by Selena Scott
Martine merely rolled her eyes and flicked her wrist through the air. Her golden energy cracked like a whip and had him yelping and stumbling to one side, his palm pressed to the six-inch section of his ribs she’d just singed.
By the time he held his palm up to the moonlight, searching for blood, she’d already melted into the tree line on the far side of the house. Arturo took off after her. And this time, his own energy was already crackling at his fingertips.
Simply because of the fact that his legs were longer, he overtook her in the shadows. He didn’t touch her, he just raced along beside her, a foot of space between them. In the distance, cars raced along the highway in a kind of shuddering hum. “I’m coming.”
Martine shot golden energy at him and he swiped it out of the air as she took off through the woods, determined to leave him behind. He bounded after her and his breath caught tight in his chest. He’d never forget the sight of her, framed by the towering white cliffs behind her, bone-colored in the moonlight. Martine leapt into the air, into a tight spin and shrank away. Out of the neck of her shirt came an amber hawk, gold in the eye and as dark as a raven.
He’d never seen her shift so quickly and it stunned him. But two could play that game. Arturo felt his clothes tear at every seam as he was suddenly a bear. Horrifying and augmented by a hundred years of evil, his fur stank of midnight and his canines were shining with spit, the length of a child’s forearm.
He jumped and swiped one enormous paw in the air, scuttling Martine’s hawk right out of the air.
She cawed. The indignant scream of an arrogant animal taken down a peg as the bear who hugged her to his chest shielded their fall and rolled them across the dusty red dirt below them.
Their colorful energies crackled through the air like doll-sized lightning as she scratched at the bear’s face with her talons and beat her wings hard in a lift-off. But the bear merely swiped her out of the air again, gingerly holding her tight.
Arturo felt rather than saw her shift. He’d never touched another shifter mid-shift and it was a strangely electric feeling. He’d never forget the vibration of her body against his. The stretch and tremble and bloom of her pressed so firmly against him. Her golden energy seemed to strike right through his heart. His breath was crystals of ice within his lungs. Before he could think or stop himself, he was shifting too.
In a spear of mixing energy, blue and gold and green where they touched, hawk and bear were suddenly woman and man again. The two of them grappled against one another, naked and smudged everywhere with the red dust from the ground. There was frustration and anger in their movements as they rolled and Martine gained the upper hand. She straddled over top of him, one hand clamped around his throat and her other hand cocked back, a ball of golden energy swirling menacingly in her palm.
She breathed hard. So did he. She could feel the thrum of his energy rolling off of him like heat. The bang of his pulse was knocking against her palm as she gripped his throat.
His irises were ringed with his blue energy but after a moment, they faded back to his normal, velvety dark eye color. What was she doing? Killing Arturo would solve nothing. It would only put the others in more danger from the demon. She didn’t want to kill him. She just wanted him to listen to her. She just wanted to make him… do something.
There was a clenching in her gut when she realized that she couldn’t exactly finish that sentence. She was panting and naked and dirty and crouched over top of Arturo and she desperately wanted to make him do something but she didn’t know what it was.
The ball of swirling energy in her palm unwound itself and instead of zooming at Arturo’s heart, it started a slow spread over Martine’s own skin. She felt herself tighten and heat every place where her own energy touched over her.
Arturo stared in confusion at the muddy woman straddling his naked body. She was suddenly glowing gold in the night. She was perfect, untouchable, beyond gorgeous.
And obviously spitting mad at him.
He couldn’t have controlled his reaction to her even if he’d seen it coming.
Martine blinked for a moment and then turned around to peer behind her at the warm, hot thing that had just thwapped up into her butt.
Her brows knitted and then raised as comprehension slowly dawned. Though she was used to seeing the male shifters naked, she wasn’t used to seeing that particular body part look quite like that. Slowly, she turned back around to face Arturo, who now seemed to be holding his breath, his eyes darker than she’d ever seen them.
