by Tes Hilaire
She dropped her gaze to the top of his head and became mesmerized by the glint of the city night lights off of the thick dark strands. He’d trimmed it since the cave four months ago, a half-ass job wrought with uneven fringes that somehow pulled together into some of the most enticing waves around the back of his neck and ears.
“Damn, Gabby, you taste so good,” he murmured against her breasts, pulling back until her nipple popped out, the coolness of air evaporating the hot moisture left by his tongue. Before she could protest, he switched targets, his head lowering to the other breast, his tongue laving her nipple so that she gasped and clung on tighter.
Oh, yes. She liked being tasted. She wanted to taste him too, if only demanding the freeing of his mouth wouldn’t mean ending the luscious sensations to those other parts of her.
He’d tipped his head when he’d altered his attentions to her other breast, exposing the strong curve of where his neck met his shoulders. His skin glistened with the thinnest coating of sweat and made her wonder what he would taste like. Salty? Musky?
Delicious.
She licked her lips, saliva pooling on the back of her tongue. Before she realized what she was doing, she lowered her head, breathing in deeply. Intoxicated on the scent, she dipped her tongue out, gliding over the hard muscles and corded tendons, and eliciting a moan at the salty tang that danced across her taste buds. Not enough. She trailed a path up his neck, briefly nibbling his earlobe before deciding she liked the heady flavor of the pulse at the crux of his jaw and throat better.
Warm blood, sweet salty heaven. Her mind conjured an image of what it would be like to graze her fangs over the smooth skin, the blood welling, then the strike. She licked her lips, dipped her tongue out once more, shuddering at the throb of his pulse skittering against the moist tip of her tongue.
He stilled, but then tipped his head further to the side, granting her better access to the accelerating throb of blood in his vein. She didn’t think, instinct overtaking her as she opened her mouth wide and pressed down. Her sharp fangs broke through the surface of his skin, the warm blood welling against her lips. For one blissful moment she gave in to the pleasure of it, her entire body shuddering at the thick sweetness of his life-giving fluid coating her tongue, but then awareness of what she was doing sank in and she jerked back in horror.
“It’s okay, Gabby.” His hand sank into the hair at the back of her head, as if trying to draw her back to his neck. “Don’t fight it. Let me sustain you.”
Sustain her? She could kill him. Even now, with the horrid realization of how close she’d come to giving in and losing herself to the bloodlust, her body shook with the need to agree to his encouragement, sink her fangs back in, and drink her fill. She couldn’t do it. Couldn’t give in. Knew that the moment she did there would be no turning back. Knew that the heady bloodlust wouldn’t ease but become worse and worse until that was all there was.
Her legs dropped down from around his waist, the hands that had been linked in his hair lowering to push against his chest. He growled, grabbing her face in both his hands, forcing her gaze to his own.
“Gabby…don’t. Don’t pull away from me.”
She shook her head, her eyes stinging from the effort it took to keep them dry. She had to push him away. He was a temptation she couldn’t have around. Not without risking both their lives. “Why are you doing this? Why would you want to help a monster like me?”
He shook his head. “No, Gabby. You’re no monster. Christos was a monster. Ganelon’s a monster. But you’re not.”
“But you think I have Ganelon’s blood in me.”
His anger slapped against her, riding the link created by the trickle of blood that still ran down the back of her throat. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Don’t pull away from me.” He yanked her close, his breath fanning over her ear as he ground his erection against the hollow curve of her belly. “No more running, Gabby. No more denying. There’s too much between us for you to be pulling that sort of bullshit anymore.”
A chill settled into her bones, erasing the warmth that had filled her with his touch. Too much between them. Too much lust? On that she could agree, but even as she tried to justify it as that alone, she knew she was kidding herself. This was more than lust. She’d pushed away the nagging suspicion before, convincing herself he was simply a man and she a succubus, but now, with his blood being absorbed into her very essence…he cares.
