Bloodlines (Demons of Oblivion) (34 page)

His brows furrowed with concern, and I decided that whatever was on his mind, it quite possibly wasn’t good.

When he spoke, his voice was low and unsteady. Eyes glistened. “I was worried about you.”

And as he continued to study my expression, I understood—not just what he had said but what he
wasn’t
saying. I struggled to come up with something to respond with, to tell him how terrified I had been when Jamie said he had been killed, or how ridiculously relieved I was to know he never stopped looking for me. But speech escaped me.

Without a word, he thrust inside me. His eyes widened and lips parted in a gasp as he did, and mine did the same as a bolt of rapture shot through me, something even more intense, more real, than anything the sex magic brought. Everything around me disappeared but for the feeling of him deep within me. Connected. Only a single thought passed through my mind before it gave way to the instincts of my flesh—a thought I knew he shared as well—and after it, we were both lost.

This
is
right
.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Breakfast
Is
the Most Important Meal

My hand stretched out to Nate’s side of the bed as I awoke.

Empty. No wonderfully shaped male body where it had been the night before; the sheets were cold.

I sat up and looked around—still no sign of him. But black garbage bags were secured over the windows in the room, electrical tape sealing them in place and keeping the daylight out. Well, if he left to ensure I wouldn’t get nasty sunburn, I supposed I could forgive his absence. Maybe he’d gone to get tools to fix the headboard, but then I figured it was a lost cause; I broke it from the frame early on and at some point we managed to crack it straight down the middle.

The sound of running water was muffled behind the wall to my left. I climbed out of bed, sore in all the right places, and opened the second door in the room to find the bedroom connected to the bathroom. Steam from the shower billowed through the doorway, so I quickly stepped inside and closed the door behind me to preserve the warmth. The tiled floor was wet with condensation and slippery beneath my feet, but after spending months freezing, I welcomed the sauna-like heat of the room.

I slid open the shower door and stepped inside behind Nate, who was rinsing the shampoo from his hair. He was...just beautiful. Possibly prettier than me, and for once, I didn’t mind admitting so.

I saw no reason to announce my entrance with words. Instead, I lathered up my hands with soap and ran them down his back.

His head dipped forward so I could better access his shoulders, and I worked my fingertips deep into the muscles, smoothing out the knots I encountered. I urged him forward a bit, letting the water wash away the soap from his back, then I wrapped my arms around his chest and let my hands trail down to his stomach suggestively.

“Can I help you with something?” He shifted around in my embrace and grinned down at me.

I lifted my head to kiss him, but my mouth didn’t linger long on his. Instead, my lips traced the lines of his throat, coming to rest low on his neck, beneath a set of ugly scars I’d made the night before.

“Still hungry,” I whispered, and nipped at his throat playfully.

“Me too.” His hands went to my rear and he lifted me up onto him, pressing my back into the wet tile. I wrapped my legs around his waist, reveling in the feel of him inside me again, and I bit down on his neck until I tasted blood.

Ah, the practicalities of having a mortal lover.

****

Afterward, Nate left me the shower while he went to shave. Once sparkling clean—and smelling remarkably “winter fresh,” much like a bar of soap—I switched off the taps, wrung my long hair free of excess water, and exited the stall. A thick, terrycloth towel awaited me, and I wasted no time wrapping it around myself.

Nate leaned over the sink, dragging the razor over the last of his beard.

He was sexy both ways, but fucking a guy who looks like Jesus can kinda wig you out after a while. “Did you make a solemn vow to never shave again until you found me?”

“We’ve been on the run for months. Facial hair was the least of my worries.” He cleaned off the razor, then turned to me. “So? Better?”

“Oh yeah, spots of shaving cream drive all the girls wild.”

He rolled his eyes and turned back to the sink. He was running a cloth under the water as I started for the bedroom, where I planned to hunt down my clothes.

“Zara.”

“Uh huh?” I looked back at him as I leaned in the doorway.

He calmly ran the cloth over his cheek, not meeting my eyes as he spoke. “I’m in love with you, you know.”

