Poison Fruit (40 page)

“No.” I watched trails of sparks fall from the sky. “Stefan . . . do you remember how I told you I caught the Night Hag?”

“Of course,” he said. “You summoned her with a nightmare and bound her with a strand of her own hair.”

“It wasn’t just any nightmare,” I said. “It was my
worst
nightmare.
That was the nature of the hex Sinclair created for me.” Two more starbursts exploded overhead. “In the dream, I invoked my birthright.” I wrapped my arms around myself. “For a minute, it felt good. It felt
great
. And then the sky cracked open above me, and I knew I’d broken the world.”

“I see.” Behind me, Stefan’s chest rose and fell in a long, slow breath. “No wonder the revelation regarding my past troubled you so.”

“Yeah.”

“You’re not that boy, Daisy,” he said. “You’re nothing like him.”

“But I am,” I said. “I’m capable of it.”

Stefan slid his arms around me, and now I did let myself lean backward into his strength. “I won’t allow it to happen,” he murmured against my hair. “I suspect
that
is what the hell-spawn Dufreyne dislikes about our union. If I had been Outcast, I could have helped the boy. I could help you. Perhaps that necessity is what brought us together.”

“Maybe.” Despite his warmth, I shivered again. “Because I can’t shake the feeling that something’s coming, Stefan. Something bad. Worse than what happened at Halloween. Way worse.”

“Is it this business of the lawsuit that disturbs you?” he asked.

“Not exactly,” I said. “It’s whoever’s behind it, whatever’s behind it. Not just Dufreyne. It’s Elysian Fields. It’s Hades, or whoever’s behalf he’s acting on.” I was starting to get worked up, my tail lashing as my sense of furious helplessness rose. “It’s the reading my mom did for me. It’s the fact that one of the goddamned
Norns
told me that the fate of the world might hinge on the choices I make.”

“Daisy.” Stefan turned me around to face him, putting his hands on my shoulders. “I’m here for you. As the leader of the Outcast. As your friend. As your lover, if you’ll allow it. Let me help.”

“How?” I whispered.

His eyes were filled with reflected fireworks. “Whatever battle is coming, it lies in the future. For tonight, just one night, let me take your fear and anger away.”

I hesitated, then nodded. “Do it.”

Stefan drew on the connection between us. I felt the unnerving intimacy of my jagged emotions spilling out of me, spilling into him—into
the cool, still place of discipline within him, into the endless yearning and hunger that lay beneath it. I felt the terrible pleasure that he took in
it, how it sated and stoked his hunger at the same time. For the Outcast, this desire was one that could never be truly slaked.

It worked for me, though.

I felt cleansed—purged of anger, of fear, of worry. All that was left was a tug of powerful attraction and a sense of reckless abandon.

And of course, Stefan knew it.

He smiled at me, and it was a predator’s smile. “Happy New Year, Daisy.”

Reaching out, I grabbed his belt buckle and yanked him closer. “Happy New Year to
you
.”

Wrapping one arm around my waist, Stefan pulled me tight against him. His other hand rose to cup the back of my head and hold me in place as he kissed me, his tongue exploring my mouth with six hundred years’ worth of accumulated skill as a final barrage of fireworks burst in the sky behind us.

Yep, I was definitely in free fall now.

“Inside.” Stefan’s voice was rough with desire as he reached behind us to wrench the sliding door open, propelling me through it.

“Bedroom?” I asked breathlessly, shrugging out of my coat and tossing it on the nearest piece of furniture.

“Yes.” Placing a hand between my shoulder blades, Stefan shoved me in the right direction. It should have been off-putting, but it wasn’t. The master bedroom was up a flight of stairs. Halfway up, Stefan pinned me against the wall and kissed me some more. I kissed him back, biting his lower lip until he made an inarticulate sound, pried himself off me, and pulled me up the stairs after him.

There were white Christmas lights strung in the bedroom, too; just enough to illuminate it. There were unlit candles. And there was a bed, a big one, with a pewter-gray duvet cover that had a faint satin sheen.

“Daisy.” Stefan whispered my name like a prayer. Positioning himself behind me, he kissed the nape of my neck before undoing the hook-and-eye fastener at the top of my dress, his breath warm against my skin. “Enough haste. I want to take this slowly. Very slowly.”

This time I shivered in a good way, a tingle of pleasure running the length of my spine, making my tail wriggle.

