He felt her shudder against him. “I’m so sorry.”
Ethan remembered the house in all its glory: the exquisite stained glass windows on the second floor, the white wicker swinging chair on the porch, the brass knocker on the front door that resembled a stoic lion. Before tonight, it was the only house in Mezza Estates to ever burn down. He frowned.
“Did they ever catch who did it?” Tina asked.
“It was my father’s best friend, a Gluttony. After it happened, he was run out of town and no one saw him ever again. His actions shocked the demon community—they never thought he would go to that extreme.”
Tina looked at him with disbelief. “That’s terrible. Why would his friend do that?”
“Because my father was a demon and my mother was an angel.” Bile rose in his throat at the reminder of how close-minded demons used to be.
“An angel?” Tina wondered aloud. “They really exist? I thought they were just a myth.”
“Oh, they exist. But they are very rare. Most of them are healers. At birth, they are marked with a strip of platinum blonde hair near their temple so that people know they could go to them whenever they are in danger.”
Tina shook her head. “Why would his friend do that to him?”
Ethan sighed. “It seems ridiculous now, with demons, angels and humans living peacefully yet fairly separately among each other, but in my parents’ generation there was a hatred toward mixed marriages in the demon community. My father’s best friend spearheaded this movement, this discrimination. What would happen to the demon community if there were people with mixed blood out there? His platform was that we had to preserve the traditions and values we uphold.”
“And what are they?” Tina asked, genuinely interested. “The traditions.”
“Demons were stigmatized for so long, that the darkness we bring to the world is bad, is wrong. But we were created to balance the dark and light in the world, to provide a yin to the yang in life. Angel blood would lighten our darkness. Many demons take this role very seriously, but some took it too far, becoming corrupt, taking pleasure in the pain they bring humans. They ruined it for others, like me, who just try fulfill their duty, never taking advantage.”
“So your father’s best friend was one of the bad ones?”
“Yes. And at first my father agreed with his friend. But then he met my mother and fell hard for her, and his mind changed about mixed relationships. He knew he’d be ostracized by his clan, so he fled with her.”
“But he found them.”
“It took him eighteen years to track them down. When he found out I was their child, that a half demon, half angel existed, he was enraged.”
“You...were there when it happened?”
Ethan nodded.
“And you somehow escaped?”
No, he had a different punishment in mind for me. “Yes,” Ethan lied. “The last time I saw them was in the basement of the hospital, the police forcing me to identify them, they were almost burned beyond recognition.” Ethan swallowed as the image of his parents’ charred bodies occupied his mind, their melted skin sticking to the white sheet laid over them.
“The morgue,” Tina said. Then she looked up at him, her eyes widened in understanding. “And that’s why you don’t like hospitals. That’s why you became a firefighter—to protect that development so no one would have to go through what you went through.”
Ethan didn’t say anything. Though Tina remained silent, he noticed a flurry of thoughts behind her eyes, that she was trying to work something out in her head. She bit her lip.
“You want to say something,” Ethan prompted.
“No, I—”
“You can say it, it’s okay.”
“I just remembered that I kind of promised my new favorite patient that I’d get you to come to the hospital with me if I could, but I don’t want to pressure you,” she confessed.
“Your new favorite patient?” he asked, confused.
“That little boy you saved tonight. Danny. He really looks up to you.” She averted his gaze. “But like I said, if you don’t want to go...”
Danny. The mention of his name gave him chills. But as he looked at her, he knew in that moment she could ask him to do anything and he’d say yes. He was powerless against it.
“I’ll go,” he said. “If you promised him, I’ll go.”
She smiled. “Thank you. I know it’ll mean a lot to him.” Her body relaxed against him once again, her eyelids drooping. Before she drifted off into sleep, she said, “I’ll be there for moral support if that makes you feel any better.”
He smoothed her hair as he whispered, “It does.”
* * *
Ethan found himself so enraptured by watching Tina as she dreamed. She was more beautiful than ever, if that was even possible. She was still in his arms, her legs intertwined with his as her head lay across his chest. He smiled to himself when he felt her take a deep breath in and sigh contentedly in her sleep. He pointed and flexed his toes, happy to feel the sluggish ache that racked all the muscles in his abdomen, the back of his thighs, his buttocks—all from their passionate lovemaking. His brain felt foggy and sluggish, too, like he’d taken a drug that calmed all the senses.
He continued to watch the rise and fall of her chest as she slept. He tilted his head down slightly and breathed in the scent of her silky chestnut hair. It smelled fruity and tropical, like sand, coconuts, pineapple. It immediately made him think of a sun-drenched island. And that’s exactly how he felt when he was around her, like he was on vacation, like he didn’t have a care in the world.
But that was just it—he did have cares, big ones. The curse that raged within him never took a holiday. It forced him to lead the life of the perpetual bachelor—rescuing Danny reminded him of that. There was no way he’d be able to commit to a woman—any woman, including one as perfect as this one—without the curse making sure that she suffered. He knew the rules and had learned to live with them. But that was before he met Tina, the self-reliant, incredibly sexy, sweet, wonderful Tina.
