Sentinel's Hunger (11 page)

He couldn’t imagine what having your sanity and dignity stripped away the way that thing had stripped his mother—not once but twice—felt like.

Michael reached for the door and Dawn caught his arm and drew him back. “Something wrong?” he asked.

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“You look good, Michael.”

“Um, thanks.”

She laughed. “It’s not a come-on and I’m not fishing for reciprocity if that’s what you’re thinking. Although a little flattery for the sake of my ego
would
be nice.”

He squeezed her arm. “You always look good.”

“Thanks, but what I meant to say was that you look… happy.”

He grinned. “As opposed to depressed?”

“You’re just usually so serious and…”

He caught what she didn’t want to say—
inaccessible
—but didn’t know what to say to make light of her observation, so he said nothing.

“I’m glad for you. And her, too. She’s a lucky woman.”

He frowned. “My mother?”

“Her, too, but I was talking about the one who was good enough to snag you.” Dawn got on her toes to peck his cheek. “Taken looks good on you, Michael. I wish you two the best.”

Damn, was what he and Xevera shared that obvious or was Dawn just that observant? And what was it exactly that he and Xevera shared?

Michael reached out to cup Dawn’s cheek. He didn’t know what to say. She really was a sweet and nice woman and he’d hated telling her no.

But he didn’t want sweet and nice. Sweet and nice couldn’t handle him. Xevera could.

“I’d better go,” Dawn said and turned away to retrace their steps down the hall.

Well, that was just a nice heavy prelude to a visit with his mother.

If his Mom had anything more ponderous to talk to him about than the weather, he wasn’t sure his conscience could take it.

Michael took a deep breath, opened the door to the atrium, and stepped into the courtyard.

A long-standing voluntary resident, his mother basically came and went as she pleased within the facility, but next to the arts and crafts
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classes, the atrium was her favorite spot to be.

He well understood her need for the tranquility afforded by the setting, with its lighted fountain and tropical potted palm trees strewn around the grounds.

There were a handful of people scattered on benches throughout the atrium, enjoying the afternoon summer sun spilling through the domed glass roof and sparkling through the water in the fountain.

It was the woman at the fountain with her back to him that caught his attention.

She was slim and petite, one mahogany, toned arm extended to run her fingers over the surface of the crystal water as she sat on the edge of the fountain. Her wavy black hair reached mid-back, reflecting from the sun.

Michael stood still and appreciated his mother’s peaceful aura. He was repeatedly amazed at how young she seemed at fifty-one, especially after everything she’d been through over the years, fighting her parents for independence, in general, and to keep him, in particular.

She turned as he neared and he caught his breath at her ethereal features, wondering for the millionth time how someone could hurt her the way his father had. But then, his father wasn’t a someone but a something.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” she murmured.

Michael sat on the edge of the fountain opposite her and leaned in to kiss her cheek.

“You shouldn’t be so tense. Your grandparents aren’t due here until tomorrow.”

He chuckled. God, she knew him too well. “We’ve got that schedule down to a science.”

“They’re not so bad, you know, just misguided and

misunderstood.”

Michael didn’t know about the misguided part, but he understood them just fine. They hated him and rued the day he’d been born, and
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he wasn’t too crazy about the rich pompous snobs either. How the two of them had created his mother was beyond Michael. But he wouldn’t punish his mother for the circumstances of her birth any more than his mother would punish him.

“It wasn’t easy for them, dealing with what happened to me.”

“And it was easy for you?” Michael arched a brow then raised a hand to stop what he knew was coming. “Please, Mom. Don’t defend them to me. You can’t win that argument.”

“I’m not trying to win anything except your peace of mind. And I need you to understand that they handled things the best way they could.”

“By trying to have you abort me and then abandoning me to the system when you…got sick?”

“You can say it, Michael. When I tried to kill myself. It happened.

It was a selfish act of weakness that will never happen again, but I’m not ashamed of it.”

“You shouldn’t be.”

“I don’t want you to be ashamed either.”

“I’m not.”

She peered at him, said nothing for a long time.

“Mom, you raised me to be the best person I can be. I’ll always love and respect you for that and I’ve accepted who and what I am. I don’t have a problem with where I came from.”

“Then you won’t have a problem releasing that woman you’re holding in your apartment? Unharmed?”

He knew his abilities didn’t come solely from his father, but it never ceased to surprise him how easily his mother got through his shields to read him. “So you know about Xevera?”

Solemnly, she nodded. “What happened to me doesn’t concern her and she shouldn’t be punished any more than my parents should be punished.”

“I can’t help the way I feel about your parents, Mom. If you want to call that punishment—”

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“You can try and help it.”

“I’m civil.”

“Just.” She grinned, the first time since he had arrived that she showed any signs of levity. “You need to let it go, baby.”

Her soft murmur went straight through him, giving him a glimpse into the depths of her gentle woman’s heart and the steel of her backbone. It made him shudder in awe and realization.

He knew why it was that he couldn’t hurt Xevera any more than he could hurt his mother.

His empathy was too strong to allow him to hurt or kill another living being, even if that being was a distant cousin of his rapist father.

Before this moment, like her parents, he had considered his mother’s kindness a weakness. But now, he realized that kindness was her strength, what kept her going, what made her go through with having him when a lesser woman would have caved to the pressure of her parents and aborted him.

“He hurt you,” he whispered, lamely trying to defend his grudge, still looking for a reason to reject Xevera’s innocence and his feelings for her.

“But Xevera didn’t.”

“I swore that one day I would get the thing that violated you.

She’s the best opportunity I have of doing that.”

“Michael, if I can forgive him, you can.”

