The Purest of the Breed (The Community) (25 page)

Luvera whirled around at the sound of her window swishing open, her hand tightening around her brush as a dark-clothed man slipped silently inside her bedroom. “Shọn,” she gasped. “Stars in the sky, what are you doing here?”

“Haven’t seen you in a long time, Luvera. Months. Not since we—”

She made a
shushing
noise. “Be quiet! My mother is just down the hall.” And she couldn’t bear to hear him say
kiss
. “If she finds you here, she’ll kill me.”

He shrugged as if a tree stump cared more than he did. “If you don’t come to me, I gotta come to you.”

“No. You don’t. I told you that what we did was a mistake.” She glanced furtively at her bedroom door. “Please, go.”

His black eyes settled on her with that peculiar unmoving watchfulness of his. “You saying you didn’t like kissing me? ’Cause it seems to me that you did.”

She turned to set her brush on the vanity, angling her face aside to hide the sudden blush heating her cheeks.

“Naw,” he answered for her, “what you’re saying is you still have your heart set on Alex.” He leaned back against the windowsill, bracing his hands on either side of his hips, his legs sprawled out in a look of casual debauchery. “I was hanging out under the bleachers tonight, watching Alex’s band play. Damn, they only made it through
one
song. That’s messed up.”

Her mind called up the image again: Alex standing in front of the mic, the spotlight encasing him in a bubble of illumination, the light gleaming off the golden strands of his hair. He’d sung a rock ballad in a mesmerizingly deep voice, the tensile muscles in his forearm flexing rhythmically while he strummed his guitar. The unmated females in the audience had been utterly riveted, hardly breathing, all eyes pinned on him. As the last chord of the first song had died away, there was an astounded hush. Then something had just…snapped, and every unmated woman shrieked ecstatically and rushed the stage. Their reaction had been so unexpected that a few actually reached Alex and tore some material off his tie-dye shirt before Jaċken was able to fling his brother-in-law over his shoulder and take off for safety, the other warriors leaping into crowd control.

“Not so good for you,” Shọn mused, “is it?”

“What do you mean by that?” Why did she even ask? She didn’t want to hear his answer.

“You saw the unmateds, Luvera. Something changed tonight. Alex is no longer Mister Untouchable Fey, but the hot guitar player every girl wants to get her hands on.
Every girl
.” He made a sound in his throat and shook his head. “If you had a slim chance at Alex before, you sure don’t have a hope in hell now.”

“Why, thank you,” she said through set teeth and a clamped jaw. “I didn’t realize I sat so far down on the desirable woman scale.” Tears soured her throat like bile. “Why do
you
even want me, Shọn?”

She expected him to say something like, “I already told you that I think you’re pretty,” not what he did say.

“We’re alike, Luvera, you and I. Both of us a couple of misfits.”

Her hands curled in on themselves, her fingers gouging her palms as a raw pain landed in her chest. She knew what Shọn was doing. Her logical mind told her that he was purposely shaking her confidence so that she’d turn to him in her need. But it didn’t matter what she knew. It worked all the same because…

Because it was the truth.

She
was
a misfit: an insignificant, unlovable oddball. Undeserving of her father’s love by virtue of her sex, certainly never good enough for her mother, regardless of her efforts. And then there was Dev, who was too busy being better than she was, off saving the world, to notice that his little sister was being crushed under the weight of her own nothingness. Shọn was right; being who she was, how could she possibly hope to stand out among the competition of
every girl
? In the back of her mind, she’d hoped that giving Alex an…an erection meant something. But, really, didn’t human males get erections easily, like, all by themselves in the shower from just washing and such? Truth was, she didn’t have a hope in hell.

She came shakily to her feet, her knees threatening not to hold her. “Why do you keep doing this to me?” She felt like a wet rag Shọn was wringing out. “Do you get a perverse pleasure from stealing my hope?”

“No. Just the opposite.” He looked up at her. “I’m trying to keep your head out of the clouds so you don’t get hurt.”

“Well, it
does
hurt,” she hissed on a bitter breath. “I don’t want to be reminded about how wrong I am, Shọn. I don’t want to think it or feel it,
ever
. Okay? Thinking about it forces me to face that…that there’s no escape.”
Anatomy is destiny
, and all that crud. She was who she was, so she was stuck with herself for the rest of her whole stupid life.

