Nightwind (18 page)

His right hand moved, slid under the fabric of her dress and unerringly found the wetness at the juncture

of her thighs. He felt her clamp down on his fingers as he slid them inside her. “Do you still want me?”

Her hand tensed in his hair. “I will always want you, Syntian.”

His fingers probed gently. “And what will you give me if I pleasure you this day, Maxine Grant?”

All her fear had vanished with the touch of his flesh against her own. Her hunger was so great she would

have devoured him if it were possible. Her hand on his cheek caressed him; the hand in his hair smoothed

the soft strands from his face. “Whatever you wish for, my demon,” she answered.

“Your daughter?” he queried. “Will you give me your daughter?”

There was no hesitation. “Yes.”

He smiled.

Lauren was outof breath when she reached the telephone. “Hello?”

“I just called to tell you I’ll be going away for a few weeks.”

“Mama?” Lauren’s brows drew together. “Going where?”

“To visit your Aunt Ivonne,” her mother answered in a dreamy voice. “I needed a vacation and that’s

where I’m going.”

“Isn’t this rather sudden?” Lauren inquired, not liking, nor understanding, the tone of her mother’s voice.

“Don’t get impertinent with me, missy!” her mother snapped. “You’ve got the number in Wewahitchka if

you need me.”

Lauren stared at the telephone, as the connection was broken. Slowly she replaced the receiver and

stood there in her living room, confusion moving over her face. She nearly jumped out of her skin when

the phone rang again. “Did you forget something?” she asked.

“Are you still angry with me?” His voice was gentle, reflecting the uncertainty of his reception.

Lauren’s heart thudded hard in her chest. “No,” she whispered, wanting to apologize to him for the ugly

insinuation she had made earlier that day, but not knowing how to begin.

“Then will you please let me take you to supper this evening?” There was a thread of insecurity in his

tone that told her he was prepared for her rejection of him.

“I would love to,” she answered immediately. She smiled at the sigh on the other end of the phone.

“Seven?” he whispered.

“Seven would be fine.”

Maxine Fowler laywith her arms behind her head, intent on the expensive clothes that were covering

Syntian Cree’s magnificent body. As he buttoned his silk shirt, she licked her lips, watching as his strong

fingers threaded the pearl studs through the buttonholes. “How old were you, Syntian?” she asked, her

regard moving over the width of his shoulders and down to the tapering of his waist.

He looked around at her. “When I left the world?” At her silent nod, he shrugged. “Thirty-four in Earth

years.” He reached for his jacket that hung on the footboard of her bed.

“Will you ever age?” Her face had taken on a look of intense sorrow.

He shook his head. “No.”

A remorseful sigh escaped Maxine’s lips and she turned over in the bed, a bed still damp from their wild

lovemaking, and buried her face in the pillow. “I will,” she said.

“You already have,” he said in an unkind voice.

She flinched, tears gathering. A shaft of anger drove through her to replace the languid warmth of a

moment before. “Just as Lauren will,” she reminded him.

He slipped into his jacket. “I am aware of that, Maxine.”

She looked over her shoulder at him. “And will you want her when she is old and gray and wrinkled as I

am?”

He glanced up at her as he moved his shoulders to settle his jacket more comfortably about him. “I will

teach her what she needs to know to keep her beauty for as long as humanly possible. Had you been a

different sort of woman, Maxine, I would have taught you such things.”

“Like you have taught Angeline?”

He shook his head. “I have taught her only ways of the flesh. That was all she required. Others have

taught her what she knows of maintaining her looks.”

Maxine sat up. “Why did you abandon me?” she shouted at him. “It was I who called you, demon!”

He walked to the door, intending not to answer her, but a spark of annoyance lit and he turned to face

her. “Do you remember what pledge I had you make before I ever laid hands to you, Maxine?” At the

furious shake of her head, he nodded. “Oh, aye, you do. Think back, Maxine. What did I ask of you in

return for the demands you made on me?”

She stubbornly refused to answer, not wanting to remember her own foolishness at the bargain she had

made. She turned her face away from the glorious beauty of his dark face.

