by Selena Scott
Not that he wanted to.
He felt weighted down by the ridiculousness of the clothing at his feet. He’d gone shopping with two mortal women. How humiliating. He was not a normal man and he’d never be.
What on earth had possessed him to do this?
His reflection was tossed back milkily in the car window as the blue sky domed over top of their racing car.
He sneered at himself. He knew exactly why he’d done this. And it made him even more pathetic.
He’d let Caroline dress him up and cut his hair because he was a vain creature at heart and Thea’s words had truly wounded him. He didn’t want to be undesirable and disgusting.
As prickly as he was, Arturo’s raw, primal attractiveness was the only manner in which he ever truly engaged with a human.
The flicker in the eyes of those attracted to him, the tensing of those intimidated by him. It thrilled him, sure, but it also grounded him. He’d always have that.
But what made him even more pathetic was the fact that Arturo, for the first time since he’d become immortal, wanted his attractiveness to work on one person in particular.
It was sharply embarrassing, but he couldn’t stop thinking about Martine.
The golden lines of her body. Her rough breath as she grappled with him. The fierce fight in her eyes when she flung her fist back, her hand filled with golden electricity. But most of all, he couldn’t stop thinking of the feeling of her shifting against him.
When Arturo shifted, it was filled with a ripping, controlled pain. It was a good kind of pain, like a hard stretch after being cramped down in one position for two long. But as Martine’s shifting energy sliced right through him, he could feel what her shift felt like to her. And it wasn’t painful. It was… explosive. It was a wild scattering of her atoms in every direction. A racing energy, like a hundred thousand gallons of water over the mile-high edge of a waterfall. It was euphoric and gorgeous and utterly untamed.
He’d been in perfect awe of her. Honestly, if they’d been on their feet, he was certain he would have found himself kneeling before her.
And Arturo didn’t kneel for anyone. Not even the demon. And he’d been through centuries of torturous pain to prove it.
The whole skirmish between them couldn’t have lasted more than fifteen minutes. But Arturo had played it over and over in his mind on an endless loop. He wished, more than anything, that he could stop the memory in one place in particular. Her straddled over his lap, golden, panting, fierce and innocent at once.
But he couldn’t stop the memory there. Because it went on.
He winced as he remembered his pathetically boyish reaction to her. Naked girl: instant erection. He’d gotten hard so fast that he’d heard it hit her back, for fuck’s sake.
The more he’d thought about it, the more certain he became that Martine was truly an innocent. That made his reaction to her both more and less embarrassing. Less embarrassing because maybe she didn’t have much to compare to and didn’t realize how doggishly eager he’d been for her. More embarrassing because he wasn’t even sure that Martine was a sexual being and there he was popping wood. It was almost like getting a hard-on from a marble sculpture of Aphrodite. Human form… but not exactly acceptable boner material.
He generally prided himself on having a very tight leash on his desires, on his actions. It was how he’d survived 400 years under the heel of the demon after all. But fifteen minutes getting sweaty and grappling with Martine and he’d been back to pre-teen levels of self-control.
They came around a long curve of the highway, rocks red as Mars on one side and the sky as blue as a blueberry on the other. Arturo didn’t see the alien beauty of this place, he saw only Martine in his mind’s eye.
“Would you wear a dress?” Caroline asked Thea up in the front seat and something about the tone of her voice had Arturo tuning in to listen.
“I don’t know,” Thea said, just the smallest tinge of unexpected girlishness in her voice. “It’s not even real yet. We don’t know anything, you know?”
“Well, that’s true. But that doesn’t mean we can’t dream about it. If and when Tre and I get married, I want to wear a white dress. But really, really sexy. Lingerie almost. My first wedding dress was so stuffy and classic and had ten thousand buttons. I felt like I was getting strapped into a straitjacket.”
“A white dress, huh?” Arturo scoffed from the back. “Tre doesn’t strike me as a traditional kind of guy.”
