by Marie Hall
The walls were painted a handsome smoky pearl gray. A California king–sized sleigh bed took up almost the entire room. A small night-light sat tucked away in a corner. The only other thing in the otherwise sparse room was a small fishbowl with a lone goldfish swimming lazily back and forth.
“You can stop clawing up my newly painted ceiling.”
Her brows dipped. “This is your place?”
Mouth thinning, he didn’t answer, simply walked to his closet and hung his jacket up.
Still not sure she should trust him, but knowing she looked as stupid as he was likely thinking her to be, she let go. Not used to the sudden catlike reflexes she’d recently acquired.
“Mind telling me why you jumped up there in the first place?”
Standing on the rich cherrywood floor, she looked around. “You scared me. I can’t help how my body reacts now. You let me go; I thought I was going to fall.”
“Don’t.” Sitting on the edge of his bed, he began unbuttoning his shirt.
Suddenly nervous again, she shifted on the balls of her feet. Darting quick glances around, into the stone-tiled bathroom at the lone white towel hanging off the towel rack, the white farmhouse sink. Getting a feel for the man.
Everything was sparse—just the bare necessities, and yet it was all elegantly appointed. His jewel-blue comforter was down—she could smell the feathers—and the gray sheets were obviously silk, judging by their obvious sheen.
“What the hell is your problem?” she grumped.
“You.” He didn’t grumble or sigh or even stare at her with hatred brimming in his cool silver eyes. He simply continued on with the business of undressing himself.
When he took off his shirt, she coughed and quickly looked away. But not before her photographic mind imprinted every groove and dip of muscle. The way his flesh bunched and gathered into tight ropes as he moved. The burnished hue of his skin. How he didn’t just have six-pack abs, but the highly desired eight. She could probably bounce a quarter off it. And, hell, his pecs too.
She’d always had a thing for pecs. How tight and firm they were, how a man could flex and pop them when he worked out enough.
Mouth dry, and heat spiraling a hot, tight path down to the very center of her, she clenched her jaw. She was dead. Shouldn’t she act dead? Not feel anymore? Not want? Shouldn’t she be a mindless killing machine by now?
Desperate for a taste of blood and or meat? Gods, that was a disgusting thought.
And now that she thought of it, she did feel an ache burning in the back of her throat and gnawing at her stomach. Ugh.
Growling, she crossed her arms. “Will you stop that?”
“Stop what?”
Waving a hand in his direction, she said, “This. Undressing in front of me. Why’d you bring me to your place? What are we doing?”
“What does it look like?”
Forgetting herself, she turned toward him and her eyes bulged. “You’re naked!”
“It’s what one tends to do in their home when it’s time to sleep,” he growled, now beginning to visibly get upset. And it seemed the more upset he got, the harder he got.
His cock was long and quickly turning rigid. She tried to look away without seeming like it affected her, but she knew her eyes were enormous in her face and her heart was definitely doing a strange stuttering.
“Stop acting like such a virgin. This isn’t for you.”
Insulted, she whirled. “Oh, nice. So who is it for? That goldfish?” She stabbed a finger at the bowl.
“What the hell is your problem?” He jerked to his feet, coming at her. A very naked—correction, a very gloriously naked—man. “For reasons I can’t make sense of, you’ve now become my problem. I have to figure out how to keep you safe from just about the entire dammed world and not choke the life out of your undead body while doing it.”
Heat flooded her cheeks, and she wondered if it was possible to blush. There were so many things about being a vampire/shifter that she had no clue about. “Great, that makes two of us! Kill me, then.” She offered up her neck, taking a step forward. “Do it—it will spare me tearing through this house to find a knife to do it myself.”
Growling, he rubbed the bridge of his nose furiously. “I already told you, you can’t kill yourself like that. You tried it once, it didn’t work.”
“Yeah”—she planted her hands on her hips—“that was because I thought I was only a vampire. This time I’ll hack off my limbs if I have to.”
