Aaron's Kiss Series Boxed Set (Books 1 - 7) (114 page)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Bradley was sitting in his office that same night, about the same time that Airic had sat back away from her paintings and cried herself into a dreamless sleep. He had long since locked up the gallery and was now thinking about all that the woman Diana Lake had told him. Which wasn’t much. She was pissed off and very closed-mouthed about her boss.

When Diana had entered the office tonight, he hadn’t known what to expect from her or the meeting. She was a little spitfire, he thought. That was for sure. And extremely protective of Airic, or Alastriona, as she had told him her name was.

“What did you say to her? You owe me that much, I think, seeing how you probably won’t see either of us again. The way she went out of here, I can assume one of several things right away. You touched her without asking her, or warning her that you were going to touch her causes the same reaction, though not as badly, or you mentioned wolves, werewolves to be precise.”

He stared at her.
Well, fuck
was all he could think to say. “I did both, actually. I was angry at her, or at least angry at the situation she caused, and didn’t think before I reacted. I’ve had a really shitty week, not that that excuses what I did, but there you have it. Do I get to know why those two things were at the top of your list? Or why either one would have her tearing out of here like that?” He sat forward in his chair and waited for an answer. He had been insensitive and a jerk, he wasn’t ashamed to admit.

“No, you do not. I am not going to tell you what happened to…No, you are not going to get that from me. You don’t deserve an explanation because you acted without questions.” She rose and he thought she meant to leave, but all she did was walk over to the piece of art that he had treasured for years. “She’s been looking for this piece. The buyer wasn’t known to us. She won’t be happy that you have it, nor will she ask you to sell it to her. ”

“You said that you had worked hard to make her come here, why? Or is it because of what you won’t tell me?” He watched her looking at the piece, and thinking that if he was in her position right now, he’d knock it over and hope that it broke into thousands of pieces. She studied it for long moments, her face devoid of any emotion she might be feeling. She touched the piece once more and straightened her shoulders, looking as if she had come to a decision, a major one. She turned to him next and he nearly laughed at the expression on her face. It said that she’d love to just rip him to shreds right now.

“When this show is over, Mr. Wolff, I’ll expect all the pieces that don’t sell to be crated up and her art to be wrapped just as you received them. I’ll send a truck for them a week from this Monday; that should give you plenty of time to do both. Also, as I’m planning on staying until the end of the night, I’d appreciate it if you’ll stay away from me during this show; right now it is everything I can do not to hurt you physically in some way. But I know that Airic would be pissed if I did.” She walked to the door, opened it quietly, and closed it just as quietly.

He had seen her several times throughout the night, always at a distance, talking to the people about the pieces, telling them about the artist. When pressed, she told people that Ms. Bennett had gotten the flu at the last minute and was extremely upset that she couldn’t be there tonight. But hopefully, she’d be able to make at least the last couple of nights, maybe if she was better.

She had gotten two phone calls. The first had seemed to upset her. The second, about an hour later, had made a marked difference in her body language. She seemed less stressed, more relaxed, but no less pissed at him if the glares she sent his way were any indication.

Bradley stood and walked over to her “Life Tree,” the piece that had made her famous, and the piece that she had been looking for. He ran a finger across it, one of the smooth lines that made it unique from all the other pieces she had done. Finger marks, they were called; the potter’s fingers shaping the clay left grooves running up the sides of the piece as it was shaped by her. He pulled out his cell phone, knowing that the other party would be awake.

“Hey, Aaron. I need a favor, can you help me?” He asked Aaron MacManus, his best friend and a vampire.

“Yeah, I can help you out. You want me to bring Sara over so she can slap you around a bit too while we’re at it? You know her, always willing to help a friend.” Bradley closed his phone. When it rang back, he didn’t answer it. His night was shitty enough without having Aaron’s teasing to add to it.

About ten minutes later, Aaron was standing in his office. He just simply appeared there. He had been invited into his house numerous times so coming wasn’t a problem. Without saying a word, he walked over to his liquor cabinet and poured them both a whiskey, neat. It wasn’t until after taking a seat across from the massive desk and propping his feet on it next to Bradley’s that he spoke.

“I’ve been around for fourteen hundred years and this is the first time since I was turned that I can remember being this relaxed and this happy and it’s because of Sara and the twins.”

