Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 99700 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 499(@200wpm)___ 399(@250wpm)___ 332(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99700 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 499(@200wpm)___ 399(@250wpm)___ 332(@300wpm)
“Lucy!”
“Seriously?” Victor asked, lips curving up.
Lucy nodded. “She’s a scandalous woman. Probably be around any minute to make sure Pandora made it here. But when we got here, well, we saw Douglas passed out. Decided we had to be responsible adults and get him home. So … oh, lovely,” she grumbled as Elias moved out behind Dante and Victor as well.
“Doug had too much to drink,” Dante said before he could ask.
Elias’s gaze moved over the women, the body, and back again before nodding. “Told him to slow it down.”
“You saw him inside?” Victor asked, brows scrunching.
“Yeah. Been here a while,” Elias said.
“I don’t know how I missed him.”
“You were busy with Sebastian,” Dante said, shrugging.
“That’s why I came out. Sebastian just ordered shots,” Elias said. “He’s waiting for you.”
“Oh,” Victor said, looking conflicted. “Let me just help Pandy get Doug—”
“No, no,” Elias interrupted him. “You’re celebrating. Go have your shots. I’ll help the girls.”
“Great.” Lucy continued to grumble under her breath.
With that, Dante gently pushed Victor back into the bar.
Elias leaned back against the door, blocking anyone from coming out again.
“You’re seriously not going to help?” Lucy asked, narrowing her eyes at Elias.
“You want help with that? Sure, let me go grab my shovel and an alibi.”
“You’re literally a vampire. You deal with bodies all the time.”
“And yet I’ve never been reduced to this level of amateur hour.”
“You’re going to just stand there?”
“Someone needs to be the designated sarcastic observer. But if you really want them, my hands are all yours, pup,” Elias said, tone warm.
Pandora saw Lucy’s eyes heat, but she was quick to tamp it back down. “You put that cold, dead hand anywhere near me and I’ll bite it off. Come on,” Lucy said, turning her back on Elias to focus on Pandora. “Let’s get this done. Your family is going to be looking for you soon.”
“All right. On three. One, two—”
“WhereamI?”
Pandora and Lucy reeled back, shrieking, as the body slurred and shifted.
“He’s alive?” Lucy gasped, then spun on her heel at the sound of Elias’s laughter. “What are you laughing at?”
“How did you not know he was alive?” Elias asked.
“You knew?” Lucy asked. “Why didn’t you say something?”
“And miss this circus act?”
“Hey, um, you’re all right,” Pandora told the man as he thrashed around before going slack again. “OK. I think we need to get him in a cab.”
“Right. To where?”
“Oh. Right.”
Elias piped up. “I’m assuming he has a wallet.”
“Oh, now you’re helpful.” Lucy fished in the man’s pocket to find his license with his address. “Huh. His name is Derrick. We were close.”
She tucked the wallet back in his pocket, then each woman moved under one of his arms and lifted, half carrying and half dragging him toward the mouth of the alley. Where Lucy flagged down a cab and both women shoved him in, gave an address, and tossed some money at the driver.
With that, they made their way back to the party.
Pandora felt like she was floating for the next several hours, unable to stop replaying the interaction with Victor over and over in her mind.
Because when Lucy fed him that lie about truth or dare, saying Pandora was showing up to shag him, she could have sworn there was something warm, something interested, in his gaze.
And this time, she wasn’t going to talk herself out of it, say it was just her imagination.
She knew what she’d seen.
His pupils had dilated and his eyes had warmed.
Maybe the ongoing attraction wasn’t as one-sided as she’d thought.
Though, even if that was the case, she had no idea what the heck to do with that information.
27
Luckily enough for Pandora, after they’d got back from Morocco, she was mostly too busy to overthink about what it meant that they’d spent several days in Morocco, curled up on the sofa reading a love story, when nothing had happened.
There were fittings to suffer through, endless magazine-plastered aesthetic boards provided by her aunts and cousins to choose from, arguments about her family’s chosen location for the wedding. Arguments she inevitably lost, then had to scramble to make it work somehow.
“That is the twenty-ninth text since we sat down,” Lucy said as Pandora reached for her phone, scrolling up through the last three texts she’d received.
“I’m starting to regret letting my family learn how to use mobile phones.”
“I guess it beats having to have sit-downs with them about every little detail, though,” Lucy said as she dropped a sugar into her tea.
“That’s true,” Pandora said after shooting off a response. “The last time we had a discussion at home, Vlad sat on his perch, sighing heavily and reciting Shakespeare’s Sonnet 87 dramatically while Elizabeth sat on the windowsill preening her feathers.”
“Why was he reciting sad poetry?”
“Because he thought Elizabeth was preening for the damn magpie eating off the bird feeder.”
“His jealousy is both hilarious and sad.”