Several portraits hung on the wall, all of them old, and all of them resembling Owen in some way. His family. The men in the paintings had regal bearings, an air of importance about them. That contrasted against Owen. He didn’t seem to share their sense of conceited pride.
He had pride, definitely, but not the sort these men in their portraits possessed, a sense of entitlement and that they were better than others, elevated by their cause.
Cait wandered on, bored with staring at his ancestors when she wanted to see him, and snuck towards the door. She peered out of it and into the long hallway. The dark green paint and rich wooden floor seemed to suck the light out of the space, turning the mounted and stuffed heads on the walls even more sinister.
She hoped he didn’t intend to add a hellcat head to the array of Hell beasts he had on display. She couldn’t imagine what visitors made of the gigantic, scaly or horned beast heads.
Cait glanced back into the living room and mulled over the way Owen had acted since they had arrived at his home.
He probably didn’t have many visitors.
She was beginning to doubt he had any and that she was the first person other than Owen to set foot in this house in a very long time.
She turned back towards the hallway and froze as her gaze fell on one of the huge mounted heads.
A shiver ran down her spine and she bared her small fangs at the beast that appeared as a blend between a lion and a reptile, hating the way the red eyes seemed to follow her. She had come close to losing her life to one of those wretched monsters more than once while in Hell. They hunted in packs, rabid beasts that didn’t stop once they caught the scent of fresh meat. The only way to get them off your tail was killing them.
Or craftily crossing paths with an unsuspecting demon and using him as a decoy that would then become the target of the pack’s hunt.
Cait had no regrets about using such tactics. Demons could teleport. She couldn’t. They were far more likely to survive a pack of Hell beasts than she was and if they didn’t, it was one less demon in the world. As a creature born of the Devil’s domain, it could be considered her civic duty to dispose of as many of the demons who had revolted against him and set up their own realms in Hell.
A bang echoed through the house.
She snarled and leaped back into the living room, breathing hard as adrenaline surged through her veins and her senses stretched out, seeking what had caused the sudden noise.
She huffed and smoothed her long black hair, trying to calm herself with the motion. It wasn’t like her to be so jittery but the fight with the male hellcat had set her on edge. She had spent most of the night on high alert, constantly aware of the male on a subconscious level, fearing he would attack her again. Even after she had left with Owen through the back door, she hadn’t been able to settle down. She had spent the entire journey wriggling in her seat and using the side mirrors to look behind her, convinced the male was following her somehow.
What if he had?
An ominous whining sound ran through the building, followed by banging and rattling.
Cait forced herself to stay where she was and ignore it. It was nothing. Probably just the house.
What if it was something?
What if it was him?
Her heart exploded into action and she rushed to the large oak table filled with weapons and armed herself with a crossbow. Her hands shook as she loaded it, drawing the string back into position and settling the dart into its cradle. She raised it and looked around the room, pointing the weapon wherever her gaze fell, breathing hard and fighting her ridiculous fear.
The banging came again, louder this time.
Cait raced from the room, tracking Owen’s scent through the building, following it down the green corridor and up another staircase. A softer noise came from ahead of her together with movement on her senses and she bolted in that direction, throwing a panicked glance over her shoulder at the same time, convinced someone was closing in on her in the dark hallway.
A strip of light shone from beneath a wooden door at the end of the corridor.
She shouldered that door open. “I heard something.”
She swung her gaze towards Owen and stopped dead.
The sudden jerk to a halt made her finger depress the trigger on the crossbow and the bolt zipped across the room, shot just above Owen’s left shoulder and thudded into the cream wall behind him where he stood right in front of her.
Both of his hands moved in unison, racing to cover himself.
Water dripped from the tangled threads of his dark brown hair, rolled down his sculpted cheekbones and the strong line of his square jaw, and dropped from there to cascade in enticing rivulets down the defined muscles of his chest. Those glistening trails lured her eyes downwards, over the ridges of his abdomen and past the sensual dip of his navel to the dusting of dark hair that captured her gaze and had her face heating as desire flared hotter in her veins.
Cait stared at his hands for long seconds, entranced and dumbstruck, unable to gather her wits or acknowledge the voice in her head that was screaming at her to look away and give him some privacy because she was probably making him uncomfortable.
His fingers flexed where he cupped himself, weakening the spell the sight of him had cast on her, enough that she managed to drag her eyes up to his.
A touch of colour darkened his cheeks.
“I heard something,” Cait muttered, falling deeper under his spell again as her eyes betrayed her and dropped back to his body.
Rope after delicious rope of honed powerful muscles delighted her eyes as she focused on his body rather than the tracks of water and she couldn’t stop herself from gawping at him, drinking in the incredible sight of him naked, even when she tried with all of her will to look away again.
Owen cleared his throat but his voice still came out a little squeaky. “It’s the water pipes. I should have warned you. I took a shower.”
