Nightwind (19 page)

the platter of steak sizzling before her.

“It looks good. That will be all,” Syntian said.

Bowing elegantly, the waiter bid them a good meal and walked away.

“You were saying?” Syn encouraged, lifting his wine glass to take a sip.

“I’m not a very sophisticated person,” she said, picking up her knife and fork to score the meat. She

concentrated on the food before her, avoiding his eyes that she could feel steady on her face. “And I’m a

bit old-fashioned.”

“You don’t kiss on the first date.”

She looked up at him, her utensils still. “That’s not all I wouldn’t do.”

He sat back, regarding her with half-closed lids. “I am aware of that, Lauren. If I insinuated otherwise, I

apologize.”

She looked away, fearing she had misread his intentions in the things he had said to her. “If I offended

you again, I apologize.”

“No, you did not,” he interrupted. He smiled as she glanced up at him. “I am offering you my friendship,

my companionship, Lauren.” His smile widened. “Unless you wish me to prove my barbarism to you by

committing some of those nefarious deeds all star travelers engage in upon landing on Earth.”

“Such as?” she shot back, relaxing in the glow from his warm eyes.

“Rape, ravaging, pillaging of the first order.” His face shone. “I’m quite good at all three.”

Her giggle was quick in coming. “I don’t doubt it for a minute.”

“Shall I ravage you then?”

She shook her head as she speared a cube of steak and placed it between her lips. “I don’t think so.”

“Soon, though?”

“Before you return to Rysalia,” she promised.

“I’ll hold you to that,” he said in all seriousness. He leaned toward her and lowered his voice. “Among

other things.”

She nearly choked on the meat in her mouth and had to take a hasty swallow of the red wine at her

plate.

“Gotcha.” He chuckled, wiggling an admonishing finger at her.

The meal was delicious. The conversation was lively and just bordered on the risqué. Her companion’s

presence caught the attention of every woman in the room and many found it necessary to pass their table

on the way to the ladies room, their hungry gazes devouring the man who ignored them.

“Would you like to go to a movie?” he asked as she finished the last of her coconut cream pie.

Stuffed as she was, Lauren could barely nod. “I’d love to. Do you know what’s playing?” She lifted her

napkin to wipe her mouth.

“There’s a horror movie at the Cineplex.” He stopped at her laughter. “What?”

“Mrs. Hellstrom warned me about your love of horror movies.”

He looked crestfallen. “You don’t like them,” he said in a disappointed voice.

“On the contrary,” she answered, watching his head come up. “The gorier, the better.”

His smile was radiant. “Hellraiser Five is at the Cinema Nine.”

“BloodWind is playing at the Riverview Quadriplex,” she countered.

Syntian’s brows shot up. “Fancy that one, do you?”

She nodded. “I’m an Eric McCormack fan.” She cocked her head to one side. “As a matter of fact, you

look a lot like him.”

He shook his head. “I’m much more handsome.”

“And from Rysalia, not Toronto.”

The movie wasgood: filled with haunting music and, to Lauren’s embarrassment, a good deal of the

players’ naked flesh. She hadn’t counted on there being so much overt sex in the plot.

“Rather effective use of his hands, don’t you agree?” Syn had leaned over to whisper to her at one point

during the film and Lauren was glad for the cover of the dark theater. “I think I’ll try that.”

Soon after the lights had lowered in the room, he had managed to stretch, placing his left arm along the

back of her chair. She was reminded vividly of a schoolgirl memory of teenaged boys doing just that to

their dates when she’d been in school. It was endearing, just a tad wicked, and wholly Syntian Cree. The

fingers of his hand strayed often to her shoulder, stroking the fabric-covered flesh as he sat keenly intent

on the scenes floating by them on the screen.

“Did you enjoy it?” he asked as they walked back to his car.

“Yes, I did.” she smiled as he opened her door and waited until she was inside the car. “Good plot.”

