by S. J. Day
“You were made for this work, babe. It’s just that simple.”
“No, I wasn’t. You said it yourself; I wouldn’t be here if Alec had kept his dick in his pants.”
“I said that to fuck with you and get you pissed off at Cain.”
“This isn’t me,” Eve argued. She couldn’t face days on end of this job. She would lose her sanity. “Remember? I’m the one who screams at the idiots in horror movies who grab a weapon and pursue the maniacal killer instead of running for help.”
The negating shake of his head infuriated her as much as if he had covered his ears with his hands.
“I didn’t commit a sin worthy of being marked,” she insisted. “This is all just a monumental fuck-up to punish your brother.”
“You know how many mortal women have fucked Cain?” Reed’s smile was tinged with malice. “And of those, how many of them have ended up where you are now?”
Her chin lifted. “He loves me. I can be used to hurt him. That’s the difference.”
“You want to toss around theories and conjecture?” He advanced. “Let’s take it further. What if Cain is in this mess because of you, instead of the reverse? I’ve been watching you, babe. You’re a natural. What if you two met because you have the inherent skill to rival him and no one else could mentor you as well as he can?”
“That’s r-ridiculous.”
“No, that’s a possibility.” His quiet conviction sent a chill down her spine. “You’ve survived demons no untrained Mark should have.”
Eve took a step forward. Reed’s suggestion pounded through her skull like a migraine. Her skin and muscles ached as if she had the flu. Even the roots of her hair tingled with a prickling that maddened her. Don’t kill the messenger, or so the saying went. But she wanted to. Unease slid sinuously around her insides, hissing like a serpent. “I love how you all conveniently forget that I was dead just a few days ago!”
A visible shudder moved through him.
That telltale sign devastated her. With everything around her unfamiliar and hostile, what she longed for most was something familiar. Someone who cared for her.
Her arm lifted toward him. “Reed—”
He turned away, his shoulders set against her. “I can feel the heat of the Novium moving through you. It’s making me . . . edgy and agitated.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I need to stay away from you while you’re like this, Eve.”
She realized then that her bloodlust was translating into a different kind of lust, which created an entirely new problem on top of all the others. She could fight her fascination for Reed, but not his returning fascination for her. “Does that mean you’re leaving?”
“I can’t,” he said gruffly. “Not yet.”
Eve would have asked why, but she had a more pressing question. “What is the Novium, exactly?”
Reed looked over his shoulder at her. “A change, similar to the change you went through when you were marked. Over time, a mentor and Mark pair become connected. Emotionally and mentally. They learn to think and move as one unit. When the time comes for the Mark to work alone, that bond has to be severed. Cauterized. Some Marks call it ‘the Heat’ instead, due the fever that accompanies the process.”
“Bond,” she repeated, “like you and I share? But I can’t feel Alec’s thoughts and feelings like I do yours.”
“There hasn’t been time. Neither of you has been trained. You haven’t hunted together. The connection has yet to grow.”
“And now it won’t?”
He shook his head.
“And what about my connection to you? Will that go away, too?”
“No. It’s a rite of passage—similar to leaving a father’s household for a husband’s. The handler/Mark link grows during the Heat, as does the Mark’s connection to his firm leader.”
“Gadara.”
“In your case, yes.”
“Boy, that sure works out for him, doesn’t it?” She watched the confusion drift over his handsome features, his train of thought following hers.
“It doesn’t work that way. It’s not vulnerable to manipulation.”
Eve rounded him so that they faced each other again. The transition was akin to stepping out of a cool house into sweltering desert heat. Her temperature shot up to an alarming degree, making her dizzy. “Tell me how it works.”
His gaze was as hot as she was. But when he spoke, his voice was calm and sure. “A Mark is trained. Then exposed to missions. They witness deaths and battle various Infernals. They absorb information from their mentors. Somehow, that combination eventually sets off the Novium.”
