Another Kind of Dead

Chapter Nineteen

Kismet said to help ourselves to food and clothing, and yet it felt strange to walk into someone else’s apartment. Without the boys—even I was starting to think of them that way, even though all three were anything but—the apartment felt empty. Missing the spark of life that made a place a home.

I wandered into the center of the living room, tense. Nervous, too, though I’d never say it out loud. The locks clicking into place did nothing to relax me. Wyatt lingered by the door. I didn’t turn around. I wasn’t ready to talk. Talking just complicated everything, and my life was complicated enough. My decision was made. Now I had to convince my heart to let go.

“Are you hungry?” Wyatt asked, the suddenness of his voice startling me.

A little. “No.”

A pregnant pause. “Thirsty?”

“I’m fine.” As if. “You know, Kismet was right about one thing.”

“Yeah?”

I one-eightied and smiled. “You do kind of smell.”

His face went perfectly still. Then a grin cracked through, and he chuckled. “Guess I should take advantage.” With a wicked glint in his eyes, he added, “Of the shower.”

“Have at it, Stinky. I’ll rummage for clean clothes.”

He strolled toward me, needing to pass in order to get to the bathroom, and my heart leapt. Then fell when he brushed right by. He whipped back a split second later, grabbed me around the waist hard enough to send heated flares up my healing back, and pulled. I tumbled into his chest, pulse racing, with a gasp he swallowed with a kiss. For its sudden buildup, the kiss was surprisingly gentle. His mouth moved softly over mine, tongue tracing gentle lines across my lips. Probing no deeper, even when I opened for him. Thumbs rose to caress the sensitive spots behind my ears. My scalp tingled. The abrasion of his beard scraped my cheeks. If a kiss could be both sensual and chaste, he’d mastered it.

I didn’t shake myself out of it until the bathroom door shut with a loud clack. A few more kisses like that and I’d never be able to leave him. Just thinking it made my heart hurt and my stomach ache. My cheeks still burned from the brush of his unshaven skin and a wicked plan formed in my mind.

I kicked off my shoes and socks and, ignoring my promise to find him clean clothes, darted barefoot around the apartment to the background music of running water, collecting a few things in the kitchen as I went. The two most important items, however, were behind the closed bathroom door. I briefly contemplated teleporting inside to get them. The quick shower shutoff decided for me. That had to be a record.

Why not, idiot? Isn’t like you have a lot of time to waste.

With one of the items in my hand, I staked out the bathroom door. Heard the clink of the shower curtain rings. Faint ruffling that could only be a towel over skin. The door pulled inward. Wyatt’s damp head poked out, searching. He caught me in his peripheral and jumped. Grinned. I smiled back. He glanced down at my hands.

“Am I supposed to wear that?” he asked.

“Yep,” I replied, twisting it around my fingers.

“Just that? I don’t really think it’s decent.”

“You got a towel on?”

He stepped out, presenting arms and legs and everything they were attached to, the best parts hidden behind a cinched bath towel. Water trickled from his hair, down his neck, making thin rivulets across his shoulders. Every muscle was perfectly toned, his abs well defined, though he seemed thinner without his clothes on. I guess I wasn’t the only one not eating much for the past week.

“I think the color clashes with my towel,” he said.

“I won’t mind and you won’t see it.”

His eyebrows arched dramatically. A playful grin quirked the corners of his mouth, showing me a side of him I rarely got to see. The man who knew how to tease and have fun when the world wasn’t crashing down around his ears.

“Turn around and close your eyes,” I said.

He obeyed without fussing. I stretched the candy cane–speckled necktie—who owned it or why was not something I wanted to contemplate—across his eyes and tied it tight.

“Evy?”

“Trust me.”

“You know I do.”

“Then hush.”

I led him into the kitchen, turned him around, and helped him sit on the dining chair I’d put near the sink. He tilted his head curiously when I tucked another towel around his neck and secured it with a chip clip.

“I’ll be right back,” I said, and then darted into the bathroom to collect the last two things necessary for this little experiment. I deliberately dragged my feet on the carpet as I returned. No sense in startling him. He was already tense, straight-backed, hands picking at the towel covering his lap. His head turned toward me with a question on his lips and in the slant of his eyebrows.

