by Selena Scott
“But how will we find Martine and Arturo?” Caroline asked, biting her lip, carried away in the fantasy world they’d created.
“I’ll find you,” Martine promised. “I don’t think you’d be able to track me down otherwise.”
“No Instagram or Facebook?” Thea asked with a teasing smile.
“No,” Martine answered solemnly.
“That makes it harder to find someone,” Celia agreed.
“That and the fact that I’m made of pure light when I’m not in my human form. That makes it harder to find me, too.”
Martine was only aware that she’d said something stunning by the looks of incredulity splashed across the three other women’s faces.
“I’m sorry,” Celia said, holding one hand up. “Would you mind running that last part back?”
“Oh.” Martine’s brow furrowed. “I haven’t gone over that with you all yet?”
“Ah. No. Must have slipped your mind,” Thea said.
“Well,” Martine cast around for a way to explain it. “You know how I have that golden light that I sometimes use for fighting? Well, that’s basically what I’m made of. And when I want to, I can shift into light. The same way I can shift into hawk form.”
“I—what?” Welp, Celia had tried to come up with something to say to that. She’d failed. But she’d tried.
“Can we see?” Leave it to Caroline to ask the one question that everyone was thinking.
“That’s… something you’d want to see?” Martine asked, confusion knitting her brow. She’s spent so much time attempting to make herself more human and less other. It had never occurred to her that maybe they’d be drawn to the things that made her inhuman.
“Yeah. Duh. Show us.” Thea had two hands on her hips, her ice-blue gaze staring at Martine like she was nuts for even asking.
“Oh. Well, all right.” She glanced out the window. “Let’s go around the back of the house, then, where no one from the road will see.”
Celia turned off the burners and the women scrambled out the back door after her.
Jack and Jean Luc came into the kitchen just in time to see the women hustle away. They exchanged confused looks and walked over to the back window to see what they could see.
“What’s going on?” Tre asked from behind them.
“Not sure,” Jean Luc replied. “The girls are doing something.”
The three men watched as Martine faced off the women. None of them heard Arturo come up behind them, his eyes pinned on Martine just like everyone else.
The sun had set half an hour before, so the deepest part of the sky was an endless royal blue. There was enough light to make out everyone’s faces but the entire world was cast in an ethereal, sleepy tone.
Arturo watched, waiting for whatever was going to happen, when suddenly his nails cut into the meat of his hands.
The faces of the three women suddenly glowed golden and bright as Martine went from a strawberry-haired, green-eyed woman to a beacon of sunshine. For a moment, she still had a face and arms and legs and a torso, but it didn’t take long for her clothes to fall away in a heap and in front of them, there was just a shining ball of light, three feet in diameter.
The entire world pressed pause as far as Arturo was concerned. He heard the gasps of the men beside him, but for him, everything was frozen. He’d seen Martine fight with her golden energy. Hell, he’d fought her himself. But he’d never seen her become her energy before.
She shimmered and became amorphous, a floating cloud tossing light onto every surface that faced her.
Arturo lifted his own hand in wonder. Even right now, he was bathed in her light. Martine’s light.
“That’s… something you don’t see every day,” Tre finally intoned. “Did you know she could do that?”
Arturo blinked and shook his head, but he found that he still couldn’t tear his eyes away from Martine’s light. “Yes and no.”
A second later, the light sphered up again. It went denser and darker and gently, a foot touched down, her arms spread to the sides like she was treading water. She went darker and denser and then she was standing there, on top of her clothes, grinning at the women and gorgeously naked.
As usual, whenever Martine was naked, the three men beside Arturo became caricatures of casual indifference. Hands dipped into pockets, mouths whistled aimless tunes, eyes wandered the ceilings, the bookshelves, their own fingernails.
Arturo, on the other hand, propped his forearm against the window and swallowed her whole with his eyes. She was blindingly alluring. It was something about the graceful curve of her. She was shorter than Arturo by at least six inches, but she was still tall for a woman. Her breasts sat heavily on her chest and her ass popped out sullenly from her back. Her legs were long and shadowed with graceful muscle tone. She looked strong and graceful and womanly all at once. She was a true warrior.
For the first time in centuries, Arturo let himself think back to the night he’d sacrificed his life to the demon so that Amelia could live. Martine had had her golden energy wrapped around the neck of the demon. She’d had him submitted like a dog, crawling for her. She was poised to tear backwards her golden energy, she was poised to rip the throat of the beast right out.
But she hadn’t seen the demon lean forward, and with his own blackened energy, grip Amelia around the middle, draw her towards him.
It had been a race then, between the demon’s life and Amelia’s. It wasn’t a chance that Arturo had been willing to take.
He’d thrown himself at the feet of the demon, spared Amelia, and damned himself.
The rest was history. Now, though, looking back on the memory, something tugged at his brain. There was something more there. Something he couldn’t quite put his finger on or identify.
He watched Martine slip back into her clothes and he said nothing. He watched the women file back into the house, chattering and lit up with excitement. He watched Jack lift Martine clear off her toes.
“Where the hell have you been hiding that?” one of the men asked her.
