Of Blood & Consequence (Book 2 of The Blood Bond Series)

11. Smell of the Flesh

Alexis moved behind the stack of documents, picking them all up easily and moving them to file them away in the wall-long filing cabinets. They were some of the older files that they would soon send off to get microfilmed and stored electronically. After that, they would be destroyed securely.

That seemed like an even more boring job than the one Delia had right now. Making sure paper was shredded completely seemed like a mind-numbing task not worth the innumerable papercuts.

Lee opened the door and strode into the room, followed by a perky Desiree, who seemed to have more energy that humanly—or vampirically, in this case—possible.

Out of all her immediate coworkers, Alexis was the only one mated, but she had a nagging suspicion that Lee and Desiree were bumping uglies quite frequently. Something in the way their eyes met when they thought no one was looking only confirmed her initial suspicions of the s****l tension that bounced between the two of them. She felt sort of bad that they couldn't be mates, both of them being born vampires.

But they were still young enough, 25 and 30 years of age respectively, and had plenty of time to find their other halves. Incidentally, neither of them seemed to be in a rush to locate them, but that could have been just them taking it on the chin and letting the chips fall where they may. Or, perhaps, maybe they let their professional demeanors hide the fact that they were aching to be with their one true soulmate. It wouldn't have surprised Delia one bit. Though Lee had a wicked sense of humor, it was almost always tempered with professionalism, but Desiree was a loose cannon—filterless and free. She could see where their attraction to each other lay. They were both quite good-looking as well.

"After the paper shredder people leave, I think I'm going to celebrate," Alexis commented as she placed documents into place in the filing cabinet. "I mean—if we are just going to destroy the files, why not just toss them anywhere in this monstrosity of a filing cabinet?"

"They need to be filmed first," Lee reminded her stoutly as he sat down at his desk and opened up a new screen on his browser. He seemed to be looking at his email and triple-checking something. "The microfiche company is just another level of security, and you know how the owners are all about that type of stuff."

Security. It was all about who and how you could get into the files—not just how secure or encrypted they were when they were there. Videos, contracts—everything was stored appropriately, categorized in alphabetical and then chronological order. It was all ridiculously orderly, and it made her skin crawl.

Delia was not a methodical or meticulous person by nature. She moved on whims and feelings, and thoroughly thought she had gotten that particular personality quirk from her mother.

Hopefully one of the few things handed down from Sasha Parker. Delia thought her taste in men was one of the many differences between the two women.

Every year around this time, the company culled a lot of the older files and put them in electronic and microfiche form, something that Delia felt was completely out of date with the latter, but could ultimately understand. Files could become corrupt, but microfiche lasted forever unless someone physically destroyed it.

She got it, but it didn't make any of it less of a hassle, and she had to concur with Alexis' groan when Lee reminded her of all the benefits of being neat and orderly.

After another few minutes it was time for a break, and Delia went into the breakroom to fix herself a cup of warm blood. Since all breaks were scattered so no one had the same time, she was alone in there and humming offkey to herself when she smelt something entirely different and new.

Something that smelled absolutely delicious.

The scent drew her into the hall between her work space and the small kitchen they used as a breakroom, and her head lifted to try to scent where the smell was emanating from. She followed it back into the office where Lee was standing, his posture rigid as Desiree stood off to one side. Alexis was still by the huge filing cabinet, and her eyes immediately flickered over to Delia standing in the doorway.

Humans. Humans where there shouldn't be humans.

Alexis caught on to what was happening even before Delia did, though she could feel her fangs pricking the flesh inside her mouth as they elongated in preparation of a fresh meal.

"This way, Dee," Alexis muttered as she forced her into the hallway again. "Let Lee handle this. He'll get them out of here, though I have no clue how they got up here without first getting okayed by security downstairs."

Delia fought her baser urges and let Alexis pull her into the hall, turning around with wide, scared eyes until she begged her coworker to get her someplace far, far away from the tantalizing scent of human flesh.

"Lexi, get me the f**k out of here before I suck them both dry in there," she pleaded sotto voce.

Alexis pushed her down the hallway, not caring if she got too forceful, as it was for her own good. A bout of bloodlust would surely have been a bad thing, and she knew Delia would hate herself after all was said and done. She was like Cassie in that way, though neither of the women had mourned the loss of Tanner. That was a completely different situation.

Evil needed to be destroyed, even if it was bloody and violent.

Delia ended up in a small room that could lock from the outside, and she could hear Alexis muttering to herself through the heavy steel door, searching for a key. The room held nothing more than spare computer parts and empty ink cartridges, so she had no idea why they were bent on locking away the useless components.

The door finally locked from the other side, Alexis promising to fetch her as soon as the area was clear of humans, and Delia heaved a sigh of relief before sagging against the wall next to the door.

Looking around, the room was dimly lit by a few recessed lights in the ceiling, and she walked over to a chair before collapsing into it to wait it out.

