Death's Lover

by Marie Hall

  Thirty minutes later she threw some bills at the cabby and got out, staring at the brick-faced Victorian home with wide-eyed wonder.

  “He lives here?” She could hardly believe it.

  It was beautiful. Classic.

  Two-story home in the gothic style. Filigree black railing circled the top of the house. Stone gargoyles facing the street and sitting on the porch, their mouths open in wide Os, brows lowered and faces twisted into a glower. She shivered and rubbed her hands down her arms. Just the type of place she’d imagine a vampire living in. A wild storm, jagged lightning piercing the sky against a black backdrop, was the only thing missing to make this place really have that creepy, perfect vibe.

  She glanced up and down the block. Pink and yellow azalea bushes lined the steep sidewalk. Elms, maples, oaks, and a variety of other trees littered the area. This was so different from the norm. San Francisco was pretty much one house or shop on top of another as far as the distant horizon. Baker Street was suburbia in the big city. Strange that in all her years she’d never been down this way. It really was beautiful.

  She bit her lip, adjusted her top with nervous fingers, and walked forward. Now that she was here she wasn’t exactly sure what to say. This was going to look really weird no matter how she approached it.

  Eve walked up to the door, hand poised and ready to knock. She didn’t see any lights on. He’s probably not even here.

  “No chickening out,” she whispered.

  At the least he deserved an explanation for yesterday.

  Taking a deep breath she shook her hands and shoulders, psyching herself up. “Okay, okay. I can do this. I am woman, hear me roar.”

  Oh, that was really stupid.

  She ran cold fingers over her face and nodded. Nerves twisted her gut in knots and threatened to make her sick. “Okay. One. Two. Three…”

  The door flew open and she yelped, startled to see Cian headed out.

  His blue gaze widened then narrowed. He looked from side to side and frowned. “Eve?”

  Words left her. She was drawing such a serious blank it was a crime. Her hand was still fisted and poised to knock. She slowly brought it back down to her side.

  This was mortifying in the extreme and not the entrance she’d hoped to make, that was for sure.

  “What are you doing here?”

  She gave a crooked grin. Now was as good a time as any to reassert herself. Straightening her back, she decided to face this head-on rather than become the cowardly mouse. “I came to find you, Cian.”

  He lifted a brow, confusion glittering in his eyes.

  She took that moment to study him. Goddess, but he looked good. White button-down shirt tapering to his broad chest, blue jeans fitting snug on his thighs. Not so tight as to reveal the package, but definitely enough to outline the smooth, firm muscle of his legs. That dark and light hair and those blue eyes. Perfection.

  Yeowza!

  He stepped back, ushering with his arm for her to enter. He still looked as confused as ever, but at least he was gentleman enough not to let her flounder on the stoop forever. The man was classy, she had to give him that. Relieved that he hadn’t decided to slam the door in her face, she leaned in and kissed his cheek. Well, she’d intended to kiss it, but at the last second he turned and their lips wound up meeting. Just that brief contact sent heat zipping down her spine and she was smug enough to enjoy seeing his eyes widen in response. The man wanted her, even though he might not be ready to admit it. He was as helpless to this thing happening between them as she was.

  Clearing his throat, he walked toward the kitchen area as if he needed space. She might have been hurt by his abrupt departure if it weren’t for the fact that she was feeling a little frazzled herself.

  Her eyes widened the deeper they went into the house. Polished, hardwood floors. Bearskin rugs, boulder-style fireplace in the living room. Leather furniture of the deepest brown, mahogany entertainment center. Plasma-screen TV on the wall. “Loaded” did not even begin to describe this house. It was a bachelor’s paradise.

  The kitchen was gorgeous, with the same polished floors, but all the electrical appliances were a futuristic silver—stove, fridge, even the toaster. The countertops were black marble.

  “Take a seat.” He pointed to the breakfast nook. She slid into the diner-style table.

  “Want something to drink?” he asked and turned toward the refrigerator, opening the door.

