Forbidden (The Preternaturals)

by Zoe Winters

  Luminitsa looked suspiciously at each of them in turn but nodded. “Be quick. The sun rises soon, and then you’ll only get your knife and a melted corpse.”

  A tingle went down Angeline’s wings. Cain placed a steadying hand on her arm. She jumped—still not comfortable being near him after their last encounter.

  He shook his head. “No,” he whispered. Then he turned back to the gypsy. “We’ll be quick.”

  The door closed and Anna said, “No. I’m not leaving him with them. Who knows what they’ll do. Magic is bad. People who use magic are bad. I mean, look what happened to Luc the last time he tangled with a witch!”

  Cain smirked. “If I recall correctly, the last witch Luc tangled with was you.”

  “And look where it got him! Cursed into a house for half a century, that’s where!”

  Anna seemed high strung.

  “Luc?” Cain said.

  The other demon shrugged. “You and I have both been through bad shit. If this is what we have to do for the ritual, it’s what we have to do. Would you rather they start the apocalypse and us lose? We have our dimension to retreat to, but what about the demons who still need humans to feed from? We aren’t all mated and safe from the need to hunt.”

  Cain nodded, but Anna still clung to her mate, unwilling to let him go.

  “Anna, you have to come back with us,” the demon leader said. He wasn’t negotiating.

  She shook her head, her jaw set firm. “I’m not leaving my mate.”

  “Listen, I know if it were Tam in a situation like this, I’d refuse to leave her, too. But this is the only way Luminitsa is letting that knife go. We have to think about the longer-term consequences.”

  Cain turned his attention to Angeline. She’d tried to blend. Once Luminitsa had refused to allow anyone in but Luc, the guardian’s presence had become extraneous. She worried—now that Cain didn’t need her—he might turn on her.

  “You’ve been nothing but trouble to me since I’ve met you.”

  She looked down. “I-I’m sorry.” But she wasn’t. And they both knew it.

  “Still,” he continued. “You’re loyal to those you care for, and that is a beneficial personality trait I may need to utilize at some point in the future. If only some of that would rub off on your vampire.”

  Cain knocked on the door again, and the gypsy answered.

  “We’ll make the trade, but if you do anything magical to my brother, you will be faced with Tamar, her coven, Anna here—who, by the way, was a witch before she became mated to a demon—and my entire dimension of demons. You may have powerful and old magic, but you are outclassed. I will cooperate with you if you can assure me my brother’s safe return and no magic used against him. We will know if you violate our terms.”

  “I assure you we only wish to speak to your brother, and work out fair restitution for his crime.”

  “Very well,” Cain said.

  Luminitsa closed the door and a few minutes later she opened it again. She took Luc’s hand and pulled him inside—despite Anna’s protests—then she shoved Hadrian outside. He held an embroidered dark blue pouch.

  Hadrian passed the pouch to Cain. “Everything on your list is in the bag.”

  The vampire spared a look at Angeline and something flickered across his face. Anger? It was quick and then it was gone. But then Hadrian was cloaked in that same strong angry energy that seemed to always follow him.

  He didn’t say he was happy to see her, or that he was angry she’d risk herself by coming. He didn’t kiss her or bite her or make any show of emotion. It wasn’t as if she’d expected a grand gesture. In so many ways, they were barely more than strangers who couldn’t seem to figure out what they would or should be to each other—aside from his brief moment of insanity when he’d suggested claiming her. Angeline was sure he was over that idea by now.

  They walked back to the portal in silence. This wasn’t a hang-out-and-chat sort of group. Tensions and anxieties were too high for small talk, anyway. Hadrian was somewhere behind her. Angeline could feel him, his distinct energy signature close, like a warm blanket she wanted to wrap herself up in, but she kept moving with the others.

  Then his hand slid into hers. She looked up at him, startled. His gaze was intense, but it kept drifting to her neck.

  “Are you hungry?”

