The Wild Rites Saga Omnibus 01 to 04

by Anna McIlwraith

  Alexi took his hand off her forehead and reached for the shower head, adjusting it so it wasn’t directed at them. He didn’t have any trouble at all with the faucets, and Emma jerked when cool spray splashed back off the tiles and hit her legs.

  “You don’t have to —”

  “Shut up.” The words were his, but the tone wasn’t — soft, distracted, shaky. Emma looked up at him, startled. Eyes so dark they were ocher, he concentrated pointedly on the shower, adjusted the water, and put a hand under the spray. He frowned and angled the shower head down a fraction. “Is this temperature all right? I’m not human, I cannot tell.”

  Emma blinked up at him, took a deep breath, then flexed her foot so the spray hit it. “Yep,” she said. “You can put —”

  “Close your eyes,” he said, and stepped under the water. Emma gasped as hot water hit her face, drenching the top of her head. She opened her mouth to tell him to put her down when she felt a hand in her hair, lifting it out from beneath the collar of the robe — which was now soaked and heavy — and combing it out so the water ran through it.

  Emma closed her mouth, held her breath. The water was good, hot, cutting through the stiffness on her cheeks. Alexi’s hand in her hair wasn’t gentle, but thorough, and utterly sure — not the way Emma had ever imagined a man’s hand might feel doing such a mundane yet intimate thing. She scrubbed at her face and lifted it toward the spray, then leaned back in toward Alexi, burrowing under his chin so she could breathe without getting water up her nose. Dirty water ran in rivulets down his chest and shoulders and neck, over her, and swirled away as the shower pounded them both.

  Emma was suddenly thankful she couldn’t see the floor. She didn’t want to know what it looked like, all that blood and dirt and gunk, sluicing down the drain.

  But she knew she was never going to get completely clean with the robe still on, no matter how drenched the terrycloth got. Water pooled in her lap, soaked through the robe and spilled down between her legs, reminding her of how badly she needed to scrub every single inch of her body until she couldn’t feel blood and magic and sex — all Alan’s — all over her.

  She tried not to think about it. She didn’t want Alexi to go. She tried not to think about that , either, but her shields were all messed up and Alexi could read minds and the connection they’d forged with the ritual power still hadn’t faded.

  Alexi angled his shoulder into the spray, so he could talk without inhaling water. The water cascaded down his chest instead of hitting Emma directly. His chin moved against the top of her head when he spoke. “Can you stand?”

  Reluctantly, Emma nodded. Alexi held her while she lowered her feet to the tiles, kept her steady. Then he put a finger under her chin and tilted her head back until she met his eyes.

  His face was closed down, the scars standing out in stark relief. His lips were a thin, lilac tinged line. All that black hair was swept back, plastered to his head and neck and shoulders, baring the arrogant height of his cheekbones, the sharpness of his jaw and chin. His pale yellow eyes narrowed, and Emma’s breath caught.

  “I’m going to close my eyes,” he said, never breaking eye contact. “I’ll close my eyes, and hold you steady.”

  Emma swallowed. Surprise had quieted every voice and memory inside her. Feeling more solid than she had in what seemed like forever, she nodded again. “That sounds good.”

  Alexi closed bruised-looking lids and dipped his head, hands still on her shoulders. Water sheeted off his side and sprayed Emma; she was close enough to the spray that she was still warm, but it didn’t make it difficult to get the robe off. Alexi’s fingers loosened as she tugged the robe down one shoulder and then the other, and then his hands were on her bare shoulders and the robe dropped to the tiles with a violent wet smack.

  Emma tensed, suddenly exposed and naked in a way she hadn’t felt before when Alexi first rescued her — but then, she had been drowning in magic and power and shock.

  She half expected his eyes to crack open, but they didn’t. His face was a harsh, arrogant mask — but Emma knew it was the kind of look that hid things. It tried for neutral and failed. Alexi never had been stellar at hiding his feelings — it was just that his feelings had only ever been anger and rage and resentment.

  He flinched. But he didn’t take his hands away.