He nodded, shut her door and walked around to the driver’s side. Climbing in, he sat, his eyes straight

ahead of him, hands on the wheel. “Not exactly accurate, but good,” he agreed before he reached down

to crank the car.

She looked over at him. “Not accurate in what way?”

He shrugged as he put his hand on the gearshift. Looking behind them, he backed out of the parking

spot. “The guy in the film was an incubus, yet he impregnated that young girl all on his own.”

“Can’t they do that?” she asked, curious that he knew so much about the infernal arts.

He shook his head. “Not unless he had become a succubus first and gathered the sperm into itself.”

Lauren didn’t understand and said so.

“An incubus is a male demon; a succubus is a female demon. The incubus and succubus are

interchangeable in most occult writings that tend to make them sexless until they visit their victims: incubi

to women and succubi to men. The demons are supposed to have the same ability to be whichever they

wish. An incubus intent on impregnating a human female can first metamorphose himself into a succubus,

gather the semen of an unsuspecting human male then transmit it, in the form of an incubus, to his female

victim.”

“But it won’t be his seed that impregnates her.”

“The dead don’t have active body fluids.”

“Demons are really dead people then?”

He nodded. “In a manner of speaking. They are the spiritual dead inhabiting mortal bodies.”

“But can they be destroyed by fire? As he was in the film?”

Syntian chuckled. “Hardly. The only way an incubus can die is to be defeated and slain during mortal

combat by one of their own kind.” He pulled up behind the line of cars waiting to exit the theater parking

lot. “Even then, it is not death as you know it. He will return to the Abyss when he leaves this plane of

existence and that is a death to be avoided at all costs.”

“Was that the only inaccuracy in the movie?”

“Demons don’t just pop up out of hell without being summoned, either. But once here, loosed, they can

act on their own if given the opportunity.” He glanced to the left before pulling into traffic.

“How come you know so much about demonology?”

He grinned. “I’m a demon, of course.”

“An incubus,” she corrected.

His eyes found hers. “At your service, milady.”

Lauren lay inbed, smiling, happy. Her thoughts were roaming back over the night, touching lightly on the

conversation they had had at the little all-night diner where, over coffee, they had laughed and joked with

one another. She sighed, thinking of what a gentleman he had been at her door, gallantly kissing her hand,

reaching out to gently touch her cheek before he turned to go.

“Syntian?” she had called out and he had stopped, turned to look back at her in the harsh glare of her

porch light.

“What, milady?”

“Thank you.”

He had bowed his head at her words. “Any time.”

She had stood on her porch and watched him drive away until the taillights of the sleek black Porsche

had blinked away in the darkness. For a long time she had stood there, breathing in the soft fragrance of

the mimosa and Cherokee rose and wisteria. The blending of the night fragrances wafted under her nose

and made her heady with their scent.

The phone rang as she crawled beneath the covers and she had known right away who was calling. She

had lifted the receiver languidly to her ear. “Aren’t you tired by now?”

There was a low chuckle at the other end. “Good night, Sweet Lady,” he had said. She heard the hollow

buzz on the line that meant he was using his cell phone.

“Good night.”

“Are you waiting for your incubus to come calling?”

Lauren giggled. “I’m ready when he is.”

There had been a long moment of silence on the phone then his voice was low and sultry. “Maybe you

should make sure your windows and doors are securely locked.”

“Somehow I don’t think that would do any good.”

“It wouldn’t,” he had answered, breaking the connection.

Lauren replaced the receiver, grinning at the way the man had of making remarks that seemed to convey

far more than the words spoken.

He hadn’t meantto go to her. He truly hadn’t, but his lust had gotten the better of him and he found

himself standing over her bed, staring down at her as she slept, aching to reach out and touch her, to

stroke the silk of her flesh, to slide his fingers into the warm moistness of her body. He watched the

gentle fall of her chest, pushing the silk fabric of her nightgown upward with each breath, and the

thickness between his thighs had grown painful and hot with need. He tried to turn away, but he couldn’t.

