Page 29 of Mating Season
The drive is silent for about five minutes, and then Nikki turns in her seat toward me.
“You know the seatbelt doesn’t do it’s job when you twist around like that,” I say.
She ignores me. “So have you and her…” She makes a juvenile hand gesture.
“If we had, she wouldn’t be with a vampire right now because I would have marked her.”
“What does that mean?”
I sigh. I don’t want to do twenty questions right now, but it distracts me at least from what Marcus could be doing to her. Rationally, I know Selene’s right. He’s waiting for the drugs to clear, and whatever plans he has for her, he’ll want to combine it with blood drinking. It’s the vampire way.
If they party there’s blood drinking. If they’re fucking, there’s blood drinking. If they’re torturing… there’s blood drinking. It’s a clear and defined pattern.
I glance at the clock on the dash. It’s already almost ten-thirty. I hate the idea of Marcus awake in the same building that Rosalie is in—even if he won’t touch her again until the sun sets tomorrow. It still doesn’t give us a lot of time. And I shift tomorrow night, which makes everything that much more dangerous.
“Hey! Cooper!” Nikki shouts, snapping her fingers next to my face.
“What?”
“What does that mean? Marking her?”
I’m sure Rosalie’s friend is going to love this. “I have to bite her and mix our blood while we’re having sex.”
She’s quiet for a long time. I’m not sure if her mouth is gaping open because I’m watching the road and trying to keep us between the lines. Finally she says, “What do you mean mix your blood?”
“I’ll bite her, then bite my tongue, and then seal her wound.”
“What do you mean… seal her wound?”
I swear it’s like being in the car with a toddler. So I just ignore her and focus on driving.
Finally after several more minutes of blissful silence, she says, “What’s going to happen to Rosalie?”
“Nothing. I’m going to find her.” I have to keep telling myself this. I have to believe I’ll find her before the sun sets tomorrow.
“No, I mean, what’s going to happen after the mating thing?”
“What happens after two humans get married? They blend their lives together.”
“Are you planning to isolate her from her friends and family like you’ve been doing up until this point?”
“No.”
Nikki makes a huffing sound. “I don’t like you or any of this, but if you get my friend back in one piece I’ll consider tolerating you.”
“Glad to hear it.”
I pick us up some food at a drive through—yes more food. I’m still hungry—then take us back into the city to the public records building. We have a whole separate building for that purpose annexed off from the courthouse.
Nikki follows me up to the door, carrying our bag of food and our drinks. “Hey, what are we doing here? It’s closed.”
“I’ve got a key and the security code.” I was supposed to return it to Greg two days ago.
“And why do you have a key?”
“You ask a lot of questions. I run the top architecture firm in this city. I use the public records office a lot.”
She crosses her arms over her chest while I try to use the dim street light several yards away to find the key on my ring.
