Taking Back Sunday

by Cristy Rey

  In spite of all her gifts and all of her training, Sunday hadn’t known Constance was warlock until she’d crossed the demon itself. The shock and anger Sunday felt overrode any wish she’d previously had of getting into the specifics of Constance’s day-to-day planning. She could have disconnected from the demon and collected her aura. She could have centered herself and returned to the investigation of the warehouse to discover Constance’s her spells and incantations. She could have combed through for evidence of the vampires or to figure out why the witch at Bearers had been killed. She could have traced the identities of Constance’s victims and tried to give their families some relief. Instead, Sunday absorbed all the dark energy of black magic and angry ghosts around her and used it to destroy the warehouse just as she’d leveled Bernadette’s manor. All the power she was harnessing pulsed through her body. The ground beneath her feet shook.

  The demon laughed once more before dissolving into a cloud of smoke and dissipating into nothing.

  You have nothing, the demon’s voice echoed in her mind. You have nothing, and I will live again.

  Sunday knew she could have probed further, but she didn’t. Instead, Sunday called upon all energies around her and drew them into her chest until she couldn’t contain them anymore. Like a psychic atomic bomb, she triggered an explosion.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Tremors from the warehouse rocked Cyrus’ truck even though it was parked yards away. Crazed with concern for Sunday’s safety, Cyrus dashed from the car and ran to the warehouse door when an explosion threw him back and he tumbled to the ground. From the door, flames burst. He was pulling himself up again ready to run right into them and evacuate Sunday to safety when she walked through the flames confidently and easily as if they hadn’t been there.

  Her eyes were the same grey clouds they had been when he’d last seen her rise to her Incarnate state. A powerful zephyr cut between them, forcing him back to the ground. Sunday remained poised at the seat of her awful glory. It was a sight to be seen. She was the terrifying, awesome embodiment of the ancient wrathful goddesses of yore. For not the first time in recent days, Cyrus understood what it was to be truly afraid.

  She was an angel of awful splendor and devastating power. Light emanated from her. If all was darkness, then she would be the sole beacon to which all things would be drawn. If she called him to her, he would have crawled on his knees and clawed at the asphalt to reach her in spite of the danger. He would have done so willingly, blindly. No matter what torment awaited him or the certain terrible end that his life would meet, Cyrus would have done as she’d asked just to be near her, and that was the most frightening thing of all.

  “Get in the car,” she demanded. Her voice was otherworldly. Bellowing from the pit of her stomach, it was caustic and cruel.

  Cyrus shook free of the daze to do what she commanded. His muscles burned as he pulled himself to his feet so that he could return to the idling vehicle. Locking himself in the car, he looked at her through the window. A white light pulsated from her body, and suddenly, it flashed like a bolt of lightning. It was so bright that it left him seeing stars.

  Before he knew a moment had passed, Sunday pulled on the door handle. His eyes darted to her. She looked like herself again, though more than worse for wear. Her skin was ashen and white as if the life had been sucked out of her. Her shoulders hunched and her arms were limp as she dragged herself into the seat and fell into it. She collapsed into a fetal position facing him. Eyes tightly closed, she bunched her hands to her chest and curled up into a tight little ball.

  As he opened his mouth to ask her if she was all right, the sound of a second explosion shook them. Sunday merely flinched.

  “I’m tired,” she mumbled, releasing the backrest and laying the seat back as far as it would go. Her features were soft and heavy with drowsiness. She pulled her scarf up and dug her chin into it. Lazily, she turned to him and slowly opened her heavy lids. “Can you take me home?” she asked with a soft voice.

  “Yeah, I can,” Cyrus choked out. His heart raced in his chest like it was going to explode, and he forced himself to breathe deeply and relax.

  Curled up beside him, Sunday was the great deceiver, even if not by her own design. He was losing his mind with fear, and she was nonchalant, like a sleeping babe, even an instant after leveling a solid structure into a pile of rocks and ash. On the surface, she was the beautiful, however exhausted, version of a woman that he believed he could love, that he did love. But she was also so much more. He wondered at her life as the Incarnate and the things she had done, the things he might have witnessed had he stayed on Bernadette’s payroll. Visions of what he imagined as Bernadette’s last moments flashed by him, and Cyrus caught himself trembling in fear.

