style="font-size:15px;"> “It was a loaner. I dropped it off at Vail’s earlier today. I’ve been doing a lot of running around for my family, picking up things they need for the wedding.”
“Vail?”
“A vampire. He’s the father of the groom. I borrowed the suit for the night. I’ve been informed by the female faction of all this wedding madness that I’ll have a rental for the wedding. Although...I imagine Vail will probably wear the suit for the wedding.”
“Vail,” she muttered. “I don’t think I’ve heard of him.”
“You probably haven’t. Vamps tend to stay off the radar.”
“Yes, I suppose.”
He discussed vampires with her so casually. As if it was something she was familiar with and engaged in discussion every day. The paranormal breeds were something she avoided with a passion. And talking about them made her uncomfortable.
“But since you don’t want to discuss the werewolf thing, I’ll assume vampires are off the table, too?”
She nodded and dropped her hand from the front of the dress shirt.
“So, do you want to go to a wedding?” Stryke offered as he waggled the toothbrush before her.
Blyss accepted the packaged offering and tapped it against her lower lip. A wedding with vampires? Oh, mercy no. But if the suit was going to be there? Had she any other choice?
The last thing she wanted to do was associate with werewolves and vampires.
“Weddings are always fun,” she managed to say brightly. “When is it?”
“Saturday. It’s an evening wedding. I’ll pick you up around six?”
She nodded. “It’s a date.”
Step three of the plan had failed miserably. On to step four. Emergency procedures.
“I’ll need your address.”
Blyss strolled out into the bedroom, stepped into her heels and spied his mobile phone on the nightstand beside the bed.
“I’ll enter it for you.”
She typed in her address on the contacts app, but she didn’t enter her number. She never gave any man her number.
When Stryke took the phone he leaned in to kiss her, but she performed a twist and managed to avoid the contact as his lips brushed her cheek. She clicked toward the bedroom door, abandoning the toothbrush with a toss toward the bed.
“I’m so sorry to rush off, but I have to get back to the gallery!”
She didn’t listen for his reply, but suspected he was probably kicking himself for inviting her to the wedding after that cold brush-off. Of course, now the man would have another day to think and wonder over her. Not a good thing.
Grabbing her scarf and purse as she breezed through the kitchen, she hastened through the front door and skipped toward the elevator.
A vampire wedding would prove a challenge. But if she did not find the suit, she would not be able to pay off Edamite Thrash. And life as she knew it would never again be the same.
* * *
“It freaked me out,” Stryke said to his brother Kelyn as they strolled down a narrow cobbled street somewhere in the 5th arrondissement. Trouble walked ahead of them. “I had no idea she was werewolf.”
“Something must be wrong with her,” Kelyn offered in his usual quiet tone.
Of the four Saint-Pierre boys, Kelyn had no wolf in him and was 100 percent faery, thanks to their mother’s genes. Physically he looked like no one in the family—save their mother—and was tall, lithe and pale. He usually covered the faint white markings that traced his arms, chest and back of his neck. Faery markings even he wasn’t sure about. His violet eyes had a tendency to make women swoon. And Stryke had heard more than a few whispers about Kelyn’s prowess between the sheets that made the ladies collapse in delighted exhaustion.
His sidhe brother seemed to navigate Paris as if he knew the city, yet used the ley-line excuse when Stryke asked about it. Faeries were inexplicably connected to the ley lines that crissed and crossed across the planet.
Trouble, who strode in front of them, his shoulders swaying with each sure stride, eyed a pair of women in stilettos and brandishing patent leather purses as they sat sipping café au lait before a chic café. The dark-haired Trouble winked and nodded to them. The women ignored his blatant flirtations with a chill Stryke was all too recently familiar with. Blyss’s quick escape earlier had made him want to check if icicles had formed on the doorknob.
There was something up with her. Beyond the weird aversion to discussing the fact they were both wolves. That was why he’d asked her to the wedding. He needed to know more. And—to have one huge question answered.
“The city girls are snobs,” Trouble said as he slowed and parted Stryke and Kelyn to walk between them. “I can’t get a rise out of any of them. I’m ready to go home.”
“I like Paris,” Kelyn commented. “It feels familiar. And Stryke found himself a werewolf without even trying.”
“Dude, really? How’d you score that?” Trouble wrapped an arm about Stryke’s neck and gave him a noogie. “Thought you were at some fancy-schmancy gallery last night with Blade? Did you hear about Blade?”
“What?” Kelyn asked.
“Scored twins,” Stryke confirmed.
“That man is a master,” Trouble said in awe. “But a werewolf, eh? ’Bout time my little bro hooked up with his own kind. Dad will be happy to hear you are serious about starting a pack. Where’d you find her? Vail hook you up?”
“I met her at the gallery. I think she’s the owner, but we didn’t talk about much. Mostly I pushed her up against the wall and had a quickie.” Because brothers shared everything. And he had to tell someone about the insane but amazing encounter.
“Nice.” Trouble wasn’t the most discerning when it came to women. He liked them fast, sexy and amiable. And they couldn’t be too fancy or prissy. Trouble was a man’s man, and he liked a woman who did all the kinds of things he liked to do.
Same with Stryke. If she couldn’t handle a fishing rod or ride behind him on the four-wheeler while careening through a muddy field, well then, that was it.
Blyss was none of the above. But hell, she was his Paris fling. And what happened in Paris stayed in Paris. Right?
“She stopped by my place earlier for more sex,” Stryke explained, “and it was the first time I realized she was wolf. When she came, I scented her. How the hell could I have not known before then?”
“Weird.” Trouble pounded his fists together, a sort of tic. “What did she say about it?”
“She didn’t want to talk about it. I had sex with a werewolf. You know how rare that is? Back in Minnesota the packs guard their females so
