SEDUCTIVE SUPERNATURALS: 12 Tales of Shapeshifters, Vampires & Sexy Spirits (118 page)

“Remember that?” I could barely talk or swallow. “Yes.”

My rising emotion seemed to pull Philippe out of his simmer.

“Lilly,” he whispered.

I raised my gaze, my hair still covering some of my face.

He placed his hand over his heart. “The second you ran into the voodoo shop a couple months ago, I was yours. And ever since my touch reading showed me what you went through in those fires, I’ve wanted to take on your pain. That’s what you saw the other night in me. It wasn’t pity. What man in his right mind would ever pity a woman who could smash his face in because she won’t have any of it?”

The breath whooshed out of me, my heartbeat clamoring. He was too good to be true, and even if his words were bowling me over, I still didn’t understand how he could stick with me in the long run.

“Mr. Flirtation,” I said, shaking my head. “Mr. Non-Commitment. What happened to all of that?”

“Ah, yes,” he said, his hand slipping from his heart. “I did fight what I felt for you, don’t get me wrong. But you made me see how useless that was.” He took another step up the porch. “I was willing to die for you, Lilly, no matter how you looked.”

“I…remember.”

Beneath the Dueling Oak…sword steel ringing in the night…Philippe crashing against the tree from Etienne’s kick, slipping down, his nails scratching the bark…

I put my hand over my own heart. I wasn’t a psychic who could read minds, but his gaze told me everything I needed to know. So did the fact that he had driven out here, not knowing how welcome he would be. He had put himself on the line for me again, and I couldn’t deny it.

Philippe took the final step onto the porch, towering above me. My boots seemed to peek out of the water, gazing at him with adoration.

“After we were together,” he said, “I thought I’d lost you when you woke up not rememberin’ anything. Then I thought I’d lost you again when you ran out of the park like a wild thing. I gave you space after that because I knew how you must be hurting. I was being a true gentleman, but I’m done with that nonsense. I’m here because I won’t have your silence and hidin’ anymore.” He took a deep breath, calming. “In case you didn’t know it,
you
actually save
me
.”

I shook my head, not understanding.

His smile was gentle. “I need to save people from their fates, and you help me to do that. Don’t you realize how we fit?”

Oh, he was good. “But the visions you used to get were never this bad before you met me.”

“Tragedy is tragedy, Lilly. And if fate didn’t want us to do what we do it wouldn’t have given me this power. It wouldn’t have brought you to me.” He laughed. “Who else will ever understand me as much as you and vice versa?”

“I—”

He held up his finger again, hushing me.

“You fill my spaces,” he said, “and you know I fill yours. I’ll do that every night, too, when you wake up. Fill up your mind, your body…your heart.”

I grasped the cotton of my shirt, right over my heart. His words—so beautiful. So right. But, truly, realistically, how long could all his sacrifices last?

He stared at me, the hope and sparkle dying in his gaze as he felt my vibes. And watching his crushing disappointment happen right in front of me only drove the point home: he
was
the real thing.

With a pained laugh, he shrugged. “I see, then. It’s not your amnesia or your burns. It’s something else—the one thing I obviously don’t understand.”

Had he given up? I knew that if he went to his bike and zoomed off into the night, I might never see him again…

With a muffled cry, I jumped out of the chair and tub, water sluicing over the porch as I rushed to embrace him, and he paused, as if not believing it.

Then he held me tight. Tighter than my boots were hugging me, tighter than the tears that had been straining to get out of me.

They flowed now, as I kissed him. Tears salted that kiss, making it wet and desperate, his hands framing my face as he pulled away, looking at me as if he would die a million times over for me.

As I would do for him.

“Instead of running away,” I said as he used his thumbs to dry my tears, “I’m going to run to you for as long as I can. I promise.”

“I’m gonna hold you to that,
cher
.”

Cher
. I was certain I hadn’t heard that in a while. Even my boots, which had given me so many
cher
-filled memories earlier tonight, stretched against me in sheer joy.