The thought shook through her being, rattling her confidence and stealing her lungs of air. She shook her head in denial. She was the monster. She wouldn’t, couldn’t let him ruin his life by being with her. And she would not let him steer her from her plans of revenge either. “Don’t let some misguided savior complex confuse you. You don’t want me.”
His grip shifted to her arms, anger flaring in his bourbon gaze. “Don’t tell me what I want.”
“You want to bed one of the creatures responsible for Angeline’s slaughter?” She forced a laugh even as acid churned in her gut. “The other Paladin are right. You really are sick, aren’t you?”
He stiffened, the impassive expression that settled over his face not matched by the tense grip of his hands. But even if she hadn’t been aware of the infinitesimal change in his grip, she would have known how much her words had hurt him. Valin was definitely stronger at projection than she’d suspected, because it felt like a knife had just been driven into her chest.
“What do you know of Angeline?” he asked softly. The words carried like deadly darts on the breeze.
Damnation. How could she be so stupid? No, not stupid, cruel. She twisted her head, unable to look him in the eyes. Why of all the cards she could have played had she tossed down that one?
“How do you know?” He shook her so hard her head rapped against the access door.
Knowing there was no escaping the ball of hot shame coating her innards, she lifted her chin. Cruel or not, the damage was already done. She could run and most likely face him and his questions later, or she could finish the job and ensure that he’d not only leave her alone but run so far and fast that she wouldn’t have to worry about being the one doing so.
And why did that hurt so damn much?
Backbone, Gabby. You have one, use it.
“Christos told me,” she said, striving to keep her voice even and unemotional, as if breaking his heart like this didn’t affect her at all.
“Christos,” he repeated.
She nodded. “He just loved reliving the details of the bloodbath, especially when I’d done something underhanded that would help one of you…Paladin.” She sneered the word Paladin, injecting some of Christos’s own hatred into her voice. After all, if it hadn’t been for them, Gabby wouldn’t be here to be breaking this man now. Or at least, without their blood running through her veins, perhaps she wouldn’t have cared. “It was his crowning moment. The slaughter of so many, the turning of one of you do-good Paladin…oh yes, he loved describing every beseeching word, every bloodcurdling scream.”
There was no hiding the emotions in his expression now. It was all there, plain as day: anger, misery, pain. Tears were openly running down his cheeks, the ache of his agony tearing at her own rib cage. The urge to reach out and comfort had every nerve in her body vibrating, but she had to stay strong if she was going to drive him off.
He swallowed, taking a deep breath. “How…how did she die?”
She stiffened in shock, her breath freezing in her lungs. He didn’t know? How could he not know? From everything she’d been told she’d assumed he would have felt his mate die. Had Angeline somehow blocked the link between them? Had Christos? But even then, wouldn’t Roland have told him?
His jaw tensed, his mouth thinning as if he could sense her reluctance to answer, which couldn’t be true; the blood bond was a one-way street when it came to reading another’s thoughts and feelings. “What did he do to her, Gabby? You know, don’t you?”
She shook her
head, closing her eyes tight so she didn’t have to look upon his misery-ridden face. No, she couldn’t tell him that. To do so would be beyond the cruelty she’d already inflicted. To know the details of his mate’s death would be…soul-consuming.
He smacked the door next to her head, scattering flaking paint chips and leaving a good-sized dent in it. “Damn you! You started this. Tell me how she fucking died!”
Gabby swallowed, sickened when the action brought with it the glorious aftertaste of his blood. She had started it. And if she had that backbone she claimed to have she’d finish it.
“He saved her for last. So Roland…” She swallowed, pushing away the vivid image her maker had painted of that fateful night and sticking to the facts that mattered. “So she’d die knowing what kind of monster her brother had been turned into and so Roland would know that his failure was at the cost of her life.”
Air hissed in and out of his flared nostrils, his throat bobbing as he swallowed. “Do you know…was it quick?”
