Wild Hyacinthe (Crimson Romance) (7 page)

I frowned, recognizing the hypocrisy of my finding any sexual act depraved.

“You still hanging in there, desperation-wise?” her voice through the phone drew me away from the anger that surged up at my recollection. “Last time was cutting it close.”

I took a steadying breath and assessed my level of need. “I’m fine,” I muttered, trying not to give away my uncertainty. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Happy birthday, Asher.”

“Gypsy,” I said. “I can’t imagine enduring all of this without you. You’re everything to me. You know that, right?”

“I know.” Her voice was soft with understanding, but because she was Gypsy, she hung up without another word.

She treated her endless support of me as an obvious thing, as though she couldn’t fathom it any other way. I wouldn’t have blamed her if she washed her hands of me altogether for the things she endured because of my weakness, yet she stood by my side year after year, kill after kill.

I took the scenic highway, cruising along the forested edge of Lake Superior, admiring the endless, pristine, blue water as I drove.

Gypsy was right. Last time cut it close. When I first woke the incubus up, I sometimes didn’t last more than a week without sex. My kills racked up fast the first two years, but I gradually gained more control. Last time, I made it to a full six months, but as I drove home one night, the savage persona of a hungry incubus kicked in. The urge to charge my body tried to claim my consciousness. It was as though I stepped back from my body and let the need to fuel have control as I parked off a deserted road and stalked toward a house. My limbs were on fire with every step I took . . . the incubus’s control was hot, burning through my veins with need. I peered through the windows, hearing the sounds of a woman dressing. She was in her forties and her husband was home, so I dug my knife out of my pocket and bit it between my teeth, climbing up the side of the house. I was fully prepared to break in, murder the husband and fuck the wife into oblivion. I didn’t think I could stop myself.

But as I slipped my hand beneath the cracked window to the empty bedroom, the moonlight glinted off the knife between my teeth. My father’s initials, my initials, A.C., flashed into my field of vision, engraved on the shiny blade. I stared at it for a moment and my senses returned to me.

There was no way to justify my life, my needs or my existence. If I didn’t fuck and kill, I would become insatiable and insane. I would break into houses and
rape
and kill. Which was worse? I couldn’t stop my needs, and Gypsy, in all her matter-of-fact brilliance, researched legends of the incubus. She believed if I allowed the incubus side of me to take over my consciousness and command my body through his lust, he would own and dominate me forever. I would break into houses over and over again like this, raping and killing on a warpath until somebody managed to stop me with mortal effectiveness.

As my father’s initials glinted in my vision, I felt piercing, deep shame. I was a killer of lust and played host to some dark
thing,
a part of myself I hated. I shook my head and slipped my hand out of the window.

Allowing the incubus to control my selection was stupid. If my late mother and father had to watch me from somewhere above as I killed over and over again and their beloved, once-broken daughter cleaned up my messes, the least I could do was try to reduce my crime. I vowed never to rape. Though I would murder my victim with the withdrawal of my cock from her begging body, the sex, at least, would be consensual.

That night, when I refused to succumb to the incubus’s total assumption of my soul, I slid my knife into my pocket, climbed down and snuck back to my car. Once inside, I texted Gypsy.

Kellie Hendricks. Journalist who interviewed me. I’m taking her tonight.

It was simple from that moment.

Now, as I drove along the same highway where I nearly committed a crime of even graver consequence months ago, I glanced in my visor mirror.

My eyes were white around the edges of the black starburst from the center of my pupil. The black only extended halfway out into my iris. My needs as an incubus would demand another life soon. And much as I hated myself for my pride, I couldn’t indulge in the whore that Gypsy procured for my appetite. I wanted
Aria.
I didn’t know if I could manage to fuck and absorb someone who was a friend, but for some strange reason, making Aria my friend seemed somehow more honorable than killing the whore in my Lamborghini.

Maybe I hoped I could enjoy her company and enjoy the kill more, as a result. Maybe I just thought she was exceptionally hot.

Maybe I hoped that killing a friend would hurt me on a deep enough level to be something of a penance for the murder.

