Beauty's Beasts (12 page)

Her breathing was fast and hard as she stared at Nick. His blade had been descending even though she had dropped the pole. Would he have buried the sword in her back or shoulder if she had not got the katana up to block him in time?

He smiled. “You’re not sleepy anymore, are you?”

She licked her lips. “No.”

“Don’t ever let yourself believe your limits are what your mind determines them to be. The real limits of your body are far beyond what your mind thinks they are.” He lowered the sword, stepped forward and pushed her blade out of the way. “You should get some sleep, Riley. You’re very tired.” He brushed her hair from her temple.

Abruptly, the adrenaline screaming through her body morphed into hot, aching arousal, between one heart beat and the next. She looked up into Nick’s eyes, marveling at the summer-sky blue of them and realized she was staring at him again. She stayed very still.

“Use my bed,” he murmured. “We’ll keep your nightmares at bay for you.”

Damian’s hands slid around her waist. He was behind her. “I’ll hold you,” he whispered in her ear.

She was starting to shake. Adrenaline overload, she realized. That and tiredness. Damian’s hands shifted and he picked her up. “Come, my lover,” he murmured. The katana was plucked from her hand. “Relax,” Damian murmured. “You’re safe.”

Things got confused after that as sleep and adrenaline aftermath claimed her. Hands were peeling her sweaty workout clothing from her. A damp cloth over her skin.

“She needs protein.” Nick’s voice.

Thick chocolate-flavored liquid in her mouth. “Swallow.” Damian’s voice. She swallowed.

Cool slippery sheets. Being turned onto her side. Warmth over her. A body behind her. Arms around her. A pillow under her head.

She was so exhausted sleep rushed at her without protest for one of the few times in her life, even though there was someone else in the bed with her.
It’s not the same, though. This is Damian with me
, was the thought that followed her down into sleep.

She woke with instant orientation, aware that she had slept so deeply she had not moved from the position Damian had laid her in. She was still on her side. But Damian was no longer behind her.

Something had woken her. She didn’t know what it was yet, but her senses had been alerted even in sleep. If she hadn’t moved then not much time could have passed yet. She didn’t feel any alarm, but she didn’t sit up or show any outward sign that she was awake. Instead, she listened.

Low voices from the sofa. Damian and Nicholas were talking.

Riley didn’t feel that Damian had deserted her in any way. Within the warded apartment, she was perfectly safe with the two vampires barely fifteen feet away. And they had some serious catching-up to do. This would be their first chance to do it, if they hadn’t spoken on the way to New York. Somehow, Riley knew they hadn’t—not with her asleep on Damian’s chest and all that lay between them so freshly opened and hurting still.

Now, with Damian and her together, the old patterns had shifted and reformed and the two men could talk. Riley shamelessly eavesdropped.

“You’ve seriously underestimated her, you realize?” Damian said, as if he were finishing a conversation.

Nick gave a low laugh. “And the dire prognostications roll on.
God,
how I’ve missed you.” There was a note of longing in his voice that made Riley’s heart clench.

“Nick…” Damian’s voice also carried a tone of regret, of…
wanting
. Because she had heard that arousal in his voice when he was with her, she had no trouble recognizing it now in the single word he spoke.

Silence.

Riley could hear her own heart in her temples and her chest and her mind. She longed to move, to twist the tiny few degrees it would take to lift her chin and look at them, to see what they were doing. Were they kissing? Running their hands over each other’s bodies? Thrusting a hand between each other’s thighs? All of the above? Something else? Somehow cementing their old relationship and excluding her?

Riley struggled to remain utterly still, keep her breath even and maintain every outward appearance of sleep, while she fought a raging and swiftly building sense of fear.

After a few seconds of silence that felt like a year or so, Nicholas spoke again. His voice was thick with arousal. “You should be careful with this game you’re playing. She’s human. She doesn’t have the stamina to deal with it the way I can. I like your games. Riley may not. Have you thought of that?”

“This one is different.” Damian’s voice was flat.

“The game or the girl?”

“You’ll see,” Damian responded.

Nicholas sighed, as if he was one of the most put-upon men in the universe. “Very well, then. Just be careful with her. I like this one.”

