Altered

by Shelly Crane

  “Don’t do this just because you’re jealous. You don’t know what you’d be doing to me.” He squeezed his eyes for a few seconds. “And to yourself. You might bond yourself to me.” I felt my eyebrows rise. “Yeah,” he prodded, seeing my reaction. “Then what? You’d be attached to me forever. An evil thing, a killer, a bastard who just wants to take your soul and keep it for himself.”

  “You kissed me once.” I ignored everything else he said, because really, he was going to do anything and everything to show me the monster in him. Enoch shook his head ‘no’. “In the water, you kissed me so I could breathe, remember?”

  “That was different.”

  “It didn’t feel different. The way your thumb moved against my cheek to calm me, the way you saved not only my life, but my sanity.” I reached up and mimicked what he’d done for me that day, letting my hand cup his jaw, my thumb sweep against his cheekbone.

  “Fay,” he begged. “I’m trying to be the good guy.”

  “You’re trying to be the villain,” I said harder. “You’re trying to show me that you’re not a good guy and never will be. But that’s not true. A good guy saved me that day, twice, a good guy brought me here and took care of me ever since. A good guy didn’t try to kiss me or take advantage of all the alone time we had in those hotels and on the road and when we got here. A good guy took all the hits that people threw at him and let it roll off his back to save me.” I moved the last inch, wrapping my arm around his neck, and let everything I felt come to the surface. All the hours of tension and want.

  I knew when he registered it by the breath he sucked in. His tongue tasted his lower lip, but he didn’t look happy about it. “Fay.”

  “Better than sorrow?” I asked and smiled a little.

  I was doing this. He needed this and he wasn’t going to keep me from being the one to give him what he needed. I wasn’t just being jealous. Yes, that was some of it, but it was more than that. If he seriously thought I was going to sit in the other room and just wait while he and another woman came in here and…did whatever it was that he needed to do to get what he needed to feed, then he clearly didn’t know me.

  Why couldn’t I just give him what he needed?

  And why didn’t he want it from me?

  No, I was doing this.

  I pushed up on my tiptoes and pulled him down to me at the same time. Right before our lips touched, his palm splayed out on my chest to stop me.

  “We don’t have to kiss.” His voice was grated, his breaths loud. “I can feed from you just from thinking about it and talking about it. We don’t actually have to—”

  “You were going to kiss her, weren’t you?”

  He growled my name. “Fay.”

  He groaned the tiniest bit, registering my emotions, but I kept my face down. I had wanted him, but it hadn’t crossed my mind that he might not want me that way. That was egotistical and stupid. He said he wanted me before, but why would he want me? I was a human. He was a creature with power. That woman that was going to feed him was a witch. He was probably pissed that the feeler kept getting in his way. I thought I had been right about the way we felt—he saved me, and the way he spoke to me and about me made it seem like his feelings…but I was wrong.

  I backed up a step and took a breath, but before I could release the breath, he had my arm in his hand and was turning to press me to the wall. I gasped from the painful collision. He shook his head. “Stupid…human.”

  He moved so fast I didn’t see him, and then his mouth was on mine, his chest pressing my back into the wall, his warm hands making trails across my clothes, but it didn’t matter. I could feel his heat everywhere. My breathing was out of control, but it was moot at this point, because Enoch was grasping me tightly in intervals as he sucked in breaths and groaned against my mouth as he took my emotions from me. He tasted like mint.

  I reached both hands up and gripped his hair, tugging, all the while turning to sit on bench, but he followed me down and hovered above me. He paused and waited there, his lips just out of reach, his eyes wide, honest, and open. I realized he was waiting to see if my feelings would change, if I was going to be afraid of him and he was going to be licking my fear from his lips instead of my desire.

  I smiled just barely, biting the side of my lip. “I’m not afraid of you.”

  He sighed. “You should be. You have no self-preservation,” he muttered and leaned in to kiss me, but he was smiling. I could feel the curve of it. With one arm bent at the elbow to hold himself up and the other hand coasting up and down my ribs at a torturous pace, he kissed me more gently than I could I have imagined being kissed from this gruff, coarse man who was so hell bent on telling the world he was bad. But right now, he was showing me anything but.

