Rebel Obsession (4 page)

“Okay, stop it! Just stop! Fuck!” Io’s stomach roiled, bile rising in his throat. He couldn’t digest dicks on dicks.

Sev sighed long and deep and eased back against the driver’s side door. “You know, what’s funny is that you carry on about women like that, Io. You fuck ‘em, spill the details, talk about them like they’re nothing more than cattle to your prod…it’s degrading. It’s irritating. Now you know how it feels.

“Ari and I don’t feel like we have to go around bragging about our sexual life. We don’t treat each other like the next big conquest. We love each other.” Sev sighed and shook his head. “And you’re such a hypocrite. I know for a fact that you get off on the idea of two girls together, and that you’ve actually lived out that fantasy more than once. But…two guys?” Sev shook his head. “The thought of two men together makes your stomach turn. So, what’s the difference? Two girls, two guys?” Sev lifted his hands palms up and moved them up and down like scales. “One’s okay, but not the other? As long as they don’t have dicks, stack ‘em one on top of the other and enjoy the party? Hmm? Is that it?”

Io didn’t know what to say. Sev was right. It was if the guy had read his mind. Until this moment, Io hadn’t made the connection. Two girls, two guys. Really, what
was
the difference? Why did two girls together stoke his sexual fantasies, but two guys made him squeamish? Great. One more thing to shame him. First, cobalt, and now his own prejudice. Would a time ever come when he wouldn’t make himself out to be such an ass?

Sev turned and sat back heavily, looking out the windshield. “Look, Io, you do what you have to do, but Ari misses you like hell. I’m not saying it will be easy, because he’s just as hurt as you are, but my mate misses you and would love nothing more than for you to be a part of our lives. But neither of us will tolerate your gay-bashing. So, if you can’t open your mind and accept us for what and who we are, then it’s your loss. It’ll kill Ari to lose you forever, but that would be better than letting you hurt either of us with your ignorant bullshit.”

Io looked away, feeling about as tall as an ant. Sev had just royally chewed his ass out, and he really didn’t have a counterargument that made sense and wouldn’t make him look like an even bigger fuckup than he already looked.

Sev put the Suburban in gear, pulled back onto the road, and they drove in silence for a while.

Finally, Io said quietly, “Okay, I hear you.”

Sev nodded, his long, blond hair like a golden waterfall over his shoulders. “Well, that’s a start.” He made a left turn toward a part of the South Side known for its growing cobalt traffic.

Io glanced out the window. “A fresh start.” He said it quietly, as if he was trying the words out on his tongue. Io was more than familiar with fresh starts. His meeting earlier tonight was evidence of that. Only, starting over with Ari felt like it would be impossible. How did you start over with someone you had thought of as a brother for nearly a century?

Sev cleared his throat uneasily. “Okay, so Ari and I plan to go to this bar in Lakeview on nights I have off. It’s called The Blue Turtle. Arion has talked to the owner, and he’s allowing Ari to play a one-hour set twice a week there starting next week. It’s a gay bar, but if you want to see him on more neutral ground, that’s where he’ll be on our next night off, okay?”

Io wasn’t sure going to a gay bar was something he was comfortable with. “You guys could come to Four Alarm, too, you know.”

Sev nodded once, pursing his lips in consideration. “Yeah, we could. But we’re not the ones with a problem over all this. You are.”

In other words, Io needed to make the first step, and maybe they would make the next one.

They.
He had to start thinking in terms of
they
with Ari, now. Because, whether he liked it or not, Ari was no longer just
he.
He was mated. Part of a pair. Which was another point of contention. Io had thought he and Ari would never take mates, and if by some fluke they did, it would be at the same time, two twins or some shit. He had always seen the two of them doing everything together for the rest of their lives, and now all that was shot to hell.

For the first time, Io was afraid of what the future held.

CHAPTER FOUR

“I’m not a prisoner!” Miriam threw her napkin down on the dinner table and spun for the door, chin high, lips pinched tightly together. Her gaze darted back and forth between the guards who stepped in front of the exit. She really was a prisoner, wasn’t she? She couldn’t even leave the dining room without permission from her father. How fitting.

