Life Cycle

He grimaced, trying to dislodge the thought from his brain. Not about wardrobe, about mating. He wasn’t taking a mate. Why would he do such a ridiculous thing and give up his freedoms? Lonely or not, the mating ritual was irreversible. And if it had seemed like eternity alone, it really would be eternity together. At least now he had an option to end his loneliness. If he took a mate, he wouldn’t have the option to go back. On the surface, he realized such reasoning made him look crazy, but forever was a long time. He’d gotten the tiniest taste of it in his eight thousand years as a demon, and he knew that was only the beginning.



Tam dropped her bags. “Did you have something else in mind?” The tone in her voice made it clear she knew exactly what was on his mind. What was always on his mind.



He backed her against the wall of the cave. “You woke me from a nice dream. Then you had the audacity to stop me because you needed your energy for magic. I was very accommodating for you, I expect you’ll be accommodating for me.”



He smirked when his double entendre, complete with filthy mental pictures, hit their mark. She was lovely when she gasped and flushed like that. Her gaze drifted south and then back up again to his face quickly, as if caught with her hands in the cookie jar.



“Touch me,” Cain said. He gasped when her small hand closed around him, touching him like only a woman with over a thousand years experience could. He’d never understand the male fixation with a virgin. It didn’t matter who else had been there first. Every bit of experience was something you didn’t have to teach her.



Despite how good her hand felt on him, his mind was too distracted. He wondered if the thing about conserving her magical energy to do the séance was true. Maybe the amount of bells and whistles didn’t indicate how much energy one was using. Maybe it took a lot of energy and magical concentration to hold a spirit to this plane long enough for a chat. What did he know about the finer details of magic? He’d spent the better part of his existence avoiding it as much as possible, just as someone highly flammable would avoid fire.



She sagged against him as his mouth found hers. She was so warm and sweet and pliable this way. He needed less and less of the demon thrall to get her to this place. He suspected if he held out, she’d beg him to keep her, no matter what she said to the contrary. Her body told truths that her mind could only begin to imagine. And what would he do then? Laugh and kill her like he’d said?



He growled angrily against her mouth. If this game went on much longer, he’d lose because he’d keep her. And if he went down that road, how much farther before he lost his mind entirely and became so attached that what Luc had done with Anna started to look good?



He’d already had the urge to mix their blood to protect her, but from what? It only worked against demons, and no one in his dimension would dare defy him on this. No, it was simply a need to possess, and now that his immediate fears over her hexing him were gone, that need made itself known more loudly.



“Oww!” Tam said.



A second later he was on the ground across the cave, smarting from an energy ball burn. He rubbed his shoulder. They didn’t usually do the fighting thing after the foreplay thing had started. No matter what she said, she liked screwing him too much to interrupt their momentum.



“What the fuck did you bite me for?” She wiped the blood off her lip with the back of her hand, looking equal parts hurt and angry, like for a moment she had trusted him. At least within certain perimeters.



His eyes widened. No. His fangs had come out while he’d been focused elsewhere, but biting her wasn’t the thing that had him panicked. Somehow, he’d drawn his own blood as well. He felt the tiny sting of throbbing pain in his tongue. Had their blood mixed? It wasn’t the traditional ritual. Not like Luc had done.



Luc had taken a knife to Anna’s hand, then cut his and mixed them together good and proper. He hadn’t hesitated to protect her. Whether his brother had known it would initiate the first stages of the mating ritual, who could say? Surely what Cain had just done wasn’t enough for that level of psychic connection. Yes, he still had free will in all of this, and more or less, so did Tam even if it had worked, but it wasn’t something to cheer about. It was dangerous.



After all the trouble he’d gone through to protect himself from her, his instincts wanted the opposite. He stood and wiped the sand off him.



“If you think you can start hurting me, just because I can’t hex you...”



“It’s not like that, Tam. It was an accident.”