I cranked the steering wheel and followed a sharp curve. Yes, I would make Aria my friend. Yes, I would probably murder that beautiful friend. And I had to start to earn her trust immediately, before things got too bad and I snapped again.

I had a good rhythm established to deal with my condition. In between kills, I nourished my needs through personal training, charging from the faint endorphins and energies my clients released as I pushed them to extremes of workout. Casual touch between me and an ordinary human during physical exertion fueled the incubus slightly and kept him at bay. Exercise itself helped to hold off my need to breathe life away from another, too. I worked out for an hour every morning, trained clients for four hours each day and worked out for another two hours every evening. As a result of all the exercise, I was in prime physical condition and had a hearty appetite, but Aria’s meal for me yesterday tapped me out at my limit of fullness. I didn’t think I could stomach another meal.

But I wanted to go eat there anyway.

The Lacy Teacup
was oddly chaotic and busy, but Aria was nowhere to be found. I had a coffee served by Bernadette and eventually asked for the manager.

“She didn’t show up,” he scowled. “Third day on the job and already flaking out. Typical.”

I finished my coffee, tipped double the cost of the bill as usual and left.

My Super Car was parked in the same place as yesterday, and I found myself lingering outside the car, uncertain. Several women passed by and stroked the hood or flashed me flirtatious grins, but I was disinterested. Had I scared Aria off?

A police car pulled up beside me. Killing used to leave me with paranoia around police, but I had dealt with the cop panic for so long that all I felt was a mild increase in my heart rate, a fight-or-flight response muted, and I uncrossed my arms, straightening.

The cop stepped out of the car and opened the back door from the outside. Aria climbed out, looking disheveled and stressed, clutching her large purse. She thanked the cop and shook his hand, and I noticed with displeasure that a cut marred her skin above her left eyebrow. She approached me, her arms wrapped across her chest as the cop drove away.

“Hi,” she whispered when we stood close enough to each other to feel the warm charge between us, residual from our kiss in that same spot the day prior.

“What happened?” I demanded with unexpected concern for her well-being.

“Um,” she tucked her long bangs behind her ear. “I hit a deer on the number three. Totalled my Camry. I saw you . . . told the cop I know you . . . ”

I reached forward and brushed her blue bangs from her other temple, relieved to find no injury beneath. “Are you okay?”

She glanced behind her and then back at me but couldn’t meet my gaze. “My car . . . there’s nothing salvageable. I hit the ditch when the damn thing was imbedded in my windshield. Funny part . . . the deer fucking survived. Limped away once it shook loose from the Camry. I had a few miles’ walk until the cop came around and picked me up.”

“The deer survived! And of course, you have no cell phone, right?”

Aria sighed. “Not all of us are rich.”

I ignored the jibe. “Well, I assume you’ve been attended to, medically?”

“I’m fine,” she insisted, squeezing herself tighter. I watched her shiver in the early-evening sunlight and realized she might be settling into both shock and denial. “Didn’t need medical care or the bill that follows.”

“Let me drive you home,” I said, tapping the code to open my doors.

“Um, no, I’ll be fine.”

“Honestly, Aria, I’m not a stalker. I just want to see you home safely.” I hid a cringe at the hypocrisy of my words yet again. Stalker? No.
Just a murdering incubus who wants to fuck you to death, sweetie.

Goddamn, what I would have given to have nothing to hide from her. To be a normal man seeing to a woman in trouble without the guilt banging on the back of my skull with every beat of my heart, reminding me I didn’t deserve this.

“It’s not that,” she winced, avoiding my gaze again. “I just . . . ” She sighed, resigned. “I haven’t lived here long. Two weeks. I don’t have a place yet.”

My eyebrows shot up with surprise. “You’ve been . . . what, living in your car?”

She nodded, embarrassed, and buried her face in her hands as she shook her head, groaning. “The Camry is totalled, Asher. Not drivable. Can you take me to a hotel or something? I haven’t gotten my tips paid out yet with that ridiculous amount you left me at the Lacy Teacup, so all I’ve got is sixty bucks . . . that should be enough for a Best Western room, shouldn’t it?”

I paused, conflicted, but the good man inside me, for once, sided easily with the incubus’s ideas. “Are you serious? I live three blocks from here. Get in, I’m taking you home.”

