Octavia's War Page 6

  Everything in life became manageable once she had learned everything she could about it. She had even learned how to cope with the fact of Mandy’s horrible life and death once she had discovered the truth of what had happened.

  The Grimoré, too, could be adjusted to.

  Snakes didn’t bother her the way they unsettled many people, although she had a healthy respect for rattlers and the speed they could move. She and Ángel stood outside the cave while Remmy went in to find what rattlers were there and bring them out. He emerged with a double fistful of snakes, three in each big hand. They hung like inert rope, not moving, not trying to coil back and bite him.

  “The cave is clear now,” he said and tossed the snakes nearly twenty yards away, where they snapped into hissing s-shapes and writhed away. “There may be more of them in the far back reaches. They won’t bother us if we stay in the front part.”

  Ángel swallowed. His eyes were big.

  “Snakes don’t like my kind,” Remmy told him, with a small smile. “Most creatures do not. They tend to hunker down and wait for us to pass by. Those won’t dare return to the cave until we have left.” He nodded toward the six he had tossed.

  “Suits me,” Octavia said. “I just want to sit down for a while.” She headed for the narrow fissure that was the entrance to the cave.

  It took Ángel longer to step inside and even then, his gaze kept darting around the cool, shadowed interior.

  They settled down on the hard, flat rock. Octavia put her back against the rough wall, protected by the denim jacket. She was too tired to care that the wall wasn’t a pillow. After a while, she closed her eyes. She wasn’t hungry enough to stay awake, either.

  * * * * *

  Ángel sat cross-legged in the middle of the cavern, watching dust float in a narrow shaft of sunlight pushing through a crevasse in the wall. The light shone on the rocky floor, showing ochre stone worn almost smooth from centuries of animals passing over it.

  Octavia was already asleep and he envied her. They had both been up all night and tiredness was making his bones ache.

  Only, he didn’t think it was just tiredness gnawing at him.

  “You can feel them, can’t you?” Remmy said, lowering himself down to sit next to Ángel. He didn’t cross his legs. Instead, he thrust both legs out in front of him and leaned back on his arms. “It’s eating at you. Clawing at your mind.”

  Ángel sighed. “There is much to think about.” He nodded toward Octavia. “The way she handled the gun. Taking them down. I thought I was to be the hunter.”

  “You are,” Remmy said easily. “You are developing all the senses. Heightened hearing, improved vision, faster reactions…and your animal instincts are growing. That is why you are restless.”

  “I thought it was the snakes making me twitch,” Ángel confessed.

  “Them, too. I suspect you could pluck one from the ground and wring its neck before it did much more than raise its head. Your reactions are speeding up. Hers, too.”

  “Then Octavia is to be a hunter as well?”

  “Octavia is to be something else altogether. A fighter, I am guessing.” He was studying her. “She took flawless advantage of every element, without thinking about it. She used the weight of the gun to move it into place. She used the inertia of the vampeen against them. Economy of movement, anticipation, use of externals…it was perfect.”

  “You sound as though you’ve done more than your share of fighting, too,” Ángel said.

  “I have, alas. Evil is universal.” Remmy’s hand rested on Ángel’s shoulder. “Your family is but a tiny outreach of a blight upon the whole world and beyond it, too.”

  Ángel sighed. “I think we should stop calling them my family.”

  “What should we call them, then?”

  “Whatever you like. The Garcia cartel. The enemy.”

  Remmy’s hand dropped from his shoulder. “I would offer my condolences, except I know you separated yourself from them many years ago.”

  “I stopped being my father’s son the day I learned that he killed my mother because she wanted to move to America.” Ángel shrugged. “It’s over and done with,” he said flatly. “I found the exit. Now it’s time to move on.”

  “I begin to see why you accepted the idea of the trinity so readily.”

  Ángel looked at him. Remmy was sitting opposite him and it was easy to see his face. The cave was not dark, not with the shaft of sunlight and daylight spilling in from the opening. It was filled with hues of red and yellow from the rocks under them and around them. So now he could read Remmy’s face. “That wasn’t all of it,” he said.

  Remmy nodded. His gaze was thoughtful. “The Commerce dinner, two years ago.”

  Ángel felt his middle jump. The Commerce Association’s dinner was an annual event that his father had usually attended. This time, he’d sent Ángel. As it was a legitimate organization with honest intentions, Ángel had not minded the assignment the way Severo would have. Severo hated mixing socially with outsiders because it meant he had to dissemble and cover up his true nature. Worse, he had to watch his tongue the entire time lest he reveal too much about the real work of the Garcia family.

  For Ángel, though, being among honest people was a chance to relax and speak freely. To be himself…almost.

  The Commerce dinner was a grand affair that brought together most of the influential businessmen and their wives from across the state, in an evening of dinner and speech-making. The most critical component of the evening, though, was the networking and cocktails before the dinner started. As always, most of Mexico’s real business happened on a hand-shake and a promise, at events like this one.

  For that reason, Enrico Garcia had sent his second son, who put a normal face upon family affairs.

