The Shadows

FORTY-THREE

As Xcor walked away from the cottage’s main room, Layla was prepared to follow him outside and make him feed on what passed for a lawn if she had to. But just as she was about to heft herself off the sofa, she heard the sound of . . . the shower.

Continuing through on the vertical impulse, she went across and around the corner to stand in front of the closed door of the bathroom.

“. . . fuck . . .” he muttered on the far side.

“Xcor?”

“Leave me be. I shall return in a moment.”

As another curse floated out through the gaps around the doorjamb, she took hold of the latch, and pulled things open.

Xcor was standing before the sink, his shirt half on and half off, his torso turned at a wrong angle as he tried to get the button down over his head—without hurting the bullet wound in his side.

“What are you doing?” he demanded. Through the folds of black fabric.

For a moment, all she could do was stare at his ribbed abdomen, the muscles striated across his belly and cut so deeply they threw shadows. But then there were his hips, hollow and jutting out from under his skin, his combat pants hanging so low only the huge muscles of his thighs were keeping them on.

He was unbelievably powerful. But also too thin.

Shaking herself into focus, she said, “I’m going to help you get that off.”

“I can handle it, just—” As he twisted again, he let out a groan of pain.

Ignoring him, she shut the door so what little heat was boiling up from the shower stayed in the bath. “Stop. You’re just going to hurt yourself.”

“I’m fine,” he snapped.

The instant she put her hand on his arm, he went dead still.

“Let me help you,” she whispered.

The good news was that he’d gotten the bulk of the shirt up over his head. So there was no way he saw her hands shake as she took hold and gently pulled upward, inching it up his arms, revealing to her eyes the fans of muscle that ran down the side of his torso and then the massive bulges of his pectorals.

His breath panted in and out of him, his chest rising and falling in a pump that got faster as she carried the shirt over his arms.

Heavy arms. Thick arms that narrowed at the elbow and then at the wrist, but plumped up everywhere else.

As what had covered him came loose, all she could think of was that he was a killer. A straight-up killer whose body reflected the work that he did.

“Wait for me out there.” He refused to meet her eyes. “I shall not take from you when I am unclean.”

“That’s a bad gash there.”

When she touched the warm, pale skin under the angry red stripe on his side, he flinched. But his voice remained strong. “It shall be healed by nightfall.”

“Only if you feed.”

The grunt she got in response was a dismissal if she’d ever heard one. And he followed it up with, “If you do not leave, you’re going to see a lot more than my chest.”

“You’re injured worse on your leg.” She eyed the ever-growing blood spot on those combats.

His hands went to the zipper of his fly. “Well?”

As if he were giving her one last chance.

“Well?” She shrugged. “Do you honestly think I’m going to let you get under that hot water without help? You’re white as a sheet. Your blood pressure is obviously low. You’re liable to pass out.”

“Oh, for the love of . . .”

Now he looked at her. And, with quick efficiency, released the fastening at his waist. The top part of the pants fell away. The bottom stuck in place over those thighs.

But something was revealed.

And it was . . . erect.

Xcor cocked a brow. “You can stop staring. I find it hard to believe you are enjoying the view.”

She tried to look away. She did. But her eyes had a mind of their own.

“You are so big,” she breathed.

He recoiled. As if that was the last thing in the world he’d expected her to say. And when he spoke next, his voice had changed.

Now, he begged. “Layla . . . Chosen Layla . . . you need to leave.”

As Xcor stood all but completely naked in front of the female, he couldn’t move. And not just because his combats had wedged themselves above his knees and turned into a hobble.

Layla’s green eyes were impossibly wide as they focused on his sex—and stayed there.

Could this evening go any farther off the rails, he wondered.

Wait—mayhap he should not offer that kind of opening to the Fates.

Meanwhile, his cock was loving the attention. The damn thing kicked as if to suggest she should shake and make friends.

He covered the rigid length up with both his palms, stretching it flat over his lower abdomen. “Layla.”

Instead of doing the reasonable thing and backing away from him in horror and disgust, she bent and grasped the waistband of his combats. Before he could shove her off, his pants were down his thighs and pooling around his ankles.

“Come, let’s get you under the spray.”

