by Naima Simone
“Move over.” He accompanied the gruff order with a bump of his hip against hers, snatching the bowl and spoon from her grasp at the same time. Ignoring her outraged huff of breath, he replaced the chips and cereal in the cabinets, but left out the milk. He might end up needing it. “You have any meat or vegetables in that monolith you call a refrigerator?”
Sinéad grunted but returned to the appliance and opened the door wide. A blast of cool air streamed across the nape of his neck. “What do you want? I have hamburger, chicken, eggs and some other stuff the girl in the store said I should have.”
“Oh for the love of—” Once again, Bastien moved her out of the way, this time with a small nudge to her shoulder with his palm. A hiss seared his ears seconds before sharp, pointed nails scored the flesh over his ribs. He jumped, squelching a surprised yelp. The bite of her nails hadn’t hurt. His skin was too tough for her human claws. But damn if his stomach didn’t clench under the ticklish sensation, making him jerk away from her touch. Her eyes narrowed into silver slits, the corners of her generous mouth turning up at the corners into a smile he’d have called—in a word—evil.
And hot.
Damn, why the dangerous, wicked look probably responsible for threatening many a vampire should send a bolt of lust from his chest straight to his cock confounded him. Maybe the bloodlust had more side effects than he’d considered. Hell yes, she was a gorgeous female, human or cruxim. But she didn’t resemble Alesia. Not in appearance and damn sure not in temperament. Well, to be fair the two females share one thing in common, a small, bitter voice hissed. Both had rejected him because of what he was—or wasn’t.
He frowned. “Don’t even think about it.”
He tracked her until she leaned against the stove, arms crossed. Once assured she would stay put, he dipped his chin and took inventory of her icebox. Not much. But enough he could put together a fast, hearty dinner. His glance slid over to Sinéad. The cruxim’s slim, almost delicate appearance belied the power and magic the winged Amazons embodied, rendering the females nearly indestructible. And feared.
Yet she seemed thinner. Compared to the last time he’d seen her five months earlier, the fine cheekbones and jaw were even more pronounced against her skin, the large, heavily lashed eyes like oval silver coins in her lovely face. He’d witnessed her battling the vampire in the alley, seen her lying flat on her back with Death crouched over her. If he’d known then she was human, fighting with a human’s physical frailties and limitations, Bastien would have taken more time with the bloodsucker. A rumble built in his chest, rolled in his throat as a vivid image of what he might have found in the dark passage if he’d been seconds later flickered on the screen of his mind. Yes—his fingers flexed around the bag of mushrooms—if he’d been aware of her true state, he would’ve made sure the vampire suffered more than a quick beheading.
He sucked in a deep breath, relaxed his grip on the vegetables, delivered a soft kick to the refrigerator door and returned to the kitchen counter. He emptied mushrooms, onions and tomatoes out of their containers. Shit, he had to get his ricocheting emotions under control. In the space of thirty minutes in Sinéad’s company, he’d vacillated between rage, exasperation, arousal and protectiveness. He’d tracked her down for one purpose—an answer and solution to the deygma she’d converted him into so he could return to his life. No other reason prevailed above finding a cure to his cursed addiction.
Didn’t mean he couldn’t feed her in the meantime.
“Where are your pans?”
When Sinéad tipped her head in the direction of the cupboard near his feet, he bent at the waist and opened the door. Quickly, he removed a couple of cast-iron pans and, straightening, settled them on the eyes of the gas stove.
After sliding a knife free of the butcher block, he set about chopping vegetables. She remained quiet as he worked and the fast, efficient slicing didn’t take long at all. Soon the delicious aroma of sizzling mushrooms and onions sweetened the air and elicited a hungry grumble from his gut.
He turned to the hamburger. He wasn’t a chef, but he did enjoy cooking. Nutrition and a strong, healthy body were as important as magic when it came to healing. It had always been his practice to meld all realms of medicine—practical and supernatural.
“You said you no longer hunt.” He resurrected the topic abruptly abandoned for the subject of food and patted the ground beef into several thick patties. Before long the sputter of frying meat joined the hiss of sautéing vegetables. “Why were you out there tonight?”