“Get back in here!” Her father’s booming voice projected with the power of a king. And why shouldn’t it? He
was
the king. A fact she was reminded of every day.

Was this the life of a princess? Did she have nothing but this…
servitude
and oppression to look forward to for the rest of her life? Her father wanted more from her than she wanted to give. More docility, more pretty-pretty figurehead, more fake smiles and propriety.
Vomit.

Freedom and normalcy. That’s what Miriam wanted. To choose where she went, when she went there, and who she saw. In short, she wanted to make her own decisions.

Her throat constricted and her jaw clenched as she stopped abruptly and crossed her arms over her chest with a huff. Her eyes narrowed on the two guards. At one time this had been her home, but somewhere along the way, it had become a jail. One day the doors had closed with the clang of barred prison cells, and the mood had only worsened in the days since.

She was constantly thwarted by everyone around her. The guards, her mother, her father, even her brother, who remained servile and meek—they all contributed to her not being able to find herself.

At forty-seven, she was old enough to be grown up, but not wise enough to be mature. That was Miriam to a tee, and she acted it, sneaking out, running off, partying, rebelling, arguing with her father constantly, and now dipping into drugs. Cobalt was the only thing that relieved her of her anguish. Only cobalt took her to a place that made her feel free and alive, unlike how she felt at home.

But the jig was up. She had experienced her first cobalt overdose two weeks ago. Now everyone knew how she self-medicated, even if they didn’t want to accept it. Case in point: her father. After being retrieved from AKM by one of the family servants, her father had greeted her with about as much gentility as a gnat. His temperament hadn’t improved since.

Arms still crossed, she spun on the heels of her designer shoes and stared her father down. He stood at the head of the lavish, oversized table in the equally luxurious dining hall. His corded arms were extended straight down to hands twice the size of hers, pressed against the lacquered walnut table. Her mother, the queen, sat straight-backed beside him, her gaze giving nothing away of her thoughts as she watched Miriam.

“Miriam. Sit. Down. I’m not finished,” he said, standing tall and pointing to her empty chair.

“With dinner or with me?” Miriam rolled her eyes, her words dripping with sarcasm, and flopped back down in front of a plate of half-eaten cuisine.

Cuisine. Not food. It was not called food in this home, which was as large as three city blocks. King Bain’s family ate
cuisine.
She mentally scoffed at the silly way things were done here.

All of it—the opulence, the money, the ass-kissing servants, the even bigger ass-kissing guards…the
cuisine
—just wasn’t her. She knew it wasn’t, but trying to figure out
who
she was and where she fit in was as difficult as a mouse trying to defeat a cat with all the overbearing control her father tried to weigh her down with. Couldn’t she just call it food, for God’s sake? Couldn’t she just wear jeans or sweats to dinner once in a while?

She looked down at the stylish, expensive pantsuit that had been laid out for her.

Everything was
always
laid out for her. She never got to decide for herself. From her clothes to her bath towel to her food—no,
cuisine
—nothing Miriam did was of her mind unless she forced her will. And when she forced her will, she was branded a trouble maker. Miriam was never allowed to think or do what she wanted. She couldn’t even speak without permission most of the time.

Her father sat back down, tossing her a cross look. “Both,” he said, answering her earlier question. “What’s gotten into you?”

She gave a flippant, one-shouldered shrug. Her father refused to admit she had overdosed. He hadn’t spoken of it once, and Miriam imagined that he thought if he didn’t acknowledge her drug use, in his mind that meant it didn’t exist. But that was how he was, always sweeping the family problems under the rug instead of dealing with them. After spending all day handling the issues of the entire race, he must not have any energy left for her or the rest of the royal family. But especially her. She was invisible to her father. He saw her, but he didn’t see her. Really
see.

Case in point, if he had been paying attention, he would have known by now that nothing had gotten into her. She had been behaving this way for a while now, but he chose not to see it.

Her father huffed, undeterred. “What were you thinking last night, Miriam? How am I supposed to rule a race when I can’t even rule my own daughter?”

