Of Love and Darkness (6 page)

“Nothing,” William said stiffly. “Except that I’m going to be late for work if I don’t leave soon.”

“You work?” Gavin asked. “Wearing
that
?”

William sniffed and smoothed the front of his poodle skirt. “What else would you expect me to wear to work?”

“Pants. A shirt. Your dick.”

“You are far too vulgar for Sydney. She doesn’t like a lot of testosterone, and you have it coming out your ass.”

“There’s only one thing coming out of my ass,” Gavin replied. “My testosterone’s located in a different area. I’d offer you some, but I’d be afraid it might cause you to grow hair on your face.”

“Go to hell, Rakshasa.”

“Too late. I’m already there.”

William thrust his nose in the air, flounced over to the couch, and crouched next to Sydney. “I have to get to work, sweetie,” he said in a low voice. He shot a quick glance over his shoulder. “Will you be okay, alone with him?”

“We aren’t alone,” Sydney said, indicating the man lying on the couch staring up at her with adoration shining in his eyes.

“I’ll protect you,” Nate swore. “Just name it, I’ll do anything.”

“Like I said. Alone.”

Sydney rolled her eyes. “I’ll be fine. Besides, I have to go to work myself. I can handle him for the next hour or so.”

Dubious, William grabbed her hand and squeezed. “Now that you know what you are—what we all are—I can tell you this. If you are in danger, just think of me. Picture me in your head, a clear picture, and I’ll be there. It’s one of the advantages to being a Fate. I’ll have a lot of explaining to do at work the next day, but your life and your safety are so much more important.”

“I’ll be fine,” she said again, giving his hand a reassuring squeeze, before pushing him away.

After William left, Sydney went into the kitchen to make tea for Nate, who, as far as Gavin was concerned, was totally milking his injury just to ensure Sydney paid attention to him. Gavin entered the living room, snagged the television remote off the coffee table and dropped into the plush easy chair. When Nate suggested he turn on some cooking show, Gavin deliberately turned the channel to ESPN.

When Sydney returned with a cup of hot tea laced with honey, Nate accepted it graciously and lightly complained that Gavin was hogging the remote. Sydney glared at Gavin as the television channel switched to the cooking show Nate had requested earlier. With a muttered curse, Gavin tossed the remote at Nate and stormed out of the living room.

What the hell is happening
? He restlessly paced Sydney’s bedroom as he considered the two instances where strange things happened to him seemingly through Sydney’s thoughts. At least, he assumed it was Sydney. Granted, those strange things hadn’t started happening until after Nate appeared on their doorstep, but no male shifter, light or dark, had the ability to control things with his mind.

Female shifters, for that matter, did not normally possess the ability to control things with their minds, either. But Chala were different. Always had been. No one truly understood the extent of their magic, not even the Chala themselves. If they had, their population would not be almost completely decimated at this point.

He gave brief consideration to the cross-dressing Fate, but quickly dismissed the idea that William had been behind the strange little nuances. William had been at work when the television channel changed, despite the fact that Gavin was holding the remote. It had to be Sydney.

He felt he had more experience with Chala than anyone who wasn’t mated to one. He’d spent several years with the Chala and her mate that he’d been unable to save, seventy-five years ago. Her name was Gloria, and her mate was Hernandez.

They had been easy enough to live with, at the time. Gloria had been a spitfire of a woman, highly demanding and not afraid to call either Hernandez or Gavin out when they weren’t paying her enough attention. But she had been funny, too, and she had been an amazing cook, and she had been wise beyond her years. She had come from a long line of Chala, and her family had a tendency to birth females instead of males, which was why Gavin had been hopeful she would produce him a mate someday.

He never met Gloria’s Fate, as she and Hernandez had already been mated when Gavin stumbled upon them. But Gloria always spoke fondly of her Fate. He had been like a favorite teacher from whom she learned a great deal about her own species, as well as Gavin’s, and the relationship between the two.

A Chala, he had learned from Gloria, knew her mate before he even realized what she was. It was like an internal alarm, she explained. The first time she saw Hernandez, before they actually met, she swore her nerves tingled and lust roared through her system like a freight train.

Gavin thought about when he had first spotted Sydney, standing in that dark alley, looking frightened and utterly lost. She certainly hadn’t appeared as if a freight train of lust was roaring through her system.

