Bitten by Cupid (7 page)

Mirabeau frowned. The entire situation was rather difficult. She knew Dani was doing her best by the girl, but with Leonius out there needing to be caught and having just met her life mate in Decker, Mirabeau didn’t doubt the woman would have trouble fulfilling Stephanie’s probably exaggerated need for attention. Anyone would.

Finally, she cleared her throat, and said, “It’s true she’s wrapped up in her own life at the moment. Dani also has to deal with all this stuff, you know. She’s going through every single thing you are.”

“But she has Decker,” Stephanie said unhappily. “And if they get married and have kids, she’ll have her own family. She won’t need me anymore.”

Mirabeau sighed. “She will always love you and need you in her life, Stephanie. If she’s preoccupied now, it’s just temporary. Besides, you too will someday meet your life mate and start a family of your own.”

“So will you,” Stephanie said quietly. “Do you think the loss will ease a bit then?”

“I don’t know, it might,” she said quietly, though the truth was she didn’t think she’d ever have a life mate and children, and the very thought that she might almost made her nauseous though she couldn’t have said why.

Stephanie was silent as she finished with the tattoo, but then sat back, saying, “There. It’s done. Look at it in the mirror.”

Mirabeau stood and moved to the mirror to examine her new temporary tattoo. It didn’t look too bad. It was just the black silhouette of Cupid on her arm. She could live with it.

“It kind of matches my outfit, doesn’t it?” she muttered, peering at herself in the black joggers and tank.

Stephanie choked out a laugh. “You hate it.”

“No,” she said at once, but then smiled wryly, and admitted, “I’ve just never been much into body art. It’s fine though. Nice.”

Stephanie laughed with open disbelief, then looked her over and sighed. “I hope I have a figure like yours someday so a nice man like Tiny follows me around with his tongue hanging out.”

“He isn’t following me around with his tongue hanging out,” Mirabeau said, amused.

“No, but if you could hear his thoughts…” She rolled her eyes, fanned herself, and added, “Oooh la la.”

Mirabeau laughed at her hamming, but was pleased at the thought that Tiny might find her attractive. She hadn’t taken the time to read his thoughts herself but thought perhaps she should. If he was as interested as she was, it boded well for her intention to seduce him. She would just have to be careful not to accidentally control his mind in bed if she got too excited. Marguerite would probably be upset if she did.

“So, am I going to continue to grow, or am I going to be stuck looking fourteen forever?” Stephanie asked suddenly, still peering enviously over Mirabeau’s figure.

Mirabeau’s eyebrows rose, surprise sliding through her. The girl had been turned about six months ago. She would have expected her to know the answer to those kinds of questions already.

“Well, Dani doesn’t know much about it,” Stephanie pointed out, reading her mind without apology. “Every time I ask her a question, she has to go ask Decker, then they get distracted and its hours or sometimes even the next day before I get my answer, so I just stopped asking her.”

“Hmm.” Mirabeau almost asked why she didn’t ask someone else, but then realized the only other female usually at the enforcer house was Sam, who was also a newly turned life mate likely to get distracted when she went in search of the answer. Mirabeau herself was probably the first unmated female immortal Stephanie had been around long enough to ask the questions.

“Right,” she said calmly, moving back to sit on the bed again, determined to answer any questions she could. “You’ll grow so long as you continue to feed regularly. Once you reach your peak adult condition, you’ll stop aging and look somewhere between twenty-five and thirty forever.”

Stephanie considered that. “How often is regularly?”

Mirabeau hesitated, then said, “It’s best to feed in small bouts about every three hours until you’re about twenty-five.”

“Like a baby,” she said with disgust.

“Basically, yes,” Mirabeau said with amusement, then noted the girl’s pallor, and asked, “When did you last eat?”

Stephanie grimaced, but reluctantly admitted, “Before we left for the wedding.”

Mirabeau glanced at the clock. It was almost two o’clock now. Well past time the girl fed again.

“Lucian said there was blood in the SUV,” Stephanie said helpfully. “We can feed before we leave in the morning.”

