Sentinel's Hunger (4 page)

She swallowed hard at his size and imagined how his hard cock would feel inside her. The image made her gasp as a wave of desire crashed through her center like molten lava.

She needed to change her tactics, she decided. She had to appeal to his humanity and lust since her appeals to his logic, so far, had
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been ignored.

She sensed that she had a better chance of reaching the former, sensed his gifts and knew he was an empath like one of the New Regime’s alternate retrieval team members, Mateo, as well as telepathic. Each was an exceptional gift in and of itself, but together they made Michael Constantine a rare human male indeed.

Another place and time, he would have been targeted for retrieval.

Instead of imprisoning her, he would have been the one in restraints.

Xevera vowed to use his empathy against him, though she regretted the need to. Perhaps she would make one more effort to importune his intellect. “Michael,” she purred, “you are not being logical. We have no feud, you and I.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. We have a blood feud and it goes way back.”

“I do not understand.”

“You don’t need to understand. You just need to know that you and I are in this together, for better or worse.”

“But…” Xevera’s breath hitched in her chest as another surge of desire engulfed her.

Michael leaned forward again and put a hand on her shoulder.

“What’s wrong?”

Had she the ability to avoid his touch, she would have. Being so close without the ability to feed on him was unbearable. Being in the same room with him wreaked havoc on her starved libido like nothing and no one else ever had before. Not even when she used to indulge her cravings, long before she had joined The Guard, the Highest’s sentry detail and protectors of the royal family, almost two hundred years ago, had she been hit with such intense longing for one being.

His virility was at once excruciating and irresistible. Only sheer will had kept her from draining him earlier. “You know very well ‘what is wrong’ and you know what I need to make things right.”

Michael removed his hand. “Do I look like I’m in the business of providing sacrificial humans to vampires?”

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Gracie C. McKeever

Seething, Xevera held her tongue. She hated that designation, but she knew that anger would get her nowhere with this obstinate human.

“You got it half right.”

She gaped, realized he had read her and wondered why she was so surprised when she remembered how he had found her and known her name.

Weak or not, hungry or not, she would have to keep up her shields around him. She could keep out the most skilled Inanna and Sebitu.

Surely she could keep out a…half-human.

Xevera glared at him, her pussy gushing beneath his darkening, heated gaze and her chest tightening at his casual efforts to arouse her.

It is the hunger, Xevera. That is all. You can fight this. You can
fight
him.

The throbbing ache in her groin told her otherwise. She was almost tempted to lower her shields and let him read her again. The hunger alone would cripple him, she was sure. “What is it you want from me?” she asked, and instantly felt him shut her out. He stood and took several paces away from the bed.

She was familiar with the obstructing technique, and frustration and admiration warred at his ability to wield it so well. She had not met anyone outside of her
Quna
and The Guard who could engage a mental shield so smoothly.

“I want the same thing from you that you want from me,” he said.

She hated these cat-and-mouse games! “I do not understand.”

“You’re hungry. I am too.”

“I do not believe that we crave the same things.”

“Think again.”

She felt him lower his shields just enough to let her in and gawked when she read his thoughts. “You want to destroy me.”

“I want to know more about your kind,” he stated.

He already knew too much, enough to incapacitate and restrain her. “You want to know about my kind so that you can destroy me.”

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“The way your kind destroyed my mother?”

The cool way he did not agree or disagree with her assumption infuriated her more than frightened her. She was not afraid to die.

That she could do with honor. No, what she feared most was that he would reduce her to a quivering uncontrollable mass of lust on the brink of breaking her pledge to the
Quna
and Emsharra.

Xevera looked at him as he abruptly turned his back without a word and left the room.

A trail of silent rage and vengeance glimmered on the air in his wake, but just below these, she also sensed the gentle man who had ministered to her in the ambulance. She sensed the man who had searched the city streets for her.

She had to reach
that
man. She had to get him back.

At the last thought Xevera wondered what had taken him away in the first place and when had Michael Constantine changed from the caregiver who had twice rescued her, to the cold man bent on making her suffer.

He had been tender right up until the moment when she had bitten him on the neck and asked him to take her home.

She had felt him harden and turn cold towards her as he carried her to this vehicle then but had been too enervated and helpless to really notice or do anything about his change of mien.

How would she get his trust and convince him to uncuff her? How could she convince him that she was not a danger to him when his very existence called to every primordial Inanna hunger inside her that urged her to feed until satiated? This very hunger unleashed was not only a danger to him, but all she came into contact with.

Only if you let it control you.

Unlike her mother, she would die before she renounced her beliefs in Emsharra and The Guard, nor would she turn renegade as had her father.

Both Sala and Dagon Nanay were shining examples of all that the Old Regime stood for, were examples of all that the Alliance was
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Gracie C. McKeever

trying to eradicate with its progressive Harvesting Program and Longevity Project, each program an undertaking to sustain and prolong human life and build a more compatible, less damaging physical relationship between humans, and Inanna and Sebitu.

Could she rely on Genesis and Alex to come after her the way they had come after Mateo Diaz when LaMia had kidnapped him?

Granted, she was not as valuable to the Harvesting Program as someone like Mateo, nor was she as wanted and notorious as the exile LaMia had been, but surely she held some value to the progenitors of the Alliance and New Regime.

Even if they did not come for her with the next portal opening as protocol dictated be done for an impaired soldier, they would certainly come for Michael. Someone with his gifts and potent spirit-boost rated the trip and attention from the assembly.

Xevera wondered again how he had managed to slip the notice of her people and the Sebitu for so long.

“I’m very good at shielding. I’ve been doing it all my life.”

Michael grinned as he crossed the finished parquet floor carrying a tray. His bare feet were all but soundless against the Oriental rug.

