Chapter 30
Yawning, Cyan stretched on the living room floor in front of the roaring fire and then snuggled deeper into the fluffy blankets Stryke had wrapped them in. They’d spent hours tangled with each other, drowning in erotic bliss. She still hadn’t recovered from the last round, their cries breaking with the dawn streaming through the massive picture window.
The scent of coffee drifted to her, and she opened her eyes as Stryke knelt on the floor, two mugs in his hands.
Moaning in appreciation, she propped herself up against the back of the couch. “Thank you,” she said, taking one of the mugs. “I’m going to need this after last night.”
His naughty smile made her heart beat a little faster. “I’d apologize, but you didn’t seem to mind the lack of sleep.”
“Totally worth it.” She wrapped her hands around the mug and let the warmth seep into her. “But do you mind if I make an observation?”
“As long as it’s not a critique of my performance,” he said, getting comfortable on the blanket, “go for it.”
She laughed. “Your performance was exemplary.”
Holding up his mug in salute, he gave her a cocky wink. She laughed again.
“You did seem a little extra…intense, though,” she said, getting a little more serious. “It felt like you were trying to keep busy.”
He studied the contents of his mug, his brow furrowed. “That’s what I like about you,” he said after a moment. “You see me. All of me, including my faults.”
“Of which you have many,” she said, teasing, expecting him to argue.
To her surprise, he agreed. “I do. And running away from my thoughts is one of them. I’m a self-centered asshole, Cyan.”
“I do believe we’ve covered that topic,” she said, still trying to keep things light, afraid he’d slide down a dark hole. They had things to talk about, and she needed him in a mentally sound place. “More than once.”
He actually laughed but sobered quickly. “My company has been my sole focus since I started it. I was desperate to save the world from demons and spare people the pain that Chaos’s death caused my family. Such a noble cause, right?” He laughed again, but this time it dripped with bitterness. “I justified everything I did in the name of saving the planet. Most of it I wouldn’t change, but the pain I caused…I’d take it back. I regret all of it.”
She was almost afraid to ask, but she had to. He needed to talk. Needed to lance an infected emotional wound, as her mother would have said. “What do you regret?”
Those dark eyes drilled into her, measuring her. Assessing her ability to handle his answer.
Her reaction to his next words would matter to him. A lot.
“I stole from my uncle Eidolon.”
Holy shit. “What did you—?”
She inhaled sharply, recalling the conversation she’d had with one of StryTech’s lab techs. He’d said that Stryke’s acquisition of their DNA samples was a mystery.
“DNA,” she breathed. “Of course! That’s where you’ve been getting the genetic material for your DeTecht machines.”
His gaze fell away, fixing on the fire. “Eidolon called me on it. And then I talked to Crux, who wanted to know why I suddenly gave a shit about him, and it hit me that Blade’s right. He’s such a dick—gods, he’s a dick—but he’s right. I hurt my family and called it the price of saving the world, when what I was really doing was running from my own pain.”
“I understand,” she said, looking down at her cup of coffee, the brew as dark as Stryke’s eyes. “I’ve been doing the same thing. It was easier to hate you than it was to process my pain. Heck, I haven’t even opened the bridesmaid gift Shan gave me because I’m too much of a coward.”
Steam rose from her mug as she lifted it to her lips. Was coffee okay for pregnant Cyberis demons? She’d forgotten to ask Eidolon how much her body chemistry would change.
Lowering the mug, she wished her mom was around to help her navigate this.
A profound sadness threatened to overwhelm her, but for the first time, thoughts of her mom brought fond memories instead of agonizing ones. The pain of losing her parents, while still there, seemed to have dulled like the hate she’d had for Stryke.
“ When you let go of hate, you open your heart .” Another mom-ism.
Thanks, Mom, but why couldn’t you have left some bit of wisdom for when you have to tell the male you love that you’re pregnant ? Yep, she could use some motherly advice right now.
“Cyan?” Stryke rested his hand on her knee. “Are you okay?”
Not by a long shot. “Uh…” She set the mug down without taking a single sip. “I need to tell you something.”
He looked at her over the rim of his cup. “I know you’re pregnant.”
What ? Incredulous, she stared as he calmly took a sip of coffee. “You knew , and you didn’t say anything last night?”
“Things got busy.”
Well, yeah, but it still hadn’t crossed his mind during one of their breaks to say, “ Hey, I know you’re pregnant ?”
“But how?” She shook her head, unable to comprehend any of this. “Who told you?”
“Nobody told me. I was looking for you at the hospital and overheard Blade.”
It still was not making sense. And now she was annoyed that he’d left after finding out. “If you knew, why didn’t you stay?”
She swore the temperature in the room plummeted. “Because,” he said, his voice so cold she shivered, “I would have dragged Parker out to the parking garage and killed him.”
Parker? What did he have to do with anything? Unless…no. Stryke did not think she’d slept with him. Did he? “You think I slept with Parker?”
“You didn’t?”
He seemed so surprised…surprised that she hadn’t slept with a damned coworker .
“No, you big jerk.” She scrambled out from under the blankets and searched for her panties. Oh, there, hanging from the corner of the TV. Angrily, she snatched them up. “And I haven’t slept with anyone else, either. No one but you in over a year.” She stepped into them. They were torn, and now she looked ridiculous. “And Eidolon ran about a million tests to make sure I wasn’t roofied or a victim of demonic possession or dream sex…shit like that.”
