He dwarfed the genteel, luxurious room and frankly upstaged it. His bulk, masculinity, and sheer, unstudied elegance rendered all the expensive trimmings around him—gilded mirrors and gold fixtures and polished marble—effete and superficial, and she wondered why she hadn’t noticed it before, the way his presence made other things pale in comparison. The way he made everything else seem figuratively and literally small.
He stared back at her, lips parted, his face transforming from worry to shock to molten heat as his gaze traveled over her wet, naked body. When his dark eyes found hers again, they were on fire.
“No, Demetrius,” she said simply, “I’m not all right. I’ve never been less all right in my life.”
He took a step forward, his eyes searing hers. “I’ll kill him. I’ll kill that bastard if he laid a finger on you—”
“He did something worse. He said we were in love, you and I.”
He froze. His nostrils flared. His jaw went tight, and his hands, hanging at his sides, clenched into fists. Steam swirled around them, hot and billowing, brushed over her naked skin like a million fairy fingertips, raising goose bumps in their wake.
“Is that what this is?” His voice was hoarse. “Love? Because it feels more like ongoing electrocution.”
She nodded, agreeing. “Or being burned at the stake.”
Slowly, heart pounding, breath growing short, she stepped forward to the edge of the large glass and tile enclosure. He watched her every move with avid, devouring eyes, his expression wary and yearning and hot.
And tortured. How tortured he looked, how wretched, like a prisoner of war—their war, the bloody battle that had been slowly killing them both for years. It pierced her, that look. It almost made her want to cry.
He said, “Run over by a truck and dragged along a thousand miles of bad road.”
She reached out, touched a hand to the flexing muscle in his jaw, and gently stroked her fingers across it until she found his lips, and then she traced those. “Drawn and quartered.”
“Swallowing battery acid.” His voice had dropped to near a whisper, grown gravelly, unsteady. His hands reached for her, finding her waist, encircling it. His face tilted down to hers, and he looked a little dazed, the heat and the thrill she felt being near him reflected back in his eyes, the raggedness of his breathing.
“Devoured by a shark—”
“Buried alive—”
“Drowning—”
“Drowning, yes, it’s just like drowning,” he whispered vehemently, gazing into her eyes, his voice broken, his face full of misery and desire. “Except you never die, and you never surface, and the suffering never goes away, it just goes on and on and on. For fucking ever.”
He pulled her up against him and crushed his lips to hers.
And then it was nothing but hunger, savage and raw, both of them drowning in each other.
It was effortless for him to pick her up in his arms and balance her weight as she wrapped her arms and legs around him, effortless to carry her into the shower without breaking his stride or breaking their kiss, effortless to press her against the tile and make her cry out when he took her nipple in his mouth and sucked, hard. They were both half in and half out of the spray, and he was getting soaking wet, still in his boots and pants and shirt, and she clawed his wet shirt from his back and ran her hands over him, heat and muscle and slick skin, his arms around her strong and deliciously possessive.
He kissed her ravenously with one hand fisted in her wet hair and the other digging into her bottom. She kissed him back, their teeth clashing, her breasts pressed against his chest, aching nipples slipping against his wet skin. He panted her name, fumbled with his zipper. When the long, hard length of him sprang free and pressed hot against her belly she was ready; she reached between them and grasped him, reveling in the husky greed in his answering moan.
“Maybe this is what love is, Demetrius,” she whispered hoarsely into his ear. “This is what love is for us—torture and suffering and pain. And this.”
She sank down on top of him with a swift, fluid motion of her hips.
He arched back and shuddered, clenching her to him, his body straining against hers. Then he held her up against the wet tile and thrust into her again and again, relentlessly, hard and unforgiving, as she pressed her heels to his spine and rode him, hearing the slap of their flesh and his erotic, low groans and the sound of her own blood roaring in her ears.
