He nicked her throat. Blood scent rose sharp, hot and sweet. So sweet. He gave Gray the words to say. They weren’t precisely necessary, but they helped. In her case, they probably were required. She’d not otherwise absorb what they were doing. Words spoken in ritual and shaped with magic took on power beyond the surface meaning.
She repeated them in a low, steady voice. He knew she would keep her oath. She’d been loyal to Tigran, after all.
Durian was in command of his connection with her, an excellent thing since she didn’t have good control of her magic and her mental state just now was labile, to say the least. Her magic ebbed and surged. Despite her limitations, the fealty oath took effect. He pushed away his triumph.
Not yet done. Not yet complete. But taking hold in them both.
His awareness of her changed and settled in him, became a part of him. His fingers tightened on her face. He heard the rasp of her breath, took in the scent of her blood before he bent his head and tasted.
Their minds touched, the pull between them stronger than before. She was human, but what came back to him along their link was the magic of his kind. Magic that was very much like his own. She could have been a warlord herself. If she learned to master her magic, she would be an asset to the kin.
He pulled back and made a cut over his throat, too. She anticipated what came next and went up on her toes. Though he accommodated the difference in their heights, she still had to put her hands on his shoulders and stretch toward him. The embrace was too intimate, primed as he was by all that had gone before. She was right that she wasn’t the kind of woman he liked to have sex with, but his body reacted. In predictable fashion. She noticed his response and froze.
“If you’re going to back out, now’s the time,” Durian said. He would not act on his instincts. Would not. He slid a hand around her waist, holding her close, fighting for every ounce of control he possessed. “Otherwise, finish this.”
Was that his voice, so low and inviting? He sounded like he wanted to have sex with her.
He did.
Indeed.
He tightened his hands on her but did nothing even when instinct roared at him to finish this with her whether she wanted it or not. She needed to be willing for this oath to take hold with the necessary strength. There should be no words to influence her acceptance, no compulsion from him, nothing that would tip her over the edge into compliance without her full acceptance of the bond between them.
She pushed up on the balls of her feet, and her mouth settled over the cut he’d made in the side of his neck. He damn near went out of his mind.
The minute his blood hit her tongue, the closure of the fealty bond shot through him. The sensation unsteadied him enough that, if only for a moment, he opened himself to her without reservation—his entire being was hers to take. Enslave. Destroy, if she wished.
He cut that off just in time. By then the oath between them had taken hold. A part of her became indelibly linked to him; a part of him linked to her.
Just like that, Gray Spencer’s loyalty belonged to him. If required by circumstance, she would lay down her life for him. And he would, in return for this, keep her safe. God knows she was going to need that.
Her mouth on his throat was soft. Her tongue slid along the cut he’d made. Her touch answered a need for contact with his own kind that he’d hardly known he still had.
His.
The single thought belonged to him but echoed from Gray.
His. One of them. Kin.
Like him.
CHAPTER 8
Several Hours Later
Durian, Gray thought, was the kind of person who would get the door for a woman. When they got to the big glass doors of the Nordstrom San Francisco Shopping Center, as expected, he took a quick step forward. He held the door for her to walk through ahead of him. She didn’t mind that he was polite that way. In a way, it was kind of sweet of him. Two young women behind her giggled as they went through. She had to wait for Durian to finish holding the door for them, so she got a good look at them batting their eyes at him.
He watched them through and let go of the door to join her, which was when the reaction hit her. As if someone had flipped a switch, her head was too full, the way everything clogs up right before the whammy of an insanely bad cold hits. Damn. The sensation was more than a little disorienting, but nothing she couldn’t tough out. In the initial days after Tigran had died, she’d felt a hell of a lot worse than this.
She grinned as the two girls passed, still ogling Durian. They were way too young for him. She said, “You going to ask for their numbers?”
“No.” Durian put a hand to her elbow. Her head felt better. Not back to normal, but better.
“Why not? They’re cute.” That earned her the stare of doom, and she decided to let the subject go. They walked out of the entryway and into the center atrium where he dropped his hand from her elbow.
The pressure in her head came back, a thousand times worse; the hammering of hundreds of voices in an enclosed space, all of them demanding to be heard. She came to a full stop. She met an elderly man’s eyes and his thoughts blasted into her head with the force of a blow. There weren’t really discreet words, but she knew his hip hurt, that he was pleased with his purchase and that he agreed with Durian on the subject of her hair color. The old man moved on and the hundreds of other consciousnesses rushed back until she wanted to scream.
Outside, this hadn’t been a problem. People hadn’t pressed in on her the way they did now. She tried blocking them out, but her usual methods did no good here. Either vanilla humans weren’t the same as fiends or she was having some kind of breakdown that was going to shatter her mind into pieces.
At her side, Durian took her elbow. Immediately, things improved, but not enough. She resisted Durian’s attempt to move forward, afraid to move, with her eyes squeezed closed. There were still thoughts and emotions, swear to God, being broadcast directly into her head.
“Gray? Are you all right?”
