Chapter Fifty-Three
Nicole
WATER DRIPPED TO THE GLOSSY WOOD FLOOR BENEATH them.
The first room was dark, a tiny rectangular kitchen with a few counters to their right, a sleek fridge, and two floor-to-ceiling cupboards.
Kyan set Nicole down gently with a grunt of approval that she was now inside. ‘I’ll check.’
The place, he meant, seeming unable to form a longer sentence.
Every word he’d uttered had done something to her. She forced herself to ignore how the vibrations of his voice stroked her every nerve ending, but couldn’t fight the shiver.
Her clothes were soaked, her shirt clung to her chest, and her hair was plastered to her head and neck. It was warm rain, but the great boom of lightning outside sparked a bolt of fear in her stomach.
She turned and looked up to find Kyan so close that the connection between them hummed, steady and present and hot.
He knew. She could feel it breathing off him. See it in the eyes that darkened at the sight of her.
She shivered again, a deep, liquid heat replacing it. The moment strung, and Kyan’s jaw flickered like the locks in a safe.
He dragged his eyes off her and moved slowly, predatorily, through to the rest of the space to confirm it was safe. Lights glowed on beneath the counters at his steps.
There seemed to be only one more room to the left and a tiny laundry and store opposite the door. Just the essentials. Still, the place had an expensive feel. The finishes were sleek, the dark wood elegant, but Nicole expected nothing less from somewhere Callum owned.
‘Best waiting it out,’ Kyan said. ‘For the night.’
The night.
Alone.
They’d planned to use Callum’s cabin, but only if they didn’t find the Druid on the first day.
What had happened in the forest changed everything.
‘I’ll take you back, if you want,’ he added, voice like gravel.
There were two questions there.
A choice.
Do you feel comfortable after what happened? What I did? Because if not, I’ll drive through a storm to return you to your loved ones.
Because her comfort and safety were always his first priority.
And, the other question: Are you happy to stay with me here tonight, in what is likely to be one bed?
The sculpted canvas of his back, wide and dark with muscle and blood, filled the doorway to the bedroom.
She found her mouth suddenly too dry, memories of their night in his townhouse flooding her.
The sound of his desire against her mouth.
The heat of him in her grip. Silky, hard; the pleasure he’d made her feel—
He inhaled sharply, body flexing.
She felt suddenly shaky with anticipation. But more than that, she wanted him to have time to come down. To process what they’d just been told and the fact that he’d just walked through a forest he’d last seen razed by fire.
So, no, she didn’t want to leave. Not yet.
‘I want to stay here, with you.’
He turned then, to confirm. And his eyes – those gorgeous, deep-feeling eyes – were dilated and full of promise.
‘I’ll just’ – she swallowed, tongue like sandpaper – ‘see if I can call the others so they know we’re okay.’
He started back towards her and each step intensified the heat slinking through her body. Kyan brushed her jaw with his thumb. A searing, lingering touch that turned that heat to a low throb.
‘Get warm.’
Then, he ducked back out into the stormy dark and Nicole let herself exhale, leaning against the counter as her brain tried to come back online.
Mindlessly, she kicked off her trainers and pulled her phone from her jeans’ pocket, needing something solid.
She found fresh, chilled bottles of water in the fridge and pristine glasses in the cupboard, pouring herself one and downing half.
The cool, mineral taste was practically nectar.
After wringing out her soaked hair into the sink and scoping the view through the window that overlooked the forest, she called her father.
‘Dad?’ she tried, when the phone connected. ‘We’re safe at Callum’s cabin but a storm’s hit.’
‘Stay inside,’ her father said, as the line crackled. ‘Storm’s … too–bad.’
Rivulets of rain streamed down the windows. They’d looked like black glass from the outside, so were likely one-way.
‘Have you arrived?’ she asked. She couldn’t imagine how he was feeling.
‘Yes, we’re all fine. Dylan … saw … Empyreal … we know—’
The line cut out and Nicole cursed, checking for signal.
They knew … a long-coiled tension in her stomach soothed slightly. There was a chance Kyan had already dealt with their mother’s murderer if it was revealed to be Logan. But it meant they were a step ahead, finally.
Logan was gone.
They knew the identity of the Wake.
And, Kyan …
Maybe this could work. Maybe she could allow herself to acknowledge more of the depth of her feelings without the risk of the Wake finding out about him.
Reminding her legs how to move, she headed into the other room.
