It had been a stupid, reckless thing to do. But the creature inside her thankfully remained unfed. That was a small blessing, but a blessing nevertheless.
Clearly ill at ease, Maddox ran his hands through the tangled mass of damp curls brushing his shoulders. “Calm down,” he said. “You’re okay. Whatever little taste you had wasn’t enough to turn you.”
“But I don’t
feel
okay!” she spluttered, shocked anew. “Do you know how close I came to giving in?”
Maddox’s gaze cleared, and he smiled crookedly in an attempt to blunt the seriousness of the moment. “Nothing happened, Jesse.” His smile straightened a bit. “Well, nothing except for your coming like a wild woman.”
His reply hit like a bucketful of icy water dashed in her face. The chill inside her deepened and spread.
Despite his claim to the contrary, something had happened. Something very deep and intimate and—dare she admit it?—exciting. Their lovemaking had stirred the ashes of the night she was taken, rekindling the dormant embers of the forbidden rites involving sex and blood, darkly sensual yet soul-numbingly terrifying to undergo. An image of herself sprawled naked and wildly aroused as a dozen mouths suckled at her chilled flesh flashed through her mind.
Jesse quickly thrust the haunting memory away. Though her knees trembled, she forced herself to keep steady and standing. “I don’t want to be a beast that feeds on men as I make love to them,” she said through half-clenched teeth. “I just want to be me, a human woman with a woman’s feelings and desires.”
A strange look crept across Maddox’s face, an expression akin to sorrow or perhaps grief. He lifted a hand, pressing his palm against her cheek. His touch, so warm and solid, should have offered some reassurance. Oddly, it did not.
“Human is something you’ll never be again,” he said softly. “And until you come to terms with what’s inside you, you’ll never be whole.”
Jesse was immediately taken aback. “That’s a hell of a thing to say.”
Maddox paused. “What I’m trying to say is that you do the best you can with what you’ve got. You’ve been touched by evil, but that doesn’t mean the rest of your life has to be misery and damnation. If you think of it that way, all misery and damnation, it’ll just grind your soul down to dust.”
As if she didn’t already feel that way. All of a sudden she didn’t want to touch him or look at him.
“I really don’t need you to remind me.”
Maddox shifted his weight forward. A hand sliding under her chin tilted her head back with ease. “I didn’t mean to be an asshole,” he said in the gentlest voice.
She shook her head, clutching her arms tighter against her bare breasts.
Stepping incrementally closer, he slipped his hands around her hips. “I want you to know that I see you. I know what you are. And I’ll help you figure it out every step of the way.” Tightening his grip, he refused to let her wriggle away.
Jesse tried to avoid his mouth as his came down over hers, but his hold was tight and his lips forceful. His tongue efficiently parried with hers, reminding her how futile resistance might be. He was still bigger than she was—and stronger.
She allowed her own tongue to join the fray, tasting the lingering flecks of blood still clinging to his lips. The demon’s appetite flared again, hotter and hungrier than before.
Jesse thrust the beast toward the darker recesses of her mind.
It wouldn’t feed today.
For now the only thing she wanted was to satisfy the urges of a body too long neglected.
Chapter 11
S
everal hours passed before Jesse was to waken from her pleasure-induced sleep. She’d spent the day in bed with Maddox. Stripping off every stitch, they lay entwined together on the bed, drifting in and out of lovemaking as the day passed. To cool the narrow, stuffy rooms, he’d extinguished the heat-producing oil lamps, plunging the windowless refuge into complete darkness. The air around them had grown markedly cooler as the sun arced toward the western edge of the sky. By the time the shadows of dusk had begun to creep in, the underground lair was positively chilly.
Feeling goose bumps spread across her skin, Jesse sighed and snuggled closer to Maddox. No nightmares had disturbed her rest. No dreams of any kind had intruded.
He stirred, laying a familiar hand on her bare hip. “You awake?”
She nodded. “Yeah.” A yawn followed. “What time is it?”
“No idea,” he mumbled. “But I can find out.”
Rolling out of her arms, he fumbled in the darkness. A lighter flared soon after, and a lamp was lit. The cloak of gloom crept away, dissolving into shadows that waltzed across the walls.
