Shadow Rising (11 page)

She stopped short, just out of reach, seeing that he was no longer quite himself.

“If you want this,” she said, indicating one of the mugs, “behave yourself.”

“Why would I want a glass of cold and dead when I’ve got you standing right in front of me?” he asked, his voice a harsh rasp. He blinked, then shook his head as his eyes cleared. “Just give me the damned mug, Ariane, before I have my teeth in you.”

She kept as much distance as she could while handing one over. Damien lifted it to his lips, took a sip, and made a face while he gagged.

“There is a thing,” he managed, “called a microwave.”

“There is also a thing,” Ariane replied flatly, “called gratitude. Drink it before I pin you to the bed with my sword and force it down you.”

He looked at her curiously for a moment. “I think I like this side of you, kitten,” he said, then drank deeply, draining the glass in seconds without coming up for air. He pulled it away from his lips with a gasp, his expression leaving no doubt as to his thoughts about what he’d just drunk.

“Disgusting. Absolutely cold, lifeless, and disgusting.”

Ariane pulled the mug out of his hands, then leaned down to get a better look at him. “It might be disgusting,” she said, “but it worked. You already look better.”

His eyes were cool blue again without a hint of red,
and even as she watched, his neck finished knitting itself together. In seconds, his color was back to normal. The only reminders of what he’d been through were the reddish stains on his skin from the blood and his disheveled hair.

“Yes, well, I think I’m going to pass on round two, if it’s all the same to you,” he said, looking pointedly at the other mug. “I prefer fresh and warm, myself.”

“It’s for me,” Ariane said, annoyed at his attitude even though she knew she shouldn’t have expected anything different. “I realize everything is about you, but other people actually get hungry while you’re busy expecting the world to meet your needs.”

“Now my feelings are hurt,” Damien said.

“What feelings?” Ariane snapped, realizing that she was the one whose feelings were hurt. All these years of wanting to build a real life on the ashes of her forgotten one, of wanting to go out and make a difference to
someone
… and when she finally saved a life, all she got was insults and complaints. It wasn’t what she’d hoped or imagined. At all.

“Good point,” Damien said, relaxing into the pillows. “Drink your medicine, Ariane. I’m going to enjoy this.”

Ariane perched at the foot of the bed, still leery of being within reach, and lifted the mug to her lips. It was far from ideal—she would much rather have gone down to the wine bar and found someone drunk and easy to lure off for a bite, but her own clothes were spattered and smeared with crimson, and taking them off anywhere near Damien seemed like a really bad idea. Besides, the hunger was beginning to really bother her, and she had no intention of letting Damien see her weak. He was
obnoxious enough already, and her temper, always so long, was short and rapidly fraying.

The first sip triggered her gag reflex. Damien had been right. This blood was cold, dead, lifeless. It had a strangely overripe taste that was just this side of rotten too. She heard a quiet chuckle, grimaced, and muscled her way through the rest of the glass all at once, just the way Damien had.

It was a minute before she was sure if it was actually going to stay down, but it did.

She very quickly felt her energy levels rise. The beast within quieted, for now. Ariane breathed a sigh of relief.

Damien was watching with obvious amusement. “That was the best part of my night, by far. Verdict, kitten?”

“Vile, but probably worth it,” Ariane admitted. She toyed with the empty mug in her lap. “And once again, I’m
not
your kitten.” She took a deep breath. “Tonight sealed it. From here on out, we search together.”

His look hardened instantly. “No. We went over this before.”

“Yes,” Ariane agreed. “And that was before I saved your life.”

Damien’s eyes narrowed. “You seem to think I have a working code of honor. That’s very sweet, but I don’t. You chose to save me, which is your problem. I’m not interested in working with anyone else on this. I want my diamond.”

Ariane got up to set the mug on the nightstand beside the small electric alarm clock, then pulled Damien’s out of his hands and set that down too. She took a moment to collect her thoughts before answering, trying to decide the best plan of attack for getting what she wanted out
of him. It was tough. She didn’t think she had anything he wanted, apart from the obvious. And even if she was inclined to give in and sleep with him, she doubted it would mean anything to Damien. He’d just put another notch in his bedpost and move along.

