Captive Heart (22 page)

Jack slept in a dark, velvety peace he hadn’t known since he was a kid too young to understand the world had real problems. When he woke, he wondered if he’d dreamed about making love to Andy, but she lay in his arms like a gift he’d never deserve, soft and barely moving as her breathing pushed her chest into his over and over again. Her head tilted back against the pillow, giving him full view of each curve and freckle.

Beautiful.

He’d wanted to take his time. He’d meant to go slow and make her beg for every pleasure, but the sight of her standing in his room waiting for him to touch her, wanting him to make love to her—too much. He’d had no more control than a teenage boy.

They’d be lucky if the ceiling below his bedroom didn’t collapse, too. He was pretty sure they’d let off quite a bit of water.

Rubber floor coverings? Maybe a first-floor room with a drain
. Had to be some practical solution.

Her rich red curls lay across her bared breasts, and he couldn’t stop staring at her, and he couldn’t stop thinking this was what he wanted, what he’d always wanted—and what he wanted forever.

Jack brushed aside a curvy wave of hair, then rubbed one taut nipple with his thumb.

She gasped in her sleep, and her whole body shivered with pleasure.

Take your time
.

Yeah, right
.

He was already getting hard again. Hell, he’d woken up hard, and he knew he couldn’t wait long to be inside her.

Andy stirred in his arms, blinked once, then leaned into him and kissed him, her warm breath brushing across his cheeks as her soft lips and tongue teased his mouth. He sensed her fingers reaching for his cock before he felt her grip, and that teenage boy problem came roaring back. He put his hand over hers before she could stroke him again. “Careful. I won’t make it three minutes with you touching me like that.”

“Good. Then we can sleep and start over again.” Her sweet voice tickled his senses, and as her lips found his again, he moved his hand so she could do whatever she wanted with him.

Her fingers felt like a dream on his hard shaft, dancing along the length like she knew each sensitive spot by heart. Jack had to jam his teeth together to hold back, especially when he looked into her heavy-lidded eyes and saw that she liked how he felt against her palm.

Another second. He could hold out. He could control himself.

Or maybe not.

“Enough.” He rolled over and took her with him, and she kept hold of his hard length, then guided him in, smooth and flawless. She was so tight and wet he almost lost it all over again.

Andy moaned and arched toward him, offering herself, and he moved deeper inside her, trying to force himself to go slow, to make her moan a little longer. He could sense her power rolling like tides through the air, and he liked that, liked her strength—and loved the vulnerable softness on her face, the pink in her cheeks, the way her mouth parted and her throaty moans as he drove himself deeper, deeper, giving her everything he could.

Afterward, he lay in the soaked sheets, holding her to his chest, enjoying the feel of her nails on his chest as he kissed the top of her head. “Any regrets?”

Her sigh sounded almost like a purr. “Waiting longer than I had to.”

“Well, we did get shot.”

“There’s that. What time is it?” She lifted her head enough to squint at his bedroom window. “Is it still night, or have we moved into morning?”

“Day, by the look of the light through the blinds.” He pulled her to him again, and she let him even though he could feel her muscles tensing beneath his caress.

“I’m supposed to be on Kérkira training adepts.”

“Can they wait?”

“They’ll have to.”

Jack wished he could make her life more sane, more reasonable. That he could somehow craft time and hand it to her as a gift, or find some way to truly help her bear the burdens she’d been handed. He tried to find some way to express that, to pick exactly the right phrases.

“Let me be the one,” he said before he got a good handle on what he was trying to offer her. “The only one for now.”

Andy lifted her head again, and some of the sleepy relaxation faded from her pretty eyes. “Excuse me?”

I’m sucking at this relationship thing already
. But he’d started, and he knew he needed to finish. “I don’t know you as well as I should, not yet—but I intend to learn everything you’ll let me about who you are and what you want and what you need. Will you give me that chance?”

She gazed at him, unblinking, definitely fully alert now. “It’s not me who comes and goes like the wind.”

“You have it in you.” He met her stare. “Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about disappearing since you found out about paranormal creatures—since you learned you were a Sibyl.”

Her lips pulled into a frown. “Okay, fine. More than once. So?”

“So don’t disappear from me.” He brushed her cheek with the back of his knuckles, enjoying the warmth and softness. “I want to see you, and I want us to be exclusive until we figure this out.”

Andy propped one elbow on his chest and one beside him on the bed, keeping herself eye level with him. She shifted from frown to smile, then back again. “You’re awfully damned full of yourself, you know that? I’ve never given anybody that kind of power over me.”

“I don’t want power over you. I want you. All of you.”

Be mine. Have my children
.

Fuck, he had to get a grip.

“Exclusive.” She let out an exaggerated sigh, the kind that went with her sunglasses-and-big-shirt persona.

“That’s about the only thing that’s nonnegotiable. You’re mine until you decide you’re not.” Jack wanted to roar that part from the nearest rooftop, but he steadied himself and kept going. “If you make the call that you’re through with me, I’ll respect that—but I’m not a man who can take other men poaching on his territory.”