I placed one of the objects on the counter and shook the other a few times, then swirled an apple-sized amount onto my palm. The sudsy scent of shaving cream made his nostrils flare. I smoothed it across his cheeks and chin, over his upper lip, and as far down his throat as his prickly dark hair went, covering it all in a marshmallow of white.

“Tilt your head back.” I rinsed my hand in the sink and let the water run until it warmed, then held the razor under it.

“Do you know what you’re doing?”

I laughed. “Nope. Want me to stop?”

“No.” If his quiet tone didn’t convince me, the slight tenting of his towel did.

I pressed the razor to his throat, struck by the sheer power of it. Wyatt had nothing to fear, no reason to think I’d use this submissive position against him. I’d die for him, and in some ways, it’s what I was preparing to do. For him and Phin and Kismet and Tybalt, and for all the innocent people in my city that Thackery had threatened.

My hand started shaking. I pulled the razor away, held a deep breath, then exhaled.

“Evy?”

“I’m fine. Just relax.”

The gurgle of running water and scrape of the razor over skin was all I heard until the unmistakable raspy sound of his increased breathing overtook them. I ignored it, as well as the tenting towel and the growing ache in my abdomen, and continued the intimate act.

His upper lip was last, the cream falling away to reveal clean skin that would be shadowed again in a few hours. I rinsed the razor, patted it dry, and used the towel around his neck to wipe away any excess cream. A dollop tried to hide behind his left ear. Leaning close, back aching, I inhaled the clean scent. Exhaled. Wyatt made a soft noise in his throat, recognizing the nearness of me. I pressed my cheek to his—first one, then the other.

“Close enough?” he asked.

“Definitely.”

Strong arms circled my waist and pulled me onto his lap. Instead of removing the blindfold, he traced the shape of my face with featherlight touches, the pads of his fingertips blazing a hot path on my cool skin. Over my cheeks, across my chin, down the slope of my nose. The seam of my lips. I flicked out my tongue and tasted his finger—the barest hint of soap still lingered. He shuddered. His erection strained hot and hard, even beneath layers of terry and denim.

I remembered the first and only time we’d made love—literally a lifetime ago—but the memories were faint. Like watching an old movie slightly out of focus. It was all there—his gentle, questing hands and possessive kisses, the strong slide of him in and out of my body—distanced and unclear, marred by my new body’s lack of physical memory. Knowledge without experience.

I hated it and loved it, because I got to try something no one else could—two first times with the same man.

I pulled off his blindfold and let it flutter to the floor. He blinked hard, eyes readjusting to the harsh kitchen light, and settled his hands on my hips. My fingers grazed his chest, the pads of my thumbs brushing over his nipples. He made a sound deep in his throat—something caught between a growl and a groan.

His right hand tangled in my hair and drew me down, and finally we kissed. Our mouths moved, lips parting, and I drank in the taste of him. His tongue darted into my mouth, stroked across my teeth, until it was met by mine. A delicate dance began as flesh teased flesh. I dragged my fingers down his bare arms and earned a soft moan. His free hand drifted from my hip to my butt and squeezed, sending a shock of heat searing straight to my core.

Wyatt’s mouth left gentle, tasting kisses across my cheeks to my neck. I breathed him in, holding firmly to the knowledge that this was Wyatt. I shifted on his lap, unsure what to do with my hands. So I directed his instead. I untangled his hand from my hair and slid it down to the hem of my T-shirt, pressing it against my stomach.

The rough pads of his fingers tickled my bare skin, but he didn’t take the hint. I helped him out by yanking the shirt up and off, my hair tumbling back down around my shoulders in thick waves. Much like our positions a week ago on our apartment sofa, and I actually froze.

“What?” he asked, a tiny sparkle of panic in his expression.

“Just waiting for the Earth to move.”

He blinked, and I could see the retort forming in his mind. Then he smiled warmly. “For a second, I thought—”

“I was having a flashback?”

“Yeah.” He swirled his finger in my belly button. “Or you’d just remembered you forgot to lock the door.”

“You locked the door, dummy. Besides, even if it wasn’t, after the pointed look Kismet gave me in the car when she dropped us off, I think she’d recognize the necktie on the doorknob as the universal sign to keep out.”

