by May Dawson
Levi ran his hand over his face. “Have you ever met a psychopath?”
I shook my head.
“I don’t mean like a serial killer,” Levi said. “Although, lucky me, I have met one of those. I mean plain old psychopaths. Nurse Tom, there was a psychopath, I bet. No conscience, no empathy. They aren’t all killers. Some of them are CEOs and politicians, law-abiding men who could not care less if you live or suffer or die. All they care about are wins and losses.”
“Thanks, Levi. I was just anxious about demons. Now you’re reminding me I should be terrified of humans too.” I shook my head. “I wish she’d close her windows.”
“The thing about demons,” he said, “is that they, too, are counting wins and losses. And human suffering is what they count as a win. There’s nothing they love like breaking kids and hurting people…”
“Like Jacob?”
“They hurt him. They didn’t break him,” he said.
“You know what I mean.” Broken as in, Jacob had become a twisted and difficult human being, someone who hated anyone who was touched by the supernatural. Even himself.
“You don’t get it,” Levi started, but whatever else he was going to say was lost as he pointed ahead. “Your mom.”
I followed his gaze.
My mother leaned on the window frame, pushing it down with her elbows; the dining room windows always stuck a little. Her long blond hair was pulled back in a low ponytail at the nape of her neck. Her movements were slow, distracted.
My heart bottomed out.
I rarely saw my mom day-dreaming like that, almost lost, except when she was sad. She’d never been a crier, unlike me; sometimes I ached to cry for a release from feelings I couldn’t handle. I had never met a Nicholas Sparks movie I didn’t like. But my mother hardly ever cried; she just became distracted. When my grandmother died, my mom had been distracted and quiet, startled out of her reverie oftentimes when we spoke to her. It had been eerie and unsettling to me as a kid. If she had cried, I would have hugged her; instead I had never known quite what to do to make her feel better. And I still didn’t.
She stepped back and pulled the curtains across. My mother disappeared behind a fall of burgundy linen.
That hadn’t been enough. And at the same time, I could feel my heart racing. No matter how much I had learned about the world since I was kidnapped from this house barely more than a week ago, she probably still thought I was rappelling and doing push-ups at the anti-mutant camp. There would be no tearful reunion if I walked up to the front door. Things had changed for me, but not for her.
“Let’s go,” I said. I had to be cheerful for Levi. He had planned this wonderful date for us, and I had derailed it with a field-trip to visit my mother and my talk of demons. I tried to smile, even though the thought of cheering up was overwhelming right now. I just wanted to go cuddle in his bed and forget tonight had ever happened. “I’m starved! Can’t wait for dinner!”
“Crazy girl,” he said, his voice serious.
I turned to him, widening my eyes to look innocent. “What?”
“You don’t have to pretend around me,” he said.
“I might need to pretend for me,” I confessed. “Promise we’ll make sure no demon murders my mom before I can make things up to her?”
I’d meant to say it lightly, but there was a flash of pain across his face. Yeah. Can’t make jokes about murder and moms around the boys. God, I was such an ass.
“Levi,” I started to say, meaning to apologize, but he leaned in and kissed me instead.
His lower lip met mine gently, and I turned my mouth into his, pressing my lips deeply against his. I felt my fingers rise to rest against his jaw as he kissed me. Some of my fear and shame ebbed away, replaced with lust, although the damn gear shaft was between us and I couldn’t have sex down the street from my childhood home.
He pulled back just slightly, kissing the corner of my lip as if he loved that particular spot, and then returned to his seat. There was the slightest self-satisfied smirk on his lips, as if he knew how much he’d just teased me out of my bad mood with nothing but a kiss.
“You don’t have to pretend with me,” he promised.
“And you won’t pretend with me?” Because I’d been on the verge of apologizing, but he had made it clear I didn’t need to.
“I won’t,” he said. “For instance, right now I’m going to be completely honest and say, I really want to buy you some new damn clothes.”
“Well, let’s go,” I said. “I’m a self-sacrificing kind of girl. I’ll let you buy out half of Macy’s if it will make you happy.”
