Sin nearly laughed at the image of the big, bad leather-clad demon pushing a grocery cart through the vegetable and diaper aisles at a supermarket. “I have a hard time believing you left her alone, not feeling well, with three babies.”
“I didn’t. Gem and Tay are with her.” Tayla, Eidolon’s mate, and her twin sister, Gem, were both half-Soulshredder demon—the worst of the worst—but they were gooey marshmallows when it came to caring for their nephews. Gem was pregnant, and Sin figured it wouldn’t be long before Tayla hopped that crazy train, too.
Shade moved to Sin. “You okay? E said you were hit with a lock-dart.”
“I’ll live.” She dropped the bag and marched back to the kitchen, talking as she went. “Con patched me up before the assassins attacked.”
Both Shade and E focused on her, dark lasers of pissed-off-ness, and she knew she’d made a huge mistake by saying anything. “Assassins?” they both growled.
“Yeah.” Con took a six-pack of beer out of the fridge and tossed a bottle at each of them. Sin fumbled hers. She’d been too busy admiring his six-pack. “Your sister can’t take a freaking step without causing some sort of disaster.”
Shade popped the cap off his bottle and flung the top into the sink. “Who were they?”
“They were mine. I’m walking around with a bull’s-eye on my ass.” She held up her left hand and wiggled her fingers, where Detharu’s silver ring glinted in the light. “Any assassin who kills me and takes my ring inherits my job. I’m pretty much the underworld’s most wanted right now.”
“Hell’s bells,” Shade muttered. “What kind of defense do you have against them?”
She waggled her brows. “Besides my uber-incredible fighting and self-defense skills?”
“Yeah,” Shade said flatly, and sheesh, the guy had no sense of humor. “Besides those.”
I could bind myself to Lycus for the rest of my life. She shrugged. “All I can do is stay ahead of them. Most won’t be able to find me, but a few can sense me. It’s even possible that they’ve put out the word to every hired blade in the underworld. I need to keep moving.”
“You’ll have to do that to keep ahead of the Carceris, too,” Eidolon added.
“You’ll stay at the cave with Runa,” Shade announced, as if he’d made the decision and Sin would have to accept it. “The entrance is hidden, and even if they track you to it, they’ll never get in.”
“You don’t know my assassins. Trust me, they’ll find a way. I’m not putting your mate and children at risk.”
Eidolon raked his hand through his hair. “Then we’ll take turns with you.”
“Turns?”
“There are four of us,” Eidolon pointed out, as if she couldn’t count. “One of us will always be with you.”
“No way.” She twisted the cap off her beer bottle. “I can take care of myself. I don’t need you guys being all big brother. Besides,” she said jauntily, as she linked arms with Con, “I have this studly dhampire to keep me safe.”
Con went taut, his arm and chest muscles turning to iron against her. For a second she thought he’d argue, but he shocked her by saying, “I don’t have a choice. I need her blood to eliminate the virus inside me.”
“Well, gee, don’t sound so excited.”
“Trust me,” he said in a hard tone. “I’m not. I do have other obligations.”
Shade knocked back half his beer. “Con can stay. That’ll give you two bodyguards.”
Sin jerked away from Con, partly to round on Shade, but mostly because Con’s lack of a shirt was a distraction she didn’t need. “Do you not understand the word no? I don’t want to be responsible for you.”
“Responsible?” Shade choked on his beer. “Responsible for us?”
“Yeah. What if my assassins use you to get to me? Or what if they kill you?”
“I think,” Shade said quietly, “that you underestimate us.”
No, actually, she knew her brothers were more than capable of defending themselves. But no one was invincible. “There’s also the trouble with the Carceris,” she reminded them.
“We’re not worried about that,” Eidolon said, but Sin shook her head.
“I am. I said no.”
Shade was in her face so fast she didn’t have time to blink. Next to her, Con tensed again, and she wondered if, possibly, he was gearing up to defend her. “This isn’t up for debate,” he growled. “We have each others’ backs in this family, and we won’t let yours be exposed.”
