Enemy Mine

by Karin Harlow

  Seeing her tonight, touching her, had shaken him to his foundation. All of the forgotten emotions he had stuffed so far down into his soul had surfaced. Surfaced with every bit of the rage and heartbreak as on the day he’d first experienced them.

  He dropped back into his chair beside the bed. What had she been trying to tell him as she lay at death’s door? Remember the sun shines by the sea? No, the sun shines on the nuns? He shook his head, wracking his brain for the meaning. The only body of water he could think of was the Atlantic Ocean. They’d met on St. Michael’s Island off the coast of Georgia. He had been an Atlanta PD sergeant in that life. He had been on extended R&R for a gunshot wound he’d sustained chasing a bad guy. Did she just want him to think of the good times? The hair rose on the back of his neck. Remember where it began. She must have meant St. Michael’s. But why? For old times’ sake?

  Those memories, still so vivid, warmed his heart. But crashing right behind them was the knowledge of what she had done. The fury and heartache resurfaced full force. He stared at her blood-smeared chest. The blood on her hands.

  Nikko went into the bathroom and grabbed some towels, dampening one with warm water. Sitting down on the bed, he unbuttoned his shirt he had put her in and pulled it away from her chest. He averted his eyes from her breasts and slowly wiped the dried blood from her body. When he was done, he dried her, then buttoned the shirt back up. Save for the slow shallow rise and fall of her chest, she still had not moved.

  For a long time Nikko stared at the soft flick of her pulse in her neck. The unusual necklace she wore moved with each beat of her heart. He looked more closely at it. The thing she’d ripped from that abomination’s chest glowed softly in a setting. Two settings were empty. Were there two more to be had? He reached out a finger to the bloodstone; it pulsed with energy against his skin. Intuitively, he knew it was important to Selena. She’d risked her life for it. He turned the necklace around her neck so he could unclasp it, then pulled it free. He lifted it up against the lamplight for a closer look. Seven rustic settings, probably platinum by the weight of it, five filled with what looked like crimson stones the size of a quarter that hummed with vitality. Power. What kind of power he did not know, but he knew it was important. He slipped the heavy necklace into his trouser pocket and turned his attention back to the woman he loved to hate.

  He traced a finger down her jugular. Her pulse jumped against his touch. Her skin was as soft as he remembered it. Warm. Human, damn it! But what if she wasn’t? What if she was what Cross said she was? Was that how she had survived his attack? He had been livid. Out-of-his-mind crazy. He had strangled her. He had watched the color drain from her face, felt the life force leave her body.

  “It’s over, Johnny.”

  “What have you done?!” he’d screamed when he looked down at her flat belly, the same belly that, the week before, had been swollen with his child.

  “I’m not ready to be a mother. I—I had an abortion.”

  His world had snapped in half at that precise second. What he did after, he had no control of. And though little Marisol’s blood was on her hands, he’d lived with the guilt and self-loathing of murdering the woman he loved.

  The body beneath his fingers shivered. She was coming to. He opened his eyes, and his own heart stuttered.

  Deep onyx-colored eyes stared at him. Her body was still, her breathing barely detectable. Nikko’s hand shook.

  Her eyes flashed. She flung him off her with such force, he went hurtling backward into the wall. Nikko shook himself. It took a moment for him to comprehend what had just happened. She knew where the cask was, and she was going to make a break for it. His eyes narrowed. Over his dead body.

  She stood on the bed, her fists raised at her sides, her chest heaving, her eyes flashing with fire. “Once killed, twice shy, Johnny boy.”

  So that was how she wanted to play it? Excitement revved through him. He smiled and lunged. She met him halfway. Their bodies crashed together and went tumbling back against the headboard, splintering it to kindling.

  Selena twisted out of Johnny’s grasp and heaved him off her. He grabbed her arm and flung her back onto the bed. She kicked his chest. The loud whoosh of his breath as it rushed from his lungs told her she had two, maybe three seconds before he regrouped. She grabbed the lamp from the nightstand, slammed it over his head, then leapt over him toward the window. It didn’t matter if she was on the first floor or the fiftieth; it was the closest, most expedient exit. She was supercharged by the infusion of his blood, and she knew that, like a cat, she’d land on her feet.

