Sentinel's Hunger (5 page)

“Is that why you got so indignant when I referred to you as a

‘vampire?’”

“We consider it an insult. Vampires are barbaric, uncivilized.”

“Mmm. Not enlightened like you.” He licked the side of her neck and Xevera barely recognized the scorn in his tone, too near climaxing to care.

“Are you quite through with your interrogation?”

“Almost,” he said and wriggled his fingers before simultaneously pressing against her G-spot and flicking her nub with his thumb.

Xevera closed her eyes tight and keened, an orgasm sweeping through her trembling body so suddenly, she helplessly gushed into Michael’s hand.

He held her with one arm as her shudders subsided, murmuring comfort against her ear. When she finally stilled, he slid his hand from her pussy and raised it to his mouth, licking each finger with deliberate, slow relish.

“Why do you torture me so?” she blurted.

“What makes your people and the Sebitu former enemies?” he answered her question with one of his own. “Did you kiss and make up recently?”

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“Emsharra and Gaiam laid down their arms to form an alliance three years ago.”

“Emsharra’s your home.”

He did not forget anything she said to him, did he? “Yes.” She nodded.

“I’m listening.” He nuzzled her neck as he burrowed his fingers in her hair.

How did he expect her to keep track of their conversation when he kept
touching
her like that? And how could she possibly tell him that the preservation of the human race had been the main reason behind the formation of the Alliance and New Regime? How could she tell him that dwindling supply of his kind had necessitated the treaty?

She did not think he would take too kindly to the way his people had been exploited over the centuries, indeed still were being exploited by her people. Granted, the intent behind the use had changed, but the end result was still the same. Her kind needed his kind to survive and was doing everything in its power to ensure his species thrived. Were that the Inanna and Sebitu’s reasons altruistic, but such was not the case.

“How do you know I’m not a spawn of one of your kind instead of a Sebitu?” Michael asked, his fingers keeping up a gentle, maddening caress against her scalp.

“I just know.”

“Right. You smelled me.”

“Yes.”

“So do I smell like these barbaric and uncivilized Sebitu?”

He smelled uniquely enticing and masculine, the spirit-boost in his human blood an aphrodisiac as powerful as his male pheromones alone and ten times as intoxicating.

Lilith
, she wanted him!

Xevera moaned, the hunger igniting with renewed intensity as if to punish her for not properly feeding.

Michael brushed his hand over her hair before standing. “You’ve
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had enough for now. We’ll pick this up later after you e—”

“Please, Michael…”

He paused and glanced down at her. “Please what?”

“Feed me.”

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Michael didn’t like the urge that had him eager and ready to fulfill her request, the urge that had him wanting and needing to touch her as if he couldn’t exist without the feel of her satiny flesh beneath his fingers.

He’d spent his entire life avoiding this sort of intimacy, trying to repress his urges and not
feel
anything, especially where women were concerned. Feeling meant laying himself bare, putting himself on the line. That, he couldn’t afford to do with anyone, much less an alien demon woman and distant cousin to his father, one who could suck him dry as easily as look at him.

He continued to touch her nonetheless, couldn’t stop himself, fingers running down her smooth toned arm of their own accord.

“Michael?”

He watched her lick her lips and the action shot a missile of hot lust straight to his groin. He closed his eyes against her hunger and his own assailing him. Her spicy vanilla musk drifted out to him, beckoning until he finally opened his eyes to stare at her. “Yes?”

“I need you.”

He knew how much, every throe and spasm of her body his.

She was at his mercy—bound, naked and helpless—right where he wanted her, right where she belonged.

Her kind—Inanna and Sebitu alike—had pushed his mother over the edge of sanity until she was but a mere shell of the woman he knew her to be.

So why did he feel like such a dirty piece of shit for holding Xevera hostage? Why couldn’t he get any satisfaction out of seeing
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her suffer for her people’s misdeeds? Why couldn't he hurt her, violate her the way his father had violated his mother?

