Demon's Hunger (11 page)

To her shock, he answered. "Yeah. Something like that."

Guarded emotions. They had that in common. Only, she'd blurted her whole life story earlier over spinach salad, while she still knew pretty much nothing about him. And why was she so curious? Because something about him intrigued her, and it wasn't just a physical thing, though there was definitely that, in spades.

He stepped closer, his faded jeans hugging lean hips and muscled legs, his linen shirt hanging loose, the open neck revealing the skin of his throat, the bulge of muscle across his chest.

Unsmiling, he stood before her, his dark hair in disarray, as though he'd ruffled the shaggy layers with impatient fingers, his silver eyes bright against the frame of dark lashes. She'd never seen anyone more beautiful than Dain Hawkins.

White-hot attraction sizzled through her, a gnawing need.

She blinked, made herself remember the feeling of standing against the wall in her basement, watching the demon's head roll across the ground to land at her feet right after Dain had lopped it off.

She forced herself to confront the truth of his magic. She couldn't believe she was actually accepting this. She made herself remember exactly who and what he was.

He was a sorcerer, a stark and savage warrior. He wasn't just beautiful; he was incredibly dangerous.

Why did
that
ramp up her libido?

She'd never in her life been attracted to dangerous guys. Mental gymnasts and great intellects were more her style, the kind of guy whose brain far surpassed his brawn.

No, actually, that wasn't true. Who was she kidding? She hadn't had a
style
. She could count on the fingers of one hand the number of guys she'd dated. Truth was, since Pat's death she'd pretty much never been attracted to anyone.

Until Dain Hawkins.

The way he looked at her right now, his lips drawn in a hard line, his silver eyes gone dark, took her breath away. She could swear he wanted her as much as she wanted him.

A very scary thought.

"Anyway"—she wrapped her arms around herself—"I don't want to talk about my mother."

"Let's talk about bones, then," Dain said, his voice touched by a faint rasp.

She felt the drum of her heartbeat, once, twice, then Mr. In Control turned and led the way to the kitchen, while she stood there watching him go, wishing he would just grab her and haul her up against him and—

Whoa
. ..
don't go there
.

Something dark and primal roared deep inside her, and she found that she very much
wanted
to go there.

In the kitchen, Vivien found two red velvet bags waiting for her on the granite countertop. They were similar to her own, but…

"Those aren't mine."

"No. One is from New Orleans. I
retrieved
it on a recent trip. And one was found in the home"—Dain gave a strange little smile, more menace than humor—"of an old
friend
."

"Doesn't sound like you think much of that old friend anymore."

Male? Female? Inexplicable jealousy bit at her.

"
He
was my mentor," Dain said, and Vivien realized she'd actually aired her little green monster out loud. Okay, great. What else could she do to embarrass herself?

"So, uh, where are the ones I collected?"

"Safe. Your belongings are safe, Vivien. Locked away in a vault."

"My belongings," she mused, and laughed. "There's not much left. A few charm bags that you have locked away. My purse, minus my BlackBerry and my wallet, because those were in my
other
purse." She paused. "But at least I nabbed the picture of my dad." She only wished she had all her other pictures. The ones of her and Amy. The ones from high school and university.

"Where is your father now?" Dain asked.

Where? Another question with no answer. Was he dead or just gone? And why was Dain asking these questions? Why did he care? She shrugged and looked away, her gaze sliding to the stove.

"Oh," she said, latching on to an excuse to change the subject. "I, um, made you some dinner. It's on the stove—" She stopped short as she saw the look on his face. Shock, as though her making him dinner was completely astonishing.

"Thank you." The way he said it was incredibly sincere, incredibly sexy.

"It's only quickie chicken—"

"I'm used to doing for myself or paying others to do for me." Dain leaned one hip against the counter. "It has been a very long while since anyone did me a kindness simply because they wanted to." He cut her a glance. "So, thank you."

The sincerity was there, in every syllable, but his words made her think again that he seemed so solitary, so alone, his walls firmly in place. At least she'd cracked hers wide enough to let Amy in. She had a feeling he didn't let anyone close.

Swallowing, she shifted her focus to the two red velvet gris-gris bags before her, the sight bringing both comfort and distress. The familiarity of them was welcome. The urge to touch them and examine them, not so welcome. It was deep-rooted and intense, a powerful compulsion.

She was drawn to whatever was in those bags.

"Do you need anything, any special equipment to examine them?" Dain asked.