  He caught her by the ankle and flung her back onto the bed. The force of her landing broke the frame.

  His big body covered hers. His fingers dug into her hair. His fangs flashed.

  He laughed at her shock. “Third time’s the charm.” He sank his teeth into her throat. Selena arched against him and moaned. She hated herself for that. As she called upon the stones, she realized that her neck was bare.

  Damn him! She kneed him in the balls. He grunted in pain, just enough that his bite loosened. It was all she needed. She head-butted him. He stared at her in shock, and she stifled a laugh. His look was priceless, despite her blood that glistened on his lips. “Fourth time is fatal.” She head-butted him again and shoved him hard. But his grip held.

  He forced her back into the mattress. His blue eyes burned bright as cobalt. His gaze swept her face, then lowered to her neck, then trailed lower to her exposed breasts. She recalled she had used her halter top to tourniquet Vegas’s leg. The shirt she wore was Johnny’s, she could smell his scent on it, but it had come undone when they’d crashed into the headboard.

  He lowered his head and scraped his fangs along the rise of her breast. “Fifth time is final,” he hoarsely said. Then bit her.

  She screamed. She thrashed and clawed at his shoulders and back, drawing blood. His fangs sank deeper. Selena arched as her body tightened. She could not breathe. She grabbed his hair and pulled it. But his voracious grip on her was relentless. He grabbed her hands and shoved them over her head. He blocked her knee with his when she tried to gouge him in the groin again. When she tried a third time, he forced his hips and legs between her thighs, preventing any further attempts.

  A moan escaped her throat. Selena squeezed her eyes shut, hating the daemon part of her that responded to the pressure of him between her legs. His body reacted immediately. His fingers dug into hers. She felt him swell. His tongue stroked her skin, soothing the sting of his bite, but he still drank from her.

  She felt his body temperature rise along with hers. Without the power of the stones to fend him off, she was victim to his seductive strength. And there was something else. She felt different. Hungry for something she didn’t understand. Empowered but in a different way from the nanorians. She could hear the rush of Johnny’s blood as it pumped frantically through his body. She felt his turmoil. His desire to hurt her but also his carnal need for her.

  His fangs slowly withdrew from her. He licked where he had bitten. Selena exhaled. Her relief was short-lived. He nipped at her aroused nipple. She gasped, afraid he would bite her, then moaned when he slowly licked it, making her ache for more. His fingers dug deeper into hers. He was fighting the same battle she fought.

  “Johnny,” she gasped, licking her dry lips. “Just get it over with.”

  He raised his head and looked at her. She caught her breath. Red tinged his beautiful blue eyes. His Michelangelo face had hardened in passion. Just as much for the kill as for the fuck.

  “I despise what you did to our baby,” he hoarsely said.

  Selena’s heart clenched with such unbearable pain she could not look at him. The anguish in his eyes, in his voice, tore her up. She would give anything, except his life or their daughter’s, to be able to tell him the truth. But the truth would get him and Marisol killed.

  Though he might never understand it, she had loved him enough to make him think the worst of her. Her heart pounded
in her chest. She still loved him. That would never die. No matter what he did to her, she could take it.

  “I’m sorry, Johnny,” she whispered.

  He bared his fangs. “What are you?” His arrogant gaze swept the length of her. She was practically naked—her chest bare, her belly exposed. The silk sarong twisted around her hips revealed her thighs and the fact she wore no panties. His nostrils flared as he inhaled her scent. Selena held her breath, afraid if she moved, she would provoke his passion to the point of no return. “What have you become,” he sneered, “some kind of high-priced whore?”

  His words were more painful than a sword in the heart. But it was best for them both if he continued to think the worst of her.

  “I do what I have to do to survive.”

  He clenched his jaw and shook his head. “You should be dead!” he ground out.

