Poison Fruit

by Jacqueline Carey

  Oh, crap.

  I swallowed. “Stefan? There’s, um, one minor detail I don’t think I mentioned to you.”

  His fingers toyed with my zipper. “You bear a mark?”

  “A mark?”

  “Of your infernal heritage.” He unzipped a few inches, tracing the course with his lips. “Somewhere on your person.”

  “Um . . . yeah.” I whipped my tail between my legs out of reflex. “It’s kind of more than a mark.”

  The zipper descended another six inches, the dress hanging loose on my frame, baring my upper back. “Well, it’s not vestigial wings.”

  Momentarily distracted, I craned my head around. “You’ve seen a hell-spawn with vestigial wings?”

  “Yes. Horns, too. Fleshy little nubbins.” The zipper continued its descent and stopped. Stefan’s hand kept going, sliding over the curve of my buttocks, reaching beneath the hem of my dress and between my thighs. I felt him stiffen slightly at the shock of finding a firm, well-tucked appendage instead of yielding flesh with nothing but a pair of silk panties between us. “Oh.”

  Turned on and mortified at the same time, I closed my eyes. “I should have told you.”

  Instead of withdrawing, Stefan bent his head to kiss a sensitive spot on my throat beneath my earlobe. “A warning would not have gone amiss. But I was prepared to find . . . something.” He took his hand away and turned me around to face him again, easing the dress from my shoulders to fall in a puddle of midnight blue shantung around my feet. “You are who you are, Daisy,” he said softly. His dilated pupils eclipsed his irises like black moons. “You are what you are. And I find that to be beautiful. All of it.”

  I felt naked beneath his gaze. Well, I was naked. But I felt extra-naked, vulnerable, and exposed.

  And really, really turned on.

  All of which Stefan knew, which only made me feel more naked and more turned on. Without asking permission, he tasted my desire, drawing on it. Just a little. Just a taste.

  And I let him.

  Stefan shuddered with pleasure. “You don’t make it easy for one of the Outcast to maintain control, Daisy Johanssen. Even one such as me.”

  “Am I supposed to?” I asked in a small voice. “Because I could raise a shield . . .”

  “No.” Eyes glittering, he stripped off his dinner jacket and unfastened his cuff links with deliberate slowness. “Don’t.”

  Making love with Stefan Ludovic wasn’t like skydiving; it was like walking a tightrope across the Grand Canyon. Well, if walking a tightrope included having mind-blowing sex at the same time. Six hundred years’ worth of practice included acquiring six hundred years’ worth of patience and self-restraint. After taking off his shirt, Stefan scooped me up in his arms and laid me on his bed, straddled my body and proceeded to spend the next hour or so thoroughly undoing me with his hands and mouth, until I was babbling with mindless ecstasy.

  Seriously, I have no idea what I said.

  And yet I was conscious all the while of that connection between us, drawn dangerously taut.

  I was aware that there was an edge beyond which he would be sent ravening. And I became aware, too, that I had to maintain some measure of control, however faint and incoherent. Lust was one of the Seven Deadlies, and apparently the well of my desire was bottomless. I couldn’t afford to lose myself entirely. I never raised a shield against Stefan, but there were times when I had the presence of mind to hold back, allowing my aura to diffuse and dissipate while I caught my breath.

  As I said, it was like walking a tightrope. A sexy, sexy tightrope. Also, it was probably a good thing that we hadn’t gone to bed before I’d gotten skilled at manipulating my aura.

  Everything slowed and intensified when Stefan finally shed the last of his clothes, settled between my thighs, and entered me, inch by deliberate inch. He braced himself above me on strong arms, his broad chest hovering above mine as he rocked his hips, his long, firm cock plowing my depths with sure, steady strokes.

  Who was it that said something about being careful about gazing into the abyss, and the abyss gazing back? Nietzsche, I think. I don’t know; I’m pretty sure I heard it in a Lifetime movie.

  Well, with Stefan inside me and the connection between us open, I gazed into his abyss. I saw the centuries’ worth of pride and anger and loss, half a millennium and more of hurt and loneliness, of endless hunger and abiding patience, and what it meant to be Outcast.

