Wild Hyacinthe (Crimson Romance)

Avon, Massachusetts

This edition published by

Crimson Romance

an imprint of F+W Media, Inc.

10151 Carver Road, Suite 200

Blue Ash, Ohio 45242

www.crimsonromance.com

Copyright © 2013 by Nola Sarina & Emily Faith

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author's imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.

ISBN 10: 1-4405-7247-X

ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-7247-0

eISBN 10: 1-44405-7246-1

eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-7246-3

Cover art © 123rf.com/Simone Meijer; istock.com/2happy, istock.com/Yuri_Arcurs

To our husbands:

Thank you for your patience, your love, your support, and for tolerating countless hours of interrogation as we tackled this project. We love you both so much.

We have so many people to thank it’s hard to know where to start.

To Tim Horton’s in High River: we couldn’t have done it without coffee.

Our families, friends, and beta readers: your patience and support are more appreciated than we know how to express. You’ve put up with the endless questions, the hours of us locked in our own little world, plotting and revising, and you’ve helped us shape the characters of
Wild Hyacinthe
in more ways than you know. Thank you, we love you so much.

To our husbands: thank you for occupying the little minions so many times so we could work. Your love means the world.

To our incredible literary agent Michelle Johnson: thank you for believing in us and this project. We were both terrified and delighted to submit it to you, and your confidence has brought us here. You’re such an incredible human being, friend, ninja, and *batman*.

To our editors at Crimson Romance: we adore you! Tara, your patience with us as we recovered from the catastrophic flood in High River was amazing, we couldn’t have done it without your understanding. Julie, your attention to detail and your humor in editing made the process such a fun one. We thank the whole team at Crimson Romance for helping the dream of sharing
Wild Hyacinthe
with readers become reality.

To the bloggers and reviewers: we cherish what you do. Your awesomeness knows no bounds.

To Tim Horton’s again, for being open twenty-four hours.

To every reader supporting us on our journey: keep being the sexy, beautiful people we admire.

The vigorous thrum of orgasm rippled through me from head to toe. Below my weight, thoroughly pinned to the bed, Kellie sighed with happy satisfaction. The transfer of her energy and aura to me began when our bodies connected, though I’m quite sure she didn’t notice. They never noticed until it was far too late to survive the bed of an incubus.

This moment was the worst. For most men, I’m sure it was the best—a beautiful woman beneath me, happy from the pleasure I bestowed upon her, stroking the muscles of my chest with admiration. But I wasn’t most men, and this moment meant I was once again a killer and the worst type of monster. I didn’t want this life of murder for survival. I didn’t want this curse.

But there was no escaping my curse. Every six months—if I was strong enough to hold out that long—I took a woman to my bed and claimed her soul with my body. Kellie was a simple seduction: money, looks, and a charming smile always guaranteed that when I needed to fuel myself, the selection of eager women would be near overload. She jumped into my car as soon as I suggested a romantic getaway to my cabin on the shore of Lake Superior without hesitation. And now, thanks to her enthusiasm, I lay buried inside her body as she admired her killer. Most men would congratulate themselves for a job well done as they kissed the delicious, sweat-sheened breasts of a woman like this. But I was not most men, and I couldn’t enjoy even a heartbeat of the encounter. I lacked the strength to resist the monster in my soul, and I hated every breath that crossed my lips as she inhaled her last tastes of earthly air.

My urges boiled. The predatory nature of my being lurked just beneath my personality, waiting for me to slip up and lose control. The incubus part of me needed to be charged, lest I physically weaken until that side of my soul took over and forced me to fuck and kill. If I didn’t do it,
he
would do it for me—the incubus, the monster I loathed, always looming over my shoulder and threatening to dominate my body in the worst way for the rest of my life. I couldn’t let him have control. I might be a monster, but the least I could do was reduce the number of kills by keeping ownership of my own body. If I wanted to remain partly a man rather than the pure, vile soul of the monster I had become, I had to do this.

So I kissed Kellie’s forehead and withdrew from her heated center, feeling my eyes blaze. Kellie’s life and silhouette burned brilliant blue before me for only a second—the image of her beautiful skin doubling as it lifted above her body—before her eyelids snapped open and she gasped. It was far too late for her to object. As I withdrew from within her, that double image of her aura lifted further to meet my flesh and I absorbed her into my body, charging my muscles, little, electric zaps of satisfaction jolting through my limbs. Her aura slid into my soul and I gasped above her mouth, taking in the last bits of her life that remained, fueling my body as she let out a strangled grunt from the back of her throat. Then, Kellie was limp beneath me. Spent. Empty. Nothing but a lifeless shell of a woman.

