Taste Me (3 page)

But now it was time for real life again. She wanted to sort through her own mail. She yearned to sort laundry into colors, choose which temperature to wash them in, turn the knobs. To go to the grocery store and choose her own fresh oranges, shop for her own damn tampons—not just have them magically appear when she needed them.

Her face blazed with heat. Garrett even managed her period.

She looked up to the picture of The Pretenders’ Chrissie Hynde, met her wise, kohl-rimmed eyes. Would Chrissie let some man manage her menstrual cycle? Hell no.

She had to make some changes—starting with confronting her pitiful feelings for Sasha’s lunk of a brother.

She made herself think back to Annika’s Succession Ceremony late last summer, the day her sister had officially become the Siren Second, a member of the Underworld Council. The weather that day had been hot and gorgeous, drenched in history, laughter, and sunlight. Held at Annika’s choice of venue, The Calhoun Beach Club in Minneapolis, the Succession Ceremony itself had taken place in one of the smaller private ballrooms, its French doors thrown open to the lake and the adjoining private beach which was theirs for the day. Though “succession casual” had ruled the day, the simple and moving rite had played out as it had for hundreds of years, with Wyland carrying the Council Tome to the front of the room where a candle-laden, white-clothed table had been set up on a riser. Valerian, resplendent in his black, grey, and white tapestry robes, had stood behind the table facing them, with Annika and her mother positioned on each side. Scarlett herself had been seated in the front row, hyper-aware of Lukas’s big body shifting uncomfortably in his chair at the end of the row. Even after Valerian had intoned the final emotional words of the ceremony—“All that was. All that is. All that shall be”—as he’d scribed Annika’s name underneath her mother’s with his flashy Mont Blanc pen, she’d been fine. But when each Council member had approached Annika, ceremonially kissing her forehead, heart, left cheek, right cheek, lips… Scarlett gulped.

Admit it.
Watching Lukas place his lips on her sister’s mouth, even platonically, had fractured something inside of her. And she’d ducked out of the after party, dialing up Garrett and setting tour plans in motion before she’d even left the Calhoun Beach Club parking lot.

What had ever made her think that touring for over a year would be a viable solution, would anesthetize her useless, pitiful feelings? All she’d accomplished was burning herself out. The year swirled through her brain: sold out shows. Music and merch sales through the roof. Hundreds of thousands of hits to the band’s website, spiking when Scarlett herself posted in their online road journal. Yes, the tour had been successful beyond Garrett’s wildest dreams, but she’d been going through the motions for months. She couldn’t write for shit, and looked even worse. About halfway through the tour, she’d started singing other artist’s songs more frequently than her own because… it was easier. It hurt less to interpret the emotions in songs other people had written, and she did it very, very well. Wildly popular, Scarlett’s Web cover shows had become epic events, guaranteeing an emotional roller coaster ride one would never forget.

But no one knew the sense of failure she felt every single night the band performed. It was bad enough she wasn’t writing her own music, but she was also too much of a chickenshit to sing her own backlist.

She couldn’t think anymore, couldn’t focus. She lost her temper more easily than she used to. Her life felt like it was happening to someone else. And that was going to change, she affirmed as she undressed. She needed to feel her own feelings again, not run from them, no matter how painful they were. And she couldn’t move on until she confronted her feelings for Lukas Sebastiani.

The bastard.

Yes, it was time to get her life back on track. Scarlett climbed into bed naked, pulling the puffy quilt over her bare shoulders.
Please, no dreams tonight.
Because in her dreams, she tumbled in the sheets with a rock of a man, with the incubus who’d kissed her, devoured her, initiating her into womanhood so deliciously that she’d… screamed.

Ruining her for anyone else.

The night sky was brightening, about to tip over to dawn, and the lobby of Memorial Hospital was filled with people who never expected they’d be making a pit stop at the emergency room. The sharp taste of iron spurted under Lukas’s tongue as yet another ambulance screamed to a stop at the entrance. Adrenaline pumped as the medical staff jumped into action like football players, choreography he’d become familiar with during the hours he, Jack, and Krispin Woolf had been waiting for Andi Woolf to come out of surgery. First, a medical response team trotted out the door and onto the field. They opened the ambulance door, listened to the EMT squatting like a coach in the back of the vehicle beside the patient. The sleepy resident quarterbacking the play then rapped out a jargon-filled stream of orders that Lukas sure as shit hoped made sense to someone. Snap goes the gurney. Gurney and passenger were quickly wheeled to the end zone.