Martine laughed, a beautiful blush on her cheeks and a light laugh on her lips. He’d never seen her look happier or more energized or calmer.
She wasn’t lingering on the outskirts of the room or of the group. She was chatting at dinner, passing food, teasing and joking.
And all the while, Arturo sat silently.
CHAPTER SIX
He slept in her bed again. And this time he fell asleep before she did. There was something churning in that dark mind of his, that was very obvious to her. There was something contemplative and deep in the way he’d been looking at her over the last few hours.
This wasn’t completely new to her, this side of him. He’d always had the capacity for broodiness, she remembered. A quicksilver temper, he’d been just as likely to be flirty and jokey as he was to be quiet and sullen. But never with Amelia. With Amelia, he’d been chronically sweet, calm, patient. It was almost like his love for Amelia had brought out a separate man from deep within him.
Martine lay on her side in the bed, facing away from Arturo, and listened to his deep, even breaths. She watched the moonlight over the darkened hills out behind the house. The rocks were a bright orange during the day, against the periwinkle sky. But right now they were a brutal, blackened red, like old blood.
Even so, she felt peaceful in her bedroom. She couldn’t ignore the heat of the man behind her. For a long moment, Martine allowed her mind to wander. She let herself imagine what it must have been like to have been Amelia. To have experienced this man’s sweetness on such a regular basis. If she were Amelia, she would be allowed to reach for him in the night. To drown in the warmth of his skin. If she were Amelia, she would be allowed to share the racing of her golden energy, to pour it into Arturo’s body as fast as she wanted to.
But no, that was a silly fantasy. Because Amelia had been a normal woman. A human. A mortal. Amelia didn’t glow golden when she was feeling desirous. She didn’t shift
into a hawk. And she certainly wasn’t composed of light. If she were Amelia, she’d simply turn to Arturo and start having sex.
That’s what humans did.
“I’d rather just fuck the bear shifters,” Thea had said earlier that night and Martine had laughed along with the rest of them, though perhaps with a little less first-hand experience than the other women. Well, try zero first-hand experience.
Sex seemed to be a very lovely part of the human experience and Martine was very curious about it. It seemed so primal and satisfying, unlike anything else that two people could do together. She’d heard the hushed moans and rhythmic passion of the others in the group over the last few months. They’d stayed in some close quarters, after all. And she’d been happy for them. She’d wanted them all to experience passion and heat and pleasure.
It also made her a little sad. She knew that there were other demon hunters out there who sought pleasure with one another. Some of them even sought pleasure with humans. Apparently, it was all kosher. But Martine had never met a person, human or hunter, who made her want to touch and kiss.
Well. Maybe that wasn’t entirely true. She closed her eyes and thought of the moment when Arturo’s bear had pinned her hawk against his chest. She thought of the shimmer and shift and energy and closeness and heat and tug and liquid pull and the heat of his erection against her back.
She wasn't an idiot. She knew intellectually that they had most likely been sexually attracted to one another at that moment. He’d looked at her like an animal in rut.
It hadn’t been with sweetness, though.
Martine closed her eyes and let her mind wander. She was confusing herself. There was no reason for all that. She just needed rest. She needed to let herself drift away. In a moment of indulgence, she let her mind rest on what it would be like to turn to Arturo and nestle in. To toss a leg over his hips and sit on him the way she had out in the dirt.
She imagined what it would feel like to lay fully on top of him. Skin to skin. She could imagine the clang of his heart in his ribs, the too-hard grip of his hands. She knew he wouldn’t be gentle with her.
She thought of his erection, how interesting and large it had been. Different than she had expected. She imagined what it would feel like if it were sandwiched between them. Pushing into her belly.
“Martine.”
His voice was gravelly and strained in her ear. She pulled herself out of her daydream and was shocked when daylight greeted her cracked eyes. She hadn’t been daydreaming, she’d been real dreaming!
And. Wow. Now she was laying fully on top of him. And that was definitely his erection trying to write his name across her belly. And those were definitely his hands digging into her hips like he was caught between wanting to yank her away or smash her down.
Her nose was an inch from his armpit and she sort of wanted to bury herself in the scent there. Was that weird? Did normal human women want that? He smelled like sleep and soap and like rain on hot ground.
A satisfied little sound came out of the back of her throat and she realized she was rubbing her face against his pec. How strange! She’d seen animals do that to one another in the wild, but she’d never had the urge to engage in the practice herself. Yet here she was.
“Martine,” Arturo tried again and this time there seemed to be a note of pain in his tone.
“Hmmm?” She raised her head and looked into his coal-black eyes.
“What—we—this—you’re glowing,” he finally said.
She looked down at herself, and sure enough, a layer of shimmery gold had coated her skin. She made a sound of wonder and stretched against him like a cat. Carefully, he rolled her to one side and sat up. She noticed he bent his knees so that his erection didn’t tent the sheet.
“I’d never seen you do that before. What you did last night,” he said to her.
“I’ve never shown humans before.”
He was quiet for a long minute, long enough for some of her glow to subside as she wondered what he was thinking. “Why now?”