“Because you are not like your father.”

“You don’t know a damn thing about me,” he bit out.

“I know more about you than you think.”

“Don’t think because I haven’t killed you yet that I won’t.”

“You could not. The pain of it would kill you too.”

She was right, but there was so much more to his ambivalence than that, maybe that he had inherited more of his mother’s nurturing and selfless genes than the malicious and cruel genes of his father.

“You are not like your father,” she repeated as if reciting an incantation with the hopes of making the words reality.

He sat down on the bed beside her, fisted her hair and jerked her head back. “Don’t bet on it,” he growled.

“You will not hurt me.”

“You’re so sure?”

“You…you need me.” She gasped and closed her eyes against the sharp ache that relentlessly sliced through her center.

Michael didn’t know how she bore the pain. It had been with her from the time he had left her at the hospital until the time they had later reconnected when he found her on the street.

He felt her efforts to keep the pain at bay long enough to concentrate on a conversation with him. Periodically her control slipped and the fragments of sensation that he caught were enough to make him double over from the pain, only a supreme effort on his part keeping him upright and focused. He imagined what it would feel like if she completely let down her shields and exposed him to the full brunt of her suffering.

Michael called himself all kinds of bastards for not releasing her, for not feeding her the way she begged him to.

Could he give her what she needed to survive and still survive himself?

Xevera took several deep breaths to center herself, the hunger a
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dull ache throbbing on the periphery of her consciousness, and opened her eyes to look at him.

Michael gentled his grip on her hair, impressed with her show of strength. Her spirit was so reminiscent of his mother’s that it hurt him to be in the same room with her.

“I know you have no reason to trust or release me, Michael, but at least you could…feed me. Please. I hunger so.”

It was taking everything in him to resist the raw siren call of her generous curves, all shimmering raisin-brown, a feminine banquet attractively presented for a starving man.

How could he deny her?

“I am…I am begging you.”

Michael knew how difficult it was for her to admit that. He felt her mental anguish. Her kind didn’t beg. They preyed on humans and took what they wanted, what they needed.

“No…” She shook her head.

He instantly re-engaged his shields, but it didn’t prevent him receiving images of her in Emsharra—Xevera the fierce warrior, Xevera the loyal servant to The Highest, Xevera the lovelorn and abandoned daughter.

Had she meant him to catch all that, trying to get to him with visions of her ordinariness and ‘humanity?’

“It will cost you nothing to help me,” she rasped.

“My life maybe?”

“I would not—”

“Drain me like you drained the doctor?”

“That was…unavoidable. I was ill.”

“You’re not in much better shape now than you were then. I should trust you?”

“Yes, because I can control it.”

Hadn’t he told himself that same thing so many times in the past?

When he’d been with a girl or woman and wanted to try something naughty and rough and she’d balk or be downright horrified at his
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fetishes and kinky tastes? Hadn’t he told himself that no matter how much the idea of dominating and binding a woman appealed to him, his needs didn’t make him a monster?

“You are not your father,” she said again.

“Wouldn’t it be better if I was full Sebitu?”

Her eyes widened. “No! Why would you believe that?”

“Compatibility.”

“Inanna and Sebitu are no more compatible than a cat and a dog.”

“But you’re compatible with my kind?”

“More than compatible.”

“Just the Sebitu half or the human half?”

Xevera huffed and rolled her eyes and Michael had to fight not to laugh at her show of frustration. He thought had she been free she would have had her fists on her hips and stomped her foot by now.

The image made him smile.

“Can we cease this quibbling and do what needs to be done now?”

He didn’t like watching her suffer, but he did enjoy her temper. It turned him on almost as much as everything else about her did, especially when he knew that she lost it sparingly and with few. She was too calm and haughty to let anyone get to her, much less let anyone
know
they had gotten to her.

He would have to change that.

“Have I not prostrated myself enough, Michael?”