Cait nodded dumbly. She could see that, and she couldn’t help imagining it too. She swallowed hard, heating to a thousand degrees as she stared at him, picturing him standing under a spray of water, rivulets of it coursing down over his muscles in a constant stream.
She shook herself and finally managed to gain enough control to turn away, giving him the privacy he deserved.
“Sorry.” She scratched the back of her neck with one hand and lowered the crossbow she held in the other.
The weight of it brought back her awareness of the weapon.
Gods, she had almost shot him too.
She wasn’t sure what she would have done if she had actually hit him. She cringed. It certainly would have made a terrible impression on him. It was bad enough that she had come sprinting into his room like a scared child, frightened by the sounds of water pipes groaning. She shook her head, despairing as she realised that he probably had a dire opinion of her already and it was completely wrong.
Normally, she was confident and able, a skilled fighter and an independent woman who could stand on her own two feet and didn’t need a male to take care of her. She had survived four centuries of life, most of that in Hell, and had been the victor in too many battles to count and outwitted her opponents in the rest.
Today was not a normal day though.
The ambush had thrown her off kilter and then Owen had knocked her even more off balance.
She set the crossbow down on the dark blue covers of the double bed in front of her and stared at it, slowly gathering her strength and pulling herself back together.
Owen moved around the room behind her.
Cait closed her eyes, because she knew that if she didn’t, she would end up trying to catch another glimpse of him as he dried off and dressed.
Not that he gave her a chance to steal a peek.
“Done,” he said and she opened her eyes and turned to face him, surprised at how quickly he had dressed.
Or hadn’t dressed.
He stood before her wearing only a pair of black
jeans that rode low on his hips, rubbing a small pale towel across his short hair.
Cait noticed something other than how honed and godly his body was as she looked at him this time.
She noticed all the dark bruises and the cuts that littered his arms, shoulders, sides and even parts of his stomach. He turned away from her, revealing a particularly nasty bruise on his left side, just above his bottom. She drifted towards him, staring at it and reaching out to touch it.
Owen spun to face her.
Cait jumped and snatched her hand back, her eyes leaping up to meet his pale green ones.
“Where did you get all the bruises?” she said, trying to make it clear she’d had a reason for wanting to touch him, one other than the desire pulsing through her again, steadily building back up towards a crescendo.
“The demon a few fae hired me to kill didn’t take kindly to my opinion that he should die for terrorising them. We had a little bit of an argument about it a couple of days ago.” Owen looked himself over and prodded a small mottled bruise on the ridge of muscle that curved over his right hip. “They’ll be gone in a few days. I just have to keep applying my salve to them.”
She was about to ask what he meant by that when he leaned across to his right, picked up a small black glass pot from the wooden dressing table beside him and opened it.
Cait flinched away as the smell hit her.
She pulled a face at it. She never had liked that smell.
“It doesn’t stink as bad once it’s on,” Owen said, his deep voice curling around her, making her forget the offensive smell of his salve for a moment.
She looked up at him to find him staring at the pot, a flicker of something in his green eyes. When they leaped back to her, darkening a degree, revealing his desire again, she realised why he was concerned about the smell, and her reaction to it.
The heat inside her exploded into an inferno again, burning up her blood as she stared into his eyes, filled with a need to take him up on his silent offer.
She wanted her taste of him now.
Gods, she hoped he was right and the salve did smell less disgusting when it was on him.
She wanted to tell him to forget it, at least for a while. She could apply it later, massaging it into his bruises and wounds while he lay on the bed, spent from their lovemaking.
He looked as if he was considering such a thing himself but then sighed wearily and stuck his right index finger into the gunk.
He smoothed a little of it over each of his cuts and his bruises, and she couldn’t help but smile when she noticed he was doing his best not to grimace as he rubbed it in. Trying to look strong and manly in her presence? It reassured her a little. After all, she had been worried about appearing like a weak kitten in need of coddling too.
Owen twisted at the waist and grimaced, sucking in a sharp breath through his teeth.
“I can do your back.” The words were out of her lips before she could consider what she was offering.
It wasn’t the smell of the salve that had her regretting her offer as he nodded, because it smelled oddly sweet now that it was on him, as if the properties of it had changed somehow.
It was the fact that she was about to touch him, running her fingers over his bare flesh while standing in the middle of his bedroom.
Owen held the black glass pot out to her and Cait took it, stared at it and drew in a deep breath to steady herself as he turned his back to her. There were more bruises on his back, long deep ones that looked as if the demon had thrown him into something unbreakable. In amidst the bruises were slashes, easily recognisable as claw marks. They were scabbed over and healing, but they must have been deep when they had happened.
She looked down at the creamy salve, wondering what magic was in the concoction, because nothing made by human hands could heal such terrible wounds in such a short space of time.
How many times had he relied on this same potion to heal his wounds for him? How many times had he been beaten this badly, or worse, by his enemies?
How badly injured would he end up when he took care of Marius for her?
She gripped the pot and stared at it, her stomach turning to lead and dragging her insides down to her feet. She shook her head. She couldn’t ask Owen to handle the male for her. Owen was strong, but the hellcat was stronger. She knew from first-hand experience just how strong that male was.
