“And you can see me just fine.”
“But I want you to see me. I could turn the light on?”
She shook her head again. The light from the hallway was quite enough, thank you. She moved her hand to cover her mound, her fingers teasing the edges of her clit.
“Lift the gown.” His voice was so low it was practically a growl. It crawled inside of her, awakening something wanton that had lain dormant for far too long. She pulled the soft satin up over her belly to expose her lower half.
His eyes glowed. “Spread your legs wider.”
She didn’t know what prompted her to do it, but she slipped two fingers inside herself and started pumping slowly in and out.
“Faster.”
Every word he commanded, she obeyed. She had no idea what had gotten into her, but it wasn’t letting go. Anna could feel the moisture slipping down her thigh. Her stomach tightened in the most pleasant way, and she wondered exactly how much she’d missed out on sexually. Not just with Luc, but with anyone.
The door standing open had bothered her at first, but now it excited her. She found her mind going down naughty little paths it never would have ventured toward before Luc.
Her fingers began working in tempo to the soft growls the demon emitted. She couldn’t stop the moan that escaped her throat.
“Look at me. Don’t take your eyes off mine. I want you to watch me while you come.”
She did as he asked, wondering if he could see the color flood her cheeks as she met his eyes. He moved his hand over her, not touching, just hovering over her flesh, running the contours of her body. When he moved his hand a little higher away from her skin, still tracing her curves, her body arched involuntarily closer to meet him.
“Do you feel it, Anna?”
She could barely find her voice to say, “Yes.”
He was feeding. Small, gentle pulls of energy. A warmth spread through her, and she knew it wasn’t just her approaching climax. It was Luc. She hadn’t expected his feeding from her to be its own kind of orgasm.
“You like it?”
“Yes,” she breathed.
“Come for me now.”
Anna heard a keening sound and was shocked to realize it was coming out of her as she went into a free fall.
Then she lay there, panting and flushed, looking anywhere but at Luc. She moved to pull her nightgown down, but he stopped her with one hand, gripping both of her wrists together.
With his free hand, he ran a finger over her wetness and inside her. Then, without ever breaking eye contact, he slipped the digit into his mouth and sucked off her juices. He released her wrists, leaned over, and kissed her on the forehead.
“Goodnight, sweet Anna,” he said, before withdrawing from the room.
. . . Anna knew immediately where she was. She was looking into the eyes of Beatrice. She recognized her from her picture. This was where it had all started. She could feel Luc’s growing impatience.
“I can’t keep sharing you like this,” Beatrice said. “I can’t. It’s killing me. I love you, and I can’t stand it when you walk out that door to sleep with someone else.”
Luc growled. He wanted to shake her. Why the fuck was she so stubborn? “I’ve told you how it has to be. I can give you what you want. It can just be us, but there’s only one way it can happen. I’ve explained the ritual to you. You’d give me your soul, and I’d bring you over.”
“You’d kill me, you mean,” she said, as if catching him in a lie.
“You can’t die. Your soul is immortal. But you can’t sustain a permanent, exclusive relationship with me while trapped in a human body. You know that.”
She looked away. He felt the sorrow pouring off her, and her fear. His voice softened. “Beatrice, I love you. I don’t know what you’re afraid of, but I’d never hurt you.” He reached out to touch her, but she pulled away.
He’d spent weeks combing the libraries, reading everything he could about the mating ritual that could bring a human woman and an incubus together. He’d never had a hard time convincing any woman to do anything before. But Beatrice wouldn’t be moved.
“I’m sorry, I can’t do it. You must be insane if you think I would give my soul to a demon. I could never go to Heaven. I’d be tied to you forever in this . . . limbo.” The last word came out with disgust.
A piece of him broke.
The scene shifted. Something different stirred the air as Luc entered the house, and Anna knew he’d just left his freedom behind. Beatrice stood with her arms crossed over her chest, satisfaction shining out from her eyes.
“You’ve just cheated on me for the last time,” she said.
He growled in frustration. They were back to this again? “I told you, I’m not cheating on you. You knew what I was, what I have to do, and you keep punishing me for it.”
“I won’t share you anymore.” Luc opened his mouth to speak, but she held up a hand. “And I won’t do that, either.”
“Why not? You love me. I love you. This isn’t that difficult, Bea!” He was pacing now.
“You’re a demon. And I’ll never let myself forget that. Ever!”
Anna felt the pain lance through him at the easy way the woman he loved spoke so callously, and she hated Beatrice for it. If the woman hadn’t already been dead, she might have killed her herself.
“Fine,” he growled. “I love you, but I’m done. You spend all your time accusing me. You refuse to give even an inch. I will be leaving now.” There was a finality in his tone, and Anna wished things were different, that he’d made the choice just one day sooner, before Beatrice had the chance to wrap the house in magic.
He slammed the door against the wall and tried to go through it but bounced off the barrier. The shock and betrayal overwhelmed him as he turned toward her.
“What. Did. You. Do?” Luc felt the glow start in his eyes as the heat rose within him. He had to fight back the change, though at the moment, it was tempting to let her see just what she’d locked herself up with.
He stalked toward her until she had nowhere to run, slamming one hand against the wall on either side of her face, blocking her in.
She laughed at him. It wasn’t a laugh of victory, but of sadness and resignation. “I can’t live without you, Luc.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I know.”
Panic coursed through him. Oh no, that wasn’t her plan. It couldn’t be. “Beatrice, I have to get out. I have to feed. I was just with you last night. You don’t know what you’re doing.”
Her sad eyes met his, the tears sliding down her cheeks. “I know what I’m doing,” she whispered.
The scene shifted. Anna felt the beast barely restrained in his cage as Luc paced, and Beatrice waited. She seemed calm, accepting. Her long, silk nightgown was transparent, and it was driving Luc crazy.