He arched a brow at her imperious tone. Even when she begged, she sounded like she was giving an order. Her manner had military leader written all over it.

And he was the enemy commander. “That remains to be seen, Xevera.”

“You cannot be serious.”

“I’m very serious.” He rose up on his knees to straddle her. “And before I’m through with you, you’ll have prostrated yourself to me in so many different positions and ways, it’ll make your head spin.”

Her breath quickened, jade eyes clouding over with desire as she
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stared up at him.

She shifted between his legs, her round hips soundly bumping his knees as he locked her in.

Michael’s nostrils flared at the scent of her feminine arousal wafting up and he cupped her face between both hands, feeling suddenly possessive and reckless. “First, we need to get one thing straight.”

“What is that?”

“I’m only granting your request for one reason and that’s to keep you alive long enough to give me more information and for your friends to find you.”

“My friends?”

“The ones at the portal that helped you kidnap that club patron.”

“They will not come for me.”

“I noticed you didn’t deny that you kidnapped a club patron.”

“What purpose would denying serve?”

“I’m glad you see things my way, then.”

“That depends.” She licked her lips and Michael swore he felt the stroke of it as if she had her tongue on his cock. The image of her on her knees before him with her hands tied behind her back had him painfully throbbing in his jeans.

“On what?”

“You believe that my friends are coming for me. They are not.”

He caressed her hair, reveling in the full silkiness of the long black strands before he tucked them behind her ears and leaned in to kiss her. He thrust his tongue quickly, simulating the sex act as he foraged inside her mouth and teased her tongue with his. After a long moment, he pulled back slightly to suck and nip her plump lower lip.

“Don’t ever lie to me, Xevera.”

She defiantly lifted her chin. “I am not lying.”

He peered at her, pushing against her shields. He felt her push back, but she was no match for him in her condition. Cursing himself as he took advantage, he pushed harder and almost gasped when he
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penetrated her thoughts. He saw them in her mind—Alex and Genesis—her friends and charges. The terms ‘Harvesting Program,’

‘Longevity Project,’ and ‘retrieval team’ jumped out at him like Broadway lights at night.

He asked her about the terms and tried not to show his distaste as she explained her people’s efforts to minimize human casualty during sexual encounters with her kind. She explained further how her people were manipulating human DNA, specifically spirit-boost, to prolong human life.

It all sounded like Frankenstein-mad-doctor activity to him, but he did ask.

“I know you don’t want to endanger your friends and that’s admirable. But I still need you to be honest with me. This isn’t going to work otherwise.”

“What else can I say to make you believe me?”

“Who are Alex and Genesis?”

“You already purloined my thoughts. You should know.”

“Not enough.” He leaned in and gently kissed each eyelid as she fluttered them closed. “Tell me. Alex is like me, isn’t he?”

“He is a
cambion
, yes.”

“That’s your people’s word for a hybrid?”

“A male hybrid, yes.”

“Why would you believe I would think him a traitor rather than a kindred spirit?”

Her eyes flew open. “Please do not make me do this.”

He raised his brows. “What? Betray your friends?”

“Yes.”

“You’re not betraying anyone. You’re protecting yourself.”

She shook her head. “No.”

“Xevera…”

“Alex and Genesis are mates,” she blurted.

“Genesis is like you.”

“Yes.”

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“Thus the reason I would think Alex a traitor.”

“Alex is not a traitor! He just…saw the light.”

“And converted?”

She tilted her head and frowned with sudden insight. “Do you believe he turned his back on his kind?”

“I believe he did what he had to do. Just as I’m doing what I have to do.”

Xevera sighed as if relieved and satisfied with his answer. “Then you do not believe he needs to be extinguished like the rest of my kind?”

In that moment when she looked at him with her slanted cat eyes, innocence and uncertainty personified, Michael wanted to do nothing but comfort her and bring her pleasure and he did it in the only way he knew how. He told her the truth. “I don’t believe you should be extinguished.”