Tempting Gray - Untouchables 02 Read online

  Grayson stepped back from temptation, feeling as dazed as the girl looked. The stones were divested of moments later and a flood of faces swept into the small room. His father was before him, angry. Not that anyone but close family could see that the president of the Were and vampire community was anything more than mildly annoyed. No, Grayson had been around his father long enough to recognize the stiff upper lip and quickened steps.

  He was dragged to a room the size of an area. It was packed full of unfamiliar faces, both Were and vampire. The room smelled of expensive cologne, blood that filled glasses, and sweetness from poppy flowers used in decoration.

  “We do not have time to idle, son. The Redenver father has it in his head this is a poor sign of tidings to come. Hurry, we must begin the ceremony before he reneges on the deal.” Argonzo Blackmoore was a tall, slender figure with the nose of a hawk, and the complexion of a Roman.

  “Now?”

  His father cast him a spared glance, watchful. “Yes, now. Are you ready or not?”

  It was time. He would meet and mate with his one and only now. How strange that a cool stillness crept over him, bracing him, in that moment. Those unfamiliar faces turned to watch him and his father as they made their way to the center of the room to the dais on which stood the awaiting Blackmoore and Redenver family.

  It wasn’t her.

  Tongue dry as parchment, Grayson licked his lips. It couldn’t be her. The possibility of it was next to nothing. Yet, as his father released him and Grayson marched up the dais to meet his bruid—he yearned for that a familiar face to stare up at him from beneath the veil. One that could dazzle him with a smile.

  His father announced the families to the quieting crowd. Grayson stood tall next to a girl wearing a loose white gown with a veil obscuring her face from view. Grayson would soon pull that veil up to reveal her. And so it began.

  He and the quiet girl who had yet to speak a word were positioned to face one another.

  Grayson swore everyone could see the sweat dripping down his temples. He was sure of it. Everyone knew he didn’t want to be here right now. They had to see it in the strain on his face.

  His hands managed not to tremble as he took his bruid’s slender hands in his own. For a second he found himself trying to learn if this girl’s hands were the same as the girl he’d danced with. The girl had been wearing gloves so he didn’t have any clue how her hands looked. Were they slender fingered with long nails like this girl’s?

  The moment came crashing over Grayson with staggering finality. A priest spoke vows before them, his words sounding as if they came from far away. On a final word, the woman before him slowly pulled back the veil.

  It felt like someone was skinning him alive, such was the agony of waiting to see.

  Was it her?

  He didn’t think he’d ever wanted anything so badly in his life as he wanted this.

  The first strands of her hair came into view. The very world rolled before him making the room spin in a whirlwind of motion. Grayson rocked on the heel of his boots nearly losing his balance before he caught himself. Did anyone see him losing control right now? Did anyone even care that his world was completely upside down?

  In front of him, a lovely girl with eyes the color of coal and hair dark as night looked up at him with calm acceptance. Across the room, his sweeping eyes locked on a girl with the wildest blonde hair he’d ever seen. She stared at him with an expression Grayson knew he’d never be able to forget. For her look showed exactly how he felt right now—ravaged. Like he’d found something precious and perfect but now had to walk away from it. She shook her head as if to clear it from what she saw. His body nearly surged toward her, wanting, no, needing to comfort her.

  Then Anita of Redenver spoke, and in a strong voice vowed to stay beside Grayson for eternity.

  It was his turn. His role had already been cast. His mother, his family, were more important than his wants.

  Grayson Blackmoore turned and delivered his vows, accepting his fate.

  Applause broke out as Argonzo presented Grayson and Anita to the crowd. Over-bright smiles from the faces below looked up at them. But across the room, the face he sought to look upon one final time was gone. And he realized he’d never see her again.

  CHAPTER 1

  Missouri State Fair, Present day

  9:42 p.m.

  Grayson stayed several paces back from his target so as not to arouse suspicions.