The two of them simply stared at one another for a moment. Perhaps they were both briefly hypnotized by a different reality. One that neither would let them have.
Arturo’s hands, in fists on the ground, slowly uncurled. Martine’s eyes followed the movement. Was he about to touch her? The thought panicked and thrilled her in equal parts.
She could no longer ignore the insistent hot nudge of his manhood at her back.
Martine frowned at him. “Such a man,” she told him. “We were fighting, not making love.”
“Trust me, Wings. Sometimes it’s the same thing.”
With a look in his eye like he couldn’t decide whether to laugh or scowl, Arturo placed two firm hands on Martine’s waist and set her to the side. He immediately leaned forward onto his bent knees and let out a long breath. It might have ended on a laugh or a groan, it was anybody’s guess.
Martine sat on her knees next to him, staring at his dark profile. She barely moved or breathed, as if she were nervous about putting a match to kindling.
“Well,” Arturo finally said. “That was interesting. And unexpected.”
Martine said nothing.
Scrubbing a hand down his face and wishing he weren’t naked with an unexpectedly human fervor, Arturo turned to peer at her through the darkness.
What he saw there quieted and inflamed him in equal measure. She still glowed a faint gold, her strawberry hair was messy and tumbling, red dirt streaked over her skin like paint. She sat on her knees and her fingers rested nervously on the ground on either side of her legs. Her chin tipped slightly down and she watched him with those big, insanely green eyes. Every color of her was muted in the dark—she was the nighttime version of herself. Ethereal and mysterious and glowing. She looked otherworldly and tempting and so fucking innocent.
Not for the first time in his centuries on this earth, Arturo wondered about Martine’s romantic life. Did she take lovers? Were there others of her species that she preferred? Other demon hunters? Or would she take a human as a lover?
He couldn’t help but replay the zinging thrum of her energy as it touched him. Would it feel like that in every place he touched her? Tasted her?
As if she could read his thoughts, her face became even more bashful, more innocent, more confused. He realized, with a jerking tug in his gut, that there was a chance she was so innocent that she didn’t fully understand what had almost just happened.
Had anyone ever told Martine about the birds and the bees?
Arturo gave a pained laugh and looked away from her. That way lay madness.
He needed space from this beguiling creature and he needed it yesterday. But he also needed to make sure that she didn’t go charging off into the darkness on her own. He knew that she was an incredibly skilled demon hunter. But he knew this demon very, very well. The idea of Martine facing him alone was enough to plant sickness deep in Arturo’s belly.
Arturo rose up quickly and held a hand out to her. “Come,” he said.
Martine, still crouching, peered up at him through the darkness. Her eyes dropped down to one particular body part of his that she happened to be eye level with.
He went from partially calmed down to raring to go in about two seconds.
“Jesus,” he muttered, turning his back to her. He stared down menacingly at his own erection, feeling distinctly foolish and embarrassed and aroused. It was a potent cocktail of emotions that he hadn’t felt since he was a mortal.
He turned halfway toward her, to preserve whatever modesty either of them had left, and held out that firm hand again.
She stared up at him.
“It’s late, Martine. One more night in the company of those fools won’t kill either of us. If you’re determined to go, go tomorrow, all right?”
She rose up, ignoring his outstretched hand, and started padding back the way they’d come. He followed her through the dark, the pale hourglass of her figure swaying hypnotically in front of him.
They were shifters, they’d seen one another naked many times before. It was just a fact of life. But he couldn’t quite figure out why he’d never really noticed the particular curve of her form before. Whenever he saw her toned triceps and calves, he just thought athletic. But there was also an undeniable softness to her figure. She was… curvy. And alarmingly alluring.
It wasn’t that he’d never noticed her attractiveness before. It was that he’d never allowed himself to be attracted. He felt like she was a cool mountain lake that he’d casually observed from a distance. Tonight, he’d been allowed to dip a hand in that lake and now he kind of wanted to go swimming.
She stooped and picked up her clothing and her pack that she’d dropped when she’d shifted.
