Eternal Sin

9

She’d allowed him to touch her.

No.

She’d practically begged him to touch her.

As she stood in the mouth of the cave, staring at Synjon, trying not to follow the path of moonlight that washed over his naked chest and the hard waves of abdominal muscle, she realized that no matter what she told herself about him, what she knew to be true about him, she would never stop wanting him.

It was her curse. One she would take with her into any subsequent relationships. She just prayed that when her baby was born, the hunger she had for his blood would subside. Maybe with that need gone, there was a chance for love and desire with another.

With Brodan.

She looked up then, locked eyes with the male who tormented her in so many ways. She couldn’t allow it. Couldn’t let him stand there after he’d touched her, called out for her climax, then declared that her balas would have only his blood. It wasn’t fair. Or right.

“Try again,” she said.

His brows drew together. “What?”

“To flash home.” She swallowed thickly. “Try again to flash home.”

His jaw tightened and he raised his chin. “You don’t mean that.”

“I do.”

“My blood . . .”

“I want it,” she said, tasting it even now as she spoke. “But the price is too high.”

He moved toward her, long, hard, muscular limbs, ripped stomach muscles bunching, flexing. Again she swallowed.

“You don’t worry about the child now?” he said.

“I’m starting to think it might be more dangerous for the child if you stay.”

He came to stand before her. “For the child or for you?”

The scent of him snaked into her nostrils. It was a poison aphrodisiac. It made her knees go rubbery and her mouth water. She licked her lips in the hope that even a drop of his blood still remained.

His voice dropped low, his eyes bored deep into her. “Hungry, love?”

Petra felt her fangs descend. With just those words, she fell into a dangerous haze. Her brain felt slow and fuzzy and refused the information it knew as truth—as a warning. She inched toward him, toward his neck. His scent beckoned her. Come. Bite. Drink.

Maybe just a mouthful? Something to ease the pain of a dry throat?

Suddenly Synjon’s head came up, and his gaze darted past her. “What is that?” he said warily.

“What? I didn’t hear anything.” She shook her head, tried to clear it.

Synjon stalked past her, was out of the cave in seconds.

Still reeling, her belly growling with hunger, Petra followed him, followed his gaze to the sky. Oh, yes, that sound. Before she even saw it, she knew. She knew what was coming.

“Hawks.” The word came out on a growl of irritation.

“Your friend,” he said dryly, “is becoming a pain in my arse.”

Petra fought the urge to agree. She had to pull herself together, get her mind back to the reality of what was before her and beside her. “She’s not alone. That’s two sets of wings on the wind.”

Syn turned to look at her. “The cavalry has been called. To rescue the princess from the evil pirate.”

She hated the words even before they came out of her mouth. “If you want to leave here, you’d better do it now.”

He laughed softly, confidently. “I’m not worried about them. I’m untouchable when I want to be.”

“Yeah. I know.” I remember.

He shook his head at her, then reached out and grabbed her hand.

She snatched it back. “Go, Syn. Now.”

“Bloody hell.”

Above them the sky was filled with feathers and flight, but Synjon hardly noticed, or hardly cared. He reached out again, but this time he grabbed Petra around the waist. Within the blink of a hawk’s eye, he had her flush against him, and they were gone in a flash.

The birds would’ve been quicker.

But Cruen knew that even if they found Synjon and Petra, the two of them weren’t going anywhere but back to their hideout. And that was exactly where Cruen was going to wait for them.

“You sure you know where we’re going?” he asked his guard as they trudged through the forest.

The male nodded. “I received the information from a reliable source.”

“Let’s hope so, or you’ll both be feeling my wrath.”

“Do you need assistance, sir?” the guard asked him, concern darkening his gaze. “You look . . .”

“I look what?” Cruen ground out.

“Nothing, sir.”

Although the male didn’t know Cruen’s history, or about his decline in magical power over the past several years, or how Synjon Wise had tricked him, trapped him inside a mental and physical nightmare, he did know about Cruen’s inability to shift. He had been told that the problem stemmed from Cruen’s DNA, the experiments he’d conducted on himself in service of the Eternal Breed.

It was all the explanation a hired hand needed.

When Cruen’s powers returned, he would no doubt have to dispose of the male. He couldn’t risk having anything about this side trip leaked, to either his staff or the Order. But for now, he mused as they broke through the trees onto flat land, he needed all the help he could get in order to contain Synjon Wise.

“How much farther?” he rasped.

The guard moved solidly beside him. “Just across the plain and to the river.”

One moment Petra felt the cool darkness of night and the next she slammed down on a hard surface, dawn breaking all around her.

In the span of a breath, she was pulled out of the dawn’s light and through an open door into a dark, sprawling penthouse.

The effect was utterly jarring, and she reached out to grab the one beside her to steady herself.

“It’s all right, love,” Synjon said, holding her close.

Panic ripped into her as she realized where she was, whom she was with, and what he’d just done.

She pushed away from him, her eyes narrowing, her fangs dropping. “How could you?”

“How could I?” He stood there in his opulent living room, wearing only the faded jeans he’d come into the Rain Forest with, his expression completely at ease. “Did you not do the very same thing to me?”

