“Luminitsa, she’s here to guard my brother until after the ritual is complete,”
Cain said, in case Angeline had forgotten her role in this trip.
Angeline wilted from the woman’s glare. “No. I give you your vampire and
the knife on loan for Luc. No one else will enter.”
Cain’s face didn’t betray any emotion. “I would like a private moment to
consult with my people.”
Luminitsa looked suspiciously at each of them in turn but nodded. “Be quick.
The sun rises soon, and then you’ll only get your knife and a melted corpse.”
A tingle went down Angeline’s wings. Cain placed a steadying hand on
her arm. She jumped—still not comfortable being near him after
their last encounter.
He shook his head. “No,” he whispered. Then he turned back to the
gypsy. “We’ll be quick.”
The door closed and Anna said, “No. I’m not leaving him with them.
Who knows what they’ll do. Magic is bad. People who use magic are
bad. I mean, look what happened to Luc the last time he tangled with
a witch!”
Cain smirked. “If I recall correctly, the last witch Luc tangled with
was you.”
“And look where it got him! Cursed into a house for half a century, that’s
where!”
Anna seemed high strung.
“Luc?” Cain said.
The other demon shrugged. “You and I have both been through bad shit.
If this is what we have to do for the ritual, it’s what we have to
do. Would you rather they start the apocalypse and us lose? We have
our dimension to retreat to, but what about the demons who still need
humans to feed from? We aren’t all mated and safe from the need to
hunt.”
Cain nodded, but Anna still clung to her mate, unwilling to let him go.
“Anna, you have to come back with us,” the demon leader said. He wasn’t
negotiating.
She shook her head, her jaw set firm. “I’m not leaving my mate.”
“Listen, I know if it were Tam in a situation like this, I’d refuse to leave
her, too. But this is the only way Luminitsa is letting that knife go. We have to think about the longer-term consequences.”
Cain turned his attention to Angeline. She’d tried to blend. Once
Luminitsa had refused to allow anyone in but Luc, the guardian’s presence had become extraneous. She worried—now that Cain didn’t
need her—he might turn on her.
“You’ve been nothing but trouble to me since I’ve met you.”
She looked down. “I-I’m sorry.” But she wasn’t. And they both
knew it.
“Still,” he continued. “You’re loyal to those you care for, and that is a
beneficial personality trait I may need to utilize at some point in
the future. If only some of that would rub off on your vampire.”
Cain knocked on the door again, and the gypsy answered.
“We’ll make the trade, but if you do anything magical to my brother, you
will be faced with Tamar, her coven, Anna here—who, by the way, was a witch before she became mated to a
demon—and my entire dimension of demons. You may have powerful and old magic, but you are
outclassed. I will cooperate with you if you can assure me my brother’s safe return and no magic used against him.
We will know if you violate our terms.”
“I assure you we only wish to speak to your brother, and work out fair
restitution for his crime.”
“Very well,” Cain said.
Luminitsa closed the door and a few minutes later she opened it again. She took
Luc’s hand and pulled him inside—despite Anna’s protests—then
she shoved Hadrian outside. He held an embroidered dark blue pouch.
Hadrian passed the pouch to Cain. “Everything on your list is in the bag.”
The vampire spared a look at Angeline and something flickered across his
face. Anger? It was quick and then it was gone. But then Hadrian was
cloaked in that same strong angry energy that seemed to always follow
him.
He didn’t say he was happy to see her, or that he was angry she’d
risk herself by coming. He didn’t kiss her or bite her or make any
show of emotion. It wasn’t as if she’d expected a grand gesture.
In so many ways, they were barely more than strangers who couldn’t
seem to figure out what they would or should be to each other—aside
from his brief moment of insanity when he’d suggested claiming her.
Angeline was sure he was over that idea by now.
They walked back to the portal in silence. This wasn’t a
hang-out-and-chat sort of group. Tensions and anxieties were too high
for small talk, anyway. Hadrian was somewhere behind her. Angeline
could feel him, his distinct energy signature close, like a warm
blanket she wanted to wrap herself up in, but she kept moving with
the others.