She went up on her tiptoes, but she still only reached his shoulders. “I. Said. No. If I were a brother instead of a sister, you wouldn’t be this crazy about protecting me, and you know it. I will not be treated differently just because I don’t have a dick.”
“Sin—”
She cut off Eidolon by slamming her beer down on the counter, spraying foam everywhere. “I will not put you at risk.” She’d done that by accepting Lore’s help with her ex-master, Detharu, and it had cost her brother years of suffering. She wouldn’t do that to a sibling again, and neither would she allow herself to grow close to them. If she was stuck with them twenty-four-seven…
She shuddered. They were overbearing and protective enough as it was. If they got to know her, she’d be screwed.
“You don’t have to do this alone.” Shade’s fingers circled her wrist, his hold gentle but as unyielding as shackles. “You are ours—”
You are mine. The voice of her first master, the one who had taken her off the streets where she’d been starving, craving things she didn’t understand, pounded in her head. He’d run an underworld crime ring that mostly operated in the human world—gambling, prostitution, murder for hire, drug and slave trafficking. He’d been the first to own her, but he hadn’t been the last.
You are mine. You belong to me. You are ours. The words of past masters kept clanging around in her skull until her throat tightened and her heart kicked madly against her ribs.
“Yours?” Sin broke Shade’s hold and stumbled back so fast she bumped into Con. “I belong to no one.” God, she was trembling all over, and her breath had backed up in her lungs as anxiety swamped her.
“Whoa.” Shade’s hands came up. “Hey, it’s okay.”
Con rested his palms on her shoulders, his grip strangely comforting when it should have made her feel even more trapped. “I think you boys should back off.”
Eidolon and Shade glared at Con, glints of gold breaking the surfaces of their dark eyes as anger sparked. “I appreciate what you’ve done for her,” Eidolon said, his voice scraping gravel, “but she is our sister, and we can handle this.”
Tension pinged off Sin’s skin like buckshot. She opened her mouth to tell them all off, but Con spoke first.
“She needs you,” he said, in that soothing paramedic voice he’d used on her in the ambulance. “You know that. She knows that.” He squeezed her shoulder, a silent message to roll with what he was saying. “But it might be best if you let me stay by her side while you handle things from UG.”
Everyone stared, motionless, until Eidolon finally took a long swig of his beer and nodded. “You’ll check in every couple of hours.”
Sin clenched her fists at the command, but she resisted the urge to mouth off. Antagonizing E and Shade now would be stupid, and she wouldn’t put it past Eidolon to change his mind.
“I might only have a couple of days, maybe hours, before I have to take care of some clan business, but we’ll do what we can until then,” Con promised.
“Good.” Eidolon propped his hip against the kitchen’s island countertop and cursed with annoyance when the beer that had spilled out of her bottle soaked his pants. “Since you’ll be moving around a lot, can you take her to warg areas that might be infected? I can give you the locations of the packs where my patients came from.”
Con frowned. “Why?”
“Because before the Carceris interrupted us, we were working on reversing the disease in an infected warg. Sin failed, in part because
too much of the virus was in the warg’s blood, and what was there had degraded too badly to be useful in the lab. If she can try the same thing with someone who has been infected for only a few hours, she might have a shot at success. I need a sample of freshly killed, intact virus.”
“Interesting.” Con slid her a glance, one that was almost approving, and for some reason, she felt like a happy puppy that had been praised for piddling outside instead of on the carpet. Annoying. “Yeah, we can do that.”
“Lore plugged all the cases into a computer program the R-XR developed to track outbreaks and cross-check them with known populations of canine-based underworld beings—”
“I thought only turned wargs were affected,” Sin interrupted. “Why track anyone else?”
“Just a precaution, in case the disease mutates. Like it did with Con.” Eidolon handed Con a slip of paper, Lore’s handwriting scrawled on it. “That’s the log-in and password.”
Sin’s heart lurched in her chest. “How is Lore?”