Gloria told him lots of other things, too, about what sex was like between a Chala and her mate, and how a Chala’s mate was essentially a homing device for a Chala. A lighthouse of sorts. No matter where a Chala was in the world, or how far away she was from her mate, she could always find him. Always.

Sydney had gotten lost four blocks from the convention center in downtown Detroit. He doubted anything could act as a beacon or a lighthouse for her.

But he wondered about the sex. He’d felt a surge of lust, of course, when he licked Sydney’s wound. But when that rush was over, he hadn’t felt particularly attracted to her. At least, he thought he hadn’t. But when she had been lying half-asleep on the couch, and when he crawled into bed with her and she unconsciously rolled over and curled into him, when she stepped out of the steamy bathroom this morning, and when he nuzzled her neck and pretended he hadn’t been affected—he had. In fact, he felt as if he had a perpetual hard-on since yesterday evening. Since the moment his tongue touched her blood. He wanted her, despite the fact she wasn’t at all his type.

He wanted her because she was a Chala.
His
Chala. His mate.

The woman in question stepped into the room, closed the door, and then stood there, wringing her hands, clearly nervous about something. He wondered what she could possibly be nervous about, unless she had finally come to her senses, and planned to tell him she wanted to mate with him after all.

“Gavin, I have to go to work in a little while.”

He arched an eyebrow and said nothing. She frowned.

“I’ve invited Nate to stay here.”

Gavin scowled. “Why would you do that?”

“Because he came all this way to meet me, and then you attacked him, and I feel bad for him.”

“I didn’t attack him.”

Sydney ignored that. “He’s lonely.”

“Aren’t we all?” Gavin muttered darkly.

Sydney ignored that too. “He was convinced that all of the Chala were dead, and his species was hopeless, and that someday, the Light Ones would die out. And then he woke up in the middle of the night. He said it was a revelation of sorts. He swore he could almost smell me.” She blushed as she said the words.

“Then he must not have come very far. Pheromones or no, your scent is only palpable for a mile at best. He can make his way home.”

“He’s from Tennessee.”

“That’s a hell of a scent,” Gavin said sarcastically.

“Stop it.”

Gavin’s mouth snapped shut. He silently glared at her.

“That’s better,” she said cheerfully. “Now, listen to me. I’m going to work. I have an event tonight, so I probably won’t be home until late. William should be home around five. In the meantime, I expect you to play nice with Nate. And if you can’t, then you can be the one to leave. Have I made myself clear?”

“Exceedingly,” Gavin said, reinforcing his words with a growl, when he was able to speak again. He hooked his arm around her waist and dragged her tightly against him. She could undoubtedly feel his insistent erection, pressing into her belly.

“If I have to do that, you have to do something for me.”

“Wh-What?” Sydney squeaked, her eyes wide, her gaze locked onto his lips.

“Kiss me,” he commanded, and for once, she obeyed. Without blinking, she leaned into him, her mouth slightly open. Her eyes fluttered closed as her tongue slipped out and touched her upper lip a scant second before he crushed his mouth down onto hers, impatient to taste her.

She tasted like coffee and orange and something he couldn’t describe, but was certain he would never, ever have his fill of. He flicked out his tongue, licking her lips, and then sucked her lower lip into his mouth. Self-satisfaction surged through him when she moaned.

His hands dropped down to cup her backside, as his mouth continued to devour hers. He squeezed and she responded by lifting up on her tiptoes to grind her hips against him.

“Chala,” he whispered, and he used his hands on her backside to guide her toward the bed.

Sydney broke the kiss and stepped out of his arms. “I think that’s enough.” She wiped a hand across her lips. For some reason, the action irritated Gavin.

“That was only a taste. It wasn’t nearly enough.”

“It was to me. And stop calling me
Chala
. It makes me feel like—like I’m nothing more than a means to an end. I know what a Chala is, and that’s not me.”

It was on the tip of Gavin’s tongue to reply that it was exactly what she was. But the unhappy look on her face gave him pause. He frowned.

“You didn’t like the kiss?”

Sydney blinked owlishly. “Why would you say that?”

“Why aren’t you answering the question?” he countered.