  With nothing more than the inclination, she could destroy him. She could destroy anything and everything that she wanted just as she had decimated Constance’s warehouse. Just as she had a moment ago, she could walk away from the devastation untroubled. While the world burned, she could stretch out sleepily, yawn, and curl up into a ball as if nothing had even happened, as if she wasn’t an H-bomb that had just gone off.

  As his heart rate slowed and his breathing eased, that fearsome reality was overshadowed by his concern. She was indeed the Incarnate, and worthy of all his horror and fear, but at this moment, she was weak and vulnerable. His face softened as he watched her. Silently, Cyrus brought his hand to her head and brushed Sunday’s hair from her sweat-glistened forehead. He cradled her cheek in his palm and lightly brushed her bottom lip with his thumb. As he caressed her, Sunday nestled closer.

  “How do you feel? Are you all right?” Cyrus asked in a whisper.

  For all she had done and all that she could do, Cyrus’ sole concern was Sunday’s wellbeing. The exertion at the warehouse was taking its toll on her. All the weeks’ worth of sleep deprivation as she investigated the threat to her friends didn’t help matters.

  “I’m tired, just tired.” Her voice was hardly audible, and she spoke through clumsy lips. Her eyes remained closed as Cyrus leaned over her and fastened her seatbelt. “I’m okay, Cyrus. I promise. I just need a little nap.”

  Sunday awoke with a start to the sound of Sammy’s personal ringtone. She’d been locked in a coma-like sleep for a long time. She could tell as much from the way her body ached to stretch. The motel room was dimly lit, and from the looks of it, she was alone. A light fed into the room from a crack under the bathroom door, and she heard the sounds of someone showering behind it. She was in the werewolves’ room, no doubt carried there by Cyrus after she’d passed out so completely in the SUV.

  The ringing stopped, and in another minute, started again. Sammy was probably worried about her. Sunday rolled onto her side, and with the covers tucked under her chin, scanned the room looking for where Cyrus had placed her things. Ringing blared from the other side of the room, but she didn’t want to get up. She finally had the chance to really rest and her body wanted nothing less than the labor it would take to reach the phone.

  The sound of rushing water stopped, and someone rifled through the bathroom. A minute later, the door opened. Cyrus’ silhouette loomed, haloed by the bright light behind him. His long, muscular body was bare but for the towel slung low at his waist. He stepped into the room and switched on a lamp on the dresser. His wet hair hung loosely over his shoulders. Fresh from the shower, droplets dripped from his beard and onto his chest. At the sight of him, Sunday swooned. There was no denying the attraction. Hardly awake and barely conscious, Sunday’s body was electric just looking at the breadth of masculinity before her.

  “Was that your phone ringing?” he asked as he strode casually to her bedside.

  His body glistened as his muscles rippled while he moved. When he reached the foot of her bed, Cyrus sat and the bed sunk under his remarkable weight. Her body rolled closer to him, and she pulled up her legs and shimmied back to sit against the pillows.

  “Yeah,” she answered groggily. S
he rubbed her eyes with a fist and yawned. “That’s Sammy’s ringtone. She’s probably wondering where I went after I ran out of the house. I can’t believe that was just last night. It was last night, wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah. It was last night. You’ve been asleep since the warehouse and it’s Thursday afternoon.” Cyrus answered. He rested his palms on the mattress behind him and leaned back into them. His body stretched out like a table, and Sunday fought the urge to lunge at him and lick him clean. With his chin, he pointed to the digital alarm clock on the bedside table that read 3:12 p.m. in neon green light.

  “I should call her back,” Sunday said, shaking her head out of the clouds and pulling her eyes up from Cyrus’ body. “I can give her some story about… I don’t know… something. Maybe I can tell her that I found that guy I had told her about and spent the night with him,” she chuckled. Instantly, the heat rose to her cheeks and she felt herself blush. She tucked her chin, and forced herself to avoid Cyrus’ hot gaze. “It wouldn’t exactly be a lie,” she muttered below her breath.