  And he fed from me.

  Every emotion I could muster in that moment I spared for him and pushed to him. He would suck in a deep, ragged breath, letting his fingers dig into my ribs gently, his hips and body moving and undulating with that breath as if it was guiding his very being. I could tell he was trying not to go too far, to keep himself in check, but he wasn’t going to get what he needed if he didn’t let himself go. He was an ornery beast when he needed to feed and I wanted that sweet man that I had glimpsed back. The man that I knew was in there somewhere. No matter how many times Clara told me he was a lost cause and a bad person, that he was just tricking me in an effort to get back at her—I didn’t believe that.

  I knew him somehow. I wanted to believe. I chose it.

  The fact that he held back now instead of devouring me completely showed that he cared more than he wanted to admit.

  I pushed his chest to push him off. He puffed breaths against my neck as he looked down at me. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

  Even now he thought he’d gone too far. I shook my head and pushed him to roll off onto the bench. I crawled up to straddle him and he hissed his protest. “Fay.”

  “I love it when you say my name,” I heard myself say. I didn’t know why I was admitting that again; I just wanted to be honest. “Especially when you can growl it like that.”

  He groaned, cursing, and sat up, squaring me on his lap, a leg on either side, and put his hands on my sides. “Fay,” he said—growled—causing me to smile. He rolled his eyes, but that turned into a chuckle. He cursed again. “You’re killing me, little human.”

  “You know, when we first met, you used to say ‘little human’ like an insult.”

  He sighed. “And now?” he asked wryly with a little smile, knowing what was coming.

  “Now you say it like you might like me.” He stopped smiling. I took a deep, shaky breath and regretted my playful statement. He wasn’t up to being playful yet, I guessed. “Never mind.” I put my arms around his neck. “Just feed. We don’t have to talk.”

  “You don’t want to live like this,” he said, almost so low I didn’t hear him.

  “What?” I whispered.

  “You don’t want to live like this, Fay.” He looked right into my eyes, not hiding from me, and smoothed my bottom lip with his thumb. “You don’t want to feed me your fears and lust forever. And hiding away isn’t living, it’s dying slowly.”

  “I don’t know what that means, Enoch, but I do know that what I was doing before wasn’t living. I think the way society says we should live is just stupidity. You should do what makes you happy. If you want to live in the woods, you should. If you want to move to an island somewhere by yourself, go for it.” I looked down at his shirt; a couple of the buttons were slightly opened. “I just want to be with people who want me there.”

  He snatched my chin up. “I want you.” He closed his eyes in aggravation. “That’s not the point.”

  “It is for me.” I moved closer, kissing his bottom lip.

  “It’s as easy as that?” He looked truly confused. “All the rest of it can work itself out? We’re not even the same species. I’m a bastard, you’re a princess. We don’t…eat the same food to survive.”

&n
bsp; “Those things work themselves out,” I promised and kissed his lips again, noticing how easily he was giving in, his hands moving down to my hips and pulling me closer. “If two people want to be together, they compromise on the little things. They make it work.”

  “We both like to sleep on the same side of the bed,” he argued against my mouth and groaned as I began to feed him again.

  I laughed. “That one is solved pretty easily.” I bit into his lip and then moved to his ear, loving how hard his hands gripped my hips against him. “We’ll just sleep on the same side together,” I whispered before taking his mouth with mine. He was done fighting me and kissed me deeper and deeper.

  He wrapped his arms tight around me, but still wasn’t letting himself take everything I was offering. I wasn’t sure exactly how this worked. I didn’t know how long he needed to feed or how much, but I did know that he wasn’t taking what he needed.

  I pulled back just enough to speak. “Enoch, don’t hold back.”

  He exhaled my name. “Fay.”

