It was possible I was being irrational, and I was surprisingly okay with that, all things considered.
Chapter Twenty-One
Love Means Never Having to Pick Glass Out of Your Arms Alone
My boots sat next to the tub, laces dangling lifelessly and material scuffed up but still standing. Corset was a ripped heap I’d thrown on the boots but had rolled off, skirt tossed on the pile as well. The bath water was hot, white steam wafting up, and stung me everywhere. First aid kit lay open on the rim of the tub next to me, beside the body wash and cloth, and I plucked at the glass embedded in my left arm with a pair of tweezers.
The bathroom door opened behind me, swinging on well-oiled hinges. His steps were soft on the tile as he moved nearer, and I pointedly did not look his way. Not when he reached the edge of the Jacuzzi, not when I heard the rustle of his clothes descending or felt the displacement of the water as he stepped in. He didn’t ask to join me but then I’d parked myself in the middle, leaving plenty of space behind me for another person, so perhaps he took it as an invitation. And maybe it was. I didn’t know anymore.
Fingers skimmed my back, gathering my hair to ease it over my shoulder, and he slipped the tweezers from my grasp. I didn’t argue, just rummaged for another pair in the box and went back to plucking glass out of my arms, as far as I could reach. It was a painstakingly slow process, especially with me sulking in silence, but he worked swiftly, just as he had removing bullets from my body years ago.
I picked up the three tiny bullets and turned them over in my hand. “That was pretty fast. You’ve had some experience doing last minute emergency surgery?”
“A bit.” The corners of his mouth turned up in a slight smile.
Huh. Interesting. “I thought you didn’t get in gunfights.”
“I don’t. Anymore.”
I guessed “pulling glass bits out of a vampire your bitch of a wife threw through a window” was also on his list of things he had experience with.
Me? Bitter? Never.
He set the tweezers on the white rim of the tub next to a small pile of glittering glass and then he touched my back, hand sliding up gently to my throat, bruised but healing from its brush with chains the other night. A whisper of magic rushed through the air and tingling heat flushed my flesh, spreading out from his hand and everywhere across my body. I knew that little trick too, knew my body was repairing itself faster, sprinting toward closing my wounds up like vampire healing on speed. Even my fucked up shoulder felt fine.
Still not forgiven, but I wouldn’t argue.
Next he reached for the shower head that retracted into the tub and switched on the stream of hot water, running it back over my tangled hair. No shampoo—I hadn’t had time to pick more up—but the bottle of conditioner waited there, and he worked some into my tresses, the scent of coconut milk filling the air. My eyes closed and for a moment I let myself accept it, accept the massage of fingers over my scalp, working water through my hair. Let my tired brain empty of thoughts and just feel, for a moment, the comfort of someone so near, so warm, so gentle.
But it didn’t last. Because bitter irritation still flickered under my skin and I couldn’t relax. As he slipped the shower head back in its place, I rose, water cascading off of me, and stepped straight out of the tub. My hair was sopping but I didn’t stop long enough to wring it out, just snatched a fresh towel to wrap around it, and another thick one to tuck around my torso to mid-thigh. I stalked from the room, tile cool on the pads of my feet, and moved into the bedroom.
The window needed to be fixed or I’d be stuck inside my bedroom through the whole of the day. And I needed to call Nic to arrange someone to fix it. And have her look into Mishka Thiering’s reappearance. And let her know I wasn’t dead.
But I didn’t remember where I put my phone and hadn’t the slightest desire to have any of those conversations at the moment, so jerked the towel through my hair to dry it, yanked back the sheets, discarded the other towel and climbed into bed. My mattress was comfortable and welcome, memory foam hugging every curve, and I settled with the sheet pulled up over my chest and left arm folded at my side.
Light burned from the lamp on the dresser and the stark whiteness of the bathroom. I lay with my back to it, glaring at the brown dried blood on the wall. I should’ve washed it off. It would take several layers of paint to cover it up and with poor air circulation in my windowless bedroom, it would stink for weeks afterward.
