In the car, I tried not to think about what had transpired in Lucas’s penthouse but found it impossible. It wasn’t so much the sex part that was bothering me, because I had to admit it had been phenomenal, if bizarre. Rather, I was getting more and more concerned about the connection Holden and I seemed to share inside my mind. It was no longer restricted to dreams, and that made it unlike anything I’d ever experienced.
I was immune to the thrall, so it couldn’t have been that. Was there some other kin
d of vampire magic I was unaware of that could let Holden enter my dreams and my waking mind without permission? The dream I’d had in Elmwood could have been dismissed as one of my typically weird nocturnal ramblings. But what had happened tonight was something new. The part of me with Holden had felt as real as the physical part of me with Desmond. And when the vampire had bitten me…
My hand went to my neck, and I half-expected to feel something there, but the skin was as smooth as ever. There was nothing to indicate I had ever been bitten.
I sat back in the leather seats of the town car and sighed.
“Almost there, miss,” the driver announced, obviously misunderstanding my sigh as one of impatience. The driver was human. I couldn’t smell anything lycanthropic or otherwise on him. Lucas must have kept him around for jobs requiring legitimate ignorance.
“No rush,” I lied.
The drive to upstate New York took a little over an hour and a half, and much of it was through picturesque wooded areas and nice-looking towns and small cities. These were the places people went to escape the bustle of the city. I don’t know why, but I’d assumed Lucas’s family mansion would be somewhere in the Hamptons. The more I considered it, though, the more ridiculous that option showed itself to be. If the mansion was where pack business was worked out, and where the pack went to meet on full moons, then having it on a tiny, overpopulated peninsula in Suffolk County was just about the stupidest idea ever.
The mansion we pulled up to was as secluded as one could be within driving distance of New York City. It was a good fifteen minutes beyond the last house we’d seen, and twenty-five minutes or more since the last settlement anyone could call a town. Yet it still wasn’t at all what I’d expected.
The house rested on top of a hill, and around it were acres of plain, sprawling lawn, interrupted only by meticulously landscaped English-style gardens. I guess I’d thought the getaway spot for a pack of werewolves would have more trees. Not that there was any shortage of woods surrounding the estate. It seemed like the entire lot across the highway from the mansion was nothing but forest. Yet the lawns of the giant mansion seemed to go on forever and offered nothing in the way of hiding spots.
As if he’d read my mind, the driver said, “Wait until you see the back. He has a legitimate hedge maze back there. ”
“Excuse me?”
“Straight out of The Shining. It’s the craziest thing. ”
He pressed a button on the visor over his head and the huge wrought-iron gates swung open. Above each red brick pillar on either side of the driveway, a large stone gargoyle was perched, guarding the entrance to Lucas Rain’s kingdom. The town car followed the winding gravel driveway up the hill at a slow enough speed for me to marvel at Lucas’s home.
The Rain mansion was incredible. It had the look and feel of an English Georgian-era manor home, with gray stone walls and dozens upon dozens of windows. There were none of the peaks and turrets I would have imagined a werewolf home to have. I guess, in my head, I’d pictured something a little more Gothic for the wolf king. It was still a grand home and big enough to suit a billionaire’s lifestyle.
The car stopped outside the front doors, and the dutiful driver got out to open my door. With a tip of his cap—yes, he was actually wearing a driver’s cap and gloves—he got back in the car and drove off, leaving me standing at the foot of the entrance stairs wondering what to do next.
I knocked on the front door, but after a long pause there was no reply so I let myself in, somewhat shocked to find the door unlocked. Inside, the house was dark and eerily quiet. I could see a few lights shining down each upstairs hallway but nothing else to indicate anyone was up there. The house’s interior was wide and spacious, and even in the dark I could tell it was decorated to feel inviting rather than stuffy.
Somewhere in the rear of the house I heard a masculine voice and a loud, familiar laugh. My heart jumped at the sound of it. I passed through the kitchen and out onto a well-lit stone patio behind the house. There was a full kitchen set up outside as well, built from the same patinated stone as the rest of the patio. Sitting on one long section of counter, next to a built-in barbeque, was a large wooden serving slab that contained the evidence of a massive steak dinner. Wineglasses were scattered all over the patio, some still partially filled with a beautiful, deep red vintage. I was willing to bet this mansion had one hell of a wine cellar.
Aside from the dinner layout and all the wineglasses, there was little else to indicate some sort of party had recently occurred. I followed a trail of lights down a stone path and past the hedge maze the driver had told me about. The walls loomed twelve feet high, and in the dark the maze was sinister looking. I heard the laugh again and was thankful it wasn’t from within the foreboding depths of the maze.
The stone path continued, and the glowing turquoise-blue light of a swimming pool appeared ahead, along with a well-lit white pool house with large floor-to-ceiling glass windows. Then I saw Lucas.
The wolf king was standing beside the pool, wearing khaki trousers and an unbuttoned white shirt that looked remarkably similar to the one I had borrowed from his penthouse. He was barefoot, which I had come to realize was one his secret comforts. His blond hair was still short and tousled, but in the three months I’d been gone he’d grown a beard. It was short and well groomed, but it was odd to see his handsome, youthful face covered in fine blond fuzz. It made him look older, more mature, and that was probably the point.
He was talking to a girl with straight brown hair. She faced away from me, but her lean figure was clad in a backless orange sundress. She too was barefoot. Lucas said something to her I couldn’t hear, and she tossed her head back and laughed, her hand touching his upper arm as she did.
I stepped into the light and waited until his gaze moved past the girl in the sundress and found me. Me, wearing my borrowed shirt with my unwashed hair and ridiculously overdressed heels. I stood at the edge of the pool’s patio and met his wandering gaze across the distance, unsure of how he was going to react.
For a moment he stared. The girl’s hand dropped from his arm, and she turned to see what he was looking at. She was fresh-faced and pretty, her skin glowing from a day out in the sun. She didn’t look pleased to see me, although I didn’t think we’d ever met.
“Secret?” Lucas asked.
“Hi. ”
He brushed past the girl like she wasn’t there, and a part of me was glad he hadn’t replaced me, while another small part of me felt bad for her because she had been so easily forgotten. Lucas was halfway from her to me when a twig snapped from the bushes next to the path. I turned, and out of the garden stepped someone I’d never expected to see again—the young wolf who had helped kidnap me.
The wolf and I froze simultaneously, and then both looked away from each other and to Lucas. The young man took another step out of the garden and moved towards Lucas, who was staring at us with great confusion.
I panicked. It seemed like my kidnapper was back and this time he wanted something from the king. Frantic, I screamed, “No. ” I dove towards Lucas, and before the other wolf could reach him, Lucas and I were falling backwards into the pool.
Chapter Ten