  He was humming with curiosity. It was obvious in the tense lines of his shoulders.

  “Got OJ?” She shrugged.

  “I think so.” He reached in.

  From out of nowhere, lancing spikes of pain arced down her skull. She winced, squeezing her eyes shut as fire raced through her body.

  The same thing that had happened the other day was happening again, and this time returning with a vengeance. Eve winced, pressing her fingertips to her temples. It was like somebody was pressing her head from both sides. Pressure was building. Tears filled her eyes. This headache was worse. Much worse.

  Like breaking a leg, puncturing a lung, and finding out you had cancer all at the same time, worse.

  “Eve!” Cian grabbed her shoulders. “What’s wrong?”

  The timbre of his words echoed in her head like the gong of bells. Her limbs turned sluggish as fog crept over her vision, and then there was black.

  * * *

  Cian kept applying a wet towel to her forehead. The slithering madness inside him had snapped at his seeing her slump in her seat. Fear bubbled through his veins.

  He still trembled from the aftereffects of so much psychic energy being blasted at him. It had been so powerful he’d dropped to his knees in agony and could still taste the adrenaline on his tongue. The incessant pounding in his skull was nothing compared to the fire stabbing through his brain earlier. Once she’d passed out, all the symptoms had faded; still, it scared him.

  He glanced at her, his heart in his throat. She was pale white, her lips a light shade of blue. It was like the mark of death, but her pulse was strong. He couldn’t make sense of it.

  Had she been suffering with those long? He ran a worried hand across her brow. She wasn’t feverish.

  A healthy glow was settling back into her cheeks. He closed his eyes, his nerves unsteady and his hands shaking. Relief was a soothing balm to his tormented mind.

  Gently he picked her up and walked her to the guest bedroom, which, thankfully, had a bed. He adjusted the pillows. Long black hair fell like shadow against the cream pillowcase.

  “Lass, can you hear me?” he asked in a soothing, rocking tone. He framed her face in his hands, searching her for any sign that she was coming to.

  A muscle in her cheek twitched.

  “Wake up. Come on.”

  She moaned.

  “Eve.” He grabbed her hand and brought it to his whiskered cheek, expelling a long breath.

  Her lashes fluttered and then slowly she opened her eyes, the golden depths bright with unshed tears. “What the hell happened?” she croaked.

  “You passed out.”

  She wrinkled her brows. “What? When?”

  “Don’t you remember? Just a second ago.” At her blank stare he rushed on. “Eve, you were projecting so hard I nearly joined you.”

  She sat up, bringing a hand to her forehead.

  “I’m not sure moving is the best thing for you right now.” He held her around the waist, trying to draw her back down.

  “Cian, I don’t know what happened, but I feel fine now.”

  He frowned. “How is this possible? Don’t you remember the headache in the kitchen just a second ago?” Surely she couldn’t have forgotten that.

  She gave him a weak smile and pushed her hand against his chest, freeing herself to sit up. “I, ah…” Her gaze shifted around the room, confusion settling like a mask on her features. Exhaling sharply, she looked to him. “Last thing I remember is you asking me what kind of drink I’d like, and then it’s pretty much blank fro
m there.”

  Narrowing his eyes, he studied her. Was she lying? Would she even have a reason to? But there was no denying the honesty in her golden gaze. She really didn’t remember.

  This wasn’t normal. People didn’t go from near death one second to looking perfectly healthy and fine the next. “How do you feel now?”

  She shrugged, a crooked grin on her face. “I feel fine. Never better actually. Little confused, to be honest, but otherwise…”

  He gripped her shoulders, forcing her to stare at him. Being death had its advantages. Knowing what afflicted a spirit for one. Be it human, plant, or otherwise. All he’d have to do was pass someone on the street and he’d know immediately if they suffered a life-threatening disease. A physical manifestation of the malady would present itself. The low throb of cancer eating away at organs, or the rush of HIV through blood.

  The sharp pains Eve had experienced made him scared that it could be a tumor, something pressing against her skull. All the symptoms fit.