She flushed. “Because it’s embarrassing. Of course I liked the kiss. I would think that was obvious.”

“It wasn’t,” Gavin said flatly. “But it was obvious that
I
liked it. So why did you pull away?”

“You called me
Chala
.” As if
that
answer was obvious.

“So? You
are
a Chala.”

“I know you think that. But I’m also Sydney. And I haven’t yet heard you call me by name. Or compliment my outfit. Or tell me I’m pretty. All you do is call me
Chala
all the time.”

Gavin gave her an incredulous look, and Sydney shook her head, as if he was a lost cause and she could not possibly save him. She was still shaking her head when she left the bedroom.

Chapter 5

When Sydney realized her car was still parked at the curb in downtown Detroit, Gavin offered to give her a ride to work.

“What about my car?” she asked.

He bit back a sigh. “I’ll head down there and check it out. It’s probably the battery.” He glanced at Nate at that point. “I suppose I can take the lovesick loser with me.”

“I don’t drive,” Nate announced from his perch on the couch.

Gavin didn’t bite back the sigh this time. “I’ll figure something out.”

“I’ll find another ride,” Sydney insisted.

“You’re going to be late as it is.”

She made it clear she wasn’t happy with the decision, but she ultimately allowed him to herd her toward his car. “I’ll get you there on time.”

“I’ll just take alive at this point,” she’d retorted before slouching in her seat and glaring out the window.

Not that he particularly liked it when she was angry, but she sure as hell was cute when she was riled up.

The event management company where she worked was a small storefront attached to a cavernous building that she explained housed all of the various props they used when putting on parties for clients. When he guided the sleek black Camaro to the curb in front of the building, several humans on the inside all but plastered their faces against the glass windows. Taking perverse satisfaction in Sydney’s obvious discomfort, he wrapped his arm around her neck and pulled her toward him for another no-holds-barred kiss, and then he released her and couldn’t help the smirk as he watched her stumble toward the door. Once she was safely inside the building, he gunned the engine, headed back to the highway, and turned toward downtown and his own apartment.

He packed an overnight bag full of several days’ worth of clothing and called a towing company to have Sydney’s car taken to a dealership near to her home. Then he took a nap. He was normally a night owl, as Rakshasa tended to come out at night, when it was easiest to stalk and take down humans without drawing attention to themselves.

When he woke up, dusk was fast approaching. He brewed a pot of coffee and contemplated his surroundings while he thawed a steak and then tossed it onto the George Foreman grill.

His apartment was one large room, located inside an old warehouse that had been converted into artists’ studios with lofts above them. He liked the location for its convenience to where the majority of Rakshasa in the Detroit area tended to roam.

The neighbors were quiet and kept to themselves, for the most part. His friendliest neighbor was a woman who designed pottery for a living. She was young and attractive, dark-skinned and dark-haired and curvy, just the way he liked them. They often tumbled into bed together when she wasn’t travelling around the country, selling her wares at various art shows.

As he sat at the high-top, square dining table, eating steak and contemplating whether he wanted to take anything with him when he moved in with Sydney, there was a knock on the door to his apartment. He dropped the fork and knife and strode to the door, opening it without bothering to look through the peephole.

Harmony, the neighbor who made pottery for a living, stood on the threshold, holding a bottle of sparkling wine in one hand and a bottle of chocolate syrup in the other. She wore a slinky red dress that clung to her in all the right places. Her thick dark hair draped over her shoulder and curled down her back.

“Hey, neighbor. I thought I saw your car in the parking garage. I just sold a design to Chia Pet. Want to help me celebrate?” She didn’t wait for his answer, but simply strolled into the apartment.

Gavin’s mouth went dry. Harmony was perfect: a beautiful, willing human woman who was exactly his type, and who expected nothing from him but sex. A lot of sex. A lot of varied sex. Harmony liked a little kink.

I’m mated
, he reminded himself. Sydney, Sydney, Sydney,
Sydney
.

Sydney was a blond. Willowy. And dressed way too conservatively. Plus, he still had his doubts about her prowess in the bedroom, even after two sizzling kisses.

But she’s my mate
.
Sydney
. He chanted her name in his head, as if this would somehow offer him the self-restraint he needed to tell Harmony to leave.