Jesse slowly sat up. Her knees, back, and rear felt chafed and raw. The whiteness of her skin was mottled with noticeable bruises. The area between her thighs throbbed, but not unpleasantly so. He’d taken her with no restraint.
“It’s just after seven thirty.”
Her brows rose. “At night?”
“Sure is.” Maddox started rummaging for his discarded clothing. Ignoring the need for underwear, he stepped into a pair of jeans and hitched them up over his narrow hips.
She spread her fingers through her tangled hair, trying to tame some of the rats. “The day went away.”
He pulled on a T-shirt. “Yes,” he said flatly, and pulled it down to cover the scratches in his skin. “Sure did.”
Jesse sat motionless, watching him dress. The earlier intimacy they’d shared seemed to have vanished, replaced by a huge empty void of disinterest. Now that sex was over, he appeared intent on putting some distance between them.
Slipping off the bed, she began to sort through the pile of her own clothing. Each small movement she made emphasized the empty ache inside her. Though she wouldn’t dare tell him, he was only the second man she’d ever had sex with. While he probably had a ton of experience, she could still count on one hand the number of times she’d made love.
What did I do wrong?
she thought.
Had he been untouched by the lust they’d unleashed together? Could a man honestly do all he had done to her and not be transformed in some way? While she wasn’t expecting him to fall down on his knees and declare his undying devotion, a little acknowledgment would have been nice. He could have offered a nice peck on the cheek before he’d gotten out of bed. As it stood, he was practically giving her the cold shoulder.
Jesse shivered as she pulled on her clothes. Maddox deValois had centuries of training to harden himself against needing anyone or anything. She was but an infant in this respect.
You’d better toughen up
, she warned herself.
It’s probably not going to get any easier
.
It was the best advice she could give herself. People were born alone, and they died alone. Expecting anyone to be available in the interim was obviously a pipe dream. When push came to shove, a girl had to depend on her own wits. She’d gotten along fine without him. Hell, they’d barely known each other two days. If he told her to hit the road, well, she supposed she’d start walking. While he’d said he’d be there to see her through, she didn’t have to be an old or wise woman to know men often lost the ability to think when the blood in their heads rushed to their dicks. In the heat of the moment people often said things they didn’t mean.
She should have known better. Listening to a guy whispering sweet nothings in her ear as he’d groped under her prom dress was part of the reason she’d lost her virginity.
Of course, Maddox was a hell of a lot more than a clumsy teenager. The things he’d done to her had taken her breath away—and then some.
Sneaking a glance his way, she felt her breath lodge in her throat. It sure would be hard as hell not to look back, though. His touch had been possessive, his cock like a red-hot iron searing her insides. When he’d taken her, he’d branded her as his own.
Another thought suddenly occurred. Wasn’t he similarly marked? Hadn’t she ripped through his flesh with her nails, tasted his blood on his lips? It was true. She’d made the same impact on his body that he’d left on hers.
She quickly tamped down her emotions, as exposed and raw as an open wound. All this thinking was beginning to give her a headache, not to mention the empty space in her stomach gnawing on her backbone. It dimly occurred to her that she hadn’t eaten since yesterday. There wasn’t a morsel of food in the place, either.
Finished dressing, she straightened. “Everything okay?” She made an attempt to keep her tone light and noncommittal.
“Sure.” Something akin to a smile crept across his lips. “I have to go out for a while, though.”
That perked her interest. “Hunting?”
Maddox offered a weak smile. “Just some errands.” Digging into his hip pocket, he dug out his wallet and a twenty. “There’s no food in the place. You might want to get out, get yourself something to eat.”
Jesse shook her head. “Keep it. I still have most of what you gave me.”
He grunted and tucked the bill away. “I need to get out,” he said. “Get some air.”
She shrugged with pretend indifference. “Okay.”
“You don’t mind?”
Another shrug. “Why should I? You’re a grown man. I suppose you’re going to do what you want, whenever you want to.”
