Absolution (21 page)

She’d stuck the pen in the pocket of her jeans, then returned to the rec room and practiced moving things. She’d lifted Mirren’s weights in the air and eventually could suspend them aloft for a couple of minutes before her attention wavered and she dropped them.

Finally, she’d stretched out on the sofa and dozed, starting at each creak of the house above her, wondering what was happening, if Mirren was safe. Wondering what, exactly, was the story with that sword.

The sound of a floorboard creaking overhead startled her to her feet, ready to run to the lower level or try hurling the weight set at anyone unfamiliar who came down the stairwell. Then the pipes knocked as the water turned on upstairs, and Glory relaxed. No one intent on breaking into Mirren’s house and finding her would stop to take a shower.

Then again, why would Mirren take a shower upstairs when he had a huge bathroom on the bottom level off his sparely decorated bedroom?
Because whatever he’s been doing, he doesn’t want you to see him.

Hadn’t they just been through this last night? Glory walked to the stairwell and listened for footsteps or voices. Nothing but the knocking pipes. She climbed the stairs and focused her energy on the hatch, visualizing the panels sliding. The first time they clicked, it broke her concentration, and pushing on the overhead panel didn’t work. The second time, she kept her focus, and when she exerted pressure on the wooden square above her head, it shifted up and slid aside.

She climbed out, slid the panel back into place, and followed the sound of the water to the bathroom off the hallway, next to the bedroom she’d been using. The bathroom door was locked, but again, Glory was able to pop the lock by visualizing how it needed to work, then using her powers to make it happen. She’d realized how valuable her abilities could be now that she was learning to use them. And for the first time, she understood why Matthias had wanted her.

Was she sure Aidan and Mirren weren’t just as anxious to use her? Were they really using her if she applied her skills willingly to defend Penton? Because she would help them if they asked her; she knew that now. She’d somehow come to care for these people she hadn’t known very long. Penton felt like home, or at least felt like it could become home. Besides, if Hannah’s instincts were right, she might need to help whether they asked or not.

Glory turned the knob and eased the door open. She’d planned to peek inside, make sure he was OK, then slip back out—but she hadn’t taken the vampire senses into account. He was leaning over, with his arms braced against the white tile beneath the showerhead, hanging his head under the spray. Blood washed off him in pink streams, but this time, at least some of it was his. Glory could see multiple cuts on his back.

She had a glimpse of a muscular butt and powerful thighs before he whirled and stood upright to stare at her. His eyes had lightened to silver—she knew that meant he was hungry, or agitated. She wrenched her gaze from his and saw a body every bit as beautiful as she’d suspected, if not more so. The tats on the left side should have made him look asymmetrical or evil or something. But he didn’t. Muscles moved beneath wet skin as he leaned over and turned off the water. His expression said he was anything but pleased to see her, but his growing erection said otherwise.

“Go.” One word, harshly spoken.

Glory ignored her first impulse, which was to turn and run from that angry face. She sensed that he wanted to frighten her and that if it worked—if she fed from him—it would only confirm the self-hatred that brought him to create the tattoos.

She reached behind her and closed the door. “Turn the water back on.”

“What the—”

She grabbed the hem of her T-shirt and slipped it over her head, noting with satisfaction that his eyes dropped to her breasts and that those silvery eyes weren’t the only thing that grew bigger. She shucked the jeans, bra, and panties.

“Go,” he repeated. “I don’t want you here.”

Liar.
“Turn the water back on.” She wasn’t sure why he’d gotten under her skin, but he had. She wanted him. He wanted her whether he admitted or not. To ignore it was stupid.

He stood there like an oaf, so she reached around him and spun the faucet, stifling a smile as he stepped away to make sure she didn’t touch him. Once the temperature was good, she pulled a washcloth off the rack and held it under the spray. “Turn around.”

Grumbling something unintelligible under his breath, he turned his back to her, and she studied the wounds. “How quickly will these heal by themselves?”

“By tomorrow. So you can go.” His shoulders were tense and his fists clenched, and Glory wondered briefly if he’d hit her, but then let that thought go. He wouldn’t. He’d had plenty of chances to get violent with her and he’d never even come close.

She gently pressed the cloth to each cut until the bleeding stopped, then poured body wash into her palm and began to work it into his skin in the uncut areas, digging into tight muscles with soap-slicked fingers and humming with approval as they relaxed under her attention.

“Glory, leave.” Mirren’s voice was rough, strained. “Get out now, or…”

“Or what?”

The answer was more growl than talk. “I won’t be responsible.”

“Good.” About time he acknowledged that she was getting to him. “I’m tired of you being all responsible. You don’t scare me, so you might as well quit trying. I’m ready for you to be—”

He spun so fast she wasn’t prepared, and her feet slid in the slick tub. Mirren’s hands latched onto her waist as she fell, lifting her until her feet left the porcelain. He held her against the tile wall of the shower and pressed himself against her, keeping her in place with his body. With rough movements, he slid his hands under her thighs and pulled her legs around him so he was pressed against her wet heat.

Her breath came in gasps. He was hard and hot, and she wanted him so badly she ached. If he’d let her slide a little farther down the wall, he could be inside her. But he wasn’t moving. He was fighting for control, and it was a fight she wanted him to lose.

She wriggled against him and felt his sharp intake of breath. “Mirren, I want—”

His voice was impossibly deep, and she felt it rumbling in the broad chest that pressed against her. “What do you want, Glory? Is this it?”

