by Anne Malcom
Luckily he did so, because I was not in the mood for having to rip one of his limbs off if he remained, arguing my points and making my rants look decidedly less cool. Who was I kidding? I was always in the mood for that. I just didn’t want to risk the bloodstains—this dress was vintage.
So Scott ran after the vampire, who was obviously not going to be a threat to Scott since any vampire who ran was a total pussy. Thorne and I made quick work of the hybrids.
Well, not exactly quick, since I kind of underestimated how strong and quick these improved versions were, and one got a lucky shot in and broke my leg. I hadn’t noticed until they were scattered about in pieces and Thorne’s eyes had focused on me, first alight with the hot desire that burned after a battle, then with horror as he looked downward.
I followed his gaze, mostly because it freaked me out but also because my leg was actually smarting a little. I guessed that was because there was a bone jutting out of my upper thigh.
How had I missed that?
Thorne rushed forward, clutching me like he expected me to collapse just because I had my snapped thigh bone protruding out of my skin.
I totally wasn’t that girl.
So I stayed standing, obviously.
Even Scott, who dragged the unconscious vampire in a few seconds later, had dropped him and rushed over to me. “Holy shit, Isla,” he whispered, eye wide.
“Scott!” I yelled, my voice sharper with the bite of pain that was becoming slightly annoying. Though not as annoying as having to take Scott through the basics of being a vampire. “Try to remember your captive and forget about a fucking flesh wound.” I shook my head, sighing. “You just can’t get good help these days.” I narrowed my eyes at Thorne, pointing at Scott and swallowing a flinch that threatened with the moment. “Go help him. I can walk, it’s not that bad.”
Thorne didn’t move, or help Scott. Instead, he stared at me, hands biting into my shoulder. “Isla, your fucking bone is shooting out of your skin,” he growled, eyes hard. “It is that bad.”
I shoved him away, intent on showing him just how much of a drama queen he was being, but then as I tried to put weight on my now-screaming leg, I sort of almost collapsed.
Thorne caught me with a self-satisfied raised brow.
“Not a fucking word,” I hissed through my pain and anger.
I had to stop falling. And I had to stop getting used to him fucking catching me. It was a dangerous thing, deadly.
To his credit, he hadn’t said anything when he carried me to the car. Or up into the apartment.
But he had been hovering.
He hadn’t even gone to help Scott and Silver interrogate the vampire we’d captured, and they obviously needed help since he hadn’t told them anything. Then again, there was probably nothing to tell since I reasoned the vampire would’ve started squealing like a pig the second they brandished the copper knife.
That’s how Jonathan was operating, not telling anyone anything that would be actually helpful, making sure all the information was separated, and we had to gather it up and try to fit it together like a jigsaw puzzle.
I hated jigsaw puzzles.
For the twenty-four hours I’d been stuck here, waiting for the bone to heal, Thorne had stayed near me. How humans managed for weeks at a time was beyond me. I was ready to end it all right now had I not felt the last of my bones knitting together right at the moment I tried to shoo Thorne away.
Obviously such things didn’t work, and he stayed right where he was, which was up in my business—and not in the good way. The good way was lost to us until Sophie got back. The witch had been gone for too long and I was getting stabby. Or murdery, or ‘find the nuclear codes and blow the whole world up’ kind of horny.
“Isla, you need to stop fucking making light of the fact that your leg hasn’t healed,” Thorne yelled, his glare molten quicksilver. “It’s been too long.” He gritted his teeth. “And Sophie is off in fucking Mexico—”
“Doing you a favor,” I interrupted him, deciding to omit that I was getting the favor since he was handling the no-sex thing rather well. I raised my brow at him. “And I’m thinking not a moment too soon. You never got this worried about something as trivial as a broken bone when you were getting laid on the regular,” I accused.
He glowered at me. “You never took this fucking long to heal before, Isla!” he shouted. And then he started to pace. That pissed me right off, rubbing in the fact that he had working use of both his legs.