  And I wrapped my arms and legs around him, embracing it all. Oh, and I came again, too. There’s a lot to be said for the rhythm and timing of a partner who can sense exactly what you’re feeling and when you’re on the verge.

  With a shudder, Stefan let himself find his own release. Breaking the connection between us, at least on my end, he collapsed against me, his body heavy atop mine.

  “Well, that was intense,” I murmured.

  After a pause, he laughed deep in his chest and rolled off me. “Yes.”

  Propping myself on one elbow, I gazed at Stefan. His eyes were closed, giving me no clue regarding the current extent of his inner turmoil. His unnaturally pale skin was faintly luminous in the glow of the white Christmas lights, in stark contrast to his slightly-too-long black hair fanned across the pillow. He had a lean, muscular warrior’s body, trained for battle rather than sport in an era long before gym memberships or CrossFit workouts. I flattened one hand on his chest, feeling the living warmth of his skin and the steady throb of his heartbeat.

  I remembered watching him impale himself on his sword, the blade piercing his chest and emerging from his back. There was no scar, not from that injury. Stefan had died and come back in the flicker of an eye. But there were other scars that his mortal body had sustained before his first death.

  I traced one, a lumpy ridge that slanted from his left clavicle across his pectoral muscle. “Are these battle scars?”

  “Yes,” Stefan said without opening his eyes. “But most of them were old before I was made Outcast and no longer pain me.”

  “What about this one?” I circled an angry pink pucker of scar tissue on his side a few inches above his right hipbone.

  He exhaled softly. “That was more recent. I caught an arrow in ambush. I was fortunate that nothing vital was pierced.”

  “It looks like it still hurts,” I said.

  Stefan opened his eyes to reveal still-enormous pupils, irises like frosty rims around them. The hunger in them made my heart skip a beat. “Sometimes, yes.” He caught my hand, drawing it to his lips to kiss my fingertips one by one. “Daisy, I would like to ask you to stay the night with me, to drift gently into sleep as I tell you the story of each and every scar, if that is what you wish. But I fear that making love to you has taxed my control to a greater degree than I anticipated, and I am finding it difficult to retreat from the precipice.”

  “Oh,” I whispered.

  “Forgive me.” He gave me a rueful smile at odds with that avid black gaze. “But it is best if I leave.”

  “Leave?” I felt slow-witted. “But this is your place.”

  “I cannot be so ungentlemanly as to turn you out of my bed and send you out into the cold, Daisy,” Stefan said. “I’m sorry. This is not the way I would have wished our first night together to end.”

  I laid my hand against his cheek. I didn’t want Stefan to leave. I wanted him to stay. I wanted both of us to stay. I wanted him to hold me and tell me again that I was beautiful. I wanted to fall asleep with him holding me, feeling safe and protected. But that wasn’t going to happen, at least not right now. Maybe never. “I know,” I said. “It’s all right. I’ll go. I’d rather.”

  He searched my face. “Are you certain?”

  Leaning over, I brushed his lips with a kiss. “Yes.”

  So instead of lying in Stefan’s embrace and reveling in the languorous aftermath, I climbed out of bed and put on my clothes.

  Downstairs, clad in trousers and an unbuttoned dress shirt, Stefan found my discarded coat and helped me into it. “Good
night, Daisy,” he murmured in the foyer as he reached for the doorknob. His black hair swung forward to touch the collar of his white shirt and his dilated pupils gleamed in the darkness. “I hope I have given you no cause for regret.”

  I thought about it and shook my head. “You know what? All things considered, I think this went well.”

  It was a hell of a way to start the New Year, at any rate.

  Thirty-nine

  In the morning, I awoke to the sound of someone pounding furiously on the downstairs door to the building, periodically pausing to shout my name in an annoyed Irish accent.

  Looking out my bedroom window, I saw Cooper in the alley below holding a large bunch of shiny, helium-filled Mylar balloons.

  I raised the window, letting a blast of wintry air into the apartment. “Cooper! What the hell are you doing?”

  He squinted up at me. “Well, I’m supposed to be deliverin’ flowers on behalf of the big man himself, but there’s no feckin’ flower shops open on New Year’s Day, so I’m doing my best, aren’t I?”

