3.

A KSEL

“You’re looking spry,” I said to Ivan as he sat in the chair across from mine. “I take it your pain hasn’t returned?”

“No, and I feel horrible about it.”

“You want it back? I could knock you around a little bit, bruise you up, maybe break a few bones if you want.”

“Eager for some violence?”

“Just trying to help a friend.” When Ivan rolled his eyes, I asked, “Why do you feel horrible about it?”

“Stassi is still in agony, and I’m walking on air because it’s the first time I’ve been without pain since I lost Anna.”

“She’s still feeling your pain?”

“Yes.”

I thought about how horribly uncomfortable Stassi had looked the last time I saw her. She actually grimaced in pain in her sleep and her entire body would shudder every now and again. I couldn’t imagine feeling that for an hour, and from what Ivan said, she’d been like that for well over two weeks now.

“And the Deveraux sisters can’t fix it?”

Ivan shook his head before he said, “I asked them if they can figure out how to give it back to me. After all, it’s pain from my own loss, so it’s only fair that I’m the one feeling it, not a vibrant woman such as her.”

“I should pay her a visit.”

Ivan scoffed. “Because you get along so well?”

“I feel like checking in on her is common courtesy since I was there when this happened.”

“You might not find her at home. She’s been working at Harold’s in Springblood for the last few days.”

“She’s working at a grocery store?”

“That’s a noble job, aristocrat!”

“When have I ever been an aristocrat?” I snapped, knowing that, in Ivan’s opinion, that was the most savage of insults. “And I wasn’t insulting the profession, I was just considering the danger it is to the general public to have Stassi working in a grocery store.”

Ivan winced before he admitted, “You have a point there, although I’ve seen her put on her customer service face. For those who know her well, it’s obviously fake, but I think she might be able to trick the masses.”

“Until one of them angers her to the point that she forgets herself and turns them into a campfire.”

Ivan burst out laughing, and I smiled before I took a sip of my coffee. I asked, “Does Cas have any more information for us?”

“Are you eager to get back on the road so soon?”

“Not at all. My visit to Texas with Blair lasted longer than we’d planned, but it was well worth it since the boys came back to stay in Mereu.”

“The boys,” Ivan scoffed. “Do they know you still call them that?”

“Yes, and it irritates them to no end,” I admitted with a laugh. “They remind me often that they would be elderly gentlemen if they were still mortals, and I reminded them that just because they’ve been on earth for over eighty years doesn’t make them old men since they’re still relatively young vampires at sixty-ish.”

“And, of course, since you’re ancient, any being less than two hundred years old is still a child.”

“Like you, infant.”

“I hit the century mark next year. Anna and I had plans to take a year to travel around the world, going wherever the wind blew us.”

“I’m sorry, my friend.”

“Maybe I’ll still do that in honor of my love.”

“You should. Go to all the places she would have loved.”

“We’ll see.”

“Don’t put it off, my friend. Even for our kind, the future is uncertain. You might find that in ten years, or even a hundred, that you regret missing the chance you didn’t take.”

“Wise words from an elder,” Ivan teased.

“Exactly,” I said as I took a final sip of my coffee and then swept my croissant crumbs from the table onto my empty plate. “I think I’ll go see how Stassi is faring.” Ivan stared at me curiously, and I shrugged. “I’ve known her for an age. It’s just one friend checking up on the other.”

“I never got around to telling you what Cas said about the Washington case.”

“Do tell.”

“The body was used as a test subject. It seems that the person was in the first stages of vampirism but was injected with bear DNA.”

“You mean genetically-engineered?”

“It seems like it but not shifter DNA - black bear DNA.”

“Like some sort of Frankenstein monster?” Ivan nodded, and I winced. “That’s horrible.”

“We’re still trying to figure out what type of sadist is doing this, but Cas said he’d know more once he talks to Stassi.”

“What does she have to do with it?” I asked.

“You know she’s not natural, Aksel.”

“Natural? As if any of us are. In the eyes of the Creator, we’re an abomination.” Even after hundreds of years as a vampire, my Norse upbringing, that included a hefty dose of catholicism, still reared its ugly head with the reminder of exactly what my ancestors and the church thought of creatures like me.