Looking baffled, Stryke shoved to his feet. “What are you doing?”
“I’m getting dressed,” she shouted.
“Why?”
“I don’t know!” she cried, tears welling up from out of nowhere. “I’m just…I’m confused and scared.” She stood there in her ruined underwear and nothing else, sobbing and feeling about as vulnerable as she’d ever felt in her life.
Then Stryke wrapped his arms around her, and she suddenly felt safer than she’d ever felt in her life. He’d thought she was carrying Parker’s baby and still wanted to protect her.
“It’ll be okay,” he said. “Eidolon’s the best in the world.” He ran his hand up and down her back in long, soothing strokes. “Did you get the test results?”
She nodded. Sniffed. “There’s no evidence of any kind of violation, physical or mental. The father is a Seminus demon. I don’t know how, but it has to be you.”
He went taut, every muscle locking up so hard he didn’t even breathe. “It’s not possible.”
She stepped back and grabbed her shirt off the floor, giving him some space. A moment or two to process what she’d said. Hell, she was still processing.
He ran his hands through his hair as he paced in a tight circle, the muscles in his bare upper body flexing. How many times had she felt those muscles rippling under her fingers and lips last night? He’d been insatiable, and she’d reveled in it.
“It doesn’t make sense,” he said. “How can I be fertile? I’m at least sixty years away from s’genesis .”
“There’s an easy way to find out if you’re fertile, you know.” She gestured to the doorway near the kitchen. “You have a lab.”
“My species can’t jerk off.”
“Yeah, I know.” Sometimes, he could be really dense. “Hello, blowjob.”
For some reason, he still seemed reluctant, as if he was afraid of the results. Sometimes, not knowing was the easier option. She got that. Sometimes, you didn’t want to know what the dead thing in the box was.
Another fun mom-ism.
No problem. She knew Stryke’s buttons now. “Think of it as a blowjob for science.” She casually slipped on her shirt, leaving it unbuttoned, her breasts playing peekaboo with the silky fabric. “I’ll be your lab assistant.” She shifted, exposing her nipples. “Your eager lab assistant.”
His head swung around, his gaze heating. “Let’s do this, then,” he said. “For science.”
Stryke’s legs were still shaking from the most amazing blowjob he’d ever had. He wasn’t sure how he’d managed to get anything at all in the sample cup since he’d gone half-blind with pleasure.
Cyan continued to lave his shaft with her tongue as the last few spasms wrung him dry and filled the cup. Her fingers played with his sac, squeezing and rolling his balls, extending his climax to a new record.
“Damn,” he breathed as he pulled away from her, too sensitive for even her gentlest touch. “Might have to get samples more often.”
She came to her feet in a fluid, lithe surge and stepped over to the sink to wash. She was stronger than she appeared, something he was reminded of often. “You just like getting off in your favorite place. You should have a bed brought in.”
He pulled up his sweatpants. “What, and miss out on the adrenaline rush of hoping we don’t knock a vial of Ebola onto the floor while we’re fucking on the counter?”
“Exactly.” She dried her hands and started the process of putting his specimen under the microscope. “But I hope you’re kidding about the Ebola.”
“I wasn’t kidding, but I was inaccurate.” He moved to the sink, talking while he cleaned up. “It’s DEbola. It’s the demon version of Ebola.” At her horrified glance, he chuckled. “The virus isn’t active outside the demon realm.”
“Yeah, well, demonic hemorrhagic fever doesn’t sound like something we want to knock onto the floor,” she said as she stuck the slide under the microscope.
He dried his hands and wandered over to her, hoping the dampness in his palms was residual moisture and not liquified anxiety. But damn, he was nervous. His logical side said that there was no way his sample contained live sperm. But the side of him that loved Cyan wanted it to.
I love her .
Holy shit, he did. Now wasn’t the time to tell her, but—
“I see swimmers.”
Swimmers. Live sperm. He stood there, paralyzed by the impossibility. How? How had this happened?
“I know this is a lot to absorb,” Cyan said, looking up from the microscope. “We’re both going to need time to figure out what this means.” She straightened, and her hands shook as she fiddled with the buttons on her blouse. “I just…I don’t know how much time we have.”
Time? Because Heaven might be after them both for knowing that the Gehennaportal was still, technically, functional if not active?
His feet moved before his brain, and suddenly, he was in front of her, his hands on her shoulders, his face in hers.
“I won’t let anything happen to you,” he swore. “We have all the time in the world. This child is—”
“Not going to be born,” she whispered.
He stepped back—stumbled back to be more accurate. “You’re…getting rid of it? But you know it’s mine now—”
“I’m sorry.” She captured his hand, her voice pleading, her eyes damp. “Getting confirmation that you’re the father makes knowing so much worse.”
“Knowing what?”
“Something Eidolon told me.” She took a deep, rattling breath. “It’s true that no known demons except Crux and Chaos have been born since the destruction of Sheoul-gra. But what most people don’t know is that the pregnancies haven’t stopped.” She laid her other hand lightly over her belly. “Just the live births.”