P.C. Cast - Burned

When their bare skins touched, Stevie Rae thought she’d explode. This was what she needed. Her skin was ultrasensitive, and everywhere Dallas touched, he scalded her, but in a very, very good way because Stevie Rae needed to be touched. She had to be touched and loved and possessed over and over to wipe away everything: Nicole, the dead kids, fear for Zoey, and Rephaim. Always, before anything else, there was Rephaim.

Dallas’s touch seared him away. Stevie Rae knew she was still Imprinted with Rephaim—she could never forget that—but just then, with the slick heat of Dallas’s sweaty skin smooth and human and real against hers, Rephaim seemed so distant. It was almost as if he was moving away from her . . . letting her go . . .

“You can bite me if you want to.” Dallas’s breath was warm against her ear. “Really. It’s fine. I want you to.”

He was on top of her, and he shifted his weight so that the curve of his neck was pressed against her lips. She kissed his skin, and let her tongue taste him, feeling the pulse there and the ancient rhythm of it. Stevie Rae replaced her tongue with her fingernail, caressing lightly, finding the perfect spot to pierce so that she could drink from him. Dallas moaned, anticipating what was to come. She could give him pleasure, and take from him at the same time. It was the way it worked with mates—it was the way things were meant to be. It would be quick, easy, and feel really, really good.

If I drink from him, my Imprint with Rephaim will break. The thought made her hesitate. Stevie Rae stopped, one sharp fingernail tip pressed against Dallas’s neck. No, a High Priestess can have a mate and a consort, she told herself.

But it was a lie—at least for Stevie Rae it was. She knew, in the deepest recess of her heart, that her Imprint with Rephaim was something unique. It wouldn’t follow the rules that usually bound a vam-pyre to her consort. It was strong—amazingly strong. And maybe it was because of that unusual strength that she couldn’t bind herself to any other guy.

If I drink from Dallas, my Imprint with Rephaim will break.

The knowledge was a cold certainty within her.

And then what about the debt she’d agreed to pay? Could she be bound to Rephaim’s humanity without being Imprinted with him?

It was a question that wasn’t to be answered because at that moment from behind them, as if conjured by her thoughts, Rephaim shouted, “Do not do this to us, Stevie Rae!”

Rephaim felt her anger and wondered if he would be able to tell whether or not it was directed at him. He purposely focused his thoughts on Stevie Rae, allowing the blood thread that tied them to strengthen. More anger. It poured through their bond, and the force of her ire surprised him though he could feel that she was attempting to hold herself in check.

No. Her fury wasn’t aimed at him. Someone else was rousing her—someone else was the focus of her aggression.

He pitied the poor fool. Had he been a lesser being, he would have laughed sardonically and wished the hapless fellow well.

It was time he put Stevie Rae out of his mind.

Rephaim kept flying east, tasting the night with his powerful wings, reveling in his freedom.

He didn’t need her now. He was whole. He was strong. He was himself again.

Rephaim didn’t need the Red One. She was only the vessel through which he’d been saved. The truth was her reaction to seeing him whole again proved theirs was a tie that needed to be severed.

Rephaim slowed, feeling unexpectedly weighed down by his thoughts. He landed on a gentle rise of land covered by old pin oaks. Standing on the little hillock, he gazed back the way he’d come, considering . . .

Why did she reject me?

Had he frightened her? That didn’t seem possible. She’d seen him whole when he’d entered the circle. He’d been fully healed when he’d faced Darkness.

For her he’d faced Darkness!

Absently, Rephaim reached back and rubbed at the base of his wings. His skin felt smooth under his fingers. There was no physical wound left. Stevie Rae had completely healed him from Darkness’s wrath.

And then she’d turned from him as if she’d suddenly seen him as a monster and not a man.

But I am not a man! Thoughts blasted through Rephaim’s mind. She knew what I was! Why turn from me after everything we’ve been through?

Her behavior utterly baffled him. She’d called for him when she’d been in terror for her life— frightened beyond thinking, Stevie Rae had called for him.

He’d answered her call and gone to her, saved her.

I claimed her as my own.

And then, weeping, she’d run away from him. Yes, he’d seen her tears, but he hadn’t known what he’d done to cause them.

With a deep cry of frustration, he threw his hands in the air, as if to rid himself of even the thought of her, and moonlight glinted off his palms. Rephaim stilled. Holding his arms out, he looked at them as if seeing them for the first time. He had a man’s arms. She’d held his hands. He’d even cradled her in his arms, though it had only been briefly as they’d escaped immolation on the rooftop. His skin was really no different than hers. His was browner, perhaps, but only a little. And his arms were strong . . . well made . . .

By all the gods, what was wrong with him? It didn’t matter what his arms looked like. She would never truly be his. How could he even imagine it? It was beyond all thoughts—beyond even the wildest of his dreams.

Unbidden, the words of Darkness echoed through his mind: You are your father’s son. Like him, you have chosen to champion a being who can never give you what it is you seek most.

“Father championed Nyx,” Rephaim spoke to the night. “She rejected him. And now I, too, have championed one who rejects me.”

Rephaim launched himself into the sky. His wings beat up, up. He wanted to touch the moon—that crescent that symbolized the Goddess who had broken his father’s heart and set about the sequence of events that created him. Perhaps if he reached the moon, its Goddess would give him an explanation that would make sense—that would be balm to his heart, because Darkness was correct. What I seek most, Stevie Rae can never give me.

What I seek most is love . . .

Rephaim couldn’t speak the word aloud, but even the thought burned him. He had been conceived in violence through a mixture of lust and fear and hate. Most of all hate, always hate.

His wings stroked the sky, lifting him ever upward.

Love couldn’t be possible for him. He shouldn’t even want it—shouldn’t even think of it.

But he did. Since Stevie Rae had touched his life, Rephaim had begun to think of love.

She’d shown him kindness, and he’d never before known kindness.

She’d been gentle with him, bandaging his wounds and tending his body. He’d never been cared for before the night she’d helped him out of the freezing, bloody darkness. Compassion . . . she’d brought compassion into his life.

And he’d never known laughter before he knew her.

Staring up at the moon, beating the wind with his wings, he thought of her incessant babble and the way her eyes sparkled with humor at him, even when he didn’t know what he’d done to amuse her, and he had to choke back unexpected laughter.

Stevie Rae made him laugh.

She hadn’t seemed to care that he was the powerful son of an indestructible immortal. Stevie Rae had ordered him around as if he was anyone else in her life—anyone who was normal, mortal, capable of love and laughter and real emotions.