by Debra Dunbar
Water splashed behind him, and he looked up in time to see a seal emerge from the water. The sleek brown creature swam through the surf to the sand, something glittering in its mouth. Thoughts of the warden melted away as he stared, mesmerized as the seal skin opened and Brea emerged.
She was Aphrodite rising naked from the sea foam. Brown hair whipping around her in the night air, pale skin a stunning match for the curling waves in the moonlight. All that skin, all that naked skin. Brea’s skin. His body tightened with sudden desire, sudden need. He remembered how that skin felt beneath the pads of his fingers, how it tasted, how it flushed with passion. Gods help him, how he remembered…
Brea’s gaze found his in the darkness, and the night held nothing so black as the look in her eyes. She glared at him as if she could kill him with only that look, strike him down and leave his corpse to be swallowed by the tide. Her seal skin hung from her hand like a thick, velvety blanket, and she wrapped it around herself as he watched, hiding her flesh from his hungry eyes.
“Brea,” he rasped when she came close enough to hear him over the waves. “I—”
She abruptly turned to the side, tilting her head so the moonlight fell over her neck, the scars with two fresh wounds in the center. Cain ached to avert his eyes, but forced himself to look at what he’d done. Again.
“Tell me again how you’ve changed.”
Her voice was as cold as the water lapping at his legs. He dropped his gaze, staring at the swirling water as if it would tell him what to say, how to keep her from fleeing his afterlife again. A glow caught his eye, something flickering in her hand barely visible through a gap in her seal skin blanket.
“First you get me the skin,” Brea said frostily, as if she’d noticed where his attention had wandered. “Then I give you the gatestone. The stone can only be used once by one person. If you can’t get the skin for me, you will tell me where it is and I will use this gatestone to retrieve it. That is my deal.”
Her hatred for him was palpable, almost as much as the fear he could taste on the back of his tongue like the residue of some sticky candy. The two were connected, he knew. That was why she hated him. Because he scared her. Nothing had ever scared her before…before him.
“Follow me.”
The wet sand sucked at his feet, tried to keep him in the water. The flow and ebb of the sea made his limbs ache, left him feeling weak. He tolerated being in the water better than most vampires, but even he had his limits. He slogged through the surf with Brea close behind. More than the sea, her presence pulled at him. Her warmth at his back was as strong as sunlight, and almost as painful.
“Brea—”
“Speak to me again, and we’re done.”
It was a bluff. She wasn’t going anywhere without the skin. “You loved me once.”
He stopped walking at the edge of the beach, just before the trees, and turned to look at her, watching her jaw drop and her eyes widen. For a second she just stared at him, as if he’d stolen her voice with his audacity.
“Oh, it’s a brave one, you are,” she breathed. “To raise such a subject after what you did to me.”
“I was newly turned, too stupid for my own good. I should have fed first, should have…” Words failed to come together as he needed them too. He shoved a hand through his hair, pulling on it as if he could drag rational thoughts to him. “Being inside you drove me to the brink of madness, and the blood, your maiden—”
“Shut up!”
She whispered the words, but they had a hysterical edge, as if they’d been meant as a scream and she’d hushed herself only just in time. Her eyes burned with fury, her pale skin flushing scarlet with rage. “You… Don’t you dare say those vulgar things to me. I trusted you, I—” She pressed her lips together and turned away, but not before he caught the shine of tears in her eyes.
The sight of those tears, of the first real sign he had that hatred wasn’t the only thing she felt for him, nearly drove him to his knees. He staggered forward a step, arms shaking with the need to wrap themselves around her, hold her and pray she let him. A voice inside his head screamed at him that he was wasting time, that he needed to get that skin, get the gatestone, or he would be trapped here forever. But he ignored it. Nothing was more important than this woman. His redemption.
“Brea, I would give anything to change what happened. You must know I never meant to hurt you. I tried to save you. That must count for something.”