“Oh, he is,” Caroline said solemnly. “On the inside, he’s very traditional, he just doesn’t always admit it to himself. Anyways, I want a dress so white and so low cut and so tight that his eyeballs melt and run down his face.”
“How romantic,” Thea said dryly, though she smiled at Caroline’s enthusiasm.
“And are you planning your own wedding as well?” Arturo asked Thea in a sickly sweet voice.
She bristled, but oddly, Thea had the sudden intuition that he wasn’t actually mocking her. He was teasing her, sure. But there wasn’t his usual dose of derision in his tone.
“No. Not really. We haven’t decided anything yet.”
“But she thinks Jack has a ring!” Caroline said, bursting with the news, even though she knew she should probably keep it to herself.
“Oh, really?” Arturo said, his eyebrows in his hairline. He couldn’t exactly say why that surprised him.
“Caroline!” Thea chirped.
“Oh, no. Was that a secret? Did I just wreck a secret?” Caroline wilted, her shoulders up around her ears as she steered the van around another curve in the road.
Well, there was just no staying mad at that. “I didn’t explicitly say it was a secret. But I’m really uncomfortable talking about it. Can we just change the subject?”
There was silence in the car for a long minute.
“What do you mean you think he has a ring?” Arturo asked, intentionally stirring the pot.
“Arturo!” Caroline barked, suddenly militant in her mission to respect Thea’s wishes. “She said we’re changing the subject. The end.”
***
It was late afternoon when they finally got home from the mall. Arturo, still in a sour mood, intended to just toss his bags into his room, but he found he couldn’t deny his desire to change into something that fit him a little better.
So, after a quick shower, he pulled on a pair of the dark jeans, the leather sneakers, and a blood-red V-neck. It was dumb, and ridiculously human, but he felt his mood lift at the soft slide of the fabric against his skin.
He felt his mood lift further at the carefully folded arrangement of his new clothes in his drawers. Earthly possessions were idiotic and ridiculous and a waste and just something he was going to leave behind when all of this was done. But they sure did look nice all folded up like that.
As disgusted as he was pleased with himself, Arturo left his room, intending to do a few laps around the property, checking carefully to make sure the demon hadn’t been anywhere near here.
Martine wasn’t the only one in their group who knew how to track a demon.
But Arturo didn’t make it further than the next hallway when he was drawn by the voices of the three other men.
They did this often, he noticed, huddled together in some hidden room to talk and discuss the goings-on. In fact, these three men gossiped more than the women did.
He hesitated outside the door.
“It’s cool, man. Kinda badass,” Tre said in the room.
“That’s what I hoped for when I bought it,” Jean Luc said, clearing what sounded like nerves out of his throat. “I knew she wasn’t going to want a classic diamond or anything gaudy and her tattoos are so colorful, I just thought…”
“She’s gonna love it,” Jack said reassuringly. “And if she doesn’t, who cares? Pick out a new one. She’s marrying you for you, not the ring.”
“She hasn’t agreed to marry me yet. Anyways, thanks for holding on to the ring, Jack. I just didn’t want Celia to a
ccidentally find it,” Jean Luc said, clearing his throat again.
Something like vindictive joy rose in Arturo’s gut. Even when he’d been mortal, he’d been an asshole, and four centuries of enslavement by a demon hadn’t made him any sweeter. He glanced behind him to make sure that Caroline wasn’t around to witness and reprimand him for what he was about to do. But he couldn’t stop himself. It was just too good.
Arturo stepped into the room and clicked the door shut behind him, a sparkle in his eye that had all three of the other men’s eyes narrowing in suspicion.
“What?” Tre demanded.
“Nothing,” Arturo said, his tongue pressing against his cheek as he studied his own fingernails. He raised his eyes pointedly. “What’s that you got there?”
Jean Luc was obviously weighing the pros and cons of lying to Arturo. Eventually he answered in a voice that sounded like he was pressing sand through a screen door. “It’s an engagement ring. For Celia.”