She would have thought it was obvious. “Because I’m trying a new way of connecting with the humans, Arturo. Leaving didn’t… feel right. Last time, with your group, I stayed, but held myself so far away from them. That was disastrous. This time, I need to stay and I need to show them who I really am. A demon hunter.” She paused for a moment. Something in her didn’t want to say this next part. “I can’t pretend to be a normal woman any longer. I have to be honest about who I am.”
“Right,” he said, rolling out of bed. He didn’t look at her as he pulled a T-shirt on and left the room.
She instantly crawled onto his side of the bed. The warm spot he’d left behind. It was for the best, she reminded herself. It wouldn’t serve either of them if he forgot what she really was.
She was a hunter, not a lover.
***
Arturo felt like he was going mad. As if he were in the middle of some sort of psychological experiment, the details of which he was, apparently, not privy to. It wasn't that he wanted to deprive himself of love, it was that he was ready for his life to be over. He'd already loved a good woman, he'd already experienced pain as close to death as he could possibly imagine. He’d been alive for something like 435 years. He wasn't about to start dating now.
Nevertheless, he was bothered. That whole day he walked around the house and through their shifter practice as if he were wearing a sign that said I woke up and Martine was cuddling me. And, oh yeah, it felt really good. And if I close my eyes I can still feel the weight of her.
Cue the eye twitch.
When he’d been a mortal, Amelia hadn't been the first woman he’d loved. But she had been the first one he wanted to settle down alongside. And now… this.
Whatever the hell this was.
Arturo spent most of the day ignoring Martine's very existence. It wasn’t what anyone would call easy. Especially considering the five-hour shifter practice they all subjected themselves to that very hot afternoon. Seriously, it was hot enough to fry an egg on Tre’s sunburn.
They dragged themselves back into the house, dripping with sweat and caught halfway between frustration and elation. Frustration because this shifter thing was hard and sweaty. Frustration because they spent the whole day kicking each other’s asses. Elation because they were actually getting pretty good at it.
Arturo slid into his seat at dinner. Caroline set down a plate of steak and potatoes in front of him and gave his shoulder a friendly squeeze. The other shifters were filing in, their hair wet from the shower and fresh clothes on.
Thea opened up the windows and the side door to get a cross breeze going. Celia popped a few bottles of wine that she passed around.
An unexpected feeling rose up in Arturo’s gut as the sounds of their conversation rolled around him. As much as he’d held himself apart from the group, he couldn’t deny that he felt a sort of connection to them now. He looked across the table, and for one moment, got caught in the snare of Martine’s bright green eyes. She gave him a small uninterpretable smile and turned back to her food.
“So,” Celia said. “Martine, will you please explain this whole golden energy thing?”
“Explain it?” Martine set her fork down and took a sip of wine. She looked delectable with her hair in damp waves over her shoulders.
“Yeah,” Thea chimed in. “Why do you have the power? What can it do? Can you control it?”
“Oh.” Martine thought for a minute, her fingers drawing circles on the bottom of her wine glass. “It’s a part of who I am. I guess you could say I was born with it. But I was never really born. When I came to be in my human form, I’d already been a light being for a long time. A millennia, maybe.”
Arturo’s stomach plummeted. As if he needed more proof that attempting to date her was a bad idea. She’d been a being made of light for a millennia and he wanted to hump her like a teenager. Classy.
“I can control it very easily,” Martine said, smiling, as if the questio
n were funny to her for some reason. “And I believe I have it as my primary tool for fighting the demon. I can fight him in three forms. My human form, my hawk form, or my light form. And in all three I can wield the golden energy.”
“Your golden energy is what will eventually kill the demon, yes?” Caroline asked, her bottom lip between her teeth, as if talking about it gave her the willies.
“Yes,” Martine nodded with a confidence that was fairly nascent. Something had changed for her in the last few days, though none of them could exactly put their finger on it.
The conversation pivoted and an hour later, Arturo found himself in the last stages of loading the dishwasher. It was the first night he’d deigned to help clean up after a meal. His first instinct had been to go shut himself into his room to gather himself together before another hellish night with Martine so close and yet so far. But, feeling strangely loose, he’d stayed in the brightly lit kitchen with Jean Luc and Thea and helped clean up.
He blamed it on the second glass of wine he’d had at dinner.
When everything was set to rights, Thea pressed a square of dark chocolate into Arturo’s hand and popped one into her own mouth. “Movie time.”
“What?” he asked irritably. He was finding himself skeptical of the camaraderie that was suspiciously wafting around everywhere he turned. He didn’t want to watch a movie and he didn’t want her friendship chocolate—oh. Wait. That was actually really good chocolate.
He found his mysteriously refilled wineglass shoved into his hand and then he was herded down the hall toward the living room where an obnoxiously large flat screen was playing the opening credits of a movie.
Movie nights were something he’d seen the mortals do a few different times in Montana and he had to say, he was utterly baffled by it. He was born a few centuries too early to fully understand movie magic. Though he did like some modern inventions (toilets, Jacuzzis, and Oreo cookies being his top three), the television was not something he understood. No matter what was happening on the screen, he found it both grating and boring. On any other night, he would have turned on his heel and slunk back to the seclusion of his room.