“Okay. Let’s see.” She started counting down on her fingers. “I’ve been exposed to missions. I’ve witnessed deaths and battled various Infernals. And I have a romantic relationship with my mentor. Good enough?”
“You’re forgetting time.”
“Maybe it’s not so much time as it is a buildup,” she speculated. “I’ve had everything thrown at me at once, then I was killed and resurrected, which has to mess with a person, right?”
“Right, which exonerates Raguel.”
“Not necessarily, since he’s the one who sent me on the missions to begin with. Plus, he’s been suspiciously stubborn about acknowledging my present condition.”
“There’s so much more to this than that, such as how you met Cain and how you were killed. Raguel didn’t have a hand in any of that.”
“I’m not saying he orchestrated this thing from the very beginning, but once he realized how it had been set up, he could have manipulated things from there. If I’m more connected to him than I am to Alec, it benefits him exclusively.”
Growling, Reed ran both hands through his thick hair. “What do these paranoid delusions have to do with your classmate dying?”
Eve studied him, noting the fine sheen of perspiration that glistened on the skin of his throat. She would guess it was no more than fifty-eight degrees in Monterey today, but they were sweating as if it were double that temperature. If she concentrated hard, she could feel the morass of thoughts and emotions roiling within him.
“Answer me, Eve!”
She shook her head, trying to dissipate the ethereal connection to him that was making it hard for her to think. Instead she lost her balance and fell into him. Jolted by the collision with something so hard and solid, she gasped and clutched at him. The sudden surge of cooling relief she felt was so astonishing and so welcome that she sobbed her gratitude.
“Babe . . .” His arms tightened around her and his lips pressed to her sticky forehead.
She stammered over her dry tongue, “How l-long does this l-last?”
“The Novium usually begins during a hunt,” he murmured, “and ends with the kill. A few days, usually.”
“Days!” Her nails dug into his skin through his shirt. “It hasn’t even been one yet and I’m sick of it.”
“This is supposed to happen in the field, where it actually helps a Mark by imparting confidence and fearlessness. Without the culmination of a kill, I don’t know how long it will last, and since you’re restrained, all that energy and bloodlust has nowhere to go.”
It was going somewhere all right. To intimate places on her body. The familiar and longed-for sensation of his embrace only exacerbated her condition. “Touching you helps,” she whispered.
“It’s killing me.”
Her hands moved of their own volition, unclenching and resting flat against him.
Reed stiffened. “Don’t do this, Eve. I’m not a saint.”
“I’m not doing anything.” She was barely moving, arrested by the volatility between them.
“You’re thinking about things you shouldn’t be. You’re a one-man woman.”
“There’s just one of you.”
He moved too fast to register. His fist captured her ponytail, arching her back. She found herself wrapped with him, mantled by his powerfully aroused body. There was no denying that he was hard for her, n
ot when she could feel nearly every inch of him against her.
Armani and steel. Elegance and brutal passion.
Desire burst across her mark-regulated senses, exploding across her nerve endings and leaving her shaken. She groaned into his hovering mouth, her nipples hardening and thrusting into his chest.
“You’re playing with the wrong brother.” His lips moved against hers, his words so softly spoken they were menacing.
“I’m not playing with you,” she whispered, repeating the words he had once said to her.
Reed’s tongue followed the line of her cheekbone, then dipped into her ear. “Then, what are you doing?”
Eve swallowed hard. “I g-guess I’m . . . coveting.”
He cupped her buttock with one hand and ground his erection against her. The lewd gesture was so patently Reed, it made her weak in the knees. “You can’t covet what belongs to you.”
Reed was deeply pained by the admission, she could feel it. That only made his feelings more precious to her.
How was it possible for her to love Alec, yet want Reed so strongly? However her affection had grown, it needed to stop. Alec had killed Reed—again—for touching her the last time. She couldn’t put any of them through that twice. It wasn’t fair. It hurt people she cared about. It made her not like herself. She wasn’t a cheater; she respected herself and her partners too much.
