Sin Undone

Two

This was such bullshit.

Sin got that this might be the answer to the epidemic, but Con didn’t have to look at her like she was a juicy steak. He could at least try to be as repulsed as she was.

“Sit.” Con’s voice had deepened to a compelling, husky rasp that nearly had her complying with his demand like a well-trained dog.

“We’re going to do it here?”

He cocked a sandy eyebrow. “You’d rather do it in a patient room? Or maybe a supply closet would be more to your liking?”

Oh, the bastard. They were not going to a patient room, where a bed would make it way too easy to do more than the blood thing, and the supply closet remark was a jab at the first—and last—place they’d been together.

She sank down into a chair. “Fine. Get it over with.”

“How sweet,” Wraith said. “You sound like an old married couple.”

She flipped him off as Con turned to her brothers. “Could we get some privacy?”

“No.” Sin jabbed a finger at Eidolon. “You. Stay.” Mainly, she was being a bitch, but also, the little flutter in her belly at the thought of being alone again with Con was a dangerous sign that she shouldn’t be alone with him.

Lore stepped forward. “I’ll stay.”

“It’s okay, bro,” she said. The last thing she needed was Lore’s hovering. He’d been doing it for thirty years, and he seemed to be having a hard time breaking the habit. “This will be strictly a clinical procedure. Eidolon can oversee it.” Clinical? That was a joke and a half, because she knew having Con’s fangs slide into her flesh would be pleasurable no matter how much she wanted to deny it.

For a long moment, Sin was sure Lore would argue. Fists clenched, he stood there glowering, his dermoire writhing angrily. Like hers, it was a faded imitation of their purebred brothers’ markings, but it still behaved the same way, appearing to move during periods of high emotion. He finally nodded and, after shooting Con a look of scathing brotherly warning, took off.

She made a shooing motion at Wraith. “You, too. Scram.”

“Smurfy.” Wraith took off, whistling the theme to The Smurfs as he went.

“We don’t need Eidolon,” Con said. “I’ve been doing this for a thousand years. I know when to stop.”

Sin wasn’t worried about being drained, but she wasn’t about to admit that her real fear was that without a chaperone, she’d end up doing a lot more than playing Happy Meal. Fortunately, she didn’t have to say anything, because Eidolon got that stern expression on his face, closed the door, and propped a shoulder against it, long legs crossed casually at the ankles. He wasn’t about to budge, and Con must have come to the same conclusion because he muttered something under his breath and sank to his knees beside her.

With him kneeling, they were at eye level, and she gulped dryly when he locked gazes with her.

“Give me your wrist,” he said, and when she hesitated, his cold smile was at odds with the heat roaring off his body. “You’d prefer the throat? Or groin? Sure, it’d go faster that way, but I didn’t think you’d want that much intimacy.” His eyes sparked with amusement, mocking her.

She thrust her left arm at him. “Damn skippy, I don’t.”

He took her wrist gingerly, as if the mere thought of touching her disgusted him. And maybe it did on some level. But she’d never met a vampire who didn’t admit to getting at least a little revved while feeding.

A whisper of pain came with the penetration of his fangs, followed by sparks of pleasure so intense she had to bite back a moan.

“Sin,” Eidolon said softly, “you’ll need to monitor the virus levels in his blood now and then. You should get a baseline now.”

Yes, a baseline. Anything to wrench her attention away from how good it felt to have Con’s lips on her, his teeth in her. Concentrating, she fired up her gift until the dermoire on her arm began to glow, and then she gripped Con’s shoulder. Beneath her fingers, his muscles bunched as though in protest, but her succubus senses picked up signs of increased arousal: the sound of his heart rate jacking up, the rapid rise and fall of his chest, the rise in the temperature of his skin.

Her own body answered with a rush of liquid heat, but she clenched her teeth and concentrated on reading his blood. Her power entered him in a focused beam and threaded through his veins and arteries. When she used her gift to create a disease, her victims didn’t feel a thing, but she’d never probed around like this before.

“You okay?” she asked, and when Con’s shimmering eyes flashed up at her, she regretted asking. Who cared if he was okay? She was the one getting sucked on. The one who was starting to see spots.