A beat of silence. Then a soft sigh. “Taking a walk. I got restless. Tired of being cooped up in here.”
Bastien nodded. He understood perfectly. Two months with Nicolai and Tamar hadn’t been prison, but he’d been trapped by his secrets, incarcerated by the raging bloodlust and horrifying red eyes and fangs that separated him from his best friend.
“How did you find the vampire and the woman?” he prodded. “I barely heard the battle and smelled the blood. You no longer have those abilities.”
Her full lips firmed, rolled in on themselves as if trying to bar the admission from leaking forth. “I…felt her,” she finally ground out. “Her pain.”
Felt her pain? The impact of Sinéad’s words struck him like a sledgehammer to the middle of his chest. He wheeled to the side, staring at her impassive, guarded expression as shock clamored through him. “An empath? You—a cruxim—are an empath?”
A short jerk of her head.
Either the gift annoyed her, or admitting she possessed the gift perturbed her, but Sinéad didn’t appear delighted in hearing the word spoken aloud. Little was known among the immortals about her enigmatic race, but one thing widely recognized regarding the “black angels” was their marked lack of emotion. They were beings of vengeance and blood—vampire blood. Like the Dimios of the hippogryphs, the winged creatures hunted, judged and executed vampires who were their mortal—or immortal—enemies.
Executioners. Hunters.
Not sensitive tree huggers.
Another, almost as staggering, idea leapt into his head. His hip knocked the edge of the stove as he pinned her with a stare.
“That’s how you found me, wasn’t it?” he rasped. Even the mention of the encounter with Evander had the ability to drag the pain, fury and agony back, tagging the helplessness and shameful vulnerability along for the ride. “You felt my pain?”
Another clipped nod.
Exhaling, Bastien faced the stove again, picking up the spatula he’d retrieved from the silverware drawer. From the abrupt responses, Sinéad obviously didn’t want to speak of this gift. And, hell, as anger strummed through him like the plucked strings of a guitar, he didn’t want to loiter in the dark, bitter memories of that terror-filled time either.
“The thing you did with your sword.” He flipped the thick hamburger patties over to finish their cooking. “Do all cruxim weapons possess the same power?” After Bastien’s decapitation of the vamp, Sinéad had risen over the body and laid the tip of the sword to its chest. Before his stunned gaze, the creature had dissolved into an oily black slick over the cobblestone.
Sinéad hesitated, then unfolded her arms and palmed the edge of the granite counter behind her. “At the time we pledge our service to Lady Nef,” she began, referring to the goddess the cruxim worshipped, “we receive our gladius along with our assigned territory. The swords are endowed with magic capable of penetrating the near impregnable flesh of the vampire. They work as a…” she swirled her slim, elegant hands in front of her abdomen, “decoagulant on their bodies. It liquefies them from the inside out.”
“Handy way of getting rid of the evidence too,” he added. “Where are your plates?”
She shifted, her arms rising to a cabinet above her. A slice of honey-gold skin flashed as the hem of her black t-shirt parted from the waistband of her cargo pants. His lips tightened as his gums tingled. His fingertips itched, the pinch of his talons biting at the calloused flesh. Heat coiled in his
gut, constricting before loosening and spiraling lower to his lengthening cock.
This wasn’t hunger—at least not for blood. When he’d left Nicolai’s home, his intention had been to search Sinéad out, demand she reverse his…condition, or help him figure out how to do it. And in the meantime, with his last reserve of cruxim blood gone, she could damn well supply his fix until they found a way to cure him of the craving. After all, she’d been the one to curse him. But the last part of the plan had been shot to hell. Since he’d first caught a whiff of her morning dew scent the need for blood had been replaced by another, greedier, deeper appetite. For flesh. Skin. Woman. Her. That’s what his body clamored for.
Shit. He scowled. He’d been in the pleasure dens, had beheld the writhing, naked bodies of females straight out of the raunchiest fantasies. None of the eroticism in those spectacles had fazed him. Yet here he stood, salivating over a paltry slice of skin—skin like a sun-kissed peach…damn it.
