Hunter by Night (23 page)

Theresa’s heart almost stopped when Xander came into the room and collapsed on the floor. Before she knew what she was doing, she’d discarded the magazine she’d been pretending to read and knelt next to him, touching her hands gently against his skin. “How badly are you hurt?”

“I’ll be fine,” he mumbled. “Just need to rest.”

She tsked quietly. “Xander.”

“Theresa.” He made a noise that sounded almost like a laugh. “I hate my power. Hate. No fucking use to me ninety-nine percent of the time. Once I use it, I have all the strength of a kitten.”

She tried to smile and gave in to the urge to run her hand over his dusty hair. “I would bet you saved a lot of lives tonight.”

He shrugged vaguely. “A shower might help. My skin burns like crazy.” He rolled and struggled to sit, but Theresa pushed his shoulders. Weak from burning his powers, he went back down easily.

Forgetting the reasons why it might be wise to stay disengaged, Theresa laid her head on his chest. “I’m so grateful you’re back. I can’t tell you how much I worried, watching you walk out of this room.” She ignored the moisture that gathered at the corners of her eyes. The night has been stressful, that was all.

She heard him swallow. His throat must be dry. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to go. God, you’re soft. So… really soft.”

She sighed deeply. “Okay. Stay here. I’ll start the water.”

His eyes opened wider.

Saying nothing further, she headed into the bathroom and turned on the shower, making sure to keep the water nice and cool. The pressure, not too hard. “Come on,” she said, when she came back into the room. She gripped his arm and pulled him from the floor.

“Damn.” He coughed, struggling to rise from the floor. “You’re strong.”

“I’m stronger than I look.” She’d had to be, after all. Theresa swept her long hair from her shoulders and put one arm around him. When she reached the bathroom, Xander braced his hands against the counter, trying to stay upright, and heat radiated through her body, knowing what she was going to have to do.

They’d certainly gotten close, but injured or not, sharing a little blood paled in comparison to seeing him in all of his natural glory. Steeling herself, she pulled his jacket.

She’d managed to untuck his shirt before he stirred from his daze. “What are you doing?”

Her pulse did a nervous little dance. “Helping you to undress.”

“I can…” He turned, reaching for his belt, and landed hard against the counter. “Well, that fucking hurt.”

“Let me help you.” She assisted him with his shirt, his belt. She hesitated before assisting him with his pants, as much because it seemed like the point of no return as because what she could already see truly deserved to be admired. “My goodness, you’re gorgeous.” She clapped her hand over her mouth. Saying such a brazen thing aloud wasn’t like her.

His hand reached out. It found the back of her neck, and tired though he was, he pulled her forward. “You know where this is going if we continue, don’t you?”

“Do you mean right now? Tonight? Or…” It was as if her dress had shrunk a size.

The muscles in his chest followed his breath, rising and falling. His green eyes went dark. “I think I mean all of the above. I’ve been worried it’s too soon for you.”

Very hard to breathe. Very. “I think…” She thought of herself. Eamon. What was best, what was logical. The promises she’d made to herself about never again loving a soldier. Her anger when Eamon’s father had died.

Then she thought of that moment shortly before Xander had returned. “I thought I lost you, you know?” Tears welled again in her eyes. She couldn’t make them stop. “We still share a blood tie. I knew when you fired your power. I knew something had happened to hurt you.” Her fingers had tightened around Xander’s but she didn’t care. She couldn’t let go.

Tears slid down her face, and she was only vaguely aware of his thumb wiping them away. “Waiting here alone for you to either return or for someone to give word of what had happened was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. Harder than when I lost Eamon, because then at least I had my community around me. And Eamon was my mate. You and I, we’re…”

Xander took her face in his hands. “What are we?”

She sniffed. “That’s just the thing. We’ve been doing this strange dance. I swore I couldn’t see another fighter die. Not after losing one mate that way. When I thought I lost you, though…” She leaned forward and kissed him.

Xander’s hands bunched in her hair. His tongue carefully probed her mouth, kissing her back. She gripped his hips as his hands came to the tops of her arms, waking up shivers of pleasure as his fingers trailed down her sleeve. He pulled away then, his forehead against hers the way it had been just before he left. His breath came out in heavy, jagged pants.

