He wasn’t about to start now.
The female’s ass was just rounded enough to say female.
He’d never gotten turned on by a damned human female in his six hundred years.
That it was Leo Taniss’s granddaughter pissed him off even more. Taniss had killed his sister’s mate. Had tortured his sister until she’d lost the babe she carried.
His sister would have died if she had not had the portion of the Great Healer’s soul within her. Being a healer of their Kind meant his sister had even struggled to die.
Both a blessing and a curse.
It had taken four years of isolation and constant supervision to keep his sister’s soul from following her mate’s to the next life. Had she not been given an orphaned infant to raise then, she most likely would have succumbed to her grief by now.
She was the last sibling he had alive—Cormac wasn’t ready to lose Kindara. That damned human had nearly succeeded in taking her from him. Cormac was going to see that vindicated.
Even now, almost thirty years later, he still feared Kindara’s soul might make that choice. All because of a human monster Cormac had been trying to isolate for almost thirty years.
His sister and niece were his world. He’d die to protect the two of them—willingly. Without hesitation, if that’s what was asked.
This female was the price Leo Taniss would pay. This one, and the three others of Taniss blood that he sensed were nearby. She’d die for her grandfather’s sins tonight. They all would. He had friends out there, hunting more of her blood.
His mouth watered for the taste of her.
Cormac had been looking forward to this act of vengeance for years.
She shifted in the tub, leaning forward where he could see the smooth line of her spine. The delicate side of her neck. Perfect, creamy skin. To the three hells, she was beautiful.
His fangs sprang free, the desire to taste her right there on his tongue.
He would do just that. Then he would kill her. Make her look into his eyes and listen to him as he outlined every single sin her grandfather had committed against his people.
And he would end with telling her exactly how his unborn nephew had died that day.
It didn’t matter to his people that this girl hadn’t even been born then. That made her even more attractive as a tool of vengeance.
The council that had governed their people, his tribe specifically, had ruled it was a just cost.
One Taniss heir would be drained dry for every decade their grandfather had tortured, hunted, and killed Cormac’s Kind.
It was always about the blood. Their very laws were written around the blood.
It didn’t seem like that much of a cost when Cormac considered the number of lives lost to Taniss.
He had two choices, according to his king. Kill her where he found her and leave her for her family to find, as so many of his people had been found. Or, he could take her back to his home and kill her there.
And leave her where no one would ever find her.
More than half of the Dardaptoans who had been killed at her grandfather’s hands had never been recovered. Their families would always be left to wonder what happened to them.
To imagine the hells they went through at a human’s hand.
His own brother had been missing forty-three years. No one knew what had happened to him. But Cormac had wondered…
Cormac had searched for him for decades. Nothing.
He had intended to slaughter the Taniss grandson he found tonight and leave him for his loved ones to find. Cruel of him, perhaps, but blood vengeance often was.
His people were an ancient Kind and their laws—even these of vengeances and tributes—had served them well all these millennia. The laws of his Kind had kept them alive this long.
Now wasn’t a time to change things; even though the other three males that hunted with him this evening had wanted to do just that. They had argued that it wasn’t the grandchildren responsible for the atrocities, but Leo Taniss and perhaps his sons. Hells, they were probably right.
Cormac got that. But the ancient laws specifically stated that a criminal could be punished through blood vengeance.
Not through his children—but through the next generation after that. To lose your hope was far worse than to lose your life. That was what Taniss had taken from their people. Their hope.
Because to see family lost, to see innocents lost, was the greatest punishment of all.
Cormac had never fully agreed with those laws. Until the day he’d found his younger sister in a puddle of her own blood.
He would never get that image out of his head. Cormac wanted Leo Taniss to feel that same damned pain.
This girl would die at his hands tonight.
“Girl.”
He expected a scream, an instinctive grab for the towel or the nightgown she’d laid out so neatly.
He got nothing. He’d taken easy control of the canine in the corner. The young dog sat watching him with a glazed, if unworried, expression. It was an ability he’d held for nearly six hundred years and he did so effortlessly. He tried speaking again. “Ignoring me will not make me leave you be, lady. I’m taking you with me. Then we shall …play…together.”
He hadn’t shouted, but he hadn’t exactly whispered.
The girl did not look at him at all. Her eyes remained closed, her body rested against the back of the tub. One thin knee shifted, peaked through the soapy foam covering her from his gaze.
“Girl!”
Nothing.
