“Queen Titiana of the Summer Court?”
I hummed. I wanted to scream my truth. No! Dahlia, Queen of the Second Circle--Wrath. Home to Valkyries, Demons, and beautiful red sand deserts.
“I don't know if I can go back. To look into the eyes of the same beings that let my family die, and didn’t care until it affected them.”
Davenport was silent. The only noise was the muffled sound of someone watching Sesame Street in the room next door. Proving the walls were paper thin.
“Why do you kill Demons?” I asked. Studying the sweeping plaster on the ceiling. The pitted patterns and yellow staining.
“My parents were Hunters,” Davenport whispered. “My family line are guardians. It's what we are born to do.”
“Born to kill a race of people?” I echoed without emotion.
“Mara,” He said my name in a way that demanded my attention. I glanced over to see that he had rested his head on his elbow. “We kill those that upset The Balance.”
His words had more meaning than he knew. The Balance was a real creature. More powerful than anything I had ever felt. She was light, darkness, and the cosmos in the form of a creepy child.
“There is good, and there is evil.” He argued. “There must always be both.”
“Demons aren’t always evil,” I said.
“And Angels aren’t always good.”
“Would you kill an Angel?”
Davenport rubbed the stubble on his chin. “If I had to.”
I let out a large yawn, an awkward gurgle came from the back of my throat, and I hoped that Davenport didn’t notice.
“You're old,” Davenport noted after he watched me tuck myself into bed.
“And?”
“I followed that truck off the freeway.” He laughed. “You’ve been alive for over two thousand years, and you can’t drive for shit.’
“Hey!” I argued, sitting up. “I’m an excellent driver.”
I was not.
“If you say so.” He laughed.
I gave him the stink eye as I flounced back down under the covers.
I never thought to ask how he had tracked me. I should have.
Chapter 13
I stared up at the water-stained ceiling, with my fingers threaded together and my hands resting on my stomach.
I couldn’t sleep. I did not know why.
Davenport's breathing had evened out a short while ago, and I listened to the rhythmic sound of his lungs filling with air.
The muffled conversation of a man and a woman drifted from the wall behind my headboard, and the room on the other side had started watching SpongeBob.
Warren Davenport jerked in his sleep, and the image of burning flames slashed across my vision so quickly that if I blinked, I would have missed it. Coupled with a short but shrill human scream inside my skull, that was abruptly cut off when my vision cleared, I realized that Davenport was having a nightmare.
I had two ways of feeding. One lacked control and happened when I was starved. I ripped the nightmares from the subconscious, dragging them to the forefront of a person's mind.
A mind is a terrifying place, and many people don’t truly know what beasties lay nestled behind their benign dreams about hair loss and flying.
I could make someone experience deep fears that they never knew they had.
I could also remove those fears altogether.
Another burning scream roared in my ears, bouncing around the inside of my skull.
Davenport must have been powerful to be able to project like that. He had called to me before; something scarred the man. Something no one else could see.
I swung my legs off the bed and padded over to the commander's jerking and fidgeting form. Asleep, his dark brow lifted, and his lips choked in pain.
My hand hovered over his face, brushing my fingertips lightly over his Roman nose. The images rushed over me in a cascade, dragging me under.
Warren Davenport stood in a world of flames. A Hell unlike any I had ever experienced. Burning souls. Fire. Cinders. Ash. Red. Red. Red. A lone figure in a wasteland.
I wrenched my hand away, cradling it to my chest, as my lungs fought to swallow as much air as I could. My mouth burnt with smoke damage, the heavy taste of destruction and death on my tongue.
What was that place?
I had scoured every inch of Hell, from the Greedy Mountains that had once been home to the long-dead Dragons, all the way to the hidden city made of tunnels, in Lust. I had never experienced anything like that before, but only one word could describe it. Hell. The like of which I had never seen. An unknown world.
I closed my eyes as my heart rate slowed, no longer banging against my ribcage in fear. The emotion was foreign to me. I did not like it.
Smoke drifted from my pores as I climbed onto the bed, deciding that I needed access to Davenport's mind to be able to heal him. I swung my leg over, straddling his deep sleeping form. He did not twitch, still caught in a Hell of his own making.
My hands boxed his ears, as I leaned in close enough to feel his breath against my cheek.
I focused on the darkness inside of him. It called to mine.
It felt like stretching taffy. Removing every tendril of a nightmare was complicated and required control. I allowed the sticky mass to wrap around me and dissolve into my skin. With a contented sigh, I wiped the sweat from my brow and rocked back.
Davenport's obsidian eyes stared back at me. My lips pressed together as I tried not to laugh when I realized that I was straddling the man.
I lifted my hand and wiggled my fingers in a shy greeting. “Hey.”
His eyes hooded. “Hello.”
Davenport moved so quickly that I had no time to react. He bent at the waist, sitting up and cupping my body towards his. His hand wound in the back of my hair, holding my head in place. His lips met mine, my eyes were open in shock. His expression was desperate. In pain. But not from the nightmare.
He wanted me badly. I could taste it in the fevered and hard press of his lips. I could feel it in the clasped grip that I could not escape. I wanted him just as badly. Moaning into his mouth, I melted as his cinnamon tongue brushed against mine.
I broke free with a gasp. “We shouldn’t do this—” I was interrupted by another kiss. My objections disappeared into the ether, like dissolving pop candy.
I wanted to ask about the fire. His dreams. But to do so would reveal too much.
Every part of his body was hard. My hands reached up, fingers pressing into the fabric of his shirt and holding onto it for dear life.
I found myself rocking, seeking something, anything, to ease the aching throb between my legs. He tasted my lips. One hand in my hair and the other on my hip, as his distorted zipper rubbed against the thin fabric of my sweatpants.
My fingers flew to his crotch, and I quickly discarded his trousers. Pulling them down around his muscular thighs before rubbing my hands over the long pipe stretching the fabric of his black boxer shorts. His cock twitched. Davenport cracked his neck and looked up at me with such unhurried confidence that I wanted to slap him.
My hand skimmed the edge of his hard cock, separated by only a thin piece of cotton. “It looks like you want something?” I guessed. His manhood twitched as if to answer my question, and I tapped my chin with thoughtful innocence. “I wonder what that could be?” I smiled wickedly.
Davenport’s eyes narrowed. “You like to play games, Sidhe?”
Pain ricocheted around my chest and rippled across my face. I jerked back as if an icy bucket of water had doused my entire body, reminding me that Davenport did not know me.