“That depends on which creator you believe in. However, Stassi’s parents were test subjects, and look at what she became. It seems that someone is trying to replicate that.”

“Do they know about her?” I asked.

“I’d prefer to think so because, otherwise, that means there’s another unhinged madman out there with his own bright ideas about making DNA soup.”

“And killing people in the process.” I thought about it for a second and then asked Ivan, “Do you or Cas think Stassi might be in danger?”

“We don’t have any proof of that, but it would make sense.”

“Does she know?”

“Not yet. Any chance you’d like to tell her?”

“Are you afraid of our little Stassi, Ivan?”

“It’s not so much fear as a healthy dose of self-preservation. That’s kept me above ground so far.”

“I’d hate to break your streak, so when the time comes, I’ll tell Stassi. Just let Cas know that I’m going to fall on my sword for the good of the team.”

“I’ll say kind things when I deliver your eulogy.”

“Liar.”

◆◆◆

A quick trip by the Deveraux home where I found Maribel in the garden led me to the market where Stassi had found employment - not that she needed it. I had it on good authority that the woman was skilled at investing - so much so that several of our friends had sought her counsel to multiply their own money. Of course, I had benefited from that knowledge using the secondhand information they gave me.

However, after all these years on earth, I understood her need to stay busy. It wasn’t so much the need to earn money as it was the need to find something to challenge your mind and body so you didn’t become stagnant. I’d had bouts of depression over the years, some of them lasting decades, but my experience told me that finding a hobby I could immerse myself in or a new career to focus on helped stave off the downslide that inactivity seemed to create.

Of course, I had an idea of why Stassi had chosen to work in the grocery - the woman just couldn’t seem to sit still and had an overwhelming urge to tell people what to do. And I found her doing exactly that when I found her with a customer in the produce section.

“Once you’ve trimmed the celery off, just sit the base in a pot of soil on the windowsill and watch another round grow,” Stassi said, pointing to the area that needed to touch the dirt to sprout roots. “It will take some time, but you’ll have an entirely new harvest after spending the money one time.”

“That’s an excellent idea,” the young woman with a baby on her hip, who I guessed might be a cat shifter just by her scent and facial features, said excitedly. “What else can I do that with?”

“That lettuce over there that’s on sale would be a perfect companion for this celery,” Stassi said with a smile.

The woman thanked her and walked toward the lettuce to make her selection, and Stassi turned to me. She studied me from my head to my toes and scowled as if she found me lacking.

“Aksel,” she said with a pinched look.

“It’s a pleasure to see you, too, Anastacia,” I said in a bored tone. “I can’t figure out if you were hired by the competition to shut down Harold’s store or if you’re trying to put him out of business one sale at a time on a whim.”

Stassi scoffed. “Only you would look for an ulterior motive in me giving a young woman some ideas about how to stretch her dollar.”

I looked at the apron she wore, complete with a name tag printed in cheerful font that was pinned above her breast. I studied her just like she’d done to me, from the brightly colored running shoes, up the solid calves and lusciously thick thighs that were encased in faded denim, over the ample hips that were just the right width for me to grip as I fucked her from behind, on up to her delectable chest. Even though they were covered by layers of material, I could still see the shape of her full, round breasts that filled my hands perfectly as I lifted her hard nipples to my mouth.

I grimaced when I realized that she’d been watching me catalog all the wonders of her body and seemed to know exactly what I was thinking. Luckily, I could tell by the literal fire in her eyes that she was thinking much the same - either that or she was about to hit me with a fireball that would incinerate all this fresh produce.

“Why are you here?” Stassi asked.

“Can a man not shop for food without the third degree?” I asked.

“Like you do your own grocery shopping,” she said with disdain. “What do you want, Aksel?”

Without thinking, I said, “You.”

Her blue-gray eyes had flames again, and I knew for certain that it had nothing to do with anger this time. She looked around at the customers in the store and then back at me before she pulled the radio from her pocket and said, “I’m going to take a quick break, you guys. Give me fifteen . . . Oh, let’s say more like ten minutes.”

I narrowed my eyes at her, and she shrugged before she said, “It’s been a while. It’s not my problem if you can’t keep up. Follow me.”

