“How very altruistic of you,” I responded dryly.
He chuckled darkly and swiveled his head toward me, standing to full height in the process. The sound of his pleasure raised goose bumps across my arms. “Altruism has nothing to do with it. Do you know what my specialty was before I met you?”
“Volunteering at local animal shelters? Spreading the message of peace and love through song and dance? Kissing babies and handing out free hugs everywhere you went? I don’t know.”
He reminisced without hearing me. “I miss those days, being free from consequence. Well, mostly free.” He sounded angry about the ‘mostly’ part.
The man before him whimpered from his wounds. From what I could see, there were several cuts along his face and arms. When Gavin heard the man’s soft cries, he smiled wickedly. He started to turn back toward the mugger.
“Wait!” I shouted.
I couldn’t let this continue. He was going to satisfy all those dark cravings that were bottled up while comatose. When he was done with this guy, he’d just move on to other victims, innocent or not. I saw it in that look.
He paused at my outburst but then ignored me to return to his prey. As he turned his back to me, I took the opening. Diving low, I tucked my head and hooked his waist, shouldering him to the side. We landed twenty feet away from the mugger, who wasted no time scurrying off into the night.
Gavin tried shoving me aside to run after him, but I punched him hard enough to break his nose. Redirecting his anger was my only chance to keep him from hurting others. I had to draw him far enough away from civilization so he would be free to release it in a more controlled environment.
He growled in frustration. “I can’t hurt you. It would hurt me, so you need to let me go now before I stop caring about survival.”
Ouch.
I did not like the dark side of Gavin. He was an asshole.
And he was getting away. Damn, he was squirrely when he wanted to be.
When I caught up to him in another alley two blocks away, he had the same mugger at his mercy. Gavin held the man by his neck with his head lowered and eyes pinned directly on me. The corner of his mouth lifted, and my fists clenched at my sides, wanting nothing more than to punch the smugness right off his face. Like a cobra, he attacked the man’s neck before I could move.
When I did, he was ready. I rushed him, but with his free hand he struck out, shoving me back twenty feet into a nearby brick wall. I dropped and landed agilely on my feet.
Gavin lifted his head when I straightened, and I saw the man’s eyes droop, his body swaying with weakness. I threw my stake aside and held my hands out in surrender.
“Stop! Let him go, and you can have me.”
He laughed but released the mugger, who fell to the ground. He could have easily snapped the guy’s neck, but he didn’t. And I knew why. A part of his conscience was still alive and kicking in there somewhere. His soul wasn’t having his defiance. Maybe that was the trigger. I had to get him to stand off against his purpose to get him to remember. Which was risky for me, considering that going against his purpose would involve killing me. I had to take that chance.
Switching tactics, I reverted to the old taunting method I loved so much. “Come on. Humans break too quickly. Where’s the fun in that? You want to make it last? I promise to put up a good fight.”
I had his full attention now and walked up to him, toe to toe. Staring into those black eyes, I cringed, missing the beautiful glacial blue. But I saw hunger there. The idea of releasing his anger, without holding back, tempted him. I coaxed him further with blunt persuasion. Meaning, I punched him again. And a few more times for good measure.
“You think you could take me, Mr. West? You may have my borrowed strength running through your veins, but I can still kick your ass.” It couldn’t hurt to appeal to the Shadowmarked side’s lust for power and superiority. They all had that in common.
Leaping over him, I gave him one more incentive to follow and prayed he went for the bait. “Catch me, if you think you’re fast enough to keep up.”
I shoved off, cracking pavement underneath my boot. Ignoring the exhaustion boring down on my lifeless veins, I pushed as hard as I could go. My top speeds became agonizing, but the rush they offered fueled me as much as any blood type could.
At first, I didn’t feel him giving chase. Worry slowed me to half speed, and I searched my surroundings. The city was now behind me, but still close. I sprinted through a suburban neighborhood and stopped when I came to the edge of a forest.
