Blood and Redemption (Cassandra Myles Witch Series) (4 page)

I reached up and kissed him.
In that moment, I didn’t care about anything else. His strong hands moved to my rump and I was now straddling his lap. His mouth opened to mine, and our tongues explored and danced. I wanted him inside me. I had turned away from him before, but I wouldn’t do it again.

My towel was around my waist and his mouth latched onto my breast. Nipping and sucking, he was driving me wild. My core rubbed against his hard cock and I couldn’t wait any longer. My hands went to his belt
. I was almost done when I felt my arms pinned to my side.

“You have to believe me that I want nothing more than to make love to you, but my control is starting to go and I’m afraid I’d hurt you. I want our time together to me
an something we’ll remember forever, not something you’ll regret.”

He let me go.
My arms slipped around his neck and I hugged him as tight as I could. I pressed my lips to his ear. “I love you, Lucius. We’ll get through this, I promise.”

His strong arms lifted me up and set me on the ground. “Whatever happens, hearing you say those words has made me happier than you can imagine. I never thought …” He stopped and gave me a cheesy grin. “You really are beautiful
, Goldilocks, head to toe.”

I blushed
, head to toe. I was standing there, naked.

“
Now run and have a shower, he’ll smell you on me if you don’t. You have to go, Cass. I love you.”

I gathered my towel and ran for the shower. The hot water felt good. So many things had just changed so drastically. I was shaking from head to toe. My body
was trying to match what was going on in my mind. Every fear and doubt vibrating around in my head was trying to get bigger and bigger until I thought I was going to lose it.

A loud r
ap at the door made me scream.

“Cassandra
, I’m sorry if I startled you, but I just walked into my office and Janine’s perfumes are all spilled on the floor. She is nowhere to be found. I was worried.”

“Really?
I’ll be out in a sec, but she sent me in for a hot shower not that long ago. She was fine then.” Where did I come up with that lie so easily? I shut off the shower and wrapped a new towel around myself. I took a deep breath before opening the door.

Quintus looked
me up and down. “Are you okay?”

“Yes.
Of course. She did an amazing job, but you said she was gone? She told me to come back, that she had one more thing she wanted to do.”

“If I didn’t just see Lucius i
n his room, I would be worried.”

“I don’t th
ink he would ever hurt anyone.”

“He is dangerous
, Cassandra. I’ve tried to be soft about this, but you have forced my hand. He would rape you and drink you dry if I didn’t make sure that couldn’t happen.”

“How have you done that?”

“I should have told you, but I had to compel him to stay away.”

“Yes. You should have
told me.” Lucius wasn’t lying. How could any of this be true? This was Quintus, the man who saved me, the man who was always there for me.

“I’m sorry
. We’ll discuss it when you get home. I came to tell you Killian is here for you.”

“Good
.” I walked off to my room to change. I was glad I was leaving for a while. I needed to get away from here. Even if Quintus had compelled Lucius, it could have been just to protect me. I wasn’t ready to admit that another person that I loved wasn’t at all who I thought he was. Then again, living in denial wasn’t working so good for me. I decided I would keep my eyes open and hope that whatever Quintus had done I could live with.

Chapter
Four

Killian had to wait until after dark to pick me up. He wasn’t old enough to walk in the sun. I didn’t know exactly how old he was, but I knew he wasn’t much more than one hundred years old. I also didn’t know when a vampire became old enough to walk in the sun. Vampires made the freemasons look like an open book. He had called earlier to let me know that he was taking me to the shooting range, hinting that if it was up to my self-defense skills to save me, I might as well curl up in a ball and hope for the best. I totally agreed with him. My non-functioning magic aside, I was just a human and no match for a fae or a vampire. Plus, the thought of going to the shooting range was exciting.

I had this perverse fascination with guns since I was a little kid. My parents were total granola crunchers and didn’t believe in owning a gun or any weapon, for that matter. This may have added to my fascination with them. My mother was horrified that I wanted to learn how to shoot and had completely forbidden it. She didn’t want me to practice magic either and I had to pick my battles. Her mother had been a powerful psychic and she attracted a lot of questionable characters. It terrified her as a little girl. She didn’t want that for me, but back then, magic was who I was. I wanted nothing more than to be allowed to practice magic. I missed those days, the time in my life when everything was black and white. Now my gift was wrapped up in so many terrible things, it felt more like a curse.

I secretly wanted to defeat Mab with my magic. I couldn’t explain why, I just wanted to drain her of every last molecule of fae magic. Seeing the terror on her face as she realized she was dying and I was the cause would fill up a tiny part of the hole left by Declan’s death, and at least that was a start. That’s what I wanted, but if shooting her would save my life or help me in that pursuit, I was more than willing to compromise.

“Ready,
hun?” He flashed me his pearly whites. All vampires have white teeth, but not all have straight teeth. Killian looked like he walked off a beach in California. His hair was blond with reddish highlights. Irish charm exuded out of every pore. He gave me a flirty bow as he opened the car door.

“As ready as I’ll ever be.”

As he got in, he squeezed my knee. “We’ll have fun. You won’t likely ever use the automatic weapons, but they can be jarring and surprising. If you need to, I want you to have at least a little experience.”

“I’m sure it will be fun. I just hope I can get good enough to use one if I ever need to.”

“I’m sure Quintus will make sure you’re safe.”

“I want to take care of myself
, Killian. It’s not Quintus’ job to keep me safe or take care of me.”

He held his hand
s up like he was surrendering. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you, my lady. I know you are woman; hear you roar.”

“Ha ha
.” This was the most Killian had said to me since he started training me. It had to be because we were out of the mansion. He felt more relaxed. It was nice to have the old Killian back.

