Without Regret Read online

Page 5

 

  Chris was pissed, beyond pissed actually. For the past two weeks he’d been stuck in Chicago helping take down several large nests of vampires who got their rocks off by draining kids. After two weeks of planning, fighting, and living off adrenaline he desperately needed his sleep. Everyone in the family knew that after a long mission he wasn’t to be bothered until he got at least twelve hours of uninterrupted sleep. Just like everyone knew not to bother Dad until after he got in a long shower and four hours with Madison.

  They weren’t rules to be f**ked with.

  The last time someone came between their father and a shower and Madison was three years ago. They’d just pulled up to the house after four long weeks of hell in Mexico. During the entire two hour ride home from the airport Ephraim absently scratched at the phantom crud he felt all over his body. The time he’d spent locked up in a dudgeon still haunted him even two hundred years later. His father required three long hot showers a day or he was one cranky Pyte.

  Chris had barely thrown the Jeep into park when his father jumped out of the car and bee lined for the shower and Madison, who was probably already in the shower waiting for him, when a Jehovah’s Witness made the mistake of picking that moment to approach him with a handful of pamphlets. Chris still cringed to this day when he thought about what his father did with those pamphlets.

  Still laughing, Joshua headed downstairs using six years as the state’s top high school and college Cross Country runner to his advantage by making it down to the foyer before Chris could blink and headed towards the dining room and probably safety. Without slowing his pace, Chris put a hand on the second floor railing and propelled himself over, landing twenty feet bellow and mere feet from his prey. Without any pause, he took off after Joshua who had the good sense to stop laughing.

  “Oh f**k!” Joshua yelped as Chris gained on him.

  Joshua might be one of the fastest long distance runners in the history of New Hampshire, but Chris was a Sentinel. He had natural ability and years of honing his skills on his side.

  “I was kidding! Oh, shit! Don’t kill me!” Joshua shrieked as Chris launched himself at his younger brother.

  The two of them slammed into the double doors of the dining room, breaking at least one of the doors from the sounds of it. Chris rolled midair so that he could protect his brother from the impact. They landed hard on the freshly polished hardwood floor. Chris barely even registered the impact. He hit the floor with Joshua in his arms and in one smooth move had his brother on his stomach, both arms pinned behind his back and the elastic of his boxer briefs yanked higher than should be humanly possible.

  “You bastard!” Joshua’s scream ended in a high pitch.

  “Next time let me sleep,” Chris said, and just to make sure Joshua understood, he yanked on the underwear again, causing Joshua to scream like a girl.

  A throat cleared in front of him. “And this is the man I brought you to see, Isabella,” a familiar voice announced.

  Oh…. . shit.

  Slowly, ever so slowly, he looked up and swallowed, hard. The first thing he saw was his grandmother glaring at him from her spot at the head of the long oak dinner table. The two priests standing behind her looked more amused than anything. No doubt living with the Williams was more entertaining than living in a rectory.

  He frowned as his gaze landed on a small woman being held between two large Sentinel males who looked completely bored. His eyes automatically continued further to the left to find Eric standing a few feet away from the trio with his arms folded over his chest, looking really pissed off.

  Eric opened his mouth to say something, but Chris wasn’t listening. His gaze for some reason shot back to the woman. Once there he couldn’t look away. She was short, even shorter than his sister Jill. Her long wavy honey blonde hair made her look even smaller. Intense green eyes matching his own openly glared in Eric’s direction. Beautiful didn’t describe her, cute in a little sister kind of way was the best description he could come up with, but he wasn’t looking at her like she was his sister.

  It didn’t matter that he was in a room with several priests, his grandmother, and his boss. He couldn’t stop devouring her with his eyes. There was just something about her. Damn, he even liked her lips. They were so cute and kissable. His eyes dropped to her little round chin down to her littleHe may have groaned. There was nothing little about that particular area. Holy shit, he didn’t know if it was because they were on such a small woman or what, but they looked huge. Were those double D’s? He frowned, how the hell did the woman stop herself from falling over? He gave himself a mental shake and forced his eyes to move down.

  Eric was saying something to him, but right now he couldn’t care less. Hell, this whole house could be on fire and he wouldn’t be able to stop his perusal of her. His eyes dropped to a small waist, very generous h*ps and short legs he’d kill to see without those baggy cargo pants. He’d be willing to bet everything he had that her legs were short, but very shapely.

  She was so sexy and adorable. All he wanted to do was go over to her lick her entire body and bury his face betweenHe froze.

  He wanted her. Holy shit, he wanted a woman! This was it. This was the moment he’d been waiting for. He needed to get the hell out of here and calm down before he scared the shit out of her. Carefully he stood up, bringing a sputtering Joshua with him as a shield and started to back up towards the door. He dragged Joshua with him since there was no need of giving everyone in the room a view of the painful erection he was sporting.

  “Let me go, you prick!” Joshua said, struggling to get away.

  “Joshua!” Grandma chastised.

  “He’s cutting off circulation to my balls! If you want great grandchildren, woman, do something!” Joshua sputtered as he tried to free himself. Chris ignored his sad attempts to escape and dragged him towards the door.

  He paused in the doorway, never taking his eyes off her and said, “I think we need to talk, Eric. ”

  ***********

  “Can I get you anything?” Eleanor, an older woman and now one of her captors, asked.

  Isabella thought it over for a moment as she looked around the cozy, yet large dining room. There were two exits from the room and both were blocked. Although she didn’t think it would make much of a difference if there were a dozen unguarded opened doors in the room since she was handcuffed and standing between two human size boulders.

  “Freedom?” she said, trying not to sound too hopeful.

  The older woman simply gave her a warm smile.

  “Sorry. ”

  Damn.

  “I meant something along the lines of a drink or something to eat,” she said pleasantly.

  Isabella was starving and really thirsty, but there was no way she would eat anything they gave her. It would probably be laced with something. She was ninety-five percent sure that someone somehow spiked her food last night. It was the only sane explanation as to what happened last night otherwise……

  No, she would not think about last night because clearly last night, or rather early this morning, she’d had some seriously frightening hallucinations. Just as soon as she escaped, or preferably when they released her, she was hauling her buns in for a CAT scan, MRI, X-ray, drug testing and whatever other tests would explain the insanity of the last twelve hours.

  “I’m fine, thanks,” she said at the same time her traitorous stomach betrayed her with an embarrassingly loud growl.