  “Give me my necklace, and I will disappear from your life forever.”

  He threw his head back and laughed. “Over my dead body.”

  Selena cocked a brow. “That can be arranged.”

  He lowered his face to within inches of hers. “What were you doing in Kyrgyzstan? What did you inject me with? And what do you know about that cask?”

  Selena knew she owed him some explanation, but that would only embed him deeper into her life. She needed him out of it! Now. But she was not leaving without the nanorians.

  “If I divulge any of that information, it will get me killed.”

  “Oh, I can make it so when you leave this room, you won’t be breathing.”

  “Try it.”

  Their gazes clashed and locked. Emotions played out in chaotic symmetry across Johnny’s face. After what seemed like hours, he nodded. “Before I do,” he said, his voice low and choked, “tell me where Marisol is buried.”

  His request stunned her. The true depth of his sorrow hit her at that moment. Her lie was vicious and cruel, but, damn her father! He’d gone after Johnny with a vengeance. Johnny had chalked it up to Atlanta’s going to shit, but it was her father manipulating the criminal minds to go after Johnny. How else could she keep the man she loved from chasing after her and getting himself killed for the effort?

  It took more power than a thousand nanorians not to tell Marisol’s father that the girl was alive.

  “She’s in Georgia.” And it was true. But she was a happy, healthy eight-year-old.

  All of the fight went out of him. She felt it drain from him. He rolled off her and sat on the edge of the bed. He raked his fingers through his hair. Selena wanted to go to him, to take him in her arms and comfort him. But she didn’t dare. Instead, she kept up the coldhearted bitch façade. “Where’s my necklace?”

  He turned so fast, she pushed back into the mattress. His eyes blazed red.

  She had pushed too far.

  CHAPTER TEN

  What kind of coldhearted woman are you?” Johnny seethed. She watched his face harden to granite. “What are you?” Disgust laced his words, his tone, his facial features.

  She blanched at his question, then gathered her pride protectively around her. Yes, she was coldhearted, but only because she had to be. For her own good. For Marisol’s own good. And even for Johnny’s own good.

  She threw her hair over her shoulders and straightened her spine. “My father was a daemon who raped my human mother. So I guess that makes me a half-breed.”

  His eyes widened and his mouth dropped open. He moved off the bed fast, as if she were a pestilence. He walked to the large window and stared out over the restless Atlantic. His back was as rigid as a steel beam, his wide shoulders square, his feet planted firmly on the floor. “What is a daemon?”

  Selena let out a long, exhausted breath, finding it oddly liberating that she could finally come clean with him. At least about what she was. “Everything you’ve heard and worse.”

  He turned slowly and faced her. Gone were the disgust and anger. Now he looked tortured. “Is that why you had the abortion?”

  Selena held her breath. She hadn’t expected him to come to that conclusion so fast. To come so perilously close to discovering her secret. She hadn’t aborted Marisol, but she’d lied about doing so because she was daemon. So in some way, she could tell the truth. Would it make him hate her less? Slowly, she nodded.

  He swiped his hand across his face and shook his head. For a brief moment, understanding—maybe even compassion—swept his features before the anger resurfaced. “Why? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  She rose from the bed. “And what? Even if you believed me, you would have looked at me like you just did and told me to take a hike. Or do you expect me to believe you’d have wanted the baby, even knowing what I am? You’ve made your hatred of what I am, what I did to survive, clear. Even now you despise what I am. How would you have dealt with a child that wasn’t all human?”

  His jaw tightened. “It wasn’t your call! That was a decision for me to make, Selena!”

  “My father is the scourge of Hell!” she blurted out. “He has caused me nothing but pain and suffering all my life. He would have done the same to my child. He drove my mother to madness. She couldn’t stand the pain. She killed herself. No way was I going to subject my child to that.” Her voice lowered. “Or you.” And it was true.

  “It doesn’t change the fact that you murdered my daughter!” he roared. He shook with passionate rage. He stalked closer. “If you knew all of this when you got pregnant, why did you wait so long, Selena?”

