“She’s right, you know,” Nick said with a smirk. “We are in the bedroom a lot.”
Alison scowled as she drained her bottle. “Would you prefer we stopped?”
“Absolutely not,” he said as he threw his hands in the air. When she got up to get another beer from the refrigerator, he asked, “What’s got you all worked up to the point you’ll be drunk by noon? It can’t be Heloise showing up like that. It’s got to be more.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Alison mused as she opened her beer and tossed the cap toward the trash can that’s lid was stuck in the open position. She was unaccustomed to drinking that much so fast and her vision was already blurred. The cap missed the trash can and skidded across the floor. “Maybe it is your ex-fiancé showing up out of the blue. Maybe I don’t like arrogant beauty queens sauntering through my garden and then snuggling in the arms of my honey.”
“She’s not a beauty queen,” he said.
“You know what I mean,” she hissed. “Don’t make light of this. If the shoe was on the other foot, you’d be plenty angry.”
Nick thought for a moment and nodded. “True.”
“So?” she asked.
“So?” he asked right back at her.
“Okay,” she scowled. “I’m getting tipsy, but I’m not drunk and I’m definitely not speaking gibberish. If you plan on playing games with me, you can leave right now. Otherwise, you can tell me why you felt the need to grab her when she was walking away and pull her into your arms.”
“You did see,” he sighed. When she folded her arms and leaned against the counter, he heaved another sigh. “If you were watching, then you saw that, in the beginning, I shunned her. It wasn’t until she told me that her mother passed away that I held her to comfort her. Losing a fellow shadow walker in death is not a common occurrence. Having it be a loved one makes it doubly worse. She told me as she was leaving. I couldn’t be that cold and cruel.”
Alison considered what she’d do if she was in his position and she agreed that he did the right thing. Even so, she wasn’t about to let him off the hook that easily. “Why didn’t she tell you right away? What else did she want?”
“She’s been assigned this area by the council,” he said.
“What? Is she a soldier, like you?” Alison asked with a voice that hinted of desperation. The mere thought of trying to compete with a tall, sleek, beauty who was also a warrior was almost crushing.
Nick smiled, “I promise you that you have nothing to worry about. I am head over heels in love with you, baby.”
Alison’s shoulder’s slumped with dismay. “So, she’s a super model and a soldier. What else?”
“She’s never modeled and she’s not a soldier,” he corrected her. “She’s more of an intelligence agent. She makes friends with mundanes who are suspected of being part of any hatchet group out to destroy us. She infiltrates the suspected groups to get the intel.”
“Why was she sent here?” Alison asked.
Nick looked at her as if she had four heads. “After Martin’s kidnapping, what you went through, and with Wilma barely cold in the ground, you need to ask?” He eyed her for a moment. “What’s really bothering you?”
“I don’t like her, and I don’t believe she came here just to play spy. Most of all, I don’t think that’s what you two talked about,” Alison pouted.
“What do I have to say to stop this jealousy?” he asked with exasperation.
“The truth,” she replied.
“I’m telling you the truth. She’s been sent here by your grandfather,” he said.
“What else?” she demanded. “Surely it wasn’t necessary for her to come to see you. I doubt that was part of her orders.”
He looked away and then said with resignation, “She heard a rumor that you and Martin can be bonded if you chose,” he said. “She came to see if that was happening.”
“How long ago did you break it off with her?” she asked.
Nick thought for a moment. “It has to be seventy-five years. Maybe one-hundred. I’ve lost track.”
“You’ve had nothing to do with her since then?” she asked suspiciously, remembering Arthur’s lies.
Nick threw his arms in the air and said with the utmost sincerity, “I swear, this is the first I’ve seen her since we broke it off.”
“Who was the guy you caught her with?” Alison asked.
Nick looked away. It was clear he didn’t want to talk about it.
“Does is still hurt you?” she asked. “Did she mean that much to you?”
“It hurts, but not the way you think,” Nick said. With a heavy heart, he explained, “The man I caught her with was a very good friend of mine. I trusted him explicitly. It still hurts to think he’d deceive me like that.”
“So, you hurt from his actions, not hers?” Alison asked incredulously. “You were engaged.”
“I didn’t love her,” Nick admitted. “It was more to stop her pestering me than anything else. I was comfortable with Heloise, but I never loved her.”
“So, is she gone now? Or, will I have to contend with more of her sniffing around?” she asked vehemently.
Nick scowled. “This isn’t about her, is it?” When Alison looked away he said. “Why don’t you tell me what it is about.”
They spent the next few hours discussing Alison’s former lover, Arthur; his secret rendezvous with Sarah; and the impact it had on Alison’s self-esteem. Nick was compassionate and understanding of her feelings, which eased much of her angst. Her continued drinking completed the task.
They finished their conversation with a lover’s kiss that led them to the bedroom for more of what Alison referred to as shadow land preparation.