“Come on, where are you?” I whispered into the now static early morning hours.
“Waiting for you,” he called from ten yards behind me.
I startled at his unannounced approach and whipped around to face him. My vision adjusted to the dark, and I glimpsed his sinister figure, barely distinguishable from the shadows. How did he sneak past me without me feeling him?
The question must have been written all over my face.
“That little connection of ours isn’t so strong right now, is it? Guess it doesn’t work as well in the dark.”
I nodded in understanding. He wasn’t referring to the low lighting. It was the Daymarked blood that enabled our connection. Even with all my blood running through him, he was operating on the darker, Shadowmarked blood. I couldn’t sense him that well anymore. If I could just find that part of him, of Gavin, and bring it out of the shadows, I knew he’d come back to me. But I wasn’t sure I wanted to see how much worse those dark parts of him could be.
“You sure you want to do this, Lucille?”
Nope.
“Absolutely.” I moved into the unlit forest.
He backed away slowly, beckoning me forward with a dare. His movements were predatory and could be considered sensual if I hadn’t looked up into his eyes.
He grinned with gleeful malice. I was witnessing a side of Gavin that’s been dormant since he regained his soul. His eyes were jet black, and all traces of tenderness were wiped clean off his face. His broad shoulders and arms were tensed, and I could see every line and curve through his worn shirt. He was in attack mode. Only, I was his target this time. His eyes made dark promises, different than the ones I was used to seeing there.
Yep. Gavin has officially checked out. Enter Gavin’s demon. Apparently, someone wasn’t paying attention in Meditation 101. After all this time, Wilhem Faust never learned to become one with his inner demon. Was it wrong that I kind of wanted to become one with it right now?
Sure, this side of him was a bit sociopathic and homicidal, but it was still really freaking sexy.
Bad Lucy. Gavin needs your help, not your indecent thoughts.
“I can tell you’re holding out on me. Don’t be shy, Gavin. I don’t bite.”
“Why, Ms. Masters, are you suggesting domestic violence to liven things up in our relationship?” His voice was cold and detached.
I hated it.
“Oh, honey, I’m simply making the same offer to you I do with any other vampire I face. You can try to hurt me. Believe me, if I thought for a second any real harm would come to me, I wouldn’t have suggested it. But let’s be honest, darling, you know who the bigger badass in the relationship is.”
“Shall we put that to the test, baby?”
The way he emphasized the word baby reminded me of how Shane taunted me, and I no longer liked it. All the happiness I once felt from hearing it shriveled up and turned to dust. I never wanted him to call me that again.
He charged, and I followed suit. We crashed together and ended up tangled on the ground. He rolled on top of me and flung his fist toward me. I bucked him forward, throwing him off balance. He swayed forward, above my head, and I kneed the back of his thigh while grabbing hold of his sides and shoving him farther over me.
As he tucked and rolled, I sat up and turned toward him in a ready crouch. “Well, that didn’t go as you planned. Maybe you could try to boss me around some more, since that worked so splendidly for you in th
e past.”
He laughed menacingly. “Are you trying to reach me, Lucille? Maybe spark some fond memories?”
“Possibly.”
“It won’t work.”
“Why did you go after the man who smelled like me?”
“Just finishing what you couldn’t.”
Liar.
My teeth grinded together and my bottom lip actually trembled from holding my tongue. When my mouth lifted into a snarl, I checked myself. My Gavin was still in there somewhere. A part of him was still trying to protect me. I just had to appeal to that part.
He lunged for me, and I spin-kicked him in the face. It wasn’t enough force to knock him back, and before my foot touched the ground, his hand found the back of my other leg and yanked it out from under me.
I went down on my back and he moved over me. Grabbing me by the arm, he ripped it out of socket as he pulled me to my feet. A swift curse escaped me. It hurt like hell, but the healing was just as painful.
My shoulder snapped back into place roughly, but just as quickly, I was shoved against a mature pine tree wider than Gavin’s side-by-side refrigerator in the penthouse. My arms were pinned above my head, not helping the pain in the least.