Shade cocked a dark eyebrow. “Flipping out.”
She scrubbed a hand over her face. God, what she wouldn’t give for all of this to be over already. “I figured. Look, why don’t you guys go do whatever it is you do. Con and I will be fine.”
Both brothers shot her looks edged with doubt, and then nailed Con with eyes that said, If anything happens to her, you’re dead.
Con acknowledged their unspoken threat with a lazy nod that also conveyed that he wasn’t worried. But whether that was because he was confident in his abilities to keep her safe or if it was because he wasn’t afraid of her brothers, she didn’t know.
“Give me your hand.” Shade held out his to Sin. “Since Con is going to need to feed from you, I’m going to tweak your system to increase your blood production. After that, you’ll need to stay hydrated. Drink lots of water.”
Sin put her hand in his. Instantly, a warm, tingling sensation flowed from her fingertips to her bones. She sagged, and both Eidolon and Con moved to catch her. Con was faster, and as he pulled her into his big body, tension sparked in the room again.
God, these guys were impossible. Lore had never been this bad, but then, he’d walked on eggshells around her because he felt so guilty about what had happened that one night so long ago.
He also realized she had succubus needs, something the Long Lost Trio seemed to not understand. Well, it was time to make them understand.
She backed away from Shade, and in a deliberate, sensual motion, she reached up and gripped the back of Con’s neck. “Look, boys. You seem to think I’m some sheltered, sweet little virginal doll.” She scraped her nails across Con’s skin, and he hissed. Those fangs were so damned sexy. “But I’m not. I’m a Seminus demon. Think about what that means.”
Shade turned an interesting gray color. Eidolon winced.
“Yeah. I need sex or I die. So stop with the obnoxious chaperone shit, because I really don’t want you anywhere nearby while I’m doing it, and I don’t think you want that either.” She gave them her sweetest smile. “And know that the second you’re gone, I’m going to ride Con until he begs for mercy.”
Eidolon sighed. Shade swore. And Con muttered something that sounded strangely like “Mercy.”
One type of tension left the house with Shade and Eidolon. But another remained, a less violent tang in the air, but one that was no less dangerous. Sin was a fucking menace, and no one was safe around her. Especially not Con.
I’m going to ride Con until he begs for mercy. Jesus. He was lucky Shade and E hadn’t gutted him right then and there. Hell, her words alone had done that. Now his blood was pumping steam through his veins, his skin hot and itchy, and his cock was hard as a steel pipe.
She stood in the kitchen, fist wrapped tightly around her beer bottle. “That was fun,” she chirped.
“What is your problem?” His bark should have made her jump, but no, Miss I’ll Take on the World squared for battle.
“Excuse me?”
He stalked toward her, and the closer he got, the more her chin came up in that defiant way of hers. “You heard me.” He tore the bottle from her hand and slammed it down on the counter. She made a sound of outrage as he caged her against said counter, his fists planted on either side of her. “What is your deal with your brothers? Why are you so hostile?”
She shoved against his bare chest, but he didn’t budge. “Get away from me.”
“Answer.” He put more weight on her, which put more skin on skin. It also put his hips in contact with her stomach, and it wasn’t going to be long before it would be obvious that he wasn’t completely hating being this close to her.
“I’m not hostile.” She squirmed, but as soon as she realized that all she was doing was wedging them together tighter and doing some interesting grinding, she stopped and said with a huff, “I just don’t know them.”
“Why not?”
She craned her neck to look up at him. “You don’t know?”
“Know what?”
“I wasn’t even aware that Shade, Eidolon, and Wraith existed until a few weeks ago. They didn’t know about me until last month.” She shoved again, for all the good it did her. Now that they were plastered against each other, she had no leverage. “Get. Off.”
Now why in the hell did his imagination have to take those two little words and make an X-rated flick out of them? “Is that an offer? You going to follow up on that charming little announcement you made to your brothers? Because you’re the one who will be begging for mercy.”
