Chapter 20
Nyx
Cain took me through a series of torch-lit tunnels—left, left again, then two rights and another left.
“Let me guess,” I muttered. “You’re trying to get me lost.”
His reply was deadpan. “We like to fuck with intruders.”
I cut him a look, and the corner of his mouth twitched upward. Somehow, that was reassuring. If he’d relaxed enough to tease me, even a little, then that was something, right?
A tall, dark-haired man stepped out of a short passage, his stride breaking when he spotted Cain. He backed up immediately, giving us space. His gaze flicked to me—curious, assessing—before he dipped his chin in a respectful nod to Cain.
The next person we ran into stepped aside as well. Then a third.
It struck me how powerful Cain had become.
When we’d first met, he’d been one of Brien’s personal bodyguards, a watchful shadow in the background.
Even then, he left an impression. But now he was nobody’s shadow—he was a Maritime lieutenant, a breath beneath the primus in the hierarchy, radiating authority.
And Luna help me, it was hot.
When he put a hand on my lower back to steer me into a short hallway, a thrill rippled up my spine. My pussy clenched around empty air.
Cain’s head snapped around, and our eyes collided. His were arresting—blue ice surrounded by fiery cobalt.
I swallowed hard.
His hand slid up to my nape, gentle but firm. “Keep looking at me like that, and I’ll forget the promise I made.”
I was still recovering from being the sickest I’d ever been. I didn’t trust him. And he was holding me captive.
I shouldn’t have shivered in pleasure, but I did.
“Yeah?” I dredged up a sneer. “Well, don’t fool yourself that I want it. You’d be forcing yourself on a prisoner.”
“Would I?” he asked with a knowing smirk and turned me toward the only door in the hallway, reaching around me to open it. “After you, firefly.”
I’d expected something like Cain’s apartment: white walls and swanky leather-and-chrome furniture, that cool, immaculate order he lived in.
Instead, I was enveloped in soft yellows and greens, with beachscapes stretching across seafoam walls.
Through an open doorway, a massive teak bed was topped with gauzy white scarves like drifts of mist.
He dropped the bag of clothes on the pale lemon couch. “You’re confined to these two rooms.”
My gaze slid to the French door at the opposite side of the living room, its glass darkened to protect sensitive skin and eyes.
“No,” he said firmly. “And just so you know, we have eyes on the garden and both doors.”
I shrugged a shoulder, disappointed. Still, anything was better than that windowless cell and its four gray walls.
“Your meals will continue to be delivered. As for blood, you’ll have to make do with blood-wine for now.”
“That’s fine.” I didn’t drink fresh blood more than once or twice a week anyway.
Cain had been meandering around the living room while he talked, fingering the books in the shelves, running a finger along the kitchenette counter. I’d noticed before how he was always moving, never still, but this wasn’t his typical excess energy. No, he seemed nervous.
He poked his head into the bedroom. I put the pad and pencil box on the coffee table and trailed after him. We stopped at the same moment, caught by the sight of the towering four-poster.
Memory smacked me in the chest: London, a foggy autumn night, a viscount’s Mayfair townhouse. Vampires and dhampirs and humans entwined in the halls, laughter and the pulse of beat-driven electronica intertwined with a half-dozen languages.
I hadn’t brought my own security—it would’ve been an insult.
Cain and I ditched the party before midnight and ended in a private apartment with a gauze-draped poster bed.
We couldn’t get enough of each other, one kiss leading to another, one position flowing into the next.
In between, we shared a bottle of Dom Pérignon, debating silly things like which accent sounds sexiest when you’re drunk and why sex makes blood taste better.
Near dawn, I’d ended up with my head on his shoulder, telling him how I hated being caught between worlds, always half something, never enough.
He’d tightened his arm around me and admitted he’d almost broken the night he’d been turned.
That when Prima Lenore had bared his neck and extended her fangs, he’d been so scared he almost pissed his pants.
He’d bitten through his own lip just to keep from begging her to let him leave.
And then we’d fallen silent, but it wasn’t the kind you felt you had to fill. It had been full of us.
Cain’s throat worked. I knew he could hear my own gulp.
“The bathroom’s over there.” He tilted his head in its direction and frowned at the empty walk-in closet. “You need more clothes. I’ll have them here by tomorrow.”
“Thank you,” I told his chin.
His face hardened. “Stop thanking me, already. I never should’ve thrown you in that damn cell in the first place, but when I found out it was you meeting my uncle…”
He’d moved closer. Or maybe I had?
“I could’ve tried harder to let you know something was up,” I admitted. “But Nazaire… He was acting suspicious. I had to play along.”
“Fuck.” He briefly closed his eyes. “I’m sorry—you knew the situation, I didn’t. I might’ve even done the same in your place.”