He grinned as he put the car into drive. We made a K-turn across the street and he drove us away from the house where Ash and I had grown up.
I resisted the urge to look back over my shoulder.
Half an hour later, Levi put the Jeep into park. “You need a dress.”
I glanced across the parking lot towards a mall. Dusk was falling, but the mall was brightly lit and busy. People in shorts and flip-flops streamed across the parking lot towards the movie theater. It felt strange to be back in Suburbia after the last few weeks.
Levi surreptitiously tucked his 9mm into the back of his jeans, pulling the hem of his leather jacket over. I guessed he couldn’t carry a sword into the mall, but he wasn’t willing to go unarmed.
“Is that necessary?” I asked.
“Yep,” he said, his voice clipped. “My first job is to protect you.”
He closed his door and came around the front of the car to me. He offered me his hand, and even if I wasn’t pleased with the idea of him being armed 24-7, I still reached out my hand too. His fingers knit around mine, his grip strong and confident, and we swung our hands between us slightly as we made our way to the mall.
“What’s your second job?” I asked.
“To make you happy.”
“But when it comes down to it…”
“Job one will always win out,” he promised.
“I hope we don’t have to test that theory out anytime soon.”
He was quiet. Right, no promises on that one.
“Let’s try to be normal for one night?” he asked.
“Except that you’re heavily armed?”
“Except for that.”
I tucked my arm through the crook of his elbow. “Why settle for normal?”
I might miss my old life. But Levi and Ryker, and this new world of magic, it was all better than normal.
I just wanted to have my sister and mother back too. I felt my chin lift as we crossed the parking lot, arm-in-arm. It would take some doing, but I believed I could have it all.
7
When Levi turned up the long driveway towards home, I could see a few lights blazing in the windows. The big farm house looked cozy and serene, nestled among the pines. I slipped out of the Jeep into a warm summer evening; it smelled like honeysuckle and lavender and fresh-cut grass out here, and I inhaled a deep breath. It was strange that nature was so beautiful and perfect when humans were so wayward.
Wayward. That wasn’t a word I used every day. It felt like someone else’s word, formed on my lips.
It still made me shiver to think that I was the reincarnation of the first woman, who had uncurled in the garden of Eden, who had set her toes down in the soft earth of a perfect world. Not that perfect had lasted long.
“How much do you feel like an angel?” I asked Levi as we crossed the garage to the door.
“With you around? About two percent,” he said. “No, I don’t feel much like an angel at all. But the powers are hard to argue with. There’s something supernatural going on there.”
“What power should the missing brother have?” I asked.
“Near-immortality,” Levi said. He keyed in his access code on the pad beside the door, and then held the door open for me. “I wouldn’t have minded that one.”
“You get to be super-strong and super-fast, that doesn’t seem like a bad deal.”
Despite the fact it was past midnight and into the small hours of the morning, I found Ryker and Jacob at the dining room table, still studying. Ryker flipped a page over and then glanced up. His weary eyes brightened when he saw me.
“Were you guys waiting up for us?” I teased.
“Work to do,” Jacob said curtly.
“Yeah,” Ryker said. “I wanted to hear all about how much lamer your date with Levi was than our date.”
“Hey, I’m not choosing favorites.”
“We all know you’re going to have favorites.” Ryker’s eyes flickered towards Jacob. “And not-favorites.”
“You aren’t helpful,” I told him sternly.
“And we all know I’m going to be your favorite,” Ryker said, tilting his chair back on two legs, his arms crossed over his chest.
“Don’t be so sure,” I told him. “Cocky isn’t cute.”
“So what did you do?” Ryker asked.
Levi came in behind me, draping his arm over my shoulders, and I breathed in the scent of his soap and aftershave, whatever it was that made him smell like pine and fresh sawdust and dark chocolate. He was delicious.
“We pretended we were normal people for a night,” I said, smiling up at him. “And it was exactly what I needed.”
“I can think of some things you need,” Jacob muttered.
“Watch yourself,” Ryker warned.
