His gaze slid up from her hand on his arm then. She fell into his gaze. That twisting flame of light was back in his indigo eyes. “You might not want to do that,” he rasped.
“What?”
“Touch me.”
“Oh.” Her hand slipped from his arm. She rubbed her fingertips together at her sides. They felt bereft, cold on the air.
“I didn’t open up to you and tell you about myself because I wanted your pity or soft looks. I especially wasn’t trying to get you to pet me like I’m some sort of puppy—”
“I wasn’t doing that,” she said hotly, scanning his six-feet-plus hard body. The last thing he reminded her of was a puppy.
“I told you the truth about me, about my mother, because you deserve to know. If we’re in this together for the next month, then you should know all the factors.”
His eyes were so cold, fathomless deep and impossible to read. The light inside them had vanished.
He spoke with such practicality. Like they were entering into some kind of business arrangement. There was nothing sentimental or friendly about his words. As much as she’d held herself from the world, something told her Niklas was an even harder case.
Not too comforting to consider, when she and Aimee would be in close quarters with him for the next month.
But they wouldn’t be with him, she reminded herself. Not really. This was strictly a mission with no emotion involved. He wasn’t invested like she was in saving Aimee’s life. A fact she should remember so she didn’t make any more overtures of friendship and embarrass herself by touching him again—by wanting and craving to touch him again. Another motive drove him and it had nothing to do with her. This was about his mother. About him.
“I appreciate you telling me everything.” She nodded, trying to look unaffected, as cool and remote as he was. “You’re right. We’re in this together.”
She still couldn’t quite wrap her head around it all. She wondered about his mother. Thoughts of her must plague him, haunt him every day. She shivered at the thought of what he must endure, the agony of living with the knowledge that his mother sacrificed her life—her very soul—for him.
As much as the memory of her mother’s death haunted her, Darby at least knew she was dead. He didn’t have that peace. Was his mother even still a demon witch? Or was she dead now? Her soul forever lost for consorting with a demon?
Once a white witch entered into contract with a demon, she gained immortality. She lived forever at the mercy of her demon’s whims.
Had his mother’s demon somehow managed to bring about her death? Because that’s what they did—tricky bastards. There was only one way a demon witch could be killed. Decapitation. Take the head and the demon was free to roam the earth in corporeal form. What every demon wanted. That was their ultimate goal.
He still watched her with his cold gaze, and she guessed he had good reason to be so cool and aloof. What happened to him could break anyone.
A small, mewling sound carried from the other room.
Niklas nodded in that direction. “The child. She’s begun the transition.”
“Her name is Aimee,” she said. He could at least call her something besides the child.
He stared right through her like she hadn’t said anything. “You may want to go to her. She’ll be very uncomfortable. At least until it ends and she wakes.”
Darby looked over her shoulder, peering into her dimly lit room. “What can I do to help her through it?”
“The fever will rage—no stopping that. Try to get her to drink. There’s not much else you can do for her. It is what it is. Her human DNA is dying, turning over. She’ll sleep for the next few days.”
“A few days?” She blinked. “That’s unnatural.”
“She’s an unnatural creature now.” He cocked his head and gave her a look that reminded her that she was unnatural, too. Just as he was.
“We should cover as much ground as we can during the time she sleeps,” he said brusquely. “It’s going to be hard enough to track him, but when she wakes, she’ll slow us down. I’ll be back soon. Until then, try to get some rest yourself.”
Rest. She doubted she could ever close her eyes again.
He opened the door and the muted light of daybreak spilled through the door, a milky violet that promised sunlight to come later.
How she’d longed for the sight of that—every breath from this hellish night, she had prayed to make it to this moment, to see daylight one more time.
“There’s something I have to know.”
He cocked his head, waiting for her to elaborate.
“If you’re not afflicted with a lycan’s desire to feed, why not shift then? I mean … could it help? Could you track Cyprian quicker?”
He shut the door and faced her, crossing his arms over his chest and looking at her that way again. That intense and unnerving way that made her want to hide from his gaze.
She resisted stepping back and held her ground. She continued, babbling, “If you have free will, why won’t you turn? It could give you an advantage, it could help—”
“It makes me too much like them.”
She blinked once and stared at him hard. “But you’re not. At least in the way that matters.” But if he could be like them in other ways—tracking, speed, strength—he might be able to find them faster. “If it could help us …”
Her voice faded. His eyes gleamed down at her, the light there bright and dangerous. He seemed untouchable. As beautiful as a fatal serpent. “All you need to know is that we do this my way.”
Indignation flared hotly in her chest. It was her turn to cross her arms. “As far as explanations go, that’s not good enough. You’re going to have to do better than that.”
His expression darkened, and she felt certain he’d had enough of her.
Bracing herself, she waited for what he would do next.
NIKLAS INHALED DEEPLY, NOT sure why he should explain anything to her at all. He didn’t owe her anything.
Then why are you here? Why are you doing any of this at all?
Ignoring the nagging voice in his head that warned him he was getting too involved, he moved into her small apartment and lowered himself to the couch. After a moment, she moved to sit beside him.
