Page 29 of Guarding the Rock Star
“Monica, can you tell me what’s going on? Please?”
She pushed the tray of food closer to me and I ignored it, despite the hollowness in my belly.
“You know, my brother’s been set on you for a while,” she began, settling on the floor across from me like we were just having a friendly visit. “You run hot and cold with him though. Sometimes you’re real friendly and flirting with him, other times you act like he’s the hired help. We’ve both been praying about it, and it seems to us that you just need to spend some time with Mark and get to know him, and then you’ll fall in love with him and realize why God has brought you together.”
She fingered that giant crucifix she always wore around her neck.
“God?” I asked in confusion.
Monica beamed like I’d gotten the right answer on a test. “Yes. It’s preordained that you two be together. And once you’re married, you and I will be sisters.”
She looked positively thrilled at this idea.
“Monica,” I said as gently as I could. “I’m a lesbian, you know this.”
“Oh sure, you say you’re a lesbian, but we’ve been working for you for a long time, and you never actually have a girlfriend. Neither of us have even seen you kiss anyone.” She made a sour face. “At least until that vamp came along.”
This didn’t feel like the time to talk about how a person could be lesbian and demisexual. They hadn’t seen me be romantic with another woman because it had been a long, long time since I had an emotional connection with someone that led to sexual attraction.
And it had never happened almost instantly, the way it did with Wanda. The more I researched about cross species mating between supernaturals and full humans, the more I realized that my ability to connect with Wanda so deeply and so quickly had to be the magic of the mate bond. There was no other explanation for it.
Wanda. I wondered if she knew I was gone yet. She must, if I’d been gone for hours. With Monica and Mark gone too, she’d know they were involved, but I didn’t know if she’d ever be able to find me.
“Are you the ones who’ve been sending the letters?”
Monica nodded.
“And the dead animals?”
“That was Mark’s idea,” she beamed. “He figured if you got scared enough, you’d start reconsidering your life choices, especially with him around to protect you. Now that you’re here, the three of us can live together as a family. And when you give my brother babies, we can all raise them as a family.”
I’d never understood what it meant for someone to look psychotic before, but now I did. Monica was coo-coo crazy and if she and her brother thought I was going to live her in the damned suburbs and be a baby breeder, they were even crazier than I’d initially thought.
The most troubling thing was that both of them had always seemed relatively normal. To find out that they’d created some out of this world fantasy about me was scary as hell.
I took another drink of water, finishing the bottle. My mind raced furiously as I replayed everything that Monica had told me. I assumed that Wanda and the bears were looking for me, but I had no idea how much of a head start we’d gotten on them. I needed to be smart and examine my options.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“This is mine and Mark’s house,” Monica said. “I know it’s not as fancy as you’re used to, but Mark wants you to raise your children in a nice middle class lifestyle, just like we were.”
“Just so I understand, Mark wants me to be his wife and the mother of his children, and he – you both – thought the best way to make that happen was to terrorize me with threatening letters and dead animals and then kidnap me?”
“Well, we wouldn’t have had to do any of this if you’d just paid attention and done what you were supposed to do,” she said calmly. “Soon you’ll realize that Mark is the one you should love.”
“Can’t Mark find his own girlfriends?” I asked. “Why do you have to help him?”
“Because I’d do anything for my brother. Anything.”
Crap. There was a good chance Wanda and the bears weren’t going to find me here and even if they did, I had no idea what Monica and Mark were planning for me. I needed to get myself out of this situation before one of these psychos really lost it.
Wanda
I had never felt so helpless in my entire life. The woman I loved, my fated mate, was gone. I’d utterly failed in my job protecting her, literally handing her over to her kidnappers.
I still had no idea why Mark and Monica had kidnapped her, but when I came back into the house and found them all gone, I knew they had. I just hoped they hadn’t hurt her. I knew Tasha enough to know she wouldn’t have gone without a fight. The stakes were too high.
“Where could they be?” I raged. “I can’t believe this.”
