by Naima Simone
Sinéad wasn’t surprised Bastien didn’t know of her race’s history. The cruxim were isolated, prone to chop the nose off anyone stupid enough to stick it in their business. Yet for some reason, she wedged her spine in the corner of the couch and spilled the historical record instilled in every Black Angel from the time of their birth.
“The first cruxim were called pithia and they were not warriors but priestesses of Nef.” Nef, their beloved goddess, endowed the cruxim with her strength. “They worshipped and served her in the heavens and on earth. While offering sacrifice and tending one of the earthly temples, a pithia came across a vampire who lusted after her—and raped her. The young she bore as a result of the attack inherited the black wings, silver hair and eyes of its mother, but the fangs and bloodlust of the vampire. Only the young craved the blood of its sire, not human blood. Nef was outraged by the defilement of her priestess. She declared war on the vampires, nearly decimating the race from the earth.”
“Damn,” Bastien breathed. “Remind me to never piss off a goddess.”
“The vampire species recovered, but their hatred for Nef was as hot as hers—and the pithia’s—for them. For thousands of years our races warred, killing indiscriminately. Including innocents. Once Nef’s fury cooled, those deaths weighed heavily on both her and the pithia’s consciences. The goddess restricted hunting to rogue vampires, but we’re still enemies. While a select few of our race continue to serve Nef, from the time most of us are weaned, we are trained to hunt and kill vampires after we feed from them. It’s what we are…what we do.”
His eyebrows veered toward his hairline. “I thought you hunted and executed all vampires. So you’re discriminate…like our Dimios.” Bastien slowly nodded then tilted his head to the side. “How do cruxim differentiate between rogue vampires and innocents?”
“Vampires are natural predators, but they don’t have to inflict pain or kill. They can easily enthrall humans and make the feeding pleasurable. But there are those who enjoy the agony of ripping their prey apart, delight in the kill and exalt in the last life’s blood pumping from their victims’ veins. These are the rogues cruxim hunt.”
“Like tonight,” Bastien added.
She dipped her chin in acknowledgment. “Yes, like tonight. All vampires possess aura—a spiritual stamp of sorts—that cruxim can perceive, probably due to the ancestral blood connection our races share. A vampire’s aura should be blue, but the essences of those who have drunk a human’s last life's blood are striated with red. A bright, desperate, angry red. As if the human soul contained in the fluid is crying out for punishment, for retribution.” Her voice softened as she envisioned the profane mixture of red and blue. Of evil and virtue. Of life and death.
She shook her head, clearing her head and refocusing on her explanation. “The taint has a slim window of eight hours before it disappears and the aura returns to blue. So the cruxim search every night—from the sky or on the ground—to locate the rogues, the killers, before they can hide their guilt behind the façade of innocence.”
“That explains it,” he said, his green eyes lighting as if a switch had been flipped inside his head.
“Explains what?”
“Since I…changed, I’ve glimpsed flashes of red and blue in crowds of people. I assumed it was another effect of the bloodlust. But I was actually seeing—”
“Vampires,” she concluded.
“Damn,” he whispered.
A corner of her mouth quirked at the note of wonder in his voice. But then she sobered. “Another trait we share,” she paused, her lips twisting, “or used to share.”
A heartbeat of silence passed.
“You miss it,” he murmured.
Yes, damn it! her spirit cried out. But she locked the scream down, remained silent.
He studied her, his inspection different than in the kitchen. More analytical, dissecting. As if she were photographic film depicting bones and joints instead of a flesh-and-blood female.
“Why did you do it?” he asked. “Why did you give me your blood if you knew it would steal your immortality? Your purpose?”
Planting her palms on the couch, she pushed herself upright. “Believe me, I didn’t know the consequences at the time. I had no idea that one act would leave me like,” she flitted her hands in front of her, “this.”
“So why? Why give me your blood? What made you do it?”
Confusion and not a little frustration welled inside her. What did he want from her?