Aria rolled her eyes, humiliated. “Asher, I can’t impose on you like that. The Best Western will be fine, and I’ll convince the manager to cash out my tips tomorrow. If I even still have a job tomorrow, that is . . . ” She hid her eyes behind her fingers.

I grabbed her hand and pulled her around the car to the passenger’s side. She made a sound of protest, but I stuffed her into the seat and buckled her in.

“Don’t argue with me,” I ordered as I slid into my own seat and cranked the key. “You’ll have a job tomorrow. And I have plenty of space. You’re going to go into shock if I don’t get you warmed up and calmed down.”

“Asher . . . ”

“Shut up, I need to concentrate,” I said, flashing her a teasing grin. “Would be terribly inconvenient to hit a deer because you distracted me in this very expensive car.”

My redirection of conversation worked. “Yes, three blocks and you’ll hit a deer.”

“Stranger things have happened in more expensive cars than this.”

“What is this, exactly?” she asked, her curiosity piqued. “It’s so sleek, like it’s all speed. I wondered if it even had seats when I first saw it, or if you, like, just straddled the engine and held on.”

I laughed at the visual, and she relaxed a bit. “Lamborghini Superleggera. I call it the Super Car. Not all that clever, I know. But it’s nothing compared to my rec vehicle, the Sissy Car.”

“Sissy Car?” Aria shook her head, a smile glancing across her face.

“Lamborghini Sesto Elemento. Ten times the price, barely faster and totally illegal to drive. I’ll take you for a ride in it sometime. I only drive it up to my cabin.” My loins clenched at the suggestion. I only used the cabin for one purpose, and here I was already mentioning the place to this random girl who lived in her car until she totalled it. I chomped on my lip for a dose of much needed pain, reminding myself to stay in check, under control, and to keep sexual suggestions to a minimum with her. I didn’t want to kill her.

She let out a little giggle. “I’d like to ride in your Sissy Car. And thanks, by the way.”

I parked in one of my garages beside the gym and led Aria up the back stairs. Three flights up, I tapped in a code to release the lock on the door. She averted her gaze for my privacy, so I closed the door and touched her chin with my fingertip. She followed my finger as I pointed to the keypad and re-entered the number, giving her full, trusting access to my home. The lock clicked again, and I swung open the door to let her into my apartment.

To call it an apartment was a dramatic understatement by common standards, I knew, but I didn’t know what else to use. A loft? I didn’t like the enclosed feeling of a single-level divided by walls, so when Gypsy hired my architect, I had all the interior walls knocked down. My bedroom was the section of the open room on the western wall—divided by a single stair up into the space—and the living room was on the east. Only the bathroom, attached to my bedroom, was an actual
room
with walls and a door, across from eight windows as large as the French doors in the middle that led to the balcony. I watched as she took in my chandelier, the vast height of the vaulted ceiling and open space before us.

Aria walked into the main living area with eyes as wide as the full moon and took in the ninety-six inch, flat-screened television with a single, long, five-seat couch facing it. She glanced at my bedroom, raising her eyebrows in approval at the double-king-sized captain’s bed with drawers on each side of the base.

I reached for her injured temple. The bleeding had stopped, but she had dirt smeared beneath the small wound, so I took her fingers in my own and drew her to the bathroom where I scooted her up onto the Italian marble counter, facing me. I touched her knees and pushed her legs apart, positioning myself between them, ignoring the sensation of forbidden intimacy that curled through me at her proximity, her gentle smell. I pressed a corner of a drawer to my right and it popped open, revealing a few toiletry items. I poured some peroxide onto a cotton ball and dabbed at her injury. Aria flinched when it fizzed and bubbled, and I grunted in approval of my own decision to disinfect the wound. She held her breath in reaction to my sound and the heat of our bodies so close to one another.

When the wound was clean, I tossed the cotton into a wastebasket and wrapped my hands around Aria’s shoulders, inspecting her pupils for signs of concussion, though she tried to avoid my gaze. She still trembled, which I suspected was also because she was so unexpectedly in the lavish apartment of a billionaire.