Chapter 8

CHAPTER EIGHT

S he retrieved her coat from the bush that had snagged it when she decided to leave it behind. Maybe Charlie could fix the five holes in it.

The arrows that had done the damage were gone. The centaurs had gathered them up, even the one the boy had shot. She wondered if they had unique feathering on them, so each archer knew which ones were his. She would have liked a closer look.

She'd also like to meet the female members of the clan. Find out how they handled their overbearing males.

As she emerged from the forest, she discovered the lake Medusa had been sailing upon had a shore here. Shedding her shoes, Ruth dug her toes into the cool mud. She'd return to the camp soon and explore her quarters, but she wanted to collect herself.

"‘ My lady .'" Merc's voice came from above her. "Gundar and Charlie both called you that. Vampire aristocracy."

His sarcasm made it difficult not to respond in kind. But it was too soon for her to get into another fight with him, no matter how appealing the idea was. "When you're a born vampire, the title is bestowed at birth. My father isn't ‘my lord,' because he's a made vampire, though he's earned that respect a hundred times over. I haven't."

Merc chuckled, a warmer sound that shivered up her spine. He landed a few feet from her. When he'd been pressing her to the ground, his clothing had felt different. He was back in the battle skirt. His wasn't crimson red like Marcellus's. It was black, with the leather-looking protective straps over it—pteruges were their official name; she'd looked them up. His belt was silver chain links hooked to a buckle and bearing a scabbard for a dagger with a spiral hilt. His upper body was bare. Her gaze climbed the terrain with pleasure. He wasn't as broad as the angel, but he was very… well-sculpted.

"I missed an opportunity," she noted. "If I'd turned around before you landed, I could have looked up your skirt. Boxers, briefs or commando?"

When he dropped to a knee beside her, she didn't draw back. He leaned in, nostrils flaring. Like a cat, he was assessing if the object of his interest was something to consume right away or play with, aka torment, first. His muscle tension showed the readiness to pounce.

"I don't recall giving you permission to stare at me like you wanted to eat me," he murmured.

"Don't recall giving you permission to treat me like a submissive."

Your submissive. She looked toward the water, pushing down the uncomfortable surge of feeling that came with the thought. Not about him specifically. Just the wish, always there, controlled by cold reality. No sense whipping herself into a frenzy over the Christmas gift she'd never get. Though Merc made her want to toss the desire into a blender and hit exactly that setting.

"I need to report that run-in to Yvette," she said, ignoring her internal idiocy. "I don't want her to think I'm trying to hide it when Pholos complains to her."

Merc settled onto his heels, his forearms resting on his knees. The wings adjusted out, and the left one brushed her back, an incidental contact. Or a presumptuous one. She decided not to comment on it.

"I doubt Pholos will mention it. Despite the posturing, he gets that it was an honest mistake, and you'll learn from it. Or his kids will have more live target practice. Works for him either way."

She curled a lip, but she wasn't going to let his obnoxious personality keep her from being courteous. "Thank you for keeping me from being impaled. It would be a poor first day on the job if I ended up dead. But I will tell her. And maybe not just that. Why don't you want Marcellus and Yvette to know you met me at the preserve?"

"They're in my business enough as it is. Didn't care to share." He shifted. "Can you smell my blood?"

The abrupt subject change told her there was more to it, but since she understood the desire to keep some things private, she went along with it. "Yes."

"Is it different from a human's?"

"Yes."

"Does that mean it would taste different?"

"I expect so." Her pulse started to thud. She reminded herself she'd had a recent meal, with dessert.

She was sure he wasn't offering her his blood. He liked to taunt, get a rise out of his prey, get them stirred up over something. Was it because he liked the spice of that emotion in his food?

He drank sexual energy. She drank blood. Neither source was divorced from the emotions, pleasures and agonies that went with them. Based on what she'd been repeatedly warned about when it came to Merc, she had a good idea what his favorite seasoning was.

Fear.

He wasn't getting that from her. He should know that by now. "So why are you dressed like that?" she asked.

"Marcellus wanted me to accompany him on some angel business. This is a more familiar and accepted look for that."

"Does he ever wear modern clothes like you do?" She couldn't imagine it on the austere and commanding male.

"On performance nights, for Yvette, he wears the security team uniform. He cloaks his wings so no one sees them. If he participates in the Promenade, he reveals the wings and changes back into Legion wear. That's been his uniform for hundreds of years. Anything else feels like playing dress-up to him."

She glanced over her shoulder as one of the feathers teased the nape of her neck, thanks to the light breeze. "I know you can do the invisibility thing, but can you cloak just your wings, too?"