“Remember what I told you in the beginning?” His voice was low and gruff, the words breathed into her mouth. “You’re a predator now. Predators like to fuck. That’s all this is.”
“Don’t lie. Not about this.”
His tumult was palpable and added to hers. She felt safe with Alec; she felt far from it with Reed. The fact that fear pushed her forward instead of urging retreat scared her. What if he’s right about me? What if killing things is what I’m meant to do?
No, she refused to believe that being a Mark was her destiny. She couldn’t believe it, because if she did, it meant that all of her childhood dreams and hopes had to die. There would be no fairytale wedding, no possibility of a family. Everything and everyone she loved, the very aspects of her life that made her who she was, would grow old and leave her life. Who would she be then? Someone she didn’t know. Someone she might not like.
“Don’t count on me to put on the brakes, Eve. I’m selfish. I won’t say no to a prime piece of ass.”
She couldn’t stop the smile that curved her lips. “Isn’t that what you’re doing now?”
His mouth took on a mulish cast. “I don’t want you like this. I’ve seen the show, I know how it ends.”
“It was a good show.” Really good. Reed was rough, edgy, wild in a way she never expected to like, let alone crave. The fact was, the mark . . . Novium . . . whatever . . . didn’t make her want him. It only lowered her inhibitions enough to free her existing attraction.
He nipped her lower lip, then licked across the spot to soothe the sting. “Come to me again when you’re not strung out with the Heat. You’ll get a different answer.”
“Reed—”
“Enough.” Tilting his head, his mouth slanted across hers, taking her breath until she grew faint.
His fist in her hair tightened, arching her further backward, forcing her to mold into him. Her scalp ached with the pressure, the pain intensifying until she whimpered in protest and writhed. The prodding of the gun into her lower back was the final injury that pushed her over the edge.
She stomped on his foot and wrenched free, stumbling a few feet away. “You’re hurting me!” she accused.
Reed wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then adjusted the prominent bulge in his slacks with impatient movements. “Look what you’ve done to me. Look what you keep doing to me, you fucking cock tease.”
Eve blinked, shocked by the vehemence of his attack. And the justification behind it. “I’m sorry. I—”
He cut her off with a glare. “Cain’s the one getting laid. That means he’s the go-to guy for your crap, not me. I want to fuck you, not carry your baggage.”
“Jesus,” she breathed, wincing at the resulting burn from the mark. A bucket of ice water couldn’t have doused her lust faster. “You know I feel like—”
“—you haven’t had sex in three weeks? Join the club, Eve. Don’t expect sympathy from me.”
A hand touched her elbow. She jerked in surprise, her head swiveling to see who joined them. Gadara’s gaze moved over her, pausing on the labored lift and fall of her chest and her clenched fists.
“Ms. Hollis,” he murmured.
The tension rushed out of her like water down a drain, fleeing her body at the exact spot where the archangel touched her. Eve was suddenly chagrined and emotionally exhausted. Still aching and slick between her thighs, she nevertheless was now capable of coherent, rational thought.
“Walk it off, Abel.” Gadara’s order resonated with divine command.
Reed spun on his heel and left them, the leather soles of his shoes thudding angrily upon the cement drive and sidewalk. It took everything Eve had not to chase after him. The set of his shoulders told her so much about his mood. She’d backed him into a corner, then wounded him. Her frustration turned inward.
“You should be inside with the others,” the archangel said. His irises were an iridescent gold rimmed with obsidian black. He was so beautiful it hurt to look at him. “Our plane will arrive within the next two hours. We will need everything packed by then.”
“I don’t want to leave.”
His brows arched.
“I need to be here,” she continued. “I can’t go. You might not want to admit it, but the Novium is on me.”
Gadara stood silently, eerily composed in the face of the day’s events.
“There has to be something I can do here that we can both live with,” she persisted.
“It is too dangerous. I prefer your original suggestion to assist from the sidelines.”