“For the balas,” she nearly shouted at him. “For your blood, for the balas.”

“This is also for the balas.”

“Bullshit.”

His brow lifted and his voice dropped. “Please don’t curse.”

“You’re kidding me, right?” This wasn’t happening. She was not going to be kept here against her will. She headed for the open glass door, went out onto the balcony and stood directly in the rising sun. The cold air chilled her to the bone, so completely unlike the Rain Forest that she instantly started to shake.

“Take me home,” she said through chattering teeth. “Now.”

Remaining in the shadows, Syn crossed his arms over his chest. “Come back in here before you freeze.”

“Everything I have is there!”

“Not everything.”

“My family, my friends, a male who cares about me.”

“And what about what you need?”

She shook her head, hissed at him.

“What you need is here, and you know it. Inside my veins. Red. Sweet. Hot.”

Around her, the wind picked up, sending her hair one way, then the other. His words made her mouth fill with saliva and her fangs dropped farther. She hated her vampire self in that moment because it made her weak. To his words, to his offer, to the imagery he had just plastered on the canvas of her mind. Maybe even to the thread of possibility that had been lying dormant inside her since the night in her tree house.

The night they’d made the balas.

“You don’t want to go,” he called out, his eyes locking with hers. “Look at you.”

“Don’t tell me what I want,” she said, weakly now, her tongue running over the surface of her lower lip.

“You’re hungry, Petra.”

“I’m always hungry.”

“So stay and feed from me.”

She shook her head, her chest tight with emotion—something she’d been relatively free of for the past twenty-four hours. “Why are you doing this?”

He seemed to struggle with the question. Even more so with a response. Finally he just shrugged. “Instinctual reaction. My balas is inside you and my instincts call for me to take care of it.”

“How clever—and convenient.” She wrapped her arms around herself, rubbed her exposed skin. “And when did this new and exciting reaction kick in?”

“Come inside,” he said.

“When, Synjon?”

“When I fed you, and perhaps even when the balas moved under my hand. All right, love? There it is.”

She stilled. Even in the cold air, her entire body stilled.

He tossed his hands up and turned away, calling out, “Yes. I admit it. A connection was forged.” He turned in a small circle, faced her again, his body still in shadow. “Not emotional. That is an impossibility. But instinctual.”

Her teeth started chattering again. “You sound like a shifter.”

“Well, perhaps we all have animal in us.”

“I won’t be your prisoner.”

“Then be my guest.”

This was madness. That she was even standing here, having a conversation about staying with him in his penthouse in the sky. If he wouldn’t take her back in a flash, she should walk straight past him to the door. Leave. Leave him again.

He moved to the very edge of the darkness. “Please come inside, Petra.”

She wasn’t sure, couldn’t swear to it, but there might have been a brief glimmer of apprehension within his gaze. As if he’d heard her thoughts, her plans. But was the apprehension for the balas alone?

Snow began to fall the moment she left the terrace. She walked back through the glass doors, closed them behind herself, then moved into the shadows with Syn.

Instantly, he threw something black and warm and soft around her shoulders. She wanted to melt into it. Into him. And she despised herself for all of it, for being so weak.

“Stay,” he said, his voice soft near her ear. “Stay until the balas is born.”

“This is insane,” she whispered as much to herself as to him.

“I will give you my vein whenever you need it.”

“So obliging.”

“No. I just realize my duty now.”

Why was she doing this? Standing here, listening to him? “Maybe it’s too late.”

“Don’t sacrifice the balas’s well-being for unnecessary pride.”

She whirled on him, nostrils flared. “Don’t do that.”

He had the audacity to look confused. “What?”

“Go the manipulative route with me. I’ve been caring for this child since its conception.”

With a slow release of breath, he sat down on the arm of a rich brown buttery-looking leather couch. “You’re right. I apologize.”

Still bristling, Petra stared at him. What the hell? An apology from Synjon Wise? Was the world coming to an end? Or did he truly have a change of heart? Had this connection he believed he had with the balas altered him somehow? And so much that he was willing to feed and keep her until it was born?

She didn’t know what to think about that. What to believe. What to hope for. She had so much anger and resentment inside her for him, for what he’d done to her father in the dungeon of Erion’s castle. Gods, what he still wanted to do to her father.

Her breath caught as, inside her womb, the balas moved, stretched, warned her that if she didn’t give it what it required soon, things would return to normal.

And that normal had been pretty much a living hell.

She pulled the blanket closer around her, keeping out the chill and the strange notions of a male changed. But notions still managed to push through, their hopeful warmth poking at her to believe, to accept. “This would be only until the balas is born.”

Syn nodded, his eyes flashing with momentary satisfaction. He’d won.

“After that, I’m going home.”

He nodded again. “To the Rain Forest.”

“Yes.”

“To the bear shifter.”

She sniffed with melancholy. “If he’ll have me.”

Synjon’s gaze moved over her face. From lips to cheeks to eyes. “Oh, he’ll have you, love. Who in their right mind could resist you?” Then he stood and gestured for her to follow him. “Come. I’ll show you where you’ll hang your hat.”