Immortal Distraction (27 page)

He was far too wired and miserable to sleep that day, and he stared into the blank darkness in front of his eyes, listening to her soft breathing beside him. He rose in the late afternoon as the sun started to set, and spent the next couple hours trying to read. He caught himself staring at his walls, floors, and just about anything else aside from the book on his lap, and when Dr. Bremmer arrived to check on Brit, he almost hugged the man for distracting him in some small way.

Ember and Truman arrived midevening and they settled into his living room, saying nothing. They were worried about him, worried about Brit, and the heaviness of the problem they faced with Driscoll seemed to hang in the air like a fog that smothered them all.

“I could kill the man myself for what he’s done to Brit. No one needs pain, but she needs it least of all.” Ember’s voice was bitter and seething with hatred as she spoke. Ember wasn’t prone to anger or violence, and as Truman reached to her leg, resting his hand on her thigh and stroking evenly over the inside of her leg, she reached for his hand as it caressed and she squeezed it.

He wanted what they had. It was an easy relationship … once Ember remembered who he was and that she was madly in love with him. They’d always been that way from the moment they first met. Trust just fit them so well and there was never much question of it. He and Brit had a decidedly different start, but they had their own brand of easy intimacy and trust too, regardless of how much she fought him, and he denied his attachment to her in the beginning. He’d gotten under her skin so easily when all others had failed. And she had reached him too after a lifetime of emotional solitude.

When she came out of the bedroom, all eyes turned to her. She froze midstep and looked sheepishly around at them. She seemed nervous, and he stood to approach her. He wrapped his arms around her, and the others stood to leave. Ember gave her a hug and the men both kissed her cheek as they left. Once they were alone, she settled into the couch next to him with her head on his lap. He stroked her hair as she stared at the coffee table.

“I need to go see my father. I should be the one to tell him.”

He was silent for a moment as he contemplated, and she sat up to look at him. “We’ll leave first thing tomorrow morning.” She nodded and curled up next to him for the rest of the evening. Her unseeing stare never left his coffee table, and he sat patiently with her head in his lap. He read for most of the evening, and when it was late, she rolled to her back, looking up at him. He set his book on the arm of the sofa and stroked the smooth unblemished skin of her cheek.

“You need to rest. I think you should try to get some sleep.”

“Will you come to bed with me?” Her voice was quiet, pleading in an incredibly vulnerable way.

“Of course.” He stroked the hair out of her eyes, and she smiled. It was small, hesitant, but it was a smile.

Chapter 23

The sun was already showing when they left in Angus’ SUV toward Massachusetts Correctional Institution. The trip took an hour, and by the time they were there, the sun was high in the late-morning sky. When Angus said he’d wait in the car for her, she looked to him. He looked fine, but it wasn’t an overcast day, and she knew he couldn’t be comfortable, but he kissed her gently and told her to go.

It wasn’t visiting day, but under the circumstances and given her profession, she was allowed to see her father. He cried. He apologized. He begged her forgiveness. He was a sad old man now that she barely recognized anymore, and she felt sorry for him. She’d hated him for abandoning them when he was arrested, but she pitied him more than anything now.

“You get the son of a bitch that done this to your momma, Brit. Hear me?” His voice was gravely as he spoke, his light brown eyes, which matched hers so perfectly, glistened in tears. He was a train wreck of a person, but he’d always loved her mother in his own way.

She nodded but said nothing. There was nothing she wanted more in her life at the moment. But her intentions looked far different now than they did only a few weeks ago. She wanted him dead. And not in the overused, off-the-cuff statement sort of way. She wanted him truly and wholly dead and in the ground. He had no place among the living, and she didn’t much give a shit if it went against what her life had stood for all these years. Catching the bad guy didn’t sound nearly as much fun as destroying the bad guy did at the moment.

She said her good-bye quickly as she shook off her sudden need to cry, and when her father hugged her hard to his body, he spoke in her ear one more time. “You go on and get that son a bitch, girl.” She sniffed her nose as she walked out the door and dashed a lone tear from her cheek before the guard caught it.