“Well, I
don’t
want your diamond, so that’s a bonus for you,” Ariane finally said as she got resituated at the end of the bed. “In fact, I don’t want anything from you except your expertise.”

He gave a short, sharp laugh. “In what arena, Ariane? I’m a man of many talents.”

“You also have a one-track mind,” she said with a sigh. “Look, it’s obvious we’re going to keep running into one another. We want the same thing. Pooling our resources makes sense.”

“You
have
no resources. I’m holding all the cards here, Ariane, and I say no.”

She fought the urge to punch him. “Hear me out. I’m not stupid, Damien. I’m well aware that you have better contacts and that you’ll find the next step easier than I will. Manon was the only lead I had, and that was an accident. But I have more to offer than you think. This is all just… more difficult than I’d expected.” She frowned at the floor and muttered, “And now it’s even more complicated.”

“You mean the Grigori who strung me up,” Damien said, shifting slightly on the bed. “I
told
you this didn’t seem like a normal abduction. Who was he? Another friend of yours?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head as the strangeness of the encounter hit her anew. “That’s what I mean. He’s one of ours, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen him before. It makes no sense. There aren’t really that many of us.”

“Well, I’ll agree with you,” Damien replied. “That
is
odd, and bears looking into. But you not knowing him doesn’t exactly make you more useful as a traveling companion. I’m still not understanding what I get out of this partnership you’re proposing.”

Ariane looked at him, at his impassive, politely curious expression, and knew he wouldn’t take her on out of compassion, or even pity. He was a creature who worked on the basis of what and how much he could get, a system utterly divorced from emotion. Maybe Sariel had been right—she relied too much on her own emotion. She needed to come at this logically. It was the only way she would get anywhere with Damien.

“I’m an extra set of hands, and I can hold my own in a fight,” she said. “I’ve got enough money to pay my way; that’s nothing you’d need to worry about. And I know Sammael. I understand him, just as I understand the Grigori in a way you don’t. Considering what happened earlier, I think that would be very useful to you.”

Damien tipped his head at her. “Persuasive. I think Drake would find you fascinating.”

“Drake?”

“The Master Shade. My employer. Collecting information has been a very lucrative hobby of his… but he knows next to nothing about your dynasty. It annoys him to no end. I suppose spending time with you might reveal a few things he’d be interested in. And if he’s interested, I get things I like.” His gaze was shrewd. “Your wings, for instance. Useful and pretty and very, very strange. No wonder your kind hides in the desert. That would be hard to conceal otherwise.”

She felt slightly ill. It figured that she would pay for
saving him. Still, this changed nothing. She needed Damien to find Sam. And regardless of what secrets she revealed or not, she could not go home.

“I guess it wouldn’t do any good to ask you to keep that information to yourself,” she said quietly.

“No. But if it makes you feel any better, it likely won’t go far. The knowledge is much more valuable if almost no one has it.” He sat up and leaned forward, and she saw much more of the cat in him than she ever had before.

“You need to realize up front, Ariane, that this is just another job for me. I’m not going to coddle you or keep your secrets out of some misguided sense of fair play. If we work together, it’s a business arrangement, nothing more, and one that is going to end up working to my advantage. Is that really what you want?”

Ariane took a deep breath. In his own way, Damien had been perfectly honest with her from the beginning, and he was being so now. She shouldn’t want any part of him. He certainly had no intentions of changing to accommodate her. But he knew this world, knew the underbelly of it where she could barely skim the surface. His goal was the same as hers, though his payoff was very different. And though she knew it was probably monumentally stupid, she couldn’t shake the memory of that lovely, throaty purr or the feel of that hot tongue laving the side of her neck.

She had no intention of returning to the desert. But if she ended up caught, or worse, then she wanted to at least have tasted something of desire.

“If that’s how it is, then yes. I’ll handle it.”

“All this just for a friend?” he asked, looking puzzled again. “He may not want to be found, Ariane, if he’s still
alive. In which case you will have sacrificed everything just to piss someone off.”