  “You can come up,” I said. “The door’s not locked.”

  “I’d rather you came down,” Cooper said. “Don’t reckon himself would like me intruding on you en déshabillé, as it were. In your nightie,” he added, seeing my lack of comprehension.

  “Oh, fine. I’ll be right down.” Closing the window, I wrapped myself in my Michelin Man coat, shoved a pair of boots on my feet, and descended the stairs, pausing at the top of the landing to apologize to the disgruntled neighbor poking his head out the door of the apartment opposite mine.

  In the alley, Cooper looked me up and down. “Nice coat.” He thrust the ribbons anchoring the balloons at me. “Here. The finest the dollar store had to offer. It was meant to be a dozen red roses, but it comes with the big man’s apologies.”

  I gazed in bemusement at the assortment, which included a number of birthday wishes, Spider-Man, a football, various Disney princesses, and a bright yellow SpongeBob SquarePants. “Um . . . thank you.”

  Cooper shrugged. “Don’t mention it.”

  “Just out of curiosity, did Stefan approve the substitution?” I asked him. “I don’t want to say the wrong thing and get you in trouble.”

  Cooper flashed a quick, feral grin at me. “Oh, that he did. I think the notion quite tickled him.” He touched two fingers to his brow in a mocking salute. “Happy New Year to you, m’lady.”

  “You, too, Cooper.” After he left, I tugged the unwieldy bunch of balloons up the narrow stairwell and into my apartment, where I set them free to roam at will. A dozen Mylar balloons drifted and bumped gently against the ceiling while Mogwai stalked their trailing ribbons.

  I was making coffee when Jen called.

  “Okay, girlfriend,” she said without preamble when I picked up. “What’s the scoop on your New Year’s Eve date with the hot ghoul? And don’t hold out on me. I know it was a big romantic shindig.”

  I poured another scoop of coffee into the filter. “Oh, yeah?”

  “I ran into Greta Hasselmeyer at the grocery store the other day,” Jen said. “Her niece Michelle is a junior in high school. Michelle’s dating a senior named Dylan Martinez who’s some kind of musical prodigy, and she told her mom that some spooky-hot ghoul hired Dylan to play his cello at a private party on New Year’s Eve. Which, I’m thinking, was for you. So yeah.”

  “Touché.”

  “Daise!” Jen sounded aggrieved. “C’mon.”

  Once upon a time, not very long ago, it would have been hard to imagine that I might be involved in a relationship that I wouldn’t want to hash over in detail with my BFF, but for the first time, I found myself hesitating.

  There was just so much that Jen wouldn’t understand. Then again, there was a lot I wasn’t sure I understood myself. The desire to dish won out. “Can you come over?”

  “On my way.” She hung up.

  Ten minutes later, Jen was batting her way through the hanging forest of balloon ribbons in my apartment. “What the hell, Daise?” she asked me, eyeballing SpongeBob SquarePants. “Are you having a kids’ party I don’t know about?”

  I handed her a cup of coffee. “It’s an apology.”

  “For what?”

  I gave Jen an abridged version of my night with Stefan, glossing over the actual sex and skipping to the part where I had to make an unplanned early exit. “Hence the balloons,” I explained.

  “At least he’s got a sense of humor,” Jen commented. “So . . . how are you with all of this? Are you okay?”

  “I don’t know.” I sipped my coffee. “It was . . . intense.”

  Jen gave me a shrewd look. “Funny, that’s exactly what you said about hooking up with Cody.”

  I’d managed to avoid thinking about Cody, because thinking about Cody included thinking about how easy and comfortable we’d been together in the aftermath of lovemaking and how nice it had been waking up in his bed that last time, all of which made my heart hurt. “Yeah, well, it’s a different kind of intense.”

  “Where do you see yourself going in this relationship with Stefan?” Jen asked. “I mean, do you have a future together? Do you want a future together?”

  “I don’t know! Do I have to figure it out at this stage?” I asked. “Can’t I just enjoy the good parts?”

  “If you were dating an ordinary human being, I’d say yes,” Jen said. “But under the circumstances, you might want to put some forethought into it.”