I took one of Philippe’s hands and rested it against my cheek. “I know that you always ask permission to read someone, that it doesn’t happen automatically with humans.”

His expression softened as he understood my meaning, and as I closed my eyes, I let him read me, have all of me—even more than I knew about myself on the surface.

I let him see what haunted me, besides the amnesia, the burns.

My boots joined in, clutching me as the all the memories crashed down. “
You’re an aberration, Lilly…a female keeper in a world of male ones…born to fail…”

Then…

The dragon…hunters…a fire that wipes out a vampire underground…Meratoliages all round my bed as I look through the slit in my bandages covering my first set of burns…Father saying, “You’re retired…”

Darkness
.

Then only darkness.

When I pulled out of the memories, Philippe was still there, still holding me.

“So that’s it,” he said. “You have a self-fulfilling prophecy about being alone, shoved away from anyone you’ve ever loved.
Cher
, I’m not gonna do that, no matter how many nights you wake up without remembering me.”

I kissed him again, then leaned my forehead against his chin. “My boots can give me memories, as long as they don’t have to expend more energy during chases and provide information about creatures like Etienne. But if another killer does show up, taking all my memories so my boots can help me survive, I might need to fall for you again and again, every night. That’s a bit of hard work for you.”

He only smiled. “So you admit you’ve fallen for me already?”

I smiled up at him, pulling him to me, pressing my mouth against his. I’d also been about to tell him what Amari had said about perhaps being on the cusp of extending my memory but…

Well, there would be time for that.

As my blood danced in my veins, we stumbled over the porch, fumbling with the screen door to get it open. In the back of my reeling mind, I wondered if Amari and Jean-Marie had left for that walk because they’d known what was to come. Surely they had even heard Philippe’s bike and were staying away now.

Best family ever.

Philippe lifted me, whirled me through the cabin’s front room, and brought me to the back room, tossing me on the bed. I laughed as I hadn’t laughed in…years?...while I crawled backward over the mattress, toward the headboard.

He shucked off his shirt, and the soft lantern light flickered over his necklace—the all-seeing eye.

Indeed, he had seen everything about me, and I opened my arms to him as he slid onto the bed.

“My Lilly,” he whispered. “How I love you.”

“And how I love you.”

I took in a breath at the unexpected—but so very expected—confession. Because I did love him, ached for him. I knew I had never said the words before, and I remembered that all on my own, just as clearly as I knew that cookies were biscuits in Jolly Old England and car trunks were boots.

Speaking of boots…

As Philippe languorously kissed my neck, a naughty vine did what I remembered it doing before—it caressed Philippe.

He paused in his kisses, then smiled against me, truly accepting everything about me.

The vine kept caressing him, joining me as I ran my fingertips up and down his toned back. When he pushed up my singlet and then swept a thumb into my bra cup, teasing my nipple, I moaned, drawing my hands down to cup his bottom, pulling him up against me until his erection nudged between my legs.

I bit my lip as he drove against me, but I wanted more of him, and I pushed at his firm chest, urging him to sit up.

He got the hint, bringing me with him until we were both sitting on the bed. I straddled him, his legs bent underneath me so I was still pressed against his cock. He slipped his hands below my bottom, palming my cheeks, helping me churn against him.

I was getting so damp, feverish for him to be inside me. It was one thing to have a memory, another to actually be making one, and I gyrated harder, harder.

Meanwhile, the vines were busy, too. Another had broken away from my other boot, and now two were running their tips over his shoulders, down his back again, then round his front to his ridged belly.

He cursed, leaning back his head, closing his eyes.

“Well, then,” I whispered, leaning forward, pushing back his hair so I could bite his earlobe. “I can see you actually wanted to come here because of my ménage-a-boots.”

“You found me out,
cher
,” he said gruffly as a vine swept lower, near his groin. He grunted, cursing again.

