“You will. And soon. This child will quicken in your belly. You’ll give birth in weeks.”

  A shudder racked her slender frame. “How is this possible?” she asked, grabbing his arm to stop his motions.

  “A little magic. I can’t have you vulnerable for long.”

  “Me? Or the baby?” she asked, resentment telegraphing in her even tone.

  “Both of you.”

  “Will it grow quickly, too?”

  He nodded against her hair as she fell silent for a long moment.

  “Is this Simon’s doing?” she asked, her voice tight and thick.

  “He understood the need.” He slipped his hand from her waistband and glided it upward to capture her breast.

  Her nipple spiked hard against his palm, and she gave him a delicious little moan. “Why do you want this child?”

  “Do you accept you’re pregnant?” he asked, squeezing her.

  “Only the possibility…for conjecture’s sake.” She cleared her throat and tried to hold her body away from his. “Why me?”

  “You’re special, Chessa. Even the sabat recognizes it.”

  “I’m not,” she said flatly. “I’m just like any other Born female.”

  “Liar,” he whispered in her ear. “You feel different. Apart.”

  “Only because of what happened with my family.”

  “Isn’t that enough? Have you ever wondered why they died?”

  “Because the rogue Revenants want to usurp power from the Born,” she said, her voice strengthening with anger that started to make her shake. “To take control of the council.”

  “That’s true in itself, but why start with your child?”

  “Because they had the opportunity,” she gritted out. “They wised up. Got bold.”

  Keeping his tone soft, he kissed her ear and whispered. “They didn’t make the decision. They were only the instrument.”

  Chessa turned to stone; her breath caught. “Someone else wanted them dead? Inanna?”

  “I don’t think so. She wants you close. I believe she wanted to control the destiny of your child.”

  “Why?” she asked, emotion thickening her voice again. “Why am I any different from the others?”

  “Because your father wasn’t human.”

  “Of course, he was.” Only a hint of doubt made her words sound halting, hesitant.

  “Did you know him? How did your mother meet him?”

  “My mother died just after I was born. My father along with her.”

  “How, Chessa?”

  “They were attacked.”

  “By whom?”

  “They were traveling, through the buffer zone, near Baton Rouge. They must have crossed the border without ever realizing it. Weres killed them.”

  Alex tightened his arms around her. “But they weren’t outside the territory.”

  “How can you know that?”

  “I remember.”

  “You were there? That was part of your past?”

  “Of course not. If you’ll think, you know the answer. I remember because Natalie’s grandmother was there.”

  Chessa’s breath halted, and her back tightened against him. “You inherited her memories? Is that even possible?”

  “It’s called genetic memory, and yes, I know everything my ancestors experienced, from the point of each conception. The point of all this, Cheech, is your father’s nature was revealed. The sabat arrested him. They set a death sentence.”

  “Lies!” she said, struggling in earnest again. “What about my mother?”

  “His death started her labor. She committed suicide as soon as you were born.”

  Suicide? Not unheard of when a Born lost her first true love. Hadn’t she attempted the same thing? She didn’t want to believe it, but it made sense. She drew a deep breath. “What was my father?”

  “A mage—natural-born, eternal. Not a practitioner. You carry his blood. So did your child. Once the council disposed of him, they wanted to murder you, but Inanna saved you.”

  “Because she wanted to use me?”

  “She watched, keeping you close to see whether you showed any signs of talent. But the characteristics must have recessed.”

  “So, she spared me.” She stayed silent for a long moment while he waited for her to make the next logical leap, which she did unerringly. “If I’m pregnant again, will she—”

  “She’ll have no choice but to kill you both. You can’t ever be in her presence. She’ll sense you’re quickening.”

  “That’s why Simon put his hex on me. So I can get back out in the open…in weeks?”

  “Yes.”

  She slumped against his chest, her face lifting toward the moon that shone hard and bright in the night sky. He heard her heart begin to thud harder in her chest as the reality of her situation began to sink in. “What about the child?” she asked in a thin voice. “How will we hide it? Keep it safe?”