“I suppose I should have asked if it’s too soon for you, too,” she said. A shiver of shame crept into her body. Theresa had thought of her own departed mate, her own concerns. She’d thought little of Xander’s lost mate, Tam. She should have. “I shouldn’t have assumed. I’m sorry.” She tried to pull away. “I can listen at the door to be certain you’re safe in the shower. I can call someone from Blood Service to see to your needs if you’d rather. But I don’t think I can continue—”

He smiled slightly, and then his mouth closed over hers. “Why do you think I haven’t fed from anyone else? I fell in love with you and that little boy a long time ago,” he whispered. “I stopped guarding you because it got too hard. I’ve said my good-byes to Tam. I couldn’t just move into my fallen friend’s life, take his mate and his child. It didn’t feel right, and you weren’t ready then.”

He tucked a strand of hair behind her head. “However. I swore if you ever felt for me what I did for you, I wouldn’t let that chance go. You and I both know life can be lost in a blink, Theresa. I see no point in worrying about ‘too soon’ when there may not be a later.”

His words made her want to jump out of her skin and pull him closer. Every muscle twitched with joy, with fear, with utter confusion. “I don’t know… My head is such a jumble. I only know that I don’t want to lose you again. Having you come back into our lives feels like the greatest gift in the world.”

He kissed her again. Nuzzled her throat gently. “Then I would love to be by your side, if you would let me. I want to spend many more nights talking with you. I want to see Eamon grow big and strong.” He pulled back, his green eyes serious. “I want to talk to Thad about taking on a role closer to the estate. Something safer. No fighting.”

Theresa couldn’t hold in her gasp. “But you love fighting.”

Xander laced his fingers with hers. “Some things mean more. Now, we’ve left the shower running and I’m about two minutes from collapsing on the floor. Do you know anybody who can sponge me off and help me with some blood?”

“Yes,” she said with a smile, “I do.”

***

Lee’s presence loomed behind Alexia, but she refused to turn around. “Lexi, talk to me.”

She couldn’t stop, couldn’t stand still or sit down. Swinging wildly back and forth from her dresser to her bed, she gathered clothing and phone chargers and toiletries—oh, my!—and tossed them into her backpack with all the force her indignation could manage.

“What are you doing?”

“Accusing me of leading those assholes here? Seriously? Do you want to accuse me of fucking Thad while you’re busy being completely ridiculous?” She stuffed yoga pants and tank tops into the backpack. “That was so shitty.” Her finger sliced through the tension between them to point at his cocky, handsome face. The wad of cash hidden in her underwear drawer came out, and she stuffed that down inside the bag, too.

She ignored the widening of Lee’s eyes. She already had stuff packed and stashed in one of the cars, but it was way the hell across the estate. “So you know, I found the hidden entrance at the back of the property, and that’s the one I’ve been using. Not that anyone around here has noticed.” Her favorite navy-blue hoodie went in next. She jerked the pack’s zipper. “I told you, I watched out the window. So I know they didn’t come to that entrance.”

Toothbrush. Toothpaste. Floss. Couldn’t forget proper gum care.

Lee grabbed a fistful of thongs and whatnot from the still-open drawer where she’d retrieved her money. He practically threatened her with them. “Aren’t you forgetting something? Some of this…” He read one of the tags. “This Victoria’s Secret stuff?”

She flopped down on the bed, suddenly tired. “I’m going to head back to Florida, and it’s summer so I don’t need a coat. I can buy more underwear.” That underwear had cost her a good chunk of change, and she just didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. God, the idea of leaving shredded her insides. So did the idea of staying with someone who would accuse her of something as hideous as selling the vampires out to their enemies. Even accidentally.

“Lexi, you can’t walk out that door tonight. We don’t know if there are still guys out there in the woods around the property.”

“If I suddenly happen upon a nest of them, I’ll send a smoke signal. But frankly, I think the chances of it are slim. The chances of meeting up with more vampires are slim, for that matter. In almost thirty years on the planet, I had only met Lucas and Isabel before you and Thad showed up to find Isabel for that royal prophecy thing. Your secrets are safe with me, I promise. But this isn’t my world.