  Hesitant at first, Emma stepped under the shower spray. Alexi shifted with her. She lost her balance, put her left hand on his torso to steady herself, felt the muscles high up in his abdomen clench. He looked lean, but it was deceptive; he was still three times her size, over a foot taller than her, and heavily muscled. His muscles were long and sleek though, didn’t have the bulging width of some of the jaguar guards who worked out regularly. A fine mist of droplets clung to every pale dip and twist and curve of his upper body, making his skin glitter, enhancing the reptilian sheen of scales that were only visible when the light hit them just so. The light in the bathroom was too dim to pick out the dark green highlights of his hair, so it looked almost as black as Seshua’s. Or Fern’s.

  A muscle in Alexi’s jaw twitched. Emma looked away, tried to focus on getting herself clean — it had been so important a moment ago. Maybe she was losing time, the shock still picking holes in her concentration.

  Yeah, right.

  “Uhm,” she glanced around. There was soap, but if she actually wanted to use it, Alexi’s hands were going to get in the way. In all the wrong ways. Dear God, had that been her thought? Cheeks blazing, she cleared her throat. “I need a little more mobility here. If I keep my hand on your chest, you can let go of me.”

  His brows arrowed down. Emma could see his gaze flickering back and forth beneath the closed lids. He nodded, dropped one hand and shifted the other so that his long fingers wrapped around her forearm, just below the elbow. His fingers were firm and cool, the nails clipped short. Did the serpent priest clip his own fingernails? Now there was a bizarre thought.

  One corner of Alexi’s mouth twitched before he obviously clamped his teeth and set his jaw. Emma fought not to smile and lost. Alexi coughed delicately through wide nostrils. “For your information,” he said solemnly with his eyes still closed, “They simply grow that way.”

  Emma snorted. “Uh-huh. Right.” She bit her lower lip to keep from laughing and twisted around, grabbed the soap, and started sudsing herself one-handed. It wasn’t great, but it was better than falling over. The powdery scent of lavender filled the shower recess.

  “Ouch.” Emma couldn’t help hissing when the suds foamed down her legs and hit her scratched-up knees. Then the soapy water swirled around her feet, and they stung, too.

  Alexi was all seriousness again. “What is it?” His tone was sharp, harsh. Emma glanced up at him, studied his face a moment, tried very hard not to think out loud that with his eyes closed, she could look at him all she wanted. The only bummer was she couldn’t see his eyes.

  “It’s nothing, it’s fine. Just cuts and scrapes. From falling down in the corridor at the complex.” It seemed that everything else had healed — every injury she’d sustained prior to the ritual. She knew a lot of that was down to what Alan had done, bathing her in vampire blood. From what she could tell, the blood had belonged to Alan and Vahan — they were the ones with their shirts off and their torsos cut up. But she’d had more injuries when she woke up after Storm’s attack; her stomach had been a mass of angry red scars and her insides had felt squishy, not quite glued together right. Now there were only faint, wriggly silver lines of scars hugging her stomach, and no pain.

  She frowned, resting her weight on the hand pressed to Alexi’s chest. “Could the overflow of power from the ritual have worked like the change does for a shapechanger, healing injuries?”

  Alexi mirrored her frown unconsciously. “Yes.” The frown smoothed out into something wary and fragile. “How bad were your injuries prior to the —” his pause was only slight — “ritual?”

  Emma stopped soaping herself. She cleared her throat. She coul
d do this, she could tell him. If she took it slow.

  But she couldn’t bring herself to talk about her hand. “When they threw me in with Storm…” Her breath hitched. “He tore me up before I could stop him. I was dying.”

  Alexi hissed. “I remember.” He inclined his head. “Fern lost you for a while. He was with you when the thing attacked, but it shoved him out of your mind. That is what he said.”

  Emma stepped closer to Alexi, let the water rinse her back. “He wasn’t a thing. He was Rain’s brother. Changed somehow. Alan said —” she took a deep breath. “He said they’d managed to do the impossible, to fuse vampires and shapechangers together, through magic and science. Storm was a monster, but he was still in there. He could use telepathy, too. Powerful stuff.”