She worked up the nerve to move her head and crack her eyes open enough to see Durian. A whole new set of psychic noise yammered at her from the people beyond him. “No.”
“What is it?”
“So many people.”
He frowned, but then understanding dawned in his expression. He slipped into her head, and the voices dampened to almost nothing. She slumped against him, glad to feel his hand on her back. Relief washed over her at the blessed quiet. He settled his other hand on her shoulder blade and rubbed slowly. “Do the same, Gray,” he said with his mouth close to her ear. Jesus, his voice was sexy. “Come into my head. I’ll show you how to block them.”
She nodded.
“Concentrate. And reach for me.”
She took a breath and did, feeling like a complete fool until it worked. At the psychic level, he came alive for her. His hand slid to the small of her back and pressed her to him. Part of her recognized him as kindred, and it soothed her.
“Good,” he said in that same low voice that made her stomach sizzle. “I’m going to stop, then start blocking. Ready?” She nodded. She trembled when the pressure of the voices came back, too much. Too many. She clutched his arm.
“Like this.” He pulled his magic but she didn’t catch on to what he was doing. He had to show her a second time before she was able to block the way he did—at a different frequency, if that was even the right word, for what she needed to do. “We’ll stay here while you practice.”
It didn’t take her long, though she had to concentrate to keep the voices and emotions out. Thank God. Echoes of the pain lingered still, but now she could open her eyes and look around without making herself vulnerable to an unexpected ride in someone’s head, or just ending up crushed by the cacophony. She kept her hand on his arm because she needed the contact. Durian didn’t seem to mind.
“Better?” he asked.
“Much. Thank you.”
“Forgive me,” he said. “I assumed you knew how to
block out humans. It’s amplified, as you discovered, in an enclosed space.”
“How do you stand it?”
“Soon enough you’ll block them without thinking about it.” He left his arm around her shoulder as they walked toward the escalators. “What did you do after you left Christophe? Surely you encountered that effect?”
“I was outside most of the time. Or not where I was around this many people. That I remember.” She shuddered just thinking of those disorienting first hours after Tigran was killed. “I lost a couple of days, to be honest.” She glanced at him, trying to guess what he was thinking. She had the feeling he wasn’t someone who tolerated much weakness. “I woke up in a shelter for battered women. Pretty messed up. They didn’t ask any questions. Just told me I didn’t deserve to be hit.”
“Christophe struck you?” His voice hardened. “Or did one of his magehelds do that?”
They were on the escalator, and she ducked the question by walking up the left side. Durian grabbed her elbow again and dragged her to the right with the other standees. He pitched his voice so no one else would hear.
“Christophe struck you?”
Gray looked around. The shoppers around them had their own business to attend to, although more than a few of the women were checking out Durian. And why the hell not? He was hot, if you liked the stuffy-shirt type of Adonis. “Why wouldn’t he? Considering he didn’t see anything wrong with turning me over to Tigran?”
“Point taken.”
She stood close to him so she could keep her voice low. “Christophe was pretty pissed off when Tigran was dead and he didn’t have his magic. He took it out on me. As it turned out, that got me into the shelter.” She shrugged. She didn’t want to think about Christophe or Tigran. “There’s not much else to say.”
They rode to the third floor and a few minutes later they were in Nordstrom. He took out a thin black wallet and held out a credit card. “Please buy everything you need.”
She looked down at herself then back at Durian. All right. So she wasn’t going to make a best dressed list any time soon. “Throwing money at a problem to make it go away?”
“It is my duty, Gray, to see that you have what you need until you are self-sufficient. Buy clothes you can work out in as well. You’ll need a great deal of physical training just to get you to a point where you’re not a danger to yourself.”
“Indoor training or out?”
“Both. Running gear. You needn’t buy a gi, but get something suitable for the martial arts.”
She took the card between her thumb and forefinger. He had a point. One set of clothes wasn’t enough. “This place is pretty expensive, Durian. What’s the limit?”
“Twenty thousand would not be an issue.”
She figured he couldn’t possibly mean that. “I can never tell if you’re serious. When you make a joke, smile so I know, okay?”
“When have I not been serious?”
“You have got to be kidding. I can’t spend that much money on clothes.” She shoved the card back in his hand.
He looked her up and down and winced. “Please try.”
“I hate shopping.”
“Please, Gray.” He wasn’t exactly ordering her but it was close enough to give her a twinge, and wasn’t that a strange feeling? “Buy enough of what you need.”
She made a face at him, but all he did was give her the patented Durian silence. She took back the credit card and studied it. A corporate card. “If you say so.”
“If you need me, text me.” He handed her a slim phone in a black clip-on case.
“Sure.”
“My number is programmed in, along with other numbers you should have. If there’s trouble and you cannot reach me, call one of them.”
She shoved the credit card in her front pocket and opened the case. An iPhone. She opened up the messaging app and selected Durian’s name. “Right. Text you. That should subdue any trouble makers.”
“Gray.” He sounded put upon. “Among so many vanilla humans, we are unlikely to encounter mages or magehelds intent on trouble. Not even Christophe would be so foolish.”