  He just squeezed her hand more tightly.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Hadrian’s thumb stroked the back of Angeline’s hand as they crossed into the demon dimension. As soon as they reached his tent, he intended to take her. And claim her. She’d given him every possible signal short of wearing a T-shirt with the directive “mount me” on it.

  He didn’t want to waste another moment he could spend with her. Being trapped with the gypsy tribe had made it clear how easily he and Angeline could be separated, and although he still couldn’t articulate why that was so upsetting to him, the fact was, that it was. The demon inside him had determined Angeline was his mate and there was no pro/con list or rational and reasoned argument that could combat such a thing.

  The humans might call it chemistry. Hadrian would call it preternatural madness.

  He could smell her excitement whenever he was near now.

  “D-did they hurt you in there?” Angeline asked as they got farther from the rest of the group.

  Their tent was isolated from the others. Cain had lightly referred to it as the honeymoon suite, but its distance and separation from the other tents nearby made it more than just a joke.

  “The Gypsies?” Hadrian asked as he pulled the flap back and gestured for her to go inside.

  Angeline hesitated before going into the tent.

  “They were okay,” he said. “It wasn’t a big deal. They had no beef with me.” Luc, however, was a different matter, and Hadrian didn’t envy the foolish demon who had once crossed that particular tribe of gypsies. “I just helped Luminitsa collect and crush the roots Tam needed and got everything together for the trade.”

  “Oh.”

  Angeline sat on the sofa, picking at loose threads that didn’t exist. Her anxiety was so transparent it was almost charming.

  “Drink?” Hadrian asked from the minibar. There had to be something besides hard liquor. He pulled back a curtain under the cart to reveal a cabinet. The inside of the cabinet glowed with a frigid blue light.

  There was no technology in Cain’s dimension. Everything was done the old-fashioned way—or with the magic the demon leader allowed there. He seemed to be allowing a lot more magic into his dimension since taking a witch as a mate.

  Hadrian took a chilled bottle of champagne from the cabinet and a couple of champagne flutes. He popped the cork and poured the bubbling alcohol into the glasses and handed one to Angeline.

  She’d neither asked for nor denied the alcohol, but he could tell she needed it—otherwise things would get more awkward than they already were. Why should everything be so difficult and awkward?

  Perhaps because she didn’t believe he could ever forgive her, and he would never be able to convince her that he already had, and that his attempts to hold onto his anger were only the fear that she would never stop having power over him, because it wasn’t her supernatural power that undid him.

  It was the power of her feminine grace. It was the shy way she glanced away from him, coupled with her fierce determination to face fear and pain for his benefit. The combination was a drug he couldn’t get enough of. Like her blood.

  She tossed the champagne back in a couple of large gulps, and Hadrian refilled the glass. “I believe you’re supposed to sip it. Would you prefer to do shots?”

  Angeline blushed and shook her head. “N-no. I’ll slow down.” She sipped this time.

  Hadrian took a couple of sips from his own glass and then placed the bottle and his champagne on the table beside the couch. He’d get more than enough alcohol in her blood at the rate she was going, though the effects would wear off soon enough. He turned her away from him and ran
his hands down the back of the damaged corset. She shivered.

  “You ruined this one,” he remarked as he continued to stroke her back through the corset.

  “D-Daria has the other one, and I didn’t like the way I felt without it. So I wore this one, but then Cain made me angry.”

  “Oh?”

  Hadrian was surprised as she recounted what had happened in his absence. She was a lot braver than she let on. Taking Cain on like that? Hadrian would have done it, but he was surprised Angeline had.

  He swept her hair out of his way and struck at her throat. She tensed, and he felt the energy coiled in her, as—even with the alcohol—she prepared to shove him off her with the force field.

  He lifted his head from her neck and licked the trail of blood. “I’m only feeding,” he said. She relaxed a fraction as he bit her again, but he knew she wasn’t truly relaxed.

  He never should have told her his plans to claim her. He’d thought she would gladly and quickly agree. He wished he could say he loved her and that she would believe him. But words like love didn’t do true justice to the way he felt. It was a bone deep certainty that she belonged with him. If that was love, so be it. But if it wasn’t, that was okay as well.

