haunted him. He’d rented a suite, bought every beautifully scented flower he could find at the florist’s, and lit the room with a profusion of candles. He took her virginity on white satin sheets covered in rose petals.
“I couldn’t have done anything differently,” he said softly.
“You knew you weren’t going to stay before you seduced me.”
He spoke with his lips pressed to the crown of her head. “I tried to spare you any suffering by leaving. I hoped that if we separated, you could still have the same future you would have had before you met me.”
Eve struggled out of his embrace, fighting him with such fervor she fell on the floor. “You’re an asshole.” Rising to her knees, she slapped him.
Alec clenched his jaw and turned the other cheek.
She cursed and pushed to her feet, her robe askew. He stood with her, securing his towel while facing her head on.
“Spare me any suffering,” she scoffed, glaring at him. “That’s lame, Alec. You have to do better than that.”
“What do you want me to say?”
She ran both hands through her hair and growled. “Something that makes sense. Something sincere and believable.”
“I’m sorry, angel.”
Pausing midstep, Eve gaped at him. “That’s it? You’re sorry?”
“Would it be better to say that I would do it again?”
She looked away. “Don’t do that.”
“Don’t do what?”
“Look at me like that.”
“You love me.” Alec smiled wryly.
They stared at each other across the few feet that separated them.
“Hate to burst your bubble,” she said grimly, “but I have more important things in my life than you. You’re expendable.”
“Actually, I’m not, but we’ll get to that later. In the meantime, you can’t ignore what happened last night.”
“It doesn’t mean what you think it means.” She walked past him to the kitchen.
He followed. “It means we’re in a lot of shit. It also means getting you out of this mess just got a hell of a lot more complicated.”
She grabbed two mugs from her cabinet and changed the subject. “You want to explain the winged man?”
“Yes, brother, would you like to explain me?”
Eve turned at the sound of the voice she would never forget. He strode in from the balcony as if he owned the place. The man who’d screwed her into unconsciousness in the stairwell. His smile was sensual and slightly cruel, and it made her shiver, not entirely with fear.
Alec snarled and vaulted across the room with a ferocity and speed that frightened her, hitting his brother in the midsection with a brutal tackle. The ensuing scuffle was far from brotherly tussling. It was a fight to the death, and the sounds and sights of the battle did something strange to her. Made her mark burn, made her pulse race. The scent of blood in the air caused a physical reaction that she likened to blood lust. A rough growl rumbled up from her chest.
Alec lifted his brother into the air like a WWE wrestler and smashed him onto her glass-topped coffee table, destroying it. A moment later, he finished off the job by braining his brother with her Waterford crystal candy bowl.
The sickening crunch of a crushing skull should have horrified her, should have made her vomit, and she was in fact stumbling toward her sink to do just that when Alec disappeared.
Vanished into thin air.
One moment he was pushing to his feet, his bare body sheened with sweat and high-velocity blood spatter. The next he was gone.
Eve paused, unblinking, her body’s natural response seized by shock. Her gaze dropped to the dead man on the floor.
Then she spun to the sink and wanted to retch, but her body wouldn’t cooperate.
“Oh my god,” she gasped, hanging on to the curved granite edge to remain standing. As her mark sizzled within her skin, a sharp sound escaped from her throat.
“Yeah, that’s where he went,” came a dry voice from the living room. The corpse on the floor rose to its feet, its disfigured head restoring before her very eyes, the dent slowly filling like a balloon. Wings sprouted from the man’s back and he shook them out, testing each side with a quick flap before retracting them.
“Cain never learns,” he said, winking at her, once again looking like the Armani-clad businessman from Gadara Tower.
“I’m insane,” she gasped. “Certifiable.”
Alec’s brother laughed. “Don’t get your pan ties in a twist, babe. He’ll be back, and in one piece, too.”
“You’re dead,” Eve muttered, “and I’m going to pass out.”
“You’re too healthy for that. All the physical reactions you used to have