Wyatt blanched. “You didn’t.”

“No, I didn’t, but I won’t let myself regret not being with you while I have the chance.”

Grief flickered across his face, there and gone so quickly I might not have noticed it if I weren’t staring right at him. I knew him, could practically hear his thoughts, begging me not to think of this as our last time together. To think of it as the first of many, and to continue believing we’d find another way.

His fingers skated across my ribs to my back, pausing where the bandages started. The itch-ache of healing was persistent and constant. The wounds would be gone soon. “They won’t bother me,” I said, answering his unasked question.

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Then don’t say no.”

“I’m not.” His voice was so quiet, almost a hoarse whisper. “This just feels like some cruel déjà vu, that’s all. Making love to you hours before you leave and don’t come back.”

A lump clogged my throat. I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and hugged him tight, even as he enveloped me in his. He wasn’t wrong, and that scared me. A month ago, still Original Recipe Evy, we’d been together in a cheap motel, and then I’d gone off to chase a lead, only to end up kidnapped, tortured, and eventually dead. Now we weren’t in a motel, and I wasn’t the woman I’d been, but his emotions hadn’t changed. He’d loved me then, and he loved me now.

I hated how heartlessly life seemed to be repeating itself.

“The future isn’t guaranteed, Wyatt, we both know that better than most. So let’s stop living in the past and dreaming of the future. Let’s just enjoy the now. Please?” My voice cracked on the final word.

He pushed against me, and I slid off his lap, sure I was in for either a fight or a rejection. I wasn’t prepared for him to stand and scoop me up. I wrapped my arms around his neck and snuggled against his shoulder, inhaling him as he walked us across the living room, toward the bedrooms, his answer given without words.

The first bedroom had a single twin-sized bed. Not completely ideal, but better than a sofa or the floor. Wyatt lowered me to my feet, and I didn’t have time to wonder whose room we were in before he seared me with a kiss. His tongue dove into my mouth, and I surged against him, his arousal pressing hot against my belly. When had he lost the towel?

Well, that wasn’t quite fair. Reeling with the intensity of his kiss, I reached around and fumbled with my bra clasp, desperate for more skin on skin. It snapped open. The straps slid down my shoulders and arms, and then it was on the floor. He kissed each breast with butterfly touches. I gasped, twining my fingers in his hair, holding him there unnecessarily, because he seemed in no hurry to stop.

Heat and desire made my legs tremble. I finally pulled him away, and he grunted a halfhearted protest. I silenced him with a finger to his lips. He kissed the tip of it, his eyes half-lidded and flaming with want.

Aware of the silver cross dangling between my naked breasts, I unfastened the necklace and tucked it into my pocket. I undid my jeans and pushed them down, slapping his hands when he tried to help. I kicked the jeans and underwear away.

“God, Evy,” he whispered, staring hungrily at my naked body. My hips jutted too sharply; my stomach was too concave. He didn’t seem to notice the flaws, the reminders of the hell I’d survived. Part of me was embarrassed by his appraisal—a small bit of Chalice rebelling against my nudity.

I took a step forward and kissed him with feather-lightness. Just a reminder of who he was. I ached for him in a way I’d never ached for anyone. I wanted gentle; I wanted nice; I wanted both with him. I needed them with him, even if only once.

I cupped his cheeks in my palms, then slid them down his neck to his shoulders, across his pecs. Just feeling and memorizing the way smooth skin stretched over taut muscle. Watching his chest rise and fall. I circled behind him, hands skating across his ribs, then up each ridge of his spine. Gooseflesh prickled the back of his neck. I traced them again, down to the thin scar in the middle of his back. He inhaled sharply.

So many different adjectives to describe him perched on my tongue without falling. In the past, sex was about getting off quickly. I’d never taken the time to truly appreciate a man’s naked body—especially one as toned and well proportioned as Wyatt’s. It had never seemed important, until now. Everything about him was stunning—and I had to let it all go.

Grief tightened my throat. I pressed my forehead to his shoulder. Somehow his hands found mine, pulled them to his hips and squeezed.

“Evy?”

I couldn’t speak, certain I’d burst into tears if I opened my mouth and verbalized my thoughts. I had to be strong for both of us. Being left behind a second time would be ten times harder for Wyatt than leaving was for me. Right?