She could read the plea in his eyes. Knew he desperately wanted her to tell him it had been. But she couldn’t, not without lying, not without showing him a compassion that would go against everything she hoped to accomplish when she started this cruel task of driving him away. Still, the next words she said seemed like the hardest ones she’d ever uttered in her life. More than any lie. More than anything Christos had ever forced her to do or say.
“No. She screamed for a very long time. But never for help; it was too late for that. She screamed for you. Prayed that you would be okay…and begged for you to save not herself, but her brother.”
Chapter 10
There wasn’t enough space on the face of earth to run from the pain, so Valin resorted to the one other place he knew he could hide—the black and gray shadows of the shade embracing him into its bleakness. Not part of His realm of holy creation, nor part of the black chaos of Lucifer’s evil workshop, the shade was a kind of neutral zone on the battlefield of good versus evil; a mixed motley of not quite good but not all bad where neither could comfortably tread. Valin didn’t have such problems. He found a strange solace in the shades of gray between His light and complete darkness. He didn’t have to be perfect here. Unlike the bathing radiance of heavenly light, in the shade there was no itch or subconscious need to squirm under the weight of his failures, nor was there room for such nagging things as extreme emotions.
At first he raced from shadow to shadow, hiding from reality. With the suffocating feelings of grief, loss, and impotence crashing over him, it had been all he could do not to strike out at the source of his renewed pain.
God, Gabby. He’d been so angry at her. She might not have been there to be part of the destruction of his life, but the fact that she’d known the details, had spoken of them so casually, heartlessly even…It had hit him low in the gut that he was mated to a coldblooded monster. But now, here in the gray shadows that took the edge off the sharpness of reality, he could look back on that moment and see more. The little movements that spoke of her discomfort, the tension in her body: She hadn’t wanted to tell him about Angeline’s death. Yes, she’d started the conversation, but he’d been the one to drag the details of Angeline’s death from her, ignoring the nagging tickle from their bond that told him she hated herself for every word she uttered.
The truth was Gabby hadn’t failed him by being who she was or knowing what she knew, but he sure as fuck had failed her by rubbing her nose in it.
Just like he’d failed Angeline all those years ago.
Save Roland. He hadn’t. Instead he had hated Roland because he’d been there and not saved Angeline. Hated that while his family had been taken from him the vampire-Paladin had been granted a state of existence—no matter how horrible it may have been. Until Karissa, that is. Karissa had saved Roland. Karissa’s love. Karissa’s blood. Her blood had saved Gabriella too, which is why Gabby could tolerate the sun and wasn’t killed last summer when Logan used His light to defeat the enemy. Yet Gabby seemed willing to throw that gift away by drinking the blood of her enemies, a slow-acting poison. The perfect way to self-destruct.
He’d be damned if he let her check out that easily. Life sucked. You moved on. And then you made something of it. He hadn’t saved his child or Angeline. Hadn’t honored Angeline’s last wish by saving her brother. But there was one person he could save.
With a new goal in mind he shifted through the shade in a purposeful direction. It didn’t take him long to reach his destination, and even less to find a crack in the seal around a window and wiggle his shadow-self through. He was definitely going to have to pick on Roland about his downgrade from his last fortress. But first things first.
Reforming in the middle of the room near where Roland was just about to settle down with a remote and a tumbler of scotch, he got a small thrill from seeing the vampire practically jump out of his skin. The moment was short-lived as the vampire collected himself, carefully setting both remote and tumbler down on the nearby end table and straightening to his full height, which was a good head taller than Valin. Bastard.
“Valin,” the Paladin-turned-vampire said casually, as if having former mortal enemies appear in his living room wasn’t an irregular occurrence.
“Roland,” Valin replied similarly.
Roland lifted his brow, his gaze briefly flickering over Valin. “Think you could at least conjure up some clothes when you break and enter into a man’s home?”
Valin smiled. “Now, Roland. That would require a measure of giving a fuck that we both know I don’t have.”