“Answer me, Maxine,” he ordered, his voice stern, uncompromising.

She looked around at him. Her mouth was set in a mulish pout.

“Maxine,” he warned, taking a step toward her.

“You made me swear an oath,” she said grudgingly.

“In your own blood,” he injected.

“In my own blood!” she snapped. Her chin lifted. “That I would never do harm to another like myself.”

“But you did,” he prodded.

Her mouth twisted with memory. “Angeline Brewster was a little nothing!”

“A little nothing just like you,” he taunted. He stepped closer to her, smiling at the way she scooted

herself up in the bed, fearful he would lunge at her and do to her what she knew him capable. “Angeline

hungered just as you did for the very things I gave you. But you tried to murder her, didn’t you, Maxine?

And you would have succeeded had I not stepped in to take the bullet meant for her!” His eyes were hot

with accusation. “Instead of trying to help her, you put every obstacle you could conjure into her path

then you tried to kill her. For that, I took revenge in her name.”

“But you were mine! You are blood-pledged to my family line! Not hers!” she protested, her lips

trembling.

“I heard her calling, just as I heard you calling,” he answered. He stared at her. “And she is blood of

your blood, Maxine. Family of your family.”

“Fourth cousins don’t count!” Maxine denied.

“Aye, they do,” he responded. “The bloodline carries on from generation to generation. You know that.”

“But you had made a pact with me!” Maxine whimpered. “With me, Syntian Cree!”

“And I fulfilled that pact,” he reminded her, “until you broke it by attempting to harm your own flesh and

blood. I did what you wanted. I made you a woman.”

“Then left me for that whore!” Tears cascaded down her cheeks. “I loved you, Syntian. I loved you!”

“You still do,” he said with a snarl. “And you always will.”

She turned her head away.

“But you didn’t learn from that time years ago, did you, Maxine?” he asked, driving the spur of his

dislike further into her. “You have tried to keep your own daughter from learning of her heritage, haven’t

you?”

Her head snapped around and she flared at him. “I tried to keep Lauren safe from brutes like you!”

“Safe?” he scoffed. “You tried to deny her the very humanity with which she had been born!”

“I wanted to keep her pure!”

“You wanted to keep her ignorant,” he shot back. “You wanted to keep her under your thumb for as

long as you paced this Earth.” His face was hot with fury. “But I would not allow that.”

“You will do to her what you did to me then abandon her just as you did me!” Maxine shouted. “She

will grow to love you and you will corrupt her as you corrupted me and Angeline and every other mortal

woman who’s known your evil touch! Lauren will pay for letting you put your filthy hands on her!”

His sneer was deadly. “Just as you let me put my filthy hands on you?”

“Get out!” she yelled at him. “Go to her! Take her, for all I care! She deserves what you’re going to do

to her!” She flung herself down in the bed and began to wail in fury.

He stood there for a moment, disgust and loathing stamped on his handsome face. “Consider yourself

lucky I did not come to you as I did to those other women, Maxine.”

Her sobbing stopped and she flipped over in the bed, staring.

“Aye, lady,” he said savagely. “They knew the hate of the NightWind. Would you like to feel it, as

well?”

Maxine pushed herself up against the headboard. “That was you?” she whispered.

“Don’t interfere with what I plan, Maxine,” he threatened. “You would not like to pay the price for

meddling this time, I can assure you.”

“Aren’t you goingto eat?” she asked him.

Syn shook his head, put his hand on his stomach. “I started feeling a little queasy on the way over to

your place.” He smiled ruefully. “I think it was something I ate yesterday that’s upset my system.”

“Maybe we should just skip supper then.”

“Nonsense,” he declared, shaking his head. “I can get just as much pleasure watching you dine as I

could from ingesting the food myself.” He laughed. “And not gain any of the calories.”

Her laughter was like a tinkle of silver bells. “But you don’t mind me having them, huh?”

His gaze smoothed over her flushed face. “I like my women full-bodied.”

Lauren felt her face grow hot. She looked down at the napkin in her lap, not sure how to answer such a

blatant attempt at flirtation.