She shook her head gently, knowing this was one thing Damien wouldn’t understand. “We are Watchers, Damien. All my life, I’ve never been allowed to make a difference. This time, this one time, it’s worth it to me to try.”

“Is that why you saved me?” Damien asked. “Wanting to make a difference?”

She shrugged, uncomfortable with his shift from sarcasm to genuine interest. “I guess. And also…”

“Yes?”

“I… may have liked the idea of having you in my debt.” She couldn’t help the smile that rose to her lips, and it broadened when Damien’s slow, Cheshire cat grin appeared. She doubted he smiled like that often, when it reached his eyes and warmed them. Ariane felt a little like melting into a puddle right there on the comforter. The art of teasing was still foreign to her, but Damien seemed to have appreciated the effort.

“Nicely done, kitten. You may learn after all. I’ll tell you what… since I am, in fact, glad to still be in possession of my sorry hide, I’ll give you something for your trouble.”

She looked at him warily. “You can keep
that
to yourself.”

This time he laughed, a full, rich sound that seemed to roll up from deep in his chest. Ariane found herself laughing with him despite herself. He had a way about him when his guard went down, and she found herself wishing he did it more often. It was probably just the shock of the evening that had altered him, but she would enjoy this side of him while it lasted. Even when Damien’s laughter subsided, his eyes stayed warm.

“You’ve already got me pegged, Ariane. I’ll have to work harder at shocking you.”

She laughed again. “No, don’t, please!”

“Music to my ears. You’re doomed, I’m afraid.” He swung his legs over the edge of the bed, paused as though checking to see if everything was still in working order, and then rose to his feet. Her eyes skimmed down the length of him again; she couldn’t help herself. Nor could she stop her mouth from watering. Streaks of crimson had dried on his chest where the blood had seeped through his shirt. Ariane wondered what it would be like to lick them off… slowly.

The tightness between her legs was enough of a warning that she needed to save that particular line of thought for another time. But when she met Damien’s eyes again, they’d gone so dark they were almost black, and she could see he knew exactly what she’d been thinking about.

She rose from the bed and took a quick step backward, an instinctive response to the predatory gaze now fixed on her.

“Oh no, you don’t,” he said softly. “Bloody innocent. You’re going to learn to stop that, kitten… because if you provoke me much more, I won’t.”

She knew he was going to catch her, but Ariane was compelled to run anyway. She made it out of the bedroom, but only steps before Damien caught her from behind. He spun her and pressed her up against the wall before she could make a sound, and once she was face-to-face with him, she couldn’t quite manage to exhale.

His eyes glowed brightly in the dark, and his breath was uneven when he drew it in. She closed her eyes when he lowered his head, expecting to feel his mouth on
hers… and was shocked when instead he pressed his nose into her hair, inhaling deeply while he rubbed his cheek against hers.

He was raw sexuality, sheer physical power. Ariane knew she had no business allowing this. She didn’t know him, she didn’t like him… and gods, how she wanted him.

She made a soft whimpering sound. It was all she could manage when her body seemed to have ignited in flames. Her breasts rubbed against his chest, turning her nipples to hard little pebbles beneath her shirt. And though none of the rest of him touched her, she could feel how close he was, knew that if she arched her back, she’d have him pressed rock solid between her legs.

Now that she knew how it felt, it was a struggle not to want it again. Why did he have to be so
compelling
?

“Mmm, I love the way you smell,” Damien murmured, his breath tickling her ear in the most delicious way. When the purr began to vibrate through him, Ariane’s knees went liquid. Only Damien’s hands, his fingers twined with hers as they held her captive against the wall, seemed capable of holding her up.

He drew back, brushing his nose against hers. “Now let’s see how you taste,” he breathed.

He took his time with it, tormenting her with small, soft kisses and suckling gently at her lower lip. When she moaned, he was ready, sweeping his tongue inside to mate with hers in a hot, openmouthed kiss. Ariane clung to him, digging her nails into his shoulders. It was only then she realized that he’d released her hands. He’d found far better things to do with his own, slipping one hand up beneath her shirt to cup and knead her breast.