“You want me to stay here? For you? I was this close, God damn you.” She held up her hand, pinching her thumb and forefinger together. “I can’t live a life with you constantly second-guessing and mistrusting me.” She flung one strap of the backpack over her shoulder and booked it for the door.

He pulled the door shut and stepped in front of it, blocking her exit.

She gave him her best angry glare. “Really? Are we going to stoop to brute strength? Because you know good flipping well that’s going the right way to make me want to smack you, and not in any way that’s sexy.”

His eyes widened and, swear to all the great heavenly bodies, a blush stained his cheeks. She remembered the sex they’d had. The hot, no-holds-barred animal way he’d made love to her that first time in the hospital. The way he’d asked her to bite and scratch him harder. The way he’d wanted more. Her own face heated, too, and she couldn’t help the tiny tug at the corners of her mouth. Wow, that had been out-of-control hot.

He reached to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. “Please.”

She shut her eyes for a few hard thumps of her heart. When she opened them again, his eyes were still wide, solemn, and that bold aquamarine color that made her knees quiver. “I’ve listened. I believed, because I wanted to, that you were honestly sincere that you wanted me to stay and you wanted things to be different. That you wanted to give me more power and freedom, or whatever the hell you said. Maybe I heard what I wanted to…” His hand wrapped around the back of her neck, and she let him pull her in for a moment before she stepped away. “Don’t. Don’t do that.”

“I’m falling in love with you, Alexia.”

She couldn’t breathe. God, seriously, her throat… She was breathing through one of those thin little coffee stirrers or something. “Lee…” She sat abruptly on the corner of the bed. Her backpack dropped to the floor.

She rubbed her hands over her face. God, she had to look just awful. The tears she’d cried before had dried up, and fresh ones flowed now, because damn—she’d love to pretend it didn’t grab her right in the chest to hear that he loved her, but God, it totally did. “Don’t pretend you love me if you don’t mean—”

His lips covered hers. His hands came gently but firmly to either side of her face.

Tears ran hot and fast down her face. God damn him. She hated to cry. It was worse exposure than standing naked in Times Square in February. Plus it made her throat and chest strain. She just couldn’t seem to keep it together around him.

His lips brushed her ear. “If you don’t believe me, listen to your blood.”

“Lee—”

“Take a deep breath for me.”

She hiccupped. “This is stupid.”

“No.” He pressed close. So hot and solid. “You do this for me. You listen to my blood in your veins, and if you still think I’m a lying asshole, you go ahead and walk out the door. I’ll help you pack your things properly.” Hot breath brushed her cheek. “Take a deep breath. Close your eyes.”

She shivered. And dammit, she did. She closed her eyes.
Inhale, exhale.
“Okay. Fine. And?”

“Again.”

She did. No words from either of them this time, and in the quiet that followed came a warm, gentle throb from deep inside her veins. A magnetic pull that drew her toward him so effectively that when her eyes opened, she was clutching at his sides, her nose against his. She hadn’t even realized.

“Twenty-five years, Lexi,” he ground out. “Twenty-five years since I walked out on Agnessa, and I swore that I would go to ash never letting another female have my heart.”

Oh, wow. “And you’re saying I…”
Oh
God. Don’t cry. Don’t cry…
But she couldn’t stop.

“You have far more than she ever did. You can’t go, Lexi. Don’t try to say this is only about guilt, because you can be sure that I care for you just as certainly my blood runs in your veins. We are a
part
of each other. And if you think you could leave and I’d never know something had happened to you, you haven’t been paying attention.” His lips brushed hers. “I would know the moment you were hurt.
And
it
would
fucking
gut
me.
”

Her tears flowed harder when she put her arms around him.

Siddoh gripped one door frame and then the next as he pushed his way down the hall. Once everything had looked under control up front, he’d used the kerfuffle with Lee and Alexia as an excuse to slip away.

I’ll be grateful when I’m no longer ready to beg for beheading
. Always the worst part of a bad fight and the subsequent feeding was that awkward in-between period when you didn’t fit back inside your own skin. Times like these, Siddoh half wished he’d just eaten it out there in the dirt. Getting knocked from the top of the food chain to the bottom never sat well. At this very moment, he’d lose a tussle with a garden slug.

