My Darkest Passion (18 page)

He smiled at Jessica, and it scared her a little to watch him passing, like he really was their age. Because that’s what he looked like, a perfect facsimile of a young man of college age. “Kynan.”

“You go here?”

“Nah. I’m from up north. Berkeley.” Smooth the way he implied he was at Cal. “I’m a friend of Addison’s. We met a while back.”

Jessica was attractive enough that she didn’t have to wonder if she was in his league. She gave him a smile Addison had seen bring other men to their knees at the altar of feminine hotness. “Roommate.”

“Nice to meet you.” He shoved his hands in his pockets.

“How did you say you met?”

“I didn’t.” Kynan bent down to his bag, opened it, and took out a rucksack that must have taken up about half the bag. “Awesome, what’s your share of the rent here?”

She stood there like a lump, mustard-covered knife in her hand. “Seven hundred a month, why?”

He put the rucksack on the table and opened it up. “Jessica, this is ten thousand in cash. I’m leaving it here for you so you’re not stuck with her share of the rent.”

Addison dropped the knife. “Excuse me?”

“Oh my God,” Jessica said. “You’re the father, aren’t you?”

18

K
ynan slouched on Addison’s couch and watched her arrange their Indian take-out on plates. Her new place wasn’t much different from the one she’d been in when he first came down here. Better neighborhood, but still not great. Her choice. He laughed. He couldn’t help it.

Plate in hand, she turned around. “What?”

“Look at you.”

She looked down, but she didn’t get it.

“Awesome.” He snorted. “You’re in the kitchen. Bringing me dinner.”

“Yeah, and? I’m bringing me dinner, too. So what?”

“Barefoot and pregnant.”

Her eyebrows drew together. She stuck out a foot so she could see it, and then she laughed. He liked it when he made her laugh.

At the moment, her eyes were pale, pale blue. Not their normal color, but she’d learned to deal with that problem, he was happy to say. She just didn’t have to bother about that with him. They’d been practicing again, working on the skills she needed if she was going keep trying to spend the rest of her life passing, but even more on the ones that would save her life if that didn’t work out for her. Which was where he saw this headed.

“You are such an asshole.”

“I love when you’re all pissed at me.” Pregnancy agreed with her, physically at any rate. She was having an easy time of it so far, which was a mercy for her, as far as he was concerned. The mental part—that was an issue for her. A big one, and not so easy, so it was good she wasn’t having a hard time with the physical part of being pregnant.

She brought over their plates of food and put them on the coffee table. If he had his way, he’d have bought her better furniture, courtesy of Nikodemus. He had unlimited credit for that. Only she didn’t give him his way.

She plopped on the couch next to him and clicked on their movie. The Jet Li version of
Fists of Fury
. “That’s why you make it so easy? Cuz it gets you hot?”

“You know it.” While the FBI warning was on screen he handed over her plate. They were good here. They both knew this was short term, and they were both relieved. Didn’t make the sex any less hot. “Harsh called while you were at school. He’s in China, now.”

“Yeah?” She ate some of the pakora and did a damn creditable job of faking that she didn’t give a shit. He knew she had a thing for Harsh, and the way they both went all silent about each other? Something was up with that. “He must have a gazillion frequent flyer miles.”

“Nikodemus has a jet, but I think Harsh flew commercial for this trip.”

“Huh.” She clicked on the movie.

They watched the movie and ate and after a bit, he took their plates to the kitchen and cleaned up for her. They’d both seen the movie before. He bought back a glass of water for her and draped an arm along the top of the sofa when he was sitting. They watched the movie more or less in silence, other than comments about fight choreography or Jet Li’s brooding looks. After the last fight scene, she turned to him and said, “So, how’s your deal with Maddy?”

Payback for his crack about Harsh. “You been saving that up?”

“Yup.”

He slid closer to her and got a rush from that, especially since she didn’t move away. She had a lot of practice passing, and being around Kynan was making her even better at it. But the need to be the dominant one didn’t just go away because she was faking being human. “I’m playing hard to get. I think it’s finally working.”