She must have seen the honesty in his eyes, because her anger deflated.



“I think I just marked you, though. As mine.”



Though he knew she wanted him, he expected a momentary flutter of revulsion to cross her face, but all he saw was peace. Then all at once it was gone, replaced by suspicion and a fear that seemed strange and incongruous on her face with regards to him.



“Is this your idea of a joke?”



“Am I laughing?” He came closer and licked the last bit of blood off her lip. Her blood was already inside him, and his in her, so there was no sense in leaving a mess behind. What was done was done, assuming it counted as a true mark.



“I’m not even sure I marked you. I just think it’s possible,” he clarified.



“How can you not be sure?”



“The ritual is specific. We don’t do it enough to have experimented with it. You were there with Anna; you know how it goes. But blood was mixed. It might mean something. It might mean nothing.” Why he was being so forthright, he couldn’t say. Maybe he needed someone to reassure him that nothing had happened and things were still the same.



But something had already shifted, maybe before he’d bitten her, maybe after, but the thing he wanted to do right now wasn’t bend her over a rock and fuck her—oh, they’d do that again, and many other things if he had his way—but right now what he wanted was to make love to her. Even those words make love had him inwardly cringing.



He shook his hand as if his ring had shorted out, but he knew the truth. It had nothing to do with the ring beyond being able to think a moment without fear of her magic bringing him harm. Now that he held the upper hand and all she had were energy balls, he was looking at her differently.



But hadn’t that been true from the beginning? He remembered the first time he’d met her. She’d showed up with the cavalry at Anna’s house like a rampaging pixie. He’d wanted to hurt her to get to the woman standing between him and his brother, but she hadn’t come to him when he’d ordered her. No amount of demon thrall could penetrate the walls she had up. Even Anna’s resistance hadn’t impressed him so much. Then Tam had done one better, sending him across the floor with one of her fancy energy balls. From that moment he’d wanted to screw her brains out, possess her, make her cry out his name. She was the first real challenge he’d met in more centuries than he could remember.



And now here she was, and what had started out as a grudge fuck had become something more.



“Excuse me, space cadet. Are you with me?” Tam said, waving a hand in front of his face.



He felt the fire light his eyes, and he growled. “Shut your mouth and kiss me like you mean it.” Oh yes, he was the king of killing romantic moments. Yet when their lips met, it was more gentle than he’d intended.



“Cain?”



It was a questioning, almost hopeful whimper against his mouth, and at any other moment he’d taunt her for it. Right now he didn’t want to fuck this up. It had been so long since he’d done it, since he’d even experimented for the sake of curiosity. He wanted to know what it felt like to have sex with a woman like in the movies and storybooks, where feelings were involved and it wasn’t just about instinctual urges. He knew this was a dangerous road, but tomorrow he could go back to being a badass. Tomorrow he could leave little handprints and welts all across her ass for making him feel something tonight. For now, he wanted something new: boring, normal sex.



He gripped the back of her neck, pulling her closer as he explored her mouth, not willing to let her get far enough away from him again to offer commentary. He didn’t bother with demon thrall. No tricks this time. No mental images or manufactured arousal. He wanted to know if she felt something for him without all that. Oh, he was playing with fire.



The sand beneath their feet was soft enough to lie on, so he picked her up and took her down to the ground with him. He allowed his hands to hover over her, inches above her body to feed—to taste her. She arched off the ground toward him as he moved his hand away. She was his sexual marionette, pulled along by his movements as if she had strings.



Her nipples hardened underneath her top. She hadn’t bothered with a bra when she’d gotten dressed to come to his tent. He liked the easy access. She began to undo the button on her jeans, but he stilled her hand.



“No. I want to unwrap you myself.”



A shiver.



It seemed like she might protest, trying to reclaim some control of the situation. The way they fucked was the same as the way they fought—a constant power struggle with neither of them willing to cede the upper hand to the other, and neither of them trusting the other. He wouldn’t ask her to trust him because he respected her intelligence more than that. All he wanted was the illusion for a little while.



