Chapter Fifteen
Chapter
Fifteen
Aurora had never wanted to kill anyone as badly as
she’d wanted to kill the bastards who had tortured Hawkyn and stripped him of
his wings right in front of her eyes.
She’d actually tried. But even as
she’d formed a ball of fire at her fingertips, the one called Moze had snuffed
it. All he’d done was shift his gaze in her direction and her entire body went
as stiff as a statue, completely immobilized. She’d been forced to watch in
horror as the bastards ripped Hawkyn’s amazing wings from his shoulders and
tossed them to the bloody floor, where they’d withered and vanished.
Funny how she’d been as frozen as an ice sculpture
but tears had still streamed down her cheeks in hot rivulets. How had Hawkyn
endured the agony? Not just the physical pain, but the emotional misery of
having his own brothers dismember him like that? She
took back every negative thing she’d said or thought about her own brother,
because truly, when it mattered, he’d been there for her. And she knew, without
a doubt, that if she called him, he’d come to her, no matter what.
Hawkyn’s family was the definition of dysfunctional, and her
heart bled for him.
“Aurora?”
Hawkyn’s scratchy voice jolted her out of her thoughts, and
she put down the book a female named Jordan had given her to pass the time.
Sure, she wouldn’t have chosen a demon compendium as a beach read, but it had
occupied her mind for a while. Who knew that raptor horrors enjoyed dining on
pomegranates as well as people?
She hurried over to the bed Jordan and two other Memitim had
laid Hawkyn’s unconscious body on before cutting off his shredded, bloody shirt
and tending to his wounds.
“How long...” he rasped as he pushed himself up on one
elbow. “How long have I been out?”
“Half a day,” she said, taking a seat on the stool next to
the head of the bed. “I got some sleep over there.” She gestured to the cot a
Memitim whose name she didn’t know had set up for her along the far wall. “I
also got a shower and pancakes. Are you hungry? I can go down to the kitchen.
It’s two in the morning, but they said I can get anything I want.”
For some reason, he smiled, amusement settling over features
that had, just hours ago, been drawn in pain, even as he’d slept. “You’re
settling in, huh?”
“They’ve made it easy. I think they’re rattled by...” She
didn’t want to say it. “By what happened to you. They’re bending over backwards
to be nice.”
Jordan and another Memitim, a male called Drue, had seemed
to think she needed company, and had shared a lot of Memitim and Heavenly
history. She’d listened, fascinated, and if she hadn’t been in dire need of
sleep, she’d have loved to talk to them all night.
She reached for the pitcher of water on the bedside table.
“Are you thirsty?”
“Yeah.” He sat up with a wince and shoved the pitcher aside
in favor of the bottle of vodka Jordan had left for him, along with a change of
clothes.
He was going to look amazing in those black leather pants.
“Jordan said you guys aren’t supposed to have any alcohol
except wine, but that those Heavenly bastards waived the rule for you this
once.”
“How thoughtful.” Anger practically bled from his pores as
he unscrewed the cap and took a swig.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I couldn’t help you. I tried,
but...”
Swinging his legs over the side of the mattress, he glanced
at the bucket of red-tinted water and the bloodstained rag she’d used to clean
him up as he lay bleeding on the mattress. She’d been shocked at how quickly
the deep lacerations in his back had healed, and she was even more shocked at
how he was moving around just twelve hours later, as if nothing had happened.
“I hate that you had to see that.” He cursed and shoved to
his feet, the muscles in his arms and bare chest flexing with every motion. “I
hate that all of this is happening to you. Drayger, having to hide, my asshole
brothers. I’m sorry.”
Startled by his apology when he was the one who had lost his
wings for helping her, she poured herself a glass of water with a shaking hand.
This was a male who she’d been convinced would deliver her to a serial killer
if his duty required it, and yet he was clearly trying to protect her.
He’d lost his wings because of her.
I’ve always done my job even if it didn’t make sense.
Even if I felt that what I was doing was wrong. But I’m invested in your
well-being now. I’m invested in you. I will find a way
to keep you safe.
Shirtless, his jeans streaked with dried blood, he still
managed to move with smooth, lethal grace as he paced the small room and drank
from the bottle every dozen steps or so. “I’m going to
request a Primori reassignment. I’m getting rid of Drayger.”
Whoa. “You can do that?”
“Theoretically. But it’s up to the Memitim Council. If they
go for it, I won’t have to protect Drayger anymore. He’ll be some other
Memitim’s problem, and I can concentrate on keeping you safe.”
“I—I don’t know what to say. Thank you isn’t enough.” She
swallowed, her eyes watering with gratitude. He’d lost his wings because he’d
tried to save her from Drayger, and now this? She could never repay him. Not in
a million years. But there was something she could do for him. “I know
it’s not much, but I can take away your pain if you want.”
“I’m not in pain.” He guzzled a good fifth of the bottle.
“Yeah,” she said, “you are. And I can take it away. Well, it
won’t be completely gone, but it’ll be manageable.”
“I’m fine.” His voice pitched low with a dark,
alcohol-soaked rasp. “I’m healed.”
She moved to him, planting her palm on his sternum, careful
to keep her energy siphon turned off. She didn’t need the mind-scrambling incoherency right now.
“I’m not talking about physical pain, and I think you know
that.” Tentatively, she eased her hand to the right, covering his heart. It
thudded faster now, his pulse pounding into her palm as if trying to match the
cadence of her own heartbeat. “I can help. Please, let me help.”
A battle warred in his expression,
a look she’d seen before, back when her brother had come home from a mission
that haunted him. He’d wanted to talk, but his pride, or maybe his military
orders, hadn’t let him.
