Embrace of the Damned

by Bast, Anya

  Biker Guy swung off the cycle, leaving the admittedly beautiful thing blocking her way, and stalked toward her, long worn leather coat trailing behind him like the wings of a fallen angel. He walked with anger set into his shoulders and a hint of menace and easy arrogance in his swagger. That anger made his body seem like it would be hot to the touch, as if he identified so strongly with rage that it affected him physically.

  She hoped his eyes didn’t bleed black. She’d have a heart attack and save everyone the trouble of having to kill her.

  “You!” he bellowed through the window. She jumped at the commanding sound of his voice.

  “I don’t know you,” she said in a shaky voice, glancing at him, then moving her gaze to fix on the cycle blocking her path. “Move your bike. I gotta go.”

  “No.” He paused. “Roll down the window.” Absently, she noticed he spoke with an odd accent she couldn’t place.

  Jessa took a deep breath and tried her mojo—funneling all of it she possibly could at the man. She didn’t know exactly how it worked, why she could do it, or really how she was even able to do it, but if she concentrated hard enough, she could make people bend to her will. Sort of like a Jedi mind trick—This is not the woman you’re interested in. Move away from the vehicle.

  The man lifted his brows. “Roll down the window,” he repeated, slower this time, as if she were an idiot.

  Damn it! Why wasn’t it working?

  When she remained still and unresponsive, completely freaked out and unmoving, he tapped the glass. With effort, she peeled her fingers off the steering wheel and rolled down her window a crack. She glanced up at him. God, he was stunning. Sculpted, strong jaw; full lips that compelled a girl to want to suck on them; deep, oddly expressive brown eyes.

  “Uh, thanks … for your help. I appreciate it.” She looked at his motorcycle. “Really. I have to go now. Can you move that, please?”

  “Why was he targeting you?” The man’s voice was deep and rough, like he didn’t use it very much—like honey and gravel.

  “Who? That guy back there? Listen, I’m still processing all that, okay? I have no idea who or what he was, let alone what he wanted to do with me.” She set her jaw. Savior or not, gorgeous or not, this man was starting to piss her off. “Look, buddy, I’m all out of pepper spray, but I’m sitting in a car and I’m not afraid to use it.” She looked meaningfully at the shiny, expensive Harley blocking her path.

  His gaze traveled over her, catching on the painful, damaged sections of her skin. “You need healing.”

  “Yeah. I’ll go to the hos—”

  He reached out and pulled her car door off the hinges, then threw it aside as if it weighed nothing.

  “No. Just no.” Jessa shook her head and scrambled into the passenger side. “No, okay? No.” She opened the passenger-side door and prepared to run.

  But he was there, blocking her path. “You don’t understand. Where there is one of those things, there are more. You are in danger.”

  The man radiated a palpable aura of menace as he loomed over her. She gave him an up and down sweep of her gaze. He still had ice in his hair. “Clearly.”

  “You’re not in danger from me.”

  “And my father was the Easter Bunny.”

  He grabbed her wrist, right below one of the light gray expanses of skin; the area had the imprint of Fanged Thing’s fingers on it, as though she’d been marked with frostbite by his skin touching hers. She yelped.

  The man laid his hand over the injury and it warmed immediately. When he lifted his fingers, her skin was back to its regular peachy tan color.

  Jessa took a step back, her eyes wide. “I didn’t just see that. I didn’t—”

  He grabbed her other arm.

  “Stop doing that!” By the time she’d uttered the sentence, her other arm was healed. Then he pressed his fingers onto the few places where Fanged Thing’s saliva had dripped on her.

  “Anywhere else?” he growled at her.

  She shook her head, blinking rapidly with nervousness.

  “You’re healed.”

  “Thank you.” She tried to step away, but he held her fast. “Uh, you can let me go now.”

  He stared at her as though he hadn’t heard a word she’d said. Tipping his head to the side, he examined her with thorough interest. A strange, intense light had entered his eyes and she took a step backward.

  There was something about this man that told her to back off—apart from the outward signs, the cycle, the leather, the scowl. There was something inside him that screamed danger, cross to the other side of the street.

  She had the urge to rip her arm away from him, but she stood her ground. He was so close to her that his breath stirred the fine hairs around her face. Heat rolled off him and she absorbed it into her own skin. Despite the threat he emanated, her body started a slow, sexual burn. She tried to ignore it, push it away. Now was not the time and this was definitely not the man.

  And man, oh, man. He was every inch a man.

  The lines of his face were hard and cold, set in an almost cruel expression. This was a man who was both brutal and beautiful. But even though his expression was harsh, his brown eyes were filled with heat and emotion. It softened him.