Something in my chest seized. I stared at him for a moment before I responded. “Yeah, I know.”

“But if you marry me then hire a demon to kill me as a sacrifice to unleash your own demonic power, I won’t be too forgiving.” He glanced at me in the mirror to catch my reaction and gave the slightest of smiles as I stifled a laugh.

I pretended to consider his words for a moment. “I
suppose
that sounds reasonable.” I continued into the bedroom, then did a quick u-turn and returned to the bathroom doorway. Ah hell. Why not? “Nate, I’m in love with you too, you know.”

I read his response and can’t say I liked what I saw. He had just washed the last of the shaving cream from his cheek and the cloth dropped from his fingers, landing wetly in the sink. He rested his hands on the edge of the counter, cast his gaze down, and said nothing.

Fuck. So...was he
kidding
? About the whole thing? No one said that to me—not said it and
meant it
. So I probably fucked up my signals and he didn’t mean it either. “Now don’t be
too
disappointed,” I muttered.

“No, it’s not...” He shook his head. “I didn’t think...”

“Spit it out, lover boy.”

“I didn’t mean for you to reciprocate. Didn’t think you...”

Oh, for Christ’s sake. I walked over and hopped onto the counter beside the sink to face him. Poked him in the stomach, just above the scar from the bullet I’d cut out of him. “I know I always make a big point of saying how irrelevant relationships are in the grand scheme of things and that I only care about me, but you should realize by now that I’m basically all talk sometimes.”

He chuckled and glanced over at me. “I thought... Ah, fuck it—look, I’m sorry about Jamie.”

“Jamie?” I repeated in confusion. “What the hell does that rat bastard have to do with anything?”

“Despite my rather intense dislike of him, I’m not happy about what he did to you. I understand if the reason you—”

“Hey, I didn’t have sex with you multiple times—in fun and exciting positions—just because I was upset about
him
.” I tugged Nate over so he was directly in front of me, his hips resting between my knees, and I hooked my ankles over his calves. My fingers skimmed his abs, took in the smooth plane of flesh over muscle, and I longed to curl up in bed with him for the rest of the day and forget the rather serious threats on our lives. “I find solace in horribly killing whoever has wronged me, not in someone else’s bed. And Jamie and me were just way too much alike.”

“Listen to me.” He gathered my face in his hands. “You are
nothing
like him.”

I rolled my eyes. “A little bit.”

“You have layers, I remember—the point is, you’re not like him. You’re better than him.”

I felt a little like my world had gone off kilter right then. Like Nate looked at me and saw someone who didn’t exist—saw a better woman than I actually was. Okay, granted, I
probably
wouldn’t have sold everyone out had I been in Jamie’s position, but that still didn’t make me a good guy.

I gave him a shrug and tried not to think about it. “Whatever. Anyway, point is, you know given the choice—though I am
loath
to make choices in such matters—I would have picked you over Jamie, even before I knew what he did, right? I mean, presuming you would’ve shown even an ounce of interest in me—”

“I was grieving. And...dealing.”

“Oh, whatever—”

He leaned down to kiss me and I melted, leaning shamelessly into him, my hands wandering the length of his body. His arms gathered me up and carried me back to the bed and I went about stripping off our respective towels. We’d just collapsed on the mattress when someone knocked at the front door.

Ah, fuck. “Did you get me a present? Sammy the delivery boy flown into the province?”

Nate sighed. “That would be Peter and Heaven.” He reluctantly rose and slipped on his jeans. “There’s a bag of clothes for you in the closet. I would’ve brought them last night to the compound if I’d known.”

“Ooh, the stuff from Heaven’s?” His friend had picked out some cute outfits before, and while they would obviously be last season
now
, I still wanted to get some wear out of them. Even if I looked like one of those vamps from movies that had no fashion sense whatsoever.

“Nope. Her hotel was attacked. Stuff I picked up a while ago.” He disappeared into the living room. Probably to answer the stupid door.