“I didn’t mean it in a bad way.” Jacob said.
I’d take bets that he did. But now, determined to embarrass him, I said, “So are we still on for nine tomorrow?”
“Yeah, sure,” Jacob said. He managed to sound pretty disinterested in the date he’d invited me on.
“You’re going on a date?” Ryker’s lips quirked up in a smirk. But all he said was, “Awesome.”
“It probably won’t be,” I said.
“Wait and see, Princess,” Jacob said.
“I thought we were being idiots,” Ryker said, unrelenting as usual.
His eyes flickered up towards me from his book. Golden eyes met mine evenly. He ignored Ryker. “I just figured I’d take my turn and show you I’m not a complete asshole.”
“Even though you don’t care what I think.” I pressed him.
Jacob turned his eyes back down to his book, sighing under his breath, as if I’d interrupted an important thought. Of course.
“What’re you working on?” I asked.
“We’re going through Wendy’s journals again,” Jacob said impatiently. “Looking for something we might have missed.”
“You want me to help?”
“Nope,” Jacob said. “You have enough mommy issues of your own to work through. You don’t need to delve into ours.”
Levi hugged me into his side. “We should all get some sleep. The research is important, but if you’re tired, you’re going to miss something. Doesn’t get us anywhere.”
I nodded. What I wanted was to sleep between Ryker and Levi every night, but I didn’t know how to ask them for that after the magical night of my eighteenth birthday, when they’d responded wordlessly to my need to be comforted and safe.
“Come up with me?” I asked Levi.
He nodded, and as we headed for the stairs, I told the other boys, “Good night. Don’t stay up too late.”
Ryker waggled his eyebrows back at me, as if he took my meaning. I hid my grin, ducking my head, but I didn’t miss Jacob rolling his eyes.
As we headed up the stairs, I said to Levi, “I wonder if Jacob ever feels left out. Maybe he’ll get lucky and the fourth will hate my guts. Then he won’t be alone.”
“Yeah,” Levi said. He pushed open the door to his room for me. “Hates your guts. That’s why he’s taking you out tomorrow. Sure.”
I pulled a face. “I think he’s just competitive.”
Levi threw himself onto the bed and pulled a pillow over his face. “Whatever you want to tell yourself, Ellis. And whatever he wants to tell you. I don’t buy it.”
I chewed on my lower lip, standing at the foot of the bed. Levi’s tall, powerful frame was sprawled across the bed, but I couldn’t see his face under the navy blue pillow. He was being weird now too. Boys were always being weird. Even the ones who could be trusted to slay poltergeists and protect the living could not be trusted to talk about their feelings.
I wanted to ask him if he was jealous, but like I’d just told Ryker, cocky wasn’t cute. We might all be fated to want each other—maybe even to love each other—but that didn’t make human relationships easy.
I slipped my heels off and tossed them into Levi’s closet; it was a little bit of sparkle and femininity alongside the steel-toed boots and boxes of ammo. Then I curled up on the bed, pushing my head into his pillow so I could nestle my head on his shoulder.
He put his arm around me automatically, his big bicep wrapped around my shoulders.
I reached up to tug at the corner of the cotton pillowcase. “It’s weird not being able to see your face. You could be anyone under there.”
“Yeah, I guess I could be.”
I sighed. He was exasperating me, all of a sudden. We’d had such a fun night together. In the theater, he’d yawned and then stretched his arm out behind my seat back, all of it so exaggerated that I knew he was teasing me on purpose, and I’d breathed in the scent of his cologne and leaned into his shoulder. It was the first time a boy had ever taken me to the real theater, and to a fancy dinner too, where we’d eaten so much Italian food and gelato that I was still stuffed. It had been perfect.
And now here he was, being a bear. A jealous bear.
As if it were easy for me to be the girl at the center of a harem. I didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. And these boys were complicated.
I pushed my face under the pillow too, the world going navy blue, until my nose bumped against his. This close up, his handsome face was nothing but a blur of tan skin and blue eyes.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll join you down here. We can be anybody together.”