His lips tilted.“You’re so obsessed with killing yourself, you haven’t even thought any of this through, have you?”
“I can’t be allowed to live.”
“I don’t give two shits how you feel. You’re not as precious as you think you are, Princess.”
Frenzy’s shoulder-length hair framing his purely masculine face, body looking like something Michelangelo would have wept over, Mila kept chanting to her brain over and over that Frenzy was fat, ugly, and soft around the middle. But the power of wishful thinking was simply not working tonight.
“I’ll do whatever I have to.” She glared, refusing to be cowed even though she seriously had a kinky urge to lick those rippled abs right about now.
Nostrils flaring, he laughed. “Fine.” Storming out of the room, ass flexing with each strident step, she followed him as he marched into the kitchen.
She tried in vain to not admire the way his muscular thighs moved, how perfect his ass was. But it was a hopeless cause, so she just gave in to her voyeurism.
Yanking open a drawer, Frenzy pulled out an enormous meat cleaver and thrust it toward her. The wickedly huge blade came within inches of her. Instinct made her jump backward.
“Go on, then,” he shouted. “Do it. Take it!” He shook it under her nose.
Her Irish temper had led her here. And here was never a good thing. It was known as being stuck between a rock and a hard place. She’d been so insistent on killing herself, mainly because she was just contrary that way: when someone told her no it just made her want to do it more.
But faced with that ginormous knife, she realized she didn’t really want to do it. But she didn’t want to tell him she’d changed her mind either. It was a lose/lose either way.
Snapping it out of his hands, she lifted a “so there” brow.
“Go on. Because I don’t have time to deal with any more of your crap tonight.”
Holding out her wrist, she placed the knife on top. “I will.” She didn’t move.
Crossing his arms, he spread his legs, and it was really hard for her to think when he so blatantly waved that “thing” around.
“Do it, then. But don’t forget you have to cut off each limb, sever them at the base. Once that’s done, take off your head. Then you’ll have to scatter the limbs in such a way that one cannot find the other and then you’ll have to burn it.”
Her brows dropped. “I obviously can’t do all that.”
“Obviously.” His lips quirked.
Heat gathered in her belly. “You’re gonna have to help me.”
“The hell I will. You want to off yourself, then do it. But stop wasting my time.” And that said, he turned and walked back to his room.
She was an arse and she knew it. The worst possible humiliation was having to walk back into that room and admit defeat. Especially to him, that smug, arrogant bastard.
Staring at her wrist, she realized what a pointless, stupid thing this was. Mila didn’t lose fights easily. She never had. Any battle she’d ever engaged in as a kid had been fierce because losing was never an option to an O’Fallen.
But she’d lost this fight. Standing here was now just delaying the inevitable walk of shame.
“Bloody hell,” she hissed and tossed the cleaver into the sink with a loud clatter.
She walked back into that room ready to throw down and defend her obviously asinine position if only because the thought of letting Frenzy believe himself to be right made her want to go ballistic. What she did not ex
pect was to see him spread-eagle on the bed. Snoring.
“What in the—”
Cracking open an eye, he growled, “There is one bed. No couch in this apartment. Either we share or you sleep on the floor.”
Lip curling with disbelief, she said, “I can’t believe you’d even—”
Flapping his fingers at her in the worldwide sign of a man who was done listening to a yammering female, he sighed. “That’s the way it is, O’Fallen. Bed or floor.”
He had the nerve to close his eyes again.
Which only increased her fury by another notch. “Let me guess, you leave the toilet seat up too!”
If it wouldn’t have made her look as petty as she knew it would, she might have actually stomped her foot just then.
When he didn’t answer, she walked in farther. Seeing him lying there, nude as the day he was born, in no way trying to hide that part of his anatomy that clearly marked him male, she wanted to slap him.