Her mouth came open. For a few seconds, she seemed too stunned to say anything at all, and he figured he’d made a misstep—but he couldn’t help it. He had to be honest.

“You should hear yourself,” she said, a lot less warmth in her voice. “I’m not territory, Jack.”

His gut tightened. “I didn’t mean it like that. I don’t—” He paused. Calmed himself. She hadn’t moved away from him, so all wasn’t lost. Not yet, anyway. “I don’t think of you like that. As a nonperson or something I own. I don’t always say things the best way. Not—not in circumstances like this.”

Her eyebrows lifted. “Have any of your circumstances ever worked out?”

Jack refused to let the sarcasm in her tone goad him, so he answered simply, “No.”

She closed her eyes. “Now I’m just being mean, and I need to stop. You’re allowed your male instincts. I can feel them bursting out of you, honest and whole and pure.”

When she opened her eyes again, she looked away, and he could tell there was something she wasn’t saying.

“What?”

Another sigh met his ears, this one not dramatic at all. “There’s something you need to know, and you might not like it very much.”

Shit
.

He waited. Tried to be ready.

“You know the whole emotion-sensing thing I’m supposed to do with my quad? Well, I’m not so good at it where they’re concerned, but it’s happening with you.” She faced him again, and he saw guilt and worry fill her eyes.

The weight of her meaning settled on his insides like a cold weight. “You’re reading my feelings?”

“Yes.” More guilt, and now helplessness, too.

“For how long?”

“I’m not certain. Maybe since the beach, but definitely since that day in the warehouse, right after you touched me.”

That simple contact had been powerful for Jack, too. What she was saying made sense to him, made him happy in a weird sort of way, like she was admitting a deep connection even if she didn’t realize that.

“And what am I feeling right now?”

She laughed. “Horny. And triumphant. And vulnerable.” She leaned closer to him and kissed his cheek. “I’d say we’re on the same page. Now you have to tell me—is that too much for you, Jack?”

Good question.

Jack realized that a few months ago, he would have backed away in a big damned hurry from anybody who got a bead on his emotions—especially a woman. But Andy? Somehow with her, it didn’t feel invasive. It felt as right as having her naked body stretched against his and her soft, lovely mouth only inches from his own.

Aware that he might be doing his own admission of a deep connection, Jack surrendered with no fight at all. “For you, I’ll be an open book. Now, do we have a deal on the exclusive thing?”

Andy’s eyes flashed, but not with anger. She kissed him again and whispered, “Deal. If you make me regret it, I’ll feed your balls to an octopus.”

Rebecca had known for years that she didn’t need as much sleep as her brother.

Lately, she hardly slept at all. Why anyone would waste the vibrant night hours—that confused her.

Night had a voice. Sometimes it sang to her, sometimes it whispered, but the darkness always reached out to her and touched her in ways she couldn’t explain. The hours between darkness and dawn gave her an excited focus and energy she didn’t quite know how to manage.

She tended to get in trouble at night, when her brother slept, when the Coven took turns standing guard over the warehouse in pairs and keeping track of Sibyl movements and activities. They had been especially active this last week, since the head of the OCU got out of the hospital—and since Rebecca got out of the prison her brother had designed for her. Her wrists ached as if remembering the elemental cuffs that had bound them for so many months after the last time she ran away from Griffen. At night, of course.

She wasn’t even sure why she’d run, or what she had been looking for, but it didn’t matter. Griffen always found her. They each had inherited different gifts from their father, and one of his was recognizing and tracking specific energies.

Hers, apparently, served as a beacon Griffen could follow to her whenever he liked. She didn’t think she’d try running again, at least not until she knew where she was going.

Rebecca took care to stay well away from the watchmen as she moved through the ground floor of the warehouse. She didn’t need light to see. Not anymore. For the past few years, she’d been able to see in the dark like most people saw at noon on sun-filled days. Seeing in the daytime—now, that was getting trickier. Bright light burned her eyes, making her head ache and her skin and insides feel like she had some terrible, feverish infection. She had taken to wearing sunglasses almost all the time, but she had them off now so she wouldn’t miss any subtleties or detail.

She bypassed the small apartments holding sleeping fighters, bound into their quarters with elemental locks that dulled their senses and lust for action and blood. She ignored the off-limits lab in the corner where the—thing—was, and went instead to the heavily barred cell built into the farthest corner next to the lab.

In the stark, bare space inside, the old man sat staring at nothing. His abnormally large and muscled body heaved with the force of his breath, a symptom of the lungs he’d damaged during his human years.

Couldn’t fix all of that
, Griffen had explained.
Damage done before the injection can’t be reversed. Only new damage
.

Rebecca knew the old man had expected to be young again, that he had imagined himself fit and full of fresh air as he joined with Griffen and the Coven to take control of the more powerful crime families in New York City. He’d been played, of course. Griffen had promised him these things without having a clue what that injection would do. The first few rounds had killed recipients outright. The next few attempts at revising the formula—not pretty or appetizing, though she had at least gotten to kill the misbegotten creations Griffen couldn’t stand to look at, much less study.

