“And you think this proposition is worth your lover’s soul? You do realize he’s an animal, right? You’re fucking an animal.”
Nora growled with frustration. She didn’t want to have this argument in public. There was no convincing her mother otherwise, so the point would be moot. All that mattered was that Nora knew the truth. Javier wasn’t some creature to be caged and used.
The waitress returned with their plates. The smell of chilis and sausage reached her nose, making her stomach prickle with hunger, but before she could reach for her fork, Cordelia snatched her hand. Nora jerked back on instinct alone. Cordelia’s grip was stronger, though, almost bruising.
“If this is the trade you’re proposing, I accept.”
Cordelia’s soul-magic sliced through Nora. It was a jagged saw, leaving a trail of pain in its wake. All Nora could do to keep from screaming was bite down on the inside of her cheek. It gave her a new pain to focus on. The throb filled her mouth with blood, making her stomach turn. Maybe her stomach turned because of what was being ripped out of her.
The soul-magic cut deep. It sliced the magic from her veins, from her bones, from her soul. Nora clutched the table and focused on the throb in her cheek until her mother’s butchering was over.
As the dark power receded from her body, she lifted her head to see Cordelia grinning. The older woman lifted her hand, golden sparks jumping along her fingertips. It wasn’t enough to tip her off to Nora’s plans. Nora could only hope she was far enough away when Cordelia realized the price of Nora’s magic.
“A deal is a deal,” Nora growled. She’d been spending too much time with the pack. Growling was beneath her, but seemed to fit the situation. “Javier’s soul.”
Cordelia looked up, startled. She’d been rapt by the power now sitting inside her. “Oh, that. I don’t think so.”
Her heart stopped. She’d sacrificed a part of herself for this. There was no way Cordelia could refuse. Yet, now Nora had no way to fight against her mother. She had no power of her own to push the matter. She was useless.
Frustration tightened her body until her shoulders ached. Her fists burned in her lap. What could she say to the monster who constantly betrayed her? Thanks for nothing, mom? Get bent, mom?
Nora found no words.
Nora wiped the blood from her lips and raised her hand to get the waitress’s attention. She didn’t want to spend another moment in her mother’s company. The confused waitress hurried over and quickly hurried away when Nora asked for a box and a check. Her food was untouched. She had no appetite for it. Not while her mouth tasted like blood and betrayal.
Across from her, Cordelia smiled. She was smug. Of course, she was. Cordelia had everything she could have wanted. Nora’s magic was perhaps the only reason her mother had asked her back into the fold. It’d always made her jealous.
Now, she had everything. Javier’s soul. Nora’s magic.
The urge to double over and let tears take her was nearly overwhelming. But, Nora held out and waited for her to-go box to arrive. She scraped her untouched meal into the box and lurched away from the table.
Her feet were unsteady beneath her, unable to cope with the sudden missing part. Cordelia’s laughter grew distant. Nora paid her bill and stumbled out onto the street. Only a few feet away from the door, she ran into someone built like a wall. Looking up, she found her mate before her.
The sight of Javier soothed her distraught soul. He touched her shoulders, brows knit in confusion.
“What happened to your mouth?” Javier gripped her chin and pulled it up, so he could inspect her wound. There was an endearing amount of concern in his soulless eyes.
Nora jerked away from his grasp and shook her head. “It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.”
“That doesn’t look like nothing to me.”
“Well, it is. So, you’re just going to have to deal with it.”
“Can’t I care about your wellbeing?”
Nora ached to tell him what she’d just done, what happened and what she’d lost, but she knew better. The words were shoved down, never to enter the world. They would do no one any good. Her only option was to learn to live with her mistake and search for a new way to get her mate’s soul back.
No footsteps followed her. She looked up and found him looking back. His eyes tracked a familiar figure as she exited the restaurant. A growl touched her ears. Nora had to reach for him, pull him back. When she did, he turned furious eyes on her.
“You were meeting with her?” His voice rose. He stepped away from her grasp and immediately calmed down. The fire banked into a strong distaste. “What more could you want from her?”
“What do you think?” she asked, exasperated.
After a long moment, his lips parted. “You didn’t.”
“I tried,” she confessed, turning on her heel to put space between her and her mother. “It didn’t work out quite the way I’d wanted it to.
***
Cordelia.
He wanted to rip her limb from limb. He wanted to reach into her chest and pull his soul out of her along with her beating heart. The woman didn’t deserve to walk this earth. If she thought he and his kind were monsters, he would show her the monster she’d made of him. If it had not been for Cordelia’s twisted touch, he would not be what he’d become.
He yanked his gaze from the monster stalking away from them and looked to the woman standing beside him. Her red hair was trying desperately to escape the simple braid she’d pulled it into. A single freckle near her eye stood out in sharp relief, darker than the rest as she grimaced.
Javier wasn’t quite sure how to decode his mate’s words. They said nothing that meant anything. All he knew was the moment of fury as he watched Cordelia leave the restaurant and the moment of pure fear when he smelled blood on his mate.
