“Oh,” Domitian sighed. “You are going to make this difficult, si?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said with a shrug, straightening her shoulders and thrusting her breasts out as she pretended to examine her nails.
Domitian chuckled under his breath but continued to work. It seemed to take forever for him to finish, though, mostly because he kept casting furtive glances over her rather than paying attention to what he was doing.
“Finally.”
Sarita glanced up at that to see that the sheet now reached all the way to the wall on this side as well, and frowned when she noticed that he was now outside it. She was about to lean over and tug the sheet aside to see what he was doing when he did it himself.
Pulling the sheet back with one hand, he climbed in to join her, balancing a tray on his other hand like an expert waiter.
“What’s this?” she asked with interest as he let the sheet slip closed again and settled cross-legged next to her.
“Food. You must eat,” Domitian said firmly. “You have had little more than a couple of pieces of fruit all day.”
“Oh.” Sarita peered with interest over the tray he set on the bed between them. There was a selection of meats and cheese, crackers, olives, two glasses of juice, and one glass of wine.
“Who gets the wine?” she asked suspiciously.
“You,” he answered easily. “Wine is no good for us.”
“Us being immortals?” she asked with interest.
Nodding, Domitian picked up an olive and popped it into his mouth.
“How is it no good for you?” Sarita asked at once, picking up a cracker and piling cheese and meat on it.
“The only effect it has on us is to make the nanos work hard to remove the alcohol from our system. It means consuming more blood.”
Sarita wrinkled her nose at that, placed a cracker on top of the meat and cheese, making a mini sandwich and ate half of it in one bite. Flakes of cracker immediately sprinkled down on her breasts and thighs and she made a face. Thinking they were going to have crumbs in bed, she raised a hand to brush away the ones on her chest, but Domitian caught her hand.
“I will lick them off later,” he assured her, urging her hand down.
A slow smile spreading her lips, Sarita said with satisfaction, “So there will be sexo later.”
“No,” Domitian answered promptly and built a cheese, meat, and cracker sandwich for himself.
Sarita stared at him for a moment, half confused and half annoyed, but then just shook her head and popped the second half of her own cracker sandwich into her mouth. She was hungry. More like starved really. She would worry about the “sex or no sex” thing later.
They ate in silence for a bit, and then Sarita glanced at Domitian and said, “So you’re a chef with your own restaurant. Why would you accept a job cooking for Dressler?”
Domitian blew a breath out and shrugged. “It is a long story.”
“Yeah, well, it doesn’t look like we’re going anywhere for a while, so spill.”
Nodding, he said, “Several immortals have gone missing from the United States over the last couple of years. No one noticed at first, because it was only one or two and they were spaced far apart. But the number has grown and the time between kidnappings grew shorter recently and it was noticed.”
Sarita’s eyebrows rose slightly, but she nodded to encourage him to continue.
“I knew that my uncle had the Rogue Hunters looking into it from a phone conversation I had with Drina, and—”
“Who’s Drina?” Sarita asked sharply, surprised at the different emotions whipping through her at the mention of another woman. Possessiveness, worry, and even jealousy were suddenly tugging at her emotions, which was kind of unexpected for Sarita since she wasn’t clear on her own feelings for the man.
“My sister,” he explained gently. “She is a Rogue Hunter in Canada. She used to live and work in Spain where my family lives, but found her life mate recently. Since he lived in Canada, and Uncle needed more Rogue Hunters there, she moved to be with her mate.”
“You have family?” she asked, unable to hide her surprise.
Domitian arched his eyebrows. “You thought I had been hatched?”
“No, of course not. I just—” Shaking her head at her own stupidity, Sarita said, “Dr. Dressler mentioned that your kind were like us, with families and everything, but I guess I just—I mean Dracula didn’t have family, you know? I guess I just keep mixing you up with him.” Seeing from his expression that she’d managed to insult him, she quickly said, “I’ll try not to do that. So what are Rogue Hunters?”
Domitian stared at her narrow-eyed for a moment, but then slowly relaxed and explained, “Basically, they are the police for immortals. They hunt rogue immortals, those who are breaking our laws and feeding on or harming mortals, or turning them in numbers, and so on.”
Her eyebrows rose. “You have your own police force?”
“Well, mortal police could not manage our kind what with our ability to read and control minds,” he pointed out gently.
“Right. Dr. Dressler mentioned that you guys were able to do that,” she said with a frown. Tilting her head, she added, “But he said you couldn’t read or control me?”
“No. It is how I knew you were my life mate,” he said solemnly.
Unwilling to talk about that, Sarita lowered her eyes and tried to think of something to say that would steer the topic away from this life mate business. She wasn’t sure how she felt about the man sitting across from her. He was sexy as hell, and she’d never had sex like they shared, but really he was still a stranger to her . . . and he was different. Not mortal.
Sarita was no longer horrified by the fact that he was a vampire. Or perhaps it was closer to the truth to say she’d stopped worrying about that for now. However, while she needed to work with him to get off this island, Sarita wasn’t sure she would be able to accept what he was once that was done. She certainly wasn’t ready to think about what he might want from her or if she could give it.
“So is your uncle the head of these immortal police then?” she asked, finally, as that question occurred to her.
“Si. But no,” Domitian said and grinned at the face she made in reaction to the confusing answer. Taking pity on her, he explained, “A man named Garrett Mortimer is supposed to be the head of the Rogue Hunters, but he answers to Uncle Lucian who was never good at delegating.”
“So two cooks in the kitchen?” Sarita suggested.
He smiled with appreciation at her choice of words and nodded.
“Why does this Mortimer guy have to answer to your uncle? Who is he?”
“My uncle Lucian is the head of the North American Council of Immortals. They make the laws, and basically govern our people there. He also used to run the hunters before he put Mortimer in charge of them.”
“Right, okay.” Sarita nodded, sure she understood the basics now. “So, your uncle had this Mortimer guy put his Rogue Hunters on the job.”
“Si. They were to find out if the disappearances were connected and, if so, who was behind them. Immortals were disappearing from several areas, but the last three disappeared from bars in Texas, so they concentrated there and hunters and volunteers were sent out to act as bait. But something went wrong. A couple weeks ago two of the volunteers—twin brothers I understand—were kidnapped together.”
“Twins,” Sarita murmured recalling Dr. Dressler’s “experiment.” Scientists had a thing for twins and experiments, didn’t they? She couldn’t even imagine what he was doing to them. Maybe cutting them in half and then seeing if once blood was applied Twin A’s bottom half would reattach itself to Twin B’s upper half and vice versa? The very thought made her shudder with disgust.
“Fortunately, both men escaped,” Domitian added finally, and would never know how close he came to getting punched for not saying so right away and sparing Sarita her distressing imaginings.
“A handful of Dressler’s men died,” he continued obliviously, “but not before our people found out some vital information. One, the intent was to fly the two captured men to Caracas, and then on to an island, and two, that the man in charge was a Dr. Dressler.”