by Lauren Dawes
“Head back,” he said, and I did as I was told, for once, and shut my eyes as tepid water cleaned away the suds. I thought that was it, but he rubbed some conditioner through my hair too, letting it sit while he washed me.
I leaned with my back to the wall, watching my fully clothed partner rub my coconut-scented bodywash all over my body. He kept his hips angled away from me, but I could see that he was turned on by this.
“You don’t have to hide that,” I told him as he rinsed the cloth off.
“Hide what?” Water ran down his face, slicking back his hair. His shirt was sticking to his skin, clinging to the curves of his chest.
“Your erection.”
He snorted but didn’t say anything more.
“You don’t think I’m attractive?”
He jerked his head up, his eyes gobbling up all the light in the room. At least it seemed that way. They went from gray to stormy tempest in a heartbeat. “Why would you say that?”
Shrugging my good shoulder, because talking about this stuff was just a smidge embarrassing, I tried to put my bravado back on… and discovered I may have left it at the hospital.
Rescuing me from the inevitable crash and burn, he said, “Let’s get out of the shower.”
Sawyer wrapped me in a fluffy towel and shoved me out the door. Glancing back over my shoulder, I watched him strip off his shirt, slacks, and underwear, leaving them in a wet pile on the tile.
“Enjoying the view?” he asked without looking my way as he reached for another towel.
Would it kill me to say yes? I shuffled to my room then I paused when I realized I couldn’t put my favorite pajamas on without help. I turned to ask him for one more favor only to find him already there with a towel around his waist. Putting clothes on me felt more intimate than the undressing for some reason, so like an adult, I didn’t look him in the eye as he pulled up the flannelette pants and did up the buttons on the matching shirt.
Without saying a word, he helped put the sling back on too.
“I’m going to throw my clothes into the dryer. Where are your clean sheets?” At my raised brows, he added, “I’m sleeping on your couch tonight.”
“Bottom shelf of the linen cupboard in the hall.”
I walked around aimlessly while he got busy making a bed for himself, trying to figure out what to do. I felt like I should be playing host even though I was clearly in too much pain to do anything other than lie flat on my back and stare at the backside of my eyelids.
“You should go to bed. I can entertain myself while you pass out.”
Fantastic idea.
With a nod, I stumbled into my bedroom, shut the door, and laid down. My eyes were closed before my head even hit the pillow.
Eleven
I woke the next morning to the smell of fresh coffee and pastries. I sat up, blinking blearily at the sun streaming through the windows. Out in the kitchen, I heard someone moving around. Throwing the blankets from my body, I padded out to find Faline. She took one look at me and said brightly, “Good morning, sunshine.”
“What are you doing in my apartment?”
“Sawyer asked me to stop in on my way to work to make sure you were okay. He had to leave early this morning. I brought breakfast.” She gestured to the plate of delicious, buttery pastries and the coffee. Still cautious, I sat down at the counter and reached for a plain croissant.
“Did Sawyer really send you? And how in the hell did you get in here without the key?”
She smiled, flashing me a little fang. “I asked your building manager.”
“You mean you seduced my building manager.”
She shrugged, all who me? “I may have had breakfast there too.”
I held my hand up, the one brandishing the croissant, and said, “Argh. No. Don’t tell me all the details.”
Leaning her hip against the counter, she grabbed a pastry for herself. “So how are you feeling?”
I looked down at the sling. “Better than I was yesterday. I guess you’ve heard what happened then?”
She nodded, her silky black hair shifting off her shoulders. “I did. I’m sorry about your truck.”
“Yeah, me too.” I loved that truck. Shoving the rest of the croissant into my mouth, I swallowed a couple of mouthfuls of coffee and stood up. “We should probably get to work, huh?”
“The boss said we could come in at nine.”
“That’s only forty minutes away.”
“I guess you’d better start getting ready then.”