The door next to him opened and Ivy rushed out, so busy looking down that she nearly ran the top of her head into his jaw. “Oh.” She stopped short, looking appropriately startled. Her hair had been piled in a pretty but haphazard way atop her head, and her face was golden and freshly scrubbed.

Yeah, everyone needed showers after that mess. Not that he’d be getting his for awhile. Siddoh paused, at odds about whether to just keep on keeping on, or to actually make conversation. “I wanted to thank you.” His mouth chose Option B without consulting his brain
.
“For before. Your blood.” She, Dr. Abel, and Dr. Brayden had made donations after the fight to get everyone back on their feet. He indicated one burnt hand with the other, as if it was necessary.

“It was… You’re welcome.”

He hesitated when he shouldn’t be, wondering about the things he’d seen before. The tattoo on her back, the red marks.
Get
home, Siddoh. None of your business. Long walk to that house of yours.
Still, he found himself feeling as if he should say more. Lacking words. Stalling, probably. Sometimes going home to his empty house was a real bitch, and tonight he’d be doing so minus a layer of skin. “Well. Good night.” He ran a hand over his face and pushed away from the door frame.

Her head tipped sideways. “Are you all right? Did you need more blood?”

“No. No,” he said too quickly. “Generous of you to offer. I’m sure you donated a lot tonight.”

She smiled. Gorgeous smile, that female. Bright. “Therapeutic amounts. Most of them are so young they can hardly drive. They bounce back fast.”

Siddoh nodded. His vision blurred some. “Hard to recall being so young.”

She sighed quietly. “I know.”

He didn’t bother pointing out that he had a few centuries on her. He couldn’t recall being as young as she was, either. “And yet you’re unmated. I find it hard to believe.” A rude comment. His filter still hadn’t returned. And he wanted to know. She came off as too quiet perhaps, but a competent female. Pretty. Sunshiny disposition, snake tattoos, and potentially self-inflicted wounds aside.

“I—” She looked him up and down. “Goodness, come in here and sit down, will you? You look like you might yet keel over. Dr. Brayden will never want to mate me if I allow one of his patients to die.”

What’s this now? Siddoh had known Brayden many long decades, and while the doctor kept his personal life very private, he was very certain Ivy wasn’t the guy’s type. Siddoh pretended selective hearing for the time being.

She led him into her room, a surprisingly austere place done in all whites and creams. Wingback chair by the door. Dresser. Desk. Lamp. The satiny silk blanket on the bed seemed to be her one luxury item.

Funny, with a female like Ivy, he’d expected flowers. Lace. Doilies like the kind her father had in the living room. Something. Before he’d seen the snake tattoo anyway. Now he half expected Alice Cooper posters. Or whoever. Was that guy still “in”? Sometimes the decades blurred together for Siddoh.

“I’m going to sully your nice, white room with my burnt skin. I’m, uh, sort of still molting here.”

“I have a vacuum cleaner. Best if we get that stuff off you anyway so you can regenerate.” She smiled and blushed brightly as she swept her thumb across his nose and cheekbone, sloughing the dead stuff from his face.

Had any female ever touched him so carefully?

When she leaned in close to inspect her work, tears rimmed her eyes. God help him, he wanted to wipe away the moisture from under her eyes.

He tried to shift in the chair but her body pressed so close. “Is something wrong?”

She knelt in front of him. “My father’s dying. He’s been cooped up in that house, and he hadn’t been able to search for a suitable mate for me…” She fell silent, and for awhile Siddoh thought maybe she’d decided to drop the topic and focus on de-flaking him. He decided that he could absotively bump this into the top five strangest conversations he’d ever had.

“I should probably—”

“He wants to see that I’m not alone,” she finished in a hurried breath.

“Of course.” Siddoh would bet money that no greeting card existed for this scenario. He should send in a suggestion.
Hey, Hallmark. Howzabout something that says, “Screw your dying father. Why can’t a hot, intelligent female like you fend for herself?” Maybe jazz it up with a hairless hunk on the front, or that crabby old woman in her bathrobe. That old lady is a fucking riot. So is this conversation.