“I thought you said this would be a good fight, Lucille. I’m still waiting for you to make it worth my while.”
He was so close that all I could smell was him. I tried blocking it out but failed miserably. My body reacted by seeking out his. There was no shame in admitting I wanted him even now. I loved him and would always seek closeness.
He smirked but there was no light to it. Just a void. He held my arms up with one of his hands while the other slowly skimmed down my body.
“Maybe I’ll have to make my own good times,” he whispered in my ear seductively.
My mouth parted over a weighted breath. He ran a heavy hand down my neck to my collarbone and further south, stopping in certain places that insulted the better memories attached to his touch.
“Don’t you miss this, baby? What do you say we have some fun before we get to the killing, yeah? I’ve never tasted Daymarked before. I used to have all kinds of fun with the female Shadowmarked population.”
The mention of his past hookups stung like a bucket of boiling water to the face, but I wasn’t ashamed of my love, and that was the sick part of this. I knew this was just a form of torture to him, but I’ve been deprived of his touch for too long. Even though he shut his feelings off, I couldn’t. I missed this. My body really missed his hands, as evident in the way I arched toward them.
He smiled wickedly just before striking. He took another bite out of my neck. I screamed out, more in heartache than from the fire thrashing up and down my torn flesh. He pulled back an inch and chuckled against my skin. His tongue darted out to lick the remaining blood, chasing the closing wound.
“Mmm, you taste even better now that you’ve fully turned, baby. So much power.”
When he looked down to see my disgust, he played the part of evil villain well. He loomed over me, laughing maniacally with my blood coating his lips and dripping down his neck, and a new kind of panic seized me. It wasn’t a fear I was accustomed to. It wasn’t the fear for my own life, but a heart wrenching pain of imagining a life without Gavin. The startling possibility of having to pull the plug on him nearly crippled me. What if he was beyond saving?
Fuck that. If he came back from this kind of darkness once, I was making damn sure he’d do it again. Forget the plug, I’d revive him myself.
His hand moved down to my hip, curving over it and rounding over my ass. Two fingers slipped into my back pocket, and my eyes widened in realization. His fingers found my folding knife, but when I struggled to break free, he pushed his weight into me. It was like getting past a three-foot thick steel wall.
“Ah, ah, ah,” he scolded. “Not so fast. We’re just getting started with the good times, baby.”
Again, with that word. Where there was once love and adoration, it now sparked revulsion.
“Not exactly the good times I remember. You used to fight for me, not against me.”
He smiled forebodingly. “Do you want to know what my weapon of choice was for playing with humans?”
The sound of my knife being flicked open sent chills down my spine. He brought it up to run the tip from my temple to my jaw.
“Knives are perfect for inflicting superficial wounds. Blood is slow to drain, too slow to be fatal, but enough to cause pain and suffering, a lasting impression.”
“And why would you want to do that if you couldn’t kill them?”
He paused to look me in the eyes but that single look conveyed only mystery. So we were back to those unanswered questions and non-answers I hated so much?
He continued like I hadn’t spoken. “I wonder how deep I’d have to go to make you suffer.”
“You kill me, you die.”
“That’s why I’m just going to play with you. For now.”
He traced the tip of the knife back up my nose to my forehead. I never took my eyes off of his. Then, a scorching pain lit up the side of my face.
Son of a bitch!
I winced and it hurt even worse. My eyes had squeezed shut against the welling tears, so I didn’t see when Gavin released me, only felt his weight lifted. I almost fell forward with its sudden loss.
My eyes shot open to find him hunched over and grabbing his head. A loud curse burst out of him. As it did, I felt it again, the tell tale sign of slight vertigo. I was feeling what he felt, and what I felt was a flurry of unrelated emotions. There was rage and darkness but also bits of regret and longing, followed by brief signs of joy.