“Where are you going to be?” She didn’t like sounding as if she needed to be around him. He was a big boy and he could take care of himself, dammit. Except she couldn’t shake the conviction that she needed to be with him in case there was trouble. Walking off with or without his plastic didn’t feel right. Besides, she came from a long line of cheapskates and cheapskates never shopped at Nordstrom’s.
“I will be safe here, Gray, shopping.” His expression didn’t change. “I won’t be far. Buy yourself suitable clothes.”
“This is cruel. I won’t forget this.”
“I would be happy to buy clothes for you.” He held out his hand for the credit card and she handed it over. “Be aware that I have a fondness for women in frills and impractical shoes.”
“You would.” She shuddered at the parade of frou-frou dresses and shirts that marched through her head.
“I hope you like pastels.”
She held back a laugh in case he wasn’t joking. “Not too much, actually.” She plucked the credit card from his fingers. “All right, boss. I’ll be picking my own clothes. On your dime.”
“Excellent.”
When he walked off, she waited a minute or two for her anxiety to settle, then went to the messaging app on her spiffy new phone and typed I am in UR base spending UR $$ and sent it to Durian. If it didn’t mean shopping, she’d rise to the challenge of maxing out his damn card.
A few minutes later, she was in the ladies department staring with horror at row after row of clothes. Jesus God. What a nightmare. Her phone dinged.
xlnt.
Yeah, right. Excellent.
She really did need everything. If she had any idea anymore of what kind of person she was, it would be easier to know what to buy. Best to keep it simple, she decided. She gritted her teeth and shopped until the credit card should have been smoking.
Along the way she picked up Joy, a personal shopper who was just now standing by the bags she’d amassed so far, having set out a selection of leather jackets for Gray’s consideration.
She was studying them when some guy who looked like he was lost wandered near and smiled at her. Cute. Better than cute, but not her type. She didn’t know what her type was, but he wasn’t it. Her head was throbbing from the effort of keeping herself blocked so she wasn’t in the best mood. Not his fault, of course.
At first, when she noticed him staring, she nodded and went back to looking for a jacket that would hide blood. Not a requirement she felt she ought to mention to Joy, but Durian was Nikodemus’s assassin. She might end up doing some wet work one of these days. She already had what she called her mini-Durian clothes; everything black, only not fancy. She had workout gear, underwear, and lots of jeans, T-shirts, shirts, and sweaters. It turned out she favored bright colors and strong patterns. She was looking for a black leather jacket because spending someone else’s money turned out to be addictive.
“Hey,” the lost-looking guy said when she made the mistake of making eye contact with him the second time she noticed him. He was about her age. Maybe a little older. Very corporate looking.
She smiled and went back to the jackets. She tried on a couple more but she wasn’t feeling the love.
“We meet again.”
Gray looked up at the guy talking to her. He was standing right next to her now. She didn’t like that she hadn’t known he’d moved so close. He looked like an Italian lawyer, with the suit and tie and shiny shoes to go with the Mediterranean complexion. She knew from what Durian had told her so far that the kin couldn’t feel magehelds. If he was one, she wouldn’t be able to tell from Tigran’s magic. Christophe’s, though, that might work. If she knew shit about it.
His black hair was long enough that she was pretty sure he wasn’t mageheld. Mages, Christophe included, shaved the heads of their magehelds. “Come here often?”
The guy�
��s eyes flicked down to her left hand. She smiled in relief. Nothing nefarious here. He was just a normal guy making sure he wasn’t about to try his lame moves on a married lady. “First time here,” she said.
He held her gaze and smiled. He actually looked a little shy when he did. That settled her nerves down. “A virgin, huh?”
“Yeah.” She slipped off the jacket she’d tried on.
“The other one was better on you. Not that my opinion matters.”
“Thanks.” She hadn’t been hit on in so long, she could hardly remember how to make him go away with no hard feelings.
He flashed her another smile, but something got inside her blocks. She didn’t like the way it felt, but she didn’t know enough yet to figure out if he was just some sociopathic human or something she ought to be afraid of. He pointed at one of the jackets. “How about that one?”
Something about him wasn’t right. While she pretended to look, she took out the phone Durian had given to her. “Nah.”
“Listen.” He tugged on his tie. “You’re going to think I’m coming on too strong, but I think you’re just…” His cheeks flushed. “Can I buy you a coffee?”
“Oh, hey. That’s really nice of you to ask.” If he was a normal human, she didn’t want to hurt his feelings, but no way was she going anywhere with a stranger. “I have a boyfriend.”
“It’s just a coffee.” He smiled a little too hard. “What’s the harm in that? Come on. Just to talk.”
Gray backed away and got out her phone. She navigated to Durian’s contact entry. “Let me ask my boyfriend. If he’s done, sure. We’ll have coffee.”
His smile froze in place. “That sounds like fun.”
The phone on the other end stopped ringing. “Durian here.”
“Hey, sweetie,” she said, trying to play it real for the benefit of whoever this guy was. “Can you come find me? I’m over by the leather jackets. There’s someone here who wants to have coffee with us.”
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