He stopped, turning his tightly coiled and simply delicious body toward me. “You think I care about fucking you when I’m faced with losing you?” he growled.
I pursed my lips, watching the way his muscles moved as he folded his arms across his broad chest. “I sure hope so,” I replied.
He did not appreciate this, because his jaw got tighter and he didn’t say anything for a long moment before he ran his hands through his hair—another motion that got me going, since he had grown it a little longer and it suited the fuck out of him—and started to pace again.
“The witch needs to be here, to heal you and then to fucking explain why this has happened,” he gritted out, his eyes darting to me. “It’s the witch’s curse, isn’t it? It’s getting stronger?” Dread saturated his voice so heavily it made me feel a little bad.
He didn’t quite know that my slow healing was mostly due to my newly beating heart and my blood flow making me weaker and slower at healing. Making me more human. Ugh.
But I wasn’t too hot on telling him that. Because then it would be even more of a production trying to go out and kill things. He might even try to chain me up. And that was only fun if sex or torture was involved.
“It’s not the curse,” I shot back, extending my leg and testing the freshly knit bones. A small and sharp burst of pain shot upward, and my body warned me that I was not quite finished healing.
I was never one for warnings.
I glanced at Thorne, who of course was watching me with that intense concern. “Look, it’s just been a while since I’ve gotten some serious Zs,” I half lied. I hadn’t had a laevisomnus in a while, and because my body was weaker now, I’d need it more often. Which sucked. Harder than I did.
But then again, I’d get to lie with Thorne, lapse into unconsciousness in his arms instead of watching him do so and then leaving to finish some work, plan some murders, lament on my past.
“You know there hasn’t been a time to sleep like the dead and not actually die lately, Thorne,” I continued, brushing away such girly thoughts of falling asleep in my boyfriend’s arms. Ugh.
He stepped forward, face rippling with softness that was somehow just as attractive as his hardness. He brushed my hair from my face. “Well then you’re doing it. Tonight.” There was no room for argument in his tone.
So of course, I made room for it.
I hated that my entire being responded to the simple tender touch. “We don’t really have time for me to check out for a week,” I replied, thinking that was about how long I’d be taking my extended nap for, the way my body was feeling. “Plus, I’m not too hot on leaving myself that vulnerable in light of recent events.”
Again, Jonathan’s face burst into my head, stabbing at all my nerve endings, reminding me of what I’d been trying so hard to forget.
“I will need a queen. And I already have you. I do already own you… once I exterminate anything that tries to challenge that, of course. And who has sullied that which I own with its human paws.”
Thorne cupped my chin, yanking my face to meet his, banishing the worst of the chill of my memory, of the clutch of Jonathan’s eyes.
But not all of it. No, I still had a cold attached to me that even the fire inside Thorne’s touch couldn’t melt.
“You’re not vulnerable,” he rasped. “Not when I’m gonna be no more than two feet away from you the entire time. No way in fuck I’m letting anything happen to you, Isla.” His firm declaration warmed me more than anything my newly beating
heart could reproduce. Almost cracked at the last of that ice.
Almost.
I hated it, my very response to his words, to his promise of protection. Hated the way I wanted to melt into it, wanted to let him take care of it all, protect me from it all.
But that wasn’t his job, to do the protecting. Not from the world and especially not from Jonathan. It was my job to protect myself, and more importantly, him. I tasted the promise in Jonathan’s words in Russia. He meant to kill everyone near me, like my mother had five hundred years ago. He’d started with Lewis, the weak human, to tease me.
He’d finish with Thorne, the hard man who wasn’t just a man, but somehow that was all he was to me, in a good way.
The man who made me want to stop being the villain for a handful of dangerous moments and try the damsel’s dress on for size.
Which was insane.
And not in the good way.
So luckily I was healed enough to rip out of his grip and stand on slightly unsteady and painful feet. Well, foot. But I didn’t let that stop me from moving forward and standing toe to toe with Thorne.
