Chapter Ten #2
“I get it,” she said, releasing his hand to peek through a
crack in the curtains. “You’re a drama queen. Can we go now?”
“I can’t flash. Your trap must have drained me.” He dug into
his pocket for his cell phone. Cipher or one of his siblings would come for
them. But the moment he saw the scorch marks streaking his phone’s plastic and
metal casing, his heart sank. “Your trap fried my powers and my phone.
Can I use yours?”
She moved toward a yellow table where a charger sat, but she
stopped after two steps and cursed. “It was in my purse. Drayger got it.”
He didn’t miss the slight waver in her voice when she’d
spoken Drayger’s name. “Where’s your landline?”
“I don’t have one.” She scowled. “Do people even have those
anymore?”
Son of a bitch. “Computer?”
“My laptop was in my car. Which has probably been towed by
now.” She hugged herself as if cold, her gaze darting from window to window.
All her curtains were drawn and her back door locked, but the open floor plan
left them too exposed. “Look, Drayger is just a human. We can walk out. He
can’t hurt you, right?”
“Most likely, no.” He guided her toward her bedroom, which
was a green and orange ‘50s bonanza. “Pack a bag. We’ll get out of here and
find a Harrowgate. You can use it to get us to
Sheoul-gra.”
She frowned up at him. “What’s Sheoul-gra?”
He stared at her in disbelief. “How can you not know that?
You’re a demon.”
“This isn’t the time for a lesson in all things Wytch,” she
snapped as she hurried toward the bedroom closet, “but I assure you, I’m not a
demon. Most of us have so much human DNA in us that we have only a fraction of
the powers our ancestors had. Our people are dying out because we tend to mate
with humans and dilute the Wytch genes.” As he eased
up to the window to look out, she whipped a duffel bag from the closet and
started filling it. “But there’s now a growing movement to save our people,
like the Wytch dating websites.”
“Online Wytch dating? Have you tried it?”
“Ugh.” She disappeared into the tiny bathroom, where she
banged around in drawers and cupboards as she talked. “Sort of. My mom signed
me up. I’ve never gone on a date, though. I don’t feel the need to date other
Wytches just to preserve our race. Man, that pisses off the parents and every
old-school Wytch on the planet.” She emerged with a toiletry bag, which she
tossed into the duffel before zipping it. Straightening, she squared her
shoulders and faced him, her gaze fierce and unafraid, her jaw set in a stubborn
line. “I’m ready.”
No, he feared she wasn’t ready. If she didn’t know what
Sheoul-gra was, there was no way she was ready for what she was about to see.
There was a serial killer outside Aurora’s house, a
serial killer determined to butcher her slowly, and yet she was perfectly calm.
Well, “calm” was a bit of an exaggeration, given that she was shaking like a
leaf and her heart was tap dancing on her rib cage.
But the fact that she wasn’t alone, and that the person with her was an angel,
gave her a much-needed boost of confidence that she wasn’t going to die.
Of course, the fact that said angel might let her die if
“fate” required it was a little disconcerting.
“Front door or back?” she asked.
Hawkyn heaved her duffel over his shoulder, the ropey
muscles in his arm flexing with every fluid motion.
“Front.” He moved to the living room. “Stay next to me. I
won’t let anything happen to you.”
He took her hand and opened the front door slowly, peering
out before giving the signal to go. But as they passed over the threshold, she
struck an invisible force. Pain radiated through her nose and cheekbones as she
bounced back into the house.
Instantly, Hawkyn rushed back inside. “Aurora!” He dropped
the duffel and framed her face in his hands, his sharp gaze assessing her for
injuries. “What happened? Are you okay?”
She nodded, cupping her nose. “I felt a ward. The bastard
trapped me inside here.”
A blast of heat roared through the house, and the
temperature shot up at least twenty degrees. She always kept the house at
sixty-five degrees this time of year, so the instant jump to summer temps was
like stepping into a dry sauna.
“How the fuck is he doing this?” Hawkyn’s raw curse bounced
off the walls. “He’s going to force heat exhaustion and then take you while
you’re too weak to fight back. We need to get you out of here now.” He
slid one warm hand down, his fingers skimming lightly over her jaw and lower,
to the sensitive skin on her neck. His gaze darkened, locking with hers. “With
your permission.”