He didn’t show it to Arturo.
“You’re going to get married! How sweet.” Arturo couldn’t keep the sly grin off his face.
“Oh, Jesus, you asshole. Just tell us what’s making you smile like a psycho already.” Tre sat down heavily on the bed and glared. Tre hated Arturo on principle. Arturo had kissed Caroline last month. He’d accidentally hurt Caroline. So, yeah. Tre figured he’d hate him for life. What Tre admitted privately, within the confines of his own head, was that maybe Arturo wasn’t so bad. They couldn’t have fought the demon without Arturo. Which would have meant Tre and Caroline would currently be having their souls feasted on by pure evil if not for Arturo. There was something about battling a demon together that sort of brought you shoulder to shoulder with a man. Tre supposed he felt a sort of grudging kinship with Arturo. Not that he would admit to that when the guy was acting like a dick.
Arturo opened his mouth to spring the truth on them, that Thea had somehow seen that ring and thought it was for her. That now Jack was in a hard spot, Thea was going to be embarrassed and Jean Luc’s proposal to Celia was going to be dampened by the knowledge that this whole thing had gone off the rails. But suddenly, Thea’s face flashed in Arturo’s mind.
He thought of her nervous excitement in the car, so unlike her usual demeanor.
Thea and Arturo were technically related. His descendants were her ancestors, settled on the land she still owned and worked. They both had the same inky black hair. The same perfect bone structure, imperious and icily good-looking. Neither were particularly warm.
It was a strange moment for a familial loyalty to crop up, and Arturo could not, for the life of him, have predicted this unexpected turn of sympathy, but suddenly, he didn’t want to laugh in Thea’s face over this misunderstanding. Maybe it was because he’d had more than his fair share of embarrassment over the last 24 hours. But suddenly, he understood how mortifying this might be for her.
All three men looked at him expectantly. Soon, confusion stole over their faces and Arturo could only guess it was because his own expression had fallen from sadistic glee to deflated befuddlement.
“Uh,” Arturo searched for something to say. He wracked his emotional brain for some sort of moral compass, no matter how rusty it might be. He came up with nothing. “Nothing. Just—” He yanked a flat hand over his newly shorn hair. “Just don’t do anything with that.” He pointed at the ring. “Not yet, okay?”
Jean Luc’s face crimped with surprise but as his eyes read Arturo’s expression, he flattened out with something like surrender. There was a note of unexpected earnestness in Arturo’s tone that kept Jean Luc from dismissing him. “Yeah. Uh. Okay, I won’t.”
Arturo nodded once and disappeared out of the bedroom.
“What the hell you suppose that was about?” Jack asked the other two.
“I’m not even sure he knew what that was about,” Tre answered.
CHAPTER FOUR
Arturo found Caroline in the room she shared with Tre. She was admiring the new scarf she’d bought that day and murmuring to herself when he burst in.
“Arturo!” Caroline jumped. “What are you doing?”
Arturo closed the door behind him but he kept a healthy distance between them. “I need to tell you something.”
“Go ahead.” Caroline lowered herself down on the bed.
“But I’m not sure I should tell you.”
“Is it about the demon?” she asked, suddenly extremely somber.
“No! No. It’s… Look, I’m just going to say it. The ring that Thea found isn’t for her.”
“Oh, dear.” Caroline’s face crumpled down. “Shoot. She was so excited. I mean, she was pretending to play it cool but…”
“I know. And I figured out the truth and was just—“”
“Worried for her,” Caroline said with something like wonder in her eye. “You were just worried that she’d get hurt.”
“I—” Stymied, Arturo crossed his arms over his chest. He wasn’t sure whether to agree or disagree with Caroline’s assessment. “I just wasn’t sure what to do with the information, is all.”
Caroline crowed happily. She whirled on her heel, sunshine in every line of her face. “Can you believe that?” she asked the corner.