  “Oh, believe me, I’m well aware of the whole immortal vs. mortal issue,” I said. “It’s not something you lose sight of.”

  “It’s not just that.” Jen’s voice was gentle. “Hot supernatural sex is all well and good, Daise, but at some point, you just want to be with someone who you can fall asleep with on the couch watching TV together.”

  “We’ll see.” I changed the subject. “What did you and Lee do for New Year’s Eve?”

  She smiled. “Drank too much champagne and fell asleep on the couch watching TV together.”

  Okay, I’ll admit it. I was a little jealous.

  But things with Stefan were good, and continued to be good in the weeks that followed. By mutual accord, we backed away from the intensity of that first encounter and kept things light for a while before scheduling an official date to attend a performance by a visiting bossa nova band at the Pemkowet Center for the Arts.

  When we went back to Stefan’s place afterward, I was hoping that it would be different this time. Not the mind-blowing sex part, obviously, or the profound connection that took place during it, but the aftermath.

  It wasn’t.

  At least this time I was prepared for it. “Does being with a woman always drive you to the edge of ravening?” I asked Stefan as I put my clothes back on.

  “No.” He smiled, but it was strained. “Only with you, Daisy. You and your outsize emotions.”

  “Could you, um, refrain from sampling them?” I inquired. “At least during the deed itself?”

  Stefan’s eyes glittered. “Then? No. At other times, yes. But then, no.”

  He didn’t explain, but he didn’t need to. I understood. It was part of what I saw in him when he was inside me and the connection between us worked both ways. Stefan was Outcast, and that was what it meant to make love with one of the Outcast.

  “Okay,” I said. “You don’t need to send Cooper over with balloons this time.”

  Stefan laughed, his swimmingly huge pupils dwindling a bit. “Very well, then. I won’t.”

  The fact that he could laugh about it was an encouraging sign. We could work on this, Stefan and I. I could continue to work on controlling my aura. Stefan could continue to hone the self-control and discipline he’d developed over the course of centuries. I didn’t envision us dozing off on the couch together anytime soon, but I thought a little postcoital cuddling and conversation was a realistic expectation.

  And if it hadn’t been for the goddamned werewolf mixer, maybe it would have been.

  Oh,
yes, I’d agreed to go.

  I didn’t want to be there any more than Cody wanted me there, but it was a matter of status. If I hadn’t accepted the invitation, I would have insulted the Fairfax clan and lost face in the bargain. I was Hel’s liaison. I couldn’t let my love life compromise that authority.

  The weekend got off to a bad start before it had even begun. On Friday afternoon, a process server visited the police station and presented both me and Chief Bryant with subpoenas to testify in the upcoming trial. Dufreyne had warned me I’d be called as a witness, but receiving the actual document brought it home. It was a jarring reminder that the trial date was approaching all too soon. I’d been practicing my unobtrusibility skills diligently, but the thought of putting them to the test in the courtroom still made me want to throw up.

  On Saturday evening, there was an unexpected fracas at the Wheelhouse, and Stefan had to cancel our plans when Cooper called him for backup in sorting it out. Not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but it left me in a more disgruntled frame of mind on Sunday afternoon when I drove out to Cody’s uncle’s place to attend the mixer.

  The Fairfax clan owned a big tract of land out in the countryside adjacent to the county game preserve. It was secluded and heavily wooded, perfect werewolf territory. I pulled into the long driveway and had gotten about halfway to the house when Cody’s cousin Joe, a tall figure clad in a bulky tan Carhartt jacket and pants, a shotgun held casually in one hand, stepped out from behind a pine tree to bar my way, pointing at me and mouthing something I couldn’t hear.

  I rolled down the window. “What?”

  “I said roll down the window!” Joe came over and stuck his head in the window, nostrils flaring as he sniffed me. “Daisy, right? You were with Cody the night he borrowed my Saw videos.”

  “Right,” I said. “I’m here representing Hel, who probably wouldn’t appreciate your detaining me at gunpoint.”

  Joe looked apologetic. “We’re just being careful. This isn’t the kind of gathering you want curious neighbors to drop by, you know?” He waved me on. “Go ahead, everyone’s out back.”