She was quiet for a long minute. A long, glorious minute with no hint of fury, no immediate rebuff. A minute that built hope, allowed him to believe that maybe, just maybe, she’d heard him. Believed him. Slowly, she turned.
Dread filled his stomach like a lead weight. Her face was blank.
“You have always been a killer,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “I was a fool to think I was safe with you.” She took a slow step toward him, her face so hard that it hurt to look at her. “I could never be safe with you.”
Chapter 3
Brea fought to keep her breath even, pulled her seal skin tighter around her to keep her hands from trembling. Emotion would only encourage him, make him keep trying. She wanted that light in his eyes to die, for that plea in his voice to die, for all that emotion he still carried for her to die. It had to, had to perish like she almost had that night. As long as he thought he loved her, she was in danger.
A sob bubbled up in her throat, and she swallowed it back. All this time she’d thought he’d forgotten her, that he was finally done begging her forgiveness, trying to get her back. Pursuing her wherever she went until she’d finally been driven into the sea for good, a prisoner on her own ship. But he hadn’t given up. He’d just been trapped. Imprisoned here. If she was going to help him escape, she had to make sure he wouldn’t come after her again. Would never come after her again.
His hands flexed at his sides, and for one wild moment she thought he’d grab her. A thrill shot down her spine, and she waited for the surge of fear, that bitter taste on her tongue like a copper coin. It didn’t come. Or perhaps it did, but she didn’t feel it under the singing of her own body, her anticipation of what it would be like to be in his arms again.
It was an accident. He loves you.
“I would never be safe with you.”
She said it again, but this time it was for her. A reminder for her traitorous body that insisted on reacting to him as if he’d never left her bleeding to death on a witch’s doorstep. As if he’d never torn open her throat, left her gurgling in horror as he lapped her blood off her naked body, still buried inside her in the most intimate way possible. This was why she’d run from him. Because some wretched part of her still wanted him back. He’d told her what she wanted—needed—to hear, and suddenly she was considering giving him that second chance, riding the more pleasant memories back into his arms. Thinking again as she once had, about a happily ever after for the thief and the assassin.
Too late, she saw his nostrils flare, his head rise, eyes widening ever so slightly. She stiffened. He could smell her desire, smell it even over her fear. She shook her head, stepping away from him. He couldn’t touch her, not now. Not when she felt so wretchedly conflicted.
Cain had always had a sense for weakness. A flicker of movement was all the warning she had, and he was there, the arm unhindered by his blade’s harness banding around her waist, pulling her tight against his chest. Her heart leapt into her throat, fear choking off her air even as her body hummed with awareness.
“Let me prove I’m stronger now.” His voice was hoarse, the breath from his words ghosting over her neck. “Please, Brea, give me another chance.”
She parted her lips before she had the words to speak, but she never got the chance to say them anyway. His mouth pressed against her neck in a heated kiss, as if he would burn away the memory of the scars and the blood. Her legs buckled, fear and desire mixing into a potent cocktail that left her head spinning in too many directions at once. She almost dropped the gat
estone, barely remembered it in time to close her fingers around the orb.
“Cain,” she gasped.
A groan wrenched itself from his being, and he dragged his mouth from her neck, hovering over her lips. “Say my name again, Brea. Please say it again.”
She drew a breath to do as he asked, then swallowed it back, fighting to shake off the erotic haze clouding her mind. He’d been her first lover, her only lover. Her body remembered him, and the damned thing remembered the pleasure as well as the pain that had followed. Flesh was so much more forgiving than the mind…
A startled gasp escaped her as he lifted her in his arms as if she weighed nothing, spun to push her back to the closest tree. The smooth bark pressed against her bare shoulders above her seal skin, a chill that did little to chase back the heat consuming her. Her legs parted and wrapped around his waist of their own accord, as she remembered a faraway night. She bit back a cry as her naked center pressed against the rough material of his pants, the hot, hard length of him straining against her through the laces.