The voices of the other employees on the radio were cheerful as they told her it was about time she took a break, but she silenced it as she walked through the swinging doors into the stock room. I followed her along the wide aisle that had dried goods shelved on either side, past pallets of cans and jugs and into a refrigerated room with thick plastic strips hanging down to curtain off the area. Once we were in the far corner of the cooler, she abruptly stopped and turned to face me before she dropped to her knees in front of me and yanked at my belt.

Without conscious thought, because right now the thought of her mouth around my cock made me dizzy, I reached out and ran my fingers through her thick brown hair and held on for the ride I knew she was about to take me on.

Stassi was a master with her tongue - whether it was flaying the skin off a man with her caustic words and sharp wit or swirling around the head of his cock before she sucked his soul out of his body. Experience had taught me that I’d need something to hold on to.

Thank God because I’d been dreaming about this moment since the last time I experienced the unpredictable ride that was Anastacia Yeamans.

◆◆◆

STASSI

From the second I turned around and found Aksel watching me with hunger in his eyes, I knew exactly what was going to happen. All I could think about while we exchanged angry words was where and how I could take what I wanted from him before I pushed him away like I always seemed to do.

The cooler seemed like the perfect place, especially since I spelled the entrance the second we walked through to make sure no one followed us inside or could hear us if they walked by but also because it was cold enough to keep my body temperature at a manageable level if I lost my concentration - which I always seemed to do when I was near Aksel Nilsen.

The man was sexy even when he was being an ass, which seemed to be every minute of the day, but I couldn’t deny that every time I saw him, I wanted to rip his clothes off with my teeth and ride his cock all the way to the finish line. And, from experience, I knew that he didn’t have a problem with me doing either.

Over the years, our interludes had taken place in some of the oddest places - the cloakroom of a speakeasy in New Orleans, an empty subway car in New York City, a storage room of a fish and chips restaurant in London, and an abandoned lifeguard shack on Coronado Island, California to name a few. Aksel and I seemed to find each other in the most random places, and every time we did, the heat consumed us until we inevitably ended up naked and screaming.

For the next few days after we came together, especially on those rare occasions where we bit the bullet and rented a room or dragged the other to our home for a weekend filled with sex and debauchery, I was tender and sore in all the best ways, covered in love bites and bruises that mirrored the shape and width of his fingers.

As Aksel’s fingers threaded through the hair on the sides of my head, I pulled his already stiff cock out of his trousers and licked it from base to tip. There was something about his scent - always clean, no matter what time of day or where we hooked up - that was absolutely intoxicating to me. I found that I couldn’t resist taking him into my mouth as I explored him with my hands - and that was something I did almost every time we were together.

And, of course, I never heard any argument when I happened to drop to my knees in front of him.

I worked him with my mouth in the way that I knew he loved and let him take the lead now and then, thrusting into my mouth as he held my head still until I took over again. Within just a minute, Aksel was beside himself, looking down at me with a fire in his eyes that rivaled the one in mine and muttering filthy things that always shocked me when they came out of his uptight mouth.

It wasn’t the act itself that turned me on, but the words he said when his cock was in my mouth that did it for me. He moaned and cursed my name, promised me punishment and pleasure, and always got me so hot that when I inevitably let his cock spring free and stood up to turn around, I was more than ready for him.

When I pulled my mouth off of his cock, Aksel grabbed the front of the store tunic I was wearing and hissed when the sharp point of the pin that held my name tag in place pricked his finger. I was still on my knees when I took his finger and pulled it into my mouth for a taste without thinking.

The second his blood touched my tongue, I felt something click inside me that had me reeling. Visions of Aksel at my side with children at our feet, Aksel standing before me with our friends gathered around and smiling happily, Aksel laying in bed beside me with his hair mussed from sleep as he gazed into my eyes with the most loving smile, and Aksel’s lips moving to form the words “I love you” over and over again in a million different scenarios flickered through my mind like a high-speed video that I had no control over.

I jerked my head back and lost his finger before I looked up at him to find a concerned frown on his face. I shook off the feelings the vision had given me and stood up without a word, silently begging him not to mention anything if he’d happened to see the same things.

I took the choice from him when I sealed my mouth to his for a fiery kiss that left both of us breathless and then turned around and unbuttoned my jeans before I pushed them down to my knees with my underwear tangled inside them. I bent over the stack of five-gallon buckets in front of me and stuck my bare ass out in invitation, and Aksel didn’t hesitate to line his cock up and thrust deeply with a loud grunt.