Damian laughed. “That stiff-upper-lipped English thing of yours stopped fooling me about three centuries ago. You
like
her? It’s far more than ‘like’ and we both know it. Have you forgotten how to speak plainly with me?”

Riley found she was holding her breath, waiting for Nick’s answer. She made herself breathe in the slow, deep rhythm of a sleeper again, as Nick’s silence stretched on. Finally, he spoke again. “You haven’t marked her yet.”

Riley heard Damian’s sigh. Disappointment? Frustration? She felt her own strong desire to grab Nick by the scruff and shake him.

“No, I haven’t marked her,” Damian replied evenly.

“Why not?” Nick pressed and Riley sensed he’d spotted Damian’s own vulnerability and was jumping on it, because it took the focus of the conversation—and the pressure—away from him.

Damian didn’t respond.

“Why haven’t you?” Nick pushed again. “She’s clearly chosen you.” Riley heard a touch of bitterness in his voice. “If you mark her, it protects us all. It…settles the matter.”

“You have to trust me,” Damian said slowly. “You used to, once.”

“Of course I do,” Nick said, sounding surprised. “With my life.”

“Then I ask you to continue to do so, just for a while.”

The silence this time was much shorter. “Very well then,” Nick said simply. He made a sound like someone stretching or standing. “It’s good to have you back,” he added.

Riley held in her amazement. Just like that, Nick had dropped the subject and asked no more question, just as Damian had requested. He was going to trust that Damian would protect Nick’s interests and emotions and wouldn’t let him get hurt. Riley didn’t know if she could do that. It took the sort of faith that Nick had built up over centuries.

But Nick was still speaking. “All these petty intrigues and plots are good for my brain. It’s been a while since I had someone to outwit.”

“Don’t forget you have Azazel out there, still.”

Nick swore. “Azazel isn’t clever. It’s just a demon with demigod-like powers that should have been killed the first go-round.”

“You should thank it. It brought Riley back into your life.”

“There’s food for thought.” Nick swore again. “Those damned green eyes of hers…I lied, Damian. The demon looked almost exactly like her.”

“I know,” Damian said softly.

Silence again.

“You’d better get back to her,” Nick said, his voice rough.

“Going.”

Riley tried to consciously relax all her muscles before Damian slipped into the bed next to her and she betrayed herself by her tension. The effect of loosening everything was therapeutic. She was still exhausted and slipped back into genuine sleep just as Damian’s long body settled fully up against hers.

She woke to full daylight with cloudless blue sky peering in through the old factory windows and the sound of the television tuned to a morning breakfast show. Hot food smells came from the kitchen and the sound of cooking. She sniffed. Eggs and vegetables. Toast?

Her stomach rumbled emptily and cramped at the aromas. Riley threw back the covers and discovered simultaneously that she was naked and that her body was as stiff as a board. She gave a pathetic cry as every muscle she possessed seemed to instantly seize up and grind to a halt.

Nicholas magically appeared at her side and she was in so much pain she barely minded that she was stark naked. He wore dark trousers and a button-up shirt in a dark blue color. The fabric settled around his frame and clung to each curve and dip of his anatomy. The dull sheen told her the shirt was silk.

She looked up into his eyes, then remembered and dropped her gaze to his shoulders and the strong neck rising out of the open collar of the shirt.

He held out a glass of orange juice. “Drink this,” he said. “It has glutamine in it and will help with the stiffness.”

She looked up at him. “I would if I could lift my arm to take the glass.”

He grinned. “Getting yourself moving is the next best way to combat the ache. Come on, move it, Riley.” He made no attempt to lower the glass closer to her.

Gritting her teeth, she raised her arm and took the glass from him. “I hate you,” she said between clenched teeth.

“As long as you do it while you’re moving. Drink.” He dropped a robe on the bed next to her. “Here, use this. Yours is useless. Come and eat as soon as you’ve drunk the juice.” He went back to the kitchen where Damian was working over the stove.

Riley drained the orange juice, then forced herself to stand and put on the silk robe. It was ridiculously oversized on her and wrapped around her nearly twice. The hem trailed on the ground and as she tied the dark green sash she realized with a jolt that this was Nick’s robe. She ran her hand over her hip, feeling strangely intimate and slightly aroused at the idea of wearing his robe and being naked beneath it.