But why
? Sydney was still in denial, and she insisted she had no interest in sleeping with him. Harmony obviously wanted to sleep with him. She walked into the pool of light cast by the lamp next to the couch and he saw clearly that she wore nothing at all under the thin knit dress. His libido did a little cheer.

I need this
. Why should he remain celibate until Sydney decided to come to her senses and realize they really were mates?

Harmony’s hands were in his pants and her dress was bunched at her waist when his phone rang. She urged him to ignore it, but he ignored her instead and pushed the button to connect the call.

“Gavin? Are you okay? I had the strangest sensation that something was wrong, but I’ve been busy and this was my first chance to be able to call.”

“Shit,” Gavin cursed as he leaned back against the couch and tugged Harmony’s hand out of his pants.

“Who is that?” Harmony asked.

“My, ah, girlfriend.”

“Who are you with?” Sydney demanded. “And did you just call me your girlfriend? I’m not your girlfriend, Gavin, and the sooner you realize this, the better off we both will be. Are you even listening to me?”

With a sigh, Gavin disconnected the call. Harmony gave him a sympathetic look. “This isn’t happening, is it?”

Gavin sighed again. “Nope.”

Harmony slid off the couch and tugged her dress over her hips. Then she reached down and patted Gavin’s cheek. “If it doesn’t work out, call me, okay?”

“Yeah,” Gavin said as he watched her saunter to the door. “Right.”

Gavin didn’t consider himself an overly sexual male, under normal circumstances. Usually, he was exhausted enough after a night of chasing down Rakshasa that he simply passed out when he got home, and didn’t wake until it was time to start the routine all over again. But when he did want a piece of ass, he rarely had a difficult time finding it, and then closing the deal.

In the last twenty-four hours, he found himself turned on and then without the means to close the deal more times than he probably had in his entire three hundred and eighty-seven-year life. It was damned frustrating.

In an effort to burn off some excess frustration, Gavin went out and patrolled his usual areas, searching for Rakshasa on whom he intended to take out his aggression. But the streets were quiet, for once, probably because the temperature had taken a dive into the negative numbers, and while shifters had an elevated body temperature, even they preferred to hole up inside on these kinds of nights. Finally, Gavin threw in the towel, returned to his apartment to retrieve his overnight bag, climbed into his car, and headed north, toward the burbs. With any luck, Sydney would be in a randy mood tonight and would turn to him for some good old-fashioned sexual tension relief. His chances were slim, he knew, but everyone had to have hope, right?

When he entered her house, he discovered the Light Ones had multiplied in the few hours he had been gone. Four of them sat in the living room, chatting amicably and eating out of bowls of chips and pretzels. Several empty pizza cartons were stacked on the dining room table, and beer bottles littered every horizontal surface. The television was on, and a hockey game flashed across the screen.

“Did I miss the invite to the shifter convention?” he asked as he strode into the center of the living room and turned a full circle, so as to take in the appearance of every being in the room. They were all shifters, all Light Ones of varying ages and appearances.

One shaggy blond-haired one looked like he wasn’t even old enough to legally drink yet—in Canada, where the drinking age was only nineteen. Another had a healthy dose of gray streaks in his otherwise jet-black hair. Shifters were immortal, if they weren’t killed, but they still aged, however gradually. He figured this guy must be as old as dirt. He’d probably had some personal friends who were dinosaurs.

The third shifter could be a shoe-in as a Matador, if someone gave him a red cape and a massive, angry bull. Gavin decided that wasn’t a bad idea.

Nate, whose neck was an unhealthy black and purple color, stood and pointed at each shifter in turn. “Jack, Hugo, and Ignacio. This is Gavin. He’s our competition. He thinks they’re already mated.” Nate’s voice was still hoarse. Gavin couldn’t hide his smirk. His chokehold had obviously done some damage to Nate’s vocal cords.

Gavin wondered why they did not consider one another to be competition.

“He’s not a Light One,” Ignacio the Matador pointed out with a sniff.

“Cursed Rakshasa,” Nate explained.

“What does that mean?” the one Gavin guessed was Jack asked.

“About two hundred years ago, a Fate named Prim cast a spell on him, cursing him to believe he has to act on behalf of the Light Ones and humanity, even though he still feels all of his Rakshasa urges.”