Yeah, and there’s this bridge for sale.…

Wyatt released my hands and turned to face me. I didn’t look up, even when he cupped my cheek and tried to lift my head. He stroked my hair, his thoughts hidden, but affection clear in his gentle touches. “Talk to me, Evy, please?”

“I’m scared.” I breathed the words, unsure if they had enough volume to even be counted as spoken.

He must have heard me, because he tensed. “Of me?”

The question pierced my heart like a needle. “God no. Not of you, Wyatt.”

Only a fraction of tension lifted. “Of sex?”

Yes. No. A little of both. “Of after.” My eyes stung and my throat closed. No, dammit, I was not going to cry. His earlier words about a cruel déjà vu came back to me like a splash of cold water. Could I do this to him again? To us?

“Come here.” He pulled me close. I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and melted against his warm skin, face pressed to the crook of his neck. His hands rubbed up and down my back. The embrace should have been awkward, given our nudity, but it wasn’t. I found an unexpected strength in it—in him.

God, I hated losing this. I hated not having an actual choice about giving him up. I hated Thackery for taking Phin, and myself for not being smart enough to find another solution. Any other solution.

Dammit all.

A soft sheet caressed my skin. I hadn’t noticed us moving or curling up together on the bed, or Wyatt pulling the blankets up over us. I snuggled close to his chest, our legs twined together, and tucked my head beneath his chin. I wanted to climb inside of him and stay there, embraced by his strength and love. I inhaled him, safe in his arms. Temporarily.

I shoved away my macabre thoughts and self-loathing—nothing I could do about any of it at this late hour. I concentrated on feeling Wyatt all around me. Just us.

Our combined breathing was the only sound for a while.

“I’ll get you back, Evy,” he whispered.

I nodded, the only response I could muster for his impossible-to-keep promise. My heart was tearing in two. One half was desperate to make love to him, to feel him in my body, to see his face when he climaxed—to give him this final gift. The other half was terrified it meant I wasn’t coming back. As a Hunter, my life was about dying to protect others; as supercombo Evy, my life was about so much more. I had something to lose.

I loved Wyatt. Whether I wanted to or not, I loved him. It didn’t matter anymore if it had started with Chalice’s attraction, or if it had started that night in my old apartment when he kissed me for the first time. Hers or mine, I no longer cared, because we were me. And both parts were vital to my survival in the here and now. More than anything else, I needed to love Wyatt. I needed to live for him.

Yes, I could give him this. Give us this.

I trailed my fingers down Wyatt’s abs, through the coarse hair below his belly button, and wrapped gentle fingers around his erection. He trembled, and I reveled in the power of such a simple thing. I stroked my hand up and down, working a light, steady rhythm, encouraged by the soft sounds coming from his throat. His half-lidded eyes and loving smile made my heart flutter.

“You keep doing that, and I’m going to come,” he gasped.

“Better not.”

“Is that a challenge?”

I grinned. “Maybe.”

With a soft growl, he shifted us in the small bed so that I was on my back with him settled nicely between my legs. He captured my mouth in a bruising kiss that meant business. His right hand tickled down to cup my breast, tweaking the nipple into hardness and sending liquid heat straight to my core. I arched up, wanting more, and his erection rubbed hot against my belly.

A wicked gleam sparked in his eyes. Fingers skated across my hip, down my leg to my kneecap, caressing the skin and tickling. He kissed me again, his tongue licking into my mouth, as those questing fingers drew circles back up my leg. So close to where I wanted his touch. I made a soft, begging sound—not a whimper but damned close.

Please, Wyatt, oh please …

Finally, he slipped a single digit down, down, then into the very center of me. I cried out against his lips and clenched around him, amazed and alarmed at how full I felt. In and out, over and over—his finger worked me, hitting all the right places. A second finger joined the first, and my hips thrust against his hand, eager for the ache to be replaced by something else. My belly tightened in anticipation. Then he moved his thumb up to press against my clitoris, and lights winked behind my eyes.

It hadn’t felt like this before, had it? No, it had never felt like this before.