He gave a slow nod and went back to taking long pulls on her wrist. Closing her eyes, partly because the room had begun to spin, she focused on feeling around inside Con’s veins. Shadowy black-and-white pictures formed in her head. She could see individual blood cells rushing through the narrow vessels, and with them, the virus. New cells joined the rush; hers, she was sure. Almost as though the presence of the fresh cells prodded Con’s, his cells attacked the virus like a pack of wolves taking down an injured deer.

“It’s working,” she whispered, hoping the boys didn’t notice the way her speech was a little slurred.

Con’s draws began to ease off.

“Keep going. You need more of my blood to join the fight.”

He grunted, a sound of refusal, and his fangs began to slide from her flesh. She grabbed his head and forced him to stay, though it took a lot more effort than it should have. “Almost, Con. We can kill it off—”

“Sin!” Eidolon’s strong fingers pried hers from Con’s scalp. And maybe she shouldn’t have noticed how silky his blond hair was, but for some reason, she did. “He has to stop.”

“Just a little longer…”

Rearing back, Con tore away from her. His eyes were swirling pools of molten metal, the carnal hunger there giving away both his fear that he’d gone too far and his desire to go further. Eidolon clapped a palm over her bleeding wrist even as she lunged forward, desperate to get Con to take more blood. She needed more time to study how the virus survived, how it died…

“We can’t stop now!”

Con swore, grabbed her hand, and for a moment she thought he was going to continue, but instead, he peeled her brother’s hand away even as Eidolon fired up his own gift to heal her and swiped his tongue over the punctures. Before her eyes, they sealed up, and an irrational fury grabbed her.

“You idiots!” More spots gathered in her vision and her head spun as she lurched to her feet. “The virus is going to rally in him. It’s going to…”

“Shit!” Con’s voice and arms closed around her as the floor fell out from beneath her.

“So, you’ve been feeding for a thousand years, huh?” Eidolon’s sarcastic drawl grated on every one of Conall’s nerves as he carried Sin to the nearest exam room and laid her gently on the bed.

Thing was, Con had no excuse. Sure, Sin kept encouraging him, telling him they were almost there, but worse than that—terrifyingly worse—was that hunger for her had overridden common sense, and he’d fed for longer than he should have.

He was just glad he hadn’t wrestled her to the floor and tried to take a lot more than blood.

“Heal her,” he snapped, his anger at himself putting a caustic note in his voice that Eidolon didn’t deserve. Still, the doctor merely shrugged as he gathered IV supplies from the cabinet next to the bed.

“My power knits tissue and bone together. It doesn’t make blood.” He lined up the supplies on a tray and wheeled it toward Sin. “We’d need Shade for this. He can use his gift to force the marrow to produce blood faster.”

Con brushed her glossy hair away from her face, which was far too pale.

“Then get Shade,” he pressed. Sin wasn’t in danger, but he didn’t like how her vibrance had been literally sucked out of her. But this was the first time she’d ever been quiet. He should be grateful.

“He’s off for a few days.” E gestured to the cabinets behind Con. “Toss me a Ringer’s.”

Con fetched a bag of IV saline solution and lobbed it to the doctor. “So call him in.”

“Runa’s sick, and he can’t leave the triplets.”

Con’s breath lodged in his throat. Shade’s mate was a turned werewolf. “It isn’t SF, right?”

Eidolon inserted a needle into a vein in Sin’s left hand. “Thank gods, no. It’s a mild stomach virus.”

“Good.” Con would hate to see anything happen to the female who had made Shade a lot more agreeable to work for. And speaking of work… “You going to call Bastien back in, now that you know the virus isn’t affecting the pricolici?” Bastien, a born warg who had been run off by his pack decades ago because he’d been born with a club foot, had devoted his life to UG, and Con knew the forced “vacation” had to be killing him as much as it was Luc.

“Hell, yeah.” Eidolon gestured to gauze wrappers on the floor. “The janitorial department is falling apart without him.”

As Eidolon hooked the bag of saline onto a stand, Sin moaned, and her eyes opened. “What… what are you doing?”

“Hold still,” Eidolon said. “Our boy here got a little carried away with his meal.”

She smiled weakly. “That’s ’cuz I’m so sweet and irresistible.”

Con snorted. “Not the words I would use for you.” Well, irresistible, maybe, but there were a lot of less complimentary words that fit her, too.