He knew that look way too well, that frustrated
why are men such idiots look
. “You could just tell her you’re sorry for being a fucked-up asshole.”

“I like being an asshole.” More like,
I’m sorry for almost killing you that night
.

“You do not. Just tell her, Kynan.” She shifted on the couch to get a better look at him. “Don’t be such a douf. Tell her you’ll do anything to make it right.”

“Yeah, and then she’ll say go fuck yourself.” Which he knew because the night he tried to say that, she walked out and went to Iskander’s house back when Iskander wasn’t involved.

She touched his arm. “What if she doesn’t?”

He put his hand on her stomach. “How’s he doing tonight?”

“We can’t talk about you and Maddy, but we can talk about this?”

“It’s right here.” He rubbed her belly. “Getting bigger. Besides, you know I’m fucked up. I can’t help it, and you know why, too.” Oh, did she know. She knew what he liked, what got him hot, what he’d done, who he’d done it with, and why. He’d bled himself for her, literally and figuratively, putting the things he’d done under compulsion and things he’d done after he was free right there where she needed them to be. In the open. No excuses. No explanations. A lot of it flat-out disturbing.

She touched the side of his head, and for the first time since the day he’d agreed to give her what she needed to keep living with her past, he didn’t keep her from knowing what he wanted to do with her. To her. She drew in a breath and that was gratifying, considering he was thinking more than a little about what he’d done for her that time. One time. One gorgeous, breathtaking walk along the razor’s sharpest edge. Hard sex. A little vicious. They never talked about that, but it was there, how that got them both through some difficult memories.

She knew about him and Maddy, and he knew she had a thing for Harsh and that for her, sex was tricky. Lots of triggers. He had his own when it came right down to it. They used each other to get past the chaos.

“Let’s have a contest,” she said. A total of maybe five other people ever dared talk to him that way. Getting in his face without fear. “Which one of us wins the most messed up award?”

Mostly, she was dealing with her situation, making decisions about how to deal with the life she’d ended up with. Enough to stay sane. Enough to have made some kind of peace with not raising the baby. “Honey, you know I always win.”

She squirmed, and he took advantage and slid his hand under her shirt, curving his palm over her round, bare stomach. “I have more unresolved issues,” she said.

“I’ve had more time to let things get poisonous.”

“Sure, pull the age card.” They both laughed at that, because it was funny, what with him being thousands of years old. One of the Entelechy, not that it had made a goddamned bit of difference in what had happened to him or what he’d done to Maddy. “You got to kill your rapist and it was about as righteous as something like that could ever be. I just get to dream about killing Giuseppe Infante in hideous ways.”

“Who said what I did was righteous?”

“Harsh.”

He laughed again. She knew a lot about him. A lot. But Harsh knew more. If she was asking Harsh about him, well, that was interesting, wasn’t it? “I wish I’d done it slower.” He liked that he didn’t have to pretend he wasn’t a savage bastard about some things. “Made him suffer. That would have been righteous.”

“Ohh. I love it when you’re all bloodthirsty.”

Just to heat things up, he stared at her mouth and entertained dirty thoughts that echoed back to her. “I told you. You could kill Infante.”

She shook her head.

“I’m serious. If you want to kill Infante one of these days, I’ll help you make it happen so no one knows it was you.”

That got her to look up. “For real?”

“Everything you need to know. You have the power. I can teach you how to use it for more than keeping your eyes from turning blue. I can teach you how to stop a mage’s heart.” He pushed up her shirt, and she was not telling him no, and that was gratifying, too. He kissed her stomach. Her decision, deciding to give birth. Maybe they did joke about which one of them was more fucked up, but the fact was, no matter what had been done to him, he’d never had to face this. A baby she wasn’t prepared to have in her life. Conceived against her will. So maybe she would win the most-fucked-up contest.

“I couldn’t do it.” She got her fingers on the top button of his jeans. “Kill someone in cold blood.”

“Not even Infante?”

She shook her head and he went in for a kiss that got close to out of control. “Maybe,” she said when she drew back from that, and he did like that about her. The way she accepted those thoughts.

“Even so,” he said, “you should know how to do that. Close up and from a distance. It’s a survival skill.”