Oh, crap.

I swallowed. “Stefan? There’s, um, one minor detail I don’t think I mentioned to you.”

His fingers toyed with my zipper. “You bear a mark?”

“A mark?”

“Of your infernal heritage.” He unzipped a few inches, tracing the course with his lips. “Somewhere on your person.”

“Um . . . yeah.” I whipped my tail between my legs out of reflex. “It’s kind of more than a
mark
.”

The zipper descended another six inches, the dress hanging loose on my frame, baring my upper back. “Well, it’s not vestigial wings.”

Momentarily distracted, I craned my head around. “You’ve seen a hell-spawn with vestigial wings?”

“Yes. Horns, too. Fleshy little nubbins.” The zipper continued its descent and stopped. Stefan’s hand kept going, sliding over the curve of my buttocks, reaching beneath the hem of my dress and between my thighs. I felt him stiffen slightly at the shock of finding a firm, well-tucked appendage instead of yielding flesh with nothing but a pair of silk panties between us. “Oh.”

Turned on and mortified at the same time, I closed my eyes. “I should have told you.”

Instead of withdrawing, Stefan bent his head to kiss a sensitive spot on my throat beneath my earlobe. “A warning would not have gone amiss. But I was prepared to find . . . something.” He took his hand away and turned me around to face him again, easing the dress from my shoulders to fall in a puddle of midnight blue shantung around my feet. “You are who you are, Daisy,” he said softly. His dilated pupils
eclipsed his irises like black moons. “You are
what
you are. And I find that to be beautiful. All of it.”

I felt naked beneath his gaze. Well, I was naked. But I felt extra-naked, vulnerable, and exposed.

And really, really turned on.

All of which Stefan knew, which only made me feel
more
naked and
more
turned on. Without asking permission, he tasted my desire, drawing on it. Just a little. Just a taste.

And I let him.

Stefan shuddered with pleasure. “You don’t make it easy for one of the Outcast to maintain control, Daisy Johanssen. Even one such as me.”

“Am I supposed to?” I asked in a small voice. “Because I
could
raise a shield . . .”

“No.” Eyes glittering, he stripped off his dinner jacket and unfastened his cuff links with deliberate slowness. “Don’t.”

Making love with Stefan Ludovic wasn’t like skydiving; it was like walking a tightrope across the Grand Canyon. Well, if walking a tightrope included having mind-blowing sex at the same time. Six hundred years’ worth of practice included acquiring six hundred years’ worth of patience and self-restraint. After taking off his shirt, Stefan scooped me up in his arms and laid me on his bed, straddled my body and proceeded to spend the next hour or so thoroughly undoing me with his hands and mouth, until I was babbling with mindless ecstasy.

Seriously, I have
no
idea what I said.

And yet I was conscious all the while of that connection between us, drawn dangerously taut.

I was aware that there was an edge beyond which he would be sent ravening. And I became aware, too, that I had to maintain some measure of control, however faint and incoherent. Lust was one of the Seven Deadlies, and apparently the well of my desire was bottomless. I couldn’t afford to lose myself entirely. I never raised a shield against Stefan, but there were times when I had the presence of mind to hold back, allowing my aura to diffuse and dissipate while I caught my breath.

As I said, it was like walking a tightrope. A sexy, sexy tightrope. Also, it was probably a good thing that we hadn’t gone to bed before I’d gotten skilled at manipulating my aura.

Everything slowed and intensified when Stefan finally shed the last of his clothes, settled between my thighs, and entered me, inch by deliberate inch. He braced himself above me on strong arms, his broad
chest hovering above mine as he rocked his hips, his long, firm cock plowing my depths with sure, steady strokes.

Who was it that said something about being careful about gazing into the abyss, and the abyss gazing back? Nietzsche, I think. I don’t know; I’m pretty sure I heard it in a Lifetime movie.

Well, with Stefan inside me and the connection between us open, I gazed into
his
abyss. I saw the centuries’ worth of pride and anger and loss, half a millennium and more of hurt and loneliness, of endless hunger and abiding patience, and what it meant to be Outcast.

And I wrapped my arms and legs around him, embracing it all. Oh, and I came again, too. There’s a lot to be said for the rhythm and timing of a partner who can sense exactly what you’re feeling and when you’re on the verge.

With a shudder, Stefan let himself find his own release. Breaking the connection between us, at least on my end, he collapsed against me, his body heavy atop mine.