  Heart hammering in his chest he lifted a gloved hand and ran it along her head, feeling not for the hair beneath but the gentle hum of disease. He could hardly swallow around the lump in his throat.

  Nothing.

  No hum. No betraying vibration. Silence.

  His nostrils flared, even more confused than ever before. With the exception of what had happened, Eve was as healthy as an immortal. No mortal sickness lay waste to her body.

  Her eyes were like wide saucers in her face. “Cian, what are you doing?”

  He dropped his hands. “I feel like I should take you to the hospital.”

  She gave a tiny shake of her head. “I really feel fine. I doubt they’d find anything. I mean”—she threw out her arms—“do I look sick?”

  “Well, no…” He couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t right, but neither could he put a finger on what that something might be. For the first time in a long time, he felt helpless. Not a feeling he relished where Eve’s safety was concerned. “Has this ever happened before?”

  “Seeing as how I don’t even remember this ever happening, I can honestly say no.” She bit her lip, a sultry gleam filling her eyes. “You’re cute when you do that.”

  Her words were so unexpected he couldn’t stop himself from smiling. Warmth shot through him at her words. “What?”

  “That. Worrying about me the way you do. It’s cute.” She smiled that crooked smile of hers.

  He really wanted to get to the bottom of whatever that was, but she seemed fine and reluctant to keep talking about it. What else was there for him to do but move on? Obviously she was fine; maybe it was some quirk of the witch he was unaware of. So he took a deep breath and tried not to think about how his heart had nearly stopped in its tracks.

  Cian stood and walked to the door. “Yeah, well, what can I say?”

  She lay back down on the bed, pulling a pillow under her cheek and smiling. This tiny woman was lying in the center of a massive bed. And yet the bed seemed dwarfed by the size of her personality. From the moment she’d entered the house, it was like she shared a part of her soul with the home, blotting out the shadows and darkness, filling the space with her light.

  He swallowed.

  Nothing had ever looked so right or made him feel so warm.

  “I guess, umm…” She gazed at him, a question in her eyes. Whether he wanted her to stay or go.

  “Orange juice, right?”

  That endearing smile lit her features again, erasing the strain from her brows. She nodded, and he turned to get it, his heart an aching thing in his chest. Seeing her here, in this house, felt so right. Natural. These emotions she brought out in him sometimes worried him, because with each passing hour he got to know her, the more he needed her.

  The reasons for her coming and how she’d found him in the first place crowded his thoughts with each footstep.

  Chapter 20

  It was still dark out when Even opened her eyes and leaned back against the pillows, frowning and thinking. Had she really blacked out the way Cian had said? It was probably true; there was a chunk of time just gone. Which was sort of frightening.

  Last things she recalled were sitting at his kitchen table and then waking up on his bed. She worried her bottom lip. Her thoughts a little fuzzy, lethargy began to creep into her limbs. Due to the nightmares, she hadn’t gotten much sleep. What was it about Cian that made her feel so safe? Despite the fear she’d suffered at home, all she wanted to do now was draw the sheets over her head and fall asleep.

  She shifted and stared out of the open bay window, inhaling the fresh sea air wafting through.

  The other morning she’d suffered a terrible headache, but it was nothing serious. It seemed the same had happened again tonight, only this time coupled with a complete lapse in memory. Truth was she felt a-OK aside from the sleepiness.

  She blew out a breath. How weird that she couldn’t remember. Was he exaggerating what happened? She rubbed her temple. There wasn’t even an aftereffect of lingering pain. If it’d been that bad, shouldn’t she have recalled something?

  Footsteps alerted her to Cian’s presence seconds before he entered the room. Worries fled at the sight of him carrying a serving tray with a tall glass of orange juice and a plate of toast. All that was missing was a cute little vase with a rose inside it.

  She laughed and sat up, giving him room to set the tray across her lap. “You didn’t need to do all this.”

  There were tiny saucers filled with a variety of jams and a small tab of butter.