Angus was in the car waiting for her, and she noticed immediately that he looked exhausted, and his pale skin looked mildly flushed as if fevered. For a man who looked as timeless as he truly was, it startled her. He caught the expression of concern and quickly kissed her. “I’m fine, love. I’ll be right as rain by nightfall.”

She watched him during the trip back to the city. She could tell he was uncomfortable by the set of his body. He stretched his neck unconsciously and shifted in his seat as though there was no finding comfort, and when he didn’t realize she was looking, she caught his lips pulling back in a pained grimace.

Once they were finally inside, he excused himself to the bathroom, and she heard the shower running. When she peaked in on him, feeling a bit nosy but wanting to see that he was okay, she caught the burns across his skin. His back, his chest, were marred by large patches that looked like carpet burns as though the top layers had been worn through. He caught her, and she tried for a small smile.

“Can I join you?” He’d hurt himself for her sake, and guilt was the least of what she was feeling. She was more depressed and sad than she could recall ever being and seeing him in pain on her account wasn’t helping any.

But he shook his head. “As much as I’d love that, the water’s too cool. I’ll be out in a moment.” And then seeing the concern she was trying hard but failing to hide, he continued, “I’m fine, Brit. It’ll heal.”

She waited for him, sitting cross-legged on the bathroom counter, and when he emerged, he smiled gently at her. The large patches of raw skin were already shrinking, and the furious red of the inflamed tissue was fading to pink. “What can I do? Do you need blood to heal?”

He smirked as he approached her. “Yes, dear, I do. But I won’t be taking yours. The last thing I need is you becoming a bloodsucking monster like your boyfriend and hating yourself for the rest of eternity on my account.”

There was a smack of rejection to his words that didn’t quite make sense to her, and she glanced away from him quickly. He didn’t have to worry about death, aging, threat, and the sadness she was trying so desperately to cope with. But he also didn’t have to deal with her for eternity, and perhaps he liked it that way. Her heart hurt to think that his life would be shared with people, women, someday that didn’t even exist in the world right now. He was eternal, and she was nothing more than a passing whim. He wasn’t trying to hurt her or reject her, but oddly, it felt that way.

He was studying her face. She could feel the slack muscles of her cheeks as her brain tortured her, and he was seeing it visibly play out on her features. “What’s wrong?” He reached for her cheek, trying hard to get her to look at him. But she only shook her head. Why was she doing this to herself now? Wasn’t it enough to feel the torture of losing her mother? Did she have to torture herself with the idea of losing him as well? Of course she did.

When he lay down on his bed and closed his eyes she crawled onto the bed with him. She’d never actually seen him sleep, but he looked very human at the moment, and before long, he was asleep. She studied his features, trying to let go of her very pathetic and vulnerable feelings for him. She wanted something. She wanted something that she couldn’t ask for, and the fact she felt so disposable at the moment didn’t help. She didn’t actually believe she was disposable to him. She’d given up thinking he just valued her on a purely physical level a while ago, but the fact she was mortal meant she was disposable, and it conflicted with what she wanted. What she needed now. Whether she was a passing whim to him or not made no difference. Her mind was made up, and as she watched him sleep, she contemplated many things.

* * * *

Waking up from his half sleep to her hand on his thigh was absolute heaven. She was caressing and gentle. His pain was gone, and his wounds held only the slightest of sensation signaling they were nearly healed. She moved her fingers up to his groin, encircling the shaft of his penis and squeezing. When he opened his eyes, he smiled at her.

Fuck; he was definitely still in love with her.

She watched him nervously, and he wondered where the nerves were coming from. She looked hesitant, and for a woman who’d touched and experienced every last ounce of his body, it seemed odd she should be so nervous.

She forced a smile to her mouth. “Brit, what’s wrong?” She shook her head and shrugged mildly, but there wasn’t a shred of truth to her response. She stopped him quick when she leaned to his mouth and kissed him. She trailed her mouth down along his chest, and then to his waist, and when her lips passed over his now engorged and large erection, he groaned loudly. She sank as far along his length as she could bear before pulling slowly back up.

