Life Cycle (19 page)

His eyes widened.
No.
His fangs had come
out while he’d been focused elsewhere, but biting her wasn’t the
thing that had him panicked. Somehow, he’d drawn his own blood as
well. He felt the tiny sting of throbbing pain in his tongue. Had
their blood mixed? It wasn’t the traditional ritual. Not like Luc
had done.

Luc had taken a knife to Anna’s hand, then cut his
and mixed them together good and proper. He hadn’t hesitated to
protect her. Whether his brother had known it would initiate the
first stages of the mating ritual, who could say? Surely what Cain
had just done wasn’t enough for that level of psychic connection.
Yes, he still had free will in all of this, and more or less, so
did Tam even if it had worked, but it wasn’t something to cheer
about. It was dangerous.

After all the trouble he’d gone through to protect
himself from her, his instincts wanted the opposite. He stood and
wiped the sand off him.

“If you think you can start hurting me, just because
I can’t hex you...”

“It’s not like that, Tam. It was an accident.”

She must have seen the honesty in his eyes, because
her anger deflated.

“I think I just marked you, though. As mine.”

Though he knew she wanted him, he expected a
momentary flutter of revulsion to cross her face, but all he saw
was peace. Then all at once it was gone, replaced by suspicion and
a fear that seemed strange and incongruous on her face with regards
to him.

“Is this your idea of a joke?”

“Am I laughing?” He came closer and licked the last
bit of blood off her lip. Her blood was already inside him, and his
in her, so there was no sense in leaving a mess behind. What was
done was done, assuming it counted as a true mark.

“I’m not even sure I marked you. I just think it’s
possible,” he clarified.

“How can you not be sure?”

“The ritual is specific. We don’t do it enough to
have experimented with it. You were there with Anna; you know how
it goes. But blood was mixed. It might mean something. It might
mean nothing.” Why he was being so forthright, he couldn’t say.
Maybe he needed someone to reassure him that nothing had happened
and things were still the same.

But something had already shifted,
maybe before he’d bitten her, maybe after, but the thing he wanted
to do right now wasn’t bend her over a rock and fuck her—oh, they’d
do that again, and many other things if he had his way—but right
now what he wanted was to make love to her. Even those words
make love
had him
inwardly cringing.

He shook his hand as if his ring had shorted out, but
he knew the truth. It had nothing to do with the ring beyond being
able to think a moment without fear of her magic bringing him harm.
Now that he held the upper hand and all she had were energy balls,
he was looking at her differently.

But hadn’t that been true from the beginning? He
remembered the first time he’d met her. She’d showed up with the
cavalry at Anna’s house like a rampaging pixie. He’d wanted to hurt
her to get to the woman standing between him and his brother, but
she hadn’t come to him when he’d ordered her. No amount of demon
thrall could penetrate the walls she had up. Even Anna’s resistance
hadn’t impressed him so much. Then Tam had done one better, sending
him across the floor with one of her fancy energy balls. From that
moment he’d wanted to screw her brains out, possess her, make her
cry out his name. She was the first real challenge he’d met in more
centuries than he could remember.

And now here she was, and what had started out as a
grudge fuck had become something more.

“Excuse
me, space cadet. Are you wit
h me?”
Tam said, waving a hand in front of his face.

He felt the fire light his eyes, and he growled.
“Shut your mouth and kiss me like you mean it.” Oh yes, he was the
king of killing romantic moments. Yet when their lips met, it was
more gentle than he’d intended.

“Cain?”

It was a questioning, almost hopeful whimper against
his mouth, and at any other moment he’d taunt her for it. Right now
he didn’t want to fuck this up. It had been so long since he’d done
it, since he’d even experimented for the sake of curiosity. He
wanted to know what it felt like to have sex with a woman like in
the movies and storybooks, where feelings were involved and it
wasn’t just about instinctual urges. He knew this was a dangerous
road, but tomorrow he could go back to being a badass. Tomorrow he
could leave little handprints and welts all across her ass for
making him feel something tonight. For now, he wanted something
new: boring, normal sex.