It bothered him a great deal that she’d been so anxious to get on her way that she’d left behind all of her belongings, all of her equipment and tools. He thought again of Martine battling the demon on her own and he cringed. He had to find a way to convince her to stay. Or to let him come along.
They reached the house again and Martine paused in the shadows of the driveway for a moment. She cocked an ear then slipped backwards, disappearing into a sliding side door of the house. Arturo peered after her, wondering why she’d gone that way. Until, ah, he realized she hadn’t wanted to be spotted by Jean Luc, who was standing just inside the front door, peering out the glass into the dark.
Arturo pushed past Jean Luc into the darkened house.
Jean Luc glanced at Arturo’s nakedness but said nothing. It merely meant that Arturo had shifted.
“Sorry for breaking curfew, Dad,” Arturo said to Jean Luc, striding into the kitchen and pouring a glass of water. He gulped it down in two huge swallows. The coolness on his throat grounded him, dulled the flame that Martine’s glowing form had ignited within him.
“I’m not going to ask what you were doing because I’m sure you wouldn’t tell me,” Jean Luc said quietly, in that deep voice of his.
Arturo said nothing. He set his glass in the dishwasher only because he had a soft spot for Caroline and she was usually the one who did the dishes.
Without acknowledging that Jean Luc had even spoken, Arturo started to stride from the room.
“Just tell me one thing,” Jean Luc said. “Are you in trouble?”
“What?” Arturo turned, confused by the question and even more confused by the vague concern he could sense coming from the big man. No one had felt concern for Arturo in 400 years and he wasn’t sure he liked it. It felt awkward and strangely burdensome. “What are you talking about?”
Jean Luc sighed. “Come on, Arturo. We’re shifters. As much as you love to block us out, we can read your feelings, okay? Fifteen minutes ago I wake up from a dead sleep and I can sense that you’re shifted and sprinting. Either chasing or being chased. And then half a second later you’re scuffling. And then your heart is pounding and you’re all revved up and sick as a dog. And, if I’m not mistaken, turned on as hell. So what the fuck just happened? Are. You. In. Trouble.”
Arturo glared at Jean Luc. He knew that the other three men were often in one another’s heads. They either didn’t know how to or didn’t care to block one another out. But Arturo didn’t play that game. He let them in when he absolutely had to and besides that, he kept that gate firmly locked. He’d been alone for 400 years. He didn’t want three twenty-first century dudes in his head. Apparently, he’d let his guard down when he’d gone after Martine.
He didn’t completely understand what had just happened with her, but he definitely knew that he didn’t think it was any of Jean Luc’s business.
“Sounds like you had a very compelling dream just now,” he sneered at Jean Luc.
“Bullshit, Arturo,” Jean Luc strode forward and slapped a hand over the kitchen door, keeping Arturo from leaving. “You were just shifted and freaking out about something. I’m not even asking you to tell me the details here, okay? I just want to know that you’re not out here battling some supernatural force without telling us.”
“Your concern is touching,” Arturo quipped dryly. Though touching wasn’t the right word at all. Jean Luc’s concern was actually righteously annoying.
“Tell me,” Jean Luc growled through gritted teeth. “If there is more to this story, we need to know. This is our lives at stake.”
“What just happened wasn’t dangerous for me or for you. And I’m not explaining any more. Go the fuck to sleep.” He shoved past Jean Luc and strode into his room, slamming the door on this night.
A few moments later, he heard Jean Luc creaking down the halls of the strange house one floor above him. He heard his footsteps in the room above him.
Great. Now Arturo knew exactly who he’d heard having a grand old time in the bedroom above his.
Arturo laid down in his bed and tugged the sheets up, a foul mood infecting him. A strange feeling started in his chest as he heard the low rumble of Jean Luc’s voice and then the soft murmur of Celia’s voice. He heard the bed creak as Jean Luc laid down and then more murmurs to one another.