I didn’t think it would happen so soon, but it did—I came hard, gasping nonsense, and he didn’t relent. He nibbled my throat, my cheeks, my mouth, drawing out the orgasm until I cried for him to stop.

He did. Using his elbows for leverage, he smiled at me. I could only grin lazily, still a bit breathless. Tiny aftershocks made my stomach quiver. God, but I wanted this always. The thought hitched the air in my lungs.

He kissed me, his tongue stabbing into my mouth, and I welcomed it greedily. I traced circles on his back, over each lump of his spine, across the scar I hated so much, down to his ass and squeezed.

With a soft growl, he tore his mouth from mine. His hips jerked and pressed his length closer. I saw how hard it was for him to take it slow and savor each moment. Saw it in the tight pull of his mouth, the lines of concentration around his eyes, the beads of sweat on his forehead.

“Make love to me, Wyatt. Please.”

My encouragement broke the last of his restraint. He raised his hips. I slid one hand around to grasp him and guide him to my entrance. With agonizing slowness, he slid inside. Filled me, stretched me achingly far, made my body weep with discomfort and pleasure. Chalice … we … I hadn’t been a virgin. No, just inexperienced—so the opposite of what I’d once been.

But oh, how I wanted this.

Our hips finally met, and Wyatt could go no farther. A sense of completion washed over me, tinged with something else that clambered in the far reaches of my mind. I shoved away the memories that threatened to surface and destroy everything, and concentrated solely on him. On us, finally together.

“God, Evy.”

I thrust my hips just a bit, reveling in the exquisite fullness of having him inside me. “Love me.”

He groaned. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You won’t.”

He was hesitant at first, his thrusts shallow and gentle, allowing me to adjust, but it was not what I wanted. I encouraged him with upward thrusts of my own, and his hesitation crumbled. I wrapped my legs around his waist and locked my ankles. He slid in and out, his hard, burning thrusts timed with his labored breathing. I rose to meet him, my own pleasure building again over the persistent throb in my back and the exquisite ache of his length stretching me. Loving me. I tried to ignore the wounds and concentrate wholly on Wyatt.

Not on my position beneath him.

On the way my insides quivered, and on the thick slide of him in my body, the scent of his sweat, the heat of his breath on my face.

Not on the way he pressed me down, held me hard to the mattress.

On Wyatt.

No one else. Nowhere else. Here and now.

Breath on my face … sweet and heady and human breath.

Holding me down … pleasuring me, driving me to orgasm.

Pressing me into the mattress … making love to me.

Making love.

His pace slowed; a thumb brushed my cheek. “Evy?”

I met his concerned gaze but couldn’t force out words. My mind and body were consumed by conflicting emotions as old memories scratched just below the surface. I didn’t want them but couldn’t seem to turn them off.

Somehow Wyatt knew, or he simply guessed my back was bothering me. He rolled us until Wyatt was beneath me, me straddling his waist, hands on his chest.

In control.

Just us.

I didn’t think I could love him more if I tried.

I set the pace, starting slow, a gentle glide up and down, and nothing else existed. The memories stayed away, beaten into the recesses of my mind by the pleasure coiling in my abdomen. I leaned down, thrusting my tongue into his mouth to taste him, and once again, we shared a breath. He squeezed my hips, and I rocked faster, harder. Our labored breathing melted into a dull roar that blocked out everything except the pounding of my heart and the joining of our bodies. Faster. Harder still, unrelenting. I closed my eyes and held on, his thrusts matching mine, as a second orgasm washed over me, fast and blinding. Pleasure rippled from head to toes, trembling my limbs and seizing my heart. I shouted, hearing only Wyatt’s voice as he roared his climax and spilled into me.

We melted together, a tangle of arms and legs and sweat and sex. I felt his lips on my face and throat. After a bit—seconds? hours?—he slipped out, and we rolled onto our sides. I snuggled close, nearly bursting with satisfaction.

Wyatt grinned at me with swollen lips and rosy cheeks. “You continue to amaze me, Evangeline Stone.” The awe in his voice threatened to turn me into a puddle of goo.

I kissed the center of his chest, tasting the salt of his sweat. “You’re not so bad yourself.”

Laughter rumbled through his chest. His hands stroked my arms and shoulders. “Careful, or you may inflate my ego.”

