“Uh-huh.” I rested my head against his cheek. And then I felt his hand slide over the top of my right thigh. “What are you doing?”
“Taking care of you.”
Heat from his fingers radiated out over my thigh. “You don’t need to do this. It’s just a scratch.”
“More like a flesh wound, and you’ve been limping around since it happened. I should’ve done it while we were in the helicopter, but I was too busy keeping you from throwing yourself into the cockpit.”
“I wasn’t that bad.” A small smile pulled at my lips. “But thank you for that. I was afraid I’d hurl all over you.”
“I’m glad you didn’t,” he replied drily.
Once the dull ache in my thigh eased until it was nothing but a memory, I started to pull away, because healing me could take its toll on him, but instead of letting me go, he scooted off the bed with me in front of him. The moment his feet hit the floor, he scooped me up in his arms.
I let out a startled yelp as I swung wide eyes on him. “Whoa. What are you doing now?”
“Still taking care of you.” He started toward the bathroom, his eyes heavily hooded, but there was a mischievous tilt to his lips. “I’ve just realized we both could clean up.”
That was the truth. Once again, I was spotted with grime and dried blood, and so was Daemon.
He took us into a surprisingly large bathroom, gently putting me down in front of a tub. It wasn’t as big as the one back in the mayor’s mansion, but it still seemed abnormally large.
Flicking on the low lights, he turned to me, wiggling his fingers. I stepped toward him. He grinned. “Closer.”
I made it another foot.
“Lift your arms.”
Telling him I was capable of undressing myself was on the tip of my tongue, but nervousness swallowed the words. I lifted my arms and he pulled off the ruined sweater, stopping to ease my hair out before dropping it onto the floor. He didn’t speak as he flicked the tiny pearl button on the pants and then tugged them off.
I placed my hand on his shoulder to balance myself as I snagged a leg free. A flush swept from my cheeks down my entire body. No matter all that we’d shared together, I was still shy around him. Not sure why, but maybe it was because he didn’t seem to have a single flaw while I had a very human body full of them.
The last remaining piece of clothing also hit the floor, and then I was standing there completely in the buff, with him fully dressed. I folded my arms across my chest as he reached around me, turning on the water.
Warm steam immediately poured into the bathroom. As he straightened, his lips brushed the curve of my cheek, sending a shiver down my spine.
I’d never seen a guy get undressed as quickly as Daemon, and before I knew it, I was face-to-face with his corded pecs. My gaze drifted down tightly rolled abs and then it moved lower—
Two fingertips pressed under my chin, guiding my gaze up to a pair of startling green eyes that seemed to carry a sheen of white behind them. “Eyes up here, or I’ll start feeling like man candy.”
My cheeks heated, but I laughed. “Whatever.”
He winked after he drew back the curtain. “After you.”
I’d never showered with a guy before. Obviously. But even if I had, I don’t think it would even remotely touch showering with Daemon Black.
My hands trembled as I stepped under the hot spray of water. A second later, he was in the tub, too, and it suddenly didn’t feel very big at all.
His hands were gentle, the pressure barely there as he turned me so my back was against the spray. Drawing in a stuttered breath, I lifted my head. I expected him to kiss me and do something that would most definitely make my knees go weak, but that’s not what he did.
His eyes locked with mine, and he carefully scooped the soaked strands of my hair over my shoulders. Then, his hands skimmed up my upper arms and coasted over my back.
His arms folded around me, drawing me against his chest, sealing our bodies together. I squeezed my eyes shut as a different kind of need slammed into me. The rising swell of emotion went beyond the physical, and as he held me so tightly that there was no space between us at all, I knew it was the same for him.
I don’t know how long we stood like that, just holding each other as the water beat down on us, but there was something intensely powerful between us that transcended words.
My knees went weak when he dropped his cheek to the top of my head and somehow managed to hold me closer.
God, I loved Daemon. I was in love with him as much as I had been the very first time I recognized what that burning sensation was, what that almost electric shock every time we touched meant.
It was hard looking back and thinking about all the time we’d wasted fighting what was between us, fighting each other, especially when the future looked appallingly short, but I couldn’t focus on that now, because we were together. It didn’t matter how many hours, days, months, or years we had stretched out in front of us; we’d always be together.
This kind of love was the real deal, stronger than a whole planet full of psycho aliens and an entire government.
We stood together for a long time, wrapped around each other, before we actually made good use of the shower—good, appropriate use of the shower. But bathing with Daemon was like . . . well, bathing with Daemon. We finally climbed out, dried off, and changed into the sweats and oversize cotton shirts, which weren’t so oversized on Daemon. The white shirt stretched taut over his shoulders, followed each dip of his abs. My skin was overly sensitive even though there’d been no shenanigans going down in the bathroom.