It would’ve been more effective if I’d had heels on and Thorne didn’t tower over me, but I had to work with what I had. Which was still a fuck of a lot.
My eyes narrowed. “After everything we’ve been through, you’re still concerned with slaying monsters and saving princesses?” I hissed, my eyes searching his, hating that the edge to my voice was counteracted by my feelings for him.
I called upon the image of Jonathan once more, the pain that came with his presence.
Ice flowed through my veins. I held onto it. I needed to. Thorne needed me to.
“If this behavior continues, I’ll be forced to call the Brothers Grimm and tell them they’ve got an escaped character from one of their fucking fairy tales,” I yelled, “because that is the only place such binary oppositions exist. Where the man and the woman live on separate sides of the coin, one doing the fighting, protecting, the other being innocent and weak.” I grinned, showing fang, the expression cold and cruel. “This is not that, Thorne. I thought my fangs might be a reminder of that. Or my body count. But still you take things from where they belong, in the pages of a book, or on some stupid screen that dumbs down humanity like the grinding of a stone by the ocean.”
I moved back from him just slightly, keeping my gaze cold. “Here, in this world, my world, it’s not like that. The princesses most likely have knives under their pink dresses, and the monsters?”
I paused, striding around the room, testing my leg, happy it was healed enough to have only a slight twinge of pain.
Then I turned. Thorne’s eyes were glued on me, of course. “Well, I guess you’re looking at her. Princess or a monster? Take your pick. Both are equally as dangerous. One just wears her monstrosity better than the other.” I folded my arms. “So don’t think now that I’ve got a beating heart that I’m any closer to that little damsel you seem intent on turning me into.”
My words hung in the air, my anger along with them.
Thorne did not immediately respond. Or yell.
Instead he stared at me for the longest time before stepping forward.
“After everything we’ve been through, I’ve found out a lot about you, Isla. And you’re right, you are a monster,” he growled, hands yanking my body flush with his. My cells responded immediately, my heartbeat thundering against his chest.
Silver eyes burned into me. “And realizing that has made me see something else inside me, that to become what I am, I’ve had to create a monster,” he said, face inches from mine. “I’ve always been that way, but you’ve shown me that.” His mouth brushed mine. “And baby, monsters need love too. They just make each other bleed more. And the sex is better.”
Again, the words hung in the air, but his seemed to stick better than mine, spiral into all those pesky cracks in my shield, take up residence in my beating heart that was so much more vulnerable now that it was moving, alive.
Then again, it didn’t come alive a handful of days ago. More like a large handful of months, in a police station.
I pouted more to hide my reaction than anything else, but I suspected Thorne saw everything anyway, felt it all through that connection established by blood. The one that got stronger every time I drank from him.
“The sex is nonexistent until Sophie gets here,” I whined. Again, my tone was used in an attempt to shake off the way his words had settled, too intensely, too heavily on top of everything else.
“Well, you know what else is gonna be nonexistent until you’ve slept and the witch is back?” he gritted out. “You getting hurt anymore. I know you’re not a damsel, babe, but that doesn’t make you indestructible. You’re a warrior, but a warrior can still bleed.” His hand trailed down to the freshly pink skin on my thigh. “Can still break.” He looked up again, his hand moving upward, inward, teasing the apex between my thighs.
My stomach burned with desire, and I felt his too.
“I’m not asking for you to stop being one. I’m just fucking requesting that you don’t make it so you break so bad that we can’t put you together again,” he rasped, his fingers teasing the edge of my panties.
I hated that those fingers were distracting me so damn much from winning an argument.
I hated that he was right.
Of course, I wasn’t about to admit it. With great willpower I hadn’t been aware I’d possessed, I stepped back, my pussy wanting to bitch-slap me for depriving it of an orgasm.