She looked up and saw that Nick was watching her. He wasn’t smiling.

Her heart thudded. Riley picked up the empty orange juice glass and walked with painful slowness to the kitchen area and rinsed the glass.

“You’re just in time,” Damian told her. “Your breakfast is ready.” He tipped the scrambled eggs and vegetables onto a plate next to a toasted bagel, a pot of cream cheese and three strips of soy bacon, picked up the plate and carried it to the table where a single placemat and knife and fork waited. He was wearing jeans so ancient they were almost white with washing, sun and age. There were small rips and tears here and there, giving her glimpses of flesh beneath. But this was no designer pair of jeans with a horrendous price tag. She saw the common label on the back of his hip. He’d acquired the jeans years ago and they had earned their holes the honest way. The sweater above was equally as ancient, in some fragile yarn that looked like it would be soft and warm and barely there. It might once have been some sort of teal color, but now was so washed out and faded that it matched the jeans.

Against Damian’s olive skin tones, it looked very good indeed.

“Where did you learn to cook?” she asked, heading over to the table.

“I used to cook for your mother a lot when she was a child.”

“He likes it,” Nicholas added from his post by the kitchen counter. “I think you’ve made his day, giving him an excuse to muck about in the kitchen with real food.”

“Even though you don’t get to eat it?” Riley asked, looking up at Damian.

“It’s relaxing.”

“So’s swordplay,” Nick said with a snort.

“Not the way I do it,” Damian returned, settling on the chair next to Riley and pushing up the sleeves of the sweater. “You turn it into an art form. A sword was never meant to be art. It’s a weapon. For defense only.”

“How can you call a katana
just
a weapon? It’s beautiful. Symmetrical, perfectly balanced…”

Their tones implied that this conversation was an old one, so Riley let their voices wash over her as she began to eat. She was ravenous.

The morning program on the television switched to news of the hour and the news anchor gravely reported the grizzly findings of six more murdered Manhattan residents overnight in the latest serial killings, their bodies mutilated in ways that seemed to indicate the presence of a large predator of a type unknown to police at this time…

Riley put down her fork, her appetite gone. She looked from Damian to Nicholas. Both of them were silent. They had heard.

“
Six
of them. One each,” she said. She stood up, groaning at the effort. “Why didn’t we go after them last night? Stop them last night?
Six more people
, Jesus, Damian, we laid around…we did nothing!”

“What would you have had us do?” Damian asked.

“Stop them!” She pointed at the television. “
We
know what’s doing it. They don’t!”

“And how do we do that?” Nicholas asked, in a reasonable tone.

She spun toward him. “You must know the answer. You’ve stopped them before. Twice!”

Nicholas pushed himself away from the counter he was leaning against and prowled toward her. “Both times I was in the company of the best demon hunters the world had ever seen. Look at you, Riley. You can barely crawl out of that bed.”

She bit her lip. “If you hadn’t left me in the care of the foster system for eighteen years, I
would
have been ready. I would have been trained, just like you trained my mother from childhood.”

“No, you would be dead,” Nick said flatly. He stood over her. “You think Azazel wouldn’t have made it his first point of business to guarantee you were out of the way before raising the Stonebrood clan once more? We would have had no warning he had returned. No chance to assemble our defenses and protect you. This way, he had no idea where to find you.”

“And now six more people are dead because we sat around on our hineys last night,” she said bitterly. “We should have been out
doing
something. Anything. Surely there was a way to…to slow them down, even!”

Nick crossed his arms. “If you can best me, right now,” he said softly, “you’re ready to take on Lirgon.”

“Nick,” Damian said, sounding mildly vexed.

“With swords?” Riley asked.

“Whatever way you want,” Nick replied.

“Riley, don’t be stupid,” Damian snapped.

But Riley didn’t even wait for Damian to finish his protest. Her question about the swords had been meant as a distraction. She moved almost before she had finished speaking. She knew she had to move faster than she had ever moved before. Her first indignant movements away from the table had placed her in the clear space between the dining table and kitchen counter.