He stilled and ran his hands over my ass and lower back before he hooked his fingers around my hips and squeezed them tight enough to leave some of those marks I would appreciate for the next few days. Suddenly, he started moving, and I gasped as he pulled almost all the way out of my body and then slammed back inside, hitting my clit perfectly to give me that zing of sensation that I craved.

Aksel and I were both silent as far as words, but we made plenty of noise. If I hadn’t spelled the room, anyone outside it would’ve been able to hear my moans and his grunts along with the sporadic bursts of filth spilling from his mouth.

“Magic pussy,” Aksel mumbled as he reached beneath me to grab my breast. He didn’t just hold it in his hand, though. Instead, he used the leverage he had to pull my back up against his chest while never losing his rhythm as he pounded into me.

I felt his lips on my neck and the scrape of his teeth near my carotid before he bit my shoulder right above my collarbone. That burst of pain grabbed my concentration, and I came instantly, my screams of delight echoing around the room as my body clutched at his and I writhed in his arms. With a grunt, he stilled and squeezed me tighter against his chest. Seconds later, I felt him spill deep inside me.

“It’s always so good with you, Stassi. You’re like an addiction I just can’t kick,” Aksel mumbled against my ear.

“And yet somehow you always seem to manage,” I said without thinking. I hoped he couldn’t hear the yearning in my voice, so I changed my tone when I said, “Now, Aksel, if you’d be so kind as to release your caveman grip from my tender breast so I can go back to work, I would greatly appreciate it.”

“What if I want to hold you for a while?”

“In this romantic setting, who could blame you?” I asked sarcastically.

“When we’re together, do you know what I imagine?”

“Not a clue,” I admitted.

Aksel had never been one to flaunt his powers, but he was feeling showy today . . . or maybe he was taunting me when the area around us changed to a dark room with jewel-colored pillows tossed here and there and a huge bed on a dais just a few feet away. The bed was rumpled as if we’d been on it recently, but now, I stood in the center of the room with him at my back as I perused the area. Candles gave a dim and romantic ambiance to the place along with the fire burning in the hearth. The only reminder that we weren’t in a bedroom created for sin and pleasure was the cold air on my skin from the fans cooling the refrigerated room and the smell of fresh produce that mingled with the vanilla-scented candles of the glamor Aksel held over the room.

Without thinking, I murmured, “I like this way too much.”

“As do I, sweet Stassi,” Aksel said before his hand traveled up my side and fisted in my hair. He tilted my head so that we were eye to eye over my shoulder. He gave me a soft kiss that soon turned passionate, and I felt his length start to harden inside me.

We had about ten seconds of pleasure, this time slow and passionate before a disjointed voice broke through our illusion.

“Stassi, come to the front! She’s doing it again, and you’re the only one that seems to . . . Just come to the front, please.”

“Dammit,” I hissed as the romantic bedroom disappeared and left me looking at the posted instructions on food rotation and health department regulations. “That bitch must be at it again.”

“Tell me her name and wait here while I go and end her life.”

“You have no idea how tempting that is,” I said as his cock slipped out of my still-needy vagina. I sighed as I grabbed my pants and shimmied them over my hips and said, “Her name is Aleta, and she was put on this earth to tempt me into outright murder.”

“That bad, huh?” Aksel asked as he buttoned his pants.

I turned around in time to see him adjust his cock behind his zipper and smiled brightly before I said, “Thanks for the entertainment on my break, but I’ve got to get back to work.”

“Entertainment?”

“What would you call it?”

“As always, it was a passionate interlude between two people who otherwise can’t seem to stand each other.”

“I think that’s called hate-fucking, Aksel.”

“Is that what we do, Stassi?” Aksel asked.

“It has always seemed like it before but . . .” I shook my head to clear those dreamy thoughts and said, “Yes. That’s what we do. That’s what we’ve always done.”

“What would it take to change that?”

As I stared into his eyes, I thought about the sensations I’d felt earlier when I tasted his blood and the heat I still felt deep in my soul. Wondering what it meant, but somehow knowing it had changed everything, I answered with, “A miracle. It would take a miracle.”