  A man with a heavy belly hanging over the dirty apron tied around his slender hips sliced a potato and dropped it into the fryer in the booth next to him. The sizzling was so loud Grayson nearly moved to get away from the foul odor. It smelled like grease. Kids ran around with fixed smiles and dirty faces covered in candy, soda, and pizza. Couples walked by hand in hand slowly investigating each booth as if there was a semblance of anything interesting there.

  It was these moments he hated the most.

  Grayson’s target wrapped his meaty arm around his wife while he pointed at the Ferris wheel. “The first Ferris wheel was built by George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr. in…” began Winston. Grayson tuned him out. He wasn’t being paid to listen to his target’s conversations. He was being paid to keep him alive.

  Finally, Winston moved on and Grayson removed himself from the cloud of grease. Great, now he would smell like French fries for the rest of the evening.

  The thought didn’t linger long because what happened next thrust Grayson into his job full throttle. Four faces became distinctly noticeable in the crowd. They stood together, the one who Gray spotted as the leader, watching Winston.

  There was no time to prepare. A blast—a fiery explosion—sent Grayson flying backward through the air. Humans screamed and ran away. Others tried to pull the injured away from the origin of the blast.

  There was no downtime, only a moment where Grayson slammed into a booth. There was no cushioning his fall. His back seemed to hit every possible object in the way. With a grunt, he pulled himself up and raced for his target. He didn’t have long to take in the situation. A bomb had been set under a booth and when Winston walked by it, it had exploded.

  They’d ambushed us.

  The four were already on his target. Where are the rest of my men? Wife down, throat slit through. Winston was on the run, but could never outrun the young, bald vampire after him. The vampire looked high on drugs, probably the synthetic shit that vamps and Weres are doing nowadays.

  Gray palmed his SIG Sauer loaded with his own silver made bullets. The first six rounds took down two of the four. Out of rounds, he took the third out with a knife stab to the heart. It was enough to incapacitate the vamp. He wouldn’t die unless Gray finished him off with a decapitation, but it’d damn well keep him down for the count while Gray retrieved his client.

  Gray took off on a sprint, his legs eating up the distance. The bald vamp laughed manically as he cornered a bloodied Winston against the back of a building. Baldy wielded a silver machete. The blood of Winston’s wife dripped.

  Most of the crowd had long since fled. Sirens blared in the distance growing louder. He had to wrap this up before the humans’ Feds showed up. A few remaining humans loitered around to watch what was happening.

  Gray raised his gun and aimed it dead center of the vamp’s bald head. He could just make out a tattoo of some kind on the vamp’s neck. “Do it, vamp, and this all ends here.”

  The vamp looked back at him. As Gray had suspected, he was young, practically a kid, and he looked higher than a kite—eyes bloodshot, fangs distended and discolored. His body looked gaunt, like skin wrapped over bones.

  “You don’t know who I am.” The kid turned back to Winston who had tried to flatten himself against the brick wall. “Why don’t you tell him who I am, Winston?”

  Winston trembled. His wife was dead and he might not make it through the night.

  “It doesn’t matter. Put down the weapon before I end this,” Grayson said.

  The vamp scraped the blo
ody, sharp edge his machete across his skull back and forth. His hands couldn’t stay steady and he scoured open his flesh several times before finally letting the weapon rest against his leg. “The real problem isn’t what you think. It’s whether or not you can stop me from killing a man many would love to see skewered before I die.”

  Seconds, moments. It happened so quickly, even his trained mind lost focus. The vamp disappeared. When he reappeared in only a few beats, he was in front of Winston. He swung the machete. Gray fired the rest of his clip into the kid’s back. The vamp’s thin body jerked violently with each bullet that struck. Winston’s head flew off as the kid’s blade finished cutting through skin, tendon, and bone. The life died from Winston in a flash, his decapitated body crumpling to the ground.

  “Fuck.” This was all wrong! How had this gone so wrong? Winston, his wife, even one of Grayson’s guards back there—all dead. All because of this bald, young punk.

  “Who are you?” Each of his words were grated between clenched teeth. Gray knelt by the vamp to check his pulse. He was dead. He’d pumped the vamp with enough silver that it’d nearly severed his head off.

