Chapter Twenty-Four

Luvera sat in front ofher vanity mirror and brushed her hair, her strokes slow through the crackling strands, her mind's eye dreamily conjuring the image of tonight's scene as if it was happening right in front of her all over again: the stage in the middle of the large field of Astro Turf with a drum set, keyboard, and electric guitar speakers on it, the bleachers overflowing with people, the hubbub of so many excited voices nearly vibrating the air.

She'd been sitting in the stands with her friends, her hands clenched in her lap, never so nervous and excited in her life. She'd just about levitated out of her seat when the houselights had dimmed dramatically and a spotlight zeroed in on Hadley, center stage and speaking into a microphone.

A special treat for you tonight, folks… ??ran?'s new rock band making its debut performance…

The murmuring had grown louder when four men stepped onto the shadowy field and walked toward the stage.

Then dead silence.

Alex Parthen himself had been the first shock. The geeky computer persona had disappeared, and a rock 'n' roll heartthrob had been born. Gone were the Dockers, plaid shirt, and gold-rimmed glasses, and in their place he was wearing stone-washed jeans, tennis shoes, and a tie-dye T-shirt, an electric guitar strapped across his shoulder. His hair had been different, too, slightly mussed, the reddish-blond strands tumbled forward over his brow. Luvera's belly had performed a perfect ten triple Axel over how handsome and sexy he was.

Shock number two had been Alex's band mates. They were all Stanga towners. Not a one should've dared to hobnob with a Royal Fey such as Alex Parthen. At least not according to the ancient Varcolac hierarchical caste system, where those of "genetically superior bloodlines" roosted supremely at the tip-top and all others wallowed somewhere beneath. To those who still adhered to this Varcolac pecking order—her mother being the Grand Poohbah of that group—the Stanga Town kids, the last-born and genetically weakest, were little better than pond scum. Luvera didn't agree with this archaic code of Varcolac culture. It was a throwback to the old days of aristocracy and peasants, and it had no place in modern society. Watching Alex break this code had secured him a place in her heart for all time.

Something she hoped to tell—

Luvera whirled around at the sound of her window swishing open, her hand tightening around her brush as a dark-clothed man slipped silently inside her bedroom. "Shon," she gasped. "Stars in the sky, what are you doing here?"

"Haven't seen you in a long time, Luvera. Months. Not since we—"

She made a shushing noise. "Be quiet! My mother is just down the hall." And she couldn't bear to hear him say kiss. "If she finds you here, she'll kill me."

He shrugged as if a tree stump cared more than he did. "If you don't come to me, I gotta come to you."

"No. You don't. I told you that what we did was a mistake." She glanced furtively at her bedroom door. "Please, go."

His black eyes settled on her with that peculiar unmoving watchfulness of his. "You saying you didn't like kissing me? 'Cause it seems to me that you did."

She turned to set her brush on the vanity, angling her face aside to hide the sudden blush heating her cheeks.

"Naw," he answered for her, "what you're saying is you still have your heart set on Alex." He leaned back against the windowsill, bracing his hands on either side of his hips, his legs sprawled out in a look of casual debauchery. "I was hanging out under the bleachers tonight, watching Alex's band play. Damn, they only made it through one song. That's messed up."

Her mind called up the image again: Alex standing in front of the mic, the spotlight encasing him in a bubble of illumination, the light gleaming off the golden strands of his hair. He'd sung a rock ballad in a mesmerizingly deep voice, the tensile muscles in his forearm flexing rhythmically while he strummed his guitar. The unmated females in the audience had been utterly riveted, hardly breathing, all eyes pinned on him. As the last chord of the first song had died away, there was an astounded hush. Then something had just…snapped, and every unmated woman shrieked ecstatically and rushed the stage. Their reaction had been so unexpected that a few actually reached Alex and tore some material off his tie-dye shirt before Jacken was able to fling his brother-in-law over his shoulder and take off for safety, the other warriors leaping into crowd control.

"Not so good for you," Shon mused, "is it?"

"What do you mean by that?" Why did she even ask? She didn't want to hear his answer.

"You saw the unmateds, Luvera. Something changed tonight. Alex is no longer Mister Untouchable Fey, but the hot guitar player every girl wants to get her hands on. Every girl." He made a sound in his throat and shook his head. "If you had a slim chance at Alex before, you sure don't have a hope in hell now."

"Why, thank you," she said through set teeth and a clamped jaw. "I didn't realize I sat so far down on the desirable woman scale." Tears soured her throat like bile. "Why do you even want me, Shon?"

She expected him to say something like, "I already told you that I think you're pretty," not what he did say.

"We're alike, Luvera, you and I. Both of us a couple of misfits."

Her hands curled in on themselves, her fingers gouging her palms as a raw pain landed in her chest. She knew what Shon was doing. Her logical mind told her that he was purposely shaking her confidence so that she'd turn to him in her need. But it didn't matter what she knew. It worked all the same because…

Because it was the truth.