Before he could turn back to the stove and hide his reaction, Sinéad lowered her arms, plates in hand. Her gaze clashed with his and, from the warmth still pumping through his veins, he could imagine what she glimpsed in his eyes. A slight gasp of air whistled between her lips and the quickening of her pulse reached his ears. The vein at the base of her throat throbbed faster under the thin layer of skin covering it.
“Damn,” he whispered and twisted around, focusing on the food he’d prepared as if it were radioactive chemicals requiring every bit of his attention or it risked detonation. Perhaps it was the foreign blood that churned these cravings harder and fiercer than any he’d ever experienced.
With Alesia, his desire had been warm, comforting, easy. After being friends for so long, the smooth slide into more had seemed a natural progression. Their love had been tender, sweet. But this need pumping through his veins had his beast snapping and lunging to be loosed—this craving didn’t feel tender or sweet. Influenced by bloodlust or not, his beast just wanted to claw, to bite.
“Tell me.” He took the plates from her grasp, ignoring the confusion clouding her bright gaze. “Before you pull a wicked-witch-of-the-west on vampires, you usually take their blood?”
Lightning flickered in her eyes. “Yes.”
“Who feeds from you?”
She ripped a couple of paper towels off the dowel. “Cruxim?” She scoffed. “No one feeds from us.”
A feral surge of hunger and triumph swelled inside him, winged through him like the wildest, clearest note in a song that lasted long after the melody ended. Setting the spatula on the counter, he flicked the knobs on the stove and slowly pivoted. He grinned, flashing every tooth in his mouth. Even the pull of his scars’ stiffened flesh couldn’t dissipate his fierce pleasure.
“Well, guess who just jumped to the top of the food chain.”
Chapter Four
Even as Sinéad followed Bastien from the kitchen and back into the living room, the jolt from his bald announcement continued to clamor through her like the booming percussions of a drum of thunder. Images of his glowing red eyes and long dagger-sharp teeth paraded across her mind like floats in the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade. Of course the similarities had registered but he fed from cruxim…her sisters? If she’d known this bit of information, his ass would’ve still been hanging around that piss-soaked alley, not sitting comfortably on her couch.
“Here.” Bastien glanced up, his emerald gaze scanning her as she stood, body rigid with tension, at the end of the sofa, her fingers curled into the faded, upholstered cushion. He nudged the wide platter laden with a hearty bagel-topped hamburger and crisps. “Eat.”
The delicious aroma called to her with a siren’s sensuous lure. Ever since she’d discovered an appetite, along with her humanity and addiction to television, her meals had consisted of sugary cereal, crisps, pancakes and eggs. Though she’d lost her immorality, the solitary nature of her kind hadn’t disappeared. She didn’t enjoy the noisy, packed crowds of the pubs or restaurants and had quickly stopped visiting those places for food. Not to mention, she hadn’t particularly cared for the fare she’d purchased. Overseasoned. Bland. Hard as tack. Too soft. Sweet Nef, it was like being pushed from the womb again and having to discover her personality, her likes and dislikes, hell—herself—once more. The task was huge. Daunting.
Some nights the stark reality of her new existence engulfed her—a massive, crashing swell drowning her in the decisions, questions and uncertainties she hadn’t been forced to deal with as a cruxim. Hours of hunting and training had been replaced with long stretches of time filled with nothing but sitcoms, late-night movies and bouts of loneliness and self-pity. Previously, her thoughts had always been black and white, decisive and never doubted. Now those same decisions were hindered or stirred by faulty, unstable emotions like anger, sadness…fear.
And the male responsible for flipping her world on its ass invited her to eat food he’d cooked with his own strong, capable hands. This male who, with a simple touch, sent her reeling into an emotional overload. This male who, with his piercing eyes and beautiful, solemn features, stared at her as if he could read her mind as easily as if closed caption streamed across her forehead.
The brutal scars that ravaged his face only added to the intensity of his scrutiny. And there lay another problem. Scowling, she carefully lowered to the far end of the couch. That stare. In the kitchen, she’d been stunned by it, blindsided by what she’d glimpsed in the emerald-green depths. Something dark, savage, ravenous. Crimson had flickered in his eyes. There and gone, but there. Yet she was human, and he’d stated he fed on cruxim, so what he’d craved hadn’t been blood. It had been…her.