“I’ve got an idea,” I called. “Lie down on the floor, pretend to be dead, and wait for them to come in and find your lifeless corpse.”

Nate chuckled and fabric rustled—he probably got his black sweatshirt. “You should probably get dressed.”

I moved to the closet and found a large paper bag on the floor, the top closed and folded over. Jeans, cute tops, a pair of boots and oh thank
god
, some panties and bras. The bras were in a couple of sizes around my range, like he’d been guessing; I tried one size I used to wear, but the cups were too big. Fuck. That’s always the way when you lose a bit of weight: it leaves your tits first. I’d have to do a lot of feeding to get my proper figure back.

I dressed in black skinny jeans—which were a tad looser than they would’ve been four months ago—a black tank top, and then I slipped Nate’s white shirt on. I’d just buttoned it up when he let Peter and Heaven in.

“Goddess! Nathan, your neck!” were the first words out of Heaven’s mouth.

I strolled toward the living room and leaned in the doorway. “Yeah, I got a little hungry.”

She was dressed as casually as I supposed one could expect her to: long white tunic in Indian cotton and a pair of navy capris. At least she had on tennis shoes instead of heels. She raised a perfectly plucked blonde brow at me. “You bit him twice?”

I shrugged. “I indulged in a second course.” Truthfully, I’d bit him more than that, but the other marks were in places she would
not
be seeing.

Peter smiled when he saw me. “You’re all right, I see.”

“Yep.”

“And you’re wearing Nathan’s shirt,” Heaven added.

“You sure are swift.”

“Did everyone make it out of there?” Nate asked. He sat on the loveseat and I flopped down next to him while Peter and Heaven took the couch.

“A few were caught by the odd bullet, and two died,” Heaven said. “There are also a number of half-crazed vampires running around feeding on anyone they come across.”

“That’s still better than the completely-crazed variety,” I said.

“Also, in one night the bounty on Nate’s head has doubled,” Peter said. “It’s all over the supernatural underworld: anyone who kills you and can produce a body is guaranteed forty million dollars.”

Silence enveloped the room. That was a hell of a lot of money.

“And that’s just one offer out of many,” Peter said. “The person we now know is your brother is still only offering ten, meaning either he’s certain someone else will take care of it for him and he isn’t concerned, or he’s planning to personally do it.”

“So even if we take out Sean, Nate’s still going to have people hunting him down for the rest of his life,” I filled in.

Peter nodded. “Take out the last O’Connor before he can produce any heirs, and there goes one of the oldest covens still in the northern hemisphere. That’s certain to up the status of a few of the smaller groups.”

Wow. That was...that was a
lot
of money. Someone like me could retire on that, if she both had any notion of giving up the job
and
killing Nate. Which I obviously didn’t. On both counts. For realsies.

I opened my mouth to speak when a high-pitched wail cut me off.

“What the hell is that?” I shouted, hands gripping my ears.

Nate and Heaven wasted no time rising and scurrying about the cabin, snatching up a series of crystals that were placed in the corners of the room. The alarm ceased and silence settled once more.

“They put up a barrier around the place a few days ago,” Peter said. “That means someone’s breached it.”

“And three guesses who that might be.” I hopped to my feet. “Okay, so what do we do?”

“You sit in here while Heaven and I reinforce the secondary barrier,” Nate said.

What. The Actual. Fuck. I glared at him. “Uh, no, I think I’ll be doing some ass-kicking.”

“It’s three in the afternoon,” Peter said. “You’ll fry outside.”

“I’m not so sure about that.” Heaven stood with the front door wide open. Outside the sky was black as night and as an inhuman creature bellowed in the distance, we all knew what that meant.

Sean had blotted out the sun somehow and the remnants of his “army” were on their way to the cabin.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Final Confrontation

I followed Nate and Heaven to the door. “At least that puts me back in the game.”

“No, you’re staying here.” Nate paused in the doorway, barring my exit.

Oh, he was
not
pulling this macho crap on me. “Move, or I’ll do it for you. You
don’t
want to find out what I do to men who like to play alpha male.”