by Lauren Dawes
“How about fucking no?” I replied defensively, folding my arms over my chest.
The woman shrugged like it was no big deal, but I saw the desperation in her eyes. “Blood will suffice.” Her words were cool and clipped.
“Ooo, another hard limit of mine. Sorry.”
“Cat,” Sawyer said softly. I glared at him. “This is our only chance.”
“I highly doubt that,” I shot back. I didn’t enjoy being backed into corners. I tended to get bitchy.
“Maybe you’re right, but how many more baby vampire attacks do we need to go and investigate? If we have a chance to catch this guy, shouldn’t we?”
I digested his words. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like that I seemed to be the one sacrificing everything here. My truck. My promise not to murder children. My staunch belief that all supernatural beings were evil monsters. Now, I was being asked to give up my blood. All so that Sawyer could catch a vampire.
“You will pay for this, Sawyer Taylor. I swear it.”
“Noted,” he replied. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet. You have no idea what kind of revenge I have in mind. I can be very creative.” Turning to the witch, I asked, “You can take one drop of blood.”
She shook her head. “Not enough. Too weak. Not enough,” she repeated. “A deep cut. Deep blood.”
“Wow, I didn’t think you could get any creepier,” I muttered. “Okay, but you don’t make the cut. I do.”
Her greedy eyes gleamed. “Fine.” Looking down, she searched the coffee table in front of her. Shoving an old newspaper out of the way, she held up a dagger that was crusted with dried… something. I stared at it. Hard. What the actual fuck was that?
“Use this,” Sawyer said helpfully, handing me one of his daggers.
I began shaking my head. “I’ve seen what they do. I’m not using that on my arm.”
“Trust me?” he pressed, his eyes darting to the witch then back to me. “Take it.”
Trust was a concept I struggled with, but I needed to trust my partner now. Nodding, I took the knife. The witch let out a soft little chuckle that had me looking frantically at Sawyer.
“There’s no other way?” I desperately needed another way. Admittedly, I was as ignorant as ignorant got about the supernatural world, but I knew deep down that sharing blood was bad.
“Blood is power. Blood will create a strong spell. Powerful.” The witch’s muttering was doing absolutely nothing to make me feel better. Her ramblings just got creepier and creepier.
Forcing out a sigh, I placed the tip of the knife against my arm and shut my eyes, sending the message to my brain that I needed to apply pressure. But after a minute, I was still in the same place… only my breathing was labored as fuck. Sawyer wrapped one of his warm hands around mine.
“Let me do it?” I cracked one eye open. He leaned in a little closer, keeping his words to me private. “I can take the pain away for you, if you’d let me?”
I nodded, because that sounded like the best fucking idea I’d ever heard. I gave the knife to him and dropped my free arm to my side.
He wrapped his warm, strong fingers around my other arm, holding me gently but firmly. With his thumb, he stroked the pulse point on my wrist for a minute. I relaxed into the sweeping sensation, trying to let my thoughts drift away from what was happening right now. I had to stay sharp, alert.
“Deep breath,” he murmured. “Keep your eyes shut. Don’t move.”
Sucking in a lungful of oxygen, I braced for the pain…
That never came. A small gasp escaped me as heat flooded my body. It wasn’t heat from a fire. Rather, it was the heat that came from a lover’s caress. I warmed all over, all thoughts of a witch taking my blood and vampires leaving my mind. All I could focus on was this warmth. I let out a groan when Sawyer skimmed my thigh with his fingertips. Granted, this was not how partners touched, but I found I didn’t actually care right now.
He feathered his hand farther up the inside of my thigh, rubbing the seam of my jeans, sending sparks through me. I widened my stance, giving him the access he needed. God, I hoped he needed it because I wasn’t ready for him to stop touching me like this. He applied more erotic pressure, playing, teasing, making me drip with desire. I had never felt this alive, this electrified, with barely a hint of foreplay before. I guessed bedding an incubus did have its perks.
