Mathias went stock-still above her, halting in mid-thrust. His breath sawed out of him, and the curse he swore was abrupt, dread-filled. “You’re crying.”
She gave a feeble shake of her head, struggling to find her voice. “I just...I thought it would be different,” she choked out. “I thought I could handle it...”
“Ah, shit. God damnit.” Every muscle in his body had ceased moving now. His scowl deepened. He started to withdraw from her. “Nova, I’m sorry--”
“No.” She clutched his shoulders and swallowed back the raw lump that was blocking her voice. When he continued to shift his weight off her, she wrapped her legs around the backs of his thighs to hold him in place. “No, Mathias. That’s not what I mean. I’m not crying because you did anything wrong. It’s because this feels so incredible. Youfeel incredible inside me. I wasn’t prepared for this--for how we’d feel together. I didn’t expect it.”
In his silence, he stared at her, unmoving. His fiery gaze warmed her face with its heat. “You feel all right, then?”
“More than all right,” she assured him. “I feel...alive. With you inside me like this, I feel whole. For the first time, Mathias, I feel like the rest is really behind me. You’ve given me that.”
He swore again, something low and reverent. Then he kissed her with more tenderness, more aching pleasure, than her heart seemed able to contain.
When he finally broke the contact, he was grinning, fangs glinting.
She frowned up at him. “What’s so funny?”
“Nothing,” he murmured, giving his hips a meaningful grind against hers. “I just think it could be amusing, doing other things you’ll enjoy but might not expect. Finding ways to keep you guessing, for a change.”
He was still moving within her, still hard. Getting harder, in fact.
Nova caressed his face, his handsome, otherworldly face. She wondered how long it would take for her to tire of looking at him.
Longer than she dared imagine.
A lifetime and then some.
She held on as he found his tempo once more. Sighed with pleasure as his rising rhythm steered her toward the edges of another crest of sensation. Closing her eyes, she let him take her there, rode with him as his large body began to go rigid and tense, his hips pumping harder now, furious and deep.
She cried out his name. Heard him mutter hers on a coarse shout beside her ear in that next instant, as heat exploded within her and he shook with the force of his orgasm.
Nova’s heart was pounding like thunder in her ears.
Then she heard the rumble again--a rapid drumming, urgent and unsteady. Coming from the other room.
Mathias heard it too, no doubt before she had. He reared back abruptly.
“Nova.” Eddie’s voice sounded oddly thin outside the apartment door.
“Something’s wrong.” Mathias said it before she could voice her concern. His face was grim, nostrils flaring. “There is blood.”
“Oh, God.” Alarm jolted her off the bed. She hurried back into her tank and sweat pants and was racing out to the living area in the next instant. She yanked open the door and shock hit her like a punch to the gut. “Eddie...oh, my God!”
The boy was white as a ghost, his eyes dilated with shock. Blood stained the front of his T-shirt and jeans. A lot of blood.
Nova grabbed him and hugged him close. She felt for injuries, but he seemed unharmed. Her hands came away sticky and red. “What happened to you? Where’s Ozzy?”
“In the shop,” he murmured, his voice thready. “I couldn’t do anything, Nova. He told me to hide. I wanted to help him, but he wouldn’t let me.”
Panic seized her. “Ozzy?” she shouted into the silence of the building.
Mathias stood behind her now, bare-chested, dressed only in his black pants. Nova swung her gaze up at him, a raw sob hitching in her throat.
“Oh, God. What the hell is going on? Oz!”
She lunged past Eddie, only to be halted when Mathias took hold of her arm. “Nova, stay here. Let me--”
She wrenched loose on a miserable cry and bolted for the stairs leading down to the studio.
CHAPTER 8
“Ozzy...oh, no. No!”
Nova found him in the empty tattoo shop, lying in a pool of blood near his station. Dropped in a ragdoll sprawl on his back, his body was motionless, his eyes frozen wide. His throat was gashed open, hideously savaged.
“Oz!” she cried, standing barefoot at the edge of the blood pool, her hands covering her mouth as a howl of anguish tore out of her. “No, Ozzy. No...”
“I was sweeping the back room after Ozzy finished with a client, when I heard a man come into the shop,” Eddie murmured from behind her at the bottom of the stairs. “He was looking for someone. Looking for you, Nova.”
Confusion jabbed through her grief as she stared down at the savagery done to her beloved mentor. “Looking for me? Are you sure?”
“He didn’t seem to know your name,” Eddie went on, “but the man knew what you looked like. He told Ozzy, asked if he knew you. The man said it was important that he find you. He said you were in trouble.”
She frowned, trying to make sense of the horror in front of her. Even in her state of numb shock, she could scent the lie in what the attacker told Ozzy. “Did you see who it was, Eddie?”
“No. He was wearing dark clothes, had a hooded jacket on. I only saw him from the side, as he walked over to Ozzy’s station.” Eddie released a shuddering breath. “He was big, Nova. He sounded mean, angry. I could tell Ozzy was scared of him too.”
She closed her eyes, fear pouring into her veins. “Was he human?”
“I don’t know,” Eddie said. “I tried to look, but I couldn’t see his face. The man didn’t see me standing in the back room. I wanted to tell him to leave Ozzy alone, but Oz motioned for me to stay put. He mouthed for me not to say anything, to hide...” The boy choked on a sob. “So, I did. I crawled into a cabinet and I hid, Nova. And then I heard the man hurting Oz...”
She glanced behind her at Eddie, and saw Mathias, now arrived at the bottom of the stairs.
“You did the right thing,” he told the kid, who had dissolved into wracking tears. “If you hadn’t done what Ozzy told you, both of you would be dead now, Eddie.”
The boy looked up at him. “You were here last night. Were you upstairs with Nova just now?”
Mathias gave a slight nod. His gaze was solemn, grave. And in the pools of pale green that met Nova’s eyes now, she saw the crackle of amber sparks. She saw the tips of his fangs too, and the flush of color that was slowly seeping into the dermaglyphson his bare chest.
The sight of so much spilled, fresh blood could not have been easy for him. His Breed nature must have been clawing at him, yet Mathias held his vampire side at bay with remarkable control. For Eddie’s sake, no doubt. Maybe for her sake too.
Nova’s own jagged sob scraped in her throat as she looked down at Ozzy again.
She didn’t hear Mathias move up behind her.
She didn’t know he was close enough to touch her, until his warm palm settled lightly, tenderly, on her shoulder. “Nova--”
“Don’t.” She shrank away from his comfort. The idea that she had been mindless with passion, crying out in pleasure with Mathias while Ozzy was being attacked and murdered right under them was a pain she could hardly bear. She stared at Mathias in abject misery, guilt and grief shredding her from the inside. Her voice came out flat, forbidding. “Don’t touch me.”
He frowned, letting his hand fall to his side. “Eddie, did the man say anything else to Ozzy?”
“No. He wanted to know where to find Nova. Ozzy wouldn’t tell him, and then the man got really mad.” Eddie sniffled. “Is the man going to hurt Nova next?”