“Would you rather be someone else?” he asked.
“Sometimes,” I said. That was the truth. Nothing about my life had been easy, not for a long time, not since my sister died. “But then I would miss out on you and Ryker and that jerkface down there. It’s an interesting life.”
I nuzzled my nose against his, hoping to find his lips with mine. I felt him shift slightly towards me, his hand sliding down to my hip, holding me against him.
“I think you should have a happy life, pretty girl,” he said.
“I’m happy right now.”
“You are?”
The words were a soft breath against my lips.
His lower lip touched mine, tentatively.
“I am,” I said. “And I’m getting happier.”
Our lips met. His lower lip was soft, cool, and his mouth still tasted faintly of peppermint gelato and chocolate and coffee.
I ran the tip of my tongue over the inside of his upper lip. His lips parted, inviting me in. Instead, I kissed his lower lip again, then pulled away, rolling over onto my back. I looked up at the bright white ceiling above.
“Sorry,” I said. “I can’t kiss you seriously under a pillow.”
He sat up on elbow, tossing the pillow across me to the floor. “I never liked that pillow anyway.”
His lips met mine again, and this time, I didn’t pull away. I threw my leg over his jeans-covered legs, feeling a thrum of desire for him. He grinned as I pressed myself up against his thigh. “I wonder if there’s anything I could do to make you even happier.”
“I believe there is,” I said thoughtfully, as if I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.
Levi’s hand slid up the hem of my dress, up my thigh, and he did put his finger on it. I gasped with surprise and with the thrum of pleasure at how confidently he had reached for me. His thumb brushed steadily over my clit, and even through my underwear, he sent a wave of pleasure flooding through me.
“All right,” I said, pushing his arm
away, struggling up on his pillows. “I’m going to need you to take off that completely unnecessary shirt. That shirt is definitely getting in the way of my happiness.”
He grinned, unbuttoning his button-down shirt with slow deliberation. I pursed my lips to one side, exasperated, as his broad pecs and then those chiseled abs came into sight, two hard-edged abs at each button. Finally he pushed the last button through, but he showed no inclination to take his shirt off entirely, and I sat forward to push it down impatiently off his shoulders.
He finally shook the shirt off one muscular forearm, and grabbed the hem of the dress he’d just bought me like he might tear it off my body.
“Easy on the fabric,” I scolded teasingly as he tugged me towards him, pulling the dress hem hand-over-hand. “This was expensive.”
“I’ll buy you a new one,” he growled. So I had to quickly yank it off over my head, for the sake of the dress, of course. I ran my fingers over the leather of his belt, the metal buckle cool under my fingertips. As I struggled to get his pants off, he leaned forward, sliding a finger under the waistband of my panties with dangerous intent. This man was a hazard to textiles.
Our bodies began to move together, he pumping into me rhythmically, slow at first, going deep and then pulling out until his tip brushed me again and then he filled me. I wrapped my legs around him, pulling him in tight, and he began to make shorter, faster pumps. He reached up to tweak my nipple, then caress it, the rough touch of his palm after he teased my nipple a mix of pain and pleasure that made me squeeze my thighs tight around him. Having Levi between my legs felt warm and solid and satisfying. I kissed his shoulder, wanting him to know how much I liked this. His shoulders were broad and faintly freckled.
I felt my legs begin to ache with restlessness, my toes curling, as my pleasure flamed into the beginning of an orgasm. I felt like the only thing that would soothe my sudden restlessness was even more of him. I dug my fingers into the meat of his shoulders, my back arching against the bed, and murmured, “Faster.”
He began to pump harder and faster into me, and one of my hands roamed down to explore his hard and narrow hipbones, the muscular curve of his ass. Everything about him felt so good. Then my orgasm started to build in waves of heat and pleasure, my face growing hot, the sensation so strong that even though it was good, I could hardly bear it. I hung onto his shoulders, buried my face against his smooth and hard pecs, and let myself come in waves in that intimate position. He stopped, shuddering with his own orgasm, his face against my neck and hair.