***

When the door finally opened, it wasn't Alexis who strode into the room with determination, but Michael. Immediately, he scooped her up from the chair where she sat shocked, planting her on his lap as he cooed soft words into her ear.

"Baby, you did so good out there. So proud of you."

Miraculously, she'd had a better response than she thought herself capable of, and she had to admit, she was pretty damn proud of herself as well.

Wrapping her arms around his neck, she watched from her peripheral vision as Alexis strode away to give the couple a few minutes to themselves.

"I was so scared I'd f*****g drain them both." Her muffled voice was heavy, throbbing with relief and emotion as he pulled her in deeper into his arms.

"You're good now, love. They accidentally walked into the building looking for a bathroom. The guards gave them directions, which they neglected to listen to carefully and ended up on the wrong floor. Security's been spoken to. Damn stupid humans."

Michael wasn't anti-human, but he thought a good percentage of the population heard what they wanted to hear—especially Americans. Only half-listening sometimes, it was amazing that there were so many of them still alive or with all their fingers and toes.

He soothed her until he felt she was calm, and he stood them both up, his mouth meeting with her forehead before pulling her out of the claustrophobic room.

"You should come home and rest for a bit, sposina," he told her. "I know security has been talked to and I'm a bit miffed they were so foolish, but I think you need to have a bit of alone time to gather your wits. I'll be at the bank with Eli this afternoon. He needs to make a large withdrawal of cash for some damn reason or other. You can scribble or doodle or whatever it is that calms you most."

Pulling back, Delia shook her head. "Honestly, I'm fine. I was just shocked that they were here. Yes, I wanted to rip their throats out and feed, but I'm good to continue to work. Honestly."

She looked up at him before his fingers tilted her chin towards him, catching her eyes in the process. "You sure? The owners have already been informed of the situation and are okay with you taking some personal time for the rest of the day."

She nodded again, more assuredly this time. "Positive. And honestly, after being locked into what amounted to a closet for a bit, I don't think I want to go back to the condo and being locked away there as well in the middle of the day."

Michael understood and kissed her deeply, assuring himself with swipes of her hungry tongue against his that Delia was making real progress with humans finally. He had noticed the last time they had worked on it, but had been the first true test of her bloodlust. Thankfully, it had gone well, and she followed him back to the office before Michael left the building to go off on whatever errand Eli had for him at the bank.

Having all but forgotten her meal, she told Lee she needed to fix herself a cup of blood. He nodded, jerking his head towards the door before she slipped back to the breakroom and fixed the rest of her mid-morning snack.

***

The rest of the day was fraught with tension. Every sound seemed to echo throughout the room, and Desiree jumped and laughed at herself when a stack of papers Alexis was carrying fell to the floor. Alexis frowned at the pile before her, and everyone rushed to help.

Luckily much of the paperwork was stapled or paperclipped together.

"Well, that was a less than normal day," Desiree quipped as they all grabbed up their briefcases and purses to head home for the day. "It was fun. Let's not do that again."

"Not until Delia's got it together more," Lee laughed. "Though she did admirably well for someone so young. Bravo, sassypants."

Delia stuck her tongue out at him and walked with them to the elevator that would take them to the basement level garage.

When they got there, they split ways, and Delia moved to the familiar dark sedan in the corner, peering through the dark to see Michael sitting in the driver's seat with his head looking down at his lap. He seemed to be frowning at his cell phone, but otherwise everything seemed normal for such an exciting, unexpected day.

Flinging her purse to the ground and leaning over to him, she caught his lips in a brief kiss just before he started the vehicle. "How was the bank? And Eli?"

He smirked. "He ended up getting a cashier's check instead of taking out the money. He's making a down p*****t on another home in Malibu. Beachside, he says. Cassie's been bothering him about spending some time at the beach with the kids, and he took that as an invitation to expand his real estate portfolio."

"Ostentatious prick." It was said with a good-natured smile. Delia could never fault her best friend's mate for wanting to please her, though he did it in rather extravagant ways at times.

"How was the rest of the day after that bungle with the humans?" Michael asked her as they merged with the other vehicles fighting LA's infamous downtown traffic. "Anything else happen that needs to be seen to?"

Delia sighed, knowing that Michael was still pretty damn pissed off about the screw-up with the security on duty. More pissed off than he let on, to be sure.

Truth be told, the fuckwits should have known better.

"Nothing else happened, though the atmosphere was pretty tense for a while. They were all understanding, though. No one lost their jobs because of this, did they?"

Michael shrugged his shoulders unaffectedly and looked over his shoulder to make a lane change. "They got written up, but no one lost their jobs today, cara."

Though they should have, his tone seemed to imply.

Once they were back at home and in their relaxed and familiarly homey environment, both of their bodies seemed to release all their tension, and Delia headed into the bedroom to change into something comfortable.

Or into something completely uncomfortable that Michael could tear off with his teeth.

Smiling, she found she liked that idea even better, and went to grab her naughtiest lingerie from the bottom of her overstuffed underwear drawer. 

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