The disturbing, terrifying need she glimpsed in his gaze should have sent her diving for the black knife handle protruding from the butcher block. But those damnable emotions had kept her glued to the floor, short pants blasting from between her parted lips, a liquid ball of fire swirling and gathering heat in her stomach. The flames had streaked to her breasts and nipples before whooshing back down her abdomen and to the pulsing flesh between her legs.
Desire. She knew of it, had witnessed it many times between couples clasped in passionate embraces on the Dublin streets. The rare occasions when her hunt for a vampire had carried her into the dimly lit interiors of the pleasure dens had exposed her to the prurient, animalistic side of lust. But in her centuries of existing, she’d escaped passion’s claws. Mercifully.
She much preferred the more clinical, practical method of the cruxim—decide it’s time to reproduce, select a male donor, have sex and done. Get pregnant and no need to see the male again. The cruxim’s ability to control their fertility had great advantages, the least of them being able to avoid sweaty, messy grappling with males.
But now, with his steady, unblinking gaze on her…with her thighs trembling each time the crease in her pants grazed her sensitive, swollen flesh and shot sparks to the top of her sex, she wondered. Wondered and waited.
What followed this unsettling clenching in her gut, swelling of her breasts and tightening of her nipples to aching points? What came after the disconcerting excitement rippling through her, rocketing her high into the clouds as if her wings had reappeared before diving to the earth, heart lodged in her throat? Her stomach twisted, and not from the tantalizing smell of cooked meat and vegetables teasing her nostrils.
Cautious, on edge, she lifted the burger and bit into it. And groaned. Ecstasy burst on her tongue, spun on her palate before zipping down her throat and hitting her stomach.
Damn sex. Nothing—absolutely nothing—could be better than this orgasm in her mouth.
“Good, huh?” Bastien asked, amusement coloring the low rumble of his voice.
She would have answered—she really would have if she hadn’t been wolfing down another bite of the toasted bagel, perfectly cooked beef and seared vegetables. Lady, who would’ve thought breakfast bread could add the most wonderful flavor to a hamburger?
Silence fell between them as they di
ned on the simple but delectable meal. Even when Bastien rose, left the room and returned with another burger, she only emitted a grunt of thanks and pleasure as she took the offering and sucked down the second serving. Beside her Bastien ate at a more leisurely, dignified pace, but inhaled an equal amount.
When the last crumbs of bread and crisps had disappeared from her plate, Sinéad collapsed against the back of the sofa with a satisfied groan.
“Thank you.” She sighed, adjusted on the cushion and laced her fingers over her stuffed belly. “The food was incredible. I didn’t realize I was so hungry.”
“You have to take better care of yourself,” Bastien murmured, clearing their wiped-clean plates from the table. Once more he retreated from the room and, in moments, reappeared with a tall glass of milk, which he passed to her. He waited until she accepted the drink then reclaimed his space next to her. The cushion sank under his weight and Sinéad planted her feet on the floor, checking the motion so she didn’t roll to his side like a raft carried on a wave.
“I’ve been doing just fine these past years, thank you very much.” She shot him a glance over the rim of the glass as she lifted it for a deep drink. The refreshing cold quenched her thirst. With a hum of pleasure, she knocked back the entire drink.
“Yes, but you haven’t been a human all these years either.” His gentle admonishment didn’t contain a hint of judgment or condescension. She lifted her eyes and the tender warmth in his gaze unnerved her nearly as much as his earlier, glittering perusal. “From a healer’s point of view, your body requires more nutrition than that shit you were about to eat. Cereal and potato chips won’t provide the strength and stamina you need, especially if you encounter any more skirmishes like tonight.” He paused. “Can I ask you a question?”
She narrowed her eyes, lowering the glass. “You go right ahead. Doesn’t mean I have to answer.”
Bastien nodded, his full lips twitching at the corner. “Fair enough. Why are the cruxim and vampires enemies? Why do you hate each other so much?”