Arturo remembered what it was like to crawl into bed next to a partner. For that woman to ask if everything was alright. To slide across the bed until he found the sheets that were warmed from her body. To pull her in close until her silky hair laced over his neck.
He’d had that once. Though it was so long ago, the memories were dim and gray, like he was viewing them through thick layers of smoke.
Arturo drifted into an uneasy sleep, only fully surrendering when an image rose up and greeted him. It was dark all around him, and in front of him a golden silhouette swayed. He followed that silhouette into the dark, straight into the land of sleep.
CHAPTER THREE
Martine slept late the next morning, something she almost never did. She woke up in the blinding heat of a mid-morning ray of sun. She could feel the edges of her being dissolving softly into the sunlight and she lay still for a moment, awake and reveling in the feeling. She didn’t suppose humans ever had this feeling. When the light caught her just right and she could feel her body open up and accept the world right into it. She never knew if she was mixing with the world or if the world was mixing with her, but either way, it felt good.
Martine usually felt very calm and very rested when she woke up in the morning, but this morning her heart was racing along without her, as if it were determined to get someplace on time. Why would she…. Oh.
Last night came back to her in two parts, like two separate scoops of ice cream onto a cone. The first part. Where she’d packed her things, including her regrets, and set out, determined to be alone yet again. Determined to fight.
And then there was the second part of the night. Arturo, a dark smudge against a darker sky. His eyes looking like they could be painted with two brushes of a paintbrush through black paint.
Chasing her, determined to follow her. Shifting, electricity, touching.
Her body buzzed in a very strange way. She was heated up and antsy. Her skin bunched up and the hairs on her arms stood at attention.
Maybe she was getting sick.
Martine sat up and looked down at herself in confusion. She was still covered in red dirt from the night before. And now, so was her bed.
She rolled out of bed and immediately pulled her sheets off, bunching them up. She’d take a shower and do her laundry.
She smiled to herself for a moment. It was so human, so domestic. Her smile faded. Who was she fooling? No one. Least of all herself. Martine was
not human and she was not domestic. She was put on this earth for one reason. To slay demons. She was a warrior. Not a laundry doer.
Still. It was rude to leave it for someone else to do and she wasn’t going to sleep in muddy sheets.
She didn’t acknowledge to herself that that meant she was planning on staying another night in the house with the group.
She just quickly washed up, pulled on clean clothes—all black spandex, of course—and threw her laundry into the wash. She was confused for a second when she saw that there was already a set of dirt-streaked sheets in the washer. And then she realized that they must be Arturo’s.
Her heart started up on that insistent racing that was as confusing as it was frustrating. She was usually so calm!
Martine entered the kitchen and just quietly observed for a moment. No one had noticed her enter, which was common. She was quite good at going unnoticed. And though she viewed it as a curse, there were many times she was grateful for the skill. Like now. She stood just to the side of the doorway of the kitchen and watched the seven.
Tre was rubbing the bridge of his nose, making his glasses bounce on his fingers. He laughed, loud and irreverent, at something that Caroline leaned over to whisper in his ear. Jean Luc frowned at whatever he was reading in the newspaper, sliding out a section for Thea when she asked from across the table. Celia and Jack were busy cleaning up from breakfast, Celia strong-arming a blackened pan in the sudsy sink and Jack scooping leftover fruit salad into a Tupperware.
Arturo sat apart from the rest of them, in an armchair under the window, his eyes closed and his hands folded over his stomach. He looked tense and uncomfortable, even for his quasi-relaxed pose. Martine allowed her eyes to skitter away from him after a moment, as if he were too… something to look directly at. Then, deeming that impulse as foolish, she forced her eyes to settle on him again.
Even though it brought a healthy blush to her cheeks, she studied him directly for a good long minute. He had purple under his eyes and his inky hair had grown long and unkempt. There was stubble on his chin that was so black it looked almost blue. He looked utterly disheveled, but that wasn’t what had Martine narrowing her eyes, riddling him out. There was something different about him and she couldn’t put her finger on it. Something was out of place.