My hands were on his chest now, toying with the placket of his crisp white shirt. And when his lungs lifted in a breath, mine did, too—like my body had forgotten it wasn’t his.
That’s when I noticed his cheeks were faintly flushed, his lips darker, redder.
Something twisted inside me. Something jagged, possessive.
He’d fed, which meant he’d had sex, too.
I could smell her on him, female, with a hint of apples and mint.
And me? I stank of the cell, my hair hanging limp and greasy around my shoulders. Hard to stay clean when all you had was a bar of soap and a sink.
I drew back, hurt and angry. I didn’t have a right to either, but that didn’t matter. Not when it was Cain.
He caught my hands. “What?”
I shook my head. “Nothing.”
“Don’t, damn it. It’s not nothing. You’re upset.”
“Fine.” My gaze locked on his. “You fed.”
“So?” A beat. Then his lips parted, forming a silent O. “I fed. That’s all.”
“Right,” I said flatly, tugging my hands free. He was a supernatural; drinking blood made us horny whether we wanted it to or not. “It’s not my business. But you don’t have to lie about it."
“It’s not a lie,” he growled. He seized my hand, pressing it to his erection. “Feel this, damn it. I haven’t fucked anyone since Paris. Since you.”
My breath hitched. My fingers had developed a will of their own because they stayed where he’d put them, exploring the hard ridge. When he drew a ragged inhale, I stilled, my gaze snapping to his. He was telling the truth—he hadn’t had anyone since that night at the gallery.
“Why not?” I asked, then jerked my hand from his crotch. “Never mind. I don’t know why I asked.”
“I know why.” Strong palms cupped my face. “You want to hear that it’s because of you. That I can’t get you out of my head. That every time we fuck it’s the best ever—and then it gets even better.” His thumbs caressed my cheekbones in slow strokes. “I’m right, aren’t I?
“No.” I was gripping his shoulders now, needing to hold onto something because the ground beneath me had tilted. “Yes. I don’t know.” The words tumbled out like loose stones.
“Well, it’s true.” His blue eyes burned into mine, like the admission scoured him raw. “I don’t want anyone but you.”
The air between us hummed. My pulse kicked, and the anger and hurt in me twisted into something reckless, something that felt too much like yearning.
Did he feel it too?
That pull buzzing beneath my skin a live wire, the one I’d been trying to pretend wasn’t there? A knowing. A recognition.
But no, that couldn’t be right. This man couldn’t be my mate, not when he still saw me as the enemy.
I pulled back. “What about my father?” I asked, inserting him between us like a shield. “Have you heard from him?”
His gaze turned frosty. He released me and stepped back. “Not since that first night.”
“He knows it wasn’t me, then—texting him.”
He lifted a shoulder, let it fall. “Probably.”
“So what are you going to do?”
He just looked at me.
“I see.” I turned and headed for the living room, needing to get away from both him and that four-poster bed.
Cain followed. “The floors are heated,” he said, tapping an electronic panel next to the door, impersonal as a hotel manager.
“Thermostat’s next to the intercom. If you need anything, push two for Kerry—the housekeeper.
Hit three for the kitchen.” He glanced around, his gaze catching on the sketchpad.
“I’ll have them get you more drawing things—supplies. Make a list and give it to Rio.”
“I will.” I paused, then added, “Thank you.” Again.
But I was grateful. To be allowed to draw meant a lot.
He shrugged. “You have a gift. You should use it.”
I bit down on my lower lip, tempted to leave it there. He was my jailer. My captor. I owed him nothing.
But Cain valued truth…and information.
And even though he was keeping me here against my will, he’d apologized for locking me up and moved me to this apartment.
He’d bent. Maybe I could bend too.
He reached for the door handle.
“Wait,” I said. “There’s something I have to tell you. Nazaire knows. Those texts—he assumed I was with you. Why would he say that unless he found out we’ve been meeting?”
Cain nodded, unsurprised. “That’s what I figured. And—?”
A chill licked over my skin. I rubbed my upper arms.
“You understand that’s why he sent me to meet your uncle? He knew exactly what he was doing—he wanted to put me in an impossible position.”
Cain opened his mouth, then closed it.
“What?” I asked.
“No.” The corner of his mouth tilted in a crooked little smile. "I want you to figure it out for yourself."
And he left, leaving me staring, brow furrowed, at the closed door.
It wasn’t until I stepped under the hot spray of the shower that it hit me. The meeting with “Baker” had been a test, and from my father’s point of view, I’d failed it.
I’d chosen a side. Cain’s.
I’d never had any intention of hurting him. In fact, I would’ve done anything to keep my father’s hands off him, including lying to my own flesh and blood.
Somewhere along the way, something in me had shifted. Something I couldn’t turn off even if I wanted to.
And the Dark Gods help me, I didn’t want to.