Bradley handed him a cigar out of the box on the desk and took one for him. He had lit them both with the lighter on the desk and taken several puffs before he said anything. “I hurt that woman today. Not physically, but I hurt her nonetheless. I was a jerk and an ass. I don’t like the feelings one bit. Here, can you tell me what this says?” He threw a copy of a newspaper article dated over eighteen months ago at him after a few more minutes of careful contemplation. 

He had done a Google search on Alastriona Bennett and found several thousand articles about her and her work. The one that caught his attention was an article run by the AP that told about a tragic accident that had taken the lives of her brother and father while they were touring Europe just under two years ago. It glossed over many details, but had hinted that the little family and a friend had gotten off the main path in a wildlife preserve and wild animals had attacked them, killing the two men instantly.

“You want me to read it to you, or just give you details?” Aaron didn’t look up from the sheets Bradley had printed off, but read ahead in anticipation of his answer.

“Just the details are okay, thanks. I know that it’s in Czech, but does it say that they were in a preserve of some sort?” Bradley leaned back against the chair and waited.

“Preserve? No, it says that Alastriona Bennett was…wait! The artist, this is her? Ah shit, Bradley, you can’t be serious. It says that she and her family and a friend were touring the churches of Europe when a pack of wild dogs came from the nearby woods and attacked them. Mr. Bennett Sr. and his sixteen-year-old son were killed during the attack. Shit! Patrick Bennett had had his stomach ripped open and the younger Bennett, Jacob, had his neck broken. It says that the animals had done extensive damage to the two men and positive ID had to be made by dental records sent for from the United States. The women, Diana Lake and Alastriona, had been dragged away by the pack and severely injured. Ms. Lake, it says here, was bitten several times but was found the next afternoon hanging from a tree branch. A professional tracker had been brought in and at press time there was little hope of Ms. Bennett being found alive by anyone on the police force. Well, apparently, they found her alive. Is there anything else?” Bradley tossed the next two sheets over to him.

“ALASTRIONA BENNETT, ARTIST, WAS FOUND TODAY DEEP IN A CAVE NEAR WHERE HER FAMILY REPORTEDLY HAD BEEN BRUTALLY KILLED SEVERAL DAYS BEFORE. IT WAS FIRST REPORTED THAT THEY HAD BEEN ATTACKED BY A PACK OF WILD DOGS, BUT IT WAS LATER REALIZED THAT IT WAS SOME MIGRATING HOMELESS MEN BENT ON STEALING WHAT THEY COULD NOT GET FOR THEMSELVES HAD THEY HAD A JOB. MS. BENNETT IS WELL KNOWN IN THE UNITED STATES FOR HER WORK IN CERAMICS. SHE WILL BE RELEASED FROM THE HOSPITAL AS EARLY AS DAY AFTER TOMORROW. MS. BENNETT COULD NOT BE REACHED FOR COMMENT.”

“Quite a change of venue, don’t you think? First you have a poor, tragic family attacked, then its ‘she’s famous, but not worth bothering for a comment.’ I don’t buy it. She shouldn’t have been that hard to get a comment from. She was in the hospital for Cripe’s sake.” Aaron put the papers on the desk and leaned back in the chair again.

“Yeah, I can see some bureaucrat being pissed off about having their tourist town advertising that they have a pack of wild animals running around eating the money makers. A few jobs were probably lost over that first article.” He took another pull on his cigar. “I don’t think it was a pack of wild dogs any more than I suspect you do. I also think maybe I know the tracker.” He looked over at Aaron.

“You think it was Bailey. Yeah, I’m sure you’re right. If you’re thinking it was Bailey, and then you’re also right that it was probably werewolves, she’d be pulled in to kill them as well. But to attack like that, is that normal, even for rouges? I mean, the first article says it was early morning when they were attacked, on a tourist route.”

Bradley sat up and moved to the vase. “Ms. Bennett was in town the other day. A couple of my wolves…she put them in their place. She’s an alpha female. Something isn’t right about that; she’d be a rarity without a mate already. I think she was targeted and turned by another alpha male.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“Fuck! So this alpha male attacks her family, kills them, takes her into this cave, and changes her because…why? I mean, she’s beautiful, and obviously talented, but why her?” Bradley knew what he was asking. Why turn a human tourist into a wolf to be an alpha without claiming her?

“The pups from the other day said she was a virgin. And if that’s so then he changed her without claiming her. That’s also rare and stupid. He wouldn’t know if she was his mate without tasting her. And without her being his true mate, there’d be no offspring. Without offspring, there’d be no heir.” Bradley had been thinking about the reasons she had been so terrified when she realized she had been with wolves. This newspaper article cleared that up, but opened the door to many other questions as well.

