The Purest of the Breed (The Community) (26 page)

Inhaling a deep sigh, she leaned over him, reaching for his wine glass with a languorous movement that brushed her breast against his arm.

He stiffened as if she’d just shoved an icy thermometer up his ass.

She turned her head toward him, her lips next to his ear, caressing him with her breath as she said, “I made Osso Bucco for—”

He crashed to his feet.

She yelped as his hard shoulder knocked the wine bottle out of her hand. It flew and flipped, then hit the floor on its side and spun, spraying red wine around her room sprinkler-style.

“Dammit, Devid!” She balled her hands into fists and glared at him through a sudden sheen of tears. “What’s your problem?!”

“Nothing. I…” He jerked away from the table. “I just think maybe we should go to Garwald’s for a—”

“Oh, I know, you forgot to take your vitamins this morning, didn’t you?” Swallowing back her tears, she crossed her arms beneath her breasts and heated her glare to boiling.

He released a fractured breath. “I’m…not sure what…?”

“Or maybe you put on the wrong pair of underwear.”

His eyebrows crashed together. “What are you talking about?”

She flung out an arm. “I’m just trying to figure out what excuse you’re going to use tonight
not
to sleep with me.”

“E-excuse?” His Adam’s apple moved up and down. “Why would I do that, Marissa? I’ve just been, you know…”

“Oh, gimme a break,” she snapped back. “From that original groin injury, you’ve gone from ‘I feel like I’m catching a cold’ to ‘I’m kind of tired tonight’ and ‘I have to get up early tomorrow,’ onto incredibly drool-brain stuff like ‘I think we should get to know each other better first’—ha!—and ‘I want you to be sure that I respect you.’
Respect
!” she spat the word. “Gee, thanks, Dev, but if it’s all the same to you, I’d prefer to have my knees pinned back to my ears and my ankles swinging while you pound me into the headboard rather than your non-orgasm-inspiring respect!” Which wasn’t entirely true, but she’d
had
it.

His mouth fell open with a silent clang.

She marched over to her bed and pointed a rigid finger at it. “You get in this bed right now and have sex with me, Devid, or we’re through with this date. I mean it. The only excuse I’ll accept this time is that you don’t have a penis.” She planted her hands on her hips. “Do you have a penis?”

His face turned the shade of a Red Delicious apple.

“Do you!?”

“Yes, Jesus. Of course, I have a…a…” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “I just don’t want to.”

“Don’t want to, what?”
Wait
. “Have sex?” she qualified in shock.

His face, if possible, stained even redder. “Yeah.”

Humiliation rose up to burn in her throat. Tight-lipped, she asked, “Are my boobs too small, is that it?”

“What?” Dumbfounded, he transferred his gaze to the offending mammaries.

Her voice came out small and hurt, she couldn’t help it. “Why don’t you want me?” God, this was like standing in front of him in her back brace.

His attention shot up to her face, then his shoulders sagged. “Ah, shit,” he moaned, pressing his eyelids with thumb and forefinger. “I do, Riss.
So much
, you have no idea.”

“You just said you didn’t.”

“No. No. I meant… Hell.” His stared at the floor. “I just can’t.”

The realization hit her, bottoming out her stomach. Why hadn’t she figured this out before? He
didn’t
have a penis, metaphorically speaking, at least. “Oh, crap,” she said in an undertone. “You’re impotent.”

Anger flared across his expression. “No, dammit,” he growled. “Don’t say that word. I hate that fucking word. I’m not…
that
, not in the way you think. I can get it up, I just need certain conditions to be met first.”

She paused, blinking. Then she exhaled a chafing breath. Oh, this was so much worse. He was a pervert. “You need me to…to…? Pee on you or something?”

His eyes seemed to bug. “Wh-what?”

Was it worse than that? Was it…? She lowered her voice to a private whisper. “Poo?” Her cheeks flamed. She couldn’t do that. No matter how bad she wanted him, she just—

“All right, stop it.” He held both hands up, his face grim. “You need to quit saying stuff like that, Marissa, seriously.”