She arched her back. “Let’s not talk about that right now.”

He let his hands wander a bit more. He liked doing her all sweet and tender. He’d done violent once, because she’d needed that, and, it turned out, so had he. Fuck, yes. But he could do sweet, too. He could. He’d done it before with other women, including ones who knew what he was. He could do it that way with her.

He sat up enough to strip off his shirt, and he didn’t even bother to pretend he wasn’t smug. She pushed at his chest, but in remonstrance, not in an
I changed my mind
way. “Let me blow your mind, Awesome.”

She smiled, but it was wary. “You know I’m pregnant, right?”

“Emily was pregnant when we started out.” Emily was his previous lover. Probably never quite a girlfriend, but close enough that deciding was a quibble. The widow of the mage who, probably, fathered her child. He put both hands on her belly. “We should do missionary before you’re too big for boring sex.”

“Jeez, Kynan. That’s so romantic.”

“Don’t worry.” He wriggled his eyebrows at her. “I like doggie, too.”

She set her palm on his naked chest. “Hold on. I want to go write that down so the world has a record of how sweet you talk.”

“Awesome, the only thing you need to remember is how sweet I can fuck you, and I promise you won’t need to write it down.”

“Really?” She slid her palm across his chest and that set a lot of his favorite nerves to vibrating. She was human, after all, and that was hot.

“Here’s the deal. You let me do you missionary tonight, and teach you how to kill a mage, and I’ll let you give me a blow job. Anytime you want.”

“Wait a second. That doesn’t even make sense.”

He laughed and then he leaned in and lowered his voice. “Mayhem. I can teach you that. Chaos. Dead mages from half a mile away if you practice the way I show you.”

“That’s disgusting.” She settled her ass on his lap in a really distracting way.

He said, “You love it when I talk like that. Don’t even try to say you don’t.”

“Yeah, I guess I do.”

He gazed into her eyes and opened himself to what she was, and the buzz was good. Fantastic. “If you want a little of what I like, you say so.”

“Sometimes,” she said, sliding her hand lower, “sweet is just disgusting.”

“You know it.”

After that they didn’t talk much, and it was good. Really good. He didn’t care much when she thought about Harsh, and she didn’t care when he thought about Maddy. In a way, they were perfect for each other. The perfect fuck buddies.

“A little of both,” she whispered when he was dripping sweat. “Because I know you like that.”

19

H
arsh’s phone beeped with the arrival of a text while he was still on the line with Nikodemus and Maddy. He swapped apps and saw Addison’s text:
here!

He texted back
W Pres Suite. Come up
, then put his con call on hold long enough to let the front desk know she was expected. He took the call off hold and went back to his discussion of his negotiations with the Chinese and Mongolian demons. Not entirely on board, either faction. The Africans weren’t anywhere near the boat.

He was in San Diego because after all this time and a couple of false alarms, there was confirmation that Infante had been seen in Los Angeles. Nikodemus wanted someone here. His flight from New Zealand landed at LAX three hours after his in-flight call from Nikodemus. He was closest, so here he was.

Fifteen minutes after Addison’s text, he was deep into his call with Nikodemus and was startled by a knock on the door. Whoever it was registered so thoroughly vanilla that he decided it couldn’t be Addison. “A moment, please,” he said to the others. He put his muted cell in his pants pocket and headed out of the suite’s living room to the door. Through his earpiece, Nikodemus and Maddy chatted about the San Francisco Giants bullpen.

He and Addison were good now, months good. They’d gotten past the issues of his first visit to San Diego and they were back to friends and long phone calls and texts from wherever the hell in the world Nikodemus needed him to be. A few feet from the door, he drew on his magic—no sense taking chances. Could be someone with papers for him to go over. Or not. “Yes?”

“It’s me.”

He opened the door and temporarily lost all track of everything. The conversation on his cell was just so much noise. The change in her was shocking. Not that he hadn’t expected her to look different. He had. And she did. But she also didn’t look like a woman who’d had a baby going on ten months ago.

He recovered himself enough to say, “Come in.” He touched his earpiece. “On a call. I’ll be another few minutes.”