  When Sunday looked up for just a second, Cyrus smiled bashfully and dropped his chin trying to hide his blush. With his attention averted, Sunday let her eyes roll over his body more generously. His shoulders were broad and tight. She could see the tension in them, pulling his back tautly, straining to give into his neck’s desire to hang loosely. Ripples of lean muscle lined his back. The ones at his side cut sharp, shapely lines down the length of his torso and trailed beneath the white motel towel to destination unknown.

  Tattoos covered the scars on his chest, back, and arms. If she intended her tattoos to be a garden on her skin, then Cyrus intended his as a diary of his hard-lived life. Where vibrant flowers bloomed down her arm, a bloody dagger in a vixen’s hand was inked on his. Below his collarbone, an inked banner inscribed with the words, Live and Let Die. On his back, a pair of wolves howled at a full moon that dripped with dark, red blood.

  Cyrus pushed himself off his hands, and sat upright. He clenched praying hands on his lap and looked up at her with hooded eyes. His cheeks still burned with blush.

  “You told your friend about me?”

  Cyrus looked down at his hands, and his cheeks bunched above the line of his thick beard. He asked so sheepishly that Sunday involuntarily wrinkled her nose and smiled at him. She was making the big, brooding werewolf shy. Even so, her stomach clenched and her teeth chattered. At the base of her head, her neck tightened.

  Here she sat with the werewolf who had betrayed her confidence, yet her sole desire was to lean forward and wrap her arms around him. He admitted to having hunted her for years and to having hated her so much that he thought of killing her obsessively. In the moment, none of that mattered. Instead of wanting to run away, Sunday only wanted to smother herself with the heat that radiated from his body.

  All awkwardness of her earliest interaction with him at the cinema flooded back to her. It had been the last thing on her mind since he’d crashed his truck into her car and forced her to accept his help in saving her friends. It was even further from her mind as they’d driven to and broken into Constance’s warehouse. But now, alone in the motel room with his naked masculinity mere feet from her, it was all she could think about it.

  “Well,” she stammered, biting back her bottom lip and doing her best not to meet his eyes. “I didn’t exactly get to tell her everything, but I might have mentioned that I met some guy and that things had started to get super hot before–”

  “Before you overheated,” Cyrus finished for her with a mischievous grin.

  Electricity buzzed in her chest as she dreamily recalled their intimate encounter before she’d overheated.

  “Maybe,” she answered, fluttering her eyelids as she turned her head to face him.

  Sitting there with Cyrus in an otherwise unoccupied motel room, Sunday could almost make herself forget the trials and tribulations of the last few days. She could push out the thought of Constance and the memory of the demon she’d faced in the warehouse. Diving headlong into Cyrus’ hazel eyes, she lost herself with the desire to recreate the scene leading up to her eruption.

  He must have been reading her expressions because he scooted closer to her on the bed. His triceps bulged and flexed as they held up the weight of his chest. He crawled to her and braced himself on his arms as he leaned his body over. With his body so close to hers, she could feel the heat pulsing from his skin. Cyrus lowered his face until it was an inch from hers. His pupils were large as he drunk in her features. His eyes moved over her face in long strokes as if he was committing it to memory.

  “You have no idea how hard I searched to find you.” His voice was urgent, his baritone timbre enticing. “I searched for years, sniffing every crumb you dropped along the way.”

  Cyrus reached his hand to her face and held her cheek in the palm of his hand. His thumb traced the line of her swollen blushing lips.

  “I carried a torch that burned every fiber of my being thinking that I wanted to be the one to end you. I had no idea that what I really wanted was to know what you tasted like. What it felt like to devour you.”

  Cyrus’ bare chest pressed against hers, and she felt his words vibrate through her body. Her breaths became shallow, and she sucked in short sips of air through her parted lips, each breath making her heart beat faster. Cyrus followed her gaze as it fell to his mouth. Her lashes beat slowly and heavily before they fluttered back to meet his eyes.