I showered in record time, holding back the yelps as the water stung my cuts once more. Half an hour later, I rolled back through to the kitchen, finally dressed in a pair of black slacks and black blouse. It had taken me twenty minutes to get into them, but I did it, damnit.
Take that, Sawyer.
I found Faline was curled up on my couch, flipping through a year-old shooting magazine.
“I missed this issue,” she said absently, not taking her eyes off the page. She looked up at me. “There’s a great article on cutting and crowning a barrel with hand tools in here.”
I nodded. “If only I had a workshop of my own,” I said wistfully. “Are you ready?”
Standing up in one smooth movement, she eyed my clothes. “No uniform today?”
“I already stand out as a human in our department. Why draw any more focus?”
She smiled and made a smug little noise under her breath.
“What?”
“You said our department.”
Shit. “Slip of the tongue.”
“Or the truth? You like it with us.”
I snorted and folded my good arm over my chest. “Yup, you got me. I love getting attacked by vampires, totaling my truck, and traipsing into Wonderland by accident.” I hope she caught my sarcasm, because my words were dripping in that shit.
“Don’t forget Reaver, who seems to have really taken a liking to you.”
“Ah, yes, can’t forget the sentient sword who’s made it its mission to pop up at the most random times.” I looked around and found it on the kitchen counter. Stalking over to it, I slid it into my belt loop. Damn, I needed to get something better to carry it in.
Faline studied me. “They always say less is more.”
I grimaced. “I might as well take him back to the station this morning. No doubt he’ll pop up again later anyway.”
“True enough. Are you ready?”
Grabbing my badge, I drew it over my head, then looked for my side arm.
“Sawyer told me to tell you he has it. When you got to the hospital, they stripped the weapons off both of you, and he collected them afterwards.”
“Good to know. Are you ready?”
She nodded, and we walked down the stairs together, our footsteps in sync. I sighed. I wished it was the nineties band.
“How’s the neck feeling?”
“My…” I placed my palm against the bite there and winced. “Still sore.”
“A baby vamp gnawed on your neck, but it should heal pretty quickly.”
“You’re sure? I don’t want people getting the wrong idea about me and Sawyer.”
She snorted, and even that sounded sexy. Bitch. “Sawyer wouldn’t ravage your neck and leave you bleeding.”
I raised a brow and pushed open the front door of my apartment building. “Oh?”
Faline gestured to a hot pink Fiat 500. “No. He’d also make you come. He’s considerate like that.”
If I’d been drinking coffee, I would’ve spat it out. As it was, all I could do was gape. She gave me a coy smile. “What? You are attracted to him, right?”
“Only in a platonic way.” I was hedging and doing it badly.
She unlocked her car, and I slid into the soft cream leather seat. “Well, these don’t come as standard,” I commented, looking around the cream-on-cream interior.
“I like what I like,” she replied with a flick of her hair.
“You know what? For a succubus, you are not what I e
xpected.”
“What did you expect?”
“Leather, whips, and chains.”
She laughed, and it was a beautiful sound. “Oh, that’s what my spanking room is for.”
“You have a…spanking room?” I swallowed. Now, why did I like the sound of that? “Do tell.”
Faline pulled out into traffic easily, sliding into the flow without so much as a horn blaring at her. “Some men enjoy being spanked. Some women do too.”
“I thought you said you could only feed on male energy.”
“That’s right, but I just happen to like sex with women too. I don’t feed off them. Sex with them is just my guilty pleasure.”
“You sound like you’re breaking all the rules.”
She shrugged. “Not really. I’m old—”
I gave her a look, since it seemed like she was barely twenty-five.
“I look a lot younger than I am.”
Flicking a hair from my slacks, I asked, “So how old are you?”
“I was born just before the breakout of the first World War.”
I gaped at her. “Hot damn, woman.” I shook my head. “Okay, how old is Sawyer?”
“If I remember correctly, he was born in the sixties.”
“Flower child. Got it.”
