Dark and Deadly: Eight Bad Boys of Paranormal Romance (36 page)

He snarled this time, impatient and snappish.

He moved, coming to stand behind her. Elissa didn’t look at him. It was hard to ignore her desire to turn and face him. She could feel him close behind her, her body tingling with awareness of his, veins filling with hunger to turn and step into his embrace, tiptoeing to bring her lips to his. Would he kiss her or push her away? She continued to tidy, picking up all her tongs, tweezers, spoons and stirrers and putting them into the desk drawer. She frowned, pausing with her hand on the front of the open drawer.

“Why did you choose the name Payne?” She knew fae kept their real names secret and with good reason. A fae’s real name could be used against them. If someone with power used it, the fae would be unable to resist their commands. She focused on the man behind her. He didn’t know much about fae or incubi, but she bet he knew about the name thing.

He didn’t answer.

Elissa turned to face him. “Don’t be shy. You can tell me since we’ll be working together.”

He glared at her. She smiled. His expression only darkened. Her smile only broadened. She liked the undercurrent of tension that rippled through him whenever his eyes met hers. Every time they did, the struggle returned, causing lines to bracket his sexy mouth and his eyes to narrow. Oh, he could fight it all he wanted, could fight her all he wanted, but in the end she would win and get her way.

He stepped back and folded his arms across his chest, revealing the lines of his fae markings as they tracked up the underside of his forearms. They curved upwards before disappearing under his shirtsleeves. Where did they go? She wanted to know. Did they snake over his biceps? Did they extend beyond his shoulders? Would he push her away if she traced them with her tongue or moan in pleasure and hold her closer?

That last one shocked her and she forced her eyes away from them.

“Come on, Payne. It’s just a silly simple question. I’m sure you can answer it. You’re not a dumb blond are you?”

He growled at her, flashing fangs. Elissa barely contained her smile. It was fun to tease him but she was growing tired of this standoff. She walked towards him and he rounded her, going to her desk. He planted his backside against it, crossed his long legs at the ankle and stared at the door. Oh. A man who knew how to employ the power of the silent treatment. She moved into his line of sight.

He shifted it to above her head.

Freaking curse him. She was tempted but it wouldn’t get her anywhere. Incubi were thick-skinned and he would probably punish her by leaving.

Elissa adjusted her plum halter-top to flash a little more cleavage in his direction and then toyed with her long hair.

No reaction. The blue and gold in his eyes didn’t even change. His fae markings remained placid cool grey.

It irked her.

Wasn’t she pretty enough to get his attention?

She paused.

Did she want him to think she was pretty?

No. She was just bored and annoyed, and he was stubborn. He was a challenge and she liked that. The fact that he was damned hot was just a cherry on top of a very delicious sundae.

He was a way of getting what she wanted. Luca back in her arms, safe and sound.

What she had proposed seemed like a fair exchange to her. She really didn’t understand his reluctance. It was strange. He was willing to go alone to get the ring, and might even get Luca for her too if she explained her situation and convinced him that leaving a young boy in the grasp of his grandfather was cruel, regardless of how Payne felt about incubi, but he refused to let her tag along in the role of his lover?

Most incubi would have been all over her, intent on turning it from pretend to real. Payne looked as though he wanted to run a mile from her, as soon as possible and as quickly as he could.

Elissa crossed the room and stopped before him, standing close. He didn’t look at her. His gaze remained glued on the strip of wall above the door.

She shook off her nerves and raised her hand. Was she really going to do this? Her fingers shook and she focused, trying to steady them and her trembling heart. She ran her fingertip along his collarbone. No reaction. Her gaze leapt up to his. The colours in them remained muted. He looked like a man waiting for a long jail sentence to end, as though everything depended on surviving until he made it back through that door. Why didn’t he just leave then?

Did the ring mean that much to him that he was willing to endure her company and wait until she changed her mind and did things his way?

“Is the ‘friend’ with a problem your lover?” The thought that she might be caused a weird tight sensation behind Elissa’s breastbone and acid in her stomach.