  The silver also helped to work as a poison which ate away at vampire and Were skin. Neither species could seem to help it—they were allergic to silver.

  Gray called in this mess to his boss—a woman he’d never want to be on the wrong end of—TJ. Yeah, even this woman didn’t go by her real first name. No one knew what it was, but there had been bets and rumors for years trying to guess if it was Terry, Tabitha, Tina, etc. It must be far too soft and pretty since the only name she answered to was TJ.

  “Make sure you and anyone else still alive are scarce. I’ll take care of the rest,” TJ said.

  Ignoring the command he responded, “It might interest you to know this vamp has a tattoo on his neck. Make that a stamp, not a tattoo.” Gray turned the vamp’s chin the opposite direction to get a better look at the marking. “It looks like a lion’s head to me.”

  A pause on the other end of the line. “A lion’s head?”

  Gray verified the animal shape. “Affirmative.” From the corner of his eye he could see Winston’s dead body. Now just a corpse. Because he’d failed his job.

  “Then I have bad news for you,” TJ said in an unaffected tone.

  “Can’t wait to hear. What is it?” He was already on the move back to his vehicle, signaling his hurt men squirming on the ground to move. TJ would have a team en route to collect the bodies.

  “You just killed Vincent Donato’s youngest son. The lion is the Donato family crest. They wear the marker on their neck. Vincent will expect blood for this.”

  Instead of feeling fear or panic, Gray sighed. Someone always wanted him or his family dead. Such was his life, and besides, when he walked around with the Blackmoore name wrapped around him like a giant red bow on top of his head, people tended to make enemies easily.

  “Won’t he be disappointed to learn he won’t be getting any?” With that parting remark, Grayson hung up, lit up a smoke, and started the drive home. Now he had to learn who this Donato family was before he got someone else killed.

  CHAPTER 2

  3:04 a.m.

  Grayson sat in his SUV watching his house. Time ticked on to the early morning hours. The sun would rise soon, and Winston’s blood had long dried on his hands.

  He couldn’t even remember the last time he came home and went inside like normal people do. No, he did this now. Came home when it was the last place he wanted to be and copped a squat in the front seat chain smoking like a damn stalker.

  It made his head hurt looking at the oversized pile of bricks that was his house and knowing Anita would have some new shit going on. It was always like that.

  He pulled out his pack of Sobranie Black Russians and lit on up, the black end flaring red. The smooth burn chafed his throat in a familiar, comforting way. He jerked his gaze away from the house and settled in to enjoy his smoke and stare at nothing and everything. These were his only moments of peace—the calm before the storm. He took a long sucking pull from his cig and held it in, letting the burn grow in his lungs until his throat couldn’t hold it anymore.

  An explosion of shattering glass broke his quiet solitude like a car wreck. He jumped out of his vehicle and sprinted across the lawn, the cigarette a smoldering twig on the street.

  Curses and screams came from inside the house. Gray peered at what had flown through the window. The bassinet. His heart sank with pronounced gravity. No. He couldn’t rush inside fast enough. Gray threw the front door open, scanned left and right finding the usual—empty bottles, ashtray overflowing with butts, the air stale and musty.

  “Anita!” he roared.

  Another crash, glass shattering. Please let her stop.

  He flew into the hallway, stared down it for one long moment. Shock registered, then horror.

  Not the nursery.

  The door was open, light on. More glass shattered as he stalked inside, hands beginning to shake. Anita was running to the bookcase, stacking her arms full of little cardboard books with bright colorful pictures, animals, and big block letters on them. Her eyes were red, tearstained, clothes dirty. She panted in her struggle.

  “Anita, stop.” His kept his voice hard. Had to. It was the only way she’d take notice of him.

  She jerked but didn’t turn to look at him. She ran to the window, shoving the little books out onto the lawn. The window was shattered from where she’d thrown the bassinet through it. She turned but moved too quickly and fell. Not that falling stopped her. Anita crawled her way to the toy chest and grabbed fistfuls of plastic blocks and fuzzy animals, throwing them at the window as if her life depended on ridding the room of these objects. Some went outside, others just hit the wall and landed on the ground.

