One Hell of a Guy: The Cambion Trilogy, Book 1 (8 page)

His eyebrows shot up. “I don’t think that was even on the list of things I imagined you’d say,” he said. “Why on earth should it bother you if I top off your glass?”

“Because I’m afraid you’ve been doing something to me,” she said. “I’ve been behaving in a way that’s not like me and every time it’s been after I drank something you gave me.”

He blinked at her. Just sat there and blinked at her, his face gone still and cold.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“You should be,” he replied, with ice in his voice. “I assure you, I’ve not tampered with your beverages in some ploy to get you into bed, Lily.”

She flushed. “I’m sorry,” she said again.

“I didn’t even have access to your drink the first night,” he said.

“The bartender did.”

He didn’t even deign to answer that one, which was just as well, because as soon as she said it she realized how ridiculous and paranoid it sounded. Sebastian hadn’t even noticed her until after she’d been served. “And your coworker was with me the entire time that next day, unless you think he didn’t mind watching me drug your water bottle?”

“Of course not,” she said. “No, it was just —”

“Just what?”

“Just a thought,” she said, knowing how incredibly stupid it sounded even as she was saying it.

“A disgusting, offensive thought,” he said, his tone curt. But she thought underneath it there was some genuine disappointment.

The idea that he would be disappointed in her for thinking badly of him grated on her last nerve.

“What was I supposed to think?” she demanded. “The way I’ve been acting around you — it’s abnormal. It’s not how I am, it’s not how I’ve ever been and I don’t like it. What was I supposed to think?”

“I’ve no idea what you were
supposed
to think,” he said. “But I might suggest not jumping to conclusions about someone you’ve only just met, who’s given you no reason not to trust him.”

“You’ve given me no reason
to
trust you, either,” she said.

“So that’s your default position, then?” he asked. “Assuming the worst and acting from there?”

“I’m confused,” she said. “I’m confused and I don’t know … I don’t know what to do with the way you make me feel, okay?”

“That’s not my problem to solve, Lily,” he said, which made her even more furious.

“Fine,” she said, pushing her plate away and standing up. “I guess I’m not your problem either.”

“Lily, that’s not what I —”

“I’m going for a walk,” she said.

“That’s ridiculous,” he said. “And if you go, I’m not going to follow you and beg you to come back.”

“I wasn’t —”

“Sit and finish your dinner. I’ll get you a bottle of water from the minibar. You can open it yourself.”

He’d said it kindly, but somehow it was the worst thing he could have said. Without another word, she turned and fled, out of the suite and down the stairs, rather than wait for the elevator and risk him changing his mind and coming after her.

Chapter 10

SHE FELT LIKE she’d been doing a lot of running away lately, but this was even worse than usual because what she was running away from now was herself.

Sebastian wasn’t drugging her. It had been a ridiculous accusation even when she’d had the thinnest shred of “evidence” to hang it on; it was beyond ridiculous now so she wasn’t going to try. Something was going on with her. In the course of a few days, she’d gone from reserved and cautious to groping a virtual stranger every time she got within two feet of him.

If it wasn’t his fault; it was hers — so what was happening?

She was so consumed with her own stupid thoughts, it was a complete surprise when she looked around her and found she’d wandered away from the well-lighted area around the hotel. She was still surrounded by hotels — this was Vegas, after all — but they were a far cry from the Venetian. The nearest hotel had a dying neon sign flashing VACANCY, and the unpleasant buzzing combined with the flickering red and blue light made her uneasy.

She turned back the way she’d come and reached into her pocket for her phone, figuring she could GPS her way back to the hotel. Two things happened at almost the same moment. First, her hand found an empty pocket. She’d dumped the contents of her pockets on the dresser in her room when she was unpacking, and her phone was sitting in the fancy bowl — valet —
whatever
. Second, and far worse, she heard a woman scream, somewhere close by.

It was one of those moments to either think or act; somewhat uncharacteristically, she chose the second option. The scream had seemed to come from off to her right; she looked cautiously down the nearest side street and saw nothing, then moved halfway down the block in the same direction and peered into an alleyway.