  Alex relaxed. She understood the dangers now. “You’ll give it into my care. I’ll raise it.”

  “Do you intend to slip into the past?”

  “Probably,” he kissed her temple again. “But I’ll miss you.”

  She wrenched away and faced him, her lips twisting in a snarl. “Do you really think I’d give away any child of mine? That I wouldn’t have to be there to protect it myself?”

  “You must take your place on the council. Prepare our way for when we return.”

  “I’m not anyone’s pawn, and certainly never yours!”

  “You’re not a pawn,” he said, reaching for her again. “You’re my dark Madonna.”

  She snorted. “And you’re what? God?”

  “No, but I am the prince who’ll fight the good battle.”

  “What’s this really all about?” she asked, fisting her hands at her sides. “Is it Armageddon?”

  Alex held her troubled glare. “It’s worse. It’s Hell on Earth.”

  Chapter 15

  Once he’d shaken off his rage, Nicolas closed the wound on Inanna’s neck, wincing at the deep red, ragged oval he’d left on the top of Inanna’s shoulder.

  Then he pulled her into his arms and held her close to his chest, watching her chest rise and fall in shallow, labored gasps. For the first time, he realized how delicate and slight her frame really was. Without the burning fire of her personality, she seemed young. Vulnerable. Womanly.

  Goosebumps rose on her flesh; her skin and lips were tinged blue. He’d done this. Rage had blinded him.

  Sickened with his actions, he brought his wrist to his mouth, sliced it viciously with his fangs then held it over her gaping mouth.

  He didn’t relax until blood pooled in her mouth, and she swallowed reflexively. Slowly, the underlying tones of her skin warmed, her cheeks reddened. Her eyes blinked open, and her gaze met his.

  “I’m sorry, Inanna,” he said. He meant it. “I went too far.”

  Her hand lifted to cup his cheek, and she smiled. “See how much I trust you?”

  “Are you saying you knew what I’d do? And you let me unleash my anger on you?”

  “Do you feel remorse?” she asked, her voice soft.

  He closed his eyes and swallowed. “Yes.”

  “Then we put this behind us. I belong to you in the same way you belong to me. We have both taken and used and hurt each other.”

  Nicolas drew in a jagged breath. “Is pain the measure of your love?”

  “Is that what we feel?”

  Not in the same way he loved and desired Chessa, but he recognized there was a bond. He sighed deeply and slumped against the seat behind him. “You shouldn’t have let me do this.”

  “Then how am I to ever know you truly care?”

  He snorted. “Do you hear yourself?”

  She smiled the winsome smile of a girl. “You forget. I’ve lived long. This life you enjoy is a blinking light.”

  “Are you saying I’m a baby?”

  “I’m saying you don’t understand everything. You can’t.” Her eyes gleamed in the darkness. “I need you, Nico. I trust no one. Only you. You can have your Chessa. But I must know you love me, too.”

  His stomach churned. Doubt crowded in to raise the bile of betrayal burning the back of his throat. “I do love you. You are my mistress.”

  She slipped her arm around his back and settled her cheek on his shoulder. “I’m chilled. And tired.”

  Nicolas pressed a kiss to her forehead, feeling a new tenderness well inside him. “Rest. I’ll hold you.”

  As her eyes closed, Nicolas wondered how things had gotten so complicated.

  All he’d ever wanted was to live. That had been the core of their bargain all those years ago. When he’d been human and seduced by her exotic, lithe body and the gift of a pretty wife.

  1308

  Outside Poitiers, France

  Anaïs was a sprite. A funny, golden elf who stripped him of his clothes and tugged him to her bed the first afternoon they met. She shed her overgown and bliaut, revealing her pale, rosy skin.

  His eyes widened on her slender curves and slight, mounded breasts, his body hardening again although he’d spent a decadent afternoon with the more experienced Lady Inanna.