“I don’t know what you expect me to say,” she huffed. “I already told you, I didn’t know—don’t know. You were almost eviscerated, losing so much blood and close to death.” She caught the minute tautening of his mouth and the slight whitening of his scars, but he remained silent. Sinéad sighed. “You’re the doctor,” she reminded him, unable to keep the exasperation from her tone. “When someone is leaking blood like a sieve, the procedure is to first stop the loss then replace the fluid. Like a transfusion. So after the first couple of days, when your body hadn’t begun the healing cycle on its own, I thought…maybe…my blood would…”
Her nails bit into the nap of the upholstery as she was flooded with not-too-distant memories of that time. The helplessness and vulnerability that had been as alien to her as the frail body she’d suddenly inhabited. The crushing loss of her wings and freedom of flight. She’d been grounded—literally—and imprisoned to the earth in a structure that was both weak and as strong as the most impenetrable cell.
“I had no clue I was sacrificing more and more of my immortality with every feeding. No idea when I left you I would no longer be…me.”
Powerful. Invincible.
She hadn’t meant to utter me. Hadn’t meant to reveal something so…exposing.
“Would you do it again?” he asked, his voice a quiet murmur. “Knowing the repercussions, would you give me your blood again?”
Staring into his face, the marks of the pain he’d suffered etched into his skin, yes hovered on the tip of her tongue. It was the civilized thing to say. The human thing to say. Of course if I could save your life I would do it all over again.
Except…would she? Would she deliberately consign herself to this shell dying around her with the passing of every day? She shook her head, meeting Bastien’s steady gaze.
“I don’t know,” she whispered. Regret echoed in the words yet she couldn’t hold in the truth.
Bastien didn’t blink and his steady gaze held her captive. Finally, he nodded.
“I don’t know if I’d want you to.” The low, harsh admission took her aback. She cocked her head to the side. Maybe she’d misheard him. Maybe her mind had mixed up the words in a dyslexic jumble. But the bitterness stamped on his scarred, beautiful face informed Sinéad she hadn’t misunderstood. “I’m a hippogryph. Yet I’m not. I’m a man, but I’m not. I have fangs, red eyes and a hunger that hunts me even when I manage to sleep.” His expression hardened, his pupils widened, the emerald orbs nearly swallowing the ring of bright jade surrounding them. “A hunger for cruxim blood.”
Long, obsidian lashes lowered, hiding his intent, pulse-jacking stare. “I belong nowhere. To no one.”
A sensation, not unlike the gentle rapping of knuckles on a door, tapped at her skull. Unlike when he touched her, this light contact was solely his emotion, held none of the overpowering, turbulent mixture of his and hers.
Without hesitation, she lowered the natural walls of her mind. Immediately, tendrils of grief and pain borne on zephyrs of confusion, hate and fear streamed into her consciousness. The force of the emotional gale dragged at her mind, her soul, threatening to bury her under its intensity. Inhaling, she closed her eyes and deliberately pictured a sliding, steel door. She slowly eased the door closed, reducing the speed and concentration of the tumultuous psychic flow into her head. The torrent of his emotion decelerated to a controllable current. Like a centrifuge separating blood and plasma, she filtered and sifted the strength of the rage and agony until little mor
e than a trickle remained. And then even less.
Sinéad exhaled. Opened her eyes.
And no longer gazed into the eyes of the hippogryph, but the man, the healer. Knowledge dwelled in the depths that had returned to human. She stiffened, waited. Some would view the cleansing as an intrusive violation of privacy. She searched his closed expression for a sign of annoyance, of betrayal for encroaching on the ground of his personal hell.
“I can’t help it,” she said, notching her chin higher. Bastien was a proud creature and wouldn’t appreciate her glimpse inside his head. Yet she couldn’t propel an apology past her lips. The “gift” bequeathed to her from the male her mother had chosen to breed with left Sinéad with little choice. She could shield herself, but she couldn’t eliminate the psychic talent that was as much a part of her makeup as her eyes, hair and wings—well, since five months ago, eyes and hair. “It’s who I am.”
Bastien didn’t respond for several long seconds. A muscle ticked in the granite line of his jaw even as he shifted to face her head on, his shoulders and chest a solid wall of tense muscle. Aggression seemed to vibrate through his big body, but it was tempered by a gleam of desperate hope lightening his unflinching study of her.