While he wanted to hunt Cordelia down and make her scream until she could no longer breathe, he knew what mattered more. Despite his hatred of the bond that brought them together, he couldn’t deny that the blood Nora hid from him was concerning. Not that he felt it as he should. When he was near her, it was stronger. The emotion lit through him like a bucket of ice water. When she drifted away from him, the feeling banked and dimmed.
He jogged to catch up to her, grabbing her arm, and steering her toward the apartment they shared for the time being.
“Hey, what do you think you’re doing?”
“Taking you home. Wasn’t that obvious?”
Nora looked like she wanted to argue, but her shoulders fell in defeat. He didn’t want to see her like that. For too long he’d watched her live in fear. Javier wished he could have promised her safety long ago. Instead, they’d lived a precarious balance, trying to protect one another.
He’d returned to that barn, into Cordelia’s arms, to protect his mate from the fate that would fall upon her had she been unable to bring him back. She’d stayed to make sure his soul stayed intact. All of that had been thrown out the window recently.
Javier had no soul when he watched his baby sister marry her mate. He knew that would hurt if he ever got his soul back. For now, he felt little. It was only when he touched Nora that he felt anything. Excitement. Fear. Desire.
She was his conduit to feeling, and he wasn’t about to let her go. Even if he couldn’t offer her anything that felt like real love. He wished he could. She deserved that much. There was pain still eating away at her heart for a loss she didn’t want to work through. Now, she’d lost her mate’s soul.
“Are you going to tell me anything about your meeting?” Javier asked as he opened the front door.
Nora stayed silent, shaking her head.
He nodded. Pushing would do nothing. “Go sit at the table. I want to see where that blood is coming from.”
Nora dropped into a wooden chair and opened her mouth. At first, Javier looked at her with confusion. Then, Nora shoved a finger into her mouth and pulled it out, smeared with thin blood. Javier cocked his head.
; “You… bit yourself?”
Nora snorted. “It felt better than what was happening at the time. I’m fine. I promise.”
He watched her lean forward, elbows on her knees, and stare at her flexing fingers. He knew the scene should have told him something, should have been a hint. Yet, he came up with nothing.
“What’s it like?”
“Huh?” Javier moved to kneel before her. He pulled her hands apart and forced her to look at him. What a twist of fate, he thought. He was a shifter looking after a hunter. It should have brought with it a bitter irony. Perhaps it was good he felt little to nothing.
Her eyes were filled with hurt. “What is it like to be a shifter?”
“Where is this question coming from?”
Nora suddenly pulled away from him. The chair squealed against the floor as she shook her head and stood. He reached out, pulling her back to him. The feeling of her hand in his was the only tether he had to feeling alive. He wished he could hold onto her forever, but this moment wasn’t about him.
Nora was hiding something. Her question was not only diverting him, but some sort of clue.
She hung her head. “What is it like to know your magic doesn’t destroy you?”
His throat went dry.
“What is it like to know a kind of magic that makes you feel more alive?”
“If this is because you had to access your magic to save my sister and her mate, I’m sorry. I didn’t ask anyone to risk themselves for me.”
He should have felt pain and concern as Nora put space between them. She walked around the counter until there was a mass of granite in the space he should have closed. Confusion crinkled her eyes and thinned her lips. She refused to look at him, choosing instead to study the stainless steel of the refrigerator door.
What had brought the two of them together? What twisted strand of fate thought he should be tied to someone who used to hurt shifters? Nora had lived her life against his kind. She’d thought, until recently, that they were all monsters deserving of death.
Now, she was mated to someone who’d become an actual monster. He could not feel anything unless he was in her presence. Distantly, he also knew that whatever part of his soul he got back would be broken and wrong.
They were a horrid match. The fates must have been laughing at them from above. At least, without his soul, his resentment was a faded thing. It laid, useless and untouched. All he knew was the desire to get close to her and feel… something
“Is there something I’m missing because I’m missing my soul?”
Nora let out a sound that was too much like a sob. Javier moved toward the counter, but she only stepped back. Frustration lit through him. His hands fisted at his sides, the urge to break something making his muscles shake.
She hurt, in more ways than one, and Javier didn’t know the first thing about helping her. Nora’s words filled the air, questions that were anything but harmless, and no emotion surfaced to help him decipher the hidden messages. It left her in pain—a pain he couldn’t stand to see.
“I don’t understand what I’m supposed to do here.”
Nora sighed and hung her head. “Nothing. You aren’t supposed to do anything.”
Once more, he watched her look to her hands. He wondered what it was she was looking for in her own hands. The secrets of the universe? A way to fix her mate? Perhaps, even a way to undo the bond that brought them together in the first place?
“I’m sorry you were brought into this. I know a mate bond with a shifter was the last thing you wanted. You don’t deserve to be in this mess with me.” Javier hesitated, words on his lips. He should have told her she could walk away. Nora didn’t have to stay with him while he figured this out. She didn’t have to stay with him ever. There was no way he was going to force her into a relationship she never asked for.
But, it hurt too much to say. Nora was his last lifeline. Near her, he felt things that should have been far and unreachable. His mate made him feel close to alive again, a feeling he never wanted to give up. Javier reminded himself that this was not only about himself. Nora, his mate, needed happiness. He could not give that to her. Not as he was. If they could not retrieve his soul, he would never be able to grant her any kind of lasting happiness. His presence would be an empty one, only a reminder of the past they endured.