Shọn straightened off the window sill, something alarmingly predatory in the way he moved, his eyes fixed on her. He came toward her, his strides fluid with dangerous grace, and stopped right in front of her, heat and muscle and threat. “You shouldn’t feel wrong.” He grabbed her by the shoulder, his grip firm, and whisked a knife from the back of his belt.

Her throat shut off. She’d said there was no escape, and maybe in some twisted part of Shọn’s mind he thought that murdering her would be a gallant gesture. Death was, after all, the ultimate escape. A shudder shook her to her bones. But she didn’t want to die. No matter how painful her loneliness and self-doubt, she always found pieces of life to enjoy.

“Let me help you feel right.” Shọn’s knife flashed.

She gasped, but… He didn’t cut her.

He cut himself.

From the edge of her vision, she saw blood bead like a string of seed rubies along the white flesh of his inner forearm. The scent struck her like a velvet punch to the face, a direct hit to the olfactory bulb. Her chin snapped up and a low moan pushed out of her throat. It didn’t matter that she’d fed just yesterday; that had been on stinky Limburger cheese donor blood. Unmated male was…was decadence. Saliva flooded her mouth, her gums throbbing with the elongation of her fangs. Every parched molecule in her body was suddenly starving.

Shọn pressed her down onto the vanity stool, following her to crouch at her feet. “Lick it,” he ordered her quietly, moving his forearm closer.

She shook her head.

“Yes.” His eyes darkened like a trick of the light—how could black turn so much blacker? “Do it.” He sheathed his knife, freeing his hand to push up her long skirt, slowly sliding it from her ankles all the way to the tops of her knees.

Her heart bounded into a wild rhythm.

He bent his dark head to her knee and kissed the inside of it, just near the bend.

Her lips parted as her stomach flapped nervously. “Shọn,” she protested softly.

He nudged her skirt higher, nuzzling the inside of her thigh.

She exhaled raggedly, an ache pulsing through her privates, thudding in time to the riotous beat of her heart.

He kissed her inner thigh, and she jerked. Heavens, she’d had no idea the skin down there was so sensitive.

“Lick my blood,” Shọn murmured against her flesh. “Then I can lick you.”

She stopped breathing, oxygen hanging suspended halfway up her throat, as if waiting for her answer. Was she actually considering it? She turned her head toward Shọn’s forearm, watching a droplet of his blood ease down his skin, slick and shiny in invitation. She flared her nostrils and wetted her lips. To a human, that blood would appear no more than red. To her, it was the vermillion shade of a Greek god’s lips, the magenta of a sunrise after a month of darkness, the bloom of a scarlet rose in the middle of the Antarctic: a
perfect
delicious red.

Her skirt was up around her waist now—when had that happened?—and Shọn’s broad shoulders were pushed between the V of her splayed legs, his eyes bright and focused on her panties.

Heat drenched her face. Her plain cotton underwear was as ugly as the rest of her clothing.

He made an excited snuffling sound. “You smell good.”

Her pulse jumped and sweat collected along her spine. Gazing down at where Shọn was positioned, it was easy to imagine his head pushed deeply between her thighs, the silky spikes of his hair brushing her skin while his tongue explored her secret place. Would it be traumatizing and mortifying or…feel incredibly good? That was,
if
a Blood Ride worked and there wouldn’t be any pain.

And
she managed not to bite him.

She couldn’t believe she was thinking this through.

Shọn ran his fingers along the top edge of her panties, and her lids drooped, her skin warming where he touched her. Heaven help her, there was a part of her that didn’t want him to stop.

She felt Shọn’s fingers tremble as he gently tugged at her panties, pulling the garment low, lower until—

A door opened and closed at the end of the hall, and the clap-clap of Pettrila’s heeled slippers headed toward Luvera’s bedroom.

Luvera’s mouth opened on a silent cry, and she shoved at Shọn’s shoulders.

But he was already moving. Silent as a wraith, he rolled out of her window, the swift breath of his passage leaving behind a stirring of her curtains and nothing more.