Clearly surprised by her refusal to cling like a vine, he looked at her with grudging respect. “Yeah,” he allowed. “I pretty much come and go as I want.”
She continued her air of nonchalance. “I’m sure I can find some way to entertain myself.” To make sure he understood she could be just as aloof, she pushed the proverbial thorn a little deeper into his side. “It’s not as if I need someone leading me around by the nose.”
Maddox stared at her a moment. “No,” he said finally. “I don’t suppose you do.” That said, he slipped on a plain black denim jacket and walked away.
Jesse had only a second to snag her own before heading after him. Passing through the ruined lounge, she caught up with him as he wrestled the grate away from the face of the small crawl space. Hefting himself up, he shimmied through the hole with the grace of a cat on the prowl.
His hand poked back through. “Come on, and I’ll give you a lift.”
Jesse refused. “I can do it myself.” Jumping up, she caught the edges of the crawl space. It took more than a minute for her to heft her weight through the opening, but she finally managed to work her way to the outside. By the time she climbed to her feet, she was a sweating, dirty mess.
“Thought you’d never make it,” he deadpanned.
She wiped her brow. “Shit. That’s harder than it looks.”
“You still need to work on building your strength. You have a good solid middle and legs, but your arms are like sticks.”
Frustration gushed past her lips. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
They walked toward the mouth of the alley. The sky was blocked out by a mass of rumbling gray clouds. Thunder boomed in the far distance. A flash of lightning warned of the storm to come. The last thing anyone living in New Orleans wanted to see was another catastrophic storm. The city had experienced enough hard knocks to last for the rest of the century.
In many ways, the cracked sidewalks and crumbling buildings resembled what she imagined a post-apocalyptic world would look like—barren, ruined, almost completely devoid of life. Squatters, the derelict dregs of society, holed up in old buildings. Some slept; some were passed out or too drugged to move. More than a few were caught in the grip of eternal rest, dead where they lay. It might be months before anyone thought to report the body, if at all.
By night the neighborhood began to change. Roused out of their stupor, the derelicts slipped out onto the disintegrating asphalt to peddle their wares and prey upon one another. Drugs, booze, flesh—all the temptations were there, ready to be plucked from the gnarled tree of society’s decay.
Jesse fought to quell a nervous shiver as they moved away from the safety of the old hotel. It wasn’t hard to imagine any one of the people loitering around on the street sneaking up behind her to slip an arm around her neck before dragging her off into the shadows. The men all looked mean, dirty, and definitely unwelcoming. And the women . . . Well, they looked trampy, trashy, and diseased.
Maddox laid a hand on her arm. “This isn’t the best place to be at night.” He reached into an inside pocket of his jacket, then pressed a smooth, slender object into her hand. “If anyone gives you trouble, you’re going to have to take care of yourself.”
Jesse looked down at her hand. The thing he’d handed her was shiny, black, and about six inches long. There was a small button of some sort near the top. “What’s this?”
“Push the button,” he advised.
She did. A long silver blade appeared, snapping into place with a click-lock sound. The force of the spring action nearly caused her to drop it. “Oh, man!” She eyed the sharp beauty. “This is awesome.”
One corner of his fine mouth turned up. “Consider it yours. I know you’ve been on your own for a long time, but maybe this will help you out if you get in a tight spot.”
Jesse gingerly disengaged the spring, folding the knife in half before tucking it in her hip pocket. “Thanks.” She liked that Maddox had enough respect for her not to coddle her or treat her like some sort of hothouse flower. There were going to be times when he couldn’t or wouldn’t be around to watch her back.
“Make sure you have the intent to use it if you pull it on anyone,” he warned. “Wouldn’t want anyone to take it away from you and cut your throat.”
She patted her butt. “I don’t think you have to worry about that.”
Maddox responded with a long, silent look. “No, I don’t think I do. But just to make sure, you’d better take this.”
Her brows rose. “What?”
He dipped into a side pocket of his jacket. When he extended his hand, Jesse recognized a rosary with a silver cross dangling from a leather cord. “I think you should carry this. Just to be safe. We killed a Consanguine, and they are going to be pissed once they figure out he’s missing. They will be looking to get even.”