“I finally pulled myself together about a year after I was turned,” he began. “That’s when I started hunting Cyprian’s pack. I wasn’t very good at first—the scent of any lycan would distract me and confuse me as to what trail I needed to follow. I was basically hunting them all. One night I came across a pair of lycans attacking a woman, a girl really.” He winced. “Not much older than me.”
His shoulders tensed, tightening as he saw the scene all over again in his head.
“What happened?”
“I engaged the lycans.” His voice became clipped, emotionless, like he was reading off a piece of paper and not relating anything significant, but he would never forget the ugliness he had stumbled upon … what they were doing to that girl. “I tried to stop them, but they were strong.” His jaw clenched. He told himself to relax, to not let the past affect him anymore. Easier said than done, he was discovering. He’d never told this story to another soul. You never had anyone to tell it to before.
He drew a deep breath through his nose, pushing that thought away. Being alone had never bothered him before. Meeting her shouldn’t change that; it shouldn’t bother him now. “As I said, I was new to it all. Inexperienced.” He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “I couldn’t handle them on my own, in human form. I thought I needed an advantage. So I shifted.”
“Did you beat them?” She winced at the question, clearly realizing he must have or he wouldn’t be sitting in front of her.
He nodded. “I did. And the girl …” He stopped, seeing the wide, haunted eyes, the blood soaking blond hair, staining it a deep brown.
Darby leaned forward anxiously. “Was she okay?”
He nodded again. “She was still alive, by some miracle.” Th
en his words came quickly. “I approached her to try and help her and she just … screamed. And kept on screaming.” Even now, he could hear the awful sound ringing in his ears, ripping through him.
Darby shook her head, a heaviness settling in her chest. “After you’d just saved her life?”
“I tried to talk to her, calm her down, but she wouldn’t stop screaming. She took off running. She left the park and ran right out into the street.” He paused, taking a breath. “A truck hit her. She died instantly.”
Darby blinked. “You can’t blame yourself for that. She was hysterical, traumatized from what they did to her.”
“She ran into that street because of me.” Because of the monster he was. “I should have left her alone.” He shook his head. “No—I should never have shifted.”
She placed her hand on his knee. Sensation zipped through him at the touch of her hand. He tensed beneath her fingers. She must have felt his tension, for she looked down to where she touched him. With a small gasp, barely audible, she snatched her hand away and buried it in her lap. Color flooded her cheeks, almost the same red as her hair, and he marveled at that. Women actually still blushed these days? Modesty and reticence had long since been absent from his life.
She moistened her lips and he followed the quick darting of her tongue, desire twisting in his belly. The air around them altered, became thicker, heavy with an aching awareness of each other.
“She ran into the street because of the lycans who attacked her. Not you.”
He tore his gaze away from her mouth. “Don’t you get it? It didn’t matter. I looked like them. To her, I was one of them.”
“Looking like them doesn’t mean you’re like them.”
“That was the last time I ever shifted. I don’t need to shift in order to beat them.”
Something passed over her face.
“What?” he demanded.
“Maybe you do … I mean, you needed to do it then to overpower them, and you’ve been hunting Cyprian for a long time. Maybe you would have found them sooner if you weren’t so hung up on shifting.”
Her words struck a nerve. “It’s the way it has to be,” he growled. “I won’t risk shifting again, losing control—”
“You never lost control—”
“Drop it,” he bit out, rising to his feet and moving toward the door again. “You mistake yourself if you think your opinion matters enough to change my mind on this.”
That did the trick. She flinched, staring at him with hurt eyes. “I’m trying to help.”
“You can help by following my lead on this.” He drew a ragged breath and wondered why the way those hazel eyes stared at him affected him so much. Why she should affect him? “And stop asking me so many fucking questions.”
NIKLAS LEFT WITHOUT ANOTHER word and Darby locked the door behind him, noticing that her hands shook. Moving into her small bedroom, she checked on Aimee before stripping out of her clothes and stepping into the shower.
She arched her throat and let the warm water beat down on her body, luxuriating in the wet heat, letting it ease her sore muscles, thankful for being alive.
She envisioned Niklas as he had been tonight, fierce and wild fighting the lycans intent on devouring her, then almost tender as he told her about his past, revealing pieces of himself she felt sure he’d never shared with another soul. Until he shut her down, spoke to her so harshly at the end.
Except she couldn’t forget his eyes.
Her hand brushed her breast and with some surprise she felt her nipple pebble-hard, aroused and sensitive. She released a moan and ducked her head under the spray of water, perfectly aware of the reason why her body was in such a state.
It had been a long time since she’d even been close to a man as sexy as Niklas. His body, his voice, everything about him aroused her.
She wanted him—no, she craved him. She ached just thinking about him. It took all her willpower not to fling herself at him.
The problem was that kiss. Maybe if she had never kissed him, she wouldn’t be so convinced at how good they would be together—how amazing it would be.