No, wait. Arturo did a double take—that wasn’t an empty chair in the corner. Martine sat there, quiet and delicate as a moth. Her calm green eyes contrasted sharply with her strawberry hair and her chin sat gently on one palm. She was staring at Arturo like he was a cloud whose shape she couldn’t quite decipher.
“How do you do that? Disappear like that?” he griped in self-defense, feeling foolish for not having noticed her sitting there. “God, you blend in like a chameleon.”
Any other day, he wouldn’t have troubled himself quite so much over that expression on her face. Was she abashed? Was she challenging him? Judging him? Was she… turned on?
Damn. He had no earthly clue. What was the point of being a bear-shifting, energy-wielding, kick-ass immortal if just a look from a pretty woman was knocking him so far off his game?
She shrugged in response to his question and then her eyes fastened back onto Caroline. “Yes, I actually can believe this.”
“You can?” Caroline asked. “I would never have guessed that Arturo would be so secretly sweet.”
“Sweet?” he asked caustically.
“You forget that I knew him when he was still mortal.” Her hand still on her chin, one leg crossed gracefully over the other, Martine swung her gaze back to Arturo. “He used to be quite considerate.”
Caroline made a sad little noise in the back of her throat. Arturo interpreted this as pity. When he’d been a mortal, he’d had the love of a good woman, then he’d gone and done the dumbest thing of his existence. He’d sacrificed himself for her. The demon, unwilling to outright murder such an interesting soul as Arturo’s, had instead decided to enslave him. Amelia, Arturo’s love, had grown old, never recovering from the loss of him. And he’d suffered for centuries, watching helplessly as she eventually coupled with a man she never really loved. And then watching even more helplessly as she grew old and died. All while the demon tortured Arturo and used him as a pawn on this search for souls.
Win-win.
He felt sick just thinking about it. He didn’t want pity or sympathy. He just wanted Caroline to take the reins on this Thea/ring thing and then he wanted to go back to his dark bedroom, away from Martine’s bright, discerning gaze.
Belatedly, Arturo realized that Caroline was approaching him with her arms out, as if to hug him. He stumbled back, grappling for the door knob.
“This doesn’t mean anything. I’m not—I’m absolved of this, all right? This is in your hands now.” He ducked out the door and didn’t look back.
***
It was the stillest part of the night. Martine breathed deeply. She’d opened every window in her glass cage of a bedroom and the unusual desert perfume swirled around her. Night blooming flowers and sage and red dirt. There was rain somewhe
re in the distance.
Her eyes were closed and she wore her hair down over her bare shoulders. She wore a long, black nightgown that she liked because it reminded her of another time. It was slightly old-fashioned she supposed, but then, so was she.
She let her mind disconnect from her thoughts. Away from the feel of the silk against her skin, away from the scent of the desert on the air. In her mind’s eye, she was in her hawk form, though her corporeal body sat on the floor of her bedroom, her hands laid gently on her thighs. In her mind, she swooped over the desert terrain.
She passed over silvery shrubs and rivers that ran red with dirt, looking coppery and aged. She swooped over the cracking and crumbling roofs of houses thirty years past needing a bulldozer. And then over some of the fancier houses in the hills. She came through a city and thought she scented him.
In her mind, she banked and chased the scent of the demon. He wasn’t there now, but he’d been there. Close to them, not more than a few hundred miles away. He was hunting for the group. Making large, delirious circles around their area. She knew that the demon was disoriented and injured from their last interaction.
She’d almost gotten him. It had been so close. She’d never felt more powerful.
Or more scared.
Not of herself, but of what would happen when the demon was really gone. She knew that it would be the end of herself. Her life force was connected to the demon. When he died, by her own hand, she would die too. She wasn’t scared of that. That was part of her life. She’d always known it.
She’d been scared of what would happen to Arturo. Who was no doubt linked to the demon as well. She thought of killing the demon. And then she thought of Arturo blinking out of existence. And she’d hesitated.