Roland shook his head, grumbling as he turned and popped open one of those ottoman storage units and began to rummage through it. A good twenty seconds of tap-foot later, he pulled from the very bottom an ugly-ass green throw that he promptly offered to Valin with a disdainful twist of his lip.
Stuffy, tight-ass, OCD bastard. And if the thought of Valin’s naked jangles mixing with the air of his apartment set him off, how did he stand himself and his rather eccentric cravings? Blood was not exactly the cleanest of supplements. Especially when it came from the Red Cross discards pile.
Valin took the offered throw, wrapping it around his waist as he took stock of the apartment. Not nearly as nice as Roland’s last digs. No voice-activated systems here. It was smaller too, though it looked like he’d managed to cram in all of the high-end furniture from his previous penthouse apartment. The place was cramped, though in a homey sort of way. It had all the extra touches that his last place hadn’t had. Things like framed photos, bowls filled with smelly potpourri…throws. All things that spoke of a woman’s touch. Speaking of which. “Where’s Karissa?”
“It’s her turn to sit with Logan.”
Valin nodded, well aware of the babysitting detail. He’d taken his own share of turns the first few days after the loss of Logan’s mate until duty had thankfully relieved him. The problem was not that he couldn’t stand the Paladin’s mopey silence, but that he could truly feel for the poor fucker. Even if Valin and Angelina had never been mate bonded, the severing of their pair bond had been like being degutted. The fact that he’d lost his best friend at the same time was almost like having his heart carved out of his chest cavity. Sometimes he still thought it had been. In fact, he would have sworn that was the case until four months ago when a cheeky little vampire had made it stutter back into rhythm.
And now she was trying to leave him too.
He worried the fringe of the throw wrapped around him. “I need the name of your supplier.”
Roland smiled, his fangs flashing. “Why? You thinking of a lifestyle change? Want me to aid you in your transition?”
“You wish,” Valin muttered with a shake of his head. Roland felt about him about the same as Valin did about the vampire. Tolerable during times of need, but otherwise the world would be a better place without his presence. Still, he seriously doubted the vampire would actually turn him. Fangs aside, the excommunicated Paladin was still one of the most ho
norable bastards Valin had ever met. Which is why he was here; as much as it grated on his nerves, the Paladin cared about Gabby too. “It’s not for me but rather a mutual friend that I happened to run into recently.”
“Gabriella? She’s alive?” Roland took a step forward, his eyes flashing crimson. Almost as quickly, he visibly checked himself, turning his head away. “Sorry. I’m used to the kid popping up all the time, so when she didn’t, I assumed we were wrong and that she was dead. Or worse, that Ganelon had her.”
Valin narrowed his eyes to study Roland’s features. Squared-off jaw, high cheekbones, a heavy brow that shadowed… no fucking way. That was it: his eyes. There was something about how the wide-set orbs had framed the flash of crimson just now that set his gut to churning. It wasn’t possible. Couldn’t be, unless…
That night. Why would Christos use that night out of all the other massacres to torment Gabby?
Valin swore long and hard, his entire body itching to poof and zip away. He so didn’t want to deal with this shit. Not on top of all the other crap.
“What? What is it? Does Ganelon have her?” Roland asked sharply, his eyes flaring red once more.
Valin shook his head, partly to assure Roland and partly because he wanted to deny what the logical part of his brain was telling him. Unfuckingbelievable. He’d just assumed Gabriella was a merker because that was the easiest explanation. And though, with any other Paladin he would have thought it damn odd for them to be mated to a merker, he figured being the “black” knight made it a moot point. Unlike his brothers, Valin had never thought twice about performing some of the…darker…tasks assigned to him—hence the name. Spying, lying, manipulation, killing…as long as the result was the desired one, it was no skin off his back. Hell, even if things didn’t turn up daisies, he had no compunction shrugging it off and moving on. Just part of the job, right?