He reacted to that, his gaze darting to her and darkening. “No.”

It went back to the door.

It was progress. He didn’t have a lover. Elissa found that oddly relieving.

She upped the stakes and ran her finger over his lower lip. He bore his fangs at her but nothing more.

“I don’t like strong silent types,” she muttered and focused her magic, willing it to reveal the object of his focus.

Her insides lit up.

He was locked on her like a heat-seeking missile on an inferno. She delved a little deeper with her magic, unravelling the threads of his feelings. They were murky. Probably his mixed genes at play. She searched and found a glimmering red ribbon of desire amongst them. He did want her. There was so much black in his feelings though. She hoped it was just his genes muddling her spell and not a sign that he held endless darkness and pain inside him. She lowered her hands to his chest, resting her palms against the rock hard muscles hidden beneath his soft grey shirt.

Elissa tiptoed and shivered as their bodies came into contact. She brought her mouth to his ear, making sure their cheeks brushed. His heart thundered like a war drum against her hands and she realised something shocking. He was trembling too. She closed her eyes as he moved, his cheek against hers and his breath cool on her throat. Mother earth, it felt so good that she forgot what she had intended to say.

Her cheek heated against his.

Elissa swallowed and remembered what she had meant to ask him. “Why did you call yourself Payne?”

He grabbed her waist and pushed her away. “It is none of your business. Tell me how to find the incubi den. I desire to leave.”

Like hell he did. The remaining trace of her spell said that he wanted to stay. She would have given anything to be powerful enough to cast a telepathy spell on him. Verity had been a witch of that level. Gods, she missed her sister. Unbidden tears sprang into her eyes. Payne released her as though she was about to explode.

“I did not mean to hurt you.” He jammed his hands into his pockets.

Elissa scrubbed her eyes with the heels of her palms. “Just something in my eye.”

Payne looked away. She had never seen a man look so uncomfortable. She stared at him, trying to figure him out. There had to be a way to make him go along with her plan. She reached out without thinking and absently ran her fingers over the pronounced bumps of the markings running along his right forearm.

He was on her in a flash, his hands grasping her upper arms, claws digging into her flesh. He growled in her face, his fangs enormous and filling her vision. She flinched away, shrinking back and uttering several prayers for protection.

“I only wanted to touch them,” she whispered, unable to find the courage to speak any louder.

Payne shoved her hard onto the wooden desk chair. “Don’t touch me again. I’m not interested in your fucked up games. I don’t like being touched.”

Elissa frowned up at him, seeing the truth behind his words in his vivid blue and gold eyes. Red was bleeding into them, mixing with the other colours, subduing them.

“An incubus who doesn’t like to be touched?” She found that hard to swallow. She ran her hands over her arms, focusing her magic on them and healing the puncture wounds from his claws.

“I’m a vampire.” His low snarling tone warned her to drop it but witches had never been a species who backed off in any situation, even one that could end in blood and death.

She laughed and pointed to his markings. “The writing is there for all to see! A dazzling lineage too... all powerful incubi.”

Payne turned on her again, his eyes red now and pupils elliptical. He bore his fangs at her. “I’m a vampire!”

Elissa sighed and curled up on the chair. She really had to stop provoking him. She tried hard to resist but in the end, it slipped out. “Deny it all you want. You are an incubus in part, but you really don’t like that part, do you?”

He snarled at her. “Shut the fuck up.”

Elissa did hold her tongue this time. His fae markings were black and red. She knew a little about an incubus’s markings and those were the colours to watch out for. Anger. Rage. A burning need for violence. Death to anyone who said the wrong thing. She toyed with the nearest spell book, giving him time to cool off so he didn’t kill her.

Payne unleashed a low curling growl and shoved away from the desk. He paced across the room behind her and she could sense his eyes on her the whole time, boring into the back of her head. His agitation flowed from him in tangible waves, darkening the atmosphere.

“Just do whatever you need to do to help me.” He stalked back across the room.

Elissa’s gaze followed him. Was helping him a possibility? He had said that her toying with him and her requests were messed up, but there was something about him that warned he was seriously screwed up in the head.