“Can you help me?” he asked, voice gruff as if the words had been shoved through a tunnel of glass and gravel. “Can you heal me like you did my emotions?”
Slowly—regretfully—Sinéad shook her head. The tentative light died from his face and a part of her inexplicably longed to reach out and stroke the chiseled mouth that firmed into a stoic line of defeat.
“No,” she whispered. “I can’t help either of us.”
* * * * *
As the moon’s pearlescent beams caressed her silken skin like an enamored lover, Bastien growled, irrationally jealous of the touch to this lovely creature’s body. Only he had the right—the privilege—of stroking her.
Worshipping her.
He swept the long strands of her hair to the side. Like a pool of molten silver. Awe billowed in his chest as he curled a hand around the nape of her neck.
“Bastien?” Sinéad glanced over her shoulder at him, her delicate, often stubborn, chin grazing the rounded, soft slope. Her thunder-and-lightning eyes held a hint of question, uncertainty.
“Shhh. Relax for me,” he murmured, cupping her hip and, with a slight tug and a low grunt of satisfaction, positioning her to his satisfaction. She resembled a sleek, mysterious feline with her ass arched in the air and her slender back curved like an archer’s bow. Beautiful. Deadly.
Sinéad’s gaze lingered on his face another lengthy moment before she turned her head and pressed her cheek into the white pillowcase. Her arms stretched forward from underneath the pillow and she wrapped her fingers around the headboard railings.
He whispered to her, gentle reassurances of her beauty, her strength, for he understood the trust it required her—a cruxim—to allow him at her back, leaving her defenseless and open to his desire and control. Her confidence in him was sweeter than the rich, heady scent of the cream moistening the folds of her pussy and dotting her inner thighs. He inhaled, drinking in the fragrance of her desire. Damn, he wanted to roll in it, coat his body with it, immerse herself in it so her singular aroma was a permanent fixture in his nose, on his skin.
Groaning, he leaned over her, his body completely dwarfing her smaller one. He lifted his hand from her neck and traced the sun-kissed skin with his tongue, savoring the flavor of perspiration and her. So dainty, so petite…and yet, if she chose to, Sinéad could flick him aside with a sweep of her arm. But she didn’t. Instead she clutched the headboard, submitting to his touch. Awaiting his—and her—pleasure. His cock pounded in anticipation and arousal. He clenched his jaw as he lowered his hand from her hip, gripped his dick and stroked his fist up its length. A growl rumbled in his chest, up his throat. An answering shudder passed over her frame, but from the slight tightening of her spread thighs, he knew his little cruxim wasn’t afraid. No, she was excited. He smelled her anticipation, her arousal.
He straightened and his hand shook as he released his flesh. His fingers danced along the dip at the small of her back then up her spine and over the large, detailed black tattoo covering her skin. Wings. Gorgeous wings arced over her shoulder blades and tapered to her waist. He’d witnessed the glory of those glossy midnight feathers and a yearning to see them again rose up in him, surging like a cresting wave.
“Release them,” he rasped, tracing the meticulous design inked into her skin. “Let me feel them.”
A pause. A gentle, tremulous sigh. And then a surge of electricity sparked against his fingertips before the ink wavered and a wing as sleek and shiny as a black pearl emerged from her back. First one than the other swelled from her flesh with a ripple of feathers, tendon and bones. His breath snagged in his throat. Like a coat of luxuriant mink, her wings spread across her body and the mattress in a magical display of fragility and power.
He summoned his own magic and, in seconds, his own wings materialized, unfolded and flared wide. Chestnut covered onyx, the tips mingling in an intimate caress he craved to mimic with their bodies. His breath heaved, rough and harsh, and reverberated in the quiet room.
“Damn, you’re lovely,” he praised in a hushed, coarse tone. The muscled ridges where her wings emerged formed a path he traced with tender fingers. She shivered and the hard quiver vibrated through her slim frame. Sinéad released a low, sensual groan and the erotic rumble echoed in the throbbing pulse of his cock. “You like that,” he murmured, and repeated the touch. Again, she shuddered, the spasm like a quake that shook the landscape of her body. “Oh yes.” He chuckled, outlining the bottom of her wing where skin, muscle and feathers connected. “You like it.”