And sometimes screams fill the stadium.

The place was bedlam. He was in the way everywhere he stood, and he’d seen
way
too much of the lower torso of a valkyrie straining to bring new life into the world, but he wasn’t going to leave until he talked to Gideon Lupinsky. Jack was in the cafeteria, getting them an umpteenth cup of awful coffee, and Krispin Woolf waited, tight-lipped, in a family room just down the hall. He’d declined Jack’s offer of coffee with icy politeness. “All I’d like is privacy, please.” Despite the closed door between them, Krispin’s misery leached into the lobby.

Lukas’s mini-comp pinged. He edged into the doorway of an empty family room directly across from the nurse’s station, his stomach sinking as he skimmed the preliminary findings that the lab had routed to both him and Gideon.

The skin they’d scraped from underneath Andi’s fingernails was incubus. Lukas sighed. Like they didn’t already have enough of a problem with bigots thinking incubi were uncontrollable sex fiends.

Lukas stepped into the family room and sat on the institutional couch. Though the thing looked like a torture rack from The Inquisition, he was so damn tired that any horizontal surface looked pretty attractive right now.

He’d been the first to arrive, beating even Andi’s ambulance, because Sebastiani Security headquarters was located a mere two blocks away from the hospital. Gideon and his rookie had been delayed at the scene, and Jack and Krispin had hit the morning rush hour exactly wrong, turning the drive from the Chanhassen boardroom from forty minutes into an hour and a half.

And thank the aurora that Krispin had been delayed, because no father, no matter how much of an asshole, deserved to witness what Lukas had seen as the gurney carrying Andi had emerged from the ambulance. She’d looked positively feral, spontaneously shifting between human and werewolf and back again, growls and moans and groans mixing and pushing from her damaged throat like gritty asphalt. She’d clutched at her neck repeatedly, as if she’d tear it open herself if she could. The sour aftertaste of her terror still lingered on the back of his tongue.

If someone did this to a member of his family, there’d be nothing left of the guy except a gut pile by the side of the road.

The doctor who’d run alongside Andi’s gurney hours ago emerged from behind a closed door. Lukas watched as he rested his weight against the nurse’s station, swung a monitor his way, and started to type. When he finished, the nurse behind the desk pointed to Lukas, who stood as the doctor joined him.

The doctor covered a jaw-cracking yawn with his hand and blearily eyed the couch before shaking Lukas’s hand. One of the laminated cards clipped to his coat pocket identified him as Dr. Adnan Penn, MultiSpecies Trauma. The picture on the card was as bad as anything the Department of Motor Vehicles had ever slapped on a driver’s license.

“How is she?” Lukas asked.

Dr. Penn dragged a hand through his short, coal-black hair. “We repaired the damage to her throat. She’s critical, in Intensive Care, but… holding. Werewolves are so damn strong,” he said with a shake of his head. “There’s a chance that the trach might be permanent, but…”

The rest of his thought didn’t have to be said: better that than dead.

“When can Mr. Woolf see his daughter?”

“I’m off to see him next,” Dr. Penn said. “Commander Lupinsky is with Ms. Woolf, but he said he’d only be a few more minutes. Mr. Woolf will be able to visit his daughter after the Commander finishes.”

Exhaustion pulsed off of Penn in waves, and Lukas had to stiffen his knees to stay standing as the other man spoke. “Mr. Woolf has authorized us to update you and the Commander if there are any changes in her status.”

If Andi Woolf died.

Penn reached for his waist as his PDA beeped. “Here comes the next one.” He eyed Lukas grimly. “Good hunting, Sir.”

Across the hall, Gideon Lupinsky emerged from Andi’s room, an evidence bag in his hand and a phone clapped to his ear. He was still wearing the thin, half-translucent jumpsuit he’d put on in Subterranean’s women’s restroom after placing his own clothing into evidence. More waterproofing than anything else, cops usually pulled the jumpsuit on to protect their clothing at messy crime scenes. Gideon’s bright red boxer shorts were clearly visible, but from the rigid expression on his face, people being able to see his underwear was the least of his concerns.