  As he stood staring at her, his eyes clouded, becoming distant, and a muscle worked in his jaw. As though he might be warring with himself over something. She’d never known brown eyes could look that hot. It made her whole body tighten with sexual awareness. Worse, his gaze probably mirrored her own.

  Well, hell.

  Then the man reached out, snagged her sweater with one big hand, and pulled her flush up against his chest. His body heat rolled off him and enveloped her, making her heart rate speed up.

  A huge, strong hand grasped the nape of her neck, the other hand going to the small of her back. She made a small noise in her throat, but it wasn’t of fear—not exactly … not totally. She should have been frightened, should have been fighting him, but there something inside her that thrilled at this man’s touch. She didn’t want to get away, even though that desire made no sense at all. Her libido really did not have her permission to misbehave right now, but she couldn’t seem to stop it.

  Pulling her head to the side, he exposed the column of her neck, then slowly lowered his mouth to it. His tongue flicked out, tasting her skin. Gooseflesh erupted all over her body and a shiver traveled up her spine.

  This was wrong. This was so, so very wrong. She knew that, so why was her body reacting this way to him? He was a forbidding stranger and—

  He gently bit her throat, almost as if he wanted to mark her, and she moaned, closing her eyes.

  She should have been worried that fangs would suddenly erupt in his mouth. She should have been having posttraumatic mental explosions of blood and flesh tearing—of icy, frostbite-giving skin and freezing saliva. Yet all she could think of was bare skin, tangled limbs, a bed….

  What kind of magick did this man possess?

  Kissing her skin, he murmured words in a foreign language that sounded tender, almost like endearments. His hand traveled up to cup the back of her head, his fingers raking through her long hair. He made a noise in the recesses of his throat, his body tensing, as though holding himself back from tearing her clothes off her.

  She wasn’t sure she wanted him to resist his impulse.

  Maybe it had been so long since she’d had sex, her libido was overriding her good sense. Maybe a one-night stand with some stranger in a dirty parking garage was—

  Her mental facilities returned with a roar. Her eyes flew open and she pushed away from him. He released her with a groan that almost sounded anguished, but he let her back away.

  She blinked and hugged herself. “What the hell was that?”

  The man stood completely—almost eerily—still, eyes closed, fists clenched. “I won’t hurt you or do anything you don’t want me to do.”

  “Uh, okay, good to know. I’m leaving now.” She dropped her arms to her sid
es and went for her badly damaged car. “Forget the door. I’ll just tell the insurance company … hmmm … well, just forget it.”

  He grabbed her by the upper arm as she passed. Making her jump. “We need to talk. Come with me.”

  She ripped her arm away from his grip. “No. You saved my life, then killed my car. I think that must make us even … I guess. And it’s true that we just shared … a moment, or something, but now I’m out of here.”

  “Come.” He turned and walked toward the cycle. All she did was stare at his back. She could run, but she didn’t have any illusions she’d actually get away. He’d just torn the door off her car, after all. He turned toward her expectantly.

  Barely able to look at him, she gave her head one little shake. Seriously, this was all a bit too much.

  He stopped, looked up at the ceiling as though summoning patience, then walked toward her. “My name is Broder Calderson.”

  “What kind of name is that?”

  “A very old one.”

  “My name is—never mind. I’m not thinking.” She put a hand to her forehead. Clearly she was in shock. She’d almost just told him her name. Of course, maybe that didn’t matter. Dmitri of the jet-black eyes had known her name without her revealing it.

  “I won’t hurt you, but I won’t let you leave alone, either. Are we going to do this the hard way or the easy way?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “That sounds like a threat.”

  “I’ll do whatever I need to do to keep you safe and right now you are not safe.”

  She blinked slowly and wavered on her feet. Her whole world had just been tipped on end, all her illusions about reality destroyed by a flash of fang, a poof of ice, and the introduction of Mr. Gorgeous Incredible Hulk.

  But, really, her world had begun to tip into strangeness way before tonight, hadn’t it? Either she was delusional or the world was not all it appeared to be. And, honestly, she didn’t think she was delusional.

  She considered him as she mulled her options. She was powerfully curious about Fanged Thing, and this man, Broder, was the only one with the answers. If the only way to get those answers was to have a conversation with him, then that was the risk she had to take.

  But before she agreed to go with him, she’d put all the odds in her favor.

  Her gaze slipped to his leather duster. “Fine. Give me the big, shiny dagger you’re hiding in that archaic piece of clothing and I’ll go with you.”

  His eyebrows rose into his hairline. “Excuse me?”

  She spread her arms. “I need some kind of a way to defend myself, don’t I?”

  He looked at her like she’d spoken Greek.

  She sighed. “You’re superstrong and you’re a stranger, no matter that you saved me from some sharp-toothed monster with frozen slobber issues and an eye disorder. I have no weapon and no assurance you won’t hurt me.” She looked at him pointedly. “I’m not going anywhere with you until you give me that dagger.”