“You can smell when someone is a virgin? Shit, that would be handy, I suppose. So…you and Lynne, that’s why there were never any children while you were together. She wasn’t your true mate? Okay, but tasting. I didn’t know you drank from your partners. I thought you just went at it like bunnies and mated with the one you liked best.”
Cocky bastard,
Bradley thought. He knew Aaron knew better than that.

“Yeah, it is handy knowing when a female is a virgin. A virgin is to be treasured, treated with respect. Taking a female’s virginity is something we take time with. Not like you vamps who plunder and pillage at first scent, you jackass. And tasting as in tasting her skin; a kiss or even a lick along a vein will do. The taste to us would be like the scent you get that attracts you to your mate. We do bite, though, and taste the blood. It will strengthen the bond between mates and open telepathic pathways between us sometimes. But to turn a human, especially a female human, into one of our kind…” He thought about the pain she would have had to endure. The bites had to be near fatal, brutal in the worst sort of way. The teeth of the biting wolf had to stay in the wound, usually in the soft tissue, for several minutes to ensure that their saliva and enzymes got into the blood stream. That was how the change occurred. In turning a female into an alpha, there had to be a multitude of bites and not all from the same male. The more alpha males that bit her, the stronger the alpha. Most females died after the first bite, but Alastriona hadn’t.

“Do you know what her name means? I heard Ms. Lake call her Airic. Her name is Celtic. It means ‘agreeable.’ That would be a good thing in a mate, I suppose, though not much fun in the long run. Her first name according to the paper is Alastriona. That means ‘defends mankind.’”

Both men sat lost in their own thoughts. Bradley was thinking he needed to see her, to apologize to her, grovel. He had already tracked down her address. John, her limo driver, was one of the members of his pack.

John had said that she sat in the back on the floor huddled in a corner for two hours. And then her first thought, her first concern, was for Diana and how she was going to get home. Yeah, he thought, she would be a great mate for the male that had had her turned. But why not court her, see if she was compatible to him first? It didn’t make sense.

“Aaron, why would a man turn a woman without reason? I mean, I can think of thousands of stupid reasons, but why kill her family, turn a perfect stranger, someone you know nothing about, into someone as powerful as an alpha bitch then let her go? Because if the way she handled my pups is any indication, she is one powerful bitch.” He was leaning forward on the desk now.

“You think he didn’t let her go then. You think he’ll come back for her, if he isn’t trying to find her already. Hummm, something to think about, I suppose. Let me ask you this, what happens if she’s already claimed when he finds her? Do you think he’ll walk away?” Bradley hadn’t thought of that. He wouldn’t, he thought. But then he would have marked her as his too.

“She’ll be safe enough, or she will be around here. The only person who could claim her would have to be another alpha; she’d kill any other wolf, pup or adult male. And I’m the only alpha in this pack, in this territory as a matter of fact.” After a few seconds, he jerked his head to Aaron. “Oh no, don’t even go there. I am not claiming anyone. Been there, done that, and have the t-shirt to prove it. Besides, in case you’ve forgotten, she sort of hates my guts, and my wolf blood.”

His first mate, Lynne, had tricked him into thinking he was her mate by using black magic. She had threatened every female in his pack and the surrounding territories with certain death if one of them went near him. He later figured out it was because she was afraid that one of them could be his true mate and that would end her plans.

She had planned to put him into a situation where he would be challenged and both the males would be killed, making her the alpha of his pack. It happened, but not often. She hadn’t counted on Shade, Colin’s mate, being a fae being and killing her. Lynne had been sleeping with every male wolf she could, hoping for a pup to claim as Bradley’s. Sometimes the sex had not been consensual. It had taken him all this time to regain the trust of some of his pack members again, as she had told them that he was the one making her have sex with them.

“I think you should talk to Bailey and also Mel. Mel might have insider information on this particular style of claiming that you don’t know. Bailey and Tristan will be here in a few days to move into their new home. Since she was the first to see her, maybe she could tell you something else about her. I gotta go, it’s almost time for the twins to get up for school and that is one thing I will not miss.” He dematerialized just as he had appeared; in a flash, he was gone.

Bradley leaned back in the chair again. It would be full moon in two weeks. If he was going to go and see her, it would need to be before then, otherwise he’d miss the pack one here. But she would be alone during the moon phase. Maybe he could romp with her under cover of the moon and she’d never know it was him. That was definitely something to consider.