Blood Stained Tranquility (19 page)

Ismini, the little bitch, had lived her whole life knowing. One would think that she would share that info with her best friend, but nooooo. She’d left Eve to find out the hard way. Not that Ismini had ever intended for her to find out.

If Eve took too much time to think about it, her brain threatened to turn inward and shrivel up on itself. Some situations just weren’t made to be dissected too closely. No. You were better off just experiencing it, taking it one moment at a time, and this definitely fell into that category.

Besides, she had no clue how in tune Zen was to her emotions. She was definitely plugged into his memories, and his feelings were beginning to ride the wire straight into her awareness. She could feel him on the other side of the door. Scared. Desperately trying to regain control of something that frightened him so much.

His hunger stained everything, and she could feel how hard it was for him to get himself together.

No. She couldn’t focus on it. She would be the one splintering the door off its hinges if she did.

Swallowing, she walked over to her tub.

Oh, fuck. Gross. Although it’d been sparkly clean when she left, and would still appear so to a human, there was a very fine layer of dust covering it, one that her improved eyes had no problem picking up on. She scrunched her nose and focused on getting the shower clean. And what do you know? One thought had it so sparkly that she could see her reflection staring back at her in the tiles. Nice. Real nice. She was getting good.

She willed her clothes off. Suddenly, she was a whole lot of naked, with a whole lot of sex waiting for her in the other room. Just the fact that she was down to her skin and nothing more set off a high-level mating call inside her body.

Her skin grew cold, in need of body heat, although she could see herself flushing. Blood rushed to the surface of her skin, softening it. She was becoming liquid. The call of her need siphoned every other instinct out of her. Her core was hot. Slick. She felt it running down her thigh.

The small groan she heard on the other side of the door made her grab onto the shower door. It cracked. She felt it start to give under her fingers. Loosening her grip took more strength than it should have. Her focus was shot; it actually took her two tries to get the door fixed.

No. He needs to calm down. You heard him. He’s not going to function any other way.
At least, he thought so. She wasn’t so sure, and his refusal to even entertain the idea of letting Mavrak out and paying attention to that side of himself was starting to piss her off.

Still, she would play the game his way. For a little while longer. She wasn’t a creature high on patience, but she’d give him what little she had left just to make him more comfortable.

He better get his shit together fast though, because she was going to have him, soon, whether he was ready for it or not.

Her pussy wept with the urge to dominate and mate with him.

Mentally cursing, she jumped into her shower and willed it on before Zeniel sensed any more of her needs—or worse, smelled them.

And, he better fucking appreciate how hard she was trying for him.

Gods damn it, she’d always been horny, despite her past, but she’d never really gotten worked up for a man before. She’d tried to mess around with guys, but it never worked out. She had only ever been able to orgasm alone, and once she’d discovered that, she’d been an addict constantly on the pipe.

The vibrator wouldn’t be able to do anything for her now though, even if she were to reach for it. She was hungry for a lot more than an orgasm.

A lot more than penetration even.

Her body was hungry for Zen’s cum, and it was a feeling she’d never thought she’d experience. It was the same feeling she got when her stomach cramped and she was starving for food, but centered in another area.

She needed to stop thinking about it, yet here she was, a hamster refusing to get off the obsession wheel. She soaped up, taking extra time washing her hair under the cold spray. She tried to focus on the task, on the feeling of her hair sliding between her fingers, but then she was hit with an image of Zen playing with said strands, of them sliding over his naked body.

This shit was pointless. She wasn’t really getting anywhere. It was time she admit to herself that there would be no focusing on anything else until her body was fed.

Six times, maybe fifteen.

With that thought in mind, she finished rinsing off and got out of the shower. One thought had her dry and dressed in tight black yoga pants and a dark purple tank top. Barefoot, she tip-toed to the door before slowly easing it open. She peeked around it, her hair falling like a long black curtain over one shoulder.

She expected to find Zen still deep in meditation. Or at least halfway there. Instead, he was sitting at the edge of her bed, head bowed, fingers lost in his burgundy hair.

She all but flung the door the rest of the way open. “Zen?”

The sound he made was almost a whimper. The veins on his hands bulged starkly as he tightened his hold on his hair. He started rocking back and forth. Eve flashed before him, reaching out to him.

“No!”

“What?”

Zen flew off that bed like a missile, his face turned away from her, and his intention was clear as fucking day.

Oh, hell no. He wasn’t going anywhere. He wasn’t fucking running from her just because Mavrak was about to come out.

With that thought in mind, she flung herself after him—grabbing onto his shirt sleeve—just as he dematerialized.

Chapter 14

The hold she had on him served as a conduit in terms of direction, even once they were both without form. Her molecules tangled with his, spinning through the fabric of reality. She could perceive it, even without a mind, and she was grateful. Without it, she might have lost him.

That was something she was determined to kick his ass for, whenever they actually came to a stop. Mere seconds later, they did, and so hard that her knees dug into wood, splinters flying in every direction.

Wait. Wood?