He hadn’t fed in five days. Maybe if he’d taken a small amount at a time, he could have been careful. But he was afraid he’d hurt her. He snarled and shoved her against the wall, sniffing her like she was the best meal he’d ever had. And she was because he loved her.
Now that he’d had her, he didn’t want anyone else. He had to do whatever was necessary to scare her into reversing the spell. “Bea undo it NOW! Undo it or so help me, I will slowly torture the life from you.” His words came out hard and guttural, barely human anymore.
“Will you?” she asked smoothly, meeting his eyes in challenge. He couldn’t smell a drop of fear on her.
Luc slammed his fist into the wall next to her face. “You bitch! What have I ever done to you?”
“It’s not what you’ve done to me. It’s what you’ve done to every other woman you’ve been with. How many before me did you let live?”
He looked away, ashamed. She was the first one, and she knew it.
When he turned back to her, the expression on her face was smug. “That’s what I thought. And you can’t imagine why I can’t trust you with my immortal soul?”
“We’ve been together for months . . . ”
“Months too long. I’m lost to you now. I know it. I wish I was strong enough to leave or let you leave me, but I can’t.”
“I’ll kill you. I don’t want to, but I will. Please Bea, let me out. Let me go.”
“No.” She let the straps of the gown slip from her shoulders. The fabric fell in a whisper to the floor. “Take it,” she said simply.
The hunger tore through him as he moved forward, unable to stop himself. He felt as if he hovered outside his body as he grabbed hold of her.
Luc took her there on the couch, listening to her soft cries and moans of pleasure until they died away, leaving nothing behind but her memory. She went slack in his arms, and for the first time in almost five hundred years, he cried.
Luc was looking at the television, but not really watching, when Anna came downstairs. He sat in the big chair and continued to pretend to be engrossed in the cooking program while he listened to her heartbeat.
“The girls are at Sally’s setting up the candles. Tam wanted to wake you, but I thought you needed rest,” he said, breaking the silence.
She sat across from him on the couch and pulled her feet up with her. He noticed with disappointment that she’d changed out of the pink gown. He grimaced at the pajama pants with cartoon candy. Oh, she still looked beautiful, but the wardrobe change seemed to indicate she was pulling away from him again.
Anna raised her hand to finger-comb her hair, and his eyes zeroed in on the scar. He couldn’t seem to shut off the relentless chanting in his brain. Mine. Mine. Mine. The entire Playboy mansion could take up residence here, and he’d only have eyes for her. He wasn’t sure anymore if it was the bond or something more.
Luc flicked the television off and turned to her. “More dreams?”
“I saw her.”
He didn’t have to ask who her was. The look in Anna’s eyes told him it was Beatrice. Had she seen him kill her? Fuck. She must have.
“I see.” Luc’s first instinct was to stay where he was and give her space. After all, she probably wasn’t feeling so attracted to him at the moment. Not with the Bea dream still spinning through her head.
But she looked so lost and forlorn that he couldn’t stop himself from joining her on the couch and pulling her against his side, even if he’d somehow put that look on her face to begin with. He wrapped an arm loosely around her and kissed the top of her head.
She tensed. “Luc, even if I wanted to, I thought you said you can’t feed two days in a row from the same . . . ”
“Shhhh,” he said. “I’m not feeding. I’m just holding. And what we did last night, it was just a taste. It wouldn’t hurt you if we decided to . . . ”
“Good to know,” she said cutting him off with a nervous twitter as she tried to subtly wrench herself free from his grasp.
He held on, not willing to let her escape. “Anna . . . ”
“Can you have sex without feeding? I mean could you with . . . whoever, and then . . . ”
“No. I can’t.”
She pulled out of his embrace, and he let her this time. He didn’t attempt to touch her again for several minutes, and she didn’t pull farther away. If she was asking these types of questions, she was still considering things. Even after the dream. Luc moved closer again, letting his warm breath feather over the back of her neck. He could feel her anxiety warring with lust.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I know what you can give and what you cannot, and yet I pursue you. I shouldn’t. But I feel calm when you’re near me. I haven’t had nightmares since you moved into the house.”
Anna spun around suddenly, her wide eyes meeting his. It was almost comical. He knew she saw him as some larger-than-life demon without any frailties or fears because it was the image he wanted her to see. The idea that he could have a nightmare, that he could have a heart in there, was probably more than she was prepared to deal with right now.
Tough.
She must have guessed what the bad dreams were about, because the next words out of her mouth were, “Are you sorry for all those people you killed?”
“Yes and no.” He weighed the words carefully. “It’s hard to be sorry for what you are. Are you sorry you had a cheeseburger last night?”
“No, but I can’t have a cheeseburger without a cow somewhere dying first. You can feed without . . . ”
He shook his head. Best to get this nonsense out of her head right now. “I can, but it’s not easy. I’ve gained self-control but only because I had to. It hurts more to kill than it does to stop now. If I don’t kill, I have to feed every night. When I killed, I could go much longer periods without feeding. I’m a demon. I told you I didn’t want you to forget that. I can’t live up to your standards of morality. The man I killed last night . . . I’m sorry you saw it. I’m only truly sorry for three lives I’ve taken, and you’ve seen those.”
“Oh.” She was quiet for a long time. “You said you had nightmares?”
“About Bea and the two girls after her. I would have nightmares about more, but I vowed never to kill another innocent, and I’ve kept that vow.”
“You’re being punished?” She’d moved back into the circle of his arms, letting him hold her and stroke her hair through the Q&A session.
“Yes. By God.”
“What for?”
“When I was human, my mother said that a part of the devil lived inside me and that I’d return to him someday. She was right.”