“Ass,” she muttered. She lifted her hand and frowned at the line connected to it. “Hey, knock it off. I don’t need this—”

Con gripped her wrist and pushed it back down to the mattress. “Yeah, you do. I took too much blood.”

Eidolon shot her a stern look. “If you had banked more of your blood like I asked you to do, I could be putting it instead of saline back into your veins.”

“Yeah, yeah. Whatever. I heal fast.”

“One benefit of being a Seminus demon,” Eidolon said as he jacked up the head of the bed so she could sit.

“There are more?” Sarcasm dripped from Sin’s voice, but Eidolon ignored her to check his beeper.

“I have an incoming trauma. Con, stay with her until the bag is empty. When you’re done, hit the lab. I’d like a blood sample from you. I want to see if you have any antibodies in your system now. And you”—he pointed his finger at Sin—“be good.”

Sin rolled her eyes, but at least she didn’t snark back at him. Instead, she waited until the doctor left, and then she turned on Con, a little bundle of ebony-eyed fury. “You idiot!”

She was sexy when she got worked up. “I said I was sorry for taking too much blood.” Actually, he hadn’t, but he felt a little bad about it, so he figured that counted.

“You should have taken more. You could still be contagious.”

“It’s not worth killing you over.” Not that killing her wasn’t tempting.

“Well, duh. But chugging another pint of blood wouldn’t have killed me.”

“Yeah, it would have.” He dug through one of the drawers for a phlebotomy kit. “Why haven’t you banked your blood like E wanted?”

“Who are you? My dad? It’s none of your business.” She shifted on the bed, the seductive rasp of her tight leather pants against the sheets making his cock twitch. Con might not like her, but his dick wasn’t so judgmental.

“If you’d done it, I could be drinking it now instead of waiting for you to produce more blood.” He pulled up a chair with a frustrated yank, sat, and rolled up his shirt sleeve.

“I’ll see if I can speed things up just for you,” she said wryly. “And in the meantime, be careful that you don’t run around spreading disease.”

“Ironic thing to say, coming from you, don’t you think?” He snorted. “I think I can manage to not bite or fuck a warg for a few days. And do you really care?”

Crimson splotched her cheeks, and he caught the scent of irritation coming from her. “Yeah. You’re right. I’m thrilled that the virus is killing people. Yay, me.”

“Why did you start it, then?”

“I was bored. There hasn’t been a good pandemic since the Spanish flu in, what, 1918?”

“Son of a—” He wrapped a rubber tourniquet around his biceps. “Just once, can you give me a straight answer?” Working with angry, jerky movements, he clamped one end of the tube in his teeth and tugged it tight.

Sin squeezed her eyes shut, and for a heartbeat, a startling shadow of vulnerability darkened her expression. But so quickly Con doubted what he saw, she opened her eyes and locked on him with that death ray of hers. “Killing is what I do. Do you really think I need a reason to start an epidemic?”

Jesus effing Christ. He had never met a female—or male, for that matter—with such a thick wall around them. Swearing to himself, he inserted a needle into the median cubital vein in the crook of his elbow. “I actually do think you need a reason. You might be an assassin, but I haven’t met an assassin yet who didn’t plan every kill very carefully.”

Surprise flickered in her cool black eyes at his assessment. “Most people think we run around killing all willy-nilly.”

“Most people are morons.” He reached for a vacutainer, a tube for gathering blood. “Most hunters, whether animal, human, or demon, are selective and careful about their prey. You get caught or injured, and you’re dead. Hunting is a matter of life or death if you need to eat.”

“Like you.”

“Like me.” He eyed her, wished she’d stop squirming and making obscene rubbing sounds on the sheets. “Even in warg form, I’m careful about what I catch.”

“I thought werewolves do kill all willy-nilly.” The way one corner of her mouth turned up in an impish smile told him she wasn’t completely serious.

“Pricolici wargs and dhampires maintain control. It’s the turned werewolves you have to watch out for, but usually only the newer ones. The older that wargs are, the more they can control themselves during the moon phase. Younger wargs do tend to kill without a lot of skill or forethought.”

Young wargs were the ones who tended to get nailed by The Aegis, and the ones who had given all werewolves a reputation for being monsters. On the other paw, the older any warg was, the less “human” he became. There was definitely a trade-off. Control while in beast form came with a loss of connection with humans while in the human body.