He shot a glare her way and her eyes darted to the books on the desk. She thumbed through one of them, pretending to look at it while she monitored him, waiting for his temper to fade. The longer she knew Payne, the more she longed to peel away the layers and reveal the man beneath. Could she help him?

She wanted to.

His pacing slowed and he stopped near the large rectangular window. He leaned his forearm against the wall above the window and rested his forehead on it, staring out at the world with his back to her. A sigh raised his shoulders. He didn’t feel angry anymore. It was hard to get hold of his emotions but he seemed calm enough for her to approach him now.

Elissa rose to her feet, closed her book, and crossed the room to him. She stopped beside him. His grey gaze slid to her, full of feelings she found impossible to discern.

He leaned back and lowered his arm, towering over her. “What?”

Elissa held her nerve. “What thrills you the most... blood or sex?”

He turned back to the window. “Blood.”

Elissa didn’t believe that. He seemed to though. He must have worked hard to convince himself. Why? Why not embrace the wicked side of his dual nature?

She opened her mouth to speak but he beat her to it.

In a low, dead voice, he said, “If you don’t shut up, then I will make you shut up.”

He flexed his fingers and she got the message. She motioned with her right hand, zipping her mouth closed, and then smiled and unzipped it again.

She stared up at him and his eyes shifted to hers, and she was struck again by his masculine beauty and darkness. He radiated danger and even though she knew that she should keep her distance, she couldn’t resist her attraction to him. She had to know more about him.

“I swear I will be quiet if you answer one question.”

He frowned, eyes narrowing and lips compressing, turning his handsome face as black as his aura. “What?”

“Why do you call yourself Payne?”

He stared down into her eyes and a brief flicker crossed them, a glimmer of darkness, hurt and intense vulnerability. What on earth had happened to this man to make him so wary and make him hate his incubus side? Elissa wanted to ask him that too but it looked as though he wouldn’t answer one question, let alone two.

He sighed. “Pain is all I know and all I bring to this world.”

Elissa shivered. An overwhelming desire to lay her palm on his sculpted cheek and tell him that couldn’t possibly be true raced through her and she barely resisted. The look in his eyes said that he believed it.

He turned away and stared out of the window again, his forehead resting on his arm above it.

She ignored her need to speak and break her promise to be quiet and went to the desk. She sat in the wooden chair and leafed through more of the new books. Payne remained still. The longer he stood there watching the world go by, the less she could concentrate. The words on the pages swam before her eyes and she pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes. What was she doing? She had the method of saving Luca in the room with her. She had to convince him to help her.

Elissa stood, her calves forcing the chair backwards. It scraped across the stone flags, shattering the heavy silence. Payne looked over his shoulder at her, a trace of melancholy in his expression that quickly disappeared. Had he been thinking about what he had told her and the reason he felt that way? She wanted to ask him to explain it so she understood why he felt as though he brought only pain to this world but he didn’t look as though he would tell her. It was his secret to keep and she had no right to push him to tell her, not when she was keeping secrets from him too.

“I need a walk. Will you walk with me?” She wasn’t sure why she asked him to accompany her. Because she feared he would leave if she left him alone here or because she feared the Rozengard males would come after her again?

He nodded but seemed tense. “Where? I don’t think it’s wise for you to be walking the streets right now... especially with me.”

Elissa stifled her smile. He was worried about her. She found that sweet and endearing, a side of Payne she hadn’t thought possible.

“Topside,” she said. “I like to walk in the woods.”

Payne closed his eyes and frowned, and she knew he was focusing through the layers of rock over their heads, trying to sense whether it was daylight or not up there.

“It’s dark, gone midnight.” Elissa waited for his response. Now that she had thought about the males and he had mentioned them too, the idea of walking alone in the woods unsettled her. She needed air but if those damn Rozengard jerks came at her again, she wouldn’t stand a chance against them. Not without Payne at her side. He was strong, powerful. She had never met a male as strong as he was. “Will you walk with me?”