by BETH KERY
She was so disoriented by witnessing the intensely carnal moment that she hadn’t at first registered that both women’s backs were arched, their hands above their head, wrists together as though they’d been bound. He didn’t restrain either of them, however, and Christina could see no bindings. It must be their choice to hold the position.
Or Saint’s preference?
Anxiety and the first inklings of fear entered Christina’s awareness when his jaws remained fixed to the woman’s thigh, his mouth moving ever so slightly. The woman’s head fell back to the floor of the gazebo, her body sagging limply as she gasped for air.
Saint lifted his head. A whimper of anxiety escaped Christina’s throat when she saw the long, sharp incisors that protruded onto his lips. With her sixth sense, she’d gleaned so much about him, so many secrets.
But she hadn’t guessed this.
His head whipped around. Christina took cover behind the tree, praying he couldn’t hear her rough pants for air. The howl of a dog in the distance mingled with the hammer of her heart in her ears.
Why didn’t she run?
Was she in too much shock to experience fear? He’d bitten that woman with teeth that looked like an animal’s lethal fangs. The fact that the woman appeared to love every moment of it confused Christina even more. She felt anxiety over Saint’s strange behavior, yes, but also an unbearable sexual excitement.
Not to mention fury that he’d chosen to bring two other females to what should have been a special meeting between them. Her anger frothed at the thought.
He was doing this on purpose, the bastard. He was doing this to push her away.
She gritted her teeth and poked her head out from behind the tree. He must have decided whatever he’d heard had been an animal or a sound from the distant city streets, because he was back to making love. He stretched across the woman he’d been pleasuring, his head now between the blonde’s thighs. After a moment, he raised his head to inspect his handiwork.
The blonde’s pussy had been shaved clean. It glistened in the soft candlelight. Christina’s womb flexed inward in painful arousal as she watched Saint’s head lower once again. The woman made a choking sound, as though pleasure had literally stolen her breath.
Christina watched, enthralled, as his limber, wet tongue drew sigh after moan after begging chant from the woman’s throat. Her body had gone rigid, her back arched off the floor. The brown-skinned woman moved her hips restlessly against Saint’s body. He responded by pressing a hand between her legs. The woman mewled appreciatively. Saint’s head whipped around.
Suddenly his eyes were on Christina. She trembled in dismay and shock and arousal and she didn’t know what else, but she couldn’t bring herself to move. Tears soaked her heated cheeks.
He pushed his upper body up with his arms, pinning her with his stare.
Chapter Two
Misery finally overcame her.
She turned and ran through the night. She came up short not two seconds later when a wolf stepped into her path. At first she thought it was Scepter. But then she saw that while this animal was as tall as Scepter, it was bulkier. Its fur looked dark gray in the moonlight versus Scepter’s mixture of dove gray and white around the neck and muzzle.
“Go away,” she hissed. Tears continued to pour down her face. A dam of emotion felt as if it were about to break and explode out of her chest. All she wanted to do was to get home and stifle her groans of pain and agony into her pillow. She didn’t have time for strays—wild or domesticated.
“Get,” she repeated between clenched teeth. She started to charge toward the animal, made fearless by her volatile emotional state. Movement caught her attention out of the side of her eye, however, and she paused. Her mouth fell open in amazement when she saw that close to a dozen wolves surrounded her in a half-circle. Each of them stood utterly still, their moonlit eyes fixed on her.
A hand spread along the side of her neck, long fingers stretching into her unbound hair. He jerked her against his long, hard body, her belly thumping against his groin. Heat and the odor of aroused male filled her nose, the impact of the scent sending her body into a strange combination of fight or flight and lust so powerful it struck her awareness like a slap to the face.
“Get your filthy hands off me,” she growled at Saint, outraged that he had the nerve to touch her with the women’s essence still on him.
“Why do you run? You know perfectly well I’d never harm you.”
She laughed mirthlessly. “I obviously don’t know the first thing about you.”
She saw his light blue eyes gleam in the moonlight, reminding her of the wolves that surrounded them. His nostrils flared when he inhaled. “You’re right. You know nothing about me, lovely, or you wouldn’t be having infantile fantasies about us sharing a romantic interlude in the darkness.”
His eyes flashed; his head moved slightly as he inhaled again, clearly catching her scent. For some reason, the primitiveness of his actions made her want to respond in kind, made her itch to press her body against his hard length, to claw at his back until he came down over her in the fragrant grass…to force him to take what was his.
The thought made her flinch away from him.
“You’re an animal,” she hissed.
“Yes.”
She started. He sounded so sure…so sad. Tears scalded her eyes.
“I’ve always known you weren’t like other people, just like I’m not. I didn’t mean you were an animal because you’re different. I meant it because you called me here tonight knowing perfectly well how much you were going to hurt me. You wanted to make sure of it, you bastard.” She jerked violently out of his hold. “That’s why you’re an animal, Saint.”
“Better I hurt you this way than to turn your foolish fantasies into reality.”
She went up on her tiptoes, shoving her face as close to his as she could get. “It was your fantasy as well, you fucking hypocrite.”