I ground my pussy against the heel of his palm, begging for more—more friction, more touching, rougher touching. I wanted it all.
He laid his mouth against my arm, licking from my wrist to the crook of my elbow. If it were any other fool licking me, I would’ve told them to fuck off by now, but with Sawyer, I wanted to hold his head there forever. I decided then that he could do whatever the fuck he wanted to do with me and I would go along with it.
Willingly.
Sacrifice me on the altar of Sawyer’s dick and sexual prowess, and I’d become his priestess.
“It’s done,” he whispered, and I opened my eyes. Blinked. Stared at the cut on my arm. It hadn’t been his tongue on my skin, but the blade. Blood oozed out in thick wave, and the witch was there with a red Solo cup, scooping up what she could. I jerked back when she dipped her head and ran her tongue over the wound.
“Enough,” Sawyer growled. “You have your payment. Do what we asked.”
The witch smiled at me with blood-stained teeth and shuffled into the kitchen. I turned back to Sawyer, still too stunned to move.
He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and wrapped it around my arm. “This will have to do for now. I assume you have a first-aid kit in your apartment?”
Blink. That’s all I could do. My brain felt fuzzy and thick, my thoughts coalescing slowly and without much sense. What had just happened to me?
Blink.
Blink.
I squeezed my legs together as an echo of an erotic throb pounded through my pussy. Sawyer’s eyes had grown darker. He had a hand wrapped around my uninjured arm, holding me like he was worried I would bolt.
“We’ll talk later,” he said softly, brushing his fingers along my cheek.
I blinked again. Fuck, I had to get some other innate function going. Breathing! Oh, wait, I was already doing that. Crying? Nah, not in front of a witch I’d just met… and was potentially going to be running into in the building in the future. Because hooray for me.
The witch returned with a shard of mirror about an inch wide and three inches long, one end tapering off to a sharp point.
Sawyer demanded, “What’s that?”
“A conduit.”
“And what does it do?”
“I’ve bespelled the mirror so you can see what the vampire is seeing.”
I cleared my throat, finally finding my voice. “Wow, that’s just needle-in-the-haystack fantastic.”
Sawyer coughed pointedly and held out his hand. “I’ll take it.”
The woman shook her head. “Her blood. Only she can see.” She thrust the piece of mirror at me, and I reluctantly took it. As soon as my fingers touched the smooth surface, my skin seemed to sizzle. I pocketed the thing and hoped it didn’t stab me in the ass.
The witch tittered to herself. “Powerful. Powerful. Watch them burn.”
“Can we leave now?” I asked Sawyer, not even trying to hide my desperation to leave.
“Yes.”
Without another word, we left the apartment while the witch got lost in her own head, muttering those same words over and over again.
“Never take me on a date like that again,” I said to Sawyer as I rode the elevator up to my apartment.
He quirked an eyebrow at me. “That’s what you call a date?”
I shrugged. “I haven’t been out much. Plus…” I drifted off, letting my thoughts die. My partner didn’t need to know about my sexual habits, although considering he nearly just got me off in front of a witch, maybe he already knew.
“Plus?”
“Oh, look, my apartment!” I exclaime
d with way too much enthusiasm and volume. I opened up the door and walked in, not caring if Sawyer followed me in or not. After tonight, I think I wanted to be alone anyway.
“Where’s the first aid kit?” he asked, shutting the door and bolting it.
“Bathroom.” I placed the mirror shard on the table and plonked down onto the couch, staring at the blood-soaked handkerchief until he returned with the medical supplies.
“How does it feel?”
I jerked my head up and stared at him. How did what feel? If he was talking about the cut, I barely felt it. If he was talking about the echo of his touch? I was all up for exploring that further.
I erred on the side of caution. “Dull.”
Lowering himself onto his knees, I watched him through half lidded eyes as he removed the handkerchief and cleaned the wound. It was a neat cut, one that would hopefully not scar. He didn’t say anything for a long time, and neither did I, since I was still processing every fucked-up thing that had happened.