Pleasure gathered to a bright, electric peak inside her body. She moaned his name, drunk with him, teetering on the very precipice of release…
And then—bastard that he was—he fell still.
Her eyes flew open. Breathing hard, he was staring back at her, a wicked grin on his face.
“Oh no. Oh no you don’t,” she said, sudden cold realization dawning over her.
But he did, he was, and his next slow, seductively spoken words proved it.
“Not yet.”
“You son of a bitch!” she hissed, stiffening. “Not this again!”
He flexed his hips and pressed deep into her and she was so, so full—her anger turned liquid along with her limbs. She groaned and shuddered, and he laughed darkly against her neck, triumphant.
“Demetrius,” she whimpered, “please.”
“Begging won’t help you, baby girl,” he teased gruffly, flexing into her again, somehow knowing exactly how much pressure and speed would take her over the edge and how much would keep her hanging on it. “You have to let go and trust me.”
“I will kill you.” Her voice was hoarse and, even to her own ears, utterly lacking conviction. “I swear I will kill you.”
He flexed into her again, with a little twist of his pelvis to top it off, and this time she gasped. He put his lips against her ear and murmured, “Let go. Trust me. Just once. Just this once.”
Oh, slippery, slippery slope, this. She’d already trusted him once, more than once, but she couldn’t think with him buried inside her, she could barely even breathe, and for some ridiculous reason all she wanted to do was give him what he wanted. Whatever he wanted.
She turned her head, looked up at him, and whispered, “Okay.”
He wasn’t expecting it, she could tell by the way he froze and looked down at her, startled. She bit her lip and nodded, just to make sure he knew she was coherent, and relaxed in the circle of his arms. “Okay.”
“Ana,” he breathed in wonder, “you never cease to amaze me.”
She smiled, feeling almost shy. “Don’t screw it up.”
“Oh?” His brows rose. He leaned down and brushed his lips across her cheek, his own rough and shadowed with a growth of day-old beard. “Interesting choice of words, considering…”
He slowly sank into her again, and she tightened her arms around his neck.
She whispered his name as her eyes slid shut and her head fell back against the tile, whispered it again, broken, when he cupped her breast and bent his head and suckled her. The drawing of his tongue and lips sent spikes of pleasure/pain straight to her core, and though she wanted to writhe against him, she held still, allowing him to hold her up and caress her and control her body, allowing him to bring her back up to that edge again, with his lips and his beautiful, hard body filling hers.
He began to thrust again, slowly, brought her face to his with his fingers on her chin. She knew he’d want her eyes open, so she kept them that way and gazed at him, noticing every detail of his face, strong jaw and full lips and the thicket of dark lashes around his eyes. His breathing was ragged. His hands dug into her bottom.
She began to lose herself to sensation. He was everywhere, filling her in every way, his scent in her nose and his tongue in her mouth and his need for her like another skin wrapped around her body. She was burning, she was flying, and with every single thrust she was falling and letting herself fall, glad of it. Glad to finally let go, if even for only a while.
“That’s right,” he murmured, watching her with half-lidded eyes when she
moaned and shivered against him. “That’s my girl.”
She was so close now; every nerve ending was firing, and her entire body was shaking. She felt as if she would crack wide open and die from pleasure, or be devoured by this thing between them that felt like a monster in the room, an entity, primal and hungry and animal.
She cupped his face in her hands and looked deep into his eyes, letting him see everything. Asking permission.
His arms were crushing. His eyes, wild. “Like drowning,” he groaned.
“Like dying,” she agreed in a harsh whisper as she rode the crest of the wave and felt something vast and dark rushing at her, inescapable as death.
D began to thrust hard, letting himself go. “Yes, Ana,” he panted. “Come for me, baby. Now.”
Love like drowning, love like burning, a million different ways to die—
She exploded, supernova, the world went white and then black. Her body bowed, and she sobbed his name, clenching around him, racked with tremors, pleasure so acute it almost hurt.