She has to mean nothing to you, he chastised himself. Get out of here before it’s too late.
Careful not to wake her, he slowly bent his knees and twisted his torso until he could plant his feet on the hardwood floor of her bedroom. Then he wiggled his shoulder out from under her, carefully moving her head from his chest to the nearest pillow before he fully sat up. Sitting there on the edge of the bed, he stretched his arms above his head.
And then it hit him.
The welt on his shoulder. He couldn’t feel it. A pang of terror stabbed his stomach as frantically padded over to the full-length mirror that hung on the back of her closet door.
He stood with his back to the mirror and looked over his shoulder, frantically searching for the angry purple welt that had blossomed on his back the night before. When he saw it, he noticed it had faded considerably. And within the light yellow-green pigment of the now rapidly healing bruise were flesh-colored fingerprints. Her fingerprints.
His worst fear was becoming a reality. The faces of his mother and father—contorted in pain, their eyes widened in desperation as they clung to life—flashed through his head and he heard the laugh, the deep belly laughs of the man who had cursed him, the man who had murdered his parents out of ignorance and fear. Ethan doubled over, gnashing his teeth as waves of nausea washed over his body again and again. Run, run, run, his brain chanted. When he was finally able to stand, he gathered all his clothes and bolted out the door.
Chapter Six
When Tina woke up to her alarm an hour later, her head was pounding and her bed was cold...and empty. She tapped the clock off and bolted upright, searching the room around her. But the moment she sat up the ache in her head intensified into a sharp pain, as if a butcher knife cleaved the front of her
skull in two. She blinked a few times, trying to shake the heaviness of sleep from her eyes, but her vision was blurred.
“Ethan?” she asked groggily. There was no response, no sounds of the shower running or breakfast cooking to greet her, only her headache pulsing harder in her ears.
She called his name again. Even the sound of her own speech aggravated her headache further. But her physical pain was quickly replaced with devastation when she realized that Ethan was nowhere to be found. He had slipped out sometime while she was sleeping.
Tears of embarrassment and mortification stung her eyes. The first time I open myself up to someone, the first time I let my guard down, and this is what it gets me? He said he’d go to the hospital with her in the morning. He’d promised.
You can mess with me all you like, but don’t jerk around the emotions of a five-year-old kid, she thought resentfully.
She threw on some clothes, popped double the recommended dose of aspirin and headed to the hospital. She’d gone into work under worse circumstances before; a migraine wasn’t going to make her call in sick. If he wasn’t going to go and see that sweet Danny, she was. Her promise to get Ethan to come with her was out of her hands. She hoped Danny would forgive her; she knew the look of disappointment on his face would be enough to send her over the edge.
She drove there in silence, replaying the night before in her mind. Did I do something...say something...? But all she could think of was her and Ethan’s naked bodies tangling in the sheets, the way he looked at her with something in his eyes that was more than desire, something deeper. The way he rubbed the small of her back as she fell asleep. What had gone wrong?
She was still agonizing over the question when she looked at the master chart and saw that Danny wasn’t in a normal room, but the ICU. Confused, she jogged to the east wing of the hospital. When she found his bed, she gasped. Gus was standing over the boy, who was out cold, as he attached an IV into the back of his tiny hand. A bag of what looked like morphine dripped silently nearby.
Tina’s mind began to spin. Besides the burn, Danny had been fine when he left in the ambulance. All of his vitals were textbook, he was sitting up and talking without any problems. And now he was laid up in bed, the starchy white sheet pulled up to his chin, on pain meds. The boy, who was already small, now looked frighteningly gaunt, like he’d lost ten pounds overnight.
Gus turned around and frowned.
“What the hell happened?” Tina demanded. “Why is he like this?” She was practically hysterical, having never seen such a deep decline in a patient before.
“I’m at a loss for words myself, kiddo. He fell asleep last night and never woke up.” He sighed heavily.
“But he was fine, Gus. He was alert and speaking—” Tina was interrupted by an electric tone from the intercom above the doorway.
“Nurse Diaz, please come to the nurses’ station. Nurse Diaz, please report to the nurses’ station,” buzzed a voice thick with static.
Gus sighed impatiently. “Karen, what could be so urgent?”
“We’ve found another discrepancy in the schedule that you need to take a look at immediately.”
“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Gus muttered under his breath. He turned to Tina. “Do you mind staying here for a second while I take care of this?” He gestured at the speaker.
“Of course,” Tina answered.
“That’s my girl,” Gus replied, patting her on the shoulder once before leaving her and Danny alone. “I’ll be back in a jiffy.”
She was still frozen in her place. She willed her now stiffened legs to walk over to the bed. Pulling a chair up to the bed’s rail, knowing that he couldn’t hear her, she whispered more to herself, “What happened to you, Danny?”
The hum of machines was all that answered her. Tears welled in her eyes.
“Wake up,” she pleaded into his ear. “Wake up for me. Please.”
Nothing. He continued to lie there like a body in a casket.