I rose to my feet and felt new life pulsing through me. I was charged and satiated. I looked over Kellie’s corpse, and my heart sank heavily in my chest. Though my body swelled with new strength by the power of her life, there was nothing left of the woman before me. I hated this. Six years of killing had worn on me, though her aura tasted of fresh water to my aching, needy body. I was a murderer. My stomach rolled and I turned away, swallowing bile.

And if I didn’t inhale her, as the needs of the incubus demanded, I’d face a fate much worse than swallowing murder as a sin. I hoped Hell would prove to be a nicer existence than my life. At least there might be no sex in Hell.

I tapped my phone to send Gypsy her cue that I was through and strode into the bathroom for a shower. The triple-sized glass panels around me fogged as the steam filled the room. I stepped into the luxury shower: referring to my hideaway as a cabin for the sake of wooing unsuspecting women into my private company was a gross understatement. My heart pounded as I stood under the stream of scalding hot water. I didn’t bother trying to scrub the filth of murder from my hands—or the rest of my body, for that matter. There was no
clean enough
for me, and I’d scrubbed myself raw enough times to know better. Nothing helped in these moments after a kill. Nothing soothed the guilt or the foul taste in my mouth. I washed my hair and tied a towel low around my hips as I stepped out into the steam.

I heard footsteps outside the bathroom and leaned on the counter. The steamy mirror reflected the haunting I felt, my appearance obscured by the fog as my life had dwindled in importance to the demands of the incubus. I stretched, cracked my neck and felt the energy of murder coursing through my veins, which bulged against my biceps, rippling over and around the muscles with the perfect texture, enticing any woman who spared even half a breath of time to look at me. My physique grew more sculpted with each passing year—a product of my chronic workout habits, I figured. Gypsy disagreed. She felt it was a natural progression of the incubus . . . I became more flawless and attractive with each life I inhaled. I never argued with my twin when it came to the topic of my bizarre, exclusive condition. She could see me objectively, while I could only see the monster that hid behind the unique, starburst pattern of my eyes.

I suppressed the urge to take another shower and scrub. It would do no good. Did all killers find the soothing shower after a kill to be a sarcastic rebuke, a mockery? No amount of expensive shampoo and warmed towels could wash the stench of death from my life. I brushed my teeth instead and took a few deep breaths after I rinsed, willing my pounding heart to slow. I had to carry on, no matter what I’d done or how many times I’d done it. The footsteps outside the door—the sound of my sister helping me in the only way she knew how—reminded me that I had more to live for than just myself. She needed me, so I needed to cope, no matter how impossible it seemed.

The door swung open, clearing the air. Gypsy regarded me in all her standard beauty: medium-dark hair tied neatly at the nape of her neck, an elegant gray suit and high heels. She tilted her head and studied me.

“Clean up’s done,” she informed me, her voice expressionless as ever.

I sighed. “Thanks, Gyp,” I muttered. “As usual.”

Gypsy leaned out of the bathroom and snapped her fingers at Jim and John—the two blond henchmen that handled disposal of all of my victims. They left to wait in the car until Gypsy was done, I supposed. I was eternally grateful for my sister’s efficiency at managing my condition. She was the lucky twin, born normal and free. She was the only person I told, six months after our parents died, when I killed for the first time. The loss of my virginity at age sixteen turned on the appetite of the incubus. Gypsy helped me through it all, knowing I was a killer of the worst sort and assuring me there was nothing I could do about it. It wasn’t my fault, she said. I wasn’t sure I believed her.

“Ready?” Gypsy asked me.

I opened the drawer before me and took out a folded, leather satchel of black powder and a slender scalpel. Gypsy grasped the knife and jerked my arm forward, revealing the tiny rows of black pinpricks tattooed in my skin: my tally of victims, my sins marked in flesh. She punctured the skin that stretched over my solid forearm muscle with the tip of the blade and ignored my grimace at the metal’s bite. Grinding black, powdered ink into the fresh wound, my sister tattooed me with a dot to represent Kellie: victim number forty-three. I refused to allow myself to escape the gravity of my condition, though Gypsy so expertly masked the bodies as mere heart attack sufferers. The journalist in my bedroom being swept away by Jim and John suffered from a severe, hidden eating disorder, so the cause of her death would not be questioned when someone found her back in her own bed with no evidence of my touch. Gypsy wiped off the blade, replaced it in the drawer, and left.

I dressed, made the bed with fresh sheets and followed her out of the cabin.

The pulsing combination of lights, pounding music, and drink glasses slammed on the bar, built a familiar rhythm in my body. I loved this freedom. Here, with the sounds of unreserved socializing around me, it was easy to forget the family I left behind.