Slap him because he obviously didn’t give a crap about her. “If you don’t want me around, then just get rid of me. You can do it. C’mon, death, are you a man or a mouse?”
There wasn’t a man alive that could ignore an obvious jab at his manhood. Frenzy was no exception.
Jumping to his feet so quickly it literally startled her into jumping back a step, he was in her face. Handsome visage curled into one of not only anger, but disdain.
“You would love that, wouldn’t you? Die the martyr? Does it give you a cheap thrill, vampire?” His long finger traced the column of her throat.
The touch was so gentle and delicate, so at odds with the violent wave of anger pulsating from him into her. Shivering, she stood still, wishing like hell she could just snap his finger off.
“Don’t touch me.”
His smile was pure rogue—two parts sensual, one part danger. She could feel the tension inside him, the coiling of emotions, the way his body shifted and moved, the way the air suddenly tasted charged, like a darkened sky a second before the storm. Everything inside her stilled. Death was just about as powerful as they came.
She’d not been with HPA long; most of what she’d learned concerning the others had been taught to her, handed down from generation to generation of O’Fallen women. Those with sight needed to understand that from the moment they’d been born they would always be on the run from those who wanted to possess what they did not own.
But what irritated her most wasn’t her power to “see.” It was the fact that when it came to her life, all she’d ever been able to see was darkness interspersed with fuzz. She could make out bits, but that was it.
Bits.
She’d seen Frenzy, but hadn’t known what he was. She’d not seen that she would die last night (maybe it was last night; time seemed irrelevant now) and that she’d come back as a…a freak. A monster.
“It makes you crazy, doesn’t it?” His low, throaty voice made her body ache in the most annoying places. She hadn’t had a man in over a year, and being with one so virile wasn’t helping matters.
Digging her nails into her thighs, she lifted her nose. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Full lips curved into a wicked smile, making her think terribly naughty thoughts. Like sucking on them, having them suck on her. His scent was driving her mad too.
She hated being a freak. Hated that she could smell the slide of sweat run out of his pores, how it teased her nose with a hint of sage and spice. Made her mind wander into the gutter, tread into places she’d vowed never to tread into again.
“The fact that you want me so damn bad.”
Heart fluttering, panic flooded the back of her throat. “Get over yourself.”
Either he was actually tired, or he refused to let her goad him. Turning his back on her, he walked casually back to his bed as if she hadn’t ruffled his feathers just a second ago and, with a hop, landed on the mattress with his arms crossed behind his head and his eyes already closed.
“Just like that?” She snapped her fingers.
“Just like that, O’Fallen.” He nodded, still not looking at her.
“God, you’re infuriating!” She did stomp her foot then. “Do you realize having me here is like hugging a ticking time bomb? It’ll find me; then what are you gonna do, Mr. Big and Bad?”
“Come to bed,” he muttered, rolling over.
Realizing she’d been staring at him, she finally blinked. “I wish you’d put some clothes on.”
Growling, he rolled over. “You want me in clothes?”
“Yes!”
“Do you?” He reminded her a little of her neighbor’s pit bull growing up. The way his lip was curled back and how he was visibly vibrating.
Her gran had always told her she pushed things too far thanks to her stubborn Irish temper and that one day she’d get bit. She had been bit—it hadn’t stopped her then, and it wouldn’t stop her now.
“No.” He laughed and she bristled.
“Is that the way it’s gonna be with us, then? You say no, I say okay?” she asked in a low, heated whisper, because if she said it any louder she’d scream and act like a raving banshee.
Giving her that wicked smile of his again, he didn’t say another word. But he didn’t have to.
“Chauvinistic pig,” she spat. “If I’m such a nuisance, why’d ye save me, then?” Mila had worked hard at softening the hard brogue, and slipping up was a sure sign she was seconds from completely losing her head.
“O’Fallen—”
“It’s bloody Mila!”
“We’ve discussed this. That matter is settled and closed. I want sleep. If you don’t stop talking, I’ll make you.”