She sighed. It was going to be a long month. Especially considering he looked at her as if she were an unwanted child foisted upon him that he must babysit. He was all hard resolve. There would be no repeat kisses.
When this was all over and she reentered the land of the living, the first thing she needed to do was get herself a boyfriend to satisfy the itch that Niklas had roused in her.
Who says you need a boyfriend to do that? Who says you can’t push Niklas into relieving that itch himself? You have a month…
A wicked smile curved her mouth at such bold and totally uncharacteristic thinking. She wasn’t one to be aggressive—a lifetime of staying below the radar and what you got was someone good at being invisible.
Her hand drifted leisurely over her breast, her palm abrading the already stiff nipple. A rattling sigh escaped her lips, and a deep twist of liquid-hot wanting shot through her body.
She leaned her forehead against the tiled wall, her neck suddenly too weak to support her head, and took a deep breath, telling herself to calm down. She needed to pull it together before she saw him again.
She needed to remember who he was and who she was. Alike and yet different. Different in a way that she couldn’t easily forget. She never had. She never would.
FIFTEEN
Niklas walked a hard line through the narrow hall of the B&B, calling himself every name he could think of for agreeing to a scheme that his every instinct screamed at him to avoid. He was breaking every promise he’d ever made to himself.
He unlocked the door to his room and slammed inside. Tossing his bag on the bed, he started packing, muttering to himself. He should just forget about Darby and the girl and go, leave. He would find Cyprian and kill him. He could do that better without them tagging along. What was he thinking?
Ten years ago, he’d begun this journey. No distractions, no companions or friends. Barely a man, he’d set out alone, his mother forever gone from him, lost to her demon. But the memory of her, of all she’d sacrificed for him, spurred him on.
He’d vowed revenge against those who infected him, on the one who forced his mother into making such a sacrifice.
And now look at him. He had a kid and a woman for companions. No, even worse than that. He had an infected kid and a white witch. A white witch whose very scent drove him mad with lust.
The irony wasn’t lost on him that the first woman to get beneath his skin was a white witch. The very thing his mother was … the thing that she had been. Before she was taken from him.
He slung his bag over his shoulder and grabbed the gear he’d left scattered about the room. He’d need to stop and restock on ammo and supplies on the way out. He wondered if Darby even knew how to shoot. He’d probably have to give her some instruction on that. Which only irritated him more. The last thing he needed was to take time out for shooting lessons—and he definitely didn’t need proximity to her. Thoughts of touching her already consumed far too much of his mind.
HIS MOUTH KISSED A fiery path down her throat, teeth dragging and nipping at her skin. He buried both hands in her hair, pulling her head back for his ravaging mouth.
A deep ache tugged inside her belly, throbbing and squeezing for relief.
He settled his weight between her legs, his hardness prodding against the inside of her thigh. She opened herself wider for him and slowly slid her hand between their bodies, enjoying the sensation of him against the back of her hand, the belly that was ridged with muscle and satiny skin.
She seized the hard length of him in her hand and ran her thumb over the tip of him. He shuddered over her. His cock filled her palm, pulsing and warm. Hot breath fanned her cheek as she guided him toward her, easing him inside her just a fraction…
Bang, bang, bang!
Darby bolted upright with a gasp.
She blinked and rubbed her eyes with a fist before swinging her gaz
e all around her bedroom, fighting the drugging influence of her dream … or vision.
Hell. Horror washed over her, dousing the heat brought on by her arousal. She didn’t quite know.
For the first time in her life she couldn’t distinguish between dream and vision. The realization left her stunned, shaken and furious with herself. For once in her life, her “gift” was proving unreliable. The one thing she could count on—whether she liked it or not—was the reliability of her visions, the recognition of them for what they were. And now she didn’t even have that.
The banging at her door continued. She stumbled from bed, casting a glance over her shoulder to see Aimee still asleep, her face flushed, dotted with perspiration. The incessant knocking didn’t rouse her in the least.
Darby peered through the blinds, verifying who was on the other side of the door. With a deep breath and silent command to forget her vision—dream, whatever—she pulled open the door.
Niklas stalked inside. “Didn’t you hear me?”
“I was asleep,” she mumbled, smoothing a hand over her wild hair self-consciously and hoping he didn’t read more into the blush staining her cheeks.
“You’re going to have to toughen up … especially considering where you’re headed.”
She straightened her spine. “I’ve hardly led a rosy existence. I’m tough.”
He ignored her comment. “How’s the girl?”
“Aimee,” she ground out. She motioned to the bedroom. “Still asleep. Feverish like you said.”
“Okay.” He nodded. “Do you have your things ready?”
“Yes.” She’d packed before she fell into bed.
“Good. Let’s go. I have everything we need. She can sleep in the car. We need to move out before Cyprian’s trail grows cold.”
Ten minutes later, they were secured in the comfortable leather seats of Niklas’s Hummer, the heat blasting on high. She sat in the back again, Aimee’s head cushioned on her lap. She stroked her light brown hair, trying to give the child, as she whimpered in her sleep, as much comfort as she could.
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