The bathroom light shut off behind me, jarring me back from my pleasantly inane decorating thoughts. No steps on the floor, no movement at all, awareness prickling as I felt his gaze on me.
“Does the door below the stairs lead to another room or...are there sheets to make up one of the cots you put in the closet? What do you prefer?”
Dammit. I wanted to have pride. I wanted to tell him to sleep on the fucking couch and burn come daylight—hell, I wanted to ignore him and let him figure it out on his own. I blinked as my eyes itched. “I waited six years for you to wake up. If you sleep out there on a motherfucking cot after all that, you will be unwelcome in my bed for the rest of eternity.”
That gurgling sound was me swallowing my pride for once.
“You’re done sulking then?”
I couldn’t tell if that was teasing in his voice or not. “Never mind. Fuck off.”
The sheets shifted, familiar warmth and heat against my back, tipping the pillow behind me. His breath was a warm spot on the back of my neck, gooseflesh rolling down my shoulders.
“You left me out there.” I sounded like a five-year-old mini human. And didn’t care. “Didn’t check to see if I was okay.”
“Suspecting that you don’t, in fact, live in a loft apartment on a cliff over a lake of lava, I figured you could survive a two story fall onto pavement, and it would be insulting to suggest otherwise.” He inched closer, flush against my back, and his arm snaked around my waist, hand sliding up to mine. “Now, should you be thrown into a swirling lake of lava, rest assured, I will immediately jump in after you.”
I chewed at my bottom lip, laced my fingers with his. “It’s three stories.”
Lips pressed to the side of my neck, delicious shivers racing down my spine, and I settled against him, relaxing head to toe.
“So I turned you into a vampire.” I cleared my throat. “In my defense, I didn’t know it made warlocks extra crazy.”
“You could have asked.”
“Yes, but that would be practical and rational.”
“As opposed to attacking me so fast I didn’t have time to react.”
“Well, I didn’t want to chicken out.”
The pad of his thumb drifted over mine, back and forth. “Why didn’t you ask?”
Here we go. Because I could pretend I was being rash and stupid, but I’d had six years to ponder it and I knew that wasn’t the case. Nothing I did was totally rash—sex on my bedroom floor days ago notwithstanding—but calculated. Rash vampires didn’t survive as long as I had.
“Because if you’d said no, I would’ve done it anyway.” I swallowed dryly. “And then you’d be guaranteed to hate me when you woke up. This way, there was a chance you’d forgive me because it could’ve been seen as a well-meaning mistake on my part. So...ta-daaa.”
Silence. “I could’ve said yes.”
My heart beat harder, tension creeping up. “Would you have?”
“I don’t know,” he whispered, and it felt like a little knife, sliding between my ribs.
“Are you pissed?”
“Being pissed won’t change things.”
“Yeah, but... I made you into a vampire. That’s like a big deal. You can’t be in the sun anymore.”
“I can make one.” He didn’t demonstrate, but then he didn’t need to—I remembered all too well.
“You have to feed on human blood.”
“Which is less gross than I expected it to be.”
“So you used to think I was gross?”
“No, j
ust what you ate.”
I sighed. “I shouldn’t be the one convincing you what I did was wrong.”
“It was wrong not to ask me and perhaps I’m still a little crazy, but being angry with you won’t undo it. I’m here now.” Lips against my throat and my eyes drifted shut. “I’m with you. Are you pissed I tried to kill you a few times?”
I chuckled; why, I didn’t know, because it wasn’t particularly funny, but perhaps giddy relief was finally settling in. “No. I think I preferred you when you just constantly rebuffed my advances instead of trying to strangle me with chains, though.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I know. I kinda wish you didn’t remember that.”
“I kept thinking...I was turning into him. And I couldn’t stop.”