Each time he slept with a woman, he wrapped the whole thing up in a pretty illusion for her, a fantasy where it was hard to separate what was actually happening from what was going on in her mind. Just this once, he wanted an illusion for himself—the illusion that someone could love him.



He struggled with himself over the thought. It was a fight not to flip her over and take her from behind, so she could be just another warm body and not a person he might grow to feel for. Now that they’d gotten this close, staring into each other’s eyes with no words between them and no magic, he wanted to flee.



Tam reached up and stroked the side of his face. He leaned into the touch. He definitely had to kill her now. If she kissed and told, his rep was over. But not tonight. Cain interlaced his fingers with hers and kissed the back of her hand, his eyes never leaving hers.



He returned to the task of clothing removal, and she seemed content to watch him. Moments later he was inside her, but not just his body. Their eyes were locked, silencing all their snark for a moment of connection he’d never had and could understand why. It was terrifying.



To her credit, Tam seemed equally scared. As he moved within her, her mouth sought his again, and then they lost themselves in the sensation as he began to feed.



Chapter Eleven



Tam’s eyes fluttered open. She expected to be up in Stepford Heaven, hanging out with Henry by now, but the hand stroking the short bits of hair from her eyes was Cain’s.



“Why didn’t you do it?” she asked. When he’d fed, he’d taken too much—more than usual. After the moment they’d shared where he’d looked like a deer caught in headlights, she’d been sure she was a goner. Whether he wanted her dead or not, she didn’t know, but that look of his had been so stark, she was sure self-preservation instincts alone would allow him to end her.



In the last moment before she’d lost consciousness, the thought Please, had popped into her head, because somehow with the demon she’d found her will to live again. But she’d said she would never beg him to keep her, and she wouldn’t. Whatever they’d shared, he was still what he was. She was still what she was. She wasn’t young and stupid enough to think this could be something real.



He may not have used the demon thrall, but he’d given her no less of an illusion. She wouldn’t believe he wasn’t toying with her, taking his game to a new level. He didn’t love her, but some little destroyed piece of her loved him. She looked away, not willing to let him see his small victory shining out from her eyes.



He hadn’t answered her and didn’t look like he was going to. Well, what had she expected? A love confession?



“Cain!”



They both turned to the mouth of the cave to see Cole standing there. His gaze flicked over her, trying not to look like he was checking her out, but he was totally checking her out. Jane popped in behind him, caught the once-over, and smacked him in the arm.



“Hey, I’m male,” Cole said.



“You don’t see me drooling all over Cain,” Jane replied.



“Hey, now. Let’s not get personal,” Cain said.



He’d subtly moved in front of Tam, tossing her clothing back to her. It was the thing that made her think for the briefest moment that maybe he wasn’t toying with her. Protecting her modesty out of some sense of possession was fairly weird given who he was. And it wasn’t like she’d shrieked and rushed to cover up. What did she care? It was just a body. She didn’t have hang-ups about it anymore. In fact, over the centuries, she’d figured out how to make it look almost exactly how she wanted, even without magic. It wasn’t as if she had tons of opportunities to show the accomplishment off to random people.



She sighed and pulled the top over her head, then stood and shimmied into her jeans.



“This had better be good,” Cain said. “This is my private space. Jane, maybe you’re too young to understand this, but these caves equal terror for demons. Please start acting scared about it and steer clear if you don’t mind.”



Jane rolled her eyes. “I’ll try to act properly terrified in the future.”



“Jane, don’t push him. We need him.” Cole turned his attention back to the head incubus. “Sun just came up a few minutes ago. You know how we thought he was going to wait until the next full moon to kill the next one? Well, we were wrong. New body, new letter, human media is crawling all over this and Anthony is dead for the day. We thought you’d want to be in on things.”



“You thought right.”