B Positive by Jewel Killian

Eleven

Sunny stared at me,seeing the hesitation on my face.

“Look, Sunny I don’t go back on my word. I agreed to help with this job, but I need some time to think about what that means exactly.”

She crossed her arms, surveying me. “The king won’t appreciate any delays.”

I stood, aiming for the door. “I’m sure he’d appreciate a safecracker whose head isn’t one hundred percent in the game even less.” I was nearly out of the meeting room. “I’ve got to get to my day job.”

Sunny stood, walking toward me, hands on her hips. “I’m afraid I have to insist that you stay.”

“And I’m afraid I must decline,” I said and blurred away.

Sunny either couldn’t or didn’t bother catching up to me and by the time I got back home it was after one pm.

Which meant I didn’t have time to reconcile what I’d agreed to do. I had to get myself ready for my two-to-ten shift. And once at the bar, it was easy to lose myself in the hustle of pouring drinks and making small talk with strangers.

If Jerry or Sandy—the bartender who’d picked up Alice’s shift—noticed my strange mood, they didn’t say anything. Luckily, Annette, that poor brunette from a few nights ago, didn’t show. And at ten on the dot, I closed out my checks and clocked out, without offering to stay later, and went home.

I hated to admit it, but a small part of me had hoped Julian would be waiting outside for me.

Our date, if you could call it that.

But he wasn’t. It stung, but it also meant he was probably going feral somewhere in town. That was not good.

“What’s with you?” Jaxson eyed me over his margarita, combat boots swinging as he settled into his spot atop my counter.

He’d come knocking the moment he heard me arrive, a pair of Dollar Store margarita glasses in one hand and a blender full of the frozen treat in the other. I hated margs. At the bar, that is. Anything that required blending was hell on bartenders. But they were delicious, so if someone else was making them, I wouldn’t say no.

I sipped on the icy, tart deliciousness, then let out a long breath.

“You’d better get it off your chest before it festers and gives you wrinkles.” He winked at me, feathery false lashes catching on the shiny copper bangs of today’s wig.

A copper-auburn that brought even more warmth to his deep skin tone.

Copper-auburn like a king’s assistant.

I rubbed at my face and licked a bit of salt off the rim of the glass.

I couldn’t tell him everything.

Obviously, I couldn’t tell him any of the vamp shit. There were laws forbidding anyone from revealing our existence to humans. But maybe talking about it would help. Maybe I could just choose my words carefully.

“I accepted a job without knowing exactly what I was getting into,” I started.

Jaxson scooted closer, amber eyes alight. Almost like he knew I was about to spill something big. “Go on,” he encouraged.

“It pays well.”

Jaxson frowned, sensing the half-truth.

“Okay, it pays a lot. I mean, like life-changing a lot.”

“But you have to kill someone?”

“No.”

“Oh.” He tapped on his chin. “Sleep with someone?”

I bit the inside of my cheek to keep myself from flushing at the thought of what it would be like to be pressed against Julian’s body again. At what kind of lover he might be.

He was a total soft dom. All the way. No doubt.

“Earth to Eden, come in, Eden.”

“Yeah, sorry. I don’t have to sleep with anyone.”

“But you want to.”

“Not the point, Jax.”

He speared me with a knowing grin, but thankfully moved along. Kind of. “Okay, why don’t you make your point instead of getting all hot and bothered daydreaming about doing some dude?”

Julian was not just some dude.

He was a king.

And a literal box of red flags.

And Jaxson knew it. Only he didn’t know he knew it. I moved on. “The job is super-dangerous. Like, life-threatening danger.” And I’d have to face the awful vampire who took my maker from me.

“Okay. What else? Cause in my book, life-changing money is worth life-threatening danger.”

Yeah. That was a point. “I’d…” How to put this? “Doing this job will require me to confront stuff I tried to bury a long time ago.”

Jaxson nodded, taking a small sip of his margarita. “Dealing with our own shit is hard for a reason. But we usually come out the other side better for it.”

Another good point.

I turned the problem over in my head for a minute.

I wanted the money and I wanted nothing to do with Titus. And since I couldn’t get one without the other, I had to figure a way around it.

The idea of taking more money than I’d expected from Julian made me positively giddy. That was a good starting point.

So maybe I could frame taking something from Titus the same way. Maybe I could put Titus in the “fat cat” box and ignore the “you killed my maker” box. And maybe I could do it all from a healthy distance, never setting foot in Titus’s territory.

* * *

Two pitchers and several hours later, Jax and I were on my bed, the only furniture I owned that could accommodate us both. I’d changed into short-shorts and a cropped tee, my usual sleeping attire, and had just begun to doze, the steady rhythm of Jax’s slow breathing and even slower heartbeat lulling me into oblivion when a sharp sound came from the hallway.

“Tell me she’s not in there with that—”

My half-asleep mind assimilated BDD’s voice into the dream I was having about the original BDD, and I snuggled deeper into Jax’s chest.

Thud thud thud. CRACK! Eden, are you all right?

Yeah, BDD, I’m fine. Have you met Tyler? I feel like you two would get along.

“What the fuck are you doing with —”

I shot up out of Jaxson’s arms, brain finally waking fully and giving me correct information. “What the fuck are you doing busting down my door, Rory?”

He paused, as if not processing his given name coming from my mouth. “The boss sent me. But the second I smelled this dog in your apartment I—”

“Hey, now. Let’s not get all name-call-y,” Jaxson said smoothly as he got off the bed and squared up to BDD. “I wouldn’t call you a sucker-head. Maybe don’t go throwing around slurs, yeah?” Jax stepped right up to BDD’s chest and stared up at him.

BDD ignored him, speaking to me over his head. “Eden, why were you in bed with a wolf? It’s like you know exactly what’s going to make you-know-who mad.”

“What are you talking about? Since when do I care about making Julian mad? And why do you keep calling my friend a dog?”

Jax spun around, his shocked expression identical to BDD’s. “Jesus, Eeds, you really don’t know?”

“Eden, step away from the—” Jaxson gave BBD a withering glare. “Uh, from him.”

I did the exact opposite, stepping toward my friend. “What the fuck is going on?” I reached for him, and he tucked me under his arm instinctively.

“All this time? How did you not know?” he mumbled into my hair.

“Know what?”

He sighed and pulled away to look me in the eye, his amber gaze saddened, heavy. “I’m a wolf shifter, Eeds.”

“Yeah, and she’s the vampire king’s mate, so get your hairy paws off her.”