“I don’t think that’s going to be possible. Not in the shape I’m in.”
“We can resume training next week. A hunt conducted under controlled conditions should suffice—”
“Next week? I can’t stay like this for—”
The rhythmic thumping of an approaching bass beat halted Eve’s tirade midsyllable. Her head turned toward the sound, her eyes catching sight of the pea-green van that turned the corner. It was followed by a white sedan, which in turn was followed by a red pickup truck. The procession slowed, then pulled into the driveway of the duplex directly across the street.
“Is that your investigative team?” she asked, her gaze riveted on the exiting occupants of the vehicles. They seemed far too rambunctious to be longstanding Marks. They tumbled out with whoops and excited chatter.
He stepped forward, taking an almost protective position in front of her. “No.”
“Then, who are they?”
“Good question.”
“They’re fresh faced,” she noted. “Maybe a college study group? Biology or chemistry, if all that equipment they’re unloading is any indication.”
“No one is supposed to be here while we are.”
Glancing aside at Gadara, Eve registered his alertness. His sweat suit wasn’t capable of softening him completely, not with his ramrod-straight posture and elegant bearing.
“Did you tell whoever’s in charge that we’re clearing out today?”
“Yes.” He returned her gaze. “But the military rarely moves quickly when civilian requests are involved. We began talks for this year’s training two years ago. I fail to see how they could have granted permission to a new group in so short a time.”
Eve started across the street. Every step was a relief. She needed to walk it off, too.
“Ms. Hollis.” The archangel’s tone was admonishing. “What are you doing?”
“Saying hi to our new neighbors.” She looked down the road toward Anytown, which was within walking distance. Far too close for mortal comfort.
As she approached the new arri
vals, Eve caught the attention of one of the girls—a somber-looking brunette with black-framed glasses and orange camisole. The girl elbowed the lanky man next to her, gesturing toward Eve with a jerk of her chin. He turned with a frown that dissolved into a smile when he saw Eve. He had unruly brown hair, a peach-fuzzy goatee, and slumberous hazel eyes that were emphasized by the olive-colored T-shirt he wore.
“Hey,” he drawled, sauntering down the drive to the sidewalk.
“Hello.” She extended her hand. “Evangeline Hollis.”
“Roger Norville.” He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed the back. “What’s a babe like you doing in a place like this?”
She was taken aback by the line, thinking it was too cocky for such a laid-back guy. “I’m teaching a class on interior design.”
The answer rolled off her tongue as if it was her idea, but she knew it wasn’t. She didn’t have to look behind her to know Gadara was watching and listening through her . . . and compelling safe replies into her brain. Mind rape, but it had its uses.
“In this dump?” Roger’s brows rose. “No amount of decorating is going to fix these homes.”
“Interior design,” she corrected. “How spaces are laid out.”
“Oh, gotcha. Sorry.”
“No problem. How about you?”
He released her hand and shoved his hands into the pockets of his brown corduroy jeans. “We’re going to be filming the next episode of our show here.”
Eve frowned. “Show?”
“Ghoul School.” Roger stilled when she just stared blankly. “On Bonzai. The cable channel.”
“Sorry.” She shrugged. “I’m not familiar with it.”
He beamed, his vaguely smarmy countenance changing to one more genuine. “That’s good news.”
“It is?”
Roger laughed. “Forgive the corny pickup line. I thought you recognized us.”
She smiled, but was bemused.
“Chicks like geeks and television personalities,” he clarified, “but not sleaze.”
Eve laughed softly. “Whatever works.”
He gestured toward the brunette. “Linda, come meet Evangeline. She’s teaching an interior design class across the street.”
Linda walked over, her lips curved shyly. She was so short, the top of her head barely reached Roger’s shoulder. Her attire was deceptively casual at first glance, but closer inspection revealed a penchant for pricey designer pieces and her bob hairstyle was cut with expensive precision. “You must be part of the group we’re supposed to steer clear of.”