"Not yet. I won't be able to say for certain until I see what's inside," Vivien murmured, already moving closer. "Do you have gloves?"

The question barely left her lips before Dain handed her a pair. In her mind's eye, she recalled the shimmer of light at his fingertips, the way he'd turned his sleeve from a bloodstained, torn mess into pristine perfection, and the way he'd conjured a fuzzy green slipper out of thin air. She figured she didn't need to ask where the gloves had materialized from.

She reached out, then gasped as Dain's warm fingers closed about her wrist. His thumb stroked lightly back and forth over her skin, sending a shiver up her spine.

"You're hurt. What happened?" he asked, his head bent as he studied the scratch on her forearm.

Didn't she wish she knew?

"I…" His touch left her breathless, and she pulled her wrist from his grasp, overwhelmed by her response to him. "I must have scratched myself."

He caught her wrist again, his gaze locked on hers as he brought his fingers to the cut. She felt tingling and a bright sensation, like the sun on her skin. When she glanced down, the scratch was gone, but her arm still felt sensitive in the place it had been.

"A day, and you'll be good as new," Dain said, dropping his hold on her.

"Thank you," she whispered, wishing his words were true, wishing she'd be good as new. But some deep instinct made her doubt that.

Turning to the countertop, she lifted the closer of the two bags. Red velvet tied with red thread. Just like the ones she collected.

A cloying unease wheedled through her, and with a quick glance at Dain, she put the bag down. It felt
off
. Menacing. Which made no sense. How could an old, decaying cloth bag be menacing? Shaking her head, she picked up the second bag, frowning as the same unpleasant aura—a sensation of
wrongness
—oozed through her.

The cloth slid from between her fingers as she gasped and jerked away.

"What is it? What's wrong?" Dain rested one hand against the granite counter and leaned forward to look over her shoulder.

Her pulse ramped up. She was buffeted by conflicting urges: one, to jump up and scuttle to the opposite side of the vast loft, to run away from the heat that scored her; the other, to fist her hand in Dain's shirt and drag him close. The latter urge was definitely the stronger of the two.

Lick him. Bite him. Draw him deep into her core.

Nothing gentle. She wanted rough, untamed ecstasy. The craving mushroomed, a pulsing ache.

She closed her eyes for a second, fought against the primal yearning. No matter how much she argued with herself that the urge was outrageous, she couldn't seem to get it under control. Her lids flipped up. The loft shimmered, and an odd sensation sifted through her, as though her body was sand pouring from a bucket.

She'd felt this before. It always came as a frightening herald right before she blacked out, lost all recollection of time. She froze, feeling sick and scared, terrified that she was going to open her eyes to find that hours, or even days, had passed and she would have no clue what had happened during that time.

Oh, God. What was happening to her?

Dain was watching her, his eyes pinched with concern, and she wondered what he saw etched on her face.

By sheer force of will, she corralled her rising panic, locking it away. She would master this. She
would
.

"Nothing's wrong." She dragged in a breath, struggled for calm. "I just felt strange for a second."

For a second? She'd felt nothing
but
strange for weeks.

Carefully, she reached out and opened one of the bags. It was a little larger than the ones she owned, heavier. She catalogued the contents out loud, sensing that Dain was listening with careful attention. Skin. Hair. Both appeared human. A smooth round stone. Her guess was polished rose quartz. A small glass vial, sealed with red wax. She thought the contents might be soil.

"Very similar to the items in my charm bags," she commented, and Dain made a low, noncommittal sound. "I think the bone is older, and the other items more recent… but I'd need to do some tests to be certain."

She withdrew the bone. It was the left pubis of a long-dead man, jagged breaks marking the places where the superior and inferior rami should have connected to the ilium and ischium.

"This is a pubic bone," she said. "From a male."

"How can you tell?" Dain asked.

He didn't sound skeptical, merely curious. Like he genuinely wanted to know.

"Imagine there's another bone on the other side, connected in the midline to join the two sides of a person's pelvis. If I lay my fingers along the bottom of the two bones"—Vivien spread her index and middle fingers apart, creating a V—"I'd see an acute angle. Like this. Like a peace sign, upside down."

Dain stepped closer. She felt his breath at her nape and she shivered.

She glanced at him over her shoulder and immediately wished she hadn't. He was too close. Too big. Too male. Too tantalizing.

Their gazes collided, and whatever he read in her face made his pupils dilate, his jaw clench.