Mirabeau was silent. Lucian had told her that as well as he’d ushered her to the secret panel in the church. The SUV would be the easiest source of blood at the moment, especially since Stephanie had no fangs. The simplest thing would be to head out as soon as Tiny had finished his shower, retrieve the SUV, feed, and head out of the city. It was probably the safest thing to do as well.

“No,” Stephanie protested at once, reading her thoughts. “You said we could nap. Surely I can wait a couple of hours? I’ll have twice my usual dosage when we get to the SUV.” The wheedling tone of voice and the fact that she called it
dosage
suggested the girl usually had trouble feeding. Mirabeau supposed she shouldn’t be surprised. Raised as a mortal, the girl was no doubt having trouble getting past the fact that she was having to drink blood at all. She probably resisted it and had to be urged to drink the stuff. Mirabeau suspected she would resist less now that she knew it was necessary for her body to mature properly. No girl wanted to be flat-chested forever.

“Okay, I did say you could nap before we left,” she said soothingly. “I’ll run over and pick up the SUV while Tiny showers. You can have some blood, we’ll all nap, and head out in the morning as planned.”

Mirabeau started for the door, but paused before she reached it as she recalled where she’d put the keys Lucian had given her. Without a purse on hand or a pocket in the bridesmaid’s dress, she’d merely tucked them into her bra. It was a handy-dandy little naturally made pocket she occasionally utilized in a pinch. However, the bra was now on the floor in the bathroom where Tiny was showering.

“So wait until he’s done with his shower,” Stephanie suggested, then held up the package in her hand. “You can give me my tattoo while we wait.”

Mirabeau returned to the bed and sat down. “So which one do you want?”

“The heart,” Stephanie said, handing her the tattoos.

Mirabeau took them from her, frowning when she saw the jagged line across it where some of the tattoo had been scratched away.

“I altered it a little,” Stephanie said quietly. “It seemed more suitable.”

Mirabeau stared at the heart, realizing that once applied it would look broken, just as the girl’s heart was at the moment, and as her own had been since she was seventeen. She just hoped Dani’s presence and the fact that her family hadn’t died might help Stephanie heal faster than she had…or hadn’t, as the case may be, she acknowledged unhappily.

Chapter Eight

Tiny shut off the water and stepped out of the shower with a pleased sigh. It was extremely nice to feel clean again. While he hadn’t taken a tumble in the sewer as Mirabeau had, his clothes and even his skin had carried the stink of those tunnels by the time they’d gotten out of them. It had been a relief to strip off the clothes and even more of a relief to be able to wash away whatever stench had clung to him. He was looking forward to pulling on clean clothes, even if they were tourist wear. Clean tourist wear beat a smelly Armani suit any day, though he’d enjoyed the designer suit before his stint in the sewers and regretted the loss of the expensive item.

The thought of those clean clothes on his mind, Tiny quickly toweled off, wrapped the wet towel around his waist, and headed out of the bathroom. He stepped into the bedroom on a cloud of steam, but stopped abruptly when he spotted Mirabeau pacing its length. She whirled midpace at his arrival, relief covering her face.

“Oh, thank goodness,” she muttered, hurrying forward and pushing past him to get inside the room he’d just exited.

Eyebrows rising, Tiny turned to watch her snatch up her discarded gown and lacy underthings to rifle through them quickly.

“What is it?” he asked, when she cursed and dropped the destroyed clothes with disgust.

Sighing, she glanced over, and admitted, “I was going to go get some blood from the SUV for Stephanie. The keys were tucked into my bra when we started out through the sewers, but they aren’t here.” She scowled unhappily. “They must have fallen out when I took that tumble in the sewers.”

“Hmm,” Tiny murmured, his eyes sliding over her in the new clothes. The black joggers had NYC down the side seams, they were a bit large and riding low on her hips, while the black tank with NYC across the breasts was hugging her curves lovingly.
I did good
, Tiny decided. She looked sexier in the outfit than he’d thought possible…and the keys had been lucky to be nestled between her breasts for even a few minutes.

A disgusted cluck from Mirabeau made him force his eyes away from her body to her face as she sighed unhappily, and said, “I guess I’ll have to call Lucian and tell him. He’ll have to send out someone with keys or send a new SUV altogether.” She gave an exasperated huff. “God, he’s going to be so pissed. It completely defeats our having snuck out of the church the way we did and sloshing through the sewers. Leonius or one of his men could follow whoever delivers the keys and—”

“We don’t have to call Lucian,” Tiny said quietly, and Mirabeau turned startled eyes his way.