She was a misfit: an insignificant, unlovable oddball. Undeserving of her father's love by virtue of her sex, certainly never good enough for her mother, regardless of her efforts. And then there was Dev, who was too busy being better than she was, off saving the world, to notice that his little sister was being crushed under the weight of her own nothingness. Shon was right; being who she was, how could she possibly hope to stand out among the competition of every girl? In the back of her mind, she'd hoped that giving Alex an…an erection meant something. But, really, didn't human males get erections easily, like, all by themselves in the shower from just washing and such? Truth was, she didn't have a hope in hell.

She came shakily to her feet, her knees threatening not to hold her. "Why do you keep doing this to me?" She felt like a wet rag Shon was wringing out. "Do you get a perverse pleasure from stealing my hope?"

"No. Just the opposite." He looked up at her. "I'm trying to keep your head out of the clouds so you don't get hurt."

"Well, it does hurt," she hissed on a bitter breath. "I don't want to be reminded about how wrong I am, Shon. I don't want to think it or feel it, ever. Okay? Thinking about it forces me to face that…that there's no escape." Anatomy is destiny, and all that crud. She was who she was, so she was stuck with herself for the rest of her whole stupid life.

Shon straightened off the window sill, something alarmingly predatory in the way he moved, his eyes fixed on her. He came toward her, his strides fluid with dangerous grace, and stopped right in front of her, heat and muscle and threat. "You shouldn't feel wrong." He grabbed her by the shoulder, his grip firm, and whisked a knife from the back of his belt.

Her throat shut off. She'd said there was no escape, and maybe in some twisted part of Shon's mind he thought that murdering her would be a gallant gesture. Death was, after all, the ultimate escape. A shudder shook her to her bones. But she didn't want to die. No matter how painful her loneliness and self-doubt, she always found pieces of life to enjoy.

"Let me help you feel right." Shon's knife flashed.

She gasped, but… He didn't cut her.

He cut himself.

From the edge of her vision, she saw blood bead like a string of seed rubies along the white flesh of his inner forearm. The scent struck her like a velvet punch to the face, a direct hit to the olfactory bulb. Her chin snapped up and a low moan pushed out of her throat. It didn't matter that she'd fed just yesterday; that had been on stinky Limburger cheese donor blood. Unmated male was…was decadence. Saliva flooded her mouth, her gums throbbing with the elongation of her fangs. Every parched molecule in her body was suddenly starving.

Shon pressed her down onto the vanity stool, following her to crouch at her feet. "Lick it," he ordered her quietly, moving his forearm closer.

She shook her head.

"Yes." His eyes darkened like a trick of the light—how could black turn so much blacker? "Do it." He sheathed his knife, freeing his hand to push up her long skirt, slowly sliding it from her ankles all the way to the tops of her knees.

Her heart bounded into a wild rhythm.

He bent his dark head to her knee and kissed the inside of it, just near the bend.

Her lips parted as her stomach flapped nervously. "Shon," she protested softly.

He nudged her skirt higher, nuzzling the inside of her thigh.

She exhaled raggedly, an ache pulsing through her privates, thudding in time to the riotous beat of her heart.

He kissed her inner thigh, and she jerked. Heavens, she'd had no idea the skin down there was so sensitive.

"Lick my blood," Shon murmured against her flesh. "Then I can lick you."

She stopped breathing, oxygen hanging suspended halfway up her throat, as if waiting for her answer. Was she actually considering it? She turned her head toward Shon's forearm, watching a droplet of his blood ease down his skin, slick and shiny in invitation. She flared her nostrils and wetted her lips. To a human, that blood would appear no more than red. To her, it was the vermillion shade of a Greek god's lips, the magenta of a sunrise after a month of darkness, the bloom of a scarlet rose in the middle of the Antarctic: a perfect delicious red.

Her skirt was up around her waist now—when had that happened?—and Shon's broad shoulders were pushed between the V of her splayed legs, his eyes bright and focused on her panties.

Heat drenched her face. Her plain cotton underwear was as ugly as the rest of her clothing.

He made an excited snuffling sound. "You smell good."

Her pulse jumped and sweat collected along her spine. Gazing down at where Shon was positioned, it was easy to imagine his head pushed deeply between her thighs, the silky spikes of his hair brushing her skin while his tongue explored her secret place. Would it be traumatizing and mortifying or…feel incredibly good? That was, if a Blood Ride worked and there wouldn't be any pain.

Andshe managed not to bite him.

She couldn't believe she was thinking this through.

Shon ran his fingers along the top edge of her panties, and her lids drooped, her skin warming where he touched her. Heaven help her, there was a part of her that didn't want him to stop.

She felt Shon's fingers tremble as he gently tugged at her panties, pulling the garment low, lower until—

A door opened and closed at the end of the hall, and the clap-clap of Pettrila's heeled slippers headed toward Luvera's bedroom.

Luvera's mouth opened on a silent cry, and she shoved at Shon's shoulders.

But he was already moving. Silent as a wraith, he rolled out of her window, the swift breath of his passage leaving behind a stirring of her curtains and nothing more.