  “I don’t want you to be in bad shape again because you were trying to be easy with me.” He sighed again. “Look, I’m not saying let’s throw down and have sex right here in the room while everyone waits outside the door.” He chuckled and lifted an irritated eyebrow. “I’m just saying…I’m not a virgin.” He seemed both irritated and slightly shocked by that. “You thought I was?”

  “I…hoped.”

  I laughed reluctantly. “Hoped?”

  “Any man—well, from my time, desires for his woman to be the only man she’s ever been with. There’s something very…primal about it.” He cleared his throat, but continued to look at me. “But I’m not a virgin either, clearly, so what can I really say about it?”

  “Well…it was one guy and—”

  “I really do not want to hear about the human boy,” he growled, “who obviously didn’t do a good job given the way your tone went down when you described the ‘one guy’. And the fact that I want to find this one guy and rip his throat out for even looking at you, let alone touching you, when that job should be mine and mine alone.”

  My mouth was gaping, I knew, but I couldn’t seem to shut it. Jealous Enoch was not only sexy but sweet and protective and strangely honorable. He put his finger under my chin and closed my mouth.

  “You asked,” he said in a low voice, a small smile on his lips.

  “I don’t think I did,” I whispered back, a small smile on my lips as well.

  “Maybe not,” he conceded, and brought me down to him.

  For the next half hour, he wasn’t as careful with me and when he fed, I knew he was feeding for real. His lips were masterful, his tongue was an art form all its own, his hands were their own little playgrounds, and his fingers, extensions of his every feeling as they crawled over me, caressing and telling me things that his mouth couldn’t or wouldn’t.

  We kissed like it was the last time and the first. He groaned so loud sometimes that I wondered if the others could hear him. No matter how carried away I got, he kept his word to keep me safe always.

  We eventually leaned back on the bench and he held me on his chest. I went to move off, spouting some girly notion about being too heavy, but he shook his head, his breath moving the hair at my temple. “No, stay. I love feeling your weight against where my heart should beat.”

  That one statement changed my entire world. He had been trying to tell me that earlier and I had been so wrapped up in saving him that I hadn’t really seen it. He didn’t have a heartbeat because he wasn’t human. I’d never have a normal life—what was considered normal to the world. Was I okay with that?

  Yeah. I smiled up at him. Yeah, I was.

  “What are you smiling about?” he asked and smirked up at me as his hand coasted across the small of my back and my behind.

  “You’re in a better mood,” I mused.

  “Was I so bad before?” I quirked a brow and he chuckled. “Okay. I know.”

  “Well, you won’t have to worry about feeding anymore, right?” I asked and licked my lip nervously.

  He gave me a wry smile. “You’re nervous.”

  “Yes.” My voice shook.

  “Why?” he asked, and he sounded truly puzzled.

  I gulped before I spoke and I hated it. “Because I’m afraid that you’re going to go back to trying to hate me like before.”

  He nodded like he was thinking about it. “I should.” My heart beat painfully. “I left Eli’s house this morning with every intention of making sure that you—” He groaned as he registered my sadness. He rubbed my cheek. “Hated me,” he finished. “I came here to feed on someone else and I knew when you found out about it, you’d be furious.” I looked away, but he pulled my face back with my chin. “But you coming here was the best thing. You stopped me from being an idiot. I thought I was hurting you, hurting your relationship with Clara, hurting Clara and Eli’s relationship, because I wanted you.”

  “Clara will get over it.” I looked down and he must have sensed that I was about to get up. He gripped my hip tighter. “Why would you pick what was best for Clara over what was best for me?”

  “I didn’t. I didn’t want you to have to choose. I didn’t want you to fight with your sister when you just got her back. Finding her was the most important thing to you a few days ago.”

  “We weren’t close growing up,” I mused. “I felt guilty because of what I did. She’s my sister, but she’s not really my friend.”

  “I thought I was doing what was best for everybody.” He scoffed. “No one wants Enoch Thames here. Trust me. They’d be happy to see me gone.”

  “That’s not true. From what I’ve heard, they respect you.”