For several seconds they just stared at each other, Christina trying to catch both her breath and her splintering control; Saint holding himself preternaturally still.
“You won’t harm those women,” she stated fiercely.
“I never harm. I take, but only what’s freely given.” His gaze dropped down over her. “And not always that.”
The image of him swam in a world filled with tears.
“Just stay away from Aidan and me, you son of a bitch.”
As she ran blindly through the night, she was too overwhelmed to even notice that the wolves had disappeared.
Saint watched Christina run away. Her vitessence—her vibrant lifeforce—popped and snapped around her, shining brilliantly in his vision. That he could actually see her hurt and disillusionment like a human would see something as tangible as the sunrise made his pain exponentially more vicious.
His frozen stance belied a nearly overwhelming need to race after her. This was his life—always the mandate to restrain, ever the requirement to battle his hunger, to vanquish his need.
He sensed Fardusk standing near his right shoulder. “Have the others escort the women off Whitby’s grounds.”
“Have you become as mercenary in your feeding as your clone, then?” Fardusk asked.
Saint turned slowly. Fardusk’s face looked as though it’d been carved from rock in the blue-tinged light of the moon. He experienced the admonishment from the revered chief of the Iniskium like acid splashing on a raw wound.
“I have given them pleasure. I haven’t shortchanged them,” Saint said bitterly. “Why don’t you just say what you’re really angry about?”
“It was beneath you to trick Christina in that way. She deserves better.”
His muscles convulsed with repressed emotion. He’d known Fardusk now for over five and a half centuries, and never once had his companion chastised him. This despite the fact that Saint was more deserving of Fardusk’s condemnation than any other. Saint had been the one to rob Fardusk and so many members of the Iniskium tribe
of their mortal lives, after all.
“She deserves much better,” Saint hissed. “What would you have me do? She is life; I am the walking dead. Christina is the fullness. I am the void. Would you have me drain her of every ounce of her vitessence, only to make her like me?”
“I would have you face your fate instead of run from it.”
Fury lashed through him. Saint lunged.
“I do not run,” he snarled close to Fardusk’s impassive face.
He didn’t see the Iniskium chief’s face, however. Instead, all he could envision was the image of Christina’s hurt when she saw him pleasuring the women, Christina suffering from a wound he’d purposely inflicted.
Remorse flooded him, but what other choice had been left to him? He forced himself to take a step back from Fardusk.
“I do not run,” he repeated. “I restrain. I endure. I will even put up with your condemnation tonight because I have no other choice.”
Fardusk remained silent as Saint turned and headed toward the main house, alone.
Chapter Three
The silence stretched. Christina didn’t move as she stared at the waifish young woman who sat in front of her desk. The girl’s forearms rested in her lap, the bandages around her wrists looking starkly white against tanned skin.
“Do you think you’re going to make me talk by staring at me like that, Christina? I ain’t a member of your fan club, and I don’t intimidate easy.” Alison’s thin, pretty face twisted in defiance.
Christina looked mildly surprised. “You, easily intimidated? I’d just as soon call life fair. Come on, Alison, you know I’m not trying to intimidate you. I’m waiting patiently because I think you want to tell me why you cut yourself this afternoon.”
Christina waited. She hadn’t been bluffing. She’d had the ability to read other people’s minds for as long as she could remember. Occasionally she caught entire thoughts, but usually just overall emotional states. The reasons behind those emotional states were less defined—the difference between catching the scent of lilacs on the wind and holding the flower in your hand.
Alison Myers wanted to reach out to Christina. She longed for a sense of security and comfort. Whatever was haunting her, tempting her, was countermanding that desire. And whatever had its hold on her was far more troubling than Alison’s typical demons.
Christina had long ago become familiar with the bitter ambivalence of teenagers and young adults. They longed to be independent, to be in full control of their lives, and yet…the longing to be taken care of and nurtured remained, causing a bitter emotional struggle. Hell, it wasn’t just teenagers who fought the internal battle. All humans vacillated between wanting to be in total control of their destinies and being taken care of by someone they trusted.
For the majority of young adults at Altgeld House, the raw wounds and scars from childhood traumas made the battle a hundred times more potent and painful.
Alison flipped her jet-black dyed hair out of her eyes, her gaze on Christina hungry and suspicious at once. She licked at her lower lip, the silver stud piercing her tongue dragging slowly along damp flesh.
Christina understood the girl was purposefully being provocative. Not surprising. When Alison felt backed into a corner, she automatically reverted to the familiar security of the seductress role. It was how she found her power when she was feeling powerless, a pattern Christina had witnessed in abused children too many times to count.
“I know you want to trust me, Alison, but you’re scared. You’ve only been at Altgeld House for four weeks now. Surely some of the others—Mirella, Eric, Andre—have told you that I can be trusted.” Christina stood and came around her desk, sitting in the chair next to Alison. “I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what was going through your mind when you picked up that razor and cut yourself.”