What had she been thinking?
“Cait?” The sound of her name rolling off Owen’s tongue in his deep steady voice soothed her.
Owen wasn’t facing Marius alone. She would be there with him and she had to have faith in him, as she had back in the bar, before her attraction to him had begun to place doubts in her head and fear in her heart.
“Sorry,” she muttered again and stuck her fingers into the pot.
The salve was cold, strangely so, and the smell changed from aniseed when it was on her fingers to a sweet sugary smell when she rubbed it into the first bruise on his back, a deep one that covered half of his left shoulder-blade.
“I don’t always end up looking like a Friesian cow.” There was a warm note in Owen’s voice that suggested he was making a joke but she didn’t get it.
She smoothed more of the salve into the bruise, keeping her strokes light so she didn’t hurt him. “A cow?”
“A Friesian cow.” He looked back over his shoulder at her, his green eyes bright with his stunning smile. The light in them faded as he frowned. “You have no clue what I’m talking about, do you?”
She shook her head.
He sighed and turned away from her again. “It’s a black and white cow… like a white cow with black splotches on it… you do know what a cow is?”
Cait chuckled. “Of course. I’ve seen cows. I didn’t realise they had special names. You’re referencing this cow in relation to your black marks against your paler skin.”
He heaved another sigh. “When you say it like that, it doesn’t sound funny.”
Cait dipped her fingers back into the pot, scooped a small quantity of the creamy gunk up, and applied it to a series of smaller bruises and cuts that dotted his right shoulder.
“I didn’t mean to make it not funny… I’m not sure this is really something you should laugh about either.” Her work slowed as she again thought about how a demon had done this much damage to him.
The male hellcat had hurt her and he was stronger than a measly demon. What would he do to Owen?
“If you keep doubting me… we’re going to fall out.” Those words leaving Owen’s lips in a cold dead voice sent a chill through her.
How did he know whenever she was doubting him? Did he have abilities that were beyond human? Could he sense things as fae and demons could? She had the feeling it had been more than what she had said that had alerted him to her thoughts about him losing to the male.
Owen looked back over his shoulder at her again, his green eyes as dark as they had been when he had eyed Marius. Another shiver went through her when they met hers, holding her immobile.
“I can handle your male.” The certainty in those five words and in his eyes gave her some relief, but riled her at the same time.
“He isn’t my male.” She looked away from him. “I don’t have a male.”
“Don’t have and don’t want?”
Cait let his words hang in the air between them as she dealt with another of his bruises, focusing on it to avoid his questioning gaze.
Her movements slowed as he continued to stare at her, her fingers drifting across his skin and awareness of how close they were to each other rising inside her. Heat rose with it, bringing her desire and need back to inferno level, until each tiny stroke of her fingers over his flesh had arcs of electric tingles rushing over her skin.
Her breathing quickened, the air too thick and heavy, making her head spin as she struggled to focus on her task and not how good he felt beneath her questing fingers.
She swept those fingers over the bruise on his left side, feeling his
heat radiating from him and through her.
“Cait.” His deep voice scraped low, a husky whisper that sent a thrill coursing through her and brought all of her focus upwards as he slowly turned to face her.
She lifted her eyes to his, her fingers resting against his side, desire pulsing through her.
Passion that flared white-hot as she waited to see what he would do.
He wanted her. She knew that. She had felt it back at the club and she felt it clearer now, a deep primal awareness that he desired her. Fiercely needed her.
She wanted him too.
Something about him was irresistible.
It had drawn her to him from the moment she had set eyes on him and she had been burning for him ever since, on fire with a need to feel his arms around her and his lips claiming hers.
His green eyes darkened, narrowing hungrily on hers.
Cait breathed harder, anticipation swirling through her and stealing the air from her lungs as she willed him to surrender to his need, to give in to the passion beating in his veins and drumming in his heart because she felt it too. It consumed her. Controlled her.
And she couldn’t deny it any longer.
The pot fell from her fingers and smashed on the wooden floor.
CHAPTER 5
The second the glass pot shattered on the wooden floor, Owen swept Cait up into his arms and claimed her mouth, unable to hold back any longer. He groaned in time with her as his lips clashed with hers, the kiss frantic and wild, an outpouring of the desire that had been constantly building in him all night, never truly abating.
During talking business with her, during the drive to his home, and even during the time they had been apart while he had taken a very cold shower, it had been growing stronger, consuming and devouring him, demanding he throw aside all conventions and take her as he wanted to.
He grabbed her backside, easily lifted her feet off the floor and walked to the bed with her as he kissed her harder. She responded sweetly, her hands clutching his bare shoulders and her lips attempting to dominate his, stealing control of the kiss. The pleasure coursing through him was so intense that he didn’t feel the pain of his bruises as she held on to him, her fingertips pressing into his flesh.
Bitten by a Hellcat Page 4