“Yeah, by the way, your father was a fucking asshole and you should’ve hired me to kill him sooner.”
“But I didn’t know you sooner.”
“Still. Plus he didn’t have a mental illness as an excuse. So don’t worry about it.” And I thought you were never going to get sane again. Of course, if he remembered everything, he probably knew that, so I didn’t get too sappy about it. “No aftereffects yet? Brain’s working okay?”
“It’s...better. I still zone out. Thoughts will rush from different angles and I have to talk myself through sorting it. When Mish...”
My blood ran cold. And here we’d been so good at avoiding that subject. “It gave you a Twin Peaks moment. I get it.”
“I thought I was dreaming again. That this wasn’t real.”
You and me both. “Want me to pinch you? I’ll do it somewhere naughty.”
“Tempting, but let’s put the violence on hold for a bit.”
“So what did she want?”
“She said we need to talk.”
“Oh yeah, she’ll talk—with a big fat knife in your back.”
“Probably. I said nothing.”
He should have driven a hot poker in her eye and that he just stood there irritated me still. I brushed it aside. “I’m going to set flamethrowers up around the elevator downstairs for future visits.”
“I’ll help.” He kissed the flesh behind my ear and fresh heat washed over my body again. “Change of subject. Are vampires not supposed to share blood?”
“It’s...not common.”
“I thought maybe I broke a rule.” His hand left mine, skimming up my arm to my neck to pull the rest of my hair to the side, kissing the flesh it exposed right near where he’d bitten me earlier, and I was having trouble remembering what I’d parted my lips to say.
“I did it once, to Dragomir. I don’t remember why—I might’ve been trying to piss Ilona off. That was when they had me locked in their basement. The pair of them had all but drained me a few times, sometimes bleeding me, other times drinking. It left me weak and unable to break out and kill people—which I eventually did anyway, as you know. No rules about it. It builds a connection, though.” It’s intimate and scary and lets you too damn close. And I’ve never let anyone do that before. I shivered. “Just...not done.”
I should’ve been exhausted—and I was, physically and mentally—and I ached in all the right places still, but when his hand drifted down to my hip, I leaned into him, molding my body against his. He was hard and ready to go again, and it wasn’t merely vampire stamina, I didn’t think—he’d been that way as a mortal, also not tiring despite the blood I took during our lovemaking, and I suspected something magical could aid in his “recovery” like it did when I nearly drained him of blood. So much more awesome than human lovers.
Fingers dragged up, cupping my breast, tender this time, and I ached like I hadn’t been touched less than an hour ago. He kneaded, thumb grazing my nipple, and I arched my spine to rub against him.
Then I blinked my eyes open because his hand was descending, down over my abdomen to the apex of my thighs, but I still felt him at my chest.
“It’s called mimicking,” he whispered against my ear, fingers delving past my folds as I eased my legs apart. “Like...a physical echo.”
Like a threesome without the third party—oh my god, I loved this sex magic cult he was once in.
I leaned into hands that weren’t really there, drinking in every touch, hooking my left leg back over his so he could thrust in with ease. Movements were slower this time, gentler, sex languid and sensual. Even reaching a fevered pitch an eternity later, the climax rolled in soft waves I rode for long moments afterward. He drove into me once more, holding, letting out a gasp in my ear, and heaved out a long sigh as he slipped back. When he kissed my neck next, I turned and wrapped my arms around him, tangled with him, let his mouth fall on mine.
“I missed you,” I whispered, and somehow that was even harder to admit than the fact that I loved him.
“Didn’t you...in six years—”
Oh. That. I squeezed my eyes shut and settled my head on his chest. “I did. Didn’t catch last names. And never here. Also, wasn’t damn near as fun.”
If he was mad, he didn’t show it. Just held me.