I’d found a comb and sat in the middle of the bed untangling all the knots, while Daemon turned on the TV, settling on a news station. Tossing the remote onto the foot of the bed, he sat behind me.
He took the comb from my fingers. “Let me do this.”
I made a face but sat still as he started to work the comb through my hair. I glanced at the TV, saw another city in ruins, and then looked away. I didn’t want to think about that, because I didn’t know where my mom was or how my friends back home were faring during all of this.
Daemon was surprisingly apt at combing out the knots. “Is there anything you can’t do?” I asked.
He laughed. “You know the answer to that.”
I grinned.
Once he was finished with my hair, I felt the edge of the comb poke me in the lower back. Brows raised, I glanced over my shoulder at him. “What?”
He leaned in, kissing me softly. The edges of his damp hair brushed my cheeks as he slanted his head, deepening the kiss until my heart was pounding.
I placed my hand over his chest, above his heart, and felt it match the rhythm of my own. My gaze lifted, and our eyes met. Somehow we ended up stretched out across the bed, my back curled against his front.
“I’m not finished healing you,” he said, voice gruff. His fingers trailed around a tender spot along my temple.
I closed my eyes, letting him do what he wanted. After all, it made him feel better. But the healing warmth slowly turned into something else when the tips of his fingers slipped down my arm, under my shirt, and across my stomach. There was nothing between his skin and mine.
“You’ve been using the Source a lot.” His hand flattened against my lower stomach, his pinkie finding a way under the loose band on my sweats. “It’s had to have worn you out.”
Another finger traveled under the band, and I wasn’t sure I was that worn out. My entire consciousness was focused on his hand—the weight and warmth of it, the exact positioning.
“Kitten?”
“Hmm?”
His voice was deep and smooth. “Just seeing if you’d passed out on me.”
“I’d never do such a thing.”
He was quiet for a moment. “You know what I’ve been thinking?”
With him, it was anyone’s guess. “What?”
“I was thinking about when all of this is over, where we are going to go.” Hal
f of his hand was under the band now. “What we are going to do.”
“You have any idea?”
“I have lots of ideas.”
A hot, sweet feeling swept over me. “I bet you do.”
Daemon chuckled as his thumb moved in a slow, idle circle under my navel. “I was thinking college.”
“You think there’ll be colleges around after all of this?”
“I think so.”
The tips of two fingers delved low, causing my breath to catch. “Why do you think that?”
“Easy answer.” He dropped a kiss on my cheek. “If you’ve taught me anything, it’s that humans are resilient, more so than my kind. No matter what, they’ll keep forging on. So I can’t believe that there won’t be colleges and jobs or anything like that.”
My lips curved into a small smile as I decided to play along. “College would be good, I think.”
“I think you mentioned University of Colorado before,” he said, his fingers creeping farther south, causing the muscles in my lower stomach to clench. “What about that?”
I remembered the first time we’d talked about the university, and I’d been so worried that I’d been overstepping relationship lines. Seemed like forever ago. “I think that’s perfect.”
“I’m sure Dawson and Beth would like it there.” He paused. “So would Dee.”
“Yeah, she would.” Especially if Archer would be around, but then, we kind of needed to get Dee’s head on straight first. “Maybe . . . maybe I could get my mom to move out there, too.”
“Of course,” he murmured, and I bit down on my lip hard enough to taste blood as he managed to get his knee between mine. “Your mom has to be there, because we’re going to do it.”
My eyes widened. “Uh, I’m not sure that’s something I want my mom to be a part of.”
Daemon’s laugh tickled me. “Get your mind out of the gutter, Kitten. We’re going to do a real wedding. The whole thing—bridesmaids, best man, the pretty white gown, and the ceremony. Even a reception. Everything.”
My mouth opened, but there were no words. I got caught in the fantasy of a real wedding—of my mom being there to help me get into a beautiful Cinderella-type gown; of Dee and Lesa standing beside me; of Dawson, Archer, and even Luc as best men. Then there was Daemon in a tux, and damn, that was something I wanted to see again.
And there’d be pictures taken and pot roast served at the reception. There’d be a DJ playing questionable music, and then Daemon and I would have our first dance as husband and wife.
My heart kicked around in my chest, and I hadn’t realized until that moment how badly I wanted that. I was such a girl and I didn’t care.
“Kitten?”
“I like this,” I whispered as my chest squeezed. “Talking about this, I mean. It feels normal. It feels like we have a—”
Daemon had leaned over me, capturing my mouth with his. The kiss reached deep down inside me, lighting up every cell. “We do have a future.”