“Well,
that
was intense,” I murmured.

After a pause, he laughed deep in his chest and rolled off me. “Yes.”

Propping myself on one elbow, I gazed at Stefan. His eyes were closed, giving me no clue regarding the current extent of his inner turmoil. His unnaturally pale skin was faintly luminous in the glow of the white Christmas lights, in stark contrast to his slightly-too-long black hair fanned across the pillow. He had a lean, muscular warrior’s body, trained for battle rather than sport in an era long before gym memberships or CrossFit workouts. I flattened one hand on his chest, feeling the living warmth of his skin and the steady throb of his heartbeat.

I remembered watching him impale himself on his sword, the blade piercing his chest and emerging from his back. There was no scar, not from that injury. Stefan had died and come back in the flicker of an eye.
But there were other scars that his mortal body had sustained before his first death.

I traced one, a lumpy ridge that slanted from his left clavicle across his pectoral muscle. “Are these battle scars?”

“Yes,” Stefan said without opening his eyes. “But most of them were old before I was made Outcast and no longer pain me.”

“What about this one?” I circled an angry pink pucker of scar tissue on his side a few inches above his right hipbone.

He exhaled softly. “That was more recent. I caught an arrow in ambush. I was fortunate that nothing vital was pierced.”

“It looks like it still hurts,” I said.

Stefan opened his eyes to reveal still-enormous pupils, irises like frosty rims around them. The hunger in them made my heart skip a beat. “Sometimes, yes.” He caught my hand, drawing it to his lips to kiss my fingertips one by one. “Daisy, I would like to ask you to stay the night with me, to drift gently into sleep as I tell you the story of each and every scar, if that is what you wish. But I fear that making love to you has taxed my control to a greater degree than I anticipated, and I am finding it difficult to retreat from the precipice.”

“Oh,” I whispered.

“Forgive me.” He gave me a rueful smile at odds with that avid black gaze. “But it is best if I leave.”

“Leave?” I felt slow-witted. “But this is your place.”

“I cannot be so ungentlemanly as to turn you out of my bed and send you out into the cold, Daisy,” Stefan said. “I’m sorry. This is not the way I would have wished our first night together to end.”

I laid my hand against his cheek. I didn’t want Stefan to leave. I wanted him to stay. I wanted both of us to stay. I wanted him to hold me and tell me again that I was beautiful. I wanted to fall asleep with him holding me, feeling safe and protected. But that wasn’t going to happen, at least not right now. Maybe never. “I know,” I said. “It’s all right. I’ll go. I’d rather.”

He searched my face. “Are you certain?”

Leaning over, I brushed his lips with a kiss. “Yes.”

So instead of lying in Stefan’s embrace and reveling in the languorous aftermath, I climbed out of bed and put on my clothes.

Downstairs, clad in trousers and an unbuttoned dress shirt, Stefan found my discarded coat and helped me into it. “Good night, Daisy,”
he murmured in the foyer as he reached for the doorknob. His black hair swung forward to touch the collar of his white shirt and his dilated pupils gleamed in the darkness. “I hope I have given you no cause for regret.”

I thought about it and shook my head. “You know what? All things considered, I think this went well.”

It was a hell of a way to start the New Year, at any rate.

Thirty-nine

I
n the morning, I awoke to the sound of someone pounding furiously on the downstairs door to the building, periodically pausing to shout my name in an annoyed Irish accent.

Looking out my bedroom window, I saw Cooper in the alley below holding a large bunch of shiny, helium-filled Mylar balloons.

I raised the window, letting a blast of wintry air into the apartment. “Cooper! What the hell are you doing?”

He squinted up at me. “Well, I’m supposed to be deliverin’ flowers on behalf of the big man himself, but there’s no feckin’ flower shops open on New Year’s Day, so I’m doing my best, aren’t I?”

“You can come up,” I said. “The door’s not locked.”

“I’d rather you came down,” Cooper said. “Don’t reckon himself would like me intruding on you en déshabillé, as it were. In your nightie,” he added, seeing my lack of comprehension.

“Oh, fine. I’ll be right down.” Closing the window, I wrapped myself in my Michelin Man coat, shoved a pair of boots on my feet, and descended the stairs, pausing at the top of the landing to apologize to the disgruntled neighbor poking his head out the door of the apartment opposite mine.