Remy nods and opens the door. “Let’s go.” Seconds later, he’s completely put together, looking at me expectantly. “Well? Are you coming?”
I get out of the car so fast I nearly fall on my face. He’s laughing as I catch up with him, and I pick him up, kissing him intensely as he wraps his legs around my waist.
“I’d follow you anywhere, cher.”
10
Remy
When I bailed out Lazare, I wasn’t sure what I’d find, but his immediate and profound grief over hurting me was a physical presence in my soul. I knew right away that he would do anything to keep me happy.
Not gonna lie, the hate sex and orgasm helped seal the deal. My heart, so broken this morning, is happy again. Lazare’s regret-filled eyes show me how sorry he is, and it feels so good to just be near him again.
The wrinkle of bringing Toulouse back from jail with us is that we didn’t have time to stop off on a side street for me to return his spectacular blow job. I have a greedy little thought about riding his knot while he drives us home, but that would no doubt lead to vehicular manslaughter, and I’m not trying to kill anyone, at least not today.
We bring Toulouse to the park, explaining that this is a safe place for him to change and that the wards will release him at the end of the night, and he can join us at the house for the big traditional breakfast that Lillian puts on after the full moon.
Toulouse is grateful, but he’s giving us a funny look.
“What?” asks Lazare, uneasy.
“This is all so generous, and it's great to have a place to run around where I won’t be seen, but I’m a fully mature were. The only real danger is being tagged in some official government office. I’m not going around ripping out people’s throats like some horrifyingly inaccurate eighties movie.”
I snort to myself. “I don't know about what it's like up in Canada, but the werewolves down here have no control over themselves. They wake up the next day with no memory, and usually a few bruises and scratches that they can’t explain.”
He shakes his head. “Learning to control myself was quite difficult, yes, but it was considered part of my responsibility if I was to be this powerful.”
Lazare and I look at each other. That’s definitelynothow they do things here. Lazare shows him through the gate, the ward prickly on our skin right as the moon begins to break over the horizon.
Toulouse undresses on a wink, just as his transformation begins. Even with Damian, I never witnessed a werewolf transformation. It looks painful, but at the end of it, Toulouse is standing on two feet, looking down at us.
“Speaking with this mouth is still hard,” he says, his voice garbled and lispy. “But thank you for this beautiful park. I’ll meet you back at the house in the morning.”
He lopes off, and we walk back through the powerful ward, making our way across the footbridge back to the house.
Our progress is slow because the makeup kisses are so sweet. Just as I’m wondering whether or not we can make it the hundred or so feet to the house, Lazare stops in the middle of the rickety bridge to look out over the lake. He wraps his arms around me as we look up at the stars.
Turning to me, his kiss is deep and searching. “I promise you, cher. I will never make you regret needing my blood. I will never let you feel trapped. I swear it.”
That bright bit of ribbon inside of me, the tether to his soul, hums and pulses, happy. He leans in for another kiss, so perfect under this bright night sky that I don’t quite register the meaning of the approaching footsteps.
So enthralled I am with his scent and the warmth of his body that I don’t understand the danger we’re in until someone—something—shoves us in the chilly lake water.
In all the years of my long life, I never learned how to swim. Gross, brackish lake water makes its way into my mouth as I sink toward the bottom, a weighted bit of useless.
Even if I can't drown, the water feels like a tomb, claustrophobic and getting darker, the moon and the blinking lights of New Orleans fading above me. I try not to panic, but it’s a failure on all levels, and I begin to hyperventilate, inhaling even more water.
Just as my brain is beginning to seize up, I sense his nearness. I don't even see him yet, but I know he…there he is. Warm. So warm against me.
And furry.
Lazare grabs the back of my collar in his sharp teeth and pulls me up, up, up. We break through the surface, and I take a long dramatic breath, then begin to cough up the half of the lake that I tried to swallow.
Lazare, however, keeps moving, dragging me with his powerful jaws toward the lakeshore. Toward the big white house. Perspective is a fuzzy, blind thing, having so easily slipped back into our bubble, thinking it's just him and me in this water. But that is not true.
There's a snarling, dark presence behind us, gaining on us. Damian. Lazare in his wolf form would normally be first to the shoreline, to solid ground, to the advantage. But dragging me is giving Damian the opening he needs. Our feet touch silt, and I realize I've lost one of my shoes, but the sound of violence drowns out that inanity.
Lazare is huge as a dire wolf, but Damian is a terror. He stands out of the lake, and he's seven foot tall if he's an inch, wolfed out and snarling as I've never seen him before. His long, dripping canines send a dark dread into my stomach.