It was a bedroom, the ceiling peaking up into a triangle. There was one large bed, long and wide enough for an Empyreal. On the left, the wall was taken up with a one-way window. On the right, stood a sleek black free-standing fireplace and the door into a bathroom.
The fire was ready to be lit, so she searched the kitchen drawers to find some long matches, then set the kindling aflame. A cosy, gentle heat bathed her face as she heard Kyan re-enter.
Nicole’s heart stuttered as she met him in the kitchen and found him gripping the counter as if recalibrating.
He hadn’t lost that wild tension in his shoulders, or the feral hunger that seemed to war with his weariness.
‘Are the family all right?’ He was trying to tamp down the hunter. She could see it in the depths of his eyes, in his attempt to force ease into his movements.
It only called to the slumbering huntress inside her, that golden thing that glowed a little brighter when he was near; that had been called and reassured by what he’d done in the forest.
‘Yes, they’re okay. But are you? Do you want to talk about everything the Druid said?’
About the gods, and the promise of destruction at the end of this road?
About your returned sister?
Kyan shook his head slowly. ‘You should get dry.’
He couldn’t talk right now for the same reasons she couldn’t.
She wasn’t going to leave him like this.
My mate.
He held her bag with a white-knuckled grip, so Nicole approached slowly. She could have sworn he stopped breathing. She brushed his bloodied fingers as she took it, her breasts grazing the tense muscle of his arm. His strong throat flexed with a swallow as his eyes closed.
‘Okay,’ she said, voice breathier than she expected.
The pressure of his body against her wet shirt had her biting back a moan, her nipples hard from the rain and the steadily building need.
Nicole made herself turn, skin pebbled and sensitive.
She felt his hot gaze on her until she walked through to the bathroom and turned on the shower – a walk-in of glass that spanned one whole wall.
Nicole closed the bathroom door over, just enough to peel off her wet clothes as the water heated, but not all the way, so it started to swing open again as she stepped into the hot rush.
She shuddered at the heat and plumes of steam, at the wild feeling of being undressed. Completely undressed and near him.
Nicole allowed herself a sigh of pleasure that caused Kyan to form a string of low curse words from the kitchen.
She wiped his blood off her, looking at it on her fingers and feeling her heart swell to the point of pain.
Felt him, like that bind had grown so tight and hot it matched the heat throbbing elsewhere in her body.
Maybe she could admit everything? Feel all of this without worry or guilt?
‘Kyan.’ She said his name in a tone close to her Influence, knowing he could hear her despite the running water. It was a voice that knew what it wanted. Low, confident. ‘Come in here.’
She was near vibrating, fighting with the suspense.
‘You told me,’ she added slowly, ‘that when I needed you, you wouldn’t keep me wanting.’
‘Are you teasing me, Nicole?’ He was closer now, had moved so stealthily she hadn’t heard him, his tone as intimate as if he’d purred into the crook of her neck.
She bit the inside of her mouth to not make a sound, even as her breasts tingled and more heat slicked between her thighs. She turned the water’s temperature down slightly. ‘Is it working?’
She sensed him: those light footsteps, the agility, the hunting skill as he opened the bathroom door wider.
She felt him enter, felt heat rush to her face at how exposed she was. To distract herself, she picked up a fresh bar of soap with a woodsy scent and began to lather it as his gaze raked all over her.
‘Are you sure?’ he asked. She could hear how gone he was. How intense the need was.
‘I’ve never been more certain about anything,’ she said, tilting her face to see him in her periphery. Meeting his tortured, dark eyes for a searing moment.
Saw the strong swallow of his throat.
His clothes hit the floor. Quietly. Slowly, as she trembled.
And then he was behind her and she nearly couldn’t breathe.
His fingers skated down her soapy arm, then he held out a wide palm to her right and she handed him the bar.
Every iota of her focus was on his hulking body. The way his solid, flexed thigh, brushed with hair, met her backside. How he slowly pressed his hips there. She breathed in a jagged inhale to feel him. All of him, hard against her.
Then his soapy hands pulled back her hair, dragging the soaked length of it over her left shoulder so he could nuzzle her right cheek.
‘My Nicole,’ he murmured, his voice so rough it felt like another touch.
He hadn’t shaved in a day or two, so the delicious scrape of his stubble had her sucking in a breath as ripples of sensation scattered through her, her thoughts dissipating like ink in water.
How did he have this incredible ability to make her mind go so quiet?
No intense focus on anything but him.
No burning eyes from staring at paintings and using her Empyrean sight to see through the supernatural varnishes.