Page 74 of Nora's Kraken

Nora, entirely unfazed, just smiles brightly as she heads toward the fridge. “Great! Let’s see what we can scrounge up.”

And that’s how we somehow end up with Casimir and Blair staying for dinner, sitting around my dining room table with Marta and Travis joining in for the meal.

We’re a motley crew of monsters, and Nora fits in like she was always meant to be here.

Watching her laugh and sip her wine, admiring the way the candlelight dances over her rosy cheeks and sparkles in her hazel eyes, she seems so peaceful, so content, like she knows she’s safe here. Like she knows she belongs.

I want to give her that.

I want to give Nora a place where she knows she’ll always be welcome. I want to give her a family, however patched together and frayed at the edges that we may be. I want her to know there’s nothing she needs to do or fix or change to deserve it. All she needs to do is be here.

“Elias,” she murmurs, and I realize I’ve been staring off into space for the last few minutes, checked out of the conversation completely. “Is everything alright?”

I don’t need to catch Casimir’s or Blair’s eyes to know they’re both probably smirking, smug as hell but genuinely happy for me, as I reach over and squeeze her hand.

“Everything’s wonderful.”

27

Nora

The next few days pass in a happy, comfortable blur.

Things feel different after dinner with Elias’s friends. Maybe because seeing how he was with them, being invited into his world and feeling right at home, made me finally start to picture how a future between us could look. And maybe Elias can see it, too. Maybe having me here with the people he cares about most in the world does the same thing to him.

Well, that, or the insane amount of fantastic sex we’re having.

Tentacles really aren’t hard to get used to at all. Not when I’m stuck in some kind of temporary, sexy limbo of being a guest in his house and suddenly having a live-in boyfriend I can’t keep my hands off of. And who could blame me, really? Now that we’ve opened that particular pandora’s box, there’s really no way to button it back up again.

The question of what Elias and I are to each other is still hanging in the back of my mind, but I don’t feel the need to answer it. Not right now. Not when all I want to do is savor this time with him.

I like Elias. Ireallylike Elias. I like being here with him, and not just because of how incredible his house is. It’s the peace and security of this place, the comfort of having someone who seems able to read my mood with a glance, giving me space when I need it and easy, endless affection when I don’t.

Even his friends are growing on me. Marta and Travis, obviously, but I’m starting to be more comfortable around Blair as well after the less than stellar start we had.

The vampire is a slightly different story, but as he ends up being a house guest after the dinner party, it gives me a little time to acclimate to him. Cas hangs around for a couple of days before heading out on a trip to Alaska to connect with a coven of his kin who live there.

He really is… something else. Even more than Elias and Blair, he speaks like he’s from a different time entirely, with another hard to place accent that makes me think vaguely of Dracula.

He’s taller than either Elias or Blair, and thinner, with careful, graceful elegance to his movements. His platinum blond hair is always perfectly styled, and his face is made up of sharp, angular features and sinfully full lips that are quick to smile or scowl, always pulling back to show off two truly shocking fangs.

I don’t really know what to make of him, but he seems loyal to his friends, and though some things he says are clearly meant to shock and provoke, it seems to be more out of good humor and honest teasing than any kind of malice.

He leaves with the dark promise that any time I need his help with problem ex boyfriends, I’m more than welcome to give him a call. What that means, I don’t even want to guess, but after the whole ‘putting the fear of death’ into someone comment, I don’t doubt for a second he’s got the bite to back up his words.

“Finally alone,” Elias murmurs, wrapping his arms around my waist from behind just after the door shuts with Cas’s departure.

“‘Finally’?” I ask, leaning into him and shivering with pleasure as his lips brush over the back of my neck. “Like having him around has stopped you from pouncing on me every chance you got the last few days.”

Those lips on my neck turn into a soft bite, and I moan and squirm against him.

“Yes, but I much prefer doing so when there isn’t a four hundred-year-old vampire in my house scenting and hearing it.”

Scenting… and… hearing?

Elias must sense the horror in my stiffening posture, because he spins me around and chuckles at my expression.

“He did not!” I sputter, glancing back over my shoulder at the door. “Seriously. Tell me Casimir did not spend the last three days listening to and… smelling us have sex.”

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