Martin wore a broad grin on his handsome face as he stepped aside to allow Vanessa entrance into his home. “I thought you’d never get here,” he said as he pulled her into his strong embrace and kissed her long and hard. His brown eyes hinted of twinkling light when he finally released her so that he could search the depths of her own large brown orbs. “You still haven’t told her, have you?”Vanessa shook her head. “She’s so frustrated with Nick not thinking she’s ready yet. I haven’t had the heart.”She reached around to squeeze his backside.He jumped away, laughing, and teased, “Where have you been all my life?”“So, where is it?” she asked as she scurried into the depths of the house like an excited school girl. “Is it down in the basement behind some secret door?”“You make it sound so mysterious,” he chuckle
Alison sat on the back porch of her estate house toweling her hair dry. She’d finally been able to swim in the pool she’d had repaired after years of neglect. Her great aunts drained and abandoned it when she was just a young girl for reasons no one would or could explain to her. Nick suggested filling it in, but Alison was determined to bring it back to life. Although, he was clearly unhappy with her decision, he went along with it and called in the workers needed to make it happen.“I see you tested out the pool,” Nick said as he sat on the top step of the porch and wiped his brow with the tee shirt he’d stripped off earlier while tending to their enormous, well-manicured lawn. “I’ll bet it felt good. It’s pretty hot today.”“I don’t know why you insist on doing everything yourself. I have the money to hire more help,” Alison said as she pulled a comb through her long locks.
Realizing that she was still in a skimpy swimsuit and feeling rather exposed after her jolting encounter with Alfred, Alison seized the opportunity given her to slip away and put on something more suitable. She took greater care in tending to her appearance than she had in some time. She told herself that it was because they had another shadow walker visiting and, as their future leader, she wanted to make a good impression, but, deep in the recesses of her mind, she questioned her real motives.She’d only been in his company for a moment, but that was long enough to assess that he was as handsome as Nick, built in a similar fashion, and very confident with the ladies. Perhaps her eyes were playing tricks on her, but Alfred looked more like a brother than a cousin to Nick. Since they were both named Jackson, she guessed it was the Jackson gene that reigned supreme. That wasn’t the case with Martin; who looked like he was related, but certainly not a borderli
Nick perched his feet on the wicker footstool in front of him and leaned back in his chair until the front legs raised just a bit off the porch floor. After nearly a century of anger and hurt where his cousin was concerned, he’d finally talked it out. Admittedly, it took a bit of arguing and threatening before he calmed down enough to listen to what Alfred had to say. More than once, he was tempted to storm away and forget the whole thing. Alfred was not only his cousin, but, prior to catching him in bed with Heloise, they were best of friends. He’d been so angry with him for so long that he’d forgotten how much he enjoyed the man’s company.After being with Heloise for so long, it shouldn’t have come as such a surprise for Nick to discover she’d fed Alfred an aphrodisiac along with a good deal of brandy to get him into her bed. In his early years, a similar trick was played on Nick by a not so seductive female
Alison lay beneath Nick’s sweaty body while she tried to understand what just happened. She’d never even considered doing such a brazen thing as to have sex on the living room floor while people were just outside the door. As promiscuous as her dear friend, Vanessa, was, she doubted even she would do something so bold and tasteless. What had gotten into her?Nick was preparing to pull out of her when she whispered, “I don’t know what happened. Something’s wrong. The world feels distant and I feel like I’ve overdosed on Spanish Fly or something. I still need you. It’s as if I’ll go crazy if you don’t do something.”He slowly moved in and out of her. The light, tantalizing friction bringing his relaxed manhood back into action.“Yes,” she moaned. “More and more and more. I just want more of it all. I want it rough and hard.”Although she’d
Nick’s blood boiled as he paced the porch of the guest house. “What the hell just happened in there?”Martin had a look of mortification as he peered toward the garden to escape his cousin’s wrathful glare.Alfred, on the other hand, attempted to defend himself. “I don’t usually do such things. It’s just that when I saw you and Alison rutting on the living room floor, something came over me. It was like a button was pushed and I lost control. It didn’t even feel like me. It was as if I was outside my body and only vaguely aware of what was happening. The driving force was to quench the insatiable horniness that overtook me. I felt like I’d go insane if I didn’t.”Nick knew exactly what his cousin was talking about, but he wasn’t about to give him a pass on his actions. “Shadow people are supposed to have more control over their urges. I w
Alfred limped to the table where a fresh mug of coffee awaited him. As he eased himself onto the dining chair, he noticed Heloise’s satin robe was tied in such a haphazard manner that a rosy nipple was exposed. She either didn’t notice or she didn’t care as she slid the coffee mug toward her lover without lifting her eyes from the newspaper she was reading.He looked at the black liquid and then around the table’s surface for the creamer. Finding none, he scowled. “After nearly one hundred years of having coffee together - that’s thirty-six thousand plus mornings, mind you - I would think you’d know by now that I take creamer in mine.“We’re out of creamer,” she said, while keeping her face buried in the paper.“Is there at least some aspirin?” he practically howled.Her voice had an amused lilt as she asked him about the condition of his geni
Discovering that his dear, devious, Heloise had installed a camera in Allison’s house made Alfred want to find the monitor so that he could check out what was happening for himself. The odds were high that the cameras were routed to her cell phone, but, just in case, he decided to check her computer.Either she thought him too dumb or was just that careless, he couldn’t be sure, but getting into her laptop proved all too easy. After only a few tries, he managed to come up with the password. A smile spread across his handsome face when he spotted the icon for the camera system. He clicked on it and multiple shots of various rooms filled the screen.He had no idea how she’d managed it, but the sinister woman had a camera in Alison’s bedroom, the living room, the front foyer, the kitchen, and on the back porch.His brows knit together. Something didn’t make sense. Why would she think Nick and A