It did hurt. It burned.
Maybe this is what love is for us…unending, unendurable pain.
She buried her face in his neck to hide her wet eyes.
“Tu mea es!” D groaned suddenly, fiercely. He pulled her head back with a hand in her hair and stared into her eyes, and his look was animal, agonized and intense. “Tu mea es.”
You are mine.
He bared his teeth and came inside her, shuddering, his eyes rapt and locked on hers. She cried out as she felt him spilling inside her, saw his face through a prism of tears.
“Tu mea es.”
He whispered it over and over again as he held her up against the tile shower wall, whispered it against her lips, her neck, her breasts, and the words swirled around like the eddies of steam, dizzying, disorienting, echoing, piercing down to the very corners of her soul.
You.
Are.
Mine.
The wide marble steps that led to the Apostolic Palace at the Vatican were designed by Bernini, and the entrance was flanked by a cadre of armed Swiss Guards. Silas, Caesar, and Aldo were ushered past the guards by their escort, a slight man in a fedora and black cape, and ascended the staircase in silence.
It was ten forty-five in the morning. In precisely thirty minutes, the pope would give his Christmas morning address to the world from the balcony of his private study in the papal apartments, overlooking St. Peter’s Square.
And then the course of history would be changed forever.
The drive from Paris had taken all night, but Silas wasn’t tired. Quite the opposite. Filled with an almost excruciating anticipation, he was finding it hard to keep a straight face. Years and years and years of servitude, of bowing and biting his tongue and being told what to do, all leading up to this moment.
It wasn’t supposed to have happened exactly like this—he was missing a hand, after all, and he couldn’t Shift because of it—but if nothing else, Silas was a master of adaptation, and this was just one more thing he’d adapted to.
Hence, the inclusion of Aldo.
Aldo could Shift, whereas Silas couldn’t at the moment, and Caesar had never been able to. And that was precisely the point, really, getting that particular Gift on film for all the world to see. He couldn’t exactly establish the kind of fear and awe he wanted to inspire in humans just by offing the leader of their most powerful church, for goodness’ sake. No—they had to be shown what it was the Ikati could do. They had to be humbled. There had been one or two instances where they’d been caught on film, but those were accidental, small scale, easily dismissed.
It would not be so easy to dismiss the sight of the pope being slaughtered on live television broadcast all over the world in front of thousands upon thousands of eyewitnesses.
And then, oh, and then they would reign supreme. While the walls between two worlds crumbled and the humans who had persecuted them for eons fell into terrified chaos, he would unite the scattered clans, distribute the serum, and wring his hands—hand—in glee.
Right after he killed Caesar.
Though he was technically Alpha of their little colony because he was the eldest son of the last Alpha, Caesar’s lack of Gifts meant his hold on the title was tenuous at best. Strength always had to be proven, even for an Alpha, and Silas was a little surprised none of the others had formally challenged him yet. He certainly would have lost, which would have deposed him, but no matter, his time left as Alpha was short.
And after the spectacular coup Silas had orchestrated, no one would dare question his supremacy, his right to claim the title as his own.
Caesar hadn’t questioned how Silas had been able to gain access to the pope’s inner circle. He hadn’t questioned how or when Silas had come up with such a monumental scheme. He hadn’t questioned anything, really, he’d simply accepted that he’d be present at this little coming-out party of theirs, taking all the glory for himself.
He’d always been a selfish, small-minded little prick.
They reached the top of the sweeping staircase and paused before a set of towering, carved wooden doors. The man in the fedora murmured in Latin, “This way,” nodding to the two guards posted on either side, who opened the doors and stepped back.
With a deferential nod and an outstretched hand, Silas ushered Caesar and Aldo in before him.
“You look like shit.”
This pronouncement was whispered with barely any strength behind it, but it made Eliana so happy she almost cried. She had the fleeting thought that she must have been storing up a huge cache of tears over the past few years, because recently it seemed like they threatened to leak out at every occasion.