Her stomach did a little dance of delight and surprise at the sight of his dimpled cheeks and stunning eyes. She had fully expected him to return to her with implements of torture, not nourishment and good humor. “I find that difficult to believe,” she said though his claims did make a twisted sort of sense.

How else could he have survived pre-Alliance Inanna and Sebitu who considered it their duty to correct their species’ mistakes by taking half-breed children in their sleep? Many unexplained infant deaths that humans labeled SIDS were actually the result of specialized Emsharra and Gaiam Old Regime death squads, squads that humans like Michael and Alex had evidently escaped.

“Which part are you finding it difficult to believe? That I’ve been shielding, or that I’ve been doing it all my life?”

“Of course both. You are human.”

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“Only half, remember?”

How could she forget? Especially when the other half was the former enemy of her people?

“Are you saying that your people and the one who raped my mother are not one in the same?”

She had let him slip into her mind again!
Lilith
forbid he had read her previous thoughts on the death squads.

“Who says I didn’t?” He took a step closer and for the first time since he reentered the room, the scent of food wafted to Xevera’s nose from the tray he was holding.

She took a deep breath, the rich spicy aroma of ground beef and sauce almost enough to make her forget about her other hunger, almost enough to make her forget how accurate and dangerous were his gifts.

“I thought you could use something to eat and drink.” He set the tray on one of the bedside tables, pulled the wicker chair closer to the bed and sat down.

“It is not food I crave, hu—Michael, as you well know.”

“This is the best I can do for now.”

That he inferred he might be able to do better for her later sent heat spiraling down to her pussy in a pool of feminine juices that had her fidgeting. “How exactly do you expect me to eat?” She shook her shackled wrists for emphasis and watched another maddening grin creep up his face. That her vaginal muscles contracted in response to the sensuous tilt of his full lips angered her more than her captivity.

“I intend to feed you.”

“I would prefer you did not.”

“It’s homemade chili, my specialty.”

Xevera hesitated as her stomach growled and heat rushed to her face.

Michael did not miss a beat, chuckling at her predicament. “I think your stomach prefers that I do feed you.”

“I have more serious concerns than my stomach at the moment.”

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Gracie C. McKeever

“There’s almost no problem that good food can’t fix.”

“Who told you that? Your mother?”

He frowned and she felt his demeanor instantly shifting. “As a matter of fact she did.”

“I do not want to eat.”

He looked at her a long silent moment as if gauging her resolve before he finally shrugged and said, “Suit yourself, Xena.”

“My name is Xevera.”

“I know perfectly well what your name is, but word has gotten around about your antics. A couple of your evening’s victims have dubbed you Xena Warrior B—”

“I am well acquainted with the pair of which you speak. They were two distasteful and obscene young men who needed to be taught a lesson.”

“And I’ll bet you taught them.”

“It is as I said. I defended myself.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt that. Except that your brand of self-defense is a little more than people around here are ready to deal with.”

Xevera sighed, heart twisting in her chest at the idea that she might have killed three humans tonight. “Did they…are they…?”

“All of your victims have survived. A little the worse for wear, but they’re alive.”

Xevera released the breath she had been holding. “Thank you.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to eat?”

“Perhaps later when you are feeling merciful enough to release me.”

“I have to tell you that’s probably not going to happen.”

She shrugged in the same nonchalant manner as him. “If that is the way it must be.”

He got out of the wicker chair to sit beside her on the bed and brought an open bottle of water to her mouth. “Drink.”

Xevera licked her lips before she accepted his offering and gulped down half the water. Before that moment, she had not realized how
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parched she was. “Thank you,” she murmured.

“You’re welcome.” He set the bottle back on the tray then tunneled his fingers through her hair and cupped the base of her skull.

He lowered his head until their lips met, teasing the seam of her mouth with considered eroticism before Xevera gasped at his audacity and he thrust in his tongue to stroke hers. When she moaned deep in her throat he pulled back, brushing her cheek with his knuckles as he stared at her. “So beautiful.”

“Would you be so bold if I was not bound?” she asked.

He leered. “That wasn’t bold. This is…” He slid a hand down to the apex of her legs where her swollen clitoris already peeked from beneath its hood, shamelessly inviting his touch.

Michael obliged it, brushing his hand over her flesh before sliding his fore- and middle fingers into her scorching wet depths.

Xevera arched her back, instinctively tried to squeeze her legs together and whimpered when she could not. Instead, she closed her eyes and writhed beneath his manipulations, panting when he alternately thrust and scissored his fingers inside her. “Please…”

“Now back to our discussion, Xevera.”

More like pilfering my thoughts.

“That, too.”

She opened her eyes to glare at him. “I meant you to catch that. I can shield my thoughts from you whenever I like.”

“I know you can,” he murmured against her ear before circling the shell with his tongue. “What were you saying before about your people and my father?”

Xevera mindlessly shuddered in his embrace and wondered how he was able to pick up the thread of their earlier conversation. She was barely able to think when his fingers and tongue were doing such luscious things to her body.

“Xevera…”

“Your father was Sebitu.”

“How do you know? And what’s the difference between them and
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Gracie C. McKeever

an Inanna?”

“The difference is the Sebitu have always been more indiscriminate and savage in their feeding methods than we Inanna.

They were still slaking their cravings with prehistoric methods only a decade ago.”

“Prehistoric methods?”

“Bloodletting and drinking blood rather than siphoning energy for nourishment.”

“So your kind doesn’t usually do what you did to me earlier?”

“Not—” She almost swallowed her tongue when he twisted his fingers and caressed a particularly sensitive bundle of nerves inside her. Xevera arched her back, pitching her hips against his hand and further impaling herself. “Not as a rule. No.”