She studied his face and worried her bottom lip, her mind helplessly racing over other possibilities. What was this special condition he required in order to bring himself to full salute? “Is it…?” God, she couldn’t even say it aloud. She stepped up to him, lifted on tiptoes, and whispered it into his ear.

He yanked back from her, a tic twitching high on his cheek. “That’s it. I’m shutting down this pervy shit.” He pointed a stern finger at her. “Tomorrow.” And with that, he bolted from her room.

* * *

Dev ran like someone had stuck a firecracker in his ass-crack, his legs pumping furiously, his lungs working, the memory of Marissa’s appalled expression pushing him to his fastest speed.

Just great
. For three long months, he’d been suppressing every drive he’d had to sleep with that woman, fighting against the pull of her beauty, her smile, her laughter, her
scent
, his growing love for her. And for what? So she could accuse him of being some kind of sick fuck? How he’d managed not to latch onto her throat—when she’d
ordered
him into her bed!—and proceed to erase all thoughts of impotence with a little demo of
blood-equals-boner
,
baby
, he had no idea. Except for the minor inconvenience that she didn’t know he was a Vârcolac in possession of a set of fangs.
Yeah. Just real fucking great
.

Thundering up the Bruns’ porch steps, he slammed to a halt and pounded on the door with his fist. Non-stop.

The door swung open, revealing Jaċken in the jamb, one black slash of an eyebrow lifted. “What the hell, Dev?”

“Where’s Tonĩ?” he gasped out, gulping for air. He couldn’t catch his damned breath.

“I’m here.” Tonĩ stepped around her husband into the doorway, a glass of white wine in her hand. “Wow, what’s going on?”

“I can’t do this anymore, Tonĩ.” He gestured sharply…or maybe like a nutjob because Jaċken held up a hand.

“Hey, calm down,” he said.

“Calm down?
Calm down
?” His voice was rising into ninny-octaves.
Shit
! He whipped his eyes back and forth between Tonĩ and Jaċken. “Do people actually dump and whiz on each other during sex?”

Jaċken’s brows bunched together.

Tonĩ bowed her head, trying to hide a smile.

It was true, then. Gross! “You have to tell the Dragons the truth, Tonĩ. Marissa thinks I’m a sexual deviant.”

“Okay.”

“Tomorrow. Please.”

She nodded. “First thing, Dev.”

“All right, then…all right…” Sucking in a fortifying breath, he plowed an unsteady hand through his sweaty hair. “One more thing.” He hesitated, his face flushing with warmth. He felt like a boy asking about his first woody. He swallowed once, then just shoved the question out of his mouth. “What the hell is pony play?”

Chapter Twenty-six

Dev slammed the door behind him and stood just inside the locker room, his breath hissing between his teeth.

Sedge, in front of an open locker in his birthday suit, put his hands on his hips, and Arc, bare-chested but with a towel wrapped around his waist, raised a single brow.

Dev clenched and unclenched his fists at his sides. Pain as acute as when his father had died ripped through him, making it feel like a Bătaie Blade had just exploded in his chest, leaving only a gaping, bloody hole where his heart should be.
I lost her
. With a savage yell, he whirled and punched the wall. Plaster crumbled beneath his knuckles, and he hit it again. Knuckles throbbing, Dev cocked back his arm for a third punch.

“I take it the women freaked,” Arc said, his words tight and low.

Dev swung around, nostrils flared. “I suppose that depends on your definition of freaked, Costache.”

To their credit, the women had handled the beginning of the revelation meeting semi-okay, admirably forgoing throwing a bunch of hissy fits when they’d learned about the sack of lies they’d been handed over the last three months. Confession one: Ţărână wasn’t home to a research institute—those scientist working behind glass? All fake—but a refuge for people trying to live their lives in safety and happiness. Confession two: the main reason the women had been brought down here was to get to know the men with the hope that they’d fall in love with one and stay.

Confession three had taken the women on their first detour into weirds-ville: the explanation of why these women were the only ones the men of Ţărână could have children with: their unique Dragon heritage.