Last night, she’d snuck out with Persephone again, hitting a dealer and ending up at a party with less than agreeable humans pawing her as she had only just barely refrained from passing out. She had openly fed from a human’s vein, in front of other humans—most of them high, none sober. When the guards had fetched her, they’d had to clean every mind at the party to ensure no one remembered the pretty vampire girl who’d bitten the neck and drank the blood of their friend.

Her brilliant sapphire eyes whipped toward her father. “Excuse me? Rule me? Is that what you said?”

Her younger brother, Colin, ducked his head across from her just as her father slammed his fist against the table. The loud boom echoed around the room, and her father’s anger hung like an ominous storm ready to let loose.

But Miriam wasn’t afraid of him. Not like her brother, and not like the spineless, sniveling liaisons who kissed her father’s royal ass on a daily basis. Unlike all the rest, Miriam’s inner package had come with fortitude and an iron will which rivaled her father’s in every way, which was probably the source of her growing antics. Antics that outraged her father, but why should she care what he thought when he didn’t care enough to treat her like a living, breathing person who bore half his genetics? And with those genes he had given her, she matched him rage-to-rage and fist-to-fist across the spectrum.

“This is my home, Miriam, and you—”

“That’s right.” Miriam sat back and threw her napkin on her plate of
cuisine.
“I’m just some stray dog you took in. I should be grateful you even allow me to live here.”

“Goddamn it, Miriam!” Her dad glared at her.

For most people, his stern frown was enough to send them yipping in the opposite direction with their tails tucked between their legs and fear in their eyes, but Miriam wasn’t like most people. Not anymore, anyway. At one time, she had reacted to her father with fear, too, but those days were over. With narrowed eyes and crossed arms, she glared right back at him.

“What? Not used to someone talking to you like they have a pair of balls? Funny that it takes a female to remind you what courage sounds like, isn’t it? You’re spending too much time with your,
ahem,
liaisons and counselors, Father. You’ve forgotten what it sounds like when someone actually has a spine.” She pushed away from the table, and this time she wasn’t going to let her father pull her back in. Conversation over.

“Miriam. Miriam!”

She waved over her shoulder, her Manolo Blahniks clicking over the hardwood floors, and stared down the guards who stepped in front of her to block the exit again.

“Get out of my way or lose your jewels.” She hit them with a downward glance aimed at their crotches.

As her father continued shouting at her from the table, neither guard budged, their faces still as stone and their eyes full of dark resolve.

“Suit yourself.” She feinted as if she was going to roundhouse the guard on the left. When he ducked, she leaped and somersaulted like a graceful cat, punching the other guard in the face as he tried to catch her.

“Bring her back here!” Her father’s voice bellowed through the entire house.

As soon as her feet landed on the opposite side of the guards, she kicked off her designer shoes, turned, and sprinted down the hall, leaving those lackeys behind. After all, she
did
have her father’s genes. The guards would never catch her.

Leaping and dematerializing, she instantly reappeared on the landing at the end of the main foyer and darted down a long hallway as the guards struggled to keep up. Breezing through her room, she grabbed her coat, another pair of shoes, her keys, and her bag, then burst onto her balcony before jumping four stories to the ground below. Security from all over the house was after her by now, but they would never catch her. They never did. She was too smart, too fast, too strong. Not even her own father could tie her down anymore.

Materializing into the driver’s seat of her Jaguar, she cranked the engine and gunned it, top down and sound system blaring.

The wind whipped her long hair around her face, and she quickly pulled it back in a ponytail, driving with her knee. Then she floored it. Destination South Side.

Destination Cobalt, more like it. She
needed
the cobalt. Cocaine, heroin, meth. Miriam had tried them all, but that shit didn’t work on vampires. At least not in the way she needed it to. Nothing helped ease her except cobalt. Dream-inducing, stress-relieving, take-me-away cobalt. It was the only thing that enabled her to deal with the shitty life Fate had racked up for her.

Damn it, but she just wanted to be herself. She only wanted to live her own life, but her fucking father and everyone else in that prison she called a home refused to let her.