When she stood, it was to take her clothes off, and he watched her body as it was revealed to him. His cock wouldn’t stop dancing on his stomach as he watched her. She stripped off her shirt quickly, unhooking her bra and letting it fall to the floor. She had generous breasts for her small frame and they were tight and perky at her young age. Her nipples were small and deliciously pink, and as he studied them, he reached for his erection and stroked.

When she pulled her pants and underwear down, stepping out of them quickly, his penis jumped off his stomach. Could his cock make his body move, he’d have tackled her to the floor and impaled her in a microsecond at this sight. She was stunning. She was hairless, and while he’d experienced every fashion of pubic regions over the centuries, he’d developed a new taste for this style since meeting her. Shaved had never been his thing until he met her. But she was his favorite, and he’d have had her no other way than this.

He loved seeing every last bit of her lips and mound. He loved running his hand over the smooth, soft skin, knowing her silken creamy wetness was only one stroke between her lips. He got lost in the view of her on more than one occasion and this day was no different. She climbed on the bed at his side, moving to straddle his hips. She rolled her hips into his as his cock slipped between the length of her slit, coating itself on her moisture, and when she grasped the shaft, rose to her knees, and gently pushed down over him as his cockhead pushed through to her sheath, she groaned, and he did too.

She rocked her hips, and his hands went mindlessly to clutch her hips as she moved. Her breasts bounced slightly as she humped his body, and he wanted to lean up to them, but before he could, she leaned over his body, letting her breasts nestle against his chest. She pushed back down over his length, taking him to her core, and as he groaned and his mouth fell open, her attention moved to his teeth. She’d seen them plenty, but she studied them as she moved.

She gently cupped his cheeks, and she kissed him sweetly. She pushed down hard to him and squeezed her sheath around him. It incited another guttural, responsive groan, and she traced his lips with her thumbs as he let go of his moan.

She leaned to his mouth again, still cupping his cheeks and caressing his lips with her thumbs, and on a haunting voice that would stay with him for eternity, she spoke quietly, “Sorry.”

He was confused by her apology for half a second, until he felt the subtle pop of tissue over his top fangs, tasted her blood in his mouth, and heard her pained cry erupt from her mouth. At that moment, confusion turned to all out shock. He was frozen and stunned as he realized what she’d done, and without consciously realizing what he was doing, he shoved her body harshly off his. She watched him with a stunned look on her face. She’d done it on purpose; there was no doubt about it, but she looked as shocked as he felt regardless.

“Oh, fuck, what have you done?” He was almost yelling as he turned on her pinning her to the mattress. Her thumbs were bleeding, and as he pulled them to him, he could easily see the puncture wounds in the pad of each one. She was trembling, near tears and looked terrified. He pulled both of her thumbs between his lips, sucking hard, knowing it would do little good. Their toxin was a microorganism just as small as any other and more than small enough to infiltrate her blood stream quickly and effectively. After only a moment of sucking her blood into his mouth, he abandoned it and grabbed his cell phone, calling Bremmer.

After asking him to come to his residence and disconnecting before he could even ask why, he rounded on her again. She’d sat to the side of the bed and had her back to him. “Do you have any idea what you’ve just done?” He was still yelling. She ignored him, and he glared at her back, watching her tremble. He was livid, he was confused, and he was scared as hell.

Bremmer arrived moments later—just as Angus stood and started pacing. Bremmer stopped abruptly as he entered. “Is there a reason I’m walking into a room with you two naked for some particular reason? You’re lovely, Brit, but it’s not really my thing.”

Angus glared at Brit in response, before snarling, “Why don’t you ask Brit what she did?” He snatched up a pair of pants he’d discarded on the chair as Brit finally turned toward them, pulling the sheets up around her body. She had tears streaked down her cheeks, and she looked so helpless and upset that he nearly crumbled. But then he got hold of himself once again. She’d tricked him. She’d used him. And for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out why. She hated what they did. She hated what they depended on to survive. And yet, she’d walked headlong into turning herself into a monster she could never tolerate being.