by C. M. Owens
“Why is he punishing you?” she muses as I study her.
“Why are you here?” I ask instead, and she turns and grabs the present I’ve put off to the side.
“It’s customary to bring a gift when showing up unannounced,” she says, as her stalker ghost drops to a chair and starts pretending to be snapping pictures of my ass in my slacks.
I’m not sure why I tighten my ass and discreetly pose a little like there’s a real camera, but it’s grating on my nerves that she’s even here.
I take the sock again, curious about why Violet’s smiling like that, and pull out a small, antique…mirror.
The shine on the glass surface is immaculate, not even a speck of dust, smudge, or lint marring the perfection of it.
It’s quite possibly the most beautifully crafted mirror I’ve ever seen.
“Where did you—”
“It belonged to my grandmother.”
“It’s far too nice to be a gift, gypsy girl,” I state absently, my eyes running over the finer, clearly hand-crafted edges.
“I was actually hoping you might trade with me.”
There’s nothing that feels better than finding something like this to barter for.
“What would you want in return?” I ask without looking away from the detail in the finishing.
True silver wrapped over just enough iron to give it proper firmness.
“Little of this and that, but mostly some self-defense skills. If monsters are my new normal, I need more than one trick in my pony’s saddlebag,” she says, confusing the ever loving hell out of me.
“What?”
“I need to be able to protect myself from things that don’t die from being strangled, and I’m asking you to help with that.”
“Wouldn’t a Van Helsing be the far more obvious choice for that task?” I muse, caught up with the reflection as my attention returns to the mirror.
“I don’t want to hunt things. I just want to fend them off and effectively get out of potentially sticky situations. You’d be better for that,” she goes on, moving closer to me.
“And I’m really curious about what you are,” she says as she steps closer, her head tipping back so she can stare up at me.
Feeling her gentle, cool touch is the only thing that breaks my concentration from my new mirror.
“I definitely want to take a spin on him. Like one of those sit-and-spin toys kind of spin,” Anna says from too close beside me, but not even she can distract me from the gypsy eyes I’m staring into.
“Have you ever heard the legend of Dorian Gray?” I ask as her breaths get a little shaky, her proximity to me messing with her head.
Terrible gypsy. Everyone knows to avoid the eyes. Why does she always look there first?
My hand slides against her cheek, and she leans into the touch as a drunken haze presumably fogs her vision. Like pure putty in my hand.
“The immortal who was all about orgies and whoring, but could die if he ever looked upon his special painting or something?” she asks quietly, a slight rasp to her voice as her hand slips inside my open shirt.
I hate that I feel it when she touches me. I deadened myself so long ago that it shouldn’t be possible to feel her. But her touch is just cold enough to force me to acknowledge it as she drags her hand up to my chest.
“Is that why I feel like this when you do whatever it is you’re doing?” she asks on a hushed tone.
A barrage of images assault my mind, as the dirty little gypsy fantasizes about all the things she’d love to do with me. She really doesn’t understand how dangerous it is to not fear me the way she should.
Someone should tell her.
“In a sense,” I murmur, brushing my hand over her cheek.
“So you’re Dorian Gray?”
“No, I’m Damien Morpheous,” I tell her, lips twisting with wry amusement when her eyes dance with intrigue. “Dorian is just my bastard brother, who my father refused to ever give the family name. He’s far more popular than I, even to this day. However, that’s only because he doesn’t have the family curse, nor is he afflicted by my own personal additional curse. He and my other siblings enjoy life so much more.”
“What curse?” she asks as I drag my thumb across her lips, entranced by how soft they are.
“My personal curse? I can give a woman plenty of pleasure. But if I find my own, it’ll be at the cost of her life.”
Her hooded gaze stays fixed on mine. “Why are you the only one with that curse?”
Putting the mirror in my back pocket, my other hand snakes around her waist like I simply can’t help myself. She’s made my damn heart start beating with the images she won’t stop seeing—images of my hands all over her bare body.
It’s pure torture to a deviant such as I.
“Because once upon a time, two gypsy women cursed me at the same time as punishment, and they turned me into a bigger freak than I already was.”
My attention is still snagged on her lips, and her hands are sliding up my chest, moving up to my neck.
“Seems harsh,” she murmurs as her fingers tangle in my hair.
“You’d likely disagree if you heard the whole story,” I tell her. “Though, I think I’ve more than been punished for long enough.”
“This is really happening,” Anna says excitedly from somewhere close by.
Everything on me is hard as I press Violet against the wall, letting her feel what she’s doing to me as I rock against her, tempting her with the forbidden the same fucking way she’s doing me.
“You did hear the part about my curse that comes with the possibility of a death sentence, right, gypsy girl?” I muse as I lean over to her ear, nipping it.
She shudders against me, and her nails press into my shoulders.
“So not a problem. Do it, Violet. Do it now,” Anna, the daft, reckless ghost, cheers from the sidelines.
“According to Emit, I’m a freak too,” she says as she drags her lips across my cheek, her hands climbing up again and tangling in my hair as I lift her from the ground.
