Captiva Master - Vampire Warewolf Menage Six Feet Under Series Book 4) (18 page)

She started typing. “And you are?”

“His daughter.” Dakota handed over her driver’s license.

“Dakota Malcov,” she read aloud, handing back her license. “Just a moment.”

Dakota raised a questioning brow at Adam. What was this woman talking about? She squinted at her license, observing the same crappy, calf-eyed picture she was certain the ever-thoughtful clerk snapped on purpose. Next to said portrait, her address read Captiva Island instead of Fort Myers, and her last name had been changed. Wow, what balls her vampire had!

The nurse did an obvious double take at Adam. Dakota didn’t like it, but she couldn’t blame the woman. Adam’s shades were off, his ice-green eyes penetrating even though he wasn’t trying, his jet hair spiked in all directions on the top of his head and cropped in tight layers in the back. Wearing a white button-down with the sleeves rolled past his forearms, his golden tanned skin highlighted the definitions of his long tendons and heavy muscles. Soft jeans strained around his thick legs, his prominent bulge – even though he wasn’t presently hard, and over the short boots he’d worn, which Dakota knew were packed with short blades. His head moved this way and that, his hand staying possessively on the small of her back, and with him beside her, she wasn’t afraid of whatever might pop out around the corner. However, since they’d arrived at the hospital, there wasn’t a woman, and many times a man, who hadn’t stopped to gawk at
her
Habaline, which Dakota found extremely irritating…and provoking.

After a long moment, the nurse cleared her throat. “Around lunchtime, your father was moved into a regular room. Follow the next corridor, turn left, and you’ll hit the south elevator. He’s on the fifth floor, room 502 A.”

When her stomach dropped, Dakota reached for Adam’s hand, curling her fingers around his. “Is he going to make it…is he awake?”

“I’m sorry. You’ll have to speak with his doctor or perhaps your husband.” Gesturing to the left, she directed Dakota to an adjacent hall. “He arrived within ten minutes of our call.” Dakota dropped Adam’s hand and bolted for the double doors, pressing through until her eyes met the next nurses’ station.

Easily, Adam snatched her wrist, turning her to face him. “I know you are upset, but it’s
us
now.” He had his glasses tucked in his pocket, controlling his glitter quite well, and when those ice-green eyes melted into hers, she relaxed just a little.

“I’m sorry,” Dakota said, standing on her tiptoes and pulling him down for a chaste kiss. “I’m not used to having someone who…”

“Will take care of you,” he finished in a whisper. “In your former world, the human world, I realize most women don’t desire what I want to give you daily, everything of myself and my protection. So I need you to compromise more.” He cupped her face between his big hands, stroking the arch of her cheek with his thumb. She turned into his palm and kissed him there. “If you cannot meet me in the middle, meet me somewhere, anywhere, and I’ll do the rest.”

Lowering her heels, she admitted what he already knew, “I was angry when I woke up this morning, losing another week of my life, and I know none of it is your fault.” She tugged him down the next corridor. “I want Dad to be okay…I, uh, never mind.”

“He’s the only human family you have since your mother left.” Adam curled a possessive arm over her shoulder, pulling her into his side. “Think not of my past when speaking of yours. You shouldn’t pity me, Dakota, not when you’ve given me
you
.”

Adam was never embarrassed to speak from the heart, and hers gave a little flutter when she said, “How am I going to help but fall in love with you?”

He laughed, bending his head down to kiss the top of hers. “You can’t. I’m sure of it. Love will come sooner than you think.” Adam shrugged, deliberately admiring her breasts filling the tight bodice of her pastel-yellow sundress. “Maybe it already has and you’re not ready to face it.”

She faltered on her next step, spying Dru Holt speaking with Maestru, “Master, this appears to be the same
issue
as Ciaran found in Scotland.” Then Maestru shook his head and pivoted on his heel, his eyes landing on her. “We cannot risk keeping,” Dru stopped and followed Maestru’s line of vision.

“What’s going on?” she asked warily.

“I’m sorry I missed your awakening.” Maestru cupped her elbows, pulling her closer, even as Adam kept his arm across her shoulders. “But your father came around.”

All thoughts were derailed when she spied his tanned throat, remembering the taste of his salty skin and his wicked blood with delectation. Twin pains shot through her gums, so she swirled her tongue across the fronts of her teeth and immediately sliced her tongue. The taste of her own blood hit her palate with vigor, and she pushed Maestru away, swallowing past the sudden burning dryness in her throat. “My dad,” she said through a wheeze, “where is he?”