  Gluttony, he discovered, was a glorious sin. He feasted on Anaïs’s small peach-tipped breasts. Tasted her fragrant woman’s flesh, sliding his tongue inside her to collect the cream she released as he slowly built her arousal.

  When he nudged apart her thighs and placed his cock at her entrance, she gripped him by the ears and kissed him hard, mashing her lips inexpertly against his.

  His own kiss had been as unpracticed, but he learned her taste, slipping his tongue into her mouth, playing with hers, dueling until they both laughed with the joy of being together.

  He felt alive, young, filled with hope and burgeoning passion. With a flex of his hips, he entered her, pushing past her maidenhead, sheathing himself in her moist depths and stroking them both toward fulfillment.

  When her release milked his cock of his essence, he rested his head on the pillow beside her, unable to move. Sated, at last. Dragging in breaths flavored by their combined scents.

  Her lips kissed him indolently, gliding along his cheek, licking the lobe of his ear until he shivered, and then sliding down his neck.

  Her first bite reinvigorated his passion, and he thrust helplessly against her, taking her murmured praise as she drank him. Lost in the powerful feelings that swirled inside him, he spent himself again, falling asleep in her embrace.

  He awoke suddenly, his body bending double against the pain that racked him.

  Anaïs’s sweet voice murmured. Her hands soothed his back and flanks. Then he’d felt the bed dip behind him and more hands glided over him. Inanna’s voice whispered in his ear, giving encouragements he didn’t understand for she spoke in a lilting, guttural tongue—one he almost recognized, one that put him to mind of searing white-hot heat and golden sand.

  His belly knotted, and he cried out. A warm mound pressed into his mouth. “Bite. Drink,” Inanna crooned.

  He felt an itching in the roof of his mouth and the strange downward tug of his teeth as they slid from his gums. He bit the breast filling his mouth and knew it was Inanna’s ripe, generous breast. He suckled her like a child on his mother’s tit, only he swallowed blood that roiled inside his belly. The urge to gag was soothed by the warmth of her skin pressing close and the many hands stroking him.

  Slowly, his stomach relaxed, and a new heat filled him, hardening his ballocks to stones that ached with the pressure to release, filling his cock so that it nudged the thigh opening beside him.

  He burrowed until his crown glided into wetness that surrounded him, gloving him lovingly in moist, rhythmic caresses.

  Kisses landed on his mouth, his ears, his shoulders. Hands glided over his back and buttocks, fingers slid between the twin halves and burrowed, entering him as he thrust into Inanna’s depths.

  Surrounded by the women, he drew in their distinct scents, one laced with exotic sandalwood, the other fresh and floral. Almost like a dream, images merged illuminated in candle glow—pale skin, dusky, flowing together and apart. Voices, soft and soothing, growing more urgent and pained. Breath brushed his face and all the length of his body.

  Through it all, he stroked to the beating of his heart that grew louder and faster in his ears, until a soft caress cupped his balls, and he shouted, jerking upward, hammering into the sweet flesh that squeezed the length of his shaft, wringing his seed from his cock in a stream of searing heat.

  When he had the strength to move again, he enclosed the woman perched across his flanks in his arms, bringing her closer for a kiss—wondering when the women had switched places. “What has happened to me?” he whispered against her lips.

  “You are ours,” Anaïs whispered back, her lips stretching into a tentative smile. “Forever.”

  “Ours?”

  Her gaze slid away. “You don’t remember?”

  “I remember…” He shook his head then looked quickly around. “We’re alone?” Had he been dreaming?

  “Now, we are. To rest.”

  “But before?”

  “Grand-mère thought it necessary to bind us both to you.”

  “I thought…maybe I had dreamed.” He reached up to slide a kiss along her naked shoulder. “Grand-mère?”

  She smiled and shook her head. “Do you remember my bite?” she asked, her finger touching the side of his throat, circling over an aching patch.

  “It doesn’t hurt.” His lips stretched into a grin. “I didn’t mind.”

  Her smile slipped. “There’s no going back.”