The connection closed just as quickly as it opened, and he stood up straight with murderous intent. I knew that look. It was desperation. The dark part of him recognized its reign was almost over. He ran at me, and my fist connected with his jaw in a loud crunching sound.
“I know you’re in there, Gavin. You can’t hurt me. You won’t. I know you’re fighting your way back to me.”
He paused, and I swore I saw real emotion flicker over that stone façade. “You’re only seeing what you want to see.”
“And you’re scared of what I see.”
He rushed me again and knocked the wind out of me with a gut punch, but I gripped his wrist and spun, my back to his front. I elbowed him in the face with my other arm and yanked on the wrist I still held, flipping him over my back. He landed with a thundering boom, shaking snow loose from the surrounding trees.
He shot back to his feet, dodging my foot to his face. He challenged me at every turn, because it was difficult besting a man who knew your every move. I had to use each recently acquired skill learned at Wolf Creek Manor to keep him on his toes, but it was still so evenly matched between us that no real headway could be made.
I used to be on the offensive, attacking everything in my path, but as my enemies evolved, I had to learn how to think in defensive terms. Studying his finite muscle twitches became my only way to avoid jabs to my head and a knee to my midsection. I had to be light on my feet and patiently wait for any opening he offered. But when I struck out of habit, he used the opening I created to deliver his own blow.
This went on for what felt like hours, and as the sun began to break free of the horizon, I realized how tired my body was. It also hadn’t escaped me how lazy his punches had gotten either. When I studied his face for signs of fatigue, I caught the thinnest sliver of white on the outer edges of his eyes. It was working. His bottled aggression was waning.
“What’s the matter, darling? Are you getting tired? We could just end this now and go back to the apartment to cuddle.”
He snarled, but I used the distraction to kick him into a massive Spruce about twenty feet away. It cracked like lightning and sent more snow drifting to the frozen ground below.
He launched himself at me and managed to hook me in a tackle. We spun through the air but landed roughly with him coming up on top. He pinned me to the snow packed groun
d. With my free hand, I reached for him.
He tried tucking his chin to his shoulder when he saw my intent, but I wasn’t having that. Grabbing a firm hold of his neck, I leaned into him to whisper in his ear, delivering my last line of defense.
“Don’t worry, Gavin. I can handle you. You know I’m the only one who can.”
Seconds ticked by as I prayed the memories would reach him.
He went rigid in my arms and just as he reared back to strike, I saw the blackness in his eyes rapidly recede. He brought his fist down, and I turned my head away from the shattering impact.
Except, it never came.
The ground by my head shook and I twisted, cracking one eye open to see his balled fist an inch from my face. When I chanced a peek at him, he was breathing heavily and his teeth were clenched shut in the middle of some internal struggle. His eyes met mine, and the darkness faded completely. He gave me a tight smile.
His next words brought tears of relief to my eyes. “Yes, you do know how to handle me. Missed you, gorgeous.”
“Missed you too, Mr. West.”
“Thank you for—”
I brought my fingers to his mouth to silence him.
“No need. I’d do anything to bring you back to me.”
He kissed me roughly and it felt like ages since my lips felt this good. They missed him too. I knew there were things in Gavin’s past we would need to discuss one of these days, especially if his old demons were going to be making reappearances from time to time. But for now, I just needed a hug from my boyfriend. And maybe a quick make out session. One that didn’t result in those demons reappearing, of course.
I pulled away to look up at him, and what I saw brought a fresh round of tears to my eyes. Our eyes met, and I saw my home, my future, and my unconditional love shining back at me. I was sick of holding back from him.
“Gavin, I—”
He saw the intent in my eyes and covered my mouth, but I yanked his hand away.
“No.” I shook my head, and his eyes gave way to acceptance. This was too big to keep inside, and he knew it.
“I love you, Gavin. And I don’t care who knows it, because I’m not hiding it anymore, especially not from you.”
Beautiful Eternity (The Bloodmarked Trilogy Book 3) Page 4