  It took Sunday every bit of effort to focus securing her psychic walls. She was in danger of losing her grip on them. Nevertheless, she yearned to connect with him. Flesh to flesh, soul to soul. The werewolf had admitted to tracking her for years with the thirst for her blood, yet she didn’t bat an eyelash at his confession. Instead, she was consumed by their sudden closeness wanting nothing and thinking nothing beyond putting her hand to his chest and drawing a map of it in her mind so that she could never forget it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Unconsciously bidden, Sunday’s hands rose, and she painted a long stroke up his broad chest and slid it over his shoulder. Her hands continued their path down his arms taking account of every muscle, every tense inch of flesh. She gripped his wrist with one hand, and with the other, pushed back his wet hair from his face, tucking it behind his ear.

  Through a ragged breath, Cyrus’ voice cracked. “Is this safe?”

  “I hope so,” she whispered hoarsely, eyes following as her fingers traced his lips.

  “I don’t think I’ll be able to take it this time if you push me away,” he growled.

  “I’m not making any promises, Cyrus.”

  The control in her voice made him hard, his erection pushing up through the heavy towel. Sunday pressed her lips against his neck, and he fisted her hair. His moan reverberated through his chest as Sunday pressed her warm, soft lips in the hollow.

  Afraid that he would get too hot and that Sunday wouldn’t be able to control herself again, Cyrus’ body went rigid. This time, he needed Sunday to take the reins. Her lips trailed across his collarbone, and she bit into his shoulder softly, easing his nonexistent pain by bathing it with a gentle kiss. Then she bit into him again, this time harder, and his body jerked. Cyrus cupped the back of her neck in his palm and forced her to look up to him. His eyes were wild with the passion he fought to hold at bay. It simmered, and the wolf inside him grew insistent.

  “Tell me you’re not going to kill me like this,” Cyrus begged.

  “You don’t trust me,” she purred. Though she’d made a statement, he heard the question behind it. She was begging him, too, pleading with him to let her go on.

  Sunday’s mouth found his again and forced it to accept her angry lips and her demanding tongue. When he did, she ran the tip of it gently over his and took his between her lips, scraping and sucking suggestively as she drew it through. This was what it was like to be with her. This was the kind of power she could wield over his manhood, his ferocious masculinity. His better judgment was fa
lling prey to her seduction.

  This isn’t right, he thought helplessly. She isn’t ready. I’m not ready. This shouldn’t be happening now.

  She was conquering him, egging on the challenge of his hesitation just as he’d done to her nights earlier.

  “I don’t trust…” His voice broke when she put her hand to his stomach and slid it down to the hem of the towel. She gripped it tightly in a fist, her knuckles brushing against the skin of his spasming muscles. “I don’t trust that you want this as much as you’re letting on, as much as I want this, or for the same reason.”

  The same woman who hadn’t been able to contain herself in the heat of heavy petting and sloppy, passionate kisses was now making the moves. She was taking steps further down the road of seduction, knowing full well the potential outcome. He didn’t want to, but he couldn’t help but to doubt that her motives were as straightforward as his were. Desire trumped all his reason. All he wanted was to be inside of her, to feel his thick shaft pummeling the melting cavern of her femininity. But he didn’t trust it that she wanted the same thing.

  After what he’d experienced in the last few days, he couldn’t trust. Either she was playing him or she wanted to lose control again. He didn’t know which was worse. Regardless, he couldn’t stop himself. His body was begging to relent and let her do anything she wanted if it meant having her like this.

  “Stop doubting me,” she muttered against his lips. “I feel you inside of me, wondering what I want. I want you.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  He stopped short of diving into another kiss, and he pushed himself off her. The towel slid off his body as he brought himself to stand by the bed. Rather than stay down, Sunday climbed off the bed and stood to face him. She was fully clothed, down to the socks she’d been wearing underneath her boots the previous night. It was unlike a werewolf to feel uncomfortable in the nude; yet, as she stepped to him, he suddenly felt inadequate. He was cowed by her dominance.