  “Anita…” he tried again, suddenly feeling tired down to his bones like an old man. A man who’d lost his fight a long time ago. A man who just wanted to sit down in peace and quiet and not think about anything. Not a single thing.

  The sobs started. Hard, wracking cries that shook her shoulders and she howled like a dying animal. Once upon a time that sound undid him, brought him to his knees. Now? He crossed his arms at her antics.

  “Stop this now. How did you even get in here?”

  More tears, more sobs. She keeled over, burying her face into the carpet, her fists beating the floor clumsily. Then she looked up at him, only she wasn’t looking. Her eyes were closed, reddened and wet. “I found it! I…found it. Why you, why you wanna keep me out of here? Like I don’t belong in here? Like this isn’t my room too? Like it never happened!” she hissed. She spoke in a soft, erratic way like her thoughts and mouth weren’t exactly on par with each other.

  He bit the inside of his cheek until the skin gave way and coppery blood filled his mouth. “I hid it because I knew if you found it you’d do this. Do you see what you’ve done! Look, look around yourself, ’Nita.”

  But did she do that? Did she ever take any kind of responsibility for her actions? Hell no. The alcohol wouldn’t let her.

  She struggled to stand, having to cling to the side of the crib to pull herself up. Her sobs subsided. “It’s always my fault. Always, always, always. Well, where were you, Gray? Where were you?”

  His eyes slammed shut as he crunched harder on the skin in his mouth, mangling it. “I was at work. You know that.”

  A strangled sound, part sob, part snort. “That’s not what I’m talking about and you know it. Where were you that night, huh? You think you’re so good, so much better than me.”

  Years of practice allowed him to hide his expression. “You know where I was.”

  “Do I?” she asked, her low-lidded, slow-blinking eyes leveling on him with surprising clarity.

  He shook his head once. “Get out of here. I gotta clean this mess up now.”

  When he tried to escort her from the room, she jerked away from his touch which sent her wobbling. “Nooo, nooooo! Leave me with my babies.
Leave me alone.”

  Shit. Her eyes were watering fast and if he couldn’t stop the deluge now then he wouldn’t for the rest of the night. “ ’Nita, let me get you to bed. Come on, it’s late. Let’s get you cleaned up and fresh.”

  She shook her head like a child, her matted hair slapping side to side. Then the keening began—a loud, gut-piercing sound that was somewhere between a child’s cry and a woman in agony. She grabbed handfuls of his shirt, buried her face in it. He hesitated for a moment before wrapping his arms back around her.

  “You’ll leave me too. I know you want to,” she said between hysterical cries.

  His heart pinched, nose tingled and he hugged her harder. Hugged the shell of a woman who used to light his life up; who now darkened it.

  “Don’t leave me, Gray. I don’t have anyone left.”

  He kissed her temple, rubbed a pattern up and down her back. “I’m not going anywhere, ’Nita. I’m right here.”

  When her knees gave out, he lifted her into his arms and took her into the bedroom, placing her on the bed. She didn’t want to let him go but he tucked a pillow in her arms and she rolled into him, crying silently now.

  After some time he went to move away but she held tight to his hand. “Don’t leave me, Gray. I love you.”

  Containing a ragged sigh, he sat on the corner of the bed holding her hand. “I’m not gonna leave you, ’Nita.” That was the truth. She and he were inseparable. They were connected by too many events, too many miseries which had brought them closer together in ways he couldn’t have predicted.

  He couldn’t lie to her about the other part. The part he wasn’t sure about anymore, the part that had guilt eating away at him like a parasite.

  Anita’s head sank into the pillow with her mouth hanging wide open as she passed out. Grayson slowly retracted his hand and stood. He gazed over his mate for a long time, seeing the past, the present, and future in her.

  It may make him a guilty asshole, but he’d stopped loving her a long time ago.