With a hum of pleasure, he clasped her hip in one hand and, circling her waist with his arm, dipped the other between her spread thighs. He slid two fingers between her folds, the abundant cream easing his way. Sinéad jerked under him, loosing a hungry cry that dragged an answering growl from the depths of him. He recognized the passion darkening the sound, made it something dangerous and too fucking good to resist—and he didn’t resist it. Sliding a finger deeper, he teased her pussy open and pushed the tip inside her grasping sex.
“Easy,” he murmured when she bucked, nearly dislodging his touch. Damn. So tight. So wet. He ground his teeth together. “Easy, sweetheart.”
Bending over her once more, he raked his teeth down the sensitive trail along her spine. A corresponding pull rippled in her extra-small channel. Muttering a curse, he pushed his finger deeper, higher inside her sex. Her smooth, muscular walls sucked at him, squeezed him in an embrace his cock envied.
He withdrew his hand, ready to slip back in when her lush morning-dew scent, sharpened by her cruxim lightning-striking-earth aroma, ripened, became heavier and richer than ever. The alluring perfume wrapped around him, snared him. Need clawed at his gut, gripped his dick in a merciless hold. The hunger—it demanded to be fed, to be satiated.
With a loud snarl, he reared back. “Retract them,” he snapped, stroking a hand over the top of one wing.
Another tingle of electricity and they were gone, disappearing into the elaborate tattoo. Immediately, he grabbed her hips and flipped her onto her back. Her eyes rounded but she didn’t utter a sound. Neither did she prevent him from nipping the taut skin on her stomach, from sliding between her legs. From shoving his shoulders under her thighs and leaving her completely vulnerable to his gaze. And touch.
Hungry. So fucking hungry it hurt.
An animalistic roar erupted from him seconds before he lowered his head and dived into her pussy. He tried to be gentle, to ease her into the intimacy. But he couldn’t draw back, couldn’t pull away from the source of her scent, from the headiest taste he’d ever consumed. He dragged his tongue through her folds, drowning in the juice that nourished both man and beast.
Circling her clit, he suckled on the tiny morsel of flesh, gloried in her savage cry. Sinéad tun
neled her fingers through his hair, her nails scratched his scalp. Abandoning the nerve-laden button, he shoved her legs wider apart, dropped his head and stabbed his tongue into her sex, thrusting as deep as he could reach. Shifting a hand, he plucked at her clit and, with one last stroke into her grasping sheath, Sinéad came apart on his mouth.
He devoured every last drop of fresh morning dew flooding his mouth. Yet…even as the hunger was satisfied, another rose within him.
Ripping at him, demanding he take. Drink.
Fangs exploded from his gums.
No. Fuck, no.
The cry echoed through his head even as he sank his teeth into her thigh…
“Bastien!”
He leapt from the sofa, throwing the light blanket aside and somersaulting in the air to alight on the hardwood floor in a crouch. Air punched out of his lungs in ragged, painful bursts. His name rang in his ears along with the faint echo of hot blood on his tongue. That dream. Fuck. It had been so real—more so than all those that had preceded it. He ran his tongue along the edges of his teeth, but no fangs. No sweet, thick cream from a tight, slick pussy. His chest heaved. A dream. That’s all it’d been.
The slap of bare feet reverberated across the hardwood. His head jerked up. In the pearly shadows preceding dawn, Sinéad’s larger, slimmer silhouette flew downstairs, through the living room entrance and barreled toward him. Without hesitation or thought, his hand snapped out, nabbed her around the waist and shoved her behind him. A growl rolled in the back of his throat, his heart slammed against his chest as he scanned the dim living room and the murkier darkness of the hallway beyond.
“Sweet Nef!”
Shooting to his full height, Bastien spun on the soles of his feet. The sharp tips of his talons pierced his fingertips, his thighs tensed as he crouched, ready to meet the threat that had somehow skirted past him to take position at his rear. With Sinéad. He skimmed over her t-shirt-clad body then shifted his scrutiny over her shoulder, inspecting the immediate area. After a few moments he noted nothing but the long stretch of the lumpy couch, the coffee table and pale-blue blanket he’d thrown over the table when he’d been jerked from sleep.