Immortals After Dark 03 - No Rest for the Wicked

snagged it with one hand. She hissed, snapping her teeth, reaching over her shoulder for her sword just as he raised a hand spiked with those deadly claws—
    Sebastian appeared, seizing the box from both of them.
    Kaderin blinked up at Sebastian through the rain. Time seemed to stand still.
    She was transfixed, awed, by the savagery in his jet eyes, the harsh lines of his face, his coal-black hair whipping over his chin.
    Suddenly, she was desperate to be the female a male like that would always come for. Ached to be her.
    He stood with one foot in front of the other. She understood why immediately—he was standing on a mine. Judging by the menacing look on his face, this was on purpose. He held out his hand. “ Come to me. ” She lunged for him just as Bowen did. Sebastian snatched her away and traced them to the edge of the field.
    The mine exploded. Sebastian pushed her back behind him, much as he had that night at Riora’s assembly.
    When the air cleared, she edged beside him and saw Bowen shuddering, lying on his front where he’d landed. Blood ran freely from his mouth. He mumbled what sounded like a woman’s name. Of course, his mate’s name.
    He seemed to sense they were still there, and raised his face. She hissed in a breath at the sight. One eye was gone, and the left side of his forehead and temple had been burned away. But his wasted body and dazed mind were still desperate for the prize, for the mate he’d lost as she’d fled him so many years ago. Somehow he was digging those claws into the ground to drag himself forward.
    “Trace me, Sebastian,” she whispered. He did nothing. “He’ll hit another mine if we stay.”
    “Exactly.” Sebastian’s eyes were dark as the night and chilling. “He deserves it for what he did to you.”
    Bowen was crawling toward them, and Cindey was walking in circles, blood pouring from her ears, mumbling something... something about a baby, and Kaderin couldn’t watch any longer. In the past, she’d have looked on with satisfaction as her competitors suffered.
    But she was different now. Or, more accurately, she was as she used to be from the very beginning.
    “ Please, Bastian, ” she cried, turning to grab his shirt with both hands. He tensed with surprise, studying her face. Whatever he saw in her expression had him wrapping her tightly in his arms and tracing her away.
    Bowen’s anguished roars echoed in her ears long after they’d disappeared.

31
    B ack in her flat, she shivered in her wet clothes. The storm seemed to have followed them to London and raged outside. Dusk had just settled over the city. It was six hours earlier here than in Cambodia, which meant the night had started over for her. For them.
    Without a word, he tucked the box into his jacket pocket, then took her hand, leading her to her bathroom. He turned on the shower, then began to unbutton her shirt.
    His eyes were as wild as that Lykae’s had been. “Do you want that box, Kaderin?”
    She nodded, still out of breath.
    He pushed her shirt past her shoulders, then pulled it down her arms, freeing it. “You have to pay for it.” He unclasped the fastening at the front of her soaked-through bra, then it, too, fell to the ground. At the sight of her breasts, he inhaled deeply but didn’t touch her, only continued to undress her. She had to hold on to his shoulders as he unzipped her pants and dragged them and her panties from her.
    When she stood before him, completely unclothed, she asked in a bewildered tone, “What do you want?” She was still dazed—not only by the violence of the night, but by that look of his in the rain. She shivered to recall it.
    “Wash off the mud, and come to the bedroom,” he ordered, his voice rough.
    She stared at the door for long moments after he left. Then she noticed, in her bathroom, all of his things. Razor, toothbrush, soap. The bastard had moved in? Her attention had been focused on him when they first arrived, but now she could recall seeing books and newspapers lying scattered throughout the flat. A pair of boots had been kicked off at the door. “The bloody squatter,” she muttered as she stepped under the water.
    As she scrubbed away at the mud covering her, she wondered what he would demand. She was infuriated, but at the same time, she was burning with curiosity.
    Would he try to drink her again? Or make love to her? Or both? She hated that imagining either made her aroused.
    But even though she truly yearned to make love