She grinned. “No, not the nineteen sixties. The eighteen sixties.”
Shock rippled through me then I cleared my throat and asked the question I’d been wanting to know the answer to for ages. “Have you two ever…?”
She looked horrified. “Had sex?”
“Well, yeah. I mean, you’re hot. He’s hot. You could feed off him, right?” Faline still had that deer in headlights look on her face, and I rushed to add, “Forget I mentioned it.”
“I kind of can’t now,” she replied, then sighed. “As much as I would totally love for him to fuck me into oblivion, I wouldn’t let him.”
“Got a boyfriend?”
“No. Argh, could you imagine how hard it would be to feed if I had a boyfriend?”
“I thought it would’ve been easier?”
“We can feed from one source, but that’s like asking you to only have one meal for the rest of your life.”
“Ah, yum, mac and cheese me, please.”
She shook her head. “What if every time you ate that mac and cheese, you lost nutrients and it began to taste like cardboard?”
“To be honest, I’m not sure box mac and cheese has too many nutrients to start with.”
Laughing, Faline added, “Touché, but that’s what it’s like for me if I feed from one male exclusively.”
“So even if you loved the guy and didn’t want to go anywhere else…?”
“I would have to. Or I would die.”
“Shit.”
She fiddled with the radio, finding a station that was playing soft rock. “But if Sawyer and I were to screw, it would end with a pregnancy.”
“He’s got strong swimmers, huh? Wait, how do you know that?”
She gave me a strange look. “You do know he’s an incubus, right?”
I literally felt the blood drain from my face.
“Shit, you didn’t,” she muttered. “I think he wanted to tell you himself. I just thought he had already.”
“It’s okay. It’s not like we’re getting married or serving a life sentence together.”
“No, you just have to work with him and trust him at your back, and, Cat, you can totally trust him at your back. He’s a good guy.”
“An incubus? Really?” Play it cool, McKenzie. “So why is he a no-bang zone for you? He’ll knock you up just like that?” I snapped my fingers.
“Whenever there’s a coupling between an incubus and succubus, there’s a child produced.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s why condoms were invented.”
She shook her head. “The only reason a succubus and incubus would bang would be to reproduce.”
“Well, if that wasn’t an ad for abstinence, I don’t know what is.” I laughed, or at least tried to, but betrayal was a dirty, rusty knife being twisted into my gut.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault. I knew I was working with supes. I thought I could handle that. I’m okay with you being a succubus. Why shouldn’t I be okay with Sawyer being an incubus?” I laughed again, the sound edged with mania. “It wasn’t as if I thought he was human.”
I glanced out the windshield and was relieved to see we’d arrived at the station.
“Because he’s your partner and you have to trust him.”
“I do trust him,” I replied automatically, frowning when I thought about the words. I did trust him. He came running into Wonderland for me. He saved me from the baby vamp. He pulled me out of a goddamn car wreck that should’ve left me a traffic collision statistic. I flushed when I thought about what happened when he took me home, took care of me.
“You’re thinking about having sex with Sawyer right now,” Faline said, gently, guiding her car into a free spot.
“Am not.” I totally was. “How sensitive is your sex-o-meter?”
That comment got me a small, fang-filled smile. “Pretty fucking accurate.”
“You can tell I’m attracted to him.”
She touched me on the shoulder. “FYI, he already knows. Plus, he’s attracted to you too.”
I shrugged that last comment away. “But how much of that is instinct to feed?” I replied. “I don’t want to be an instinctual impulse.” She opened her mouth to reply, but I waved her away. “What does it matter anyway? He’s my partner. Partners don’t fuck each other’s brains out.” Even though the thought of Sawyer leaving me sated and boneless was an instant shot of lust to my groin. Unclipping my seat belt, I got out of the car.
“I’m sorry if I’ve upset you.”