Adam bent around, staring down at her in concern, just as Maestru’s eyes narrowed. Ever so gently, Maestru lifted her chin, the simple touch sparking fire underneath her skin, and used his thumb to pry her lips apart. “Adam, you didn’t mention this during our morning phone call.”

“This is the first I’m seeing of it,” Adam replied, peering into her mouth, as well, “same as you.”

“Whatever this is” – she looked between them, wishing they weren’t talking
about
her but instead talking
to
her - “can we discuss it later?”

Dru intervened, “I should examine Dakota.” He tilted his head to an adjacent empty room, housing two mechanical beds and a three-decade old television with a coordinating phone, both in avocado green. Maestru ushered her inside, Adam and Dru following silently. Three male bodies took up every square inch of the place, making Dakota a touch claustrophobic, and she grew a little testy. She looked pointedly at Dru, no longer picking up the weird vibe that told her he wasn’t human. He seemed normal now. In contrast, she scented an assortment of humans walking by the now closed door, each with their own…delicious …fragrance. “Once again, I’m left to wonder what’s happening to me.”

Dru replied, “I remember something quite similar to this happening in the Russian Coven when their Coven Master claimed his Bride, though I’ve never witnessed it since.” The doctor moved in vampiric speed. In Dru’s hurried moves, she could clearly follow each of them without one blurring into the next. Dru finished his examine by opening her mouth while uttering those infuriating, panic-inducing,
ah-ha
doctor mutterings under his breath.

“Tell me,” she demanded, her fingers curling into fists, a red haze veiling her sight. “What’s wrong with me.’’ Her temper was on edge when she had originally awakened. Now it was far worse, and why did she want to bite Dru?

“Have you forgotten I can read most peoples’ minds,” Dru said, taking a deliberate step back. Her face burned, but to his credit, he kept her mental meanderings to himself. “You are as close to a vampiress as anyone not born of our race can get.”

A ripple of shock tore through her, and she ass-planted on the bed. Adam sat next to her, pulling her tight, and the bed groaned under his incredible weight. Maestru, on the other hand, asked her question after question. She ended his inquisition with a final, ‘no I don’t want to eat human food anymore,’ and a subsequent ‘the sun felt nice on my skin today’. Although she had to admit her head was foggy and pounding.

Dru tapped his chin in that doctor’s way. “Your head will fill better after you feed, but you still may want to try human food, just a little, until we’re sure you can completely sustain yourself on blood.”

Adam said, “She hasn’t been eating but a crumb here and there, nothing at all for this last week she was in her deep sleep.”

Maestru stood in front of the window looking out, his raven-colored brows drawn. He was a living sculpture, so beautifully wicked, and if she weren’t so frightened of her circumstances, of her father’s circumstances, she’d pull him down on this bed and… Dru coughed, and considering vampires really didn’t need to do that, she realized that he’d heard everything. “Sorry,” she whispered.

“It’s good,” Dru laughed. “I’m glad My Master has you now, and obviously you are, too.”

Maestru turned with an unfathomable expression, but somewhere in his eyes, she saw hope. “Do you think this transformation could have changed her Donor status?”

Dru shoved his hands in his lab coat, and inclined his head to Adam. “There’s only one way to find out.”

Delicately, Adam took her hand, kissed the wrist, and brought it to his mouth. With the barest of touches, he pricked her with his fang. Blood started welling and he lapped. “Tastes the same,” he said, trying to hide his disappointment.

Maestru stepped closer. “But it doesn’t smell the same.” He took her hand, a small smile curving his lips, and ran his tongue over the sensitive skin of her wrist. “Tastes the same, however, I don’t want to gorge any longer…sorry,” Maestru said, kissing her nose, after Dakota raised a threatening brow his way. “Dru, you’re up.”

Dru didn’t look too thrilled about being the tiebreaker. “I remember the last time you asked me to sample her,” he said cryptically.

Maestru declared with the confidence of a man who always got what he wanted. “You won’t harm her.”

Dru pressed his thumbs on either side of Adam’s pinprick, urging more blood to the surface, and speedily lapped. His body tightened all over, waiting, waiting, and waiting for something to hit him. “No,” he said with evident relief. “I mean, she’s delicious, but Dakota didn’t hit me in that Donor way.”