  “Well”—his gravelly voice rolled through her veins—“after what happened, I figured putting something in your stomach couldn’t hurt.”

  She smiled and buttered her toast. “You sure do own a lot of food for a vampire. I can’t understand how the sight of this stuff doesn’t turn your stomach.”

  “Yeah.” He snorted.

  The flavor of sourdough burst inside her mouth with the first bite. “Oh,” she moaned, “this is so good.”

  He grinned and sat on the edge of the bed. “Glad you like it.”

  Eve devoured the toast and drank more than half of the orange juice before she spoke again. She pushed the tray aside and sighed, placing her hand over her stomach. “Jeez, I just realized that’s the first thing I ate all day. Thanks, I really needed that.”

  Now that she’d eaten, she was really starting to feel sluggish, and his bed was so comfortable, the comforter thick and plush. All she wanted to do was kick off her shoes, curl into him, and fall asleep.

  “So, how’d you find this place?”

  “Right”—she rolled the r—“I kinda forgot all about that, didn’t I?”

  He cocked his head, twisting his lips.

  Now came the part that she’d dreaded. Her stomach knotted all over again. “Truth is, after I totally wigged out on you at the beach yesterday…”

  “Hmm”—he nodded—“what was that all about? I thought we were having a good time.”

  The guy didn’t pull punches. Blunt but honest, at least he didn’t beat around the bush or pretend like he didn’t know what she was talking about. She admired him all the more for it.

  “We were. I was.” She sighed and gave an apologetic shrug. “This is so hard to say without sounding totally weird.”

  She couldn’t look at the open confusion in his deep blues anymore. It was just making her too nervous. So she allowed her gaze to roam the room, coming to rest on the burnished cherrywood armoire. “Two years ago I lost someone really dear to me. And it’s crazy, but in that moment I got so carried away”—she paused, taking a deep breath—“and, I dunno…I just panicked.”

  He grabbed her cold hands, warming them. She looked at him. His touch seemed to fill that empty space inside her, like the seamless joining of two souls.

  She drowned in his bottomless eyes. He wasn’t judging her but comforting, and she felt herself falling deeper and harder. Her heart gave a tiny jerk.

  “You still didn’t t
ell me how you found this place.”

  His fingers slowly stroked the small of her back. It felt good, and she relaxed into his touch.

  “That’s it? You’re not pissed at me for acting like such an idiot?”

  He kissed her knuckle and said, “Who am I to judge?”

  The movement of his firm lips against her flesh made her tingle, and desire coursed a turbulent path down her body, making her ache low in her gut, her nipples tightening into hard, painful buds.

  She shook her head and patted the spot on the bed next to her. She hardly knew him and yet it felt like they’d known each other for years. There was something very calming about that.

  “My sisters forced me to do a séance.”

  A grin split his face.

  She rolled her eyes. “I swear I’m not a stalker, but you never gave me your number or address, and I wanted to find you and tell you that…I was sorry.”

  He crawled next to her, draping his arm around her shoulders and pulling her close. “It’s okay. I am glad you came.”

  Stomach fluttering at the tenderness in his voice, she laid her head on his chest. The steady beat of his heart, a song in her ears. The soapy scent of his body filled her senses. She sighed. This was so nice, so perfect.

  With a flick of his wrist, Cian turned off the lights, and several candles around the room burst to life. A soft golden glow filled the room.

  “This is nice,” she murmured, closing her eyes. Sleep crowded her mind, becoming harder to ignore.

  “Eve.”

  “Hmm?” She could stay like this forever.

  “Do you want to stay the night?” His voice was a soft whisper.

  A small thrill raced down her spine, and she nodded, nuzzling his chest with tiny moans until she finally fell asleep.

  * * *

  He watched her. It seemed that was all he could do anymore. In repose she reminded him of a sylph. Angelic and ethereal. Reaching out, he touched the sable polish of her hair. It was silky soft, and he rubbed a strand between his fingers.