One of Taniss’s granddaughters was reported to be deaf. He checked the counter nearby. No hearing aids. There were none he could see in her ears.
Cormac slipped into her head; a gift he’d had from birth.
The girl’s brain was very complex, and he got the sense of a great intellect. One he had not seen many like. Beyond merely intelligent. Genius level. Highly profound intelligence level.
Pity she would die tonight. She could do a lot of good with a brain like that.
There had been only a small vibration of sound within her head. One he had seen many times before. The girl was deaf. Now he knew who she was.
Joselyn Taniss, then.
Daughter of the fourth Taniss son, Jason—the one they knew the least about. Interesting.
Cormac hadn’t exactly read over the files they had on Taniss’s grandchildren. Nor had he done more than glance at the photos in the dossiers Barlaam and Aodhan had provided on the Taniss grandchildren of an appropriate age.
Only seven females and five males had been old enough to be given in the blood cost. Even some of them were skirting the line on that.
Three females had come of age under Dardaptoan law only in the last year.
He was glad he hadn’t found one of them. They were just babes in his culture. To kill one of them wouldn’t sit right on his stomach at all.
At twenty-five or twenty-six, Joselyn wasn’t much more than that. That gave him pause. She was barely more than a babe. Far too young to die.
But then again, wasn’t that the point of blood vengeance? To strike the heart of the enemy?
He took a moment to poke around in her head, while he reminded himself why he was there.
His sister’s image popped into his head. She had blond hair and a narrow build, too. Many females of his Kind did, made in the image of the ancient goddess who had created them.
One small, thin hand rose to touch her temple. As if the female’s head hurt. As if she felt him.
Cormac probed deeper, intrigued by that very idea. He stabbed at her mind. Hard. Deliberately.
She cried out. Both hands went to her temple.
Cormac smiled.
He had one more trick up his sleeve.
–Girl, can you hear me now?
She screamed, both hands covering her ears.
The sound of her pain and terror echoed off the walls of his own head.
Cormac cursed. He bent over until the rush of nause
a subsided. It had been sheer pain unlike any he’d ever felt before. If what she felt was even half what he had, it was a miracle she was still breathing. A miracle he hadn’t killed her outright.
The female was already half out of the tub when he gained control of himself.
He grabbed for her. There was no way in the three hells theat female was getting away from him now.
His hand tangled in blond hair. His other covered a slick, slim abdomen. He lifted her. The female wiggled out of his hold. Like someone had taught her exactly how to do that.
Water splashed over him from the waist down. He cursed.
Nails came at his eyes, and she got a good slice of his cheek.
It wasn’t as easy as he thought it would be to subdue her. Not with her naked. It was very distracting.
It distracted him—all that naked wet skin—and terrified her. Cormac kept himself in her head the entire time.
She thought he was there to assault her.
The mere thought of it disgusted him. He wasn’t a damned Incubus.
He had some principles, after all.
–Come on, female. We have a long night ahead of us.
She cried out again, grabbing her head and whimpering.
He swore and staggered, almost dropping her.
She needed to stop doing that.
Every time she whimpered, a stabbing knife went through his head.
Cormac grabbed a pink towel and tossed it around her. All that creamy skin was just too distracting. He lifted her over his shoulder, ignoring how she fought.
Ignoring how sweet she smelled. No doubt she would taste just as sweet. Vengeance would be ambrosia. He just had to remember that.
When the time came.
He would taste her before he finally killed her.
Her family owed him that much. And he was going to make them pay it.
About C.J. Brookes
C.J. Brookes lives in central Indiana with her husband of fifteen years, their ten-year-old daughter, four-year-old lump of a beagle, elderly but diabolically clever border collie, evil border collie puppy, four demanding ducklings, one garden snail who lives in her child’s bathroom, and a rogue cardinal named Carl and his wife Carla.
Best known for her romantic suspenses, which she writes under her main name of Calle J. Brookes, she has been writing for more than twenty years, and has more than seventy novels and novellas published.
In 2018, C.J. made the decision to remove all the paranormal titles she had published, revise them, update them, and expand them before sending them to her wonderful editor to make them better than ever.
In 2020 the first five titles were ready for relaunch. In that timeframe, C.J. added even more titles to the list. Watch for these Dardanos titles—including a brand-new book FATED TO THE WOLF.
If you’d like to drop C.J. a note, she can be found at [email protected].
Also by C.J. Brookes
Stolen By The Warrior Page 24