“Are you with Quintus?”

“Not that it is any of your business, but no.”

“Then let me take you out to dinner.”

“I’m flattered, but I’m still not ready to date again.
Do I give off some sort of pheromone only vampires can smell?” He ignored the question.

“Well, you let me know when you are. I will make sure we do something very dangerous.” He waggled his eyebrows up and down. I had to laugh. He was being quite charming.

“Right now, my life has enough danger in it without adding any more.”

“How about we go out sometime as friends? I just enjoy your company. I have fun when we spend time together. I don’t want anything other than that.”

“That is something I can say ‘yes’ to. I would love to get out every once in a while.”

“Now, until we get to the range, why don’t we get to know each other?”

“I don’t know what you know about me.” It felt weird that he was so interested in me now. He had always joked around, but he was never this forward. We had been meeting every day for almost a month. Not once had he shown any interest except to teach me how to defend myself.

“I know nothing, my dear. Your boss is very protective of you. He doesn’t want the riff raff bothering his princess.” He said it in a joking way, but fell short of being convincing.

“What do you mean?” I didn’t know how to take what he said.

“Quintus said you were off limits. Everyone has to treat you with respect. ‘Hi
, how are you’ kind of thing, but other than that, you were strictly hands off. Break the rules and any vampire doing so would find themselves in a dry cell.” 

“What’s a dry cell?”

Killian shook his head. “The old man doesn’t tell you very much, does he? A dry cell is when a vampire is placed in a cage and isn’t given blood for an extended period of time. It’s quite painful.”

“I didn’t know. I thought he had told everyone to be careful when I first got there but…” I didn’t know how to finish that sentence. Had Quintus really done that?
Was I being a naïve idiot to even question he was capable of doing exactly that?

We pulled up in front of the gun range. He sighed long and heavy. His manicured hand ran through his strawberry blond hair.

“Quintus will not be happy with me for telling you these things. I do feel you deserve to know them. Do you remember Nickolai?”

“Yes, he was a very sweet, very young vampire. I think he had been turned not that long ago, maybe in the 90s? He was only in his early 20s then. I liked him because I felt like we were close in age and he was more modern than most vamps.”

“Nickolai is my only son. He had been in my employ for a few years and found out he had a tumor in his lungs. It was one of those medical flukes. It was very aggressive. I couldn’t help him. I had grown fond of him; he was a hard worker and his background was similar to mine. I asked permission to turn him and Quintus granted my request.” He was beaming when he talked about his son. It was sweet. I thought it odd that I didn’t know that Killian was Nickolai’s sire. I think sometimes vampires keep secrets just to be assholes.

“You don’t have to tell me. I don’t want you getting into trouble on my account.” I didn’t know if I wanted to hear this. I felt stupid and naïve. There were so many things I had either ignored or were kept hidden from me
.

“What is it about you that
makes me want to spill my guts? My vampire instincts are telling me you’re too dangerous to deal with.” He shook his head. “Apparently, Quintus didn’t like how he looked at you. He said he was too forward and he made you uncomfortable. I warned Nickolai to leave you alone, but he said you enjoyed his company.”

“I did. He was just a sweet guy. He never made a move on me. We would just talk on our lunch break. Well, my lunch break. He was so funny and he was one of the few people at that time that had grown up even close to my time. He was always singing me cheesy 80s songs.”

“Well, our boss told me in no uncertain terms that if he continued to engage you, then he would be punished. I couldn’t stand to see him hurt in any way. He had been punished severely as a child. So I sent him away to live with a close friend in Seattle.”

“So that’s who you went to see at New Years?”

“Yes, I… well, he needed me.”

Killian stared at me. If he was waiting for me to say something bad about Quintus, he would wait a long time. I didn’t know how to bring it up without mentioning what Lucius or Killian
had told me, but I owed Quintus the chance to defend himself.

Killian
was the first to break the silence.

“Well, my favorite witch, let’s go shoot. That always makes me feel better.” A switch was flipped and he was back to being happy-go-lucky Killian.

“Let’s.”

We had the building to ourselves. Quintus paid to have it stay open after hours so we wouldn’t be disturbed. “Okay
, let’s start with the basics.”

Killian taught me all the safety and cleaning details. I kn
ew those things were important, but I was getting impatient. I was almost jumping up and down when it was finally time to use the guns.

“Now spread your legs and brace yourself. This gun has a bit of recoil.”

He was right behind me with his arms on my arms, helping me aim. I took a deep breath and tried to relax.

His mouth was at my ear. “Don’t stop breathing when you take your shots. Pin point on your target and pull the trigger.”

“Okay, but don’t expect a head shot on my first try.”

“I do expect it. I bet you get at least two.”

“What do you want to bet?” I was having fun with someone who wasn’t trying to eat me or claim me as his eternal love. It felt like a refreshing change.

“If you do
, I want you to come to my house for a movie night, just friends.”

“I want a gun of my own. I know that sounds weird that if I fail I want a gun, but I want a small handgun. I won’t use it until you think I’m competent
.” I sounded like a child on Santa’s lap.

“Fair enough.
Don’t tell Quintus you have one, though, or at least where you got it.”

His mouth was touching my ear. “Relax and concentrate.”

I shot off all six rounds. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to succeed or not. The target shot up to us and, as it got closer, I realized I had made three head shots. “I did it, Killian! Cass kicks ass!” I danced around like a fool, swinging my hips and doing a few fist pumps. I’m sure I looked extremely nerdy, but at that point, I was too excited to care. “So I guess I owe you a movie night.”