He pushed the vacutainer into the holder, and blood began to fill the tube. Sin frowned. “Uh… do you need help with that?”

“Nah. I’m good with one hand.”

“No doubt you are.”

He smirked, amused by her presumption. “I have no need to be. Females fall at my feet.” Sin hadn’t exactly fallen at his feet—no, she’d tried to kick his ass when they first met. But she’d eventually caved. Of course, as a succubus, she could very well cave to every male who crossed her path. And why that thought made him suddenly grumpy he had no idea.

“The day I fall at your feet,” she drawled, “is the day I give up pizza.”

“Pizza?”

“Mmm, love it. All kinds. Thin crust, pan crust, the works, just cheese… yum.” She rubbed her flat belly, and Con had to clench his fist to keep from reaching over and joining the action. “Stomach’s rumbling. Need pizza.”

“Tell you what. You explain to me why you started the epidemic, and I’ll bring you a pizza when I come back from the Council meeting.” He also made a mental note to call Luc with an update about SF. Con had promised the warg that he’d keep him up on the latest news.

She hesitated, then shrugged. “It was a hit gone wrong. I was supposed to waste this werewolf, so I channeled my gift into him. It usually kills quickly, but I was interrupted by Idess.”

“Lore’s mate? Why would she interrupt?” Con remembered the first time he’d seen the gorgeous angel who gave off a glow of pure goodness, even though rumor had it that she was human now. Idess had been brought in to the hospital by Lore after a battle in which they’d tried to kill each other.

Now they were mated, happy, and practically inseparable.

Sin waved her hand. “Long story. But basically, she was all angel-fied at the time, and she was protecting the guy.” She cast a sideways glance at him. “It was that first victim you brought into the hospital. Remember when I was waiting around the ER?”

Hell, yeah, he remembered. He’d brought Chase in, and Sin had been hovering. He’d left the dying werewolf in a trauma room and paused outside the door to write up the paperwork. Sin had been there.

She cleared her throat. “Hey, how is the warg?”

Con looked up, startled to see the incredibly hot female standing in front of him. “Dying. Why?”

“No reason.” She rubbed her arms, which were covered by her denim jacket sleeves. “What’s wrong with him? Was he in an accident? Is he sick with something?”

“You’re kind of nosy.”

She shrugged. “Just a concerned citizen.”

He watched her for a moment, letting his enhanced vampire and warg senses reach out to detect her species. Her high temperature and low heart rate indicated demon blood, but she smelled slightly human. So demon and human, but what kind of demon? Whatever she was, she bled like everyone else. The scent came to him on a raft of air, making his mouth water and his fangs drop. As a paramedic, he’d trained himself to ignore the tantalizing scent and sight—Doc E frowned on his medics attacking patients for food—but for some reason, he was reacting to this sexy creature. “You should get your leg looked at.”

Frowning, she looked down at the spot of blood that had seeped through her jeans. “It’s no big—”

He didn’t wait for her to finish. Hunger had hijacked his body, and if he didn’t get the hell away from the little temptress, he’d soon be feeling the effects of the Haven spell when he jumped on her. Quickly, he handed the clipboard to a nurse and headed toward the parking lot.

“So,” he said, “you tried to kill that warg with your gift, and he survived long enough to infect others.”

Sin tucked her knees up against her and wrapped her dermoire-marked arm around them, giving him a tantalizing view of her tight, round ass. Not that he was looking. “Yep.”

“Why not slit their throats or shoot them? Why go the disease route?”

“Why not?”

Back to the nonanswers. Impossible female. “Do you want the pizza, or not?”

“What, pizzas are rationed now and only you can get one? I’m outta here.” She yanked the catheter out of her hand and leaped off the bed with sinuous grace and the lightest thump of boots on the floor. “I have stuff to do, people to kill, and I can get my own pizza.” Blood seeped from her hand, and though Con was sated, his mouth still watered.

“Come here.” His voice was low and rough, and Sin swung around, her furious glare burning a hole right through him.

“Screw you.”

“Been there, done that,” he growled. “Now, come here.”

She shot him the bird and started toward the door. “I don’t respond well to orders.”

