Unknown - Scorched

He grabbed her arms, setting her back once more with that insane strength. “If you don’t back away, I won’t be able to stop myself.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

“Only if you’re willing to take a demon for a lover. I have no idea what my demon might do, but it wants you.”

And then she felt it, a pressing wave of need that rolled off him and sent her skittering backward. He took a step forward, the very proximity of his energy nearly bringing her to her knees. Her jaws burned with the need to taste him. Her body felt like it was breaking apart in its haste to surrender.

Constance panted, hugging herself, shivering with frustration. Now she wanted him for so much more than a first meal. A door had just cracked open, and there were all kinds of temptation on the other side. Everything she had missed since she was seventeen. Everything for herself.

But could she put her desires first, when there was a rescue at stake? Could she be that selfish?

He saw her hesitation. His jaws bunched, and the red light in his eyes flared, but he let her go. Damnation. She almost wished he wasn’t so honorable.

“The demon changes things, doesn’t it? It’s different when I don’t smell like dinner.” Mac gave her a long, narrow-eyed look, the burning glow lurking in his gaze. “I hope you didn’t bring me here thinking you could get your teeth into me.”

Constance drew herself up, trying to summon enough anger to wash away the lust burning up her body. It didn’t work. “What does it matter?”

“Sweetheart, if you have to ask that, you’ve been here too long.”

“Maybe.” She felt herself drooping, but pulled her head up again, refusing to look as defeated as she felt.

He gave her another look that said he was weighing and judging her soul.

Constance felt like she would burst into tears. “I’m sorry. Don’t walk away. Please don’t make Sylvius pay for my mistakes!”

She closed her eyes, wishing she could tell him about the kitchen table, the family she wanted, how he had blown into her existence and made that dream almost touchable because it was his face she saw there. Someone real.

All he could see was how she’d tried to trick him. Again.

“Please,” she said again, forcing herself to look at him.

He stared at her for a long time, thoughts chasing themselves across his face. The foremost was a sexual heat scorching in its frankness.

“Please,” she repeated, softer this time.

“There are some things I need to find out. Promise me you’ll stay here until I get back.”

“I can’t.”

“Promise me!” Mac grabbed her by her arms, his grip hard and hot through the fabric of her sleeves. He shook her a little, his strength lifting her to her toes.

She set her jaw. “Let go of me.” Her voice was quiet.

He flexed his arms, pulling her to him. She could feel his breath on her face, warm and urgent. “I need your word. I won’t help you if I’m going to come back to find you torn to pieces by the changelings or staked by the guards. I’m not that selfless.”

His demon’s energy was as palpable as rushing surf. His hands shook as he relaxed his fingers until he stopped crushing her. But he still held her, barely banked need alive in his touch.

Fear warred with the urge to cling to him, but she had her pride. “I’ve lived here for a long time, Conall Macmillan. I’m not easy prey.”

He swallowed, clearly forcing himself under control. “I don’t care.”

Constance thought about resisting, dragging out her surrender because something about it was delicious. This isn’t a game. This is serious.

She cursed inwardly, but did the reasonable thing. “Very well, but I won’t wait long.”

“Good enough.” Mac released her arms and folded his own, as if to keep them out of mischief.

The air in the room changed, taking on the same final feeling as the moment someone closes a book. The heat slipped away like water draining through a sieve. “Later, then.”

Cool. Businesslike. In charge.

He was holding back, being what Constance needed. The mother in her approved, but the young woman that never got to live began to silently weep. “No, wait...” He was already dust. Bollocks!

Alessandro was hoping for a perfect couple of hours, which meant old jeans, no sword, and no sister-in-law. Ashe hadn’t come back since last night. Even Holly wasn’t at home. She’d stayed late in the reading room in the university library. She’d left a note saying she would call when it was time to drive there and pick her up.

Seizing the moment, Alessandro retreated to the third floor of Holly’s house, where he’d turned a corner bedroom into a studio. There, he kept those things that were uniquely his.

The room was filled with instruments in stands, in cases, hanging on the wall—guitars, lutes, citterns, and other members of the long-necked, plucked family. Some had fat, pumpkin bellies; others were sleek. There was a solid-bodied Gibson and pieces of a French lute he meant to rebuild someday. Alessandro had owned hundreds of instruments over the centuries, but these were the voices he could not bear to part with.

When he had moved in with Holly, those had arrived first. The rest of his things—mostly books and an armory’s worth of weapons—had taken more time to put away. Piles of car magazines still tottered on the old desk, their pages stirred by the draft from the double-hung window. Truth be told, he liked things a little messy. He didn’t mind at all that Holly was a haphazard housekeeper, because he was the same way.

From where he sat, he could see outside, across the street and down the brush-covered cliff, the moon trailing a silver scarf across the calm water. It was a clear, cold night. Holly’s huge cat curled into a ball at one end of the lumpy Victorian sofa. Alessandro was sprawled with his favorite Martin acoustic at the other. He’d built a small fire, the pitchy scent of the wood blending with the must of damp wool carpet. The house felt content, the sort of drowsing quietude he associated with nesting chickens.

Alessandro switched on the radio, keeping the volume low enough that he could still hear himself running over and over the finger exercises he practiced every day, up and down the frets of the Martin’s glossy neck. Vampire speed was great, but that meant twice as much work to achieve perfect precision. Of course he would do better if he sat up straight, but he was too lazy to move.

The Kibble-ator—Kibs—uncurled and rolled onto his back in a full-body stretch, claws extended. Without breaking rhythm, Alessandro rubbed the cat’s stomach with one stockinged foot, listening to his passagework and the radio at the same time.

“This is Errata and you’re listening to CSUP at FM 101.5 in Fairview. That was the Happy Dead People with their latest release, Afterlife, After You. It’s ten o’clock and time for Unnatural Enquiry, the current issues portion of our show. I have with me a very special guest, George de Winter of the Clan Albion vampires. Welcome, George.”

“Good evening, Errata.”

Clan Albion? Who gave those villains airtime? Suddenly annoyed, Alessandro rolled off the couch, walking a few steps to put the guitar safely in its stand by the wall. Kibs flopped over, a boneless heap of stripes, and yawned.

On his way back to the couch, Alessandro turned up the volume of the old plug-in radio. The werecougar announcer was in fine form, her sultry voice making the patter sound like a come-on. “We’re here tonight to talk about nothing less than the state of the paranormal nation. Are we monsters or are we citizens of the world at large? Should we obey the same laws as our human neighbors? Scrap that, kiddies, and let’s ask why we should obey any laws at all besides the call of the wild?”