Blinking, momentarily confused, she watched him flick the
pink tip of his tongue across a fang. Oh, right. He could feed from her to
recharge. Take her blood with those huge, gleaming canines.
She waited for the revulsion to kick in, but instead,
something else happened. Something...hot. Hotter than the serial-killer induced
heat that was testing the limits of her deodorant, building quickly, as if they
were inside a pre-heating oven. Her breasts became achy, and between her legs,
a honeyed rush of wetness bloomed.
There’s a serial killer outside.
The sudden thought came with a blast of memories, of Drayger
with the scalpel that made tiny, stinging cuts. Of him with the skinning knife that removed flesh with a wet sound you could
hear through your screams. Sharp things and his laughter and pain—
“Will it hurt?” she blurted.
“I’ll make it feel good, I promise.” A fresh blast of heat
drove up the number on the thermostat near the door to 103. “But we need to
hurry.”
She nodded, and his emerald eyes darkened even more, holding
her gaze prisoner as he lowered his head toward hers.
Gently, he tilted her face to the side and opened his mouth over her throat,
and she shuddered with a mix of anticipation and trepidation. She’d only dated
a handful of men in her thirty years, wasting most of them on her high school
sweetheart, a human who had never known the truth about her. If he had, he
might not have cheated on her during their junior year in college. Then again,
maybe he enjoyed the curse of flatulence she’d cast upon him, affecting him
every time he kissed a girl.
The other guys had come after the breakup, nothing serious,
mostly rebound dates she’d used for sex. Wytches needed to discharge their
energy often, either with sex or magic, and she’d gone through an extended
anti-magic phase for a while. But not one of those sexual partners had made her
nervous the way Hawkyn did.
Granted, none of them had fangs. Nor had they been
supernatural beings, let alone angels. And none of them had looked like Hawkyn,
with his six and a half foot, thickly muscled build, a cocky smile that
radiated confidence, and intelligent eyes that she doubted missed anything.
Hawkyn’s breath whispered over her skin, and she shivered as
her anxiety became excitement. As his tongue flicked across her vein, she even
had to hold back a moan of pleasure. When his fangs sank into her flesh, the
mild pinprick gave way to a shocking spear of ecstasy that went straight to her
core.
His arm slipped around her, bracing her body against his big
one as he disengaged his teeth and repositioned his mouth. She let herself go,
let herself sink into him as he swept her up and then settled them both on the couch so she was straddling his lap, her sex pressed firmly
against the impressive arousal behind the fly of his jeans.
He took slow, easy draws, one hand holding her head in
place, the other gripping her waist, settled tamely above her hipbone. His
pinky finger wedged between her waistband and her sweater, and consciously or
subconsciously he was stroking skin, his touch adding to the heat that was
building inside and out.
Under the circumstances, was it bad that she wanted to rock
against him to ease the maddening desire? But despite his erection, he made no
indication that he wanted anything more than her blood, and she sensed he’d
chosen this position not because of how they fit together, but because he could
keep an eye on both entrances and most of the windows.
A drop of sweat trickled down her temple, and she glanced at
the thermometer. 115 now.
Shifting slightly, Hawkyn let out a groan and swept his
tongue over the punctures in her throat. She felt no pain, only a pinch and
tingle that told her the holes were sealing themselves.
“Are we done?” she whispered, making no move to climb off
him. She wasn’t even sure she could. Her bones felt like noodles and her
muscles like water.
She was still ragingly horny, though. So horny she’d
forgotten to try drawing energy from him, even though her palms had been
pressed against his back, holding him close as he took long, deep pulls from
her vein.
“Yeah,” he said roughly, tucking her head into the crook of
his neck and shoulder. “I just need a minute to clear the fog.”
“The fog? Outside?”
His chuckle made her bounce, and she almost gasped at the
electric sensation of her breasts rubbing against his chest.
“In my head.” He arched, just a little, and she did gasp at how his erection
rocked into her mound. “And my body.”
“I get that,” she murmured into his shoulder. “Because I
feel like I drank a couple of Long Island Ice Teas spiked with some kind of
super-aphrodisiac.” Reluctantly, she pushed herself up, just in time for
another heatwave.
125.
“Come on,” he said, lifting her off him. “We’re going
someplace much cooler.”
“And where’s that?”
He grinned as he flipped the duffel into the air with his
foot and caught it in his hand in one easy motion.
“Hell,” he said, taking her hand. “We’re going to Hell.”