  Alexi’s fingers flexed against Emma’s skin. His thumb brushed back and forth once, twice. She could almost hear him thinking the questions — why did Alan do it, how, what was he creating monsters for — but Alexi asked none of them.

  “Was that all?”

  Emma blinked. “All?”

  “All the injuries.”

  Emma bit her lip. He might have his eyes closed, but he wasn’t blind. She brought her right hand up in front of her face, looked at the little mound of scar tissue, and then the much, much bigger one on the back of her hand.

  She said, “They shot my marked hand at point blank.” Alexi’s face smoothed with surprise before he could curb it. His grip on her left arm tightened. She moved a little closer to him, into the shelter of his body. “Open your eyes and look, if you want.”

  He sighed heavily through his nostrils and tilted his chin. “You don’t have to —”

  She cut him off. “I trust you. Just look.”

  His throat bobbed as he swallowed thickly. Then his lids lifted. At the sight of the incredible yellow of his eyes, something in Emma turned over. She held her hand in front of his face and watched his eyes.

  “I should have noticed this before. Why did they do this?” He reached up and turned her hand over, eyes getting brighter as he took in the damage to the back of her hand.

  “I used this hand to tear out a vampire’s throat.” Alexi turned the full force of those blazing eyes on her, and she almost didn’t have enough breath to say the rest. “I don’t know if he lived. I don’t much care. He threatened to rape me. Alan had told him to scare me into submission, and he took the suggestion kinda liberally. Seems silly now.” She curled her fingers and tried to let her hand drop, but Alexi retained possession of it. He stared at her, hard. She had no idea what he was thinking. If she wanted, she could reach into his mind and find out, she knew she could do that now, but part of her didn’t want to.

  Part of her couldn’t handle the idea that he pitied her.

  His gaze faltered, fell to her mouth and lower, and suddenly he swore and looked away so fast he ought to have whiplash. He squeezed his eyes shut again and pulled away, letting her go, throwing his hand out for the edge of the shower partition wall.

  “Alexi?” Emma closed her right fist around his fingers and hung on. He stopped, facing away.

  His voice was jagged glass and rough heat. “I do not pity you.”

  Emma dug her nails into his hand. “Then look at me.”

  He tried to draw his hand away, but she stopped him, refused to let go. He could have broken all her fingers with a flick of his wrist, but he let her stop him. Slowly, he turned and looked her in the eye, and the look on his face was terror, pure, naked terror.

  His throat worked once, twice. When his voice came it was a broken thing. “What would you have of me, caller of the blood?”

  Something warm and fierce curled in Emma’s belly. “As caller of the blood, nothing. Not a thing.” Alexi’s eyes widened. “But as me, just me, I would have you stay.”

  His nostrils flared. His chest expanded. He shook his head, just a tiny movement, and she felt his whole body tense to flee.

  “Don’t run from me, Alexi. Don’t.”

  He closed his eyes. She pulled at his hand. He took a step toward her, and another, and the air between them hummed with the effort it cost him to hold his power in check, to keep his eyes shut, to keep breathing.

  She closed the distance to him and he opened his eyes, stared down at her, scars standing out along his cheeks like crimson lightning. Barely more than a whisper, he said, “Why?”

  Emma reached up, slow, giving him time to evade her, and then finally threaded her hands through all that long, dark hair. She balled her fists. “Because I want you to,” she said. Then she dragged his head down, stood up on tiptoe, and did what she had wanted to do from the first time she met him: she kissed him.

  31

  Cool lips, soft and electrifying; Emma’s heart leapt, she gasped and fell into the cradle of his body, and he caught her and let out a surprised breath that tasted of freshwater and rock salt and the air just after rain. His mouth covered hers, his hands slid up her naked shoulders, and then he kissed back, devoured her mouth with his. His tongue swept into her and his arms crushed her to his body and he ate at her with aching, sweet desperation. Everything in Emma responded with a hard flood of need, and she cried out into his mouth and reached for his mind, couldn’t help it, wanted him, needed every —

  He gasped and tore his mouth away from hers. His eyes were wild. “This is insane.”