“We don’t?” she asked hopefully.

He shook his head. “I can get us into the SUV and get it started without keys.”

“You can?”

She was peering at him now as if he were a god. It made him smile wryly. While he liked that she was looking at him like that, it would have been nice if it were for a different reason than that he could help her avoid calling Lucian, he thought, then admitted, “It’s one of many more dubious skills I possess. I had something of a shady past before Jackie’s father took me under his wing and taught me to be a PI. If not for him, I think I probably would have become a criminal. Fortunately, he caught me while I was still young.”

Much to his surprise, the words made Mirabeau’s mouth widen into a full-fledged smile. Moving toward him across the bathroom, she chuckled, and admitted, “That touch of shadiness just makes you even more attractive.”

Tiny felt his eyebrows rise and smiled. He was certainly attracted to her and had hoped it was returned, but while Marguerite was hoping they were life mates, and Stephanie had made a comment or two about their lusting after each other, he hadn’t really seen any evidence of it from Mirabeau before then. He couldn’t seem to take his eyes off her, but she had been all business up until that moment, so he said, “More attractive? You
do
find me attractive then?”

“Oh, yeah,” she assured him huskily, glancing down and running one finger lightly along the bare skin just above the towel around his waist.

Tiny sucked in a breath, his stomach jumping and his body along with it. He wasn’t at all surprised to see his towel tenting outward as little Tiny came to roaring life. Neither was he surprised that Mirabeau’s smile had widened even farther and now had a satisfied edge.

Her eyes were beginning to glow with what he knew was evidence of her own desire when she lifted her face to his again, and her voice was a soft growl as she said, “After this assignment is done, we’ll have to do something about that.”

Tiny was already reaching for her, and her words didn’t stop him from drawing her forward to press against his chest and other less flat parts.

“Why wait?” he growled, then covered her mouth with his. He kissed her with all the desire he’d been experiencing since joining her in the tunnels. His mouth was demanding, and even though he was getting a response, he knew she was holding back, that her sense of duty was struggling with her own desire, and she wasn’t giving him all of herself.

Breaking the kiss, he began to nibble his way across her cheek to her ear, and whispered, “We’re on a break right now. Stephanie’s safe and probably sleeping, and we have a couple hours before dawn…consider this a dinner break.”

Mirabeau pushed him away so swiftly, he thought at first he’d somehow offended her, but then she kept pushing, urging him away from the bathroom door and backward across the bedroom to the king-sized bed. Tiny felt it bump up against the back of his legs, then Mirabeau was pushing him back onto it and climbing on top of him to straddle his toweled hips.

“Dessert, not dinner,” she whispered, and bent forward to kiss him. This time she unleashed all the passion he’d suspected she was holding back…and more. She was like molten fire, pouring over him, her mouth melting into his, and her body plastering itself to him like warm wax. Her hands caught and pinned his to the bed, and she slid her tongue into his mouth and did things that had him groaning and thrusting his hips upward against her.

Mirabeau’s own hips were not still. She was shifting and rotating on his groin, her breasts pressing against and rubbing across his chest as she did, the combination sending his excitement through the roof, so that it seemed to vibrate through him in waves, growing stronger with each reverberation. Growling low in his throat, Tiny tugged at his hands, managing to catch Mirabeau by surprise and pull free of her hold. They were immediately everywhere, trying to touch all of her at the same time, first sliding up her sides, then covering her breasts through the cloth of the thin cotton tank top she wore then shifting to slide beneath it to touch her bare skin.

Christ, I’ve never experienced this kind of passion before,
Tiny thought faintly, as his fingers slid over the hot skin of her stomach. It felt like they were both burning up; she was almost feverishly warm to the touch, and he was burning up from the inside out. He wanted to feel all of her against him. He wanted her naked flesh pressing down on his everywhere, and he wanted to thrust his body into hers and bury himself in her moist heat. But that would bring an end to it, and he wanted this never to end.