Her legs wind around my waist as I leverage her between the wall and my body and kiss a spot on her neck, telling myself I can have a small taste and back away.
“You’re a gypsy freak,” I say against her skin. “I can assure you it’s entirely different,” I add as she starts pushing my shirt off my shoulders.
I really should stop. She’s not thinking clearly, and neither am I.
Throw two forbidden fruits into the same fucking basket, and there’s no telling what chaos will spring free after that.
“How?” she asks, though it’s more of a moan, since I’ve found a spot on her neck she particularly loves having kissed.
My grip tightens on her ass as I grind against her, unable to stop myself when a fresh flurry of images roll around in my mind.
“Boring easily is a shared affliction among my kind,” I tell her as her lips brush the edge of mine and we both freeze.
“And?” she asks quietly, her tongue barely touching the corner of my mouth and driving me out of my motherfucking mind in a way that surely shouldn’t be possible.
“Sex is our weapon,” I go on, touching her cheek. “Illusions are our birthright. But I’m the only one who can’t have pleasure. That means a piece of me, the monster I am that craves the carnal, is denied unless I kill someone during the process, because it drains their life to give me that pleasure. Sort of a mood killer when your date drops dead before you can fully finish,” I tell her dryly, even as my stomach sours.
“What if you found someone who can’t die?” she asks as I press into her harder.
“Vampires die. Werewolves die. Creatures I’ve created die. I’m an alpha, Violet. Nothing is stronger than me,” I say as I stop myself from tearing her clothes off.
Just barely.
Her lips are on mine in the next instant like the insane gypsy just can’t refuse anything forbidden, and I forget everything when her tongue touches the seam of my lip
s.
For the first time in longer than I can remember, I kiss someone back, opening myself up to all the frustration I stopped allowing myself to suffer through.
She moans into my mouth, which just fuels everything in all the wrong directions.
Just as I decide to give her the pleasure she wants, minus the risk, of course, she tears her lips away from mine, breathing heavily as she reaches into my back pocket and pulls out the mirror.
I blink a few times, feeling a little confused about why the fucking hell I’ve just told her so much. But with her still pressed up against me, it’s hard to think about anything other than giving her what she really came here for. Maybe the frustrating aftermath would be enough to free myself of this cumbersome obsession I’ve developed with her.
“We really shouldn’t do this,” she says quietly.
“I don’t have to be inside you to make you feel better than you’ve ever felt,” I say against her ear, nipping it again. “You aren’t at risk unless I’m inside you, and the only way I can find true pleasure is that way. No worries, gypsy girl.”
She hisses out a breath when I start kissing my way down her neck again.
“Maybe training with you is too ambitious. There’s definitely something that magnifies freaks when they’re in the same place at the same time, it seems,” she says, causing me to grin against her neck.
“Curse of the forbidden,” I state without hesitating.
“I guess there’s a curse for everything,” she says as I start kissing her again.
She groans against my mouth, pulling me closer one second, and then shoves me away in the next.
I drop her to the ground and take a step back, running a hand through my hair. “I’m really confused,” I decide to tell her, frustrated for a new set of reasons.
She grins as she touches her red lips, eyebrows lifting. “Enjoy the mirror.”
My jaw grinds as she starts toward the door, without a rhyme or reason as to why she’s leaving, dropping the mirror off by the door again on her way.
“I can’t accept the mirror if you’re going to get Emit to train you. We haven’t bartered for anything.”
“I guess you can owe me,” she says as she leaves without a backward glance.
“What the actual hell?” I say under my breath, putting a hand over my rapidly beating heart as I try to slow it back down to the almost deadened beat it normally has, as my other hand scrubs through my hair again.
My heart, however, does not slow down, which really pisses me right the hell off. And the crafty little gypsy just left me with a debt, because I can’t possibly give up that mirror, something she has no idea will drive me insane.
“She really doesn’t deserve that vagina,” Anna says on a disappointed sigh as she walks out too.
I glance around, finding the mirror to be on the dresser next to the door where she’s left it, and a cold, sinking sensation sinks in as she pulls out of my driveway.
Did I really just fucking tell her who and what I am?
Why would I do that?
I’m in the middle of slapping my forehead when I catch the scent of wolf, and I snarl at the door. The barbarian bangs on it like he has something urgent to discuss.
Cursing, I swing open the door, and there’s the alpha mongrel himself, pushing that long, sloppy hair of his out of the way as he shoves a bowl against my chest.
“Smell that,” he growls.
“You’re out of your damn mind,” I say, even as I lift the damn bowl to sniff it.
I curse when something wet touches my cheek before I even get a whiff of anything. All I smell is wolf, wolf, and more wolf.
“Why is it wet?” I snap.
“Because I licked it for like a fucking hour,” he says like he’s really pissed off.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I bark as I toss the bowl at the wanker’s head.
He snatches it out of the air and shoves it back at me. “Just smell—”
“Portocale oranges,” I say on a hushed breath as I finally catch the scent of something I haven’t smelled in ages. “No wonder you licked the bowl,” I add with an insuppressible grin. “Please fucking tell me you know how to get more.”