Chapter Twenty-five

Marissa had never wanted to have sex with a man so much in her life.
Three months
of dating studmuffin Dev Nichita, and she hadn’t had any action beyond a few kisses here and there.
Why
? was the question strobing in bright lights across the front of her brain. She’d run the gamut of confused, hurt, insecure, and angry, and still hadn’t come up with an answer. Because it didn’t make sense. Not to be conceited about it, but she was hot. So fricking hot that she’d never had trouble getting a guy. Keeping him was a different matter, but getting him had always been a breeze. Not that the why of it mattered anymore. No, come hell or high water, she was getting laid before the end of their date tonight—or in the middle of it, either way—and stuff Dev’s lame excuses.

She was prepped for a do-or-die campaign. In the corner of her room she’d set up a small round table with a pristine white tablecloth, china plates, silver service, and long-stemmed wine goblets, the crystal reflecting the light of two burning votives. Her outfit was also designed to entice. A while back the cheerleader getup she’d danced around in for that football game had driven Dev insane, so tonight she was wearing a modified version of that: a pleated miniskirt that showed off her long, tanned legs, plus a blouse with a low, scooped neckline and a hem that barely reached the waistband of the skirt, the style highlighting both her small waist and some seriously plumped-up cleavage. If she wasn’t able to take him down with this, then she didn’t know what.

A knock.

Aha
! She crossed her room and opened the door. “Hey!” She smiled at Dev, secretly squeezing the doorknob until her palm hurt to keep from flinging herself at him, legs wrapped around his waist, arms encircling his strong neck. The mere sight of him, as usual, was sending her belly into a crazy Roaring ’20’s shimmy. He was dressed simply in button-fly jeans, a gray T-shirt, and a pair of brown suede boots, but he was such a ridiculously good-looking and well-built son of a gun, it was all she could do not to perform an old-fashioned Victorian-age swoon.

“Come on in,” she said.

Dev stood frozen on her doorstep, a bottle of wine clutched in his hands. His eyes roamed over her body, and his silver irises heated to sterling.

Was he picturing her naked? God, she hoped so.

“What…here?” he asked. “In your bedroom?”

“Sure, why not?” She had to fight the temptation to bat her eyelashes innocently. “It’s a nice place for a romantic dinner.”
And I plan to use the bed around dessert time
. She gestured toward her cozy setup. “See?”

A panicky look flickered across his face. “Um…why don’t we get a drink at Garwald’s first?”

She felt her smile narrowing at the corners.
What’s your fricking problem, Dev
?! “You might want to take a whiff of dinner before you say that.” She jerked her thumb over her shoulder into her bedroom. “There’s some tasty food in here.”

He still made no move to enter, standing like a chunk of stone, his eyes tight at the edges.

She fought down the urge to bare her teeth at him. This wasn’t insulting
at all
, nuh uh. “Not hungry?” she asked tartly. “That’s a first.”

“Um, no. Sorry,” he murmured, crossing into her room. “You just look so beautiful tonight, and I’m…it’s making an idiot out of me.”

That brought back her smile. Oh, well, in that case…
forgiven and forgotten
.

“Here.” He handed her the bottle of wine he’d brought.

“Oh, great.” It was a very nice Côtes de France Bordeaux. “I already have something breathing, though, so we can have this later, okay?”

“That’s fine.”

She set Dev’s bottle on the wet bar, then picked up the one she’d already opened. “Are you familiar with the Italian Amarone?”

His expression brightened. “It’s one of my favorite reds.” He settled himself at the table.

She moved to the back of his chair and studied him, lazily running her eyes over the brush of dark hair against his collar, a tiny razor nick at the place where his cheek met his jaw, the artful shape of his ear. She recognized what this fascination with the smallest parts of him meant. She was completely infatuated with this man. Three months of dating bliss had established roots out of the seeds of connection they’d planted the day of the rock-wall climb. Their time together had been the greatest; everywhere they went, they enjoyed themselves. They talked effortlessly and laughed with even more ease. The only thing she could find to grumble about was the lack of sex. And the complaint wasn’t even about missing out on a “fun lay,” the category she’d originally assigned for Dev. Now getting together with him was about far more than getting her orgasm on; from the foundation they’d built, she ached to deepen the intimacy between them.