A sound somewhere between a cry and a snarl dragged from Cain’s lips, and he thrust against her, once, driving forward as he held her pinned to the tree. One hand wrapped in her hair, pulled her down, and she was too confused, her mind too muddled to fight it. To fight him.
He kissed her. He kissed her as if he would breathe her in, as if his heart would beat again if he could just kiss her long enough. His arm remained solid at her back, but not so tight as to make her feel trapped. And then he hesitated. On instinct, she’d kissed him back, body remembering how he’d taught her to kiss him without cutting herself on his fangs, sliding her tongue so gently into his mouth. His hesitation distracted her, helped her retreat from the precipice she’d been hanging from.
She pulled back from the kiss, and he let her, but he didn’t release her from his arms. He stared down at her, and she recognized that expression, that hesitant fear.
“You look the way you did the night you told me you killed people,” she whispered. “The Dead Executioner.”
He brushed her hair behind her ear, slowly, as if waiting for her to slap his hand away, his face a fragile mask of composure. “I’d never told anyone else. I was so afraid you would be disgusted, that you would leave me.” He smiled tentatively. “It was that same night you told me you were a thief.”
“Two criminals.” Her heart softened with the memory. She’d never expected to fall in love, never expected to find a man she could be honest with. “I felt so close to you that night.”
Part of her was aware she was naked, her seal skin held up only by the pressure of her back pinning it to the tree. Only Cain’s body hid her nudity from the world, and still, in that moment she felt…protected.
“Acushla,” he whispered. He leaned in again, brushing his lips over hers.
Tears welled in her eyes and slid down her cheeks. She’d felt this way once before, felt this satisfaction, this peace. She couldn’t afford to feel it again.
Gathering every shred of her willpower, she pulled back and looked him in the eye. “If you love me,” she said quietly, “you’ll respect my wishes…and leave me alone.”
Cain jerked back as if she’d struck him. His hazel eyes spiraled through their rainbow of colors, dark brown, light brown, light green, dark green. Every color danced with pain, with a yearning that stabbed her in the heart until she was sure it would draw blood. He let her down gently, drew away like a scolded canine, black hair falling to hide his face from her.
She watched him retreat, steeling herself against a sudden, desperate urge to call him back. The night air was so cold, much more so after the warmth of his embrace. Her lips still tingled with his kiss, her blood singing with the pleasure he’d awoken inside her. But this was how it had to be. It had taken her seven years to feel safe again, seven years to get back the security he’d taken from her. She wouldn’t give it up so easily now.
Her seal skin felt rough as she drew it around her, a poor substitute for Cain’s arms. He turned back to the jungle, trudging with heavy steps into the foliage. It took a few shaky steps for her weak knees to find a solid stride to follow him.
I never should have let him hold me.
“The vampire’s name is Marun. He is here for the egregious error of bedding and then killing his sire’s blood mare—something for which he was judged much more harshly than he was for the eight women he killed before her. He is the only other vampire I know who resists the sickening rush of the water to linger on the beach—though for different reasons. I stay there in the hopes of avoiding those who would kill me. Marun lingers in the hopes of glimpsing a naked selkie maid.”
Cain’s voice was as subdued as his body language, but Brea steadfastly refused to linger on his emotional state. Or her own. She forced her mind to the conversation at hand and wrinkled her nose. “It is disgusting that he could pass so quickly from lusting after a selkie to stealing her skin and leaving her trapped on a land populated with vampires.” She froze. “Did he…feed on her?”
“Most likely.”
Brea firmly held her mind away from that thought and all the images it threatened to bring with it. “Where did he hide the skin?”
“He buried it. He moves it every now and then. Being on this island has a tendency to make one paranoid.”
“I can imagine.”
Silence grew between them. Brea tried to think of something to say, but nothing would come to her. What was there to talk about? What was left to be said? Nothing. Not a damn thing.