  His eyes narrowed. He hesitated, but then reached into his duster and pulled forth the blade in a heavy leather sheath. It appeared to have a special holder secured inside his coat. “I see your point,” he answered slowly, handing it over.

  The dagger felt heavy in her hand. Enclosed in thick black leather with a B and a D in script at the base, the sheath itself was lovely, but when she pulled the blade free, she gasped. “Wow.” It seemed made of pure light—if light was as sharp as a new sword and could draw blood.

  “Be careful with that.”

  She raised her gaze to his and narrowed her eyes. “Who are you?”

  THREE

  Broder had thought the last thousand years of his existence had been hell. He’d been wrong. This was hell. Having to sit across from this woman, who heated his blood like water on a stove, and not jump on her like an animal in rut—this was hell. He drew a breath and concentrated on her face, tried to pay attention to what she was saying.

  He’d been without a woman for a thousand years; he’d been forced to learn control and he had a lot of it, but there was something about this particular female that made him crazy. Perhaps it was because she was available to him, but he wasn’t convinced it was the only reason. It made sense that Loki had chosen a woman that was beyond average well suited to him.

  And, fuck, she was beautiful. Long, straight, dark blond hair that framed a heart-shaped face with big brown eyes and full, rosy lips. She was curvier than the current notion of what was beautiful—but perfect for his personal notion. All those curves were in exactly the right places. All of them begged for exploration, by both his hands and his mouth.

  If Loki had fashioned this woman for him alone, Broder would not have been surprised. It was hard, very hard, to concentrate on what she was saying as she sat across from him in the booth of the diner.

  Even despite the danger she was in.

  As soon as he’d arrived at the parking garage, he’d known something was wrong. When he’d reached her and found that agent attacking her, he’d gone insane. If he’d had all his wits, he would have kept the demon to interrogate, but his blood had rushed through his ears, all rationality had fled, and every part of him had demanded the demon become ice. Now he had no idea why it had been targeting this woman—his woman. He already thought of her that way.

  “… and then you pulled my door off the hinges!” She let her arm fall to the top of the table as if in exclamation. She gave him a slow, narrow-eyed blink that screamed irritation. “You ruined my car.”

  He said nothing in response.

  She twisted her full lips and his groin ached. He shifted in his seat to relieve the pressure. This woman was going to be the death of him—and he’d thought he was unkillable.

  “You never explained who you are.”

  “Think of me as a soldier in a war or a policeman.”

  She raised her brows. “Think of you as? What are you really?”

  “Unclassifiable.”

  She studied him for a long moment. “I figured out a while back there are mysteries in this world.”

  “Mysteries and monsters. There are both. You found that out today.”

  “I knew it before,” she muttered. Lowering her gaze and drawing a finger across the top of the table, she said, “My name is Jessamine, but everyone calls me Jessa.”

  That was a gorgeous name. It fit her well. “Of course it is.”

  “What?”

  “That name suits you.”

  “Oh.” She scrunched her face up. “You don’t talk very much.”

  He shrugged. He was about to talk a lot—much more than he usually did. “What were you doing in that government building so late at night?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “I’m trying to figure out why you were targeted by that man.”

  “What was he, anyway?”

  “A monster.”

  She gave him a withering look. “Thanks, figured that out already. More info, please?”

  “All in good time. Why were you in the parking garage of a government building after hours?”

  She took a sip of her coffee, then stared out the window at the empty city street. “It’s personal. I’d rather not discuss it.”

  “Any detail at all would help me. You don’t have to tell me everything.”

  She took a moment to answer. “I needed to look something up regarding my family.”

  Broder considered her vague answer. Outwardly he had no idea why an agent of the Blight would go after her. There didn’t appear to be an obvious reason. Maybe she’d just been in the wrong place at the wrong time, had run into a hungry agent. Yet the Blight were usually much cleaner in their feeding habits than that. If their prey resisted the way she’d been resisting, they usually let it go. The Blight, like the Brotherhood, had compelling reasons to keep their presence secret from humanity.

  “The building was closed for the day, locked. It was well past working hours. There was no one there and you didn’t have entry.”

&
nbsp; “All true.” She refused to meet his eyes.

  “Do you work there?”

  She glanced at him, eyes flashing. “None of your business. You know, I’m not much for interrogations.”

  Hmmm … in his opinion, that meant no. Interesting.

  She was hiding something, but did it have anything to do with why the Blight had sought her out … if the Blight had sought her out? She seemed legitimately ignorant of the presence of Blight in the world, even if she was taking the supernatural occurrences back in the parking garage better than most humans would. Maybe she was just a really good actress.