Kiss me. Taste me.

The thought came from nowhere, hitting her, visceral and deep. Frightening her, because she didn't understand where it came from. Her blood roared in her ears, the moment spinning out like cotton candy from a drum, until finally, finally, he eased back an inch.

Jerking her attention to the bone in her hand, Vivien made a vague gesture. "This bone is likely from a male, because a male usually has a narrower pelvis, a small angle, just like this. A female has a wider pelvis, a larger angle. More like an L." She clenched her fist, then spread her thumb and index finger apart, showing him exactly what she meant.

"Are the bones in your charm bags also from a male?"

Vivien hesitated, staring at the bone in her hand, feeling that it was evil somehow, even though she knew that was ridiculous. Bones weren't evil.

She thought of all the murders she'd worked on over the years.

Bones weren't evil, but people could be. Were they hardwired that way, or was it a choice?

"Yes. All my bags contain skeletal remains from the
same
male." She glanced at the pubis in front of her, carefully eased it back into the bag, and pulled off her gloves. She didn't want to touch it anymore right now. "Though without further tests, I can't say for certain if this fragment is from the same skeleton as those."

But she
could
say for certain. The fine hairs at her nape rose, and she felt a tide of conviction slap at her. She
knew
that it was from the same skeleton. How? Instinct wasn't enough. She just knew it, felt it, as though the bones
spoke
to her. And no matter how crazy that seemed, she couldn't make light of it, couldn't deny it. She shuddered, freaked out and unnerved.

The bones were all from the same person.

Murder, desecration of a body, the horrors of human actions were nothing new to her. As a forensic anthropologist, she saw things every day that other people couldn't even conjure in their nightmares. But something about
these
bones and the things she felt when she touched them left her cold.

Had it been that way with the bones in her own charm bags? Had she noticed this before? She couldn't say with certainty, and that only exacerbated her distress.

She wet her lips, glanced at the charm bags, and whispered, "Someone hacked apart the corpse, stuck the pieces in a bunch of bags, and scattered the bits to the four corners of the earth."

"No, I don't think they did," he mused. "I think the body was disinterred years after the burial and the bones scattered then."

Vivien jerked around in surprise, found Dain so close she could see the individual lines of silver that fanned through the darker pewter of his irises.

His expression was blank, detached, controlled. Her gaze dropped to his mouth.

God, he had such a sexy mouth.

Deep, aching need uncoiled in a powerful wave, sensitizing every nerve, every cell inside her.

"It's the magic," he rasped, staring down at her, his expression hard. "Dark magic."

Was it? She didn't think so. The longing was her own, freed from a secret place inside where it had lain dormant until now. Until Dain. The scent of his skin was delicious, citrus, spice and man. She wanted to lick him, taste him.

And just like that, she was crushed by the weight of her arousal, by the need to touch him, take him, make them both scream.

There was nothing gentle or sweet in what she wanted from him. She wanted raw, rough pleasure.

She wanted to draw from him power and life.

What was she thinking?

She shuddered. These urges were stealing her mind. They spiralled up from deep within, feral, leaving her aching and baffled and half afraid of herself, of the part of her that she'd never before known and certainly didn't recognize.

It was as though there were two parts of her. The part she knew well, rational, analytical. And the part that craved sensation. Craved sex.

Her gaze shot to Dain.

Craved
him
.

Stumbling away, Vivien practically ran across the penthouse, ignoring Dain as he called her name. She jerked open the glass door that opened to the terrace at the far end and sucked in a breath of dry, frigid air. The wind cut through her T-shirt, fanned a few desultory snowflakes through the open door.

The cold felt good. Real. Recognizable.

She stepped out onto the enormous terrace, inched away from the door.

"Vivien!"

Backed up against the brick wall, she pressed her palms against the glacial surface. Desperate for space and distance, she prayed he wouldn't follow.

Then she prayed he would.

He did.

Dain stalked her, one step forward for each she retreated in a sideways slide along the wall, and she shook her head wildly from side to side.

"Please," she whispered, the word snatched by the wind.

She was shaking from the cold, from terror and confusion, panting with the power of her arousal.

She would kill to have Dain Hawkins's naked skin against her own.

"Vivien?" Dain stepped close. "Come inside. Talk to me. I can help."

His voice was low, soothing, pouring over her, the sound stroking her like a caress. A harsh stab of desire sliced her to the core.