Apparently, this one had been chatting with William while Gavin was away. Which turned out not to be a bad thing, as a collective, “Oh-h-h,” went around the room and Gavin suspected their respect level increased a notch or two. Good. They should be afraid.

“Why are you all here?” Gavin asked to the room at large, even though he was certain he already knew the answer. Damn Sydney for not sleeping with him yet.

“We’ve come to woo the Chala,” Ignacio replied with a flourish that reinforced Gavin’s original desire to find a bull. Preferably an angry one.

“You should call her that when you woo her,” Gavin suggested solemnly. “She really likes it.”

“Good to know,” the matador proclaimed with a stiff nod.

All’s fair in love and war and all that.

“Where’s the Fate who lives here?” Gavin asked. It was well after six. William should have been home by now.

“He went to the grocery store,” Nate replied. “Said he didn’t have nearly enough food to go around. He took Quentin with him.”

“There’s another one?”

Nate nodded.

“Fuck me,” Gavin muttered as he walked into the dining room and filled a lowball glass half full of whiskey. He drained the glass and then took the bottle into Sydney’s bedroom.

“Thank you for the ride,” Sydney said demurely as she slid into the passenger seat of William’s tiny yellow sports car.

“No problem.”

He guided the car away from the curb and Sydney leaned back in the buttery soft leather seat, glad to be off her feet for the first time in over ten hours. When events fell on weekdays, it was always more difficult, because her office work still had to be done as well. And this particular event had been more stressful than most because the men in attendance had taken an unnatural liking to her.

It had been an intimate dinner party, a fundraiser, and most people in attendance were mated—no—married. Yet that did not stop the men from staring at her, flirting with her, even trying to slip her business cards with cell phone numbers scrawled on the backs. She’d never received so much attention from the male species before in her life. She had been flabbergasted, and completely out of her element.

It was daunting, to say the least, to have so many men all of a sudden vying for her attention. She wasn’t normally the type of girl men noticed with such . . . intensity. She was pretty enough to warrant a casual glance, maybe even an occasional lingering appreciative look, but she was well aware she was no striking beauty.

Were they shifters? She couldn’t be sure, because she had no idea how to figure it out, without coming right out and asking. That fissure of awareness she had just before Gavin walked into her life, and then again just before the Rakshasa attacked her, hadn’t really happened while she’d been at work. Probably because she stayed in a perpetually heightened state of awareness all day today. She recalled the startling moment when she could have sworn she heard Gavin calling her name, and she frowned.

“I thought Gavin would pick me up, since he dropped me off earlier.” She hoped her tone sounded light and casual.

William made a face. “He’s passed out face down on your bed at the moment.”

“What?”

William glanced at her and then turned back to the road. “We have a few houseguests. He isn’t handling it very well.”

“A few?” Sydney repeated, as she stood in the foyer twenty minutes later, surveying the scene in her living room. As a unit, five heads swiveled around and noticed her for the first time. An instant later, five shifters were gathered around her, taking her coat, her purse, offering to slip the boots off her feet, asking if she was hungry or thirsty or tired. Did she need a backrub? Ice cream? Was she free to go out next Tuesday?

“Next Tuesday?” she asked in confusion.

The young blond shifter looked apologetic. “We’ve already drawn straws for who gets the first date when. I just wanted to be the first to ask.”

“You drew straws to see who gets to go out with me?” Sydney’s voice rose with her disbelief.

She’d been on precious few dates in her life, and she’d had to work at it reasonably hard each time. Never had she imagined she would find herself surrounded by five men, all clamoring for her attention. Make that six, she thought, as she recalled William told her Gavin was passed out on her bed. Of course, he wasn’t clamoring for her attention like the rest of them. He simply assumed he had it.

“Excuse me,” she said as she pushed her way through the crowd, to get to the hall leading to the bedrooms. “Pardon me. I’m just—I’m going back to my bedroom. I highly value my privacy,” she announced loudly. “No one is allowed anywhere near my bedroom without my express permission. Does everyone understand?”

All five nodded solemnly.

“Great. Okay. Well, nice to meet you all.”

She hurried down the hall, slipped into her bedroom, and quickly closed the door, just in case someone out there wasn’t a very good listener and decided to follow.