That’s when the mighty fell, or nearly fell. Maestru mimicked her ass-plant and lowered himself on the adjacent bed, his face in his hands. “The Lovci won’t hunt her anymore.”

“A relief like no other,” Adam said quietly, leaning over and slapping Maestru on the knee a couple of times before turning his attention to Dru. “My mate wants to see her father.”

“Yes, Randall’s been awake for a few hours.” Dru looked at Dakota. “He’s even talking, though it would be best for you to see him after you feed.”

Now, she wished that she had eaten something, a cracker, anything, sensing dry heaves rising. “He had a serious stroke, was in a coma, much the way I was, and snapped out of it. Now he’s talking without any problems, no slurring, no speech delay?”

In vampiric speed, Dru checked an incoming text. “For his age, Randall is doing remarkably well. ”

For his age, Dru said, yet her father was only forty-six. Something wasn’t right here, wasn’t adding up at all. She looked hard at Maestru, his face now a mask of composure. “What were you two discussing when I walked up, regarding Scotland, of all places?”

“You could hear that?” Maestru appeared impressed. “It was Coven business, Dakota.”
She didn’t believe him, nor did she believe her dad was suffering from a stroke as she’d been told. “Dru, please, tell me his prognosis.”

He opened the door, stepping into the hallway. “Let me run more tests. Feed and go see him,” he repeated.

A nurse came barreling by, asking Dru about medications, and Maestru led Dakota quietly down the hall with Adam, just as quiet, on the other side. Several times, Maestru covered her hand with his, but she pushed him away. “I’m not holding your hand.” Every time he put his hands on her, she forgot the world and went to a place where only they existed, and she needed to keep her wits about her. His responding chuckle was purely masculine. Yeah, he knew what he did to her. “You’re not telling me the truth about my father.”

“There’s nothing to tell about your father, other than the wonderful news of him coming back to consciousness.”

Dakota read between those lines. Maestru didn’t want to lie to her, so he reworded the truth. She’d find some way to figure it out herself. When she stayed quiet, he went for a subject change.
“Luisa called me this morning,” Maestru inquired in a deceptively soft voice that she wasn’t buying for a second. “She thinks you might be planning to stake her.”

“Yeah? Well, rent her psycho, and she’ll understand why. You don’t go creeping up on people while they’re showering.” They neared the elevator with her wondering if staking would actually kill a vampire. By the looks of Maestru, she didn’t think so, and he wasn’t the one to ask. “She knew I had plenty of towels, and I don’t think my throwing a half-empty shampoo bottle at her head constitutes an attempt at staking.” Luisa was exotically beautiful, looked innocent enough for a vampiress, but she gave Dakota the creeps. “Do you?” No, Dakota didn’t trust Maestru’s housekeeper one iota.

Maestru explained, “She’s been with me for centuries.”

Dakota hissed, really hissed, like a vampire, and then those twin pains in her gums started up again. Carefully, she prodded the areas with her tongue. Fangs. She had freaking fangs! She pressed her hands against her stomach, wondering why she was still thick around the middle if she were truly a vampiress. Luisa had a figure like Blythe did, well, before Blythe got pregnant.

The elevator finally opened, and they stepped inside after everyone exited, allowing them some much-needed privacy. Still, a young couple hurried down the corridor to catch the elevator before it’s ascent, so Maestru waved his hand, and they turned around. When the doors finally closed, they were alone, silence filling the tiny space. A knot of fear, lust, and confusion swelled inside her belly – that hadn’t changed.

Adam was first to break the silence. “I’ll tell Luisa to stay out of the shower. Believe me, she’ll obey my first request.”

“I already made that clear.” With a flying shampoo bottle. “That’s not good enough, because I want her out of my house!”

With a wide smile, Maestru purred, “You are thoroughly jealous, territorial, and you need to feed. The feeding can be easily remedied, and territorial urges are part of your new psyche; however, jealousy has no place in our relationship.”

“Whatever,” she barked. “Who did
you
feed from this morning? Don’t answer that. You probably enticed a few nurses into a maintenance closet.” She tapped her toe. “Why isn’t this thing moving.” She eyed the unlit panel. “Hey, no one punched the – whoa!” Somehow, Maestru had her against the wall of the elevator without her following his movement.