Then his hand slid into hers. She looked up at him, startled. His gaze was
intense, but it kept drifting to her neck.
“Are you hungry?”
He just squeezed her hand more tightly.
Chapter Fourteen
Hadrian’s thumb stroked the back of Angeline’s hand as they crossed into the
demon dimension. As soon as they reached his tent, he intended to
take her. And claim her. She’d given him every possible signal
short of wearing a T-shirt with the directive “mount me” on it.
He didn’t want to waste another moment he could spend with her. Being
trapped with the gypsy tribe had made it clear how easily he and
Angeline could be separated, and although he still couldn’t
articulate why that was so upsetting to him, the fact was, that it
was. The demon inside him had determined Angeline was his mate and
there was no pro/con list or rational and reasoned argument that
could combat such a thing.
The humans might call it chemistry. Hadrian would call it preternatural
madness.
He could smell her excitement whenever he was near now.
“D-did they hurt you in there?” Angeline asked as they got farther from
the rest of the group.
Their tent was isolated from the others. Cain had lightly referred to it as
the honeymoon suite, but its distance and separation from the other
tents nearby made it more than just a joke.
“The Gypsies?” Hadrian asked as he pulled the flap back and gestured for
her to go inside.
Angeline hesitated before going into the tent.
“They were okay,” he said. “It wasn’t a big deal. They had no beef
with me.” Luc, however, was a different matter, and Hadrian didn’t
envy the foolish demon who had once crossed that particular tribe of
gypsies. “I just helped Luminitsa collect and crush the roots Tam
needed and got everything together for the trade.”
“Oh.”
Angeline sat on the sofa, picking at loose threads that didn’t exist. Her
anxiety was so transparent it was almost charming.
“Drink?” Hadrian asked from the minibar. There had to be something besides
hard liquor. He pulled back a curtain under the cart to reveal a
cabinet. The inside of the cabinet glowed with a frigid blue light.
There was no technology in Cain’s dimension. Everything was done the
old-fashioned way—or with the magic the demon leader allowed there.
He seemed to be allowing a lot more magic into his dimension since
taking a witch as a mate.
Hadrian took a chilled bottle of champagne from the cabinet and a couple of
champagne flutes. He popped the cork and poured the bubbling alcohol
into the glasses and handed one to Angeline.
She’d neither asked for nor denied the alcohol, but he could tell she
needed it—otherwise things would get more awkward than they already
were. Why should everything be so difficult and awkward?
Perhaps because she didn’t believe he could ever forgive her, and he would
never be able to convince her that he already had, and that his
attempts to hold onto his anger were only the fear that she would
never stop having power over him, because it wasn’t her
supernatural power that undid him.
It was the power of her feminine grace. It was the shy way she glanced
away from him, coupled with her fierce determination to face fear and
pain for his benefit. The combination was a drug he couldn’t get
enough of. Like her blood.
She tossed the champagne back in a couple of large gulps, and Hadrian
refilled the glass. “I believe you’re supposed to sip it. Would
you prefer to do shots?”
Angeline blushed and shook her head. “N-no. I’ll slow down.” She sipped
this time.
Hadrian took a couple of sips from his own glass and then placed the bottle
and his champagne on the table beside the couch. He’d get more than
enough alcohol in her blood at the rate she was going, though the
effects would wear off soon enough. He turned her away from him and
ran his hands down the back of the damaged corset. She shivered.
“You ruined this one,” he remarked as he continued to stroke her back
through the corset.
“D-Daria has the other one, and I didn’t like the way I felt without it. So
I wore this one, but then Cain made me angry.”
“Oh?”
Hadrian was surprised as she recounted what had happened in his absence. She
was a lot braver than she let on. Taking Cain on like that? Hadrian
would have done it, but he was surprised Angeline had.
He swept her hair out of his way and struck at her throat. She tensed,
and he felt the energy coiled in her, as—even with the alcohol—she
prepared to shove him off her with the force field.
He lifted his head from her neck and licked the trail of blood. “I’m
only feeding,” he said. She relaxed a fraction as he bit her again,
but he knew she wasn’t truly relaxed.