“Possibly. But don’t trust the cost,” he says, snapping me out of my trance as I put the bowl down and furrow my brow.
“Explain.”
“I just ate a bowlful of cookies made with those oranges. I didn’t even realize what I’d actually eaten until ten minutes ago when the bowl finally stopped having any taste at all. Not one bitter bite in the batch, Damien. Which means that treat took a lot of her time. The information I spewed isn’t a full debt. Which means I’m still in debt to her.”
I have never envied him more than I do in this moment, and I’m seconds away from stabbing him…if I can find anything to stab him with.
“Where’d you get the damn cookies?” It’s the most ridiculous question to ask with such an urgency to one’s tone.
“From the only Portocale gypsy who wouldn’t have any clue just how big of a deal it was,” he tells me.
“So what’s the cost?” I ask him like nothing else matters.
Damn her. My heart is beating harder again, just because my senses are nowhere nearly deadened enough right now, not after what she just did to me. Finding anything interesting at this moment is a certain pain in the ass to come.
“She fed me these, and I couldn’t stop yammering on about the fucking Portocale curse when she asked me questions.”
My eyes widen as a sick feeling settles on my stomach. “What the hell did you tell her?”
“Nothing about our part in her curse, of course. But I damn near got close. That gypsy is much more fucking dangerous than we give her credit for being. Even after she staked four fucking vampires, we’re still treating her with the same carelessness we do a typical mortal,” he growls as I look over to my newly acquired mirror.
I go to pick it up, careful not to look at the reflective surface, and just stare at the back.
“What’s my one rule?”
“Never really explain what you are,” Emit states as if on autopilot.
“Not only did I tell her what I am, I specifically used Dorian’s name to explain,” I tell him, more annoyed with myself than with her.
“Are you serious?” he snaps as he comes over and looks at the mirror in my hand. “How’d she know you fancy mirrors?”
“How’d she know it’s the one gift I can’t refuse?” I ask, getting to the more important question. “Especially when she only just learned of what I am?”
His eyes meet mine. “Vance,” he bites out.
“Why would Vance give her any information on us?” I ask him pointedly.
“What if she hit him first?”
“He’d be here right now, bitching just like us about that conniving little gypsy,” I say as I run a hand over my mouth that can’t decide if it wants to scowl or grin.
It’s been far too long since I’ve dealt with a gypsy woman who has gypsy pride, and I love it as much as I hate it.
Emit looks to be showing the same frustrating confusion on his face.
“She hit your house before mine. What if she’s on her way to Vance’s next?” I ask him.
“She’ll likely drive really fucking slow,” he tells me, causing me to arch an eyebrow.
“So we can beat her there.”
I pull on a jacket and tuck in the mirror in the inside pocket.
“It’s been a while since I felt the power a gypsy with pride can possess with a simple gift,” I tell him. “Especially one with Portocale blood pumping through their veins.”
“I don’t think she really even knew she was using it,” he fires back.
“Possibly. Which means she was coached. But who the hell by?”
I throw my door open and stalk out.
Emit’s embarrassingly small sports car is in the driveway, and I walk right by it to get into my Range Rover. I’m confused when he gets in on the p
assenger side, as I crank it up and start spinning up snow until my tires gain traction on the pavement and launch us forward.
“Why the hell are you stinking up my car with your wolf smell?” I snap as I turn a sharp curve, and almost roll the damn vehicle.
Fortunately, Emit’s gargantuan self helps with the weight distribution of the vehicle, and I hurdle us forward again in the direction of Vance’s house, taking the bypass road to avoid town.
“We’re both going to the same place,” he says a little defensively before looking out the window.
“You could have still folded yourself into your penis-car and—”
“It’s a small car. What does that have to do with my penis?” he volleys, but his jaw is grinding.
A grin spreads over my face before I can help it. “You dodgy fucker. You actually hate the car. Why are you still driving it?”
“Would you shut up?” he snaps, not looking at me. “What all did she get you to confess? And why the hell are you—”
He stops speaking, and then I hear him groan. “Your heart is beating.”
That causes me to bristle. “Things got intense, and it hasn’t slowed down yet. Just deal with it until we get to Vance’s and—”
“Shit,” he hisses.
He suddenly starts trying to duck, lay the seat back and hide his face, all at the same time. It takes me a second to realize what his problem is.
A Gypsy Magic delivery van is right in front of us, and I curse as I continue to drive like hell’s on my ass and pass her with barely a blink, seeing her lips moving in sync with the little ghost in the van with her.
“Are they fucking singing?” I ask as the small glimpse I get sticks in my head.
“She’s definitely on her way to Vance’s,” Emit says as he peers over the seat. “Wonder what she’s taking him to render him helplessly under her thrall, and if she’ll feed it to him with those daring little fingers of hers.”
I snort derisively as her van becomes a dot in the rearview mirror.
“Maybe she’s gifting him another stick to shove up his ass,” I suggest as I cut down another road.
Chapter 24
VANCE