“No one has ever helped me before,” he said, his
single-barrel-whiskey smooth voice turned rotgut-vodka rough. “No one but my
siblings.”
“You lost your wings because you helped me.” She stepped
back so she didn’t have to crane her neck to look up at him and so he could see
every genuine emotion on her face. “Jordan explained how much of a risk it was,
and what you stand to lose by breaking rules. I don’t understand this Memitim
Council thing, but it sounds like there’s nothing more you want than to sit on
it and change things for the better. So let me do this for you. It’s the one
thing I’m really, really good at.”
For a long, torturous moment, he said nothing. Then,
finally, the hard set of his shoulders relaxed, although the wariness in his
eyes remained.
“How?”
Man, she needed a drink for this, and his vodka looked
tasty. “There’s a reason I’m a masseuse,” she said, holding out her empty water
glass with a gesture at his liquor bottle. As he poured a generous couple of
shots, she continued. “I recharge my powers through touch. I absorb negative
energy and emotions and turn them into fuel for my abilities.” She sipped her
drink, enjoying the sting of alcohol on her lips. “My clients leave feeling
happy and lighter, and I’m now Portland’s most in-demand masseuse.”
And not just Portland. Spas all over the country wanted to
hire her, offering her more money, places to live, exclusive client lists.
She’d even been approached by the owner of a world-renowned Swedish resort and
a Hollywood celebrity wanting a personal live-in masseuse. Thanks, but no
thanks. She liked her quiet life of obscurity and didn’t want to move. Portland
suited her. With its quirky and laid-back personality, world-famous restaurants
and breweries, and endless things to do, the city felt like home the way
Sacramento, where she’d grown up, never had.
“So you want to give me a massage?”
“That’s one method. It’s the slow one.” She paused for a
heartbeat and then, before she changed her mind, blurted, “There’s also a fast
one.”
“Yeah?” He took a swig of vodka, the tendons in his throat
undulating with each swallow. “What the hell. Let’s do the fast one.”
“Don’t you even want to know what it is?”
“I don’t care what it is. My father kicked me out of his
realm, I probably lost any chance I had to sit on the Memitim Council, and two
brothers I’d never met just dug my wings out of my body with their bare hands.”
He barked out a bitter laugh. “Fuck it. I can handle anything. Just do it.”
Abruptly, her body flushed with heat, but her brain balked.
She generally avoided the second method, the one that was the hallmark of her
succubus heritage. It was too intense. Too intimate. When her partner orgasmed,
more than just his seed rushed into her body. She got a blast of power so
pleasurable that it would send her into an extended orgasm of insane pleasure,
but she also got a head full of emotions that came with little or no context.
There might be a mix of sadness, anger, love, jealousy... And unless her
partner told her everything he was feeling ahead of time, she was left with a
knot of emotions that tangled her up inside for hours. It was one of the
reasons she’d avoided relationships.
But damn... Hawkyn tempted her. Yes, he was angry right now,
but angels were good, right? How much emotional baggage could there possibly
be?
No one has ever helped me before.
Okay, maybe there was a lot. Everyone she’d talked to had
mentioned that Memitim grew up in the most atrocious situations imaginable, and
even after they’d been plucked from the human world and introduced to the work
they’d been bred to do, life still didn’t seem that great. How could it be when
you had no choice about how you lived or the job you were doing? She might have
gone into the spa business because it seemed like a good way to collect the
energy she needed to survive, but the truth was that she enjoyed it. She liked
making people feel good. Happy, positive people were what the world needed. And
from what she’d seen, Memitim could especially use some sort of underworld spa.
“Well?” He stared at her from across the room, his hand
wrapped in a death grip around the bottle, his gaze holding the same smoldering
intensity she’d seen in his father’s eyes in the portrait downstairs.
God, what was it going to be like to have all that intensity
focused on her? Touching her? Inside her? All he had to do was look at her and
she shivered with violent tingles.
The cold air in this drafty castle just got warmer. “Okay,
but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“You didn’t.”
“Didn’t what?”
“Warn me.”
She huffed. “When I said not to say I didn’t warn you... I
was warning you.”
His lazy, lopsided smile made her groan. He was teasing her.
She loved these glimpses, brief as they were, into his off-duty personality.
He’d been on the go since they’d met, in a constant state of motion, and
despite the shitty circumstances, it was nice to see him relax a little.
Of course, that could have something to do with the
ninety-proof bottle of attitude adjuster in his hand.
She eyed her own glass of liquid bravery, but really, she
didn’t need it. Even if her succubus genes weren’t already going to work,
preparing her body with a hot rush of desire, she’d want Hawkyn.
And she’d want to help him.
As he gulped down another swig of vodka, she set her glass
on the little end table and turned to him.
“Here’s another
warning.” She pulled her shirt up over her head. “Some scenes may be too
intense for young viewers.”
She tossed the shirt onto the mattress and reached around to
unhook her bra.
“What are you doing?” he croaked, the vodka bottle frozen a
few inches from his mouth.
“Sex. That’s the fast method.” She dropped the bra on the
mattress and flushed at the way he stared at her exposed breasts. “You game?”
For a long, tortured moment, he said nothing. Oh, God, what
if he refused her? How embarrassing. She’d made a huge mistake, and she looked
like a desperate fool. Choking on humiliation, she lifted her hands to cover
herself, but he shook his head.
“Don’t.” His voice was a low growl, sultry and dark, so
resonant it hit her between her legs. “You’re beautiful.”
“Does this mean—”
He was on her before she could finish. His lips came down on
hers and his body pressed her into the cold stone wall
and both his hands gripped her shoulders so firmly she figured she’d have
bruises later.
Awesome.