The wan illumination of the streetlight at the curb beside her reached just far enough into the alley to show her that this was trouble, of the worst sort. A woman — petite, blonde, wearing a tiny red skirt and bandanna top — was trying her damnedest to pull out of the grip of a stocky, bald guy in a black sweatshirt and having no luck at all, while another guy, this one in a t-shirt and baggy shorts, tried to trap her wildly flailing legs. Not that succeeding would have been particularly helpful anyway, not when there were two other guys standing ready to catch her if she did.

She thought about leaving … and then she remembered that she was a woman, and thought about how that could have been her in there, if she’d walked by five minutes sooner.

“Hey,” she shouted from the mouth of the alley, and took two steps in. “I called the cops! Let her go!”

In her head, this was perfect. It was going to send the guys scattering to the four winds, and then she’d help the woman to safety.

In reality, the two guys not currently holding a struggling woman came after her at a dead run. She had time to think,
Oh, shit!
and turn to run — and then they were on her.

She screamed and got backhanded for her trouble, which split her lip and pissed her off enough that she started kicking and punching in earnest. But there were two of them and one of her, and it was a matter of less than a minute before she was hauled back into the alley and pushed up against a wall next to the other woman.

Their eyes met as one of the guys holding Lily slid his hand up under Lily’s shirt and copped a quick, assessing feel, the zipper at the wrist of his red jacket scraping against her skin. Lily felt like she might be going a little mad, and was surprised that no matching expression could be found in the other woman’s eyes; the other woman just looked — what?

Resigned
, Lily decided.
She looks like that scream was all the fight she had in her.

The fourth guy, who was decked out in a blue wifebeater and — of all the crazy-ass things — yellow flip-flops, let out a yelp then swore and let go of Lily for a moment. “Fuck! Something — something bit me!”

“What the fuck, dude?” Red Jacket said, though at least it got him to take his hand off Lily’s boob so he could restrain the arm Wifebeater had let loose.

“I don’t know — I thought it was a cat, but then — I don’t know. Fuck!” Wifebeater was rubbing his forearm, and it did indeed have a giant reddening welt on it.

“Nevermind your fucking arm, for Christ’s sake,” Red Jacket said. “Get one of
her
arms.”

Wifebeater complied, recapturing Lily’s left arm and pinning it against the wall. He looked at her with a lecherous grin. “Hey, sweetheart,” he said, getting in close to her face. “We’re gonna party, okay?”

Okay?
she thought.
It is most certainly not fucking okay. Has he lost his mind?

Rather than get into a debate about his sanity, she spat in his face.

Not smart, as it turned out, since he backhanded her — this was her evening for being backhanded, it seemed, which would have been hilarious if it hadn’t been so terrifying. To think that thirty minutes ago she’d been in a however-many-thousands of dollars per night hotel suite with the hottest guy she’d ever met, eating gourmet food and trying to decide whether to cap off her night with a swim or a round in the jacuzzi.

Now she was being smacked around by a couple of lowlifes, and the smacking around was actually the least of her worries. She tried again to get a limb loose, but after almost a full minute of struggling her hardest she got nowhere; they had her arms well-pinned and Red Jacket was pressed against her legs in a manner that was both repulsive and impossible to escape.

She cast her gaze over to the other woman, and swallowed convulsively when she saw her shirt was in shreds and her skirt was rucked up completely over her hips — and the furious kicking with which the woman was keeping her attackers at bay was becoming less effective as they used the sheer weight of themselves to press her against the wall behind her. The guy in the black sweatshirt already had his pants around his knees.

At least I’m not wearing a skirt
, she thought — as though that was going to make any difference at all, in the end.

Just as she had this despairing thought — just as she felt that same emotion she’d seen in the other woman’s eyes take up residence in her — someone came in from the mouth of the alley. Fast.

Faster than she’d ever seen anyone move in her life.

And it was Sebastian.

He was coming straight at her — in the second she had to realize it was him, their eyes met and she saw murder in his. She’d never understood what that saying meant until now, but she saw death in his eyes as surely as if he’d been the Grim Reaper himself.