Sure, he was mostly trying to antagonize her, but he knew what being inside her felt like. He knew what she tasted like. And, as with all sins, this one was addictive.
Literally.
The reality put a much needed damper on his lust, cooling him down a few degrees.
“It was not an offer,” she ground out. “I was messing with those two meatheads because they needed a damned wake-up call.”
“Agreed, but next time, put someone else’s balls in a vise.”
“But squeezing yours is so much more fun,” she said, with a cheery bat of her eyelashes. Then she frowned. Her dermoire lit up, and a tingle ran through his chest. “You need to feed.”
“I don’t.”
“Maybe not for hunger. But the virus is building again.”
“It can wait. You still haven’t recovered from the last feeding, not to mention the blood loss from your wounds.” Shade had power-punched her blood production into high gear, but Con didn’t want to push it. And the less time spent with his mouth on her, the better.
She shrugged, making her long, silky curtain of black hair swish against his chest. “Whatever. We’re only going to be traveling to warg packs. But no skin off my back. Just don’t blame me for any infections you cause.”
Sudden anger replaced the residual lust zipping through his veins, and with a snarl, he pushed away, putting several feet of distance between them. “I blame you for all of them.”
Her eyes narrowed into furious ebony slits. “Yes, I’m to blame. Are you ever going to stop reminding me?”
“Maybe when my friends stop dying.” Clenching his fists so hard his knuckles ached, he pivoted around so he wouldn’t have to look at her, wouldn’t have to be reminded how much he both wanted her and hated her. His temple throbbed as he fought the urge to grab her, shake her until her teeth rattled, and then strip her naked and claim her right there on the kitchen floor.
Suddenly, her fists were pummeling his back. “You stupid son of a bitch! I fucked up and infected a shitload of people, but you don’t have to.”
She shoved him hard enough to knock him into the fridge, severing the last thread of control on his temper, blurring the line between lust and anger. Hot, potent adrenaline surged in his veins as he wheeled around, seized her upper arms, and lifted her. He knew his eyes had gone fully mirrored, so she’d see her own terror in them. His fangs punched down and his cock got hard, and shit, he was on the edge.
But instead
of terror, he saw only defiance as she ground out, “Do it, asshole. Bite me. What are you fucking waiting for?”
Con slammed her against the wall and bit into her neck. She gasped, but the sound was followed by a low moan. As her honeyed blood poured down his throat, his libido went berserk, the way it had in Eidolon’s office, except multiplied by a hundred. Maybe it was because they were alone. Maybe it was because they had full body contact and his anger had shot all his common sense through the roof.
Maybe it was because with each feeding, the addiction was building.
“Con…” His name came out on a whisper of breath against his ear, and it was his turn to moan. Especially when her legs came up and hooked around his waist, putting his aching shaft in contact with her core.
Her nails dug into his shoulders. “Fuck me,” she murmured.
For most dhampires—and vampires—feeding went hand in hand with sex, which was why he preferred to take his blood from females. Few of his kind were picky about the sex of their bed and blood mates, but Con had long ago determined that a soft, sweet female was the best fit for him.
Except there was nothing soft or sweet about Sin, and for some reason, that fact had a far more powerful effect on him. The fight, the intensity… it rocked him like nothing—and no one—else.
Yes. No. Ah, damn, his body was screaming for her, but his mind swirled with doubts. Deeper involvement with her would be a bad thing on so many levels. He’d keep her safe because he owed her brothers and because she could be key in finding an answer to the epidemic, but that was as far as the relationship between Sin and Con could go.
“Con.” Her satiny lips brushed his cheek, and the raw desire in her voice pummeled his resolve. “I need it.”
Right. Duh. Succubi. He had to keep her safe and healthy. Justifying sex had never been so easy.
He couldn’t tear open his fly fast enough.
Sin wrapped one arm around his neck and dropped her other between them so she could rip open her own pants. Not gently, he shoved her up on the counter, disengaged his fangs, and jerked off her pants and thong. They caught on her boots, and he growled with impatience, tearing her pants as he yanked them off.