  The only words he could come up with came wrapped in the language of obsession and possession. And given her history with Linus and her time in Heaven, he knew there was no way he could ever paint those things again in a way that made her feel safe and not scared.

  And yet, she continued to place her trust in him. Maybe he should wait to mark her.

  When Hadrian finished feeding, he sealed the wound, pushing past the urge to claim her while her defenses were down. It would only take a moment, a nick of his own tongue and a quick mixing. If he were smooth about it, it would be done before she realized what had happened. Then she’d be his. They could work through it later.

  He began to unlace the corset. After fumbling with it for several minutes, he got it off her. Her breasts sprang free from the steel-boned prison, and Hadrian’s hands closed over them. She leaned against him, a sigh escaping her lips.

  “That’s it, little angel. Give yourself over to me.”

  The vampire took her glass, placing it on the side table with his own, then he pulled her to stand and led her to the bed.

  “Where are you, Angeline? Where’s the woman who seduced me? The one who had no shame?” It wasn’t that he didn’t love this more demure version, but he couldn’t help worrying large pieces of it were shame and fear rather than innate nature. Or had the mask been the temptress? Would he ever find the whole Angeline? The real one? Whatever combination of traits she turned out to possess?

  She shrugged and looked off at some imaginary point in the distance. If it was the last thing he did, he would crush this sense of shame they’d drilled into her.

  “Look at me.”

  Her gaze shifted back to his.

  “Do you want this with me?” The demon didn’t give a shit. The demon was already picking out china patterns. But the man cared. He wouldn’t do what she’d once done to him and then simply call it karma.

  “You know I do,” she said. “I just…”

  “Just what?”

  “Hadrian, are you playing with me? Not that I don’t deserve it after… But… just tell me if this is real or not. I want you anyway. I’ll do whatever you want anyway. A part of me doesn’t even care if it’s not real. I just don’t want to hope that it is only to—”

  He captured her mouth with his own. She opened to him, and he deepened the kiss. When he pulled away, she was flushed. It was a bit of a blow to his ego that the magic of his kissing skills hadn’t erased all doubts, like it might have in some romantic comedy.

  There remained a touch of fear in her eyes. And now he couldn’t pretend he didn’t know what those fears were about. The fear of being mocked and pushed away for thinking he could ever truly want her. The fear that she wasn’t enough of whatever measure she’d determined in her head she must live up to in order to be worthy of anyone’s love and affection.

  “Forget about what happened between us before,” he said. “That’s in the past. I forgive you. I mean it. It’s over and done. That moment has nothing to do with this one. A lot of time has passed. That’s not how things are between us right now.” No, things were so much sweeter now. She was so much sweeter now.

  She didn’t protest when Hadrian laid her on the bed. He removed the rest of her clothing and looked at her for a long time, drinking in naked vulnerability. “Don’t move,” he said.

  Hadrian went to an old trunk near the bed and lifted the lid. He had no doubts that in the dimension of a sex demon, these tents came equipped with naughty props. And he was right. Under a few slinky gowns, the vampire found a blindfold, ropes, a flogger, a riding crop, various toys, but nothing battery-operated or requiring electricity.

  He didn’t want to freak her out. Though from the way she’d taken to his bite, and her love of corsets, there was no doubt she was at least a bit of a masochist. She seemed to relish and revel in his bite even though she wasn’t human and he couldn’t put a suggestion into her mind for it not to hurt. She didn’t care that it hurt. She liked that it hurt. How did he get so lucky?

  Still, he’d danced around it because it was easier to pretend everything had been merely about a need to punish her for her crimes against him, some penance to somehow absolve her later, rather than admitting that it was more for his own gratification than anything else.

  In spite of all this, he pulled out the least offensive, least threatening thing he could find: silk scarves.

  Hadrian raised them in the air. “Do you trust me?”

  A shy smile and a nod.