“I’m sorry.”
“Not as sorry as you’re going to be,” I replied in a half-hearted sing-song voice.
“Not for the blood. I’m not sorry if that’s how we can find this vampire. I’m sorry for the other thing.”
I forced my eyes to widen, deciding to play dumb. “Other thing?”
“The distraction I provided?”
“You mean touching me?”
Sawyer shook his head, his gray eyes clear and unbeguiling. “Other than your arm, I didn’t touch you,” he replied.
What the hell was he talking about? As if my body wanted to scream at him that it remembered being touched, a bolt of lust shot through me. I shifted in my seat, the reality of his words sinking home. “You manipulated my mind into thinking…” Jesus, I couldn’t even bring myself to say the words.
He nodded, never taking his eyes off his work. “I could see that you were terrified, and I needed to relax you. Believe me, I would never intentionally use my powers to influence you unless it was absolutely necessary.” Dumping the bloody gauze onto the table, he opened up a bandage and some more non-stick pads. “I think you should know what species I am.”
“You’re an incubus,” I told him. I shouldn’t have enjoyed how much I’d clearly taken him by surprise, but I did. I felt like I was lost in this supernatural world, always the one with the wool pulled over her eyes, so it was nice to be on the other end, even if it was for something as small as this.
“How did you…? Faline,” he growled.
“Yes, Faline, but don’t be pissed off with her. Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
“Hold this.” I pressed the non-stick pad in place as he unwound a little of the bandage. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to throw me under the fucking bus if we got into trouble.”
“Buses aren’t my style. I prefer taxis. Those drivers are savage.” He stared at me, and I shrugged. “I know what you mean. I was a loose cannon. I’d watched my partner get murdered and didn’t do a damn thing to stop it. Or help.”
He nodded, still working the bandage around my forearm. “If you could do that to a human partner, I didn’t want to think about what you would do to a supernatural one.”
“I would never…” Pausing, I thought about the words I was about to say, about what I’d told Faline. “We’re partners, Sawyer. You being an incubus doesn’t change that.”
“And you being human doesn’t change that for me either,” he replied softly, amusement glittering in his gray eyes.
“Are we bonding, Sawyer?”
His mouth flexed into a small smile, the one I knew showed his genuine amusement. “In our own strange way.”
I sighed through my nose and said, “Okay, you’re an incubus. So did you use your pussy-soaking whammy on me?”
I got a loud laugh that time. “Pussy-soaking whammy?” he asked.
“Yeah, you know, that thing you do to make women pant all over you. I saw the way that woman in the coffee shop reacted. She looked like she wanted to claw my eyes out for standing close to you.” Eh, it was a stretch of the truth.
Sawyer looked confused, then when it finally dawned on him, he said, “That was you? The woman in front of me?”
I huffed. Don’t let it sting. “Yeah. Am I so unforgettable?”
He had the good grace to look chagrined. “I don’t know what to say. I went in there to get coffee. I was in a bad mood because I was getting a new partner and I’d lost the bet.”
“Bet?”
“Yeah. We had a pool going about who they would send and who they would be assigned to. I got shafted twice.”
I tried not to laugh. Really, I did. “Alright, so bad mood Sawyer,” I pressed, hurrying him on because thinking about him hating me made my chest hurt.
“Bad mood Sawyer equals slightly misdirected energy. I needed to feed before I met you, so I took a hit at the coffee shop. I didn’t even notice who was there. All I knew was there were three women in there, and I needed something. That woman in line behind us and the barista were soaked for me. I could smell it. You, on the other hand…”
“Me?”
He stood up, collecting the gauze and packaging as he did, then disappeared into my kitchen. “You,” he said as he returned, shivering. “You are something else.”
“I have a feeling I’m not going to like what you’re going to say next.”
