Page 25 of Don't Bite the Botanist
Chapter thirteen
Tressa
Lilith take me now and put me out of my misery.
Tressa slumped against the wall just outside her bedroom. When she’d woken up to Ethan cuddled against her, part of her hoped he was fully awake and initiating something. Something she was more than interested in. But the moment she realized he was dreaming, she had no choice. She couldn’t take advantage of him like that. Even if he didn’t know what it was, he would feel the pull of the mating bond.
And judging by his reaction, she’d made the right call. If things had progressed much further, she wouldn’t have been able to stop herself—wouldn’t have wanted to—and she had a feeling he would have been halfway back to San Jose when he realized what they’d done.
She thumped her head against the wall a few times, then climbed to her feet. Wallowing in what could have happened wasn’t getting her anywhere. That rogue was still out there, and her mate was still in danger. While the compound might be the most secure place they could hole up, the incident with Bianca a few months back had shown them it wasn’t entirely impenetrable.
Which meant she needed intel, and she needed it fast.
Tressa knocked once on Baylin’s door, then pushed it open before he could say anything. Entering the sterile room that contained little more than a wall of computers, a blood cooler, and a door that led into Baylin’s actual bedroom, she paused briefly when she saw Derrick slouched in a chair off to the side, his face drawn with melancholy.
“Morning, Derrick,” she chirped, but he only grunted in response. She waited for his typical smirk and a snarky quip—two things youalwaysgot from Derrick—but he just folded his arms and scuffed a shiny loafer on the marble tiling. Since he wouldn’t meet her eyes, she turned to the other male in the room.
“Hey, Baylicious,” she said, dropping into the computer chair beside her cousin, careful not to knock over the open can of Red Bull that sat a little too close to the edge. She picked it up and read the label, cringing when she saw the amount of caffeine. Her cousin was the only vampire in the world who seemed to crave more energy than they were naturally blessed with.
“Hey, person who doesn’t wait for permission to enter,” Baylin replied without pulling his eyes from the monitor. A chat box was open on one of the screens, but he closed it before Tressa could see who he was talking to.
“Oh, come on,” she teased, kicking up her bare feet to set them on the arm of Baylin’s chair. “At least I knocked. Saiden doesn’t even do that much.”
“And he’s fully aware how I feel about that.”
“So why not lock your door?” she asked, poking his ribs with her big toe.
Baylin grabbed her feet and dropped them to the floor before snatching the energy drink from her hands. “No reason. I just keep forgetting.”
Tressa studied her cousin and the complete lack of annoyance on his face. That, combined with the fact Baylin never forgot anything, made her wonder if some part of him actually enjoyed how they entered his space so casually.
Like a family would.
They all knew how Baylin had been turned and abandoned, left in a back alley of Galway to either die or become a rogue. It was only by the grace of Lilith that Marquin found him and taught him how to function as a real vampire. Baylin’s life before that, though, he never talked about. Not even with Saiden, who was more or less his brother since they were turned around the same time and grew into their fangs together with Marquin watching over them.
It was almost like an unspoken rule in their cadre. If someone wanted to volunteer their history, great. But you didn’t ask.
Youneverasked.
And she had every intention of hiding behind that rule.
“So what’s he moping about?” Tressa thumbed a finger at Derrick who only scowled at her in response.
Baylin shook his head, then turned his attention back to the monitors. “That is… not my story. Just leave it alone, Tress. He’ll tell you when he’s ready.”
Ignoring Baylin’s advice, Tressa scanned her sulking cousin—the tension in his body, the almost greasy appearance of his normally coiffed hair, and the wrinkled Armani dress shirt that looked like it had been slept in. Twice. Whatever had her cousin tangled up must bemajor for him to be anything but runway ready. “Derrick?” she asked, hoping he might offer her a brief distraction from her own issues.
He ran a hand through his messy blond hair and shook his head. “Not now, Tressa. I’ll… I’ll tell you later. Why don’t you update us on your own mate? Bay says you took him to bed last night?” Derrick’s voice held a hint of teasing, but there was no levity behind it. None of the normal joy he would take in tormenting one of his family members.
Deciding it would be best to let it go, Tressa sagged back in the chair. “What update would you like? The one where he woke up in my arms completely freaked out because he thought he was taking advantage of me and I can’t tell him he’s my mate so it was a perfectly normal reaction? Or the one where I can’t stop panicking about how he almost died in that hospital so now he lives here and I have to make sure absolutely nobody exposes our vamp-ness before I’m ready to tell him the truth?”
“Ooof,” Baylin said, only half paying attention to her while the other half of his brain was clearly occupied with whatever the lines of numbers on his computer represented. She couldn’t even be mad about his lack of concern for her problems since that was pretty standard for Baylin. If you ever had his full attention, something was seriously wrong.
“Yeah, oof indeed,” she replied. “We need to find this rogue and take her out so I can focus on convincing Ethan that not all vamps are evil.”
Baylin laughed. “So, what I’m hearing is that operation VAJ is making a return?”
Tressa blinked. “Operation what? Scratch that, I don’t want to know. What I do want to hear is what you’ve found out about her. I’m going to assume you haven’t been doing anything but researching ever since I told you.”