We had a hell of a lot of shit to deal with—not the least of which was his wife back from the grave—but for one blessed night, I refused to think about it, refused to do anything but listen to the thrum of his heart, feel his body against mine, and revel in the fact that—at least temporarily—everything was right in my existence, damned as it was.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Annie Get Your Gun
I awoke to the sound of the shower in the other room.
A little déjà vu, in my opinion, but then he hadn’t really bathed last night so much as picked glass out of my back, so he probably wanted to get clean. Light was white and straight, cutting a square over the bed and over me, and I smiled absently. A girl could get used to this. I yawned, twisted, my back cracking a little, moved my fingers up to rub at my eyes.
The flicker of movement toward me was enough to jar my brain and I reacted, rolling across the bed as a knife sank into my pillow.
I scrambled, still tangled in sheets, barked my elbow on the end table. A dark humanoid creature with red eyes and fangs twirled a pair of knives, hissing. Light from the bathroom glinted off the blades and the fucker was at least seven feet tall. How the hell did it get in my room?
No time to wonder as it darted forward again. My foot caught on the sheet as I tried to rise and I tripped, hands jutting out to grab the end poster of the bed. I was of course naked, an unfortunate side effect of bedroom activities, and not the best position to be in when attacked by a demon.
My fingers locked on the rough wrought iron post and I swung around, sheet still around my foot as it collided with the thing’s chest.
The demon stumbled, its steps heavy and thumping; the sound must’ve alerted Nate as the water shut off. I was already backing up, kicking loose the sheet, fumbling for my dresser where some weaponry waited in the top drawer. Basic stuff but better than standing around naked without anything. A gun might not help but I had knives. Also a sword somewhere in the closet, dusty. I was out of practice with that kind of thing, but then I hadn’t faced demons in a while that required decapitation. Hopefully this wouldn’t either, or I’d be kicking myself.
I grabbed the drawer and yanked but the creature came at me so I abandoned my task, ducked one knife as it sailed toward me. Ducked the next. Tried to kick him in the balls but my foot didn’t meet anything under his dark ceremonial robe—so much for that idea.
“Uh, honey?” I called, as Nate had not yet joined me. The knife sank into my dresser top, way down deep and I punched the demon hard before he could yank it out.
It growled and jerked the other knife toward me; I danced away, the tip of the serrated blade narrowly missing my collarbone. I needed clothes, damn it.
“What?” Nate called.
Oh, come on. “Little help might be—”
It charged at me again and I beat across the floor, out of the way, and it was not fun trying to do that with no bra. My chest
is not the sort to just shut up and lie flat while I’m running.
I shrieked at a tug on my scalp—goddamn thing had my hair and wrenched me back. The remaining blade neared my throat.
“Jesus,” Nate muttered from the doorway, standing in a towel and shaking his head.
The demon looked at him too so I used the moment to twist and kick, showing far too many of my lady bits when I slammed my foot on his wrist, pinning it to the wall.
Nate grabbed the knife stuck on the dresser, jerked the thick heavy blade out, and threw it at the demon. Light darted from the metal and the blade sank into his chest, his body tensing. Black blood poured.
The demon roared. So, knife to the heart didn’t kill him then.
I slipped away, his grip on my hair loosening enough when the knife had hit him. My scalp burned and I spared a moment to rub at the back of my head. “Well, that didn’t really help.”
Nate watched the creature, frowning. “What the hell did you do?”
“Nothing! I woke up to it playing the stabby game with my pillow.”
“Right.”
The demon jerked the knife out of its chest and black ichor blood was dripping on my goddamn floor. Its red eyes moved between us, as if deciding who to target first since we were on either side of the room. I kind hoped it went for Nate so I at least had time to put underwear on.
“It was probably Mishka.”
The demon charged at me and if it was Mishka, maybe she didn’t make the “kill Nate” plans clear enough to the thing. I took three steps back, hit the wall. Reached for the nightstand and whipped it up, smacking the creature across the side of the head. Wood splintered and cracked and the demon stumbled.
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