Panting on her hands and knees, Eve looked up, her eyes squinting as they searched out her prey. The suicidal urge to kill him reared its head once more. That motherfucker. He’d tried to leave without her, tried to leave her all over again, after all they’d been through in the last few hours.

After everything
she’d
been through the last few weeks.

Her nails dug into the floor, the sound of wood peeling grating in the air. Four feet away from her, by the wall, Zeniel kneeled, also on his hands and knees. He wasn’t looking at her. Didn’t matter. Those red irises of his threw a glow on the floor, one so intense that it shot back up and illuminated his face.

He was in full war demon mode—those eyes, the moving marks on his face and arms, the damned cheekbones—and he was beautiful to her. Absolutely beautiful.

It hurt her; grated into her organs, stripping ribbons free just as her nails were doing to the wood beneath her. He’d tried to leave again. She told herself that he felt justified—and didn’t give a fuck. Because she’d never be able to just walk away from him. The fact that she was chasing him now proved that.

But for him, it seemed easy to just turn around and flee.

“Are . . . are you all right?”

Those dual tones detonated pure awareness inside her. It turned her on. Which was an understatement. Ismini had confessed to her that hearing Dyletri’s voice warped and split in two did the same to her. Evesse hadn’t understood, not until she’d heard Zeniel and Mavrak talking to her from within the same voice box.

She sunk her fingers deeper into the wood and gritted her teeth. She had some self-control. She was not so fickle. She was pissed off at him, and she wasn’t going to let something as stupid as being horny for him get in the way of that this time.

Right?

Zeniel’s eyes fell to her hands, like two flashlights shining red light at her fingers. In the glow they gave off, she saw the deep grooves she’d left on the wood floor. When she looked up, worry had overtaken the male’s face.

Those eyes . . . Zeniel wasn’t the one speaking to her, for all that there was two tones in his voice. It wasn’t the color of his eyes that gave it away, but the way he was staring at her hands. She knew Mavrak had taken over. Zeniel would have stared her in the eyes.

Exhaling, she forced herself to nod, not trusting her voice. She wanted to curse and beat the shit out of Zeniel. Unfortunately, that wasn’t who she was dealing with right then.

The nod Mavrak gave her in return was . . . shy. Hesitant. He still refused to look her in the eye. Suddenly, he jumped up and stood. He seemed distressed and frantic as he looked around the room they were in.

Staring at the ridiculously huge width of his shoulders, and the way his T-shirt stretched across his back, hanging on for dear life, she was hit with another case of the want-nows. She was also hit with the knowledge that what stood before her was the most complex contradiction she’d ever come face-to-face with.

And that was saying a lot considering she had to look in the mirror every day.

One half of him was—or had
been
—so self-controlled. So calm. Yet it was that half that walked around the world with such confidence. As if he owned everything.
Including
her. The other half of him, the war demon before her, was supposed to be the raging one. The killer. The
demon.
Yet, as raw and tumultuous as Mavrak was, he was the shy one.

As he began to move around the room, it called her attention to where they were. Easing back into a kneeling position, she let herself take a good look around. They were inside a large bedroom. It looked like a master bedroom—in an old, rundown, apparently abandoned house. Everything around them was broken, rotten, dilapidated, or worse.

A fact her
R’mann
seemed determined to fix all of the sudden.

He flashed around the room at top speed, waving his hand over this and that, willing it back into pristine condition.

She was a balloon with a needle jabbed into her side. Except that, instead of air, it was anger leaking out of her with a steady hiss. She curled one hand around her side, as if that was going to help shit. Whatever. It wasn’t like she could actually take out her anger on the male before her. Not until his other half made an appearance.

She stood, watching as he returned the large fireplace back to its former glory. Considering the furnishings around her, she’d have to guess that this was an old Victorian home. Where the fuck were they?

“Is this where you’ve been staying?”

Zeniel froze, halfway across the room, with his back to her. He turned his head, but stopped himself from actually looking over his shoulder at her. He was tense, panting; he
wanted
to look at her, was dying to. His need hit her, jamming that damn needle deeper into the latex she seemed to be made of.

He was afraid to look at her; she could see it in every line on him. And she knew why, too.

She opened her mouth to ask him to turn around when he gave her a quick, terse nod, before flashing over toward the bed.

“What are you doing?” she asked when he willed that, too, back to sparkly-new condition. His response was immediate.

“My
R’ma
deserves better,” he mumbled under his breath.

The latex was shredded, dropping to the floor in pieces, leaving her stripped of any barriers. Defenseless. Her anger was free to fly away. Without it, there was only room for the need she felt.

And it wasn’t just about the sex. It went beyond that. She wanted to curl into his lap, and possibly crawl into his skin. Merge with him until they were one being and she felt him in every fiber of her soul.

Damn. She was getting good at the romance spiel, wasn’t she? Next thing she knew, she was going to be writing Valentine’s Day cards for Hallmark and shit. Her.
Evesse
.

Sol would never let me live this shit down if she knew.

Zeniel looked around the room. Not finding anything else to fix—hell, she doubted the place had looked this good even back in its glory days—he made his way to the front of the bed. He all but fell onto it, his weight dragging him down into a slumped, seated position.