Another tense silence ensued. Christina noticed the tears welling in Alison’s extraordinary midnight blue eyes. She reached out with her mind to read the twenty-year-old woman’s primary emotion. Usually kids who cut themselves were either boiling with anger or so miserable they’d gone numb. But those weren’t the primary emotions she sensed emanating from Alison.
“You’re scared shitless,” Christina said softly.
A sob racked the girl’s slender torso. Tears that had been restrained until that moment gushed down her cheeks in a torrent.
“It was a sacrifice. A blood sacrifice. It was a test. I had to show that I give myself willingly—without doubt.”
Christina crinkled her brow in concern. She hadn’t observed any indication of delusional thinking from the girl in her original assessment, nor observed any psychotic thought processes since then. She must have missed something…unless Alison had gotten herself mixed up with some sick Goth who got off on forcing his girlfriends to cut themselves as a sign of loyalty?
Altgeld House wasn’t a lock-down facility. The residents were expected to either be in school, working, or trying to find a job. There was an eleven-thirty p.m. curfew monitored by Marianna Jones, the night supervisor, but Lord knew residents had been known to get into plenty of trouble before the midnight hour struck.
“Who demands a blood sacrifice?”
Alison opened her lips to respond, but a knock sounded on Christina’s office door. She mentally cursed whoever had interrupted at such a crucial moment. She apologized to the fragile young woman and flung open the door.
“Can’t you read?” she demanded, referring to the do not disturb sign she put up when she was in session with a resident. She came up short when she saw Saint standing there, wearing jeans and a black T-shirt that highlighted the long taper from his broad shoulders to his narrow waist. He wore sunglasses and his hair had the wind-tousled, sexy look she associated with him just getting off his sleek Augusta F4 motorcycle. Fury swelled in her breast.
It’d been two weeks since the charity function. The fact that she’d been able to read Saint’s monumental conflict and pain when he’d halted her amongst the trees only escalated her volatility and confusion. She’d never resented her ability to read others more acutely, but things would have been easier if she could just think of him as a freak and a jerk.
She’d been making plans to move off Whitby’s grounds since the night of the gazebo. But when night came, she grieved for the loss of him…grieved for the loss of what might have been.
What should have been.
The incendiary thought kept occurring to her that perhaps Saint’d been right to show her what he was, justified in pushing her away when she’d become so insistent upon seducing him.
She’d kept her defensive barrier intact, however. Been proud of herself for shutting him out.
The realization that all she’d done was avoid the issue for two weeks slammed home as she stared at the vivid reality of Saint standing right in front of her.
What right did he have showing up here in her private domain, looking like a beautiful, suffering angel, when she was doing her best to squeeze the life out of her too-frequent thoughts of him?
“What do you want?” she asked ungraciously.
“I brought Aidan. He wants to talk to you. He’s waiting in the day room.”
“Is he all right?” Her anger at the fact that Saint had been hanging around Aidan when she’d specifically told him to stay away was forgotten in her concern for her son.
“He’s fine. He just said he had something important he wanted to discuss with you and asked if I’d bring him over.”
Christina glanced around at Alison, who was staring at Saint, slack-jawed. Christina mentally rolled her eyes. Was there a female on the planet whose brain wouldn’t short-circuit at the sight of him?
“Alison, can you hold on just a moment? I need to speak with my son.”
Alison swallowed heavily and nodded.
Christina sighed and stepped into the hallway, worried she’d lost crucial therapeutic ground with the girl by the interruption. She’d done a suicide assessment and spoken at length with Alis
on’s psychiatrist. They’d agreed the girl wasn’t actively suicidal. But Alison was in some kind of danger. Christina just knew it. And this business of a blood sacrifice alarmed her.
She glanced up when she noticed that Saint hadn’t moved to make way for her and her nose was just inches away from a broad, cotton-covered chest.
As usual, he didn’t speak, even when she stared into his eyes.
“If you want to say something, say it,” she spat.
“Aidan’s not the only one who wants to speak with you. I do, as well.”
She rolled her eyes. “Miracle of miracles. Whatever it is will have to wait. You’re at the very bottom of my list, Sevliss.”
She felt his gaze boring into her back as she walked away.
He watched her as she strutted down the corridor. Christina’s fury burned in his nose and tasted like bitter spice on his tongue. Her never-absent arousal added a rich, intoxicating flavor to the complex array of emotions that always flavored the energy field that surrounded her. He forced himself to look away.
It shamed him beyond belief that he could have stared at her unceasingly for an eternity, drawing on her vast energy…feeding from her like the parasite he was until he’d drained every ounce of her vitessence, leaving nothing but a hollow shell.
Christina lit up his monochrome world like a blazing comet. Whenever he was near her, a lifeless, gray landscape flooded with vibrant, throbbing color.
He glanced into Christina’s comfortable, messy office, his attention fixing on the pale, undernourished-looking young woman who stood facing him. She trembled. His gaze flickered down to her wrists. Vitessence glowed around her wounds—the color a watered-out gold against the gray outlines of the rest of her.
For one such as he, releasing blood to the air was like breaking a safety seal. He caught the scent of her blood, her fear and excitement.