“I’m all he has left. I want to give him peace.” Her hands moved again. Gently, methodically. Across his neck, his chest, his arms. Brushing the damage from Siddoh’s body and making him brand-new.

Siddoh swallowed when she grabbed a cloth to exfoliate the skin along his waistline and tried to pretend the whole situation wasn’t the weirdest thing he’d been party to in the past century. “I guess I’ve just never been able to get comfortable with the concept of an arranged mating. To me it’s like an exchange of property. And then you’re committed. For a thousand years, maybe more. Yeeow.” She’d pulled at a flake of skin on his arm that still wanted to stay attached.

“Sorry.” She stood and dusted his shoulders. “It worked for our kind for a long time, you know. For many it still works. Statistically, arranged matings are more solid. It’s only been in the last couple of centuries that we’ve had formal laws in place for dissolution of the mating pact.
Probably
because of the increase in love matches. Love cools. A business agreement comes with incentives to create a true commitment.”

Would she pull out pie charts next? Laser pointers? How could she not believe in love? Even Siddoh believed in love. He wanted to believe it was a thing he would be part of some day. “Have you even gotten Brayden’s okay with this?”

She knelt in front of him and gave a sharp stare.

“I’m just playing devil’s advocate.”

“I can see the things they say about you are fitting.”

The words, her glare. Both sliced deep across his exposed chest. He could only imagine. “What things?”

“Look,” she said. She knelt down and ran her hands around his side and up his back. “I leave the estate very rarely. My father is traditional. I wish to honor his beliefs. He loves me.” She ran her hands over his forearms and rocked back on her heels. “Okay, your upper body is fine.”

With the death knell of “the things they say about you” still ringing between his ears, Siddoh held back the knee-jerk zinger of “Why, thank you.” Not that they couldn’t use some damn levity.

Ivy, however, smiled slightly and said, “You look much better with all the dead skin gone, I mean.”

He managed a chuckle. She almost related to his humor. In this stuffy society of theirs, so few females did. Probably why he got along with Alexia so well, with her progressive human ideology and her abuse of the phrase “that’s what she said.”

He put his hands on the chair. “I can understand,” he said, “that you want to uphold your family’s traditions.” His voice had gotten embarrassingly heavy and deep. Hard to ignore all that gentle stroking from an attractive female. With hope,
she
didn’t notice. He shifted, slightly aroused by her proximity. “But arranged matings are done so little anymore. If this was important to your father, why didn’t he set you up before now? I don’t think bartering oneself—”

With that, the pleasant massage session was over. She stood so quickly that the stir of air against his new, sensitive skin made him shiver. “There was never time. And then he was put under house arrest.” She gave him her profile. Long, straight nose. Longer eyelashes. “You have your values. Allow me to have mine.”

He stood as well, a growl rising. “How can you value yourself at all if you’re willing to commit your life to a stranger?” Wrong fucking thing to say. None of his damned business.

Her mouth dropped so far open he could have parked a car between those fangs of hers. “I value
family
. And I am about to have none left. You make it sound so awful. Dr. Brayden is a friend and we work together. How is that not a foundation? My father only wants to know I’m taken care of.”

“Ivy, you run an entire estate with hundreds of residents on it, practically single-fucking-handedly. You do not need anyone to take care of you.”

“I know that. I
know
that. But my father…” Her breath caught.

But her father was dying, and this was what she believed she needed to do. Grief could be a real bastard.

At a loss, Siddoh placed a hand on her shoulder. “Ivy, I’m sorry.”

She sniffled. “You know, statistically, arranged marriages are more likely to last.”

You
said
that
already.
She was trying so hard to prove a point, but was she trying to prove it to him or to herself? “You don’t have anything to justify to me. I had no right to pry.” He had no right. No reason. All this because she’d given him blood? All his pride about moving with the times. Here he was being closed-minded and backward.

She blinked and nodded, still staring at the floor. Another sniffle. “Are you feeling up to making it back to your house?”

“Yeah.” He cleared his throat, backing away carefully to avoid brushing anything with his new, ultrasensitive skin. “Much better now. Thank you.”