  The blood drained from her face. The lies were eating her up. Selena inhaled slowly, held her breath, then exhaled. The moment of truth. Most of it. “I had hoped my father wouldn’t find out, but he did. Then all of those close calls happened to you at work. He was trying to destroy everything I loved! I couldn’t let that happen!”

  “She was viable, damn you!”

  Selena braced herself against his fury. His heartache. What would he do if he knew Marisol lived? Hate Selena more. She had never once questioned her motives, firmly convinced his hatred was worth it, but what she’d failed to consider was the pain he would live with every day. It was just as debilitating as what she lived with—or rather, what she lived without. Her daughter. She swallowed hard. No, it was worse. There was no anguish as terrible as the anguish he suffered.

  “I’m sorry,” she softly said.

  He paced the room. She felt his turmoil—his hatred, his desire to hurt her, but also his need for her to live. Abruptly he stopped. With his hands clasped behind his back, he said, “Tell me what happened back at your club.”

  Selena tried to let go of the guilt, but it hung around her neck like a two-ton anchor, so she dragged it with her. It was her turn to go to the window and look out at the blackness of the night. Two hundred yards away, white-caps rolled onto the sands of Miami’s renowned beaches. She hugged herself, suddenly feeling cold. Alone, and tired. How much should she tell Johnny? How much did his vampire friend know? Without breaking her stare, she said, “Vegas was possessed by a Hellkeeper by the name of Malphas, a very strong daemon, and a superior prick. I drew him out and killed him.”

  “Why?”

  She spun around and faced him. “Because his death takes me one step closer to my father, and when I get there, I’m going to destroy him just like he destroyed my mother!” And just like he’d destroyed any chance of happiness with Johnny.

  “Why did you cut out his heart?”

  “Without it, he cannot regenerate.”

  He cocked a brow. “What else?”

  She shrugged. “I couldn’t leave it. In the wrong hands it can be deadly.”

  “In your hands?”

  She smiled. “It will be deadly.”

  “After you killed Malphas, what did you do to Vegas?”

  Selena walked past him, not wanting to go there.

  He grabbed her arm, and while his grip wasn’t brutish, it wasn’t gentle either. Their gazes locked. “After you killed Malphas, what did you do to Vegas?”

  “I possessed h
im.”

  Johnny let go of her arm and stepped back. “What does that mean?”

  “It means I got inside his head. Had I wanted to, I could have driven him mad, made him do my bidding. Controlled him. Instead, I gathered information.”

  “What information?”

  “Nothing that concerns you, Johnny.”

  He moved back into her personal space. “Since you shot me up with that concoction, everything about you concerns me.”

  She shook her head vigorously. “No, it doesn’t. Forget the last four days. Forget I’m alive. Forget all of it, Johnny.”

  “Johnny is dead. My name is Nikko Cruz now.”

  Nikko Cruz? He would always be Johnny to her.

  “I don’t know why you came here, Nikko, but—” Selena’s nose twitched, every sense on high alert.

  Sulfur. And a lot of it.

  “Do you smell that?” she asked, moving toward him.

  “Sulfur.”

  “Daemons, Nikko, at least a legion of them. We need to get the hell out of here.”

  “What—”

  She turned toward the window and shoved Nikko toward it. As he went flying through the glass, she leapt after him, grabbing him as they tumbled down several stories to the parking lot. She tried to turn him so that she took the brunt of the impact, but he maneuvered her so that he did. They hit hard. Shrill screeching came from the daemons circling the hotel as they hunted for her scent.

  She grabbed his hand and took off through the parking lot toward the water. There she had a chance to keep them at bay.

  “I need that necklace, Nikko,” she said as they ran. “With it, we might have a chance.” With it, she could fry ten legions with a wave of her hand.

  “No deal.”

  Selena stopped short, breathing heavily, and glared at him. “I need the necklace.”

  “Call your own legion of daemons.”

  Her eyes widened. How the hell did he know she possessed that power?

  “Call them.”

  “I cannot call upon them to battle their own kind.”