Mirren let her slide and slammed into her without warning, filling her until she thought she’d burst, then eased her up again with a groan. “I told you to fuckin’ leave while you could.” His voice echoed against her cheek as he thrust into her again, her back sliding along the tile from the impact.

Oh no. He wasn’t going to turn this into some warped kind of punishment. She was no fragile china doll he had to protect. She wrapped her legs around his waist and began moving herself. He stilled, letting her move around him for a few seconds before thrusting her against the wall again and setting up a steady, pounding rhythm.

“This. What. You. Want?” He punctuated each word with a thrust, and Glory couldn’t answer beyond a gasping “yes.” Each stroke brought her closer to the edge, but she had to let him know he wasn’t punishing her—or himself.

She stretched her arms around his neck and pulled him down to her, kissing his throat and, on impulse, biting into the ridged skin of a snake tattooed into the side of his neck. She tasted a hint of rich blood before he shuddered and moaned. He froze briefly before lowering her to the shower floor, letting go as soon as her feet were firmly planted. He hadn’t come, and neither had she. He was going to run away.

Glory looked up at him, willing him to stay. “Mirren, I want you. Like this. Now.” She had been telling herself she wanted Mirren because she thought she could help him accept himself—but it was his acceptance of her that made her want him. He didn’t think she was a freak. He made her feel valued as a person. Maybe she was greedy, but she wanted him to value her as a woman.

“No. You don’t…you shouldn’t…” His breath came in heaving gasps as he stepped out of the shower and grabbed a towel on his way into the hallway. Glory reached over and turned off the water, resting her face against the coolness of the tile. She flinched when the door slammed behind him.

She’d faced bigger problems than Mirren Kincaid in her life. She had no doubts he was a fierce fighter, and he’d probably done things with that sword that would make her blood curdle. But he also didn’t like himself very much and was scared of getting close to anyone.

And Glory had one big advantage. However stubborn Mirren might be, she was more so.

CHAPTER 20

D
amned floor panels. Mirren slid the pieces of the hatch locking mechanism in the wrong order and had to close his eyes, flex his fingers, clear his head. Starting over, he let his fingers work from memory, maneuvered the pieces in the right sequence, and opened the hatch to his basement. After descending a few steps, he reached up and locked it behind him. All he carried with him was the towel around his waist and Faolain in it scabbard, which he’d stashed behind the door when he came in.

He needed to get away from Glory. The woman had no idea what she did to him, had no idea what being around him could do to her. Killing twenty people, washing off the blood, and then burying himself balls deep inside an innocent woman who had a case of hero worship was about what he’d expect of himself. It was the kind of life he’d been born to, but what seemed right—or at least acceptable—four hundred years ago wasn’t right anymore. It never had been. The gallowglass, in their arrogance, just hadn’t known it.

But Glory wasn’t one of his Atlanta whores. There was something pure about her. Hell, even noble. She thought he was her savior, but the man she wanted didn’t exist.

Mirren gave a harsh chuckle as he opened the hatch into his private subbasement and climbed down into the cool, quiet living area. He threw the towel on the bedroom floor on his way to the bathroom for a dry one, thought about jacking off to relieve the aching balls Glory had left him with, then decided he deserved to suffer.

He’d pulled on a pair of loose jeans before it struck him: Glory had been locked in his basement when he’d gone to help with the fight. She must have some kind of genius for puzzles to have gotten out, or else Will needed to tighten security even more.

As for what Mirren needed, well, he needed his routine. Snagging the towel he’d dropped earlier, he sat on the bench along the wall opposite the bed and stroked the terry cloth over the blade of his sword to remove the blood, then honed the blade with one of his old sharpening stones. Finally, using a fine grade of oil, he cleaned it from hilt to crossbar to blade tip. Once it was gleaming, he placed it back in its scabbard and hung it from a hook on the side of his armoire nearest the bed.

While he cleaned the sword, he thought about the vampires he’d killed tonight. It was hard to hate them, even if they had been trying to do the dirty work of that damned Matthias Ludlam. They were starving. Desperate.

They represented twenty more souls whose lives he’d taken, if vampires had souls, something of which Mirren wasn’t convinced. Aidan thought so. Then again, Aidan was a bloody romantic. Hungry souls. So the tats to remember their deaths should involve food. And food brought his mind right back to Glory.

She’s probably upstairs crying her eyes out because you’re such an asshole. But better now than later, when it would hurt her more. Or your violence gets her killed.

Mirren went into the living area outside the bedroom and sat at a drawing table. Pulling a charcoal pencil from the drawer at the front, he raised the tabletop to a comfortable angle and flipped open the sketchpad he always kept handy. Drawing relaxed his mind like nothing else, the smell of the charcoal pencil, the scratch of nib on paper. It was something that had always been just for himself. When he’d been a kid in Scotland, and then a youth in Ireland, the youngest of a family of gallowglass men, he’d learned quickly that elite mercenary warriors didn’t do pansy shit like drawing pictures. He’d had that lesson beaten into him early.

Like they did with his sword when he was in his cold, gray zone, his hands seemed to work of their own accord, using the sharpened pencil tip for hard lines, the sides of the charcoal for soft, smudging some with a finger to fill in areas with color. He’d been careful to buy inks with the colors clearly written on the labels so anyone else seeing the tats wouldn’t see the grays and blacks that he did. He knew there were reds and greens on his body art, even if he couldn’t see them. Might seem silly to even care, but he wanted an apple to be the color of an apple or a leaf to be the color of a leaf, even if that wasn’t the way he saw them.