Down the hall, Dr. Penn escorted Krispin Woolf into his daughter’s treatment room. Suddenly the voices in the waiting room quieted to a hush, then excitement buzzed like a hive of bees.

His father had arrived.

He, Jack, and Krispin Woolf hadn’t been recognized by too many people in the waiting room, and those who had recognized them had clearly seen that they were occupied. But Council President Elliott Sebastiani, accompanied by Siren Leader Claudette Fontaine? It was too juicy to ignore, even in the land of Minnesota Nice.

Where the fuck was his father’s bodyguard? Lukas stepped in front of their bodies with his own, quickly herding them to the family room he’d just come from.

Lukas closed the door behind them and moved them away from the window. “Damn it, Dad…”

Elliott sighed and hugged him. “He cleared the elevator, watched the doors close.”

“If he’s not next to you, he’s not guarding your body.”

“If you’re here, why should I bother him?”

Lukas opened his mouth, then shut it. Now was not the time, and his father was right—he
was
here. He hugged his father back, then leaned down and kissed Claudette on both cheeks. He sensed his father’s concern—for Andi, and for Lukas himself—but a much more complex set of emotions swirled around Claudette: a woman’s fear that he recognized intellectually but couldn’t fully appreciate, a helpless, gut-burning anger, and… maternal concern.

He tensed.

Claudette had passed her aristocratic bone structure and coloring down to her younger daughter Scarlett in spades. What was it about the Fontaine gene pool that pulled at the Sebastiani men so strongly? Did his father feel yanked around by his gonads too?

If he did, he seemed pretty damn happy about it. Elliott’s wife, Lukas’s mother Dasha, had been dead a long time, and Claudette, this woman who’d stepped in out of friendship and practically raised him and his siblings alongside her own little girls, had twined herself around their hearts. After years of guilt and denial, his father had finally reached out and taken what he wanted.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t do the same.

“How is Andi?” Claudette asked, her siren’s voice soft, empathetic. Lukas felt it comfort him, as she had no doubt intended. Yes, there was no doubt about it. Scarlett’s skill came down through the blood.

“She’s critical but stable. They’ve repaired her throat, established an airway, and they’re keeping her sedated for the time being.” He stretched the stiffness from his shoulders. “She’s fighting.”

Elliott took Claudette’s hand. “And Krispin?”

Lukas shrugged. “He’s angry. Upset. Not talking too much.” Not talking aloud, anyway. But vengeance pulsed off the man as Lukas had easily interpreted the request Krispin couldn’t let himself speak: “Find who did this to my baby.”

“His anger is understandable.” Claudette pulled Elliott to sit beside her on the couch.

“Yeah.” Lukas plopped down in an adjacent chair, and they simply sat for several minutes, the bubbling of the saltwater aquarium on the table punctuating the silence. People walked by the closed door, some undoubtedly curious about what event had brought members of the Underworld Council to the hospital. They’d find out soon enough.

Lukas relayed the information about the skin found under Andi’s nails. “Lupinsky is running like crimes, but nothing’s popped yet.”

“Did you find anything at the scene?” his father asked.

Lukas hesitated, his hand unconsciously rubbing his stomach. How to describe it? “Pleasure. Pain. Violence. All swirled together,” he said slowly. “And… ashes.” He shrugged. “But maybe someone was sneaking a smoke in the bathroom.”

“Or not.” Elliott looked at Claudette, then back at Lukas.

Claudette’s concern fluttered into the room like a hummingbird, tripping his internal security perimeter. Lukas sat up straight on the couch.
Shit. This was about Scarlett.
He opened his mouth to speak, but Claudette beat him to it.

“Aah, Lukas. You read me too well.” She pushed her silver and red hair behind her ear, and it swept right back onto her cheekbone again. “With what happened to Andi tonight, I’m nervous about the girls. Annika is pretty good at taking care of herself, always has been, but Scarlett…” Claudette ticked off reasons on her slender fingers. “She’s a wide-open target when she’s performing. She’s not street-smart. And just coming off the road? She’s absolutely exhausted.”

