Chapter 3
Cain
Nyx’s head had fallen back, her hair spilling over my arm in dark-red waves. Godsdamn her anyway for being so beautiful. An off-beat, one-of-a-kind beauty that kept dragging me back, again and again, risking my life just to be inside her.
I toyed with a silky curl, just taking her in. The wide, expressive mouth. The high cheekbones. The clear hazel eyes under arrow-straight eyebrows.
A tiny diamond glinted in her left nostril and she wore her bangs chopped high on her forehead.
I hadn’t wanted to stop feeding. Her flavor lingered on my tongue, a hot temptation. I’d wanted to drink my fill, then fuck her against the wall until she was chanting my name again.
When she’d strolled into that art gallery, all long legs and attitude, heads had turned like she was a living magnet. Not because of the black dress clinging to her like sin, but for the way she wore it—like the world existed to admire her. She was hot, and she knew it.
A redheaded, golden-skinned firefly. Unique, incandescent.
But beneath the bravado, the rich-girl attitude, was something vulnerable, something no one else seemed to notice. It was that hidden need, that softness, that had me twisting myself into a pretzel, chasing the daughter of a man I despised.
She drew a breath, her tits shifting beneath that cobweb of a dress, and my dick twitched in response.
Down, boy.
The clock was ticking. Any minute now, some asshole from her father’s syndicate would notice she was missing and come looking for her.
And I wanted answers.
She’d been on that damn island.
That forest painting was a signed confession, even if part of me still didn’t want to believe it.
If Nyx had known about Eden’s kidnapping—if she’d been on that island watching Lemaire’s secret lair burn, knowing Eden was trapped inside—then why in Hades hadn’t she done something? Gotten Eden out herself, or told us the moment we landed on the island.
Eden had come close to dying in that lair.
Talon had nearly incinerated himself to save her.
Anger and betrayal burrowed into me, an animal with teeth and claws, tearing at the reality of Nyx in my arms—the warm, relaxed woman who’d let me feed from her.
“Pathetic,” my uncle Baker sneered in my head. “Too soft. Just like your father.”
My jaw clenched, a dull ache rising in my teeth. What if Baker was right?
Crashing the art show had taken a fuck-ton of effort. I’d had to hack into the invite list, then send the collector whose invite I’d “borrowed” to the other side of Paris on a trumped-up errand.
I gave Nyx a shake. “I said, ‘Talk,’ damn you. And make it good.”
Gods, now I sounded like my fucking uncle—but not enough to back off.
She blinked as if surfacing from a dream, her pupils blown wide, then sat up, pushing away from me. My fingers tightened on her—even now, I didn’t want to let her go—but I did.
She scrambled off my lap and sat against the wall, arms wrapped around her bent legs.
“I’m sorry about Talon’s mate,” she said in her faint, sexy Québecois accent. “I didn’t know anything about her being kidnapped—not until I reached the island. I did what I could—made sure she had food and water.”
“That motherfucker locked her—a pregnant human—in a dark, underground cell with barely enough to eat and drink. That was you doing what you could?”
She tightened her grip on her legs. “Lamaire would’ve let her starve. He said a hungry woman was more compliant. So yeah, I did what I could.”
Footsteps sounded in the hall outside. The other washroom door opened, then shut.
I eyed her, my knee bouncing. I’d been hunting for proof in Quebec City. I hadn’t expected to find it here in Paris—in a fucking painting. The one with me and the fire.
Well, I had my proof. But I wanted something more. A better apology? Nyx on her hands and knees begging forgiveness?
The door shuddered under a hard knock. “Nyx?” Jerome called in French, his voice muffled by the thick metal. “Are you in there?”
Nyx’s head snapped up. “Yes,” she called back. “What?”
“Are you all right?” Despite the question, he didn’t sound concerned, he sounded stern, like she had to ask his permission just to go to the bathroom.
“I’m fine,” she answered. “I’ll be out in a couple of minutes.”
“I’ll wait here.”
Our eyes met. Nyx moved a shoulder in a what-can-I-say shrug.
Silently damning Jerome to Hades—and not for the first time—I stood, bringing her with me.
We’d run out of time, but I wasn’t finished because what I really wanted wasn’t an excuse or an apology. I wanted a reason.
“Why?” I demanded, low-voiced. Vampires hear like wolves—any louder and Jerome would know someone else was in here, door or no door. “Why didn’t you get word to me? Eden spent two days on that island—in a cold, wet cellar. Lamaire almost got away with her all together.”
“How?” Nyx lifted her chin in that way that made me want to shake her… or drag her closer and kiss the defiance off her mouth. “It’s not like I could just text you.”
We hadn’t exchanged numbers. A mutual decision, one that had seemed smart at the time.
“Fuck that. You could’ve found a way to reach me.”
“By then I was on the island. I went dark—we all did. We couldn’t risk one of you intercepting our communications. I couldn’t even contact Nazaire. And I didn’t know Eden was on the island until I got there.” She held my gaze. “I swear I didn’t.”
My anger wavered, which only pissed me off more. “Why should I believe you?”
She flinched like I’d hit her. “I have never lied to you. Not once.”
I stared down at her, gut knotted. She smelled like guilt and adrenaline and the same impossible-to-resist pull that had wrecked my judgment from the start.
She felt it, too. Her eyes darkened, and she wet her lips, the air between us tightening.
Jerome knocked again. She jolted and tried to slip away from me. “I have to go.”
I spun her to face the wall. “Not yet.”