Apparently Cain had reached the same conclusion. They traveled in silence until finally he stopped beneath a tree heavy with bright yellow starfruit. Without looking at her, he knelt on the ground at the base of the trunk and began to dig. Brea held her breath as he parted the soft, damp earth, only relaxing when he straightened with something large and brown in his hands. Even beneath all the mud, she could see that it was the seal skin.
There should have been a moment of joy, an empathetic reaction at the thought of returning the skin to the grieving selkie, giving her back her life. But as Cain handed her the fur, all Brea could think about was the gatestone. About what it meant to put it in his hand.
Placing the shining orb in his large palm felt like the end of the world. He closed his hand around it, and she released it, quickly, withdrawing before he could touch her, backing away one step, two, three. She was shaking violently, like the down of a feather trapped in the rigging, buffeted by the wind. She could feel his hands on her body, the tree against her back.
Stop running away. Seven years. He might have changed.
She never got the chance to act. A sharp rustle of leaves was her only warning before a stranger erupted from the trees. Honey-colored hair and glistening fangs had her reaching for a dagger she didn’t have. She had a glimpse of burning red eyes, pale fingers reaching out for her, curved into claws.
Fear seized her throat. With practice honed over seven years, she pulled the fear into her, molded it into a weapon, and used it to fuel a cold fury. She curled her hand into a fist, shifted the seal skin to her left arm, and brought her fist up directly under the vampire’s jaw.
A grunt and clacking of teeth rewarded her effort, but the vampire kept coming, connected with her shoulders, and shoved her down into the freshly churned earth. The vampire bared his teeth at her. Blood covered his fangs from where they’d pierced his lower lip when his jaw snapped together.
“That’s mine,” he snarled, fisting the mud-slicked seal skin. “You can’t have it.” He licked his lips, sucking at his own blood. “And you’ll pay dearly for that.”
The voice crawled over her skin as if it had long, spindly legs. Even as he threatened her, the vampire ran his gaze up and down her naked body, lust glittering in the red flecks of his eyes.
“You’re a selkie,” he whispered.
She tightened her grip on her seal skin but didn’t try to cover herself. Wrestling to hide her body was futile at this point, and
would only give him the satisfaction of knowing his leer bothered her. She needed a weapon…
Still holding his gaze, she swept her free hand over the ground, searching for something she could use to stab him, a stick, a sharp rock. A zing of metal made her freeze, her lips parting as a blade exploded from Marun’s chest, spraying her with dark red blood.
The light in Marun’s eyes flickered out, like candle flames snuffed by a stiff wind. His mouth opened and closed as his chin fell, dull eyes staring at the silver protruding from his chest, his ruptured heart giving up its blood in a fountain turned black by the night’s shadows.
Cain stood behind him. He’d taken advantage of Marun’s attack on Brea to creep behind the other vampire, had buried his blade in her attacker’s chest. But it wasn’t the metal gleaming in the moonlight that arrested her attention, nor the blood pouring from the dead-forever vampire frozen above her. It was the look on Cain’s face.
Panic tightened his handsome features. His eyes roved over her body, but there was no lust, only need. A need to see if she was injured. He didn’t look at Marun at all, didn’t mind his blade as he jerked it free from the corpse and fell to his knees beside her.
“Brea, acushla, are you all right?”
Still she could only stare. He’d once told her how it felt when he killed someone. He took pleasure in it, satisfaction. But there was no satisfaction in his face now, no sign that he’d enjoyed taking Marun’s afterlife. All she saw was concern. Fear. For her.
That was what Brea saw. But as he knelt beside her, raised his free hand as if he would cup her face and shake her to make her answer him, her fear saw something else.
His nostrils flared. His pupils dilated. The fangs she could see past his parted lips lengthened. Her fear was as a separate entity, and it was painfully aware that there was blood everywhere. Instinct screamed at her, reminded her of why she’d run, why she resisted him when she wanted so badly to surrender.