  “Yeah, like from your little talk with Aries,” he grumbled. I smiled and shrugged. “Look, I’m sorry. I wasn’t going to sleep with her, if that matters.” I tensed and he winced. “Sorry.”

  “She was a pretty witch.”

  He grinned. “Most witches are. It’s part of the package.” He sobered and cupped my cheek. “I don’t want to hurt you, love. The last thing I ever want to do is hurt you.”

  I smiled. “Then don’t.”

  He laughed gently. “It’s that easy, huh?”

  “It’s that easy.” I leaned down and kissed his mouth once. “You’re not a monster, Enoch.” He tensed. “You’re not a bad guy anymore. You choose who you want to be.” He sighed against my mouth, all his pent-up aggression seeming to go with it. He sagged a little and I clung to him tightly. “We accept the love we think we deserve…but you’re not a monster.”

  He brought his hand up to join the other and embraced my face in the warmth of his palms.

  “I don’t know how to be in love with you.” He kissed my open mouth several times, almost like he couldn’t stop, couldn’t get enough. His shirt was fisted in my hands and I held on for dear life as I waited for him to finish that sentence. He leaned back and put his forehead to mine. “But I won’t stop trying until I figure it out.”

  That answer made me ache in ways that I’d never ached before. I felt the tears come, but tried to hide them by hugging him around his neck. But that didn’t work when he wanted to keep kissing. When his cheek connected with the wetness, he froze. He gripped my arms with me still planted firmly on his lap and leaned back a little. “What’s wrong? What did I say?”

  “Do you feel any sadness from me?”

  He looked confused as he shook his head. “No.”

  “What you said….was…”

  “Not the right thing?”

  “It was the perfect thing. You can’t feel happiness, and that’s a shame, but if you could, this is what it would feel like.” I put his hand over my heart as it beat wildly and kissed him like mad on that bench.

  I knew that we’d have some people who weren’t pulling for us, but I wasn’t worried about them right now. We had a war to think about. The rebel camp were more lovers instead of fighters on a regular basis, so it appeared. They took in
any rebels, any mated or bonded couples with humans, any creatures that were being chased by the Horde or other councils from their races for reasons other than lawful ones. This camp had over a hundred a fifty people in it. That was a lot of people to move at the drop of a hat, but as I listened to Franz in the big tent, it seemed this wasn’t uncommon and they moved around a lot.

  Everyone was present, so Enoch and I sat on the ground since there weren’t enough chairs. When we heard the dinner bell, he had said it meant they were calling a meeting. Then he sat down on the grass and pulled me down into his lap. I had gasped at the move because, honestly, I thought he was going to be weird about it all. I never expected him to be so easygoing about us. He grinned at me over my shoulder and kissed my cheek. “Close your mouth, sweetheart. The meeting’s starting,” he had taunted.

  I had laughed and shook my head, elbowing his gut and loving the rumble and tremor I felt from through his chest from his laughter. Eli and Clara had come up not even a minute after that, and decided to sit a considerable distance away from us. I’m sure there were other watching and wondering what was going on with Enoch, but honestly, I tried not to look around at them.

  Franz grinned like a goat eating briars at us as he started the meeting, and Aries and his bonded mate were currently sitting right next to us. Her name was Regina and she was this sweet and funny human redhead who would giggle and then look at Aries to see if he thought it was funny, too. It was freaking adorable.

  The bond stuff was so interesting to me.

  But for the moment, we had to figure out what to do—close up shop and head for greener pastures, or stay and wait for the rest of the Horde to show up and fight, knowing lives would be lost and bonded couples and mates broken, wait for the rest of Horde to show up and fight. Enoch wanted to fight, but I wasn’t surprised by that answer.

  “Our scouts have been hiding out and watching and those bastards are communicating with someone via radio,” Franz told us. “They are waiting on reinforcements from the Horde. We don’t know when, but they’re coming. We know if we’re watching them, they’re watching us. If we make a move to leave, they make a move to stop us, so it would have to be in the middle of the night. No preparations. No packing in the daytime. No indications that we’re getting ready to make a move.”