Brayden had once given Siddoh blood, too. So had a dozen unnamed, unmated donors from Blood Service. Males. Females. Siddoh couldn’t believe he’d let Ivy get to him this way.

Her eyes remained downcast. “Then perhaps you should go.”

So he did.

***

Days had gone by with no attacks. Amazingly, Lee had willingly kissed Alexia good-bye and walked her to the door to greet Anton earlier that morning. They’d talked about moving her stuff down the hall into his room when she got back that night. She’d always sworn she wasn’t the type to get giddy and love-struck, but she was practically dizzy with excitement.

She spun around in the center of the dusty, hollowed-out room that was to become the new Ash Falls shelter, already wondering about a good way to thank him when she got home.
Home.
“Whoa.” She stopped herself and sobered up, finally taking a good look around the construction area. “That’s enough spinning.”

The windows had been covered so that the workers could paint with a big sprayer, and the wiring and pipes stuck out all over. She edged close to Anton, who stood with his hands on his hips surveying the mess. “Anton, what the hell am I doing here? I don’t mean to sound like a jerk, but not only do I know jack shit about construction, what little Spanish I know tells me these worker guys are all talking about my tits.”

Anton, God bless the man, blushed from collar to roots. He was so easy to fluster. “Probably not all of them.”

“No.” She licked her lips, following the gaze of one painter whose eyes were plastered to the tight-fitting Levi’s on his coworker. “Probably not him.”

Anton muttered. “Lexi, focus for me, would you please? You wanted a meaningful day job. You want something to do other than Lee—”

“That’s what she said.”

“Lexi!” Holy cow, his finely bronzed skin really caught fire. “Dammit, that one didn’t even make sense.”

“Okay,” she said. She gave him her best smile. “Sorry, I’m feeling off today. Maybe it’s all the nervous flutters. I’ll be good. Seriously. Give me the four-one-one.”

He blew out a breath. “This is all freaking you out, I bet,” he said in a lowered voice. “We haven’t gotten to talk much, and I’m sorry. I know you were kinda planning to get the hell out of Ash Falls. Next thing we know, the queen’s in labor, the estate’s under attack, and you and Lee…” He let out a low whistle.

God. Yeah. Her and Lee. Only in her craziest peyote-induced dreams. “Nuts, huh?”

He tapped a thumb against his bottom lip. “I don’t know. Last few months, I’ve noticed the way he looked at you when he thought nobody knew. Certainly it was no secret how you felt about him. No more nuts than a cast-out, homeless wizard shacking up with the king’s sister. If Tyra and I can make sense, then you and Lee can make sense.”

She squinted up at him. “Just shacking up. You two gonna do the official thing? Tie the knot, or whatever the vampires do? The official mating ceremony?”

“Eventually. Hope so. She wants to wait until things settle down.” He rubbed absently at a bandage covering his forearm. “If they ever settle down.” He pointed to a stout, bespectacled man in the corner with a flannel shirt and an armload of two-by-fours. “Okay, so that over there is Ted. He’s the guy in charge of the workers.”

So they would be moving on. All righty then. “Ted. Gotcha.”

“So they knocked down the walls between these two buildings, and there are going to be two floors. Upstairs will be for families. Downstairs, single males and females will be separate like before.” He paused with raised eyebrows.

Alexia nodded to indicate she was keeping up.

“Great. So the other thing is we’ve purchased the building next door as well. It’ll be a private school for any, uh… children like me that happen to be spotted coming through here who need a place. You know?”

“Gotcha.” She shivered in spite of the mild late-summer afternoon. Something was strange. She had the sweats even though she was chilly, not to mention dizzy and a little nauseous. Maybe all the paint fumes… “Okay.”

“So maybe that’s something you could help with, too, you know? Some of these wizard kids don’t have parents and the ones who do, they need to be educated. That’s a whole new problem that the vamp—that our society hasn’t handled before. For these kids to survive, they have to be integrated into society or handled somehow. It’s something Ty and I are still figuring out. We don’t know the best course of action for these kids yet, and if it comes in front of the Elders’ Council, they’ll all lose their fucking minds. We need to come up with a plan. A program.”