He gripped the back of her neck, pulling her closer
as he explored her mouth, not willing to let her get far enough
away from him again to offer commentary. He didn’t bother with
demon thrall. No tricks this time. No mental images or manufactured
arousal. He wanted to know if she felt something for him without
all that. Oh, he was playing with fire.

The sand beneath their feet was
soft enough to lie on, so he picked her up and took her down to the
ground with him. He allowed his hands to hover over her, inches
above her body to feed—to taste her. She arched off the ground
toward him as he moved his hand awa
y. She
was his sexual marionette,
pulled along by
his movements as if she had strings.

Her nipples hardened underneath her top. She hadn’t
bothered with a bra when she’d gotten dressed to come to his tent.
He liked the easy access. She began to undo the button on her
jeans, but he stilled her hand.

“No. I want to unwrap you myself.”

A shiver.

It seemed like she might protest, trying to reclaim
some control of the situation. The way they fucked was the same as
the way they fought—a constant power struggle with neither of them
willing to cede the upper hand to the other, and neither of them
trusting the other. He wouldn’t ask her to trust him because he
respected her intelligence more than that. All he wanted was the
illusion for a little while.

Each time he slept with a woman, he wrapped the whole
thing up in a pretty illusion for her, a fantasy where it was hard
to separate what was actually happening from what was going on in
her mind. Just this once, he wanted an illusion for himself—the
illusion that someone could love him.

He struggled with himself over the thought. It was a
fight not to flip her over and take her from behind, so she could
be just another warm body and not a person he might grow to feel
for. Now that they’d gotten this close, staring into each other’s
eyes with no words between them and no magic, he wanted to
flee.

Tam reached up and stroked the side of his face. He
leaned into the touch. He definitely had to kill her now. If she
kissed and told, his rep was over. But not tonight. Cain interlaced
his fingers with hers and kissed the back of her hand, his eyes
never leaving hers.

He returned to the task of clothing removal, and she
seemed content to watch him. Moments later he was inside her, but
not just his body. Their eyes were locked, silencing all their
snark for a moment of connection he’d never had and could
understand why. It was terrifying.

To her credit, Tam seemed equally scared. As he moved
within her, her mouth sought his again, and then they lost
themselves in the sensation as he began to feed.

Chapter Eleven

Tam’s eyes fluttered open. She
expected to be up in
Stepford
Heaven
, hanging out with Henry by now, but
the hand stroking the short bits of hair from her eyes was
Cain’s.

“Why didn’t you do it?” she asked. When he’d fed,
he’d taken too much—more than usual. After the moment they’d shared
where he’d looked like a deer caught in headlights, she’d been sure
she was a goner. Whether he wanted her dead or not, she didn’t
know, but that look of his had been so stark, she was sure
self-preservation instincts alone would allow him to end her.

In the last moment before she’d
lost consciousness, the thought
Please
, had popped into her head,
because somehow with the demon she’d found her will to live again.
But she’d said she would never beg him to keep her, and she
wouldn’t. Whatever they’d shared, he was still what he was. She was
still what she was. She wasn’t young and stupid enough to think
this could be something real.

He may not have used the demon thrall, but he’d given
her no less of an illusion. She wouldn’t believe he wasn’t toying
with her, taking his game to a new level. He didn’t love her, but
some little destroyed piece of her loved him. She looked away, not
willing to let him see his small victory shining out from her
eyes.

He hadn’t answered her and didn’t look like he was
going to. Well, what had she expected? A love confession?

“Cain!”

They both turned to the mouth of the cave to see Cole
standing there. His gaze flicked over her, trying not to look like
he was checking her out, but he was totally checking her out. Jane
popped in behind him, caught the once-over, and smacked him in the
arm.

“Hey, I’m male,” Cole said.

“You don’t see me drooling all over Cain,” Jane
replied.

“Hey, now. Let’s not get personal,” Cain said.