“Shut your mouth. I know what you were going to say and don’t even think it.” She darted around the counter, suddenly in his space again. “I’m in this, neck deep. If you think I’m going to come this far only to turn around and run, then you’re an idiot.”
He laughed. He couldn’t help it. Nora had hit the nail on the head.
She narrowed her eyes at him. “What’s so funny?”
“You’re right, I’m an idiot.”
His admission brought a small, struggling smile to the corner of her mouth. It was almost as if she didn’t want to smile, as if she shoved it back and fought to remain serious. Then, her eyes lit up and her lips parted. In that moment, she was so beautiful. Her lower lip gleamed with a sticky, strawberry scented gloss. The spray of freckles across her nose pulled him in like tiny magnets.
He leaned toward her, starving for a kiss, when she slapped her hand onto his chest.
“You laughed.”
His sex-addled brain couldn’t make sense of what she’d said. The words spun around like sugar in a cotton candy machine, becoming unreadable fluff.
“You really are an idiot,” Nora said with a teasing smile on the corner of her mouth.
He couldn’t help it anymore. He stole a kiss, lips on the corner of her mouth as if he might taste the mischief there. It startled her. Nora quickly recovered, parting her lips to let him take her whole mouth. He delved deep, tasting dark and bitter coffee on her tongue. It was a shock to his system that worked faster than any caffeine.
Her fingers drifted up his spine, over the raised lines of his old tattoo, to hold the back of his neck. Her touch brought him to life, leaving in its wake sensation he hadn’t felt since long before his captivity. He pulled her into his body and tilted her head back to delve deeper. Nora complied. She was butter in his hands.
From her, he experienced elation and excitement. Her emotion bled into him the same way her body scented the air. She needed him as much as he needed her. A growl slipped from his mouth and into hers.
He shoved her back. Her rear hit the counter, so he lifted her until she could sit atop it. The added height gave her access to his neck. She broke the kiss to lay a trail of kisses along it. Her hands gripped his shirt, pulling and tugging like he might drift away. Nora was not letting him go. She wasn’t going anywhere.
He ripped her shirt over her head. He hungered for the feel of skin on skin, flesh against flesh. She was his enemy, his mate, his beginning and end all in one. Javier should have hated her. He should have left the moment he’d been freed from Cordelia’s cage.
Instead, he let himself fall deeper into her. Each step brought him further into the mess that they were becoming.
Chapter Three
Chills ran up and then down Nora’s spine. She shuddered and fell into the sensation. Her mind spun out of control. A part of her knew this was too much too fast. Another part of her cared little. It hungered for Javier in a primal way. Too long had she been in his presence without being able to feed this deep need. Now, she could feed to her fill.
His touch reached into the void now inside her. He caressed it with his tongue, with his fingertips on her bare nipples. It filled her and made her hunger for another kind of filling.
Jeans were an annoying thing. She fumbled with the metal buttons. The fabric clung to her skin and refused to be pulled down in her position. Javier growled and gripped it, tearing the denim with ease. The monster he was becoming lurked in his eyes, a dark fire that threatened to consume her being.
She should have trembled. Perhaps, Nora should have run for the door and kept running. Instead, she grabbed either side of his face and pulled him into
her. She claimed his mouth with her own. Her tongue swept through his mouth. He groaned into her, pulling her now bare hips into his. Through the thin fabric of her panties, she could feel how much he needed her.
Her own body said much the same with the wet and musky scent it released into the air. She was ready for him. The thought of being filled by him, of his cock pushing as deep as it could go, gave her a sense of completion. This was her mate, the man the universe thought might make her the happiest. She could feel it in each swipe of his tongue through her mouth, in each flick of his thumb over her nipple.
His cock would feel just as good.
She reached between them and pulled the buttons of his jeans free. With her feet, she guided his pants down. His cock burst free, ready for her attention. Hot and hard, he rubbed it against her inner thigh, silently asking to push further with each rough stroke.
Nora groaned, her core throbbing at the very thought. She spread her legs for him. He gripped her thighs and pulled her toward him, entering her in one, smooth motion. He was more than she’d ever taken. He stretched and filled her, occupying spaces that were empty and barren.
She tried not to think about the things she lacked. The empty spaces inside her had been deafening in their silence, but she gripped Javier and rocked her hips, asking him for more with each motion. She needed more, for him to fill her so completely that she forgot herself and the woes she’d wrought.
Javier did as she asked, through his own need or through some kind of unspoken communication, she didn’t know. All she knew was the hard thrust that broke her into a million pieces. Her head fell back and hit the cabinet behind her. Another thrust of his cock made the dull throb in her skull disappear. Together, they both let out a breathy laugh. Javier reached to cradle the back of her head, protecting her from the cabinet and her own clumsiness.
The touch felt intimate, far more than anything else. He cared about her. The thought struck her and made her tighten around him. He groaned at the sudden sensation. It devolved into a growl, his pace quickening as his need sharpened.
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