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

1. The Letter

Michael Jensen read the letter from his mother again slowly. Looking at all the postage stamps from Italy on the envelope, he wondered why she even bothered. No one wrote letters by post anymore. It was all email, and she simply needed to jump into the 21st century with both feet.

Why they didn’t send their correspondence by mail only ascertained with him that both his parents still weren’t comfortable with technology, but even more so, uncomfortable with the footprint they left on the web.

You could get rid of paper quite easily by burning it. Emails seemed like they lived on forever.

Michele,

We understand you your trepidation about being brought into the fold here in Sicily, but I would beg you to reconsider as we could use some of your current expertise in security with our dealings with the Martinellis. You know how suspicious we can be when expanding the business, and I have heard that your duties include surveillance and technologies we could harness, and—

He stopped reading after that. It was always the same old song and dance with his mother and father. Giuliana Di Salvio always tried to encroach upon his goodwill to help his parents in the shifty, underhanded dealings. His father, Nicholas—Nico to his closest of cohorts—would always bring up duty, which was why he always let his mate write to Michael, whom she always called Michele, the Italian variant of the name.

Michele had completely Americanized himself and switched it to Michael, just like his father had changed his surname from Argento to Jensen, though he still lived in Italy. Argento was a powerful name in the underground where all his business was conducted, and he tried his best to hide his true identity when he could by using fake names or the one he had eventually changed it to—Jensen. It was one of the reasons Michael had fled the Old Country and moved to America. He didn’t want any part of what his parents were hustling.

As he sat behind his desk in his condo that Friday afternoon, he chewed the tip of his pen before figuring out how to say the same thing as last time in a diplomatic way.

Mama,

My regrets that I cannot help you at this time. I have a newborn mate and need to keep her from pretty cut-off from human society until the initial bloodlust of being turned vampire has worn off.

Since she is new to this life, I’ve gotten her a job at my old security job. Very little chance of her coming into contact with humans as SecurElite is vampire-run and all the human clients meet only with the owners. Delia is doing well there, and I escort her to and from work so there is very little contact between her and the outside world. I simply couldn’t leave her alone, as this is a very delicate time for her. I’m sure you understand…

He went on to ask about his brother and sister, and then about his aunt and uncle living in Florence. He knew Nico and Giuliana had a vacation home there, because much of their business dealings went through the old city on its way north or south. Into Switzerland or Austria above it, or south to Rome and Naples, they’d decided on Florence as a second home, and were thinking about another one on the island of Capri.

After settling on a hastily penned letter to his mother, he took out his car keys and hoofed it to the elevator. Delia would be done with work in 20 minutes, and she was hoping to visit Cassie, Eli, and their twins the next day.

He hit some moderate traffic heading downtown, and pulled up into the employee parking lot in the underground only thirty seconds before Delia waltzed out through the freight elevator and strode quickly to the car. Michael smiled and leaned over to kiss her after she hopped in and before she put her seatbelt on.

“Work okay?” he asked as he looked into the rearview camera to make sure he pulled out and didn’t hit anybody accidentally. Not that it would have mattered as most of the people leaving the building at this time were pretty much bullet-proof.

“Same as always,” she replied quickly. “Boring, back-office legal assistant BS. It makes me almost wish that a human would walk in to stir up some trouble. At least at Promises I had handsy customers I could mouth off at on the regular.”

Michael didn’t want to even think about Delia going back to Promises. Though she could easily handle herself now that she was a changed vampire, she could just as effortlessly have killed someone as well. Her bloodlust for humans hadn’t waned in the first few months after being turned, and he was careful that she never came in direct contact with them until she was able to control the urge to feed. All of her blood came in baggies that were bought for an exorbitant amount. It wouldn’t always be that way, and one day she would be able to feed off humans to get her sustenance, but he was taking it slowly with her. Like her best friend, Cassie, she would have felt horrible if she’d bled someone dry and killed them.

He let her spout off about her dull job, but he knew that she was aware it would only be temporary until she got her baser urges reined in. It was a stop along the way, and Michael was fine with taking it as slow as she needed.

So, he listened to her vent. He could quiet her later with his kisses, and then have her screaming when he split her in half with his—

“Michael? Cassie says we should come over in the afternoon tomorrow. You good with that?”

He had let his dirty thoughts of s*x with his mate tear him away from their one-sided conversation, and he was drawn back at the mention of Cassandra White and her mate, Elijah Payne. Michael worked for Payne exclusively now, and because they were connected by their females’ close friendship, Eli let Michael pretty much work when and where he wanted. It’s not like Eli was hurting for money, and much of his time was spent surveying Payne’s many properties throughout the city. A lot of them were in downtown L.A., but even then, people occasionally—well, if you could call criminals people—got the idea to try and break in. The few times the silent alarm had sounded, Michael had been woken with a call to his cell phone and had to go downtown to investigate in the wee hours of the morning.

Once it was simply a cat that had somehow made its way into the building and was roaming the halls silently, the other two times the perpetrators had fled the scene before he could get there. Once he found them in an alleyway nearby, stuffing computers and laptops into the back of an old Chrysler Cordoba. He was damned surprised the piece of s**t still worked, but he was able to take down the crook, call 911 with one hand, and use the other to hold the man to  the ground with his wrists behind his back.