Her brother thought she liked killing, but in truth, she sought death, or being around dying things. The bigger the animal, the more its death energy fed her.

Sometimes she thought she’d starve, but sooner or later something around her would die or, like Griffen’s pitiful experiments, present itself to be slaughtered. She’d do the killing, but only for the sight of the blood and the deep, strengthening flow of nearby death.

When this creature in its cage finally died, his final throes might sustain her for months. The old man’s lined face had a sour tightness that might have made her laugh a few years back, or even a few months ago. Now the creature just looked sad. She pitied him, but she also needed him. That knowledge came from instinct, and lately her instincts had become much stronger and more accurate.

Rebecca breathed in the stale, motionless air around the creature’s cage. Ammonia, sweat, and despair. The stench made her wrinkle her nose, but she held back comment. She hadn’t come here to anger the thing. She’d come to help him remember his anger—and what to do with it.

She leaned as close to the bars as she could get without actually touching the metal and whispered, “I know you can speak.”

She had expected the old man to ignore her, but his comeback was fast. “Leave me.”

His resonant, raspy voice disturbed Rebecca’s composure. He sounded very much like the thing in Griffen’s lab, and she despised that thing for what it had done to her when it walked the earth free and in control of its own destiny.

It took a few moments to get herself back in control, but when she could think again, she went right back to her task. “You and I, we have a few things in common.”

“Go away, girl.”

Rebecca’s gut reacted to the voice again, and she had to hold back a scream of pure rage and hatred. This time, it took longer to bring herself back under good management, and she did so only with great force of will.

“We don’t belong,” she said to the creature when she was sure she could speak rationally. “Not in this world.”

This brought silence from the monster, and Rebecca watched as the big creature glanced down at his massive hands. Demon claws extended from his fingertips, and the smell of ammonia grew stronger.

She coughed, but kept herself in check. When she touched his cage bars with her fingertips, she almost gagged at the stifling elemental energy. The locks seemed heavy and cruel, like they had been designed to crush the monster’s essence instead of just control him for the safety of the Coven.

“This is terrible,” she said aloud, shoving back at the energy enough to realize it might prove too powerful for her, too. Just the single contact had bled out some of her will.

The monster nodded, agreeing that the locks were unpleasant.

Gratified, Rebecca reached for the cage door, quite capable of working the elemental energies keeping the actual mechanical locks in place. She almost unlatched the bars, but hesitated, then had a storm of second thoughts.

Instinct again. Given her recent experiences, those instincts were likely correct.

Rebecca stepped back from the bars. “If I let you out of that cage, you’ll kill me.”

The old man didn’t answer at first. He just kept looking at his clawed fingers. After a time, he nodded once.

Rebecca folded her arms. “Why?”

Silence ensued for a time, but the creature did at last manage an answer. “Because you are there. Because you breathe.”

The reasonless reason didn’t distress her, but it also didn’t tell her what she needed to know. “Is it the killing you like, or the death?”

The creature raised his head enough to look at her, to study her, as if he might be seeing her for the first time. He seemed to be considering her question, and she could tell when he settled on the correct words.

“The pain. I like the pain and the fear. It … fills me.”

Interesting. So the thing craved dark, violent energy, much like death—especially death from attacks and wounds, like the Rakshasa from whom the creature took its supernatural power. Death from murder had the most explosive energy of all. Now Rebecca knew they were headed in the right direction. “Does it have to be people?”

She could tell the creature didn’t understand what she was asking, so she figured out a new wording and tried again. “Would the pain of animals satisfy you and help you grow stronger?”

The old man studied her for a longer period of time before answering. “Some.”

Rebecca got closer to the bars but held herself apart from the locks coursing through the bars. “Enough to free yourself from my brother and the Coven?”

“Perhaps.”

There it was. A possibility. Maybe one day a solution. Instinct drove her questions almost completely now, and this time she asked, “Could you clean the mess from the animals so nobody would know you were getting them?”

“I could.” The creature’s calm certainty reached her even through the dense energies containing him, and Rebecca knew he was telling her the truth.

Now it was her turn to trade truth for truth, and to see if they could reach a bargain. “If I do you this favor, one day I’ll want a favor in return.”

The creature in the cage didn’t hesitate. Once more Rebecca received a single nod. She knew for a fact that the monster had struck many such deals in his human life, and he understood that if he failed her, one or both of them might die. If Griffen didn’t kill the monster for his deceit and betrayal, then Rebecca surely would.

They had an agreement, then, her and the creature. And what fed him would in small ways feed her, too. Not so much the pain suffered by the creatures, but the power of their fear and panic, the energy released during their deaths. She had no idea why she wanted to grow stronger, why she needed so much energy from other creatures, but her rampaging instincts urged her not to ask such questions. It didn’t matter, anyway. Not yet. When the time came for her to understand, she’d know the answers—and she’d know what to do.

Wordless and silent, Rebecca slipped away from the cage and into the darkened warehouse. Tonight she’d deliver her new friend some rats. Tomorrow, whenever she could escape Griffen’s stifling supervision and protection, she’d go in search of larger game.