I stopped thinking as his lips returned to mine, and he eased me onto my back. The rest of the world, all the concerns and dangers, faded away until it was just the two of us. He did crazy insane things with his hand, and there was this rush of sensations that tossed me around like I was riding a wave. And when I came back down, I pushed him onto his back.
Daemon’s brows flew up as I hovered over him. “What are you—?”
He got with the program pretty quickly, and the edges of his body started to glow that luminous whitish-red as his hand curled around my damp hair. Before his lashes drifted down, his eyes were like rough diamonds, and the expression was sort of awed, even though I really had no idea what I was doing. But he seemed to love it, and I think it was because he loved me.
Later, we lay facing each other and we were quiet. I traced the line of his bottom lip, working up the nerve to ask him something I’d been curious about. “Why did you leave with them when they came?”
His eyes were closed, face relaxed. “When they came out of the woods, I could hear everything they were thinking, what they wanted. It was the same for Dawson and Dee. We were immediately connected. And at first, it was overwhelming. I wanted to go with them.” He paused, opening his eyes. Our gazes locked. “It was like I forgot everything except them. They became everything.”
I couldn’t even wrap my head around that. “Do you hear them now?”
“No. If anything, it’s a low hum way in the background.” He paused. “It’s not the first time something like that has happened. When a lot of us are around one another, it can get hard, because it’s like a million-way radio. It’s why we never liked being in the colony. When there are so many of us, we all are connected, almost like one being, and you’re influenced into things you don’t want. You’re not an individual. You’re a whole. I just didn’t know it could be as strong as it was when they came.”
“But you beat it,” I reminded him, because he sounded almost disappointed in himself.
“Because of what I felt for you. Same with Dawson, and obviously any other Luxen who is connected to someone else, but Dee . . .” He trailed off, shaking his head. “Those who came, they are different from the rest of us. I know that’s obvious now, but they . . . they’re so cold. No empathy or compassion.” A sigh shuddered through him. “I don’t remember my parents, but I can’t believe they were like this. I guess we aren’t like that because we’ve been around humans. That lack of compassion and empathy makes them dangerous, Kat. More than I think we even realize.”
As I smoothed my thumb along his jaw, he turned his head, placing a kiss on the center of my palm. “They have to have a weakness, though. Everything in the universe has a weakness.”
Daemon captured my hand, threading his fingers through mine. “In every colony, there is an Elder who pretty much rules over the group. I know that out of those who have arrived, there has to be one who is kind of like . . . like their sergeant. Their queen in a hive. Taking out that person won’t end this, but it will weaken them—the hold they have over other Luxen.”
Like Dee.
“Any idea who that is or where that person is?” I asked.
His lips kicked up on one side. “No. Rolland kept it pretty hidden, and now that makes sense. Because of Sadi, he knew better than to share that little piece of information. Damn Sadi. I had no idea she was an Origin, but I think she’s not the only one who’s been pretending and hiding out among the Luxen.”
I frowned. “Who else?”
“It’s something I never really noticed until I was leaving the colony, when I came for you. Strange thing is, I never trusted this guy. There was also something off about him, and he said some off-the-wall stuff when I left. Things that didn’t make sense then, and I didn’t really put anything together until Archer revealed what he was—you know, the eye coloring.” He rolled onto his back, exhaling slowly. “Ethan Smith.”
It took me a moment to remember who he was. “He’s the Elder from the colony back home?”
He nodded. “His eyes are just like Archer’s and Luc’s.”
“Holy crap,” I breathed. Sitting up, I folded my legs under me. “But if he is an Origin, and if the Origins somehow helped get the rest of the Luxen here, the question is why?”
Daemon’s gaze shifted to mine. “That’s the question of a lifetime, right? Why would some of the Origins be working with the Luxen?”
12
{ Daemon }
Kat looked like her brain hurt.
I couldn’t blame her. There was so much being thrown at us, I felt like I needed to be wearing catcher’s gear.
The whole thing about Ethan kept tossing around in my head as we lay in bed together, trying to get some sort of rest before Archer returned and most likely dumped even more messed-up news in our laps.
I could tell that even though Kat was quiet in my arms, she wasn’t sleeping. Like me, there was too much to dwell on. Thinking about Dee made me want to slam my face through a wall, so I’d rather figure out
what the hell Ethan could have to do with the Luxen invasion.
The thing was, it truly was the million-dollar question. Why would the Origins and the Luxen work together? It was something I asked Archer after he showed back up with bags of clothes. When he tossed Kat a chocolate bar, I frowned, wondering just how much he picked up on.
Archer raised a brow at me. “Enough to know you picture knocking my head off my shoulders whenever we’re around each other.”
I smiled at that while Kat looked up from unwrapping her candy bar. “What?” she asked.
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