Upset me? Popped my biggest illusion bubble? “It’s not your fault. What he is shouldn’t matter.” I looked up at the building. “We should probably get in there though. We’re already late.”
Twelve
I walked into the office behind Faline, listening to the sound of office chatter taper off suddenly.
“There she is, our own miracle child.” This came from a guy called Braxton, who was sitting behind his desk with a grin on his face. He was a shifter of some kind, but I wasn’t sure what yet.
“Miracle child?”
He nodded. “Congrats on being inducted into PIG.”
I rocked back on my heels. “How do you figure?”
Holding out his hand, he checked off his fingers as he said, “Attacked by a Renfield, fought Baba Yaga, got bitten by a vampire, survived a run in with a semi, Reaver likes you…”
“Okay, okay,” I told him. “I get it. I’m a bad-luck magnet.”
He still had that stupid grin on his face. “Oh no, sweetheart. You aren’t just a magnet. You’re the epicenter, and you’re just the kind of human we want on the team. You didn’t balk when you had to kill that kid or freak out when you stumbled into Wonderland. No, you stayed strong. You’re one of us now, Cat McKenzie.”
Although I was shaking my head, I was also secretly pleased that I was being accepted like this. All my life, I felt like I hadn’t been, except by Mrs. Brown.
“Alright, that’s enough, Brax,” Sawyer growled as he came into the room behind me. I turned around to face him. He studied me with cool disinterest, no doubt seeing the bruising on my neck, the cuts on my face and neck, and the dark crescents under my eyes.
I tried to piece together the image of the man who had taken care of me last night and the truth about what he was. I hadn’t been lying when I’d said I didn’t care what flavor of supe he was. I didn’t. What I couldn’t connect the dots on was the two sides of Sawyer.
Breaking into my thoughts, he said, “Let’s go. There was a report of a vampire attack at a convenience store overnight.”
I bobbed my head and followed him, hesitating a step when we got outside. My truck was gone, nothing but a crumpled ball of steel, w
hich left us only one way to get around.
“You’re insane if you think I’m getting on there.” I pointed at his motorcycle.
He threw a spare helmet at me. “There’s no other way to get there.”
I cursed the department’s lack of vehicles for PIG. “I’ll take the bus.”
He blew out an exasperated breath. “Just get on, pussy cat.”
Resenting the name, and resenting that I liked it more when he said it, I slid the helmet onto my head and walked over to the bike. Sawyer sat astride, kicking the peg to get the engine started. I waited until his signal before sliding on behind him. I fixed my hands to his shoulders, but he repositioned them around his waist. I flexed my fingers, meeting the strong muscles of his stomach.
“Slide closer,” he said, his voice coming directly through a speaker in the helmet. “Keep your good arm tight around my waist and hang on. I’ll go as slow as I can.”
“I hate you,” I murmured, and his warm laughter filled the helmet a moment later.
“No, you’re enjoying groping me right now.”
I snorted but didn’t deny it. He revved the engine, pushed the kickstand up, and we were off. He weaved through the streets of Buxton, flowing in between cars and trucks, making his movements seem like art rather than necessity. We didn’t catch any traffic lights, and it was only fifteen minutes later that we drove into the parking lot of one of the ubiquitous twenty-four-hour mini marts that dotted the streets of Buxton.
“How was that?” Sawyer asked when he shut off the engine and put the bike back onto its stand.
“Horrifying.”
“Horrifying because you liked it so much?”
“I miss my truck.”
I began to fumble with the strap on the helmet, but he pushed my hands out of the way and undid it for me. Sliding the helmet off, he placed it onto the seat of the bike and looked at me. His fingers skimmed over the bruising on my neck where the bite was still fresh enough to sting. I winced.
“How are you feeling?”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Why are you asking me now and being so sweet?”
He dropped his hands. “Sweet? What do you mean?”
“Oh, come on. You were playing it all cool in the office, and now that we’re alone, you’re fussing over me like a mother hen.”