Lots of
what the hell
? skepticism had made the rounds over that.

Confession four, the biggie, had trekked the women directly out of weirds-ville and into freak-out-city.
Ahem, yes, tap-tap, the men and women of this community are actually a different breed of human called Vârcolac, who in some ways resemble mythical vampires
.

That double-decker whopper was followed by one of those black hole silences reserved for funerals, or for the you-have-six-months-to-live kind of bad news.

Someone finally cleared her throat. “
Excuse
me?”

Another woman snorted sardonically. “Delusional much?”

A laugh rang out, uncomfortable and incredulous.

In the back row, aerobics instructor Abby Fiske pushed to her feet. “I’m outta here.”

Tonĩ remained calm, which was admirable, considering the number of eyes that were looking at her like her phone was off the hook. “Vârcolac aren’t coffin-sleeping ghouls who transform people with their bites,” she said. “That’s just invented Dracula stuff. There’s no reason to be afraid of—”

“Oh, I don’t think fear’s the issue here.” Abby crossed her arms firmly in front of her. “The
issue
is that there’s no such thing as vampires or Vârcolac or whatever mind-fuck you people are trying to put over on us.”

No such thing as vampires
meant it was time for the men to perform an array of dancing monkey parlor tricks to prove that, surprise-surprise, they were very real.

Thomal was called upon to demonstrate his Dragon speed, running across the room so fast he disappeared. Gábor presented the Pure-bred specialty of making his eyes glow preternaturally bright. Then Jaċken, who was the only one besides his brothers who could control his fangs without the usual stimulations of aggression, blood, or sex, stepped up to do the shit job of flashing a set of elongated canines. This, of course, raised the newbies’ barely contained fear of him to new and dizzying heights of terror, and resulted in that trip into freak-out-land by convincing them.

The women started screaming like they were surrounded by a bunch of salivating beasts, which was always insulting, no matter how much their reaction was supposed to be understandable.

“Pipe the hell down!” Jaċken roared, his sharp glare and the tone of his voice effectively quieting the mass tantrum down to sniffles. “We’re not monsters,” he ground out. “After three months of living with us, you know that, for chrissake.”

From there, more explanations had followed, the whole nine yards laid out for the newbies, the goods and the bads. Emphasis was placed on the benefits of hooking up with a Vârcolac: increased health, a doubled lifespan, and significantly decreased aging, which all resulted from long-term exposure to Fiinţă, not to mention the indescribable pleasure experienced from being juiced up with the elixir. Then the blood-bond was described, how after feeding and sex took place, a biological transformation occurred that rendered the mated Vârcolac dependent on the blood of his or her mate for the span of that person’s life. Yoo-hoo, that’s why nobody’d been doing the nasty for three months; Vârcolac weren’t physically capable of having sex until they were blood-bonded.

Dev gave Sedge and Arc a stormy look. “Well, let’s see, Susan nearly puked at the sight of a pair of fangs, by the expression on Hadley’s face when she saw Thomal’s scaly dragon tattoo, I strongly suspect that she now thinks of him as Lizard Man, and Abby’s going to bail on us because, and I quote: ‘I don’t want to have children with birth defects.’ That’s us, man.” He leaned back and flung his arms wide. “Walking talking
birth defects
.”

Arc’s nostrils went white.

Hell, Dev almost longed for the days when they used to kidnap women.
This is who we are, there’s no getting out of here, so
deal
with it
.

Sedge powered his legs into a pair of blue jeans. “Jesus, didn’t any of them take it well?”

Dev drew a labored breath. “Chelsea did.”
Gábor, that lucky fuck
. “She practically creamed herself when she realized that she could finally get herself a bad boy who wouldn’t cheat on her. The rest are guarded about it right now.” Which he supposed was fair. “After the dust settles, we’ll see what—”

The door to the locker room swung open and Thomal stepped inside, his expression calm—unnatural calm. Powder-keg calm. With hard, remote eyes, he glanced at the damaged wall, then at Arc and Sedge, and finally at Dev.