He sat down beside me on the couch, and I shifted my body around, facing him. My arm throbbed dully, and I held it on top of my leg carefully. I studied his face. He looked so torn, so I decided to save him from saying anything more.
“So with the witch, that was all in my head?”
He nodded. “I’m sorry if I overstepped.”
I didn’t care that he’d tapped my mind like an overripe watermelon. I hadn’t been able to make the cut, so he did. If we caught the vampire now, it was because he was there to help me.
“I’ll call it even if you tell me why you don’t have fangs like Faline.”
“Only female sex demons have fangs.”
“Sex demons? Woah, I thought you said you were an incubus.”
“I am. We’re a species of sex demon—well, what humans call demons. For us, it’s just a different race. You have black, Caucasian, Asian, and so on. We have our own classification system.”
“Alright, so females get fangs. What do male sex demons get? A twelve-inch dick? Orgasm-inducing cum? Your finger turns into a vibrator?”
He laughed, throwing his head back as he did. One point to me. I needed to lighten the mood. Seriously though, I knew he had the twelve-inch dick package when he’d gotten into the shower with me after the accident, but was there anything else?
“So, are we good? You know…” He gestured to my bandaged arm.
“Yeah, we’re good. Although, now I kind of wished I’d used my necklace instead.” I glared at the shard of mirror on the table.
“Oh?”
“Yeah. Less stabby,” I replied absently.
He conceded my statement with a nod. “That is true. Although, I’m not sure your necklace would’ve worked.”
“Why not?”
“I’ve noticed it glows sometimes.”
I wrapped my hand around it protectively. I’d been told by my father never to take it off, that it would protect me as long as I was wearing it. “What’s the theory?”
“I think it’s been bespelled already.” I digested his words, nodding to indicate he should go on. “Every time there’s a supernatural around using their gifts, it glows. I noticed it when you were in Wonderland fighting Baba Yaga. Did it also happen in the coffee shop?”
I tried to piece it all together in my head, getting the timeline straight. “That was the first time it flared to life. Before that, I guess I never came into contact with anything supernatural…” I clutched at the stone a little more tightly, choosing to omit all the truth about all the other times it had glowed in warning after that. Had it really been bespelled? There was
only one person I could think to ask, and that was Mrs. Brown. The only problem was, I had no idea where to find her. I frowned. I also couldn’t remember what she looked like.
Sawyer stood up and stretched, the bottom of his sweater riding up with the movement. Unashamedly, I stared at the strip of skin he flashed. When he caught me staring, he gave me a lazy grin, then kissed me on the top of my head. “I’ll see you tomorrow, pussy cat. Get some rest.”
Fifteen
The next day was uneventful. All I did was go through voice clips and write reports. I had a sneaking suspicion Sawyer was taking it easy on me. I was good with that. My arm still throbbed from where the witch had taken her blood, and I wasn’t sure my nerves could handle being on the back of Sawyer’s bike again so soon.
I’d planned on getting a new truck over the weekend.
If the damn thing ever got here.
“Does time move differently in this department?” I asked Sawyer as he busied himself with something I couldn’t see.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, how is it only Thursday? I feel like I’ve been working here a year already.”
Across the room, Faline laughed. She’d returned to her desk after being out in the field for most of the day. “You think we have our own measurement of time? Our own supernatural Gregorian calendar?” It wasn’t my most outlandish idea. She got up from her chair and sauntered over to me, her hips moving with serpentine grace.
“What are you doing tonight?”
I glanced over at Sawyer, who kept his eyes on his work, but tilted his head a little to the side to show he was listening. “Why?”
I had planned on seeing my therapist. After Sawyer had left last night, I’d kind of reached my breaking point. There was only so much supernatural horseshit I could shovel at a time, and my cart was full.
“It’s my birthday. We’re,” she gestured to the whole room, “going out tonight to celebrate. I would like to you come.”
I narrowed my eyes, asking, “Why?” again.
Faline perched on the edge of my desk and stared at me. “Because I like you, and I think we’re friends?”