She reached out to him, hoping her touch would will him back to life. But the moment she smoothed his hair away from his face, his eyelids fluttered. Hope surged within her chest until she saw his face twist in pain. His eyes closed tightly and he bared his teeth, grunting wildly.
The heart monitor in the corner started beeping like mad; his pulse was skyrocketing. Tina stared back in horror. “What’s going—”
Tina removed her hand and, in the blink of an eye, the sense of stillness took over the room again. The beeping stopped and Danny fell gently back to sleep.
Tina looked down at her hands; they were pale and clammy. She spread her fingers wide and studied them, as if something on her skin could explain what had just happened.
When Gus entered the room again, the look of pure terror on her face stopped him dead in his tracks, causing him to block the doorway.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“I gotta go, Gus,” Tina said, panicked. She made a move to walk past him. “I can’t explain it, but something is just not right with me today.”
He planted his feet firmly, still standing in the doorway. “Listen, Tina, I know you haven’t lost a patient yet and that this may be the first time you’ve ever seen someone suffer. This must be hard for you, but it’s—”
“I know, part of the job.” Her voice was cracking. “But I—”
“That’s right,” Gus said, stopping her. He took one of her hands in his. “And Lord knows I’ve been through this plenty of times. The first time is always the hardest, I know.”
“I feel like it’s all my fault. That I’ve done something wrong.”
He looked her dead in the eye. “Now you listen to me, Miss Driscoll. You’re the most talented nurse on my staff, but everyone hits a wall sometimes. Sometimes it’s just out of your hands, do you understand me?”
Tina sniffled. “Yes.”
“Why don’t you go to the waiting room, grab a cup of coffee and calm yourself down before going home? Take a rest, work this out.”
Tina took a breath. “You’re right, Gus.” She smiled faintly. “As always.”
“That’s right,” Gus laughed softly. “I’ll see you later, okay?”
“Okay.”
Tina walked down the corridor toward the waiting room, trying to steady her breath. She thought about how lucky she was to have such a supportive boss like Gus. She knew he gave her preferential treatment and she was appreciative. It came in handy on tough days like today.
But the moment she dug into the pocket of her scrubs for a rumpled dollar bill, her fleeting sense of relief crumbled. The waiting room was empty except for one person sitting in the far corner. He was there. Ethan was sitting in the waiting room, his gaze on the shiny, polished floor.
He looked agitated, his left knee bouncing up and down with nerves. She knew it must’ve taken a lot for him to come here. At least he made good on his promise, a small voice told her. The waiting room was probably the farthest he could make himself go, she thought sadly. But her pity for him didn’t damper the intense blaze of anger that flickered within her. The moment she walked into the shadow he cast on the floor in front of him, he looked up.
“How nice of you to show up,” Tina said.
“You’re angry. You have every right to be angry—” Ethan began.
“Why did you run out on me this morning?” she asked him point-blank.
“Listen, I should’ve explained—”
“You’re damn right you should’ve explained,” Tina countered, raising her voice slightly. “First we share one—” she paused, looking Ethan up and down before continuing “—memorable night together, we stay up half the night talking, and then the next thing I know you’re making your perfect getaway as I sleep?”
“That’s not what it was—I swear, I didn’t mean for it to be a getaway
. I just saw the welt on my shoulder and knew you were in grave danger—”
Tina shook her head. “What? What are you even talking about?”
“I need to talk to you,” Ethan said, taking her hands in his and gently pulling her down to sit next to him. “You know that bruise you saw on my shoulder last night?” he asked evenly.
“Yeah...” Tina drawled, her patience wearing thin. “What about it?”
“It looks different today.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” Tina asked with a helpless laugh. “That’s usually how bruises work. They fade from black to purple to—”
Ethan squeezed her hands, massaging her palms with his thumbs. “No, no, it’s more than that. There are fingerprints visible in the bruise. Wherever you touched me healed and the skin around stayed as it should.” He pulled down the collar of his shirt, revealing his shoulder. He was right—there were her small ovals within the bruise, and they were just as smooth and pink as the rest of his back. The same size and shape of her fingerprints. “I don’t feel any pain there anymore. None. Your touch healed me, Tina.”
When she didn’t answer, he asked gently, “You’ve never lost a patient, have you?”
“No, but I—”
“You’re an exceptional nurse. You’re smart, you’re nurturing, you care about your job. But even the best nurse can’t help everyone.”
Tina didn’t move a muscle. He continued.
“But there’s a reason for all of that. A gift. You’re an angel, Tina. You’re one of the most powerful healers on the planet.”
“I don’t—” But Tina stopped herself. She thought to all the patients she’d ever saved, an internal Rolodex flipping in her brain. All the times her coworkers stared at her in amazement after helping a stroke victim walk again, a case of pneumonia clear up overnight, even the most destitute of drug addicts’ withdrawal symptoms vanishing minutes after she soothingly rubbed their backs while they retched over the toilet. How even Gus, a man with so much more experience on the job than she had, seemed to lose more patients than he saved. Losing a patient had happened to everyone, except her. That is until, it seemed, with Danny, today.
The Demon's Forbidden Passion Page 4