  Emma’s heart flipped over, flapped in her chest like a trapped thing. “Your point?”

  He looked at her like she was mad. “Emma…” He dragged in a huge, tidal breath and let it out, nostrils flaring harder than ever. “You can’t — you just — you were —”

  “I was. And I need you now.” Emma anchored herself with her hands on his chest, the feel of his flesh like living satin beneath her fingertips.

  His hands tightened on her, his eyes blazed. “It won’t make it go away.”

  She shook her head. “That’s not why I need you.”

  A low, inarticulate sound escaped his lips. “Then why?”

  “Because I want you.” She swallowed, stared up into his face and felt nothing but the galloping demand of her heart, her body, all of it certain of only one thing. “Just because. I always have.”

  He slid his hands over her shoulders, into her wet hair, and held her face still so he could stare down into it. The look on his face went from terror to bright curiosity. She watched that curiosity turn dark and hot as it filled his gaze, until the fire of his eyes was molten, and there was fear and loss and longing in the cruel line of his mouth and, in his mind, the sure knowledge that sooner or later, she would die on him and break his heart.

  Surely she couldn’t be reading him right. Surely those weren’t Alexi’s thoughts, pounding through him, through her.

  Breathless with wonder and exultation, Emma had to force her voice to work.“I’m not that easy to kill, Alexi.”

  Something fierce flashed behind his eyes. “I’ve noticed.” Emma felt him flex a mental muscle, and behind her, the shower shut off. Still holding her there, he bent his head, eyes hooded and watching her, and brushed her mouth with his. Just the merest touch. She heard the bones of his face creak with the effort of being so gentle, while Emma’s blood roared and her heart pounded with demand.

  “Do not ask this of me,” he whispered against her mouth. “Please. I am weak, and if you decided after that it was a whim you’d rather forget, I would not be able to stop myself from hating you. Please.”

  Emma pulled back to glare at him, but instead she was struck to her core by the look of raw vulnerability stamped across his features. She said the first thing that came into her head. “I thought you already hated me.”

  He turned his face away and laughed, but it ended too abruptly to be anything but a sob. His hands tightened on her. I cannot ask you to forgive me, because I do not know that I can change. I have lived lies for seven hundred years. I am a serpent priest. It is what I am.

  For a moment Emma forgot what it was she was supposed to forgive him for
, forgot everything: she was just suddenly hit by the sight of him, holding her in his arms, his anguished face carved of a masculine beauty so pure it was almost too painful to look at. Like staring into the sun.

  He turned back, anguish chased from his features by a look of uncertain wonder. You cannot be thinking of me. You are looking at me, but it cannot be me you think of in such a way.

  Emma lifted a hand to his face and traced the arrogant curve of one eyebrow, let her fingers drift down the long, proud line of his nose. Lie to yourself if you like, Alexi. If it’s easier to think so. She touched his jaw, smoothed her thumb over the roughness of his scars, followed one scar from the corner of his mouth to the velvet-soft spot behind his ear. But don’t lie to me, not like that. I have always found you beautiful. She held his gaze as she trailed her hand down his neck, over the heavy muscle of his chest, to rest over his heart.

  He swore under his breath, nostrils flaring, and she raised a finger to his lips. “You don’t need me to forgive you.” She took her hand away from his lips and replaced it with her mouth, marveling at the taste of him, at the alchemy that took the touch of his lips and turned it into something that felt like it was rearranging every cell in her body. He didn’t move, and his mind sang with disbelief and aching wariness, but his mouth responded with possessive strength and his kiss matched all the fierce longing that burned through her, through their connection.

  And it had to end, sometime. If it wasn’t already tattooed onto her soul, there was something wrong with her. She broke contact, trying to breathe. Trying to think of what to say.

  “I need a bath sheet” she said apologetically.

  He was gone so fast she swayed in his absence, but back a split second later, before she had the chance to find out if she could actually stand on her own or would fall over.

  He wrapped her in the towel and tucked the ends in, then looked down at her with that breathtaking, arrogant look that used to make her quake in her boots, and still did, just in a different way. Or maybe it was the same way, and always had been.