L.L. Foster - The Kindred

She didn’t want to awaken Luther . . . but then again, she did. Fuck. In a very short time she’d become a needy, whiny fool.

“Gaby?”

Closing her eyes, she swallowed and attempted to regulate her voice, to hide the repulsive despair. Too much depended on her being a paladin.

Without looking at Luther, she said, “There’s more that I should tell you.”

A heavy pause preceded Luther’s calm concern. “Why don’t you come back to bed and we’ll talk?”

No, if she got back in bed with him, she’d want things she shouldn’t. Like respite from duty. Like . . . normalcy. “No, Luther. I can’t.” An odd constriction in her throat made it difficult to squeeze the words out. But the import of her words demanded voice. “It . . . it’s eating me up inside until I feel like I’m going to . . . I don’t know. Explode. Destroy something.”

She heard the creaking of the bed, then felt Luther’s arms come around her. And oh God, it felt good.

Too good.

“You can tell me anything,” he whispered, “and somehow, we’ll figure it out.”

That he believed such nonsense only added to her agitation. Some things, like her purpose on earth, would never be so easily divined.

Breathing hurt, but then, she’d hurt for so much of her life, what did that matter? Pain kept her sharp, in senses and in body. She needed the pain now.

Pain she could handle.

It was the invasive weakness that would be her undoing—and still she turned into Luther’s comforting embrace, holding him so tight that her arms ached.

She shouldn’t share her appointed onus with anyone, much less someone as pure as Luther. It wasn’t fair to burden him.

But he’d changed her, and she no longer had the internal fortitude to bear it all alone.

Unable to face him as she detailed the awful, ugliest of possible crimes, Gaby told him about Bliss’s vision—and her own.

“Your bloodsucker is still on the loose, Luther.”

As if to soothe her from her worries, his hands rubbed up and down her back. “I know that. We’ll get him, Gaby. I swear. It might take some time—”

“Yeah, well, unfortunately time is something you don’t have. Hate to break it to you, cop, but your guy isn’t just a bogus bloodsucker.” She had to take several quick, shallow breaths before giving him the truth. “The sick fuck also likes the taste of human flesh.”

Luther stiffened. The ugly word barely squeezed past his abhorrence. “Cannibalism?”

Gaby nodded. “Not just a cannibal, fucked up as that is.” Sick to her soul, she whispered, “He wants something special now. He wants . . . fresher meat.”

With each word, Luther grew more rigid, until now, it was his hold that crushed.

Gaby didn’t mind, though. Somehow, for whatever inane reason, being held by him made the possibility for resolution more plausible.

Careful not to hurt her arm, Luther levered her away from him. At her disclosure of what she believed, what she had considered keeping from him, what she had thought to fight alone . . . Oh God.

Fury and fear rolled together to obliterate his control.

He struggled to keep his temper concealed from her. He knew Gaby, and if she suspected he wanted to lock her away for her own safekeeping, she’d leave him and never come back and everything they’d shared wouldn’t sway her one bit.

His fingers bit into her shoulders, but he couldn’t help it, and she didn’t seem to notice. “I understand about Bliss. This isn’t the first time she’s claimed to have a strange foreboding about things, most often with morbid circumstances.”

“And she’s been right every time.”

Did that mean Gaby considered Bliss right in proclaiming them an item? According to Bliss, they were meant to be—and Gaby knew it.

He let that go to tackle a bigger, more monumental question. “What I don’t understand is your vision.” He managed one leveling breath, and then another. “Care to explain?”

She shivered, and then in a burst of energy she shoved him away. “I fucking hate this.”

“This?”

“Feeling this way.” She pressed a fist to her belly. “I’m cold , Luther. I’ve never been cold a day in my life. Other than thunderstorms, I don’t even notice the stupid weather.”

He had no idea how to console her. Never had he known her to be susceptible to the cold, so she was changing. He’d already sensed it, and understood how hard it was for her.

And still he relished it.

But changing wouldn’t be an easy thing for Gaby to advocate.

Her gaze sought his before she stepped away, putting a deliberate physical and emotional distance between them.

“Always, every second of every day, there’s been this awful yawning pit inside of me. It’s been a part of me for as long as I can remember. It’s bleak and hungry and sick, but it’s buried deep where I can’t change it, and so I ignore it. It’s there, but I’ve made it unimportant.”

“You’ve learned to function with it.”

“I had no choice, damn it.” She pressed the heels of her hands to her eye sockets. “Jesus, Luther, I want that awful, indifferent pit back.”

Hurting for her, Luther stepped closer. “Because it’s familiar? Or because it was replaced with something that’s worse?”

“Because now I can’t compartmentalize things.” She dropped her hands, but only to slug him in the shoulder, to close in on him with aggression and urgency. “You fucked it all up. You’ve got me confused and . . . and fucking cold .” Her trembling bottom lip was stilled only by the harsh compression of her mouth. “And needy.”

She swallowed, but he heard the tears in her voice.

“And . . . scared.”

That admission cost her, sending savage emotion to wrack her body. She swallowed again, convulsively, but the tears still glistened in her sad, wounded eyes.

He’d never seen Gaby cry and, God Almighty, it ripped him apart.

If he touched her now, she’d resent the compassion, and it might send her over the edge. No matter how badly he needed to hold her, he couldn’t do that to her.

Going to his closet, Luther found a flannel shirt and draped it around her. Holding the collar together under her chin, he put his forehead to hers and wished for a way to ease her turmoil.

As a detective, the only way he knew to proceed was to get all the details he could. “Tell me about your vision, Gaby. Let’s start with that.”

Angrily, she shrugged into the shirt, and then swiped a hand over her eyes. “Why not? It’s all so screwed up anyway.”

She marched out of the room and down the hall to the spare bedroom she’d appropriated. Going to her knees, she bent at the waist and dug under the bed.

Good God. Even now, with foul talk of a cannibal, she threw him off guard with her manners.

The shirt barely covered her hips. And with her in that position, he saw . . . well, everything.

Lounging in the doorframe to keep from touching her, he said, “You know, Gaby, most women feel vulnerable when they’re naked.”

She dragged out a box without looking at him. “Why?”

The question threw him. “I suppose because many men are spurred by lust at the sight of a woman’s body. Some men, idiots I guess, can lose control.”

“So?”

Right. Why would Gaby be concerned with a man’s loss of control? She’d flatten anyone who tried to take advantage of her. “Very few women are as capable of fending off rape as you are.”

“Interesting. But I’m not naked, so does any of this really matter?”

He felt sweat on his forehead. “Jesus, Gaby, you’re mostly naked and you just flashed me an invitation that was damned hard to resist.”