I could feel heat spiking his skin, and he ravenously fixed his mouth to my breast, which was partly inside my bra from when he had rubbed it with his thumb. But now he used his lips and teeth to work the cup away from me, kissing, biting, sucking.

His passion needled my clit, and I ground into him harder, faster. The vines moved up his chest, to his own nipples, circling them.

They had found an erogenous zone, because he went wild, undoing his zipper, then mine, pulling off my shorts while I helped him. All the commotion didn’t even interrupt the vines as they kept him aroused.

When I was bare for him, I straddled him again, reaching down to bring him out of his jeans. He lay thick and pulsing and stiff in my palm, moisture on his tip.

I rose up, then impaled myself on him, giving an ecstatic cry that made the vines stiffen. More of them had come out of my boots, combing through his hair, my hair, then pulling us together, pushing us away, making themselves a part of our rhythm.

It was as if tendrils were all over me, inside me, tickling the lining of my belly, climbing up and up like growing flowers, soft and smooth. They pushed against me, and when they exploded, a shower of petals floated through my nethers, my torso, my skin…even under my eyelids, where the bursts of color sharpened, then began to fade.

Philippe came soon afterward, both of us falling to the mattress, sweat-soaked and satiated, gasping for air, looking at each other deeply, truly.

It was only when he touched my face that I realized how many vines had detached from my legs.

My face. I reached up to feel the scars that had appeared. I wasn’t entirely burnt—some vines had remained pinned to my calves—but even so, my instincts nearly had me flinching away from Philippe’s fingers.

But there was no repulsion in his eyes…and not even pity.

As my vines retreated, merging into full boots again, wiggling happily against my legs and returning me to my normal state, I wrapped my arms round Philippe.

My saving grace.

My found soulmate.

THE END

Dear Reader,

Thank you so much for reading!

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If you enjoyed this story, I hope you consider leaving a review at the site where you purchased it. Your review doesn’t have to be long, just honest, and it would mean a lot!

I also hope you read the following excerpt from a Lilly Meratoliage prequel (from a collection called MONSTER HUNTERS). SHADOWS TILL SUNRISE is the first full-length Lilly Meratoliage novel, but you can enjoy Lilly’s previous adventures as a kick-ass villain in some of the Vampire Babylon series, along with the novella “Raising the Darkness” (included in the following excerpt from MONSTER HUNTERS), and in the KICKING IT anthology (in the novelette “The Girl with No Name”). In other words, if you want the full Lilly experience, this is the order in which you would read:

*A DROP OF RED, Vampire Babylon, Book Four

*THE PATH OF RAZORS, Vampire Babylon, Book Five

*DEEP IN THE WOODS, Vampire Babylon, Book Six

*“Raising the Darkness,” included in the MONSTER HUNTERS collection or available in print in its own compilation called RAISING THE DARKNESS

*“The Girl with No Name,” included in the KICKING IT anthology

*SHADOWS TILL SUNRISE

By the way, SHADOWS TILL SUNRISE itself is available in print if you’d like it to be on your keeper shelf!

Lilly is great fun to write, and I have a thing for Philippe Angier. I’ve always liked pirates, whether they just have the attitude or they’re the real thing. If you
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Happy Hunting!

Chris

About the Author

Chris Marie Green

Chris Marie Green is the author of the urban fantasy Vampire Babylon series from Ace Books and the Jensen Murphy, Ghost for Hire series from Roc, which features a fun-loving spirit from the 80s.

She tries her best to avoid international incidents whenever she takes a break from her first love, writing, and cheats on it with her other true love—traveling. She has an alter ego named Christine Cody, who wrote the dark fantasy Bloodlands trilogy.

You can find her at
www.chrismariegreen.com
or hang out with her online at Twitter
@ChrisMarieGreen
and
www.facebook.com/chrismarie.green
.

Additional Books by
Chris Marie Green

ONLY THE GOOD DIE YOUNG

KICKING IT

RAISING THE DARKNESS