He was up in a flash, the tube of blood dangling from his arm, and he had her backed against the wall. “Then what do you respond to, little demon? Because right now, I’ve got a mind to turn you over my knee and spank the spoiled hell out of you and see how you respond to that.” Her gasp of outrage was a bright spot in his otherwise shitty day. “Oh, yeah,” he purred, as he wedged his thigh between hers. “You do respond to me. You responded very well to what I spilled inside you.”

When she’d told him she couldn’t climax until her partner came first, he’d been surprised. And then he’d made her come. Hard. He could still hear the sound of her panting breaths, could still feel her tight inner muscles clamped around him—

She struck out, but before her fist could knock loose a few of his teeth, she hissed and grabbed her head with both hands as the pain from the antiviolence enchantment that protected the hospital kicked in. She and her siblings were immune, but only if they fought with each other.

“Forgot about the Haven spell, huh?”

“I hate you,” she rasped, and why that made him smile, he had no idea.

More gently than she deserved, he peeled her bleeding hand away from her head and swiped his tongue over the needle puncture. God, she tasted decadent, with a bite like fine brandy, and he couldn’t help but let his tongue linger on her skin. She went taut, slowly releasing her head with her other hand.

Beneath his fingers, the pulse in her wrist pounded, matching his beat for crazy beat. The air between them crackled with sudden heat, and his hips surged as he pressed his palm to her delicate throat, wanting to absorb the sensation of her lifeblood flowing under both his hands.

Ah… damn. Power swamped him as though he’d completed a circuit. She was life. She was death. She was the most dangerous female he’d ever met, and if he was smart, he’d run like hell.

Licking her lips, Sin took a deep, shuddering breath that ended with “Release me.”

Right now, that was the last thing he wanted to do, but he’d made his point. She might hate him, but she wanted him. Head a little fuzzy and still feeling the buzz of her blood inside his veins, he stepped back, but she surprised him when she caught his wrist.

Her dermoire lit up, and heat spread through his arm. “Just checking your virus levels,” she said, her voice thick with the same lust that coursed through him like syrup. “You really should have drank more.”

He fixed his gaze on her throat and was only half serious when he murmured, “Still can.”

Her eyes glinted with mischief as she eased closer and pressed the length of her body against him. All her soft parts fit perfectly with his hard ones, but then he’d known that. “Go for it,” she said, exposing her throat and calling his bluff.

She knew damned good and well that he couldn’t risk taking more blood from her, especially given how he’d lost control earlier. And he wasn’t about to take from her throat. Too intimate, too much contact, and way too much Sin for him.

Funny. Too much sin. That had never been a concern before. He’d spent the majority of his life committing all of the sins and inventing new ones.

But this little succubus was killing his people, had made him a carrier of the disease, and her brothers were hyperprotective sons of demons who would have his balls on a spit if he fanged and banged her right here, right now.

You did her in a fucking closet.

Yeah, and talk about a mistake. One he wouldn’t mind repeating. Sure, he despised her, but that would keep things interesting in the sack, wouldn’t it?

Images of her clawing his back, biting his neck, fighting him even as she spread her legs for him flooded his brain. A sixth sense told him she’d give as good as she got, would have no trouble keeping up with him even during the worst of the moon fever, when violent matings could kill.

Back off… back off… He took in a ragged breath, desperate to keep control, because although the full moon was two weeks away, Sin’s blood had forced a high tide in his veins, and every primal urge was starting to rage.

Besides, there wasn’t a breed of succubi out there that didn’t steal something. Whether it was your seed, your soul, your life force, or your heart, they sucked something out of you and rarely gave back.

Sin definitely did not strike him as the giving kind.

The door flew open with a bang. Still hopped up with feral instincts, Con pivoted, fangs bared, to face the threat.

Wraith strode inside, his loose gait deceptively relaxed. Deceptive, because his bright gaze was predatory; he was fully aware of what he’d walked in on, and Con knew the cagey bastard well enough to know he’d file away the information and use it when it was to his advantage.

“Smurfette,” Wraith drawled, his eyes focused on Con. “E needs you in the ER. Warg came in, circling the drain.”

Sin scowled. “Circling the drain?”

“Dying,” Con gritted out. “He’s dying.”

Wraith nodded. “Time to see if you can save lives instead of just taking them.”