"Yes. I wasn't aware I could do that until I met him. He's helped me look deeper into the abilities my angel blood gives me."

"You sound like that bothers you."

The black blood and silver eyes flickered. He had a straight, patrician nose. Thin, sensual lips. Cheekbones cut from smooth marble. "I'm an incubus. That blood holds the angel side in contempt."

"Maybe I'm contrary, but that would make me all the more determined to figure out what it doesn't want me to know about that side of myself."

He said nothing, but his expression shifted to something she couldn't interpret. "What?" she asked.

"I'm not used to having casual conversations. Not with a female like you."

"A vampire female?"

"No." He didn't elaborate, and she held his gaze, though it took effort.

"Is it less fun than trying to scare me?"

Merc reached out and placed his palm on her chest, the heel of his hand against the upper rise of her breast. Curious, she gave way to the pressure behind it and laid down on the grass. He stretched out next to her, bracing himself on his elbow, and leaned over her. His wing arched over the higher shoulder, and she reached out to brush the black and white filaments. He intercepted, clasping her wrist.

His thumb moved over her pulse, nostrils flaring anew at her sexual response. It shouldn't mean anything. She'd fucked males she cared nothing about. Sexual response was sexual response, though she'd matured enough to realize the cost of that attitude.

Most vampires were fine having sex with whomever they wanted, and walking away. Like visiting different restaurants. You might go back when you were in that neighborhood. You might not. It wasn't a two-way commitment. The restaurant's feelings didn't matter.

She wasn't wired that way. Maybe that was her raising. Every interaction with a living being mattered, leaving an imprint of some kind, on both sides. Whether they acknowledged it or not.

"Can you feed on that?" she asked, a little breathlessly.

"Yes. I can feed on any level of sexual response." The silver in the whites of his eyes were like glints of mica. He dipped his head over her midriff, a central point to inhale whatever was coming to him from all points of her body. "But some are more appetizer than meal."

He focused on her neck, where the arrow had grazed her. It had healed, but the blood was there. When he put his mouth on it, tasting her essence, she quivered. Hard. He spoke against her skin. "It's a pleasure, isn't it? Someone else enjoying your blood? Putting his mouth to your throat?"

Him in particular. She didn't respond, but he didn't seem to need her to answer.

"Who do you feed upon at home?" he asked.

"Members of the preserve staff."

His tongue moved slowly over her flesh, his fangs grazing her as she trembled harder. "Direct from their flesh, or bottled?"

"Usually bottled. Sometimes direct, if we're out on the preserve." If it had been a physically exerting morning, she'd weaken and need it right then, in order to keep working.

"Do you prefer the throat or somewhere else?"

"Depends on the person, the relationship."

"If it was me?"

Throat. No doubt at all. The idea of putting her mouth, her nose, close to that beating artery, having the opportunity to give him even a tenth of the sensation he was giving her, was irresistible. She would want his arms and wings around her, cradling her as she drank, seeking nourishment from him. The romantic fantasy was impossible to dismiss. Fortunately, so was the knowledge it was based on characteristics she wanted him to have, not ones he did.

"I don't drink from unknown sources. I don't know whether incubus or angel blood is okay for vampires."

"That's a deflection, Ruth. It was a hypothetical question."

"I'm not much on hypotheticals. Survival in the vampire world is literal, 24/7."

"Fair enough." He inflicted that derisive smile on her, but behind it she detected understanding. The kind that came from firsthand experience.

"Hypothetically, I would like to see you take it from my wrist," he said. "While kneeling before me, my fingers sliding along your face, your throat, the curve of your ear, into your hair. The movement of my fingers would increase the flow of blood, wouldn't it?"

She cleared her throat. "Yeah. I guess."

He still held her wrist in his grasp, but his ruffling feathers grazed her twitching fingertips. He'd told her she didn't have permission to actively stroke them. She could sense his attention sharpen, as if he anticipated her disobeying him.

She was tempted. So tempted. But when she didn't move, he drew back. Curving one wing so it dipped into his direct view, he pulled out one of his primaries with a sharp jerk.

"Ouch. Does that hurt?"

"Not badly. Another will grow in its place shortly." He drew the dagger from his belt and pressed a release on the hilt to reveal another, shorter knife nesting inside it.

"Wow, nice work." She propped herself up on her elbows. "Can I see the bigger one?"

He handed it over so she could examine the release mechanism. While she did that, he sharpened the quill. When he was done, he took back the longer knife and handed her the feather. "Hold onto that and lie back down."