“You give the best compliments, Mel.”
She squeezed her hand, and Mel, weakly, squeezed back. Her eyes drifted around the room. “Where the hell am I? Rich people’s heaven?”
“Oh, this?” Eliana looked at the ridiculous, opulent room. There was a marble fireplace, tall windows flanked with silk curtains, a flat-screen television on the opposite wall, and a chandelier hanging over the bed. The very big, Thai-silk-covered bed. “This is nothing. Wait ’til you see the billiard room. And the rooftop pool. And the gym.”
She managed a wan smile. “The gym. Oh, goodie. I could really use a workout right now.”
“Shut up, sickie.”
“You first.”
They shared a smile and a moment of profoundly relieved silence.
Eliana had crept into the room only moments before to find Melliane awake, trying to sit up in bed, her face pale and sweaty with the effort it took just to move. She’d gently pushed her back against the pillows and sat down, scolding, beside her.
“We’re at Alexi’s.”
Mel’s dark brows rose into twin quirks. She sniffed, a delicate flare of her nostrils, and looked Eliana up and down before giving her a faint, smug smile. “And Demetrius is here, too.”
Eliana flushed. “Can I just say that’s really annoying? And vaguely creepy?”
“Spill it.”
“It’s a long story.”
“Should be an interesting one.”
“You have no idea.”
Mel’s smile faded, and she regarded her very seriously. “You’d tell me if I was going to die, right? Because it feels like I am. My chest feels like there’s a really fat guy sitting on it, and the rest of me feels like I got hit by a truck.”
“You are not going to die,” Eliana enunciated, leaning closer. “I won’t let you. And neither will Demetrius.” Just saying his name made her feel funny inside, like a million tiny butterflies had opened their wings and started to dance. Her voice softened as her gaze dropped to the white bandage that was peeking out of the neck of Mel’s top. “He’s the one who fixed you up.”
An odd look crept over Mel’s face. “He’s good at that.” There was a little hitch in her voice. “Has he fixed you up yet?”
Eliana chewed her lip. “Insert another word that begins with an f into that s
entence and you’ll get the general idea.”
Mel’s look became dire. “Details. I want details.”
Eliana tried not to smile and instead tried to look very stern and intimidating. “I think I might have liked you better when you were unconscious.”
Her attempt at intimidation failed. Mel said, “Don’t pretend you wouldn’t have made a little shrine for me with incense and candles and my picture—a good one, I hope—and cried over it all the time and prayed to it like one of those Buddhist nuns if I never woke up. You so totally would have.”
She brushed a stray wisp of black hair from her friend’s forehead, feeling her heart squeeze to a knot inside her chest. She would have done more than built a little shrine. She would have built a monument, adorned by stone angels with vast wings and fierce eyes, and there would have been wreaths of holly and inscriptions in marble and candles that never burned out.
Eliana shrugged, keeping her voice nonchalant. “I don’t have any pictures of you. I’d make some kind of crude drawing, where you’d be a tiny stick figure with a huge mouth and big scary teeth. I might light one candle. A little one. If I could find any laying around.”
Mel grinned.
There was a soft rap on the door, and then Alexi stuck his head in. “Doctor’s here. Is she—”
He caught sight of Mel awake in bed and broke into a smile. He swung the door open and entered. “Yes, she is. Welcome back to the land of the living, tiny, ferocious one.”
“The land of the extravagantly wealthy living,” Mel said, eying him. “How come I never knew you were rich before?”
“Why, do you like me better now?”
Her lips pursed, considering, and then she nodded. “It helps.” When he beamed she amended, “A little.”
Alexi walked toward them, still smiling, looking more like he’d just been handed a challenge instead of an insult. “What if I bring you breakfast in bed? Crepes with fresh cream and raspberries?”
“Oh,” she whispered, very serious, eyes wide, “you evil, evil man.”
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