In the end, Eli was woken from a dead sleep—ha ha—came down to the station with his work laptop, proved all the technology in the back of the perp’s car was his with their serial numbers, and the man was booked on a charge of grand larceny.

Eli was grateful, albeit a bit irritable at being woken up, and he let Michael do as he pleased after that. It appeared the man was just barely getting enough rest each night. The twins were still quite young at the time, maybe only a month or so old.

In the months that passed since then, the little ones had settled into a regular sleeping pattern, and Eli was a bit more cheerful during his waking hours.

When Michael had first met the man, he was unmated, surly of disposition, but paid well enough that Michael could ignore his more unpleasant tendencies to growl his commands. He’d even felt a bit sympathetic to his plight. He’d never heard of a vampire waiting over 400 years for his other half to appear. And it seemed that for all that waiting, he’d been blessed with two babies right off.

Delia was now babbling happily about an afternoon with Adam and Charlotte the next day, and he wistfully replied to everything she said, content enough in the fact that she seemed to enjoy and even look forward to seeing her little niece and nephew.

Cassie insisted that she was Aunt Delia, and Delia, in turn, always gave her a wide smile when she was given Adam or Charlotte to coo and simper over after having been given the moniker.

As an honorary aunt, Delia took to the handle with zeal, always helping Cassie with the babies when they went over, never minding when they cried or made a deathly amount of noise. Everything they did was precious to her, and she took to them quickly over the ensuing months after Cassie had given birth.

“Honestly, they’re already so smart! The last time I told Adam to hush because he was being noisy, the little guy actually listened!”

Michael smiled over at her as he turned into the parking garage of their condominium. “Vampire babies age quicker than humans in that way. Once they’re a year old, they will be able to know the difference between right and wrong and can be seen in public for the first time. Rumor already has it that Elijah Payne of Payne Media Management has taken a wife through the confidential marriage procedure, so it’s not like anyone can get hold of a certificate for them.”

“Well, I don’t know who blabbed about his having twins, but my bet is Leandra.” Delia wasn’t a fan of the waspy, wicked-tongued female. She supposed it was because they were too much alike, but it also could have been because of jealousy as well. Leandra could come and go wherever she pleased, whereas Delia was restricted to only speaking and meeting with her own kind. It rankled her that she was to be handled with kid gloves until her bloodlust around the human population waned to something more manageable.

Michael took her hand in his as soon as they were parked and made their way over to the freight elevator. Since the condominium was owned by Eli, he’d been given an exclusive key to the elevator so that Delia wouldn’t be tempted by pulsing human veins while going in or out of the building. If he turned the key and pressed the button to the 10th floor, it would bypass anyone elsewhere trying to use it, even if it was supposed to only be for freight.

She warmed up blood for both of them, shaking the beverage bottles to even the warmth out after coming out of the microwave. Handing one over to Michael, she started to sip hers and then went into the kitchen to empty out her other four used blood bottles from work. She always rinsed them after drinking at SecurElite, but she put them through a nightly rinse cycle as well in the dishwasher.

Coming back to see Michael sitting in the living room and watching a rerun of Breaking Bad, she curled up next to him before kissing him slowly on the jaw. Her lips were still pressed there when she felt the muscles moving into the slow grin that always made her toes curl. Putting his arm around her, he closed his eyes, breathing in the scent that was all Delia. All his mate.

She smelled of home, was all he could think. When trying to pin down the sweet-spicy scent of her, it was much closer to the fragrance of plumeria that was predominant in Sicilian gardens. When he’d asked her what his scent was like to her, she told him he smelled like sandalwood, and regaled him on how she would always burn incense like that when she lived with her mother and grandmother in Arizona. They used to complain about the heavy odor, but it was relaxing to Delia and calmed her nerves somehow. She’d had a difficult time growing up with her single mother and the grandmother she loved so dearly. If pressed, she would have said that her grandmother was her favorite person in the world next to Michael. She hoped that someday soon she would be able to visit and bring Michael with her so they could meet. She knew her Nena would love him. They had pretty similar tastes in men, whereas Delia’s mother, Sasha, let a variety of men woo her as she explored the single-male fishpond in Phoenix, Arizona.

Delia continued to press soft kisses along the stubble at Michael’s chin. She loved how chiseled it was and how full his lips were. He had a strong, straight nose, and a full head of dark, slicked-back hair. It had grown longer since they’d met, and he continued to keep it that way. She said enough times how much she enjoyed running her fingers through it.

She also enjoyed his new goatee, and how it scraped along the inside of her thighs when—

“Jesus, Delia,” Michael growled under his breath. “I can f*****g smell that sweet p***y of yours already. What were you thinking about?”

She only smiled slowly and pulled away from him.

Walking backward towards the hallway in their condo, she grinned at him the entire time.

“Why don’t you follow me to the bedroom and find out?”

With that, she bolted for the bedroom as fast as her feet would carry her.

And that was pretty damned quick, even for a vampire.