  * * * * *

  Bear Dawson was there that night. Ángel saw him across the room, talking and laughing, his Spanish flawless and almost completely accent-free. Bear had been setting up a new branch of a bottled water franchise in Chihuahua. He seemed to understand the principals of bribery and favors that built most businesses and he had a circle of Mexicans listening to his low voice.

  Ángel sipped his whiskey, using the drink as a way to hide his sudden distraction from the conversation happening in the circle he stood in.

  What was it about the man that drew his attention? True, he was taller than just about everyone in the room. His white skin, blond hair and pale eyes stood out like beacons in a sea of black-haired and black-eyed people.

  Until that moment Ángel would have said that his preferred type of people was purely nationalistic. Doe-eyed, dusky women and hot-blooded Hispanic men. They were the type of people he understood, like the woman standing at his side now, smiling at the jokes of the men in their circle. For a moment, Ángel could not remember her name.

  The group around Bear Dawson broke up. At that point, Ángel didn’t know who he was or what his name was. He found out later, when the moment was gone. All he knew was that this stranger, this American, was pulling his attention in a way that was almost annoying. He couldn’t afford to be distracted by anything that wasn’t legitimate, normal and respectable tonight. He didn’t want to be distracted. He wanted to enjoy himself, untroubled by exotic demands.

  Bear’s gaze met his.

  Ángel knew then that the man had been aware of his attention all along. There was no surprise in his expression.

  The moment when they looked at each other could only have lasted for the barest second or two, yet seemed to stretch out for hours.

  There was knowledge in the man’s gaze. Knowledge and acceptance.

  Ángel tore his gaze away, pummeling his attention back to the people around him, gripping his glass until the sharp bumps of crystal bit into his fingers. He couldn’t afford to have anyone notice his distraction.

  He managed to keep his gaze upon the little circle he was in right up until supper was called, while his attention wandered just as his thoughts did. His body trembled.


  He knew he had not misinterpreted the man’s glance and he was throbbing with the possibilities.

  The woman’s hand on Ángel’s forearm kept him anchored where he was. She was the daughter of one of his father’s friends and he could not afford to offend her in any way because at the very least, his father would learn of the insult to his friend. Severo did not have a monopoly on cruel and unusual punishment. Their father was just as capable of dreaming up painful retribution for errors and mishaps.

  Later that night, when she was beneath him and moaning her pleasure, Ángel let himself think of the blond man whose name he had finally discovered. Bear Dawson.

  His thrusts deepened, his body quivering for release and his orgasm tore through him like a wild thing.

  * * * * *

  He had not seen Bear Dawson again, until two years later when he had been dragged into the compound, his face bloody and his body hanging between two of Severo’s men. In the intervening years, though, he had constantly heard of Dawson’s business dealings, usually described amid his father’s cursing, for Dawson’s activities had frequently crimped Enrico Garcia’s plans.

  “That dinner is the moment you were thinking of, that you were speaking of when you told Octavia about it this morning, isn’t it?” Ángel asked Remmy now.

  “It is very rare to meet someone who knows themselves well enough to recognize such a moment,” Remmy said softly. “Especially here in this land of rampant masculinity and ego.”

  “I have always known that about myself,” Ángel admitted. He smiled. “I have enjoyed the best of both worlds, more than once. It was the way I learned how different I was from any of my family.”

  Remmy glanced at Octavia. “She is very beautiful…”

  Ángel studied her peaceful face, the strongly arching brows and the pointed chin. There was a hint of a cleft in her chin that spoke of the real strength in her. In repose as she was now, her true beauty was undisguised by fury or impatience or frustration or any of the dozens of emotions that could cross her face inside a few minutes.

  “Has the bonding always…been affecting me?”

  “Why do you ask that?” Remmy said.

  “Because it seems to me that all the bonding is doing is giving me exactly what I want, that I never had the courage to reach out for myself. Or has it been making me think that is what I want, all along?”

  Remmy shook his head. “The Grimoré arrived upon this world only two years ago, Ángel. Even the dinner where we first saw each other happened before that. Octavia’s sister’s fall from grace was even farther in the past and that is what set her upon the path that led her here.”

  Ángel let out a breath. “Good. Then it is not an omnipotent power pushing us around, as Octavia feared.”

  “Indeed.” Remmy sat up, taking the weight off his hands and brushed the dirt from them. “Although I can understand your confusion.” He pressed his hand against Ángel’s face. His thumb brushed against his chin, then stroked with a featherweight touch over Ángel’s mouth.

  Ángel grew still. His heart raced.

  Remmy pressed his mouth against Ángel’s. It was almost as delicate a touch as his hand. Tentative, even.

  Ángel gripped Remmy’s head and held him still. He kissed him properly, pouring his energy and his need into it.

  That was all the encouragement Remmy seemed to require. His tongue slid inside, stroking Ángel’s.

  Ángel’s entire body seemed to throb in reaction. He shifted his legs as the crotch of his jeans became uncomfortable. His cock was beating against his hip, as hard as the rock beneath him.

  Remmy groaned and the deep, erotic sound squeezed Ángel’s heart and made his pulse leap.

  He was quivering with the need to ram himself into…someone. Even in the depths of the kiss, he was aware of Octavia on the other side of the cave and the siren song she held for him and realized that Remmy was just one piece of what he needed.