  He tried not to look too eager as he tied her down to the posts around the bed. When she was trussed up as he wanted her, Hadrian circled to observe her from all possible angles. Her breathing deepened, and he watched her chest rise and fall, the anticipation dancing in her eyes.

  “Why do you like this?” he asked.

  “I-It makes me feel safe.”

  He chuckled at that. Oh yes, Angeline was the girl for him. That answer would make sense perhaps to one out of a hundred people, if that many. But it made sense to him.

  He joined her on the bed, still fully dressed, and ran his hand from her breastbone, down over her belly, to stop at her most intimate place.

  “If being confined makes you feel safe, why do you object to the claim?” Don’t ruin the moment, you idiot.

  “It’s not about me. What if you did it and regretted it? I couldn’t stand to live with your contempt. What if you blamed me later? What if you said I tricked you into claiming me to tie us together? What if…?”

  Hadrian placed a finger against her lips. “What if we were deliriously happy together? What if you were right? What if we are the same? What if we were always meant to be together?”

  He unbuttoned his shirt and slid it off his shoulders while he let her think about that. “I won’t change my mind about claiming you, Angeline. You and I? It’s supposed to be. And why are you so worried about my forgiveness? What about yours?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Bless her for being so sweet. “I killed you. Did you conveniently forget about that? If our relationship started out abusive, it was both of us, not just you. Why should I hold a grudge against you when you’ve obviously never even considering holding one against me?”

  “I didn’t want to be a vampire. It made me feel wrong inside.” She flinched as she said it, and they both knew why. She’d hated being a vampire, and yet she’d turned him into one—not the best way to start out what was intended to be a very long romance.

  Hadrian suspected her problem with being a vampire might be more to do with her sire, the shithead who brought her into the darkness with him, rather than the nature she’d been given, but they could have a long discussion or they could do other, more pleasurable things. They had eternity to talk. Either way, she’d never be a vampir
e again.

  “So, about that claim…”

  There was a long pause before she spoke. “I won’t say yes, but I won’t stop you.”

  “Okay, then. I’ll take it.”

  She laughed. It was the best sound in the world.

  Hadrian moved back to the box of clothes and toys and took a blindfold from the pile. “Close your eyes.”

  She closed her eyes and he secured the black cloth around them. He pressed light kisses over her face, down her throat, over her breasts. She sucked in a breath when his mouth settled over her mound.

  “Be a good girl,” he said against her skin. He stroked the side of her hip as she arched toward his mouth, straining to spread her legs wider.

  He took her swollen bud in his mouth and licked and sucked on her flesh. As her breathing deepened, his fingers slid inside her.

  “Let. Go.” He stroked her center as he said the words. Her release flowed out of her in whimpers and mewls and a silvery light and current of power that passed through him and almost knocked him over.

  Hadrian took off the rest of his clothes and slid inside her welcoming body. Her moist heat almost undid him. So incredibly tight. She hadn’t been kidding or lying about the six decades of celibacy.

  He ripped the blindfold off to find her face wet with tears. He brushed them away with his thumb.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’mvery okay.”

  Her gaze held his as he moved inside her. His fingers laced with hers. She could no doubt free herself of the feeble scarves if she wanted, but she didn’t. It was only one of the many things so very right about his little angel. He was already planning their future couplings, when he would use restraints she couldn’t so easily free herself from.

  When he was on the edge of release, his fangs emerged, and he moved closer to her throat.

  Hadrian was so lost in her, he didn’t hear the tent flap.

  “Get dressed. We have to go now!” Cain shouted, tossing Hadrian and Angeline’s clothes at them.

  Hadrian caught the shirt midair and growled. “Get out!”

  The demon leader grabbed the vampire and tossed him to the other end of the tent. “I said get dressed.” Cain looked down at Angeline and smirked. “I would have thought this dynamic would have been reversed, given our earlier altercation.” The demon turned back to Hadrian. “I’ll wait outside. If you’re not out there in three minutes, you’ll be going naked. I can assure you, I don’t care about your state of dress.”