“Arrogance is your emotional tap, right? Just doing my duty as your partner.”

Partner. It was an odd word to use for a man who’d been my boss for the four years I’d known him—save the last month or so of our lives as we’d first become allied fugitives, and then so much more. All in such a short amount of time. Triumph and defeat. Love and loss. Joy and fear. We’d defied death, defeated a demon-possessed elf, protected the future of a were-Clan, saved the lives of countless innocents, and summoned half a truck into a log cabin—not too bad, really.

Wyatt folded me against his chest, and I could have stayed like that forever. Or until restlessness drove me back out into the world, ready to hunt and fight. Knowing I’d be able to return to his arms at the end of the day and be loved and protected all over again.

But I wasn’t able to.

Lips brushed my forehead. “Think we should change the bedding?”

“Be my guest.”

He chuckled. “We should probably get up, though.”

I lifted my head and peered over him. Groaned. The blue neon numbers on the bedside clock announced ten minutes until company arrived. “You’re right.”

“Go clean up. I’ll find some clothes and tidy up in here.”

I gifted him with a soft kiss, which he returned with enthusiasm, then reluctantly climbed out of bed, chilly from the loss of physical contact. I gathered my scattered clothes and went across the hall.

In the bathroom, I washed as best I could, then scrubbed my face and brushed my hair. No time for a proper shower. Everything ached deliciously and for all the right reasons this time. My cheeks were flushed and my eyes bright, and for the first time since waking from that damned coma, I looked somewhat healthy.

I returned to the living area. Wyatt was dressed in someone’s dark blue jeans and a hunter-green polo, not his usual color combo. “What, no black?” I teased.

“Not that looked clean.” He closed the distance between us and settled his hands on my hips. He didn’t have to ask the question lurking in his mind.

“I’m fine. Better than fine, actually. Kind of amazing.” I drew him into a gentle kiss, just enough to put the taste of him back on my lips.

The doorbell rang. I jumped, both of us startled by the unfamiliar chime.

“Gina wouldn’t ring,” Wyatt said.

A second chime, followed by a fist rapping on the door. “Mr. Truman?” a muffled male voice said, oddly familiar.

“Who the hell knows you’re here?” I whispered.

He crossed to the door on silent feet and peered through the peephole. His shoulders tensed. Not good.

“Mr. Truman, I need to speak with you.”

Wyatt turned his head toward me and mouthed two words I didn’t understand at first: “James Reilly.” I stared. Mouthed back: “Who?” Then the penny dropped. The private investigator who’d cornered him at Alex’s memorial last week. Fucking hell. Wyatt waved at me. I bolted into the bathroom (apparently my new favorite hiding place) and closed the door nearly all the way.

The front door creaked open. “What can I do for you, Mr. Reilly?” Wyatt’s voice was icy.

“I was hoping for a few moments of your time,” Reilly said. That same conversational tone, designed to set his interviewee at ease.

“I really don’t have a few minutes today. I’m about to head out on business.”

“Of course, and I apologize for—”

“How did you know I was here?”

The silence was deafening. I craned to see. They hadn’t moved from the front door. Still out of my line of sight.

“I’m an investigator, Mr. Truman. It’s my job to find people.”

“Have you been following me?” We both knew that wasn’t possible.

“No, I’ve been following a red-haired young woman who’s come to this apartment several times over the last week.”

Bastard was following Kismet? Why? Reilly said he was looking into the fire at Rufus’s old apartment building, and Kismet wasn’t involved in—Shit. If she’d gone to visit Rufus recently—

“So you were watching the apartment,” Wyatt said, “and you saw me come inside.”

“Yes, with a rather pretty brunette, as a matter of fact.”

I didn’t have to see Wyatt to know he’d tensed up, even if he’d somehow managed to keep his expression neutral. This Reilly was a major pain in the ass.

“Mr. Truman, may I come inside?”

“No. Like I said, I’m leaving very soon.”

“Of course.”

“I still have your business card, so why don’t I call you—”

“May I speak with Chalice Frost please?” Reilly’s tone had changed completely. Gone was the genial fellow asking harmless questions, replaced with cold determination. “Because unless she has an unrecorded twin roaming the city, she was the brunette I saw come inside with you. So where is she?”

Crap.