She didn’t give him a chance to protest. And a second later, his battered and bruised body was under the warm falling water, aching bones and healing scars both screaming and sighing at the impact. With a snap of the curtain, she gave him the privacy he wanted—except the klonk over by the toilet suggested she hadn’t departed, but rather had shut the lid and sat down.

There was no reason not to follow through with the soap and the shampoo, and he tried to be quick about it. Unfortunately, the bullet that had narrowly missed his lung was stinging sure as if there were battery acid upon his flesh. And the soap did not help that.

The other reason to be fast was that he was acutely aware of both his nakedness and his arousal. The more efficient he was, the sooner he could get dressed.

No clothes, though. He had no clean clothes.

Closing his eyes in defeat, he rinsed the suds out of his hair, tilting his head back. Which was a mistake. The water’s rush hit his cock, and damned if it didn’t feel like hands, her hands.

Or maybe her mouth—

The release was not unexpected. It was, however, unwanted. As his erection kicked and his orgasm rolled through him, he gritted his teeth—

“You don’t have to hide it,” she said in a husky voice. “I can see the shadow of you.”

“So look away,” he groaned as his hips rolled into his ejaculations.

“I can’t.”

Sagging against the tile, he knew he had lost whatever upper hand he had believed he had in the situation. That female had guessed the terrible truth about him. She knew his aims had changed. And she seemed unwilling to keep whatever relationship this was on terms that gave both of them some honor and dignity.

But at least she didn’t know it was all based on her.

That his life . . . pathetic as it was . . . was based on her now.

If that came to light, it would be his ruination.

Xcor twisted the faucet off with a crank, determined to put an end to all of this and send her away just so he could get his defenses properly back in place. Just as he was going to rip the curtain down and put it around himself, the heavy weight of towel was tossed over the pole.

“For your modesty,” she said.

Was she laughing at him?

Not bothering to dry himself off, he covered his lower body and pushed the curtain fall back. She was indeed on the loo, the fleece she wore camouflaging her changed shape from the pregnancy.

Without a word, she pulled her sleeve back again and put out her arm.

There was a challenge in her eyes.

“Fine,” he snapped, angry at himself. At her. At this new territory they had entered.

Lowering himself to his knees—because she was right, he was awfully dizzy—he put his fangs to her flesh.

Starved. He was starved for her.

And yet he struck as gently as he could.

At the first taste, he moaned, his body swaying, its weight knocking into the cabinet into which the sink had been mounted. Her blood was a dark wine that made him thirsty instead of satiating his dry throat, and between his legs, his cock kicked again and again.

He was orgasming into the towel, the pleasure coursing through his veins, his bones, his flesh—

Mine.

From out of the depths of him, the urge to take her rose so violently, that he started to act on it, his body on the verge of leaping up and dragging her to the floor so he could mount her.

Pregnancy or not, he was going to get at her sex and leave his mark inside of her—

Breaking off the contact, he pushed himself away from her, bracing his feet against that cabinet, the cold porcelain of the tub behind him biting into his shoulders as he went rigid in an attempt to control himself.

“What’s wrong—”

“Go!” he shouted.

Within him, his sexual beast was prowling and ready to have her—and coupled with his blood lust, he knew he could not handle the pair of instincts together. He was liable to chew her wrist off at same time he fucked her raw.

“Xcor, you have not had much at all—”

Gritting his teeth, he closed his eyes and strained. “Get the fuck out of here! If you want your young to live—leave! I will attack you! Go!”

That got her attention.

As, no doubt, did the fact that he was still orgasming all over himself, the towel now lost, the jets kicking out and marking his own thighs and belly as his leg muscles trembled at the force he was exerting—to make sure he didn’t jump on her.

“Go!”

A split second later, she was out of the bathroom; one moment after that she was out of the cottage. And she was in such a hurry, she left both of the doors open, so he saw the headlights of her car come on and watched them circle the scruffy lawn in front before streaking off down the lane.

It wasn’t until he could neither see her red taillights nor hear the crackle of her tires that he eased up even a little on the bracing.

Gripping his cock, he began to stroke his shaft as he pictured her eyes on him, and heard anew the strange tone she’d used as she had pronounced him sizable.

He had no interest in masturbating.

But what he really didn’t want was his rational side to completely desert him—such that he went after her through the night, stopping her somewhere unsafe just so he could do what he did not want to do to her.

No, this way he would stay put.

Oh, God . . . the way she had looked at him, he thought as he started to come again.