He’d subtly moved in front of Tam, tossing her
clothing back to her. It was the thing that made her think for the
briefest moment that maybe he wasn’t toying with her. Protecting
her modesty out of some sense of possession was fairly weird given
who he was. And it wasn’t like she’d shrieked and rushed to cover
up. What did she care? It was just a body. She didn’t have hang-ups
about it anymore. In fact, over the centuries, she’d figured out
how to make it look almost exactly how she wanted, even without
magic. It wasn’t as if she had tons of opportunities to show the
accomplishment off to random people.

She sighed and pulled the top over her head, then
stood and shimmied into her jeans.

“This had better be good,” Cain
said. “This is my
private
space. Jane, maybe you’re too young to understand
this, but these caves equal terror for demons. Please start acting
scared about it and steer clear if you don’t mind.”

Jane rolled her eyes. “I’ll try to act properly
terrified in the future.”

“Jane, don’t push him. We need him.” Cole turned his
attention back to the head incubus. “Sun just came up a few minutes
ago. You know how we thought he was going to wait until the next
full moon to kill the next one? Well, we were wrong. New body, new
letter, human media is crawling all over this and Anthony is dead
for the day. We thought you’d want to be in on things.”

“You thought right.”

Tam worked to keep her face blank. The full moon was
less than a week away. If Jack had jumped the gun, it could only
mean one thing. He didn’t want to wait anymore. He was coming for
her this month, not next month. She should have known. He wouldn’t
form a connection with her in a dream like that if he wasn’t coming
soon. He wouldn’t give her the opportunity to get the upper hand.
He must have come to her right after he’d killed. The thought
sickened her.

That mouth that had most likely just eaten a human
organ, kissing her. She turned away from the group and threw up,
unable to fight back the wave of nausea over his lips—even his
dream lips—on hers.

A second later, a hand was on her back. Cain’s. “Are
you okay?”

Now he was showing concern for her
in front of others? “Fine,” she said, not meeting his eyes. She
wasn’t willing to let him see how angry she was with him right now.
He’d had his moment to kill her and beat Jack at his own game, but
instead of waking up in Heaven, she’d woken right back here, where
she was a target for a sadistic serial killer.
Gee, thanks, Cain.
No, he didn’t
love her. He didn’t know what love was. If he had the faintest
spark of a genuine human emotion, he would have done the noble
thing and spared her from Jack. He had the power to, after
all.

Their last time together would have been a perfect
note to go out on. Peaceful and painless. What stood in front of
her now would be anything but. It didn’t matter that they all
thought she was safe in the demon dimension. There was no place in
existence safe from Jack’s reach. He would find a way.

No matter what, she wasn’t going to lose her shit
right now with Cain and Cole and Jane all standing around, looking
at her with concern.

She just wished she knew why Jack
was breaking his pattern. There had to be a reason it was
this
moon that he had to
have her for. It couldn’t be a case of missing her.
Gross.

“Cain?” Cole said. “Are you coming with us?”

“Go,” Tam said. “I’m fine. Probably food poisoning
from the last crappy food run your minions went on. They have to
start feeding me better. I’m not a fucking cat you can just give
fake food in a bag.”

His eyes narrowed, but whether or not he was buying
the lie, he nodded. “I’ll have a talk with them.”

She needed to figure this out, and she didn’t need
anybody hovering over her. She was barely keeping it together now.
The last thing she wanted was to get the shakes and Cain be there
to see it. The last thing she wanted to see from the demon she was
angry with was pity. And she wasn’t about to ask him to fuck her
again to kill her. She so was not in the mood right now. Plus, a
part of her just wanted to kick his ass at least one more time. It
seemed only fair, considering how much he pissed her off.

When he’d left, she sorted through her bags for the
moon chart. She did one each year for the year ahead. It contained
not only the moon phases, but planetary alignments and all
astronomical anomalies that might affect magical workings. It let
her know the best times to do certain workings. She could do magic
at any time, but some magic worked better with an extra boost.