  He touched his lips to hers, not really listening. But ready to fuck this winsome creature again. “I’m where I want to be.”

  He hadn’t known, didn’t realize that he had died. That he’d spent days in bed recovering. Days spent in the arms of the two women who’d turned him.

  One he’d wed. The other he’d served.

  Still served, for he was bound by blood to her.

  But he was bound by his own will to betray her.

  Present Day

  Alone in her apartment, Chessa locked the door behind her and grabbed several bottles of water from the kitchen counter before heading to the bathroom.

  With candlelight casting shadows over her naked skin, she stopped up the sink and filled the basin with water. Then slowly, she worked a rich, scented lather into a washcloth and washed every part of her body, working methodically from her face to her shoulders and underarms, then working faster as she moved down, at last lifting her feet one at a time to the counter to complete her task.

  She didn’t want to finish. Didn’t want time to think. She wanted to be clean, and then crawl between fresh sheets and pull them over her head, never to waken until this entire nightmare had ended.

  Perhaps if she slept long enough, she’d wake up to a world where everything worked again. Where the sound of the dump truck growling up the street tugged her into awareness in the early morning. She’d roll over again and sleep until the mailman buzzed the outer door to fill their boxes.

  She’d waken to find that everything that had happened over the past week had been nothing more than a really bad dream. A pizza-with-jalapenos type of dream, the kind that gave her indigestion and burned the back of her throat, but the ache passed as she hurried through her evening.

  She tossed the washcloth on top of the overfilled hamper and walked back into the bedroom to find Nicolas stretched across the bed, dressed in black and looking devilishly seductive, two pillows stuffed beneath his shoulders.

  “Not now,” she said, her chest tightening at the sight of him.

  “Then when?” he growled.

  “You stick to your turf—”

  He shook his head. “So, we won’t talk. That’s fine by me. I want to sleep.”

  “Sure, you do. She exhaust you?” Chessa sniped, feeling gloriously bitchy. “Or does the smell of Inanna just happen to be your latest cologne?”

  Nicolas didn’t blink. “She dropped me off. She’s heading back to Ardeal.”

  “Good riddance. Tired of slumming already?”

  Nicolas closed his eyes for a brief moment. His chest rose with a deep inward breath. “I didn’t come here to talk about her.”

  “You follow her around like a lap dog,” Chessa snarled. “You use me to get rid of the kinks she leaves in your neck.”

  “How about we make a deal?” he said, sounding tired. “You don’t mention Inanna, and I won’t ask what happened between you and Alex tonight.”

  She winced. Nicolas could never know. Another reason she needed him out of her life. When it came down to it, if Inanna wanted the dirty work taken care of, Nicolas would be the one given the job.

  The thought made her want to vomit.

  Damn, she really was pregnant.

  She crossed her arms over her naked chest. “You want a place to sleep—take the couch.”

  He gave another heavy sigh. “We have to capture our demon. We both need rest. Shut up and get under the covers. I promise I won’t touch you.”

  He swung his legs over the side of the bed and walked toward her, his gaze giving her a single heated once-over before he passed her and shut the bathroom door behind himself.

  “Fine,” she called over her shoulder. “You just stick to your side of the bed.” For added measure, she hunted for a set of pajamas and jerked them on. Then she knelt on the bed to pull open the window to let in a breeze but found the latch was already turned.

  So, that’s how he’d gotten inside. She peered over the narrow ledge that ran to the balcony. The man had wanted in here bad.

  Thoughtful, she lay down, and pulled up the sheet, then turned on her side to face away from the bathroom door. Tonight might be torture, but she couldn’t pass up the opportunity to share the same bed with Nicolas one last time. Tomorrow, she had to make plans.

  Number one, catch a monster. Next, pack a bag and head to somewhere no one knew her. Somewhere she could blend in. Somewhere a night owl wouldn’t stick out like a sore thumb.

  Maybe Vegas, although it was were-country. As long as she kept her snacks below the radar, she should be all right. And no way would any of the coven break treaty to follow her.