Page 5 of Guarding the Rock Star
My mouth dropped. She lifted one finger to the bottom of my chin, closing my mouth, then stalked off to do her investigation of my home.
“I’m gonna need more coffee if I’m going to have to deal with this shit,” I told Chloe.
When Wanda walked into the kitchen about ten minutes later, I was eating my toasted peanut butter and jelly sandwich – with the crusts cut off thank you very much – and glaring at Chloe as she worked on her iPad and pretended to ignore me.
“Everything’s secure,” Wanda reported.
I resisted the urge to say “told you so” but only because this letter thing was freaking me out more than I wanted to admit.
Grabbing a chair, Wanda turned it around and straddled it, which shouldn’t have been sexy, but somehow absolutely was.
“Would you like a cup of coffee before you leave?” I asked, adding a pointed emphasis on the word ‘leave’.
“No thanks, I just had a bottle of blood before I left home.”
I choked on my sandwich, causing a chunk of food to fly out of my mouth and land on the table. Holding up a finger, I took a long drink from my water bottle before turning my attention back to Wanda.
“Bottle of blood?”
She gave me that stern look again. It was kind of hot.
“Yes, blood. I have to take it every morning to keep my strength up.”
My eyes flew to Chloe, whose face lit up. “Oh! You’re a vampire, aren’t you? I thought you were kind of pale, even by Seattle standards. That’s so cool! I don’t think I’ve met a vampire before.”
My best friend had been with me when I’d met royalty, presidents, and some of the biggest movie stars, never batting an eye. But now she was fan-girling over a vampire?
“Yes, I’m a vampire.” Wanda’s tone was curt. “If we’re through with the chit chat, I’d like to go over our protocols and figure out a game plan to keep you safe until I catch this asshole who’s threatening you.”
“I don’t want a bodyguard,” I protested again.
Both Wanda and Chloe ignored me.
I took another bite of my sandwich and studied my new vampire friend. I had the strangest feeling that my life was about to change, but I couldn’t say why.
Wanda
Holy. Shit. My mind was reeling. I was pretty sure Tasha was my fated mate.
Who was I kidding? There was no ‘pretty’ about it. I was one hundred percent sure it was true. This woman was mine. The instant I saw her all my vows to never have a mate disappeared as I felt an emotion I’d never felt before: love.
It seemed bizarre. I was a working class girl, a veteran, a vampire, and much older than her. Tasha was young, human, rich, and famous. My entire apartment could fit just in her living room. She lived a fancy glamorous life while I spent my time running background checks, chasing down criminal assholes, and drinking beer with my friends in a bar where your feet stuck to the floor.
I’d felt a kind of...sensation when I was in the elevator coming up to her place. I’d felt simultaneously hot and nauseous. At first, I’d thought I’d just gotten a bad container of blood or something. But then I’d looked into Tasha’s eyes, touched her hand, and gotten a good whiff of her scent. That’s the moment when I knew what it was like to find the missing piece of your soul.
I scowled, irritated that I was even thinking things like ‘missing piece of your soul’. What the hell was wrong with me? Vampires didn’t often get fated mates. We weren’t as lucky as the shifters were. But it wasn’t totally uncommon either. After all, my friend Angie had found her mate just last year.
The irony of Angie also finding her mate while on the job was not lost on me. Although now that I thought about it, that had happened to Lois as well. At least Lois’s mate Monique was a supe, so she knew how it worked when you found your mate. Angie’s mate – like mine – was fully human. That always made things more complicated.
The supes and the humans lived in an uneasy alliance. We’d all decided long ago not to eat the humans or rock the boat and in exchange they mostly pretended like we didn’t exist. No one wanted a war between humans and supes, so we all did our best to keep the peace.
There wasn’t a prohibition against cross-species mating, but it could also be difficult. Mostly because the humans didn’t feel the mating pull as much as we did. When we supernaturals first found our mates, we felt an irresistible pull to be near them, to mate them and mark them as our own. It was like love at first sight to us. The full-blood humans preferred long periods of dating to get to know a person since they didn’t have the same sense of rightness as we did when we met the right person. Plus, a lot of humans were biased against the supes.
Tasha being my mate was an unexpected complication. It would make me distracted. I was already feeling off-kilter around her. But I needed to put my attraction out of my mind and focus on my job because if I didn’t, Lois would take me off this case or, worse yet, fire me.
Now that I’d found Tasha, I had a strong biological urge to protect her. The thought of any of my coworkers being around my mate twenty-four seven before I could mark her made my fangs descend a bit, pressing against my lips.
I heard my mate’s business manager gasp. She was a short and curvy human with blonde hair and huge blue eyes. She and Tasha looked as different as night and day.