“Clue in, Thorne. There’s only one way to win a war,” I said, my voice just a little rough. “It’s to get a little broken. So you’re going to have to get right with the fact that I’m not going to get through this unscathed.” I narrowed my eyes. “And neither will you. It’s just the way of it. You don’t see me yelling and forbidding you to do all the fun stuff like slay, do you?” I didn’t add the part that I wanted to. Fuck, did I want to. I wanted to lock Thorne up in a cage to make sure Jonathan didn’t make good on his promise to kill him.
I knew Thorne could handle himself.
But I couldn’t handle myself without him.
I should’ve said that. Poured out all my feelings, laid bare all those broken pieces that weren’t as obvious as a bone sticking out of my leg but that would take a fuck of a lot longer to heal, if they healed at all.
Of course, I didn’t do that, because that would mean addressing the big vampiric elephant in the room.
Jonathan.
Despite being trapped here for twenty-four hours and it having been three days since Jonathan’s resurrection, we had not broached the subject. There had been both too much time and not enough to do so. We had eternity, after all.
Fury danced in Thorne’s eyes as it seemed like he was plucking thoughts from my mind.
I really hoped not. If that was the case, we’d have a bigger problem than a possible apocalypse. His no-doubt profanity-ridden reply was interrupted by a knock at the door.
I grinned, the only time I’d been happy about how many people thought it was okay to just drop by and ring the bell, not even break in and try to kill me.
“Oh, sweetums, we’ve got company,” I said, twirling around. “Let’s not continue this later.”
I darted away before he could snatch me. Before I could let him. I was seriously horny, and I didn’t trust myself not to jump him, even with the prospect of an unplanned pregnancy.
Chapter 3
“Oh, your brother’s here, honey,” I called when I opened the door, scowling at the king. “Are you guys going to a baseball game together, you know, now that you’ve reconnected?” I asked with both sarcasm and venom. I wasn’t totally over the betrayal of the ugly truth of their relationship.
That was another vampiric elephant in the room. It was surprising that we could even squeeze around them.
It wasn’t like Thorne and I had even had time to talk about it all, since we’d only made up right before we left for Russia, and that w
as partly because I’d thought I might die, or mostly I thought he would and I hated the thought of him dying when I wasn’t there to yank him back from the grave.
But he hadn’t done near enough groveling.
The king, otherwise known as his brother, hadn’t done any.
We’d gotten back from Russia and he’d all but disappeared… until now.
He was obviously doing whatever it was that kings did in the middle of wars, which was welcome to me. I didn’t need the reminder of Thorne’s betrayal sauntering around me like he had the power to tell me what to do.
I barely restrained myself from ripping a limb off Rick, though my hand twitched with the need to. Especially with the fact that I’d been unable to do any fighting, sexual or otherwise, in twenty-four hours.
Well, Thorne had done some amazing things with his mouth earlier, but still, it wasn’t enough to curb my very real need to inflict bodily harm on the king.
I stepped back to let him into my apartment instead. I’d already kind of ripped his arm off once, and I figured one only got to rip a limb off a monarch once and be forgiven for it.
Not that I cared about forgiveness. I did care about my head remaining attached to my shoulders, though.
I closed the door. “Does the fact that you’re almost kind of family give me diplomatic immunity?” I asked, deciding that if he agreed, it would be his fault for giving me permission to rip his limb off without repercussions.
He turned, face blank, not clenching up like Thorne did at the mention of their little brotherly connection. “No, I’m not stupid enough to give a vampire like you any kind of immunity,” he said dryly. “You’ve already received a pardon. That’s one too many.”
I frowned, remembering not at all fondly the meeting with the two twits from the Sector and the subsequent pardon for crimes against vampire law—aka boinking Thorne and then falling in love with him.
“Ah, yes, I must pencil in some kind of international incident so I can render that little baby null and void,” I mused.
Rick strode over to my bar cart like he owned the place. That pissed me right off. The only person who could stroll around abodes they didn’t own with that kind of superiority was me.