“Oh yeah?” Her laughter lacked humor. “And just how do ye plan to do it?”
“Like this.” It was all the warning he gave her.
She knew she moved fast; she felt the vertigo of it each time she jumped. But what Frenzy did, it wasn’t just fast. He literally vanished from one second to the next.
Somehow she wound up not on the bed, or even on the floor, but over his lap, ass up.
“What the bloody hell is this?” she roared, kicking her legs at him, but his strength was absolute and unyielding.
“This is me giving you one last chance to stop now before I take this to the next level of foreplay.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to demand he release her, but now his hand was framing her rear and she couldn’t believe how hot it felt through the fabric of her jeans. How rough and coarse the blue jeans felt against her sensitized skin, how the way he glided it softly from one side to the other made her breathing stutter and pulse rocket.
Shuddering, she inhaled weakly, completely at his mercy. And she wasn’t one bit sorry for how he made her feel, or even ashamed of these emotions. Frenzy was hot. Period. She might deny it to him, but never to herself. She’d wanted him to touch her this way from the moment she’d woken up in that shifter’s cave.
“It’s not even a challenge with you,” he growled.
That did it. It was one thing to want to scratch an itch; she was here, they might as well. Two consenting adults, nothing wrong with that. But to toss her emotions away the way he just had, to make her seem…pathetic…
She slapped him. And it didn’t matter that she was bent over the way she’d been; there was strength in her body now and she used all of it. She laughed when he cursed and dumped her to the ground. His face bore a bright red welt now.
“O death, where is your sting?” She laughed and for the first time in hours forgot herself, forgot that she was wanted by every last freaking immortal on earth, be it faerie, shadow, or otherwise. Forgot that if she’d had her way, she’d be pushing up daisies, not sitting here mocking someone who two days ago would have made her pee her pants to meet in person.
“Woman.” Burrowing fingers through his fiery locks, he glared at her.
It was kind of fun knowing she could goad him this way. Because even though he was the grim reaper, she wasn’t sca
red to die.
“I know what you’re doing and this isn’t going to work. You can make me angry all you want, I will not kill you.”
Rolling her eyes, she stood.
“There are worse things than dying.” His teeth looked vicious in his face when he smiled that way.
“Yeah, like being stuck here with you. Do you even have a plan?” She glared back.
“Other than putting duct tape on your mouth, you mean?” His eyes sparked with something, something she couldn’t quite name.
It was dark and seductive, and made her body ache and crave and need and…
“I can’t stay here with you. I just can’t. If you’re not going to kill me, then take me to Ireland, where I’d planned to go already.”
Shaking his head, he rolled over, yanking the covers over him, finally.
Too hard to think when he was naked.
“It’s too dangerous.”
Clenching her fists, she realized trading barbs was likely to get her nowhere with him. So maybe being sweet would be the way to winning him over.
“Please.” And just to further sweeten the deal, she smiled.
Suddenly the lights in the room dimmed. Startled, she jerked, expecting to find a phantom or boogeyman crawling through a window.
“I did it. Settle down,” he said in that gravelly voice of his that always made her feel like her skin was too tight on her body.
Brows lowering, she turned to him. “How?”
He tapped his forehead.
“What, with your thoughts?”
When he didn’t immediately answer she took that to mean a “yes.”
“You can do that?”
Narrowing sexy bedroom eyes, he cocked his head. “I thought you said you knew all about us.”
“I might have been bluffing. A little.”
This time when he smiled it wasn’t all teeth, it was a slow, sensuous curl of lips. Made her chest feel suddenly tight, the room a little too warm. Shouldn’t these very human feelings have vanished after the change? She couldn’t understand why she was acting this way.
She’d never been this big of a horndog in life. Mila had enjoyed sex, more so with certain partners than with others, but now it was all she could seem to think about. She closed her eyes, needing to stop looking at him so much. Maybe that would help.