  Remmy pulled his mouth from Ángel’s. He was breathing deeply and Ángel realized it was the first time he had become aware of Remmy’s breathing. Did he breathe all the time? Why would vampires need breath at all?

  They were secondary questions, easily dismissed in the face of the overwhelming need gripping him. Ángel closed his fist around Remmy’s shirt, stopping him from moving away.

  Remmy sighed. “Octavia is the only one who does not know what she wants. I will not force her to it.”

  “Nor I.”

  “Then we are agreed on that, too.” Remmy seemed pleased.

  Ángel pulled him close enough to kiss him again. If he could not kiss Octavia, Remmy was a more than adequate substitute.

  * * * * *

  Octavia thought she heard the moan in her dreams. The thick darkness in front of her, broken by a single narrow shaft of sunlight, told her the truth. She was awake. The moan had woken her.

  She blinked. Sleep was still trying to pull her down. Then she heard the whispers and her name.

  She focused, forcing herself to a higher level of alertness.

  “…I will not force her to it.”

  “Nor I.” That was Ángel’s voice.

  “Then we are agreed on that, too.”

  The two of them were darker shadows in the cave, which didn’t seem to be as dark as she had thought. Her eyes had adjusted to the low level of light while she had slept and now she could make out larger details in the dark.

  They were sitting close together. Their mouths were together.

  Octavia drew in a startled breath, her drowsiness vanishing.

  They were kissing.

  She couldn’t pull her gaze away from the pair of them as the kiss went on and on. One of them groaned again. She couldn’t tell which, although it was clear from every taut line of their bodies that they were both enjoying the kiss.

  Octavia swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry. Every nerve in her body seemed to be tingling. Her breasts felt heavy and hot inside the lace cups. Her nipples were almost painfully erect and hard. She wanted to move her legs restlessly, only it would tell them she was awake and she didn’t want to disturb them. She didn’t want to intrude.

  She was more than happy just to watch.

  Octavia had seen men kissing before, although the moments had been rare because of her conservative upbringing and the even more conservative culture of average Mexicans. She had found it interesting to watch because it had been novel and different.

  There was nothing novel or different about the way Ángel and Remmy were kissing. The heat they were generating was from raw, undiluted passion. More than that. There was feeling there. Emotion.

  She knew what both of them would be experiencing. She had kissed both of them herself and knew what it was like. Ángel’s full lips and Remmy’s hard mouth…both good in different ways.

  When had she started to think of Ángel in that way? Was it after he had kissed her or before? Remmy had always lingered in the back of her mind as Bear, her coordinator, who would never unbend enough to acknowledge she was a woman, let alone kiss her, as much as she might wish he would.

  While Ángel had never entered her thoughts as anything other than the second son about whom she never seemed to be able to learn anything, except that he didn’t think like anyone else she knew.

  Her education about Ángel and his thoughts had spiked hard in the last twelve hours.

  He was leaning into the kiss, the tendons in his forearm flexing as he held Remmy in place. Then he let the other man go and sat back, breathing hard.

  “You stopped.” Remmy was just as breathless.

  “It’s good, but it isn’t perfect. Not without Octavia being part of it.” Ángel shrugged. “Sorry.”

  Remmy nodded. “I think she might already be awake. Her heartbeat increased.”

  Ángel turned his head sharply to look at her. “Octavia?”

  Octavia considered closing her eyes, only Remmy had heard her pulse leap. It would make her a liar if she pretended she was asleep now.
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  “I was watching,” she said quietly. “You’re wrong, Remmy. I do know what I want.”

  Remmy got to his feet. “What either of you want is irrelevant right now. You both need sleep. I do not, so I will watch.”

  Ángel laughed.

  “I mean it,” Remmy said firmly.

  “You think I can sleep now?” Ángel said.

  “I think if you let your body speak for itself you’ll be asleep faster than you ever thought possible. You’re both very tired. Your body temperatures had dropped before…well, before.”

  Watching them kiss had raised her body temperature. She could feel it in the heat between her legs. She was almost glowing with it. Remmy could sense that.

  “Lie down and close your eyes,” Remmy said, his voice low. “Sleep will come.”

  “What if they come instead?” Ángel asked.

  “You’re both working with higher senses now. You’ll wake if they do. And I am not going anywhere.”

  Octavia wanted to protest, except that the heaviness of her body said that sleep was still waiting for her. She laid down, cushioning her head on her arm. She settled into the most comfortable position possible on raw rock. She wished they’d had room for one of the blankets that Ángel had spoken of.

  That was her last thought before waking with the last light of day beaming almost directly into the mouth of the cave, dazzling her with the red and orange display, while Remmy stood silhouetted in the blazing light, looking out upon the desert.

  “They have been on the move,” he said.

  “Who?” Ángel asked, yawning.

  “Everyone and everything,” Remmy replied.

  Chapter Seven

  They started walking again even before the sun was fully set. The bluffs and knolls sent long shadows over the dry land, as the sky drifted from blue to indigo to deepest black. The stars came out overhead and Octavia found herself studying them with growing wonder. “There are so many,” she said.