He moved past her, and for one confused second she thought he was a hallucination or something — this was the part of the movie where the hero pulled the attackers off the heroine and smacked their heads together like coconuts, wasn’t it? So what the hell was he doing?

What he was doing, apparently, was being smarter than her … and better at prioritizing. Wrapping a hand around Black Sweatshirt’s throat, he pulled him off the other woman with not a moment to spare; given her attire, her location, and the lateness of the hour, her virtue was likely to be nonexistent, but Lily thought — and apparently Sebastian agreed — that whether she chose to compromise it further really ought to be up to her.

Baggy Shorts gave a shriek but Lily couldn’t really see what had happened — and then the shriek spiraled up an octave … and up … and up. Then Sebastian shifted slightly to the right and Lily saw he had quite literally lifted the guy up by the crotch of his pants and was holding him about four feet off the ground, his body bowed back in agony, long greasy hair just barely brushing the asphalt. Judging from the screaming, that wasn’t just fabric Sebastian had bunched in his fist. Somewhere in the back of her mind Lily wondered how well everything was still attached in there.

Sebastian let go and the guy fell in a heap on the ground, crying and puking. Black Sweatshirt, meanwhile, was still immobilized by Sebastian’s grip around his throat.

How is he doing that?
she thought frantically, and then, incredibly, Sebastian picked the guy up and threw him — literally threw him, a good ten feet — against the brick wall on the other side of the alley, so hard Lily heard bones crunch. Black sweatshirt hit the ground as his friend had done, but there was no crying or puking; he was soundly unconscious, and the way the side of his head was dented, it didn’t look like he’d be waking up any time soon — if at all.

The two guys holding her had let go — only about forty-five seconds had passed since Sebastian entered the alley but you didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to see whose side he was on, or how badly everything was going for anyone not on that side — and they were both turning tail to run when he caught Red Jacket on the back of the skull with a roundhouse kick right out of a karate movie.

Red Jacket crumpled and Sebastian reached out and grabbed Wifebeater by the back of his neck, plucked him right out of his flip-flops, turned him to face Lily.

“Tell the lady you’re sorry,” he said, and Lily couldn’t even recognize his voice. It had gone deep with fury, and his eyes —

His eyes were red. Glowing. Red.

Wifebeater moved his mouth, perhaps attempting to produce the apology that had been demanded of him, but nothing came out.

From the other direction there was a rustling sound, and Lily and Sebastian both turned to see the other woman attempting to get the tatters of her clothes to cover her. Sebastian stretched out his arm, put his hand on her shoulder. “Stay there,” he said roughly.

The woman went stiff and stopped moving.

Sebastian turned back to Lily.

“Did he put his hands on you?” he asked her, and it took her a minute to understand what he’d asked, the words were that close to a growl.

“Y - Yes —” she stammered.
His eyes.
What the hell was going on with his eyes?

With the hand that wasn’t holding him immobile, he reached out and broke Wifebeater’s wrist. Just … snapped it. Like a twig. The man screamed, a long, terrified sound, cut short when Sebastian shook him like a mother cat shaking a kitten by the neck.

Then Sebastian broke his other wrist.

This time shaking him didn’t stop his screaming, so Sebastian settled the matter by hurling him against the same wall he’d used to dispatch Black Sweatshirt, with much the same result: unconscious would-be rapist in a pile at the base of the wall.

With all four threats removed, Sebastian seemed momentarily at a loss, then he took a step toward her. “Are you okay?” he asked.
 

“Your eyes,” she said. “Your eyes are glowing.”

He closed them, took a deep breath, let it out, opened them.

They were still glowing.

“I’m sure it’s the light,” he said.

She felt a high-pitched, frantic giggle bubble up out of her and barely recognized her own voice.

“They’re
glowing
,” she said, and shook her head when he took another step toward her. “Don’t touch me.”

He looked sad — how could someone look sad when they had glowing eyes and had just destroyed four human beings in the span of sixty seconds? — and turned to the other woman. She didn’t object when he approached her so he went in close, speaking softly, putting a hand on her shoulder again, but more gently this time.