He stared at her, seeing what all the men and women in the soup kitchens where she’d volunteered through the years, and hospitals where she’d worked as a nurse, must have seen: pure goodness.

“Have you forgiven him, Mom?”

She reached out a hand to cup a whiskered cheek. “A long time ago and every time I look at your beautiful face.”

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Six hours after the encounter with his mother, Michael was still shaken, awash with emotions he could neither deal with nor deny. He was, however, looking forward to going home as he had never before, even if the root of his confusion was there, waiting in one gorgeous and shapely raisin-brown offering.

Like most EMS workers he was dedicated. He wanted to help people and worked twelve and fourteen-hour shifts as a norm. But he never let himself get as bad as some EMTs who literally lived out of their cars and avoided home like the plague, staying away for days at a time. A lot of those same colleagues were either addicted to the job, lived solitary lives or were among the job’s astounding number of divorcees.

Michael didn’t want that for himself. He knew what he wanted his priorities to be and living, eating and sleeping EMS only to die a young, bitter lonely man wasn’t among them. Not to mention after that little stunt Xevera had pulled earlier on that ‘bridge’ in their minds, he had more reason than any mortal man to want to get home and begin working on his priorities.

The job was exciting and most times rewarding, but there was no substitute for a home and a family.

He wouldn’t even go the next step and consider love. He was having a hard enough time considering settling down with someone not of his world and not of his kind, much less falling in love with her.

Michael found a parking space in front of his building and sat for a moment glancing up at the front windows. As expected, he found
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Mrs. Knowles peeking out at him from behind the edge of a window curtain.

He grinned as he unlatched his seatbelt, got out of his SUV, and activated the alarm.

He watched the curtain drop into place as he climbed the outside steps and imagined Mrs. Knowles scurrying back into her apartment to warn her husband that the degenerate was home.

Impulsively, he reached out to touch her mind, careful not to alert her of his presence as he brushed just below the surface of her brain.

He found her mind resistant, but still accessible.

She’d been in his apartment while he was out!

Michael took the last several stairs at a sprint, burst through the outside glass doors into the vestibule, and rushed upstairs to his apartment three steps at a time.

The door was locked and he gave Mrs. Knowles her props for being an attentive and courteous spy.

Michael unlocked the door and paused on the threshold.

“Xevera?”

She came out of the kitchen wiping her hands on an apron, looking like Suzy Homemaker until he realized she didn’t have anything on under the apron.

Already in a holding pattern of semi-arousal since he’d punched out and left the station to make the drive to Brooklyn, his dick immediately stood to full, rigid attention.

She stepped into his arms and stood on her toes to kiss his lips as Michael hugged her close and dipped in his tongue to tease himself with a brief taste of her.

He licked his lips as he pulled back and thumbed a smudge of meat sauce and cheese from the corner of her mouth. “Mmm, tasty.

What did you make?”

“I am sure it is nothing to rival your chili, but I believe your people call it lasagna.”

“You read my mind. I’m in the mood for Italian food.”

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“I am in the mood for soul food,” she whispered and slid a thigh between his legs to rub against him.

Michael chuckled and pulled her into his arms, suddenly turning serious when he remembered his earlier discovery. “So, how was your day? Anything happen while I was out?”

“Anything like what?”

“Did you get any visitors?”

She averted her eyes and pulled away from him. “I am not sure.”

“You’re not sure?”

“I thought I heard a door slamming earlier before I was fully awake. I checked the house, but did not find anything untoward. I assumed I must have been dreaming.”

He looked at her a long moment, gauging her veracity.

She fidgeted but met his glare head-on, and he caught her stray thoughts and the rest of her story, that she’d been too exhausted to hear Mrs. Knowles.

“Are you still tired?” he asked.

“Not anymore.”

“But you’re hungry?”

“It is not as critical a situation as when first we encountered one another.”

He roughly pulled her against his chest and growled, “Do you
want
me, Xevera?”

“I will always want you,
mishva.
”

It was on the tip of his tongue to ask her what that last word meant, but he was sure he wasn’t ready to know.

Michael slid one arm around her back and the other beneath her thighs to lift her in his arms as he headed for the bedroom.

“What about dinner?”

“It can wait. I’m hungrier for you right now. Have been all day.”

He unceremoniously dropped her in the middle of the bed, stripping out of his dark-blue uniform shirt and white T-shirt beneath as he stalked her across the mattress.

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Xevera lay on her back looking as powerless to move as when her legs and ankles were bound, when he turned the full force of his gaze on her.

He shot out a hand to unsnap and take off her apron before he bent his head to consume her mouth in a fierce soul kiss that set her insides on fire.

Xevera moaned and fisted his hair, finally enjoying the springy softness of the curly bush in her hands. “Clothes…take your clothes off.”

“The prisoner is still trying to give her jailer orders?”

“Please…”

Michael leered, unbuckled his belt, undid his pants and pushed them and his boxer briefs down past his hips just enough to liberate his aching cock.

Without preamble, he drove into her hot channel, sliding through her wetness with ease.

“Oh,
Lilith!
I missed you so.”

Michael grunted a response, circling his hips with brutal precision as he bracketed her face with his hands and held her head in place to invade her mouth with a dizzying kiss.

His tongue mimicked the movement of his hips, thrusting between her lips and luring hers out for a teasing dance of give and take that had them exchanging pants of desperate desire.

When Michael’s balls tightened against his groin, his oncoming climax took him totally by surprise. He came inside Xevera with a drawn-out groan seconds later, shuddering as her vaginal muscles squeezed and milked his penis dry.

Xevera wrapped her arms and legs around him and held tight as the tremors subsided.

Michael hadn’t realized until that moment how much he had missed her holding him, hadn’t realized that he would do anything in his power to hold onto her.

Even release her.

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