“I really should apologize for the other day,” she finally said, glancing up to see him watching her. “About

what I called you.”

“Actually,” he said, leaning back in his chair and folding his arms over his wide chest, “after I thought

about it for a while, I rather liked the notion that you thought I was a gigolo.” He grinned openly at her

look of acute embarrassment. “No really,” he continued. “At least you don’t find me unattractive and I

was beginning to think you did.”

Her head came up. “You’re joking.”

“Not in the least.” He tilted his head to one side. “You didn’t seem all that eager to go out with me.”

“It wasn’t you,” she answered in a low voice.

“Must have been my cologne then,” he teased then winked at her. “Or my deodorant.”

“You’re an incorrigible flirt, aren’t you, Mr. Cree?”

“I’ve been known to be.”

Her smile widened. “Where are you from, anyway?”

He wagged his brows. “A galaxy far, far away.” Her laughter made his heart soar with affection. “Why,

Lauren, don’t you believe me?” His lower lip thrust out in a seductive pout.

“I think I’d believe anything you told me,” she laughed. “You make everything you say sound so

sincere.”

“I am sincere, woman,” he cautioned her. Unfolding his arms, he leaned forward, bracing his elbows on

the clean white linen of the tabletop. “You can believe that anything I tell you will be the one hundred

percent truth.”

She grinned. “What planet?”

“Rysalia.”

Lauren clucked her tongue with mock disgust. “A barbarian.”

His left brow crooked upward. “You’ve heard of it?” There was a look of wonder on his handsome

face.

“Just this side of Andromeda,” she teased. “Beyond the mountains of the moon.”

He laughed, understanding her literary allusion. “Well-read and well-versed.” He nodded. “I like that in a

woman.”

“So you’re Scottish,” she commented, alluding to his slight accent.

“I am an Outlander from beyond the mountains,” he admitted, but he didn’t say what mountains or in

what land those mountains lay.

“And your purpose here on Earth?” she asked, her face perfectly still although her lips twitched in wry

amusement.

He leaned closer, lowered his voice. “To take a Terran woman to wife.”

“I see.” she smiled sweetly at him. “To re-populate your planet?”

He sighed. “To make my life less lonely.”

Lauren’s brows shot upward. “That won’t do.”

He frowned. “Why not?”

“You’re suppose to be here for nefarious purposes, barbarian. No self-respecting star traveler would

come to Earth for anything other than to cause mischief.”

His smile returned. “Oh, I do that, too.” He sniffed. “In my spare time.”

“When you’re not looking for a wife?”

“Precisely so.”

“And what kind of wife are you looking for?” She winced at her question although it seemed to carry on

the fantastical quality of their conversation. “One who is a good breeder?” His answer made her blink.

“One such as I once knew,” he answered quietly.

There was such sadness in his tone, such inner misery Lauren was taken aback. His answer put a

damper on the frivolity of their intercourse and she was stunned to realize this man had been married. She

wanted to clarify the realization.

“You were married?”

He nodded. “A long, long time ago.” He looked away from her across the crowded restaurant.

“What happened?” She had to know what had brought such agony to his face, such terrible longing to

his dark eyes.

He looked back at her. “She died.”

Lauren felt a stab of pity. “I’m sorry.”

Syn shrugged. “As I said, it was a long, long time ago.”

“But you still feel the pain of it.”

“I always will.” His gaze fused with hers. “I think you know what such pain feels like, don’t you, Lauren?

In a different way, but a lonely pain just the same.”

She shifted her look from his. “I’ve known moments of unhappiness, yes.” She flinched as his hand

covered hers on the tabletop. Looking down at the strong, bronzed fingers caressing her own, she knew

a moment of utter joy that rocketed through her entire being.

“Let me make you happy, Lauren. Let me make you feel all the things you have always wanted to feel.”

She withdrew her hand from beneath his and placed it in her lap. She took a deep breath before she

could answer him. “I think you have misjudged me.”

The waiter brought her food and apologized for interrupting her. She smiled at him and looked down at