His hunger was too powerful, his need too great, and he reached for her, wanting her more than he had

ever wanted anything in this life or the last.

“Syn,” she whispered in her sleep.

He stilled, his groan of despair so great he thought she had heard him, but her lids only fluttered as she

turned over in her sleep. He watched her arms wrap around her pillow, drawing it to her breast and he

wished with every fiber of his being that it was him she held so tightly to her body.

“Leave her, Cree,” he heard his inner voice warn. “Get out before she wakes and finds you here.”

Yet still he could not go. He knew he had to content himself with merely looking at her, not touching her

as he so longed to do, not burying himself to the hilt inside her warm and innocent body.

Go! Now! Before it is too late. Before he let his hunger rule him.

An ache, from deep within the gut of him, rose up to fill him with a pain of such longing, such loneliness,

he wished he could weep to release it. His hands clenched into fists at his sides and his entire body

quivered with misery.

“Come away!”
another voice demanded and his head came up as he recognized Angeline’s waspish

hiss.
“Now, Syntian! Come to me!”

His teeth clenched together until the muscles in his jaw jumped. Tearing his gaze from Lauren’s sleeping

form, he stepped back into the darker shadows of her room and evaporated.

Angeline watched him form in the far corner of her bedroom, the wavering heat of his fury spiraling

around him like a mirage on the desert floor. It was his eyes that came first: hot and infinitely raging then

his body, stiff with outrage and anger.

“Behave,” she warned him. “It is I who orders you.”

His voice was a snarl of pure venom. “What do you want, Angeline?”

“You,” she answered and saw his eyes flare with such lethal intent she nearly feared him. But her own

hunger for the body beneath the black silk of his shirt and sleek black leather pants forced the fear from

her mind.

“I will not let you paw me tonight, bitch.”

“You will do whatever I ask of you, demon, or I shall send you back to the very depths of hell.”

He took a step toward her, intent on letting her have him in such a way she would never forget, or live to

remember, but her mocking smile brought him up short.

“You want her, Syntian?” she taunted. “How will you have her if you can not reach her, my lover? If you

are once more imprisoned in the muck of the primal ooze?”

He wasn’t so sure she had the power to send him back to that nether region of the Abyss since she

hadn’t been the one to summon him from it, but he couldn’t take the chance that she didn’t. He had

known women before, powerful women who had had such abilities and he had feared them, much as he

feared Angeline, although his hatred for this one ran deeper than any he had experienced in a thousand

years or more.

“Come here, Syntian,” she demanded, crooking her finger at him.

He watched her stand up and untie the silken ribbon at her throat, watched the pale peach gown slide

down her shapely body until she stood before him in curvaceous splendor.

“Don’t make me tell you again,” she warned as she ran her hands down her breasts.

“I don’t want you,” he bit out from between his clenched teeth.

“You never do.” She sighed. “Since when have I ever let that stop me from having you, Syntian?”

There was fire in his body as he went to her, jerking her roughly into his arms, slamming her nude body

against the coolness of the silk and leather of his clothing. His right hand buried itself in her long hair and

he dragged her head back until the slim column of her slender throat was exposed to him. He wished he

could sink his teeth in that pulsing flesh and rip out her throat—tear out the veins and arteries—and gorge

himself on her warm, salty blood, devour her flesh.

“Be careful what you do, Syntian,” she told him, sensing his violence as his hand tightened painfully on

her scalp.

His breath gasped from his lungs in great gulps and he was forcibly reminded that beneath the sludge of

the Abyss, he had had no breath. No warmth. No blood to course, sluggish as it did, through his veins.

He had simply existed, his mindless screaming going on and on and on. There had been no light, no

warmth nor presence in that private section of eternal punishment that had been given him. It had been

the loneliness, the overpowering aloneness that had nearly driven him insane. He knew he would never

survive another internment in that evil place without losing all presence of himself and becoming a shade in