He never should have told her his plans to claim her. He’d thought she
would gladly and quickly agree. He wished he could say he loved her
and that she would believe him. But words like love didn’t do true
justice to the way he felt. It was a bone deep certainty that she
belonged with him. If that was love, so be it. But if it wasn’t,
that was okay as well.
The only words he could come up with came wrapped in the language of
obsession and possession. And given her history with Linus and her
time in Heaven, he knew there was no way he could ever paint those
things again in a way that made her feel safe and not scared.
And yet, she continued to place her trust in him. Maybe he should wait to
mark her.
When Hadrian finished feeding, he sealed the wound, pushing past the urge
to claim her while her defenses were down. It would only take a
moment, a nick of his own tongue and a quick mixing. If he were
smooth about it, it would be done before she realized what had
happened. Then she’d be his. They could work through it later.
He began to unlace the corset. After fumbling with it for several
minutes, he got it off her. Her breasts sprang free from the
steel-boned prison, and Hadrian’s hands closed over them. She
leaned against him, a sigh escaping her lips.
“That’s it, little angel. Give yourself over to me.”
The vampire took her glass, placing it on the side table with his own,
then he pulled her to stand and led her to the bed.
“Where are you, Angeline? Where’s the woman who seduced me? The one who
had no shame?” It wasn’t that he didn’t love this more demure
version, but he couldn’t help worrying large pieces of it were
shame and fear rather than innate nature. Or had the mask been the
temptress? Would he ever find the whole Angeline? The real one?
Whatever combination of traits she turned out to possess?
She shrugged and looked off at some imaginary point in the distance. If
it was the last thing he did, he would crush this sense of shame
they’d drilled into her.
“Look at me.”
Her gaze shifted back to his.
“Do you want this with me?” The demon didn’t give a shit. The demon
was already picking out china patterns. But the man cared. He
wouldn’t do what she’d once done to him and then simply call it
karma.
“You know I do,” she said. “I just…”
“Just what?”
“Hadrian, are you playing with me? Not that I don’t deserve it after… But…
just tell me if this is real or not. I want you anyway. I’ll do
whatever you want anyway. A part of me doesn’t even care if it’s
not real. I just don’t want to hope that it is only to—”
He captured her mouth with his own. She opened to him, and he deepened
the kiss. When he pulled away, she was flushed. It was a bit of a
blow to his ego that the magic of his kissing skills hadn’t erased
all doubts, like it might have in some romantic comedy.
There remained a touch of fear in her eyes. And now he couldn’t pretend
he didn’t know what those fears were about. The fear of being
mocked and pushed away for thinking he could ever truly want her. The
fear that she wasn’t enough of whatever measure she’d determined
in her head she must live up to in order to be worthy of anyone’s
love and affection.
“Forget about what happened between us before,” he said. “That’s in the
past. I forgive you. I mean it. It’s over and done. That moment has
nothing to do with this one. A lot of time has passed. That’s not
how things are between us right now.” No, things were so much
sweeter now. She was so much sweeter now.
She didn’t protest when Hadrian laid her on the bed. He removed the
rest of her clothing and looked at her for a long time, drinking in
naked vulnerability. “Don’t move,” he said.
Hadrian went to an old trunk near the bed and lifted the lid. He had no
doubts that in the dimension of a sex demon, these tents came
equipped with naughty props. And he was right. Under a few slinky
gowns, the vampire found a blindfold, ropes, a flogger, a riding
crop, various toys, but nothing battery-operated or requiring
electricity.
He didn’t want to freak her out. Though from the way she’d taken to
his bite, and her love of corsets, there was no doubt she was at
least a bit of a masochist. She seemed to relish and revel in his
bite even though she wasn’t human and he couldn’t put a
suggestion into her mind for it not to hurt. She didn’t care that
it hurt. She
liked
that it hurt. How did he get so lucky?
Still, he’d danced around it because it was easier to pretend everything
had been merely about a need to punish her for her crimes against
him, some penance to somehow absolve her later, rather than admitting
that it was more for his own gratification than anything else.