Lukas snorted. “Yeah, a life filled with sex, drugs, and rock and roll might do that to you.”

Claudette nailed him with a stare he usually didn’t see outside the boardroom.

“Sorry.” Tipping his head back, he tried to work the kinks out of his stiffened shoulders, neck, and upper back. “It’s been a long day. I’m not usually so subtlety-impaired.”

“Yes, you are,” she replied. “And you’re not being fair to Scarlett. But that’s an issue for another day.” Lukas sensed her finger hovering over the spring of a trap, and took a careful breath. She took Elliott’s hand again. “If there’s the slightest possibility someone is attacking the Council through their family members, Scarlett might just as well have a bull’s-eye painted on her back tonight.”

To Lukas, a political motive for the attack on Andi Woolf seemed tenuous at best, but until he and Gideon could hit the street, he couldn’t rule it out, either. Couldn’t reassure her with empty platitudes.

“We can’t rule out a political motive, but we haven’t found anything to support one either,” he responded. “Gideon and I have been at the hospital all night. Give us a chance to investigate, Claudette, to rule it out. As for the show tonight, you know that Underbelly is the safest place Scarlett could possibly perform. I’ve reviewed Jack’s security plan. It’s rock-solid. Jack will be there, right at her side.”

“And you, Lukas? Where will you be?”

Damn it.
Lukas slouched back against the back of the couch and swiped his hands through his hair. He should have been better prepared for this. He knew the trap was about to snap shut; he felt the tension in the fucking hinges.

“Lukas,” she pressed. “I want you there.”

“No.” The instinctive response slipped out before he could stop it. He did not have time to babysit a spoiled rock star, especially this one—and not with Andi Woolf lying in a hospital bed, fighting for her life. “Claudette, I—”

“I know you’re busy, and that you and Scarlett rub each other the wrong way. Nothing against Jack, but”—steel entered her voice—“I want you to keep watch over my daughter personally.”

It was all Lukas could do to clamp down on manic laughter. If Claudette knew just
how
wrong he and Scarlett had rubbed each other, with which body parts, and how bloody long ago, he’d be strung up. There was no parental statute of limitations for what he’d done. He reached for his only argument. “Scarlett won’t agree.”

“If you and Jack have problems with Scarlett, we can set Claudette on her,” Elliott advised. “She can be very persuasive.”

Lukas remembered how Scarlett’s barely legal hands had felt on his younger body.
Your daughter is no slouch in the persuasion department, either.

Ah, shit.
He stood and paced the small room, considering the ramifications of Claudette’s demand. Physical pain he could manage. Did, nearly every day. But standing in such close proximity to a siren who interpreted and amplified emotions with her voice? This particular siren, who he wanted with every cell of his body, but couldn’t let himself have again? She’d lead him around by the dick all night long.

Clenching his jaw, he fought his mind back to Andi Woolf lying in her hospital bed. Was it a random attack, or politically motivated? Andi’s injuries went well beyond some guy—some incubus, Lukas made himself acknowledge—losing control, or not being able to handle his liquor. The taste of ashes gave them somewhere to start, but Claudette’s request would keep him off the street for nearly twenty-four hours.

He couldn’t refuse.

Like you wouldn’t have ended up at the show anyway
, his mind whispered.

He took a deep breath. He could damn well control himself around her. It would be tough, but he could do it. Even if it killed him. “Okay,” he replied curtly.

Claudette stood and hugged him. Her relief smelled like fresh dandelions. “Thank you so much, Lukas.”

His father joined them, wrapping his arms around them both. “Thank you,” Elliott whispered.

His father had a pretty good idea what the request would cost him.

“Well, then,” Elliott said. “We all have work to do, Lukas more than we do, I think. We should get going.” He turned to Lukas. “Will you be heading to Underbelly soon?”

“A couple of hours more, I think. I have to touch base with Gideon first, then we’re going back to the scene. I’ll catch a shower and a change of clothes somewhere along the way.” Lukas looked at his watch and mentally rearranged his day. Any hope he had of catching a catnap had just been shot to hell. Where was Jack with the coffee?