When she complied, brushing the feather over her palm and testing the quill's sharpness on the pad of one finger, he put the smaller knife back into the sheath of the bigger one and set it aside. Her attention left the feather as he put his hands on her thighs, slid them up to the fastener of her jeans and unhooked it, pushing down the zipper and then the denim to expose her thighs to her knees. He left her panties in place, though his gaze touched on the black cotton, the lace waistband. "Give me back the feather."

When he reached for it, she switched hands, holding it playfully out of reach. "You took my other one."

"No I didn't. You threw it away. But despite that disrespect, you can have this one when I'm done." His expression held hers. "Give me back the feather, Ruth."

The words delivered a bouquet of quivering feathers inside her chest. As she gave him the one she had, he closed his hand over it and her fingers, gripping them firmly enough to send a brief pain through the joints. A warning that increased the tingling through her body.

"Hands behind your back, fists in a knot at the small of your back."

She should refuse and get up. Leave him. She wasn't that smart. Instead, she complied. He put his other hand over her mound, hidden beneath the cotton of her panties. His thumb caressed her clit through the fabric, then passed over the crotch below, a sure stroke with enough pressure to have her biting her lip. "Nice and wet," he observed.

He settled lower, his elbow on the ground, forearm across her pubic bone and upper thigh as he held the feather like a pen. The sharp tip scraped her before he punctured her thigh, making her jump and a sound catch in her throat. He did it a few times, with deliberate precision. Each penetration made her wetter, more needy, her body arching, breath clogging in her throat.

He bent and tasted the tiny drops of blood. Moving between her legs, he put his mouth on her cunt over her panties. A firm, sucking hold, tongue tasting her through the fabric. A moan tore from her, her fingers tightening in that knot he'd commanded her to make against the small of her back. Her grip on her own hands, the press of her knuckles in her back, was as painful as his bruising hold when she hadn't given him the quill right away.

He held the climax out of reach, tasting her thoroughly, inhaling her with nuzzling contact. Learning her scent, her responses. But more than that. She became aware he was drawing energy from her. He twined it around her, carrying her on it like she rode a cloud. A miasma with a fragrant perfume, her pure sexual response.

He was feeding on her.

Before she could decide how to react, he drew back. Sliding an arm beneath her, he lifted her enough to tug her jeans back up over her hips. Leaving them open, he tucked the feather marked with her blood under the waistband of the panties. The sharp quill pressed against the swollen flesh of her clit, the feather end teasing her flat stomach and tender indentation of her navel.

He rose, unsmiling. "Don't give yourself a release. I want you wanting."

Him standing over her, leaving her shuddering and aching for more, and worse, wanting to comply, snapped her into a different part of herself. She scooted away, rolled to her feet and snatched out the feather. She tossed it away, just as she had before, no matter the wailing protest from the part of her that wanted to do what he'd ordered.

"You don't command my pleasure," she told him.

He didn't move, but he didn't have to. His presence pushed against her, called to her. "But you want me to."

"Wanting is not the same as needing," she retorted. "And I know what happens when one gets mistaken for another. I'm no one's fast food lunch. So fuck off."

In a blink, he was close enough to haul her up to her toes with a clamp on one arm. She hit him in the face with her free fist, and twisted to break herself free.

He twisted with her, proving the move was ineffectual. But then he released her and shoved her back onto her heels. He could catapult her across the field, but he'd restrained himself so she stumbled but didn't fall. She planted her feet, fists clenched and ready.

"They don't know you can travel the portals by yourself, without detection," she guessed. "That's the problem. Isn't it?"

When his sneer showed the lethal shape of his fangs, she wondered why he hadn't used them to mark her flesh, instead of the feather. Maybe because incubi didn't drink blood. But he'd seemed to enjoy the taste of hers.

"You think your threats will keep me from doing whatever I wish to you? I can feel how much you want me to overpower you. Make you behave."

That mocking tone inspired reactions she detested. Uncertainty, guilt, anger, resentment. Confusion. But she was certain of one thing, and she had no trouble acting on it, no matter how much she might regret the things she had to abandon to do so. But if the choice was between that and her self-respect, her choice was made.

"They're right about you. You don't know how to treat a female you really want. Don't come near me again until you do."

She left him. Though she didn't look back, his regard was a weight on her back, like the target the centaur kids had fired upon. If he retaliated, she likely wouldn't have a chance to defend herself.

But the issue wasn't whether she could win the fight. It was the choice to fight. And she would. Because she preferred a fight over fear.

Plus, a traitorous part of her really wanted to fight with him again. She informed it that the incubus angel thing was a total ass.

It told her that she hoped he'd prove her wrong.

She told it to shut the fuck up.