Hotter Than Hell (59 page)

He gasped, his entire body shaking as it rested atop her.

Mia felt the heat of tears under her closed lids. It was hard, so hard to push what he had given her back into him. It went against every instinct she had, but clearly he felt it, and his kiss and his hands upon her grew rough, savage. He hadn’t several centuries to learn how to control such an influx of power and strength as she had.

His grip upon her waist hurt, and she did nothing as he forced her legs apart. She wanted this. Exalting in the savage response she could invoke, she gave him more, feeling it leave her in a scintillating sensation of sparkles.

A guttural sound came from him, and Mia gasped in an exquisite pain as he entered her, pushing to fill all of her in one move. She groaned, arching into him, wanting this. Wanting it so badly that she gave him even more of herself.

Wave after wave of emotion drenched her, running off her to pool in the room as if to drown her in lust. He moved against her, dominating and aggressive. Every motion was like knives in her aura, breaking it, destroying what she had built to protect him. But she gave back more than she took, and he grew wilder, more demanding. He forgot all as he sweated above her, and she moaned with every breath, feeling an end coming, the wait an exquisite pain.

And in a sudden pulse, it broke upon them. A twisted groan eased from him, and he clenched her to him as wave after wave of ecstasy fell on them. Mia’s barrier shattered. Gasping, she clutched at him, feeling his entire soul empty into her as she reached fulfillment, her body wracked with tremors as they hung unmoving in a haze of bliss.

Emotion shook the room in silent thunder only she could feel, and she almost passed out, taking breath after heaving breath until the sensation gave a final pulse and vanished.

“Tom,” she panted, feeling his breath in her hair as he lay atop her, too spent to move. “Tom, are you okay?”

He didn’t answer, and she pushed on his shoulder. “Tom?”

“I love you, Mia,” he whispered, and he sighed, his full weight coming to rest against her.

“Tom!” she exclaimed, shoving him to the back of the couch and wiggling out from under him. The air felt thick, like sunshine pooled at the bottom of a valley, eddying about her feet with the heaviness of honey. She hadn’t kept any of the emotion from the room. It was all here, cloying and thick, making her dizzy with a repressed need. But Tom…

Clutching her discarded dress, she stared as his aura went wispy and thin. An unbearable brightness began to emanate from him, and seeing it, a single tear trickled from her. Her hand trembling, she reached to touch him, shaking at the taste of his aura. It was fading, spreading out, becoming silver and thin to fill the room with unseen sparkles. Any other banshee would take it, gorge on the last life energy and dance in exaltation—but she didn’t. Mia walled herself off, and a tear slipped down as she watched his life fill the room in a bright, ever so bright, light.

“Tom…” she whispered, weary even as her body still sang with the ecstasy he had filled her with. She had seen this before. He was dead. He was dead, and there was nothing that would bring him back. In that single moment of fulfillment, his emotion-rich aura had washed over her, laying his soul bare. She hadn’t taken it, and it lay pooled about her feet to rise like a slow fog shifting from gold to purple. But she hadn’t given him anything back, either, not like a human would have, protecting his soul until he gathered it back unto himself again.

Mia fell to her knees before him, still touching his shoulder warm with the last of his life. Misery twisted her delicate features, and then a sob broke free, harsh and pain-filled. It was followed by another, and she knelt beside him, her hand trembling as she gripped the wish that had caused his death. The tears falling into her lap turned from salt water to black crystal, the mark of a banshee’s pain, and they fell soundlessly as she wept.

The glow from Tom’s soul filled the room, and she closed her eyes, the light too painful for her pale eyes. The doors were shut, the windows locked, and though his soul was gone, the energy of his death lingered.

And Mia cried. She had killed him, sure as if she had driven a knife into his lungs. Sob after sob filled the apartment, her crystalline tears soaking up the energy of the room until the brightness dimmed to a memory, and then, even that vanished and the air was pure. The love was gone, the fear, the comfort, everything was gone, as if no one had loved, lived, and died sheltered by these walls. She kept none of his energy for herself. It had been hard, but to take it into herself had never been her intention.

Slowly, Mia’s tears abated until her breathing steadied and her breath no longer came in racking gasps. The tears falling from her had eased from black to gray and were now perfectly clear, reflecting the dim sun from the ended rain. The emotions of the room were condensed and pooled in them. There would be nothing to link her to the death of this man, nothing to indicate that he had died in anything other than peaceful sleep.

Tom’s body lay facedown on the couch, an arm trailing to brush the floor. Not looking at him, Mia slowly got dressed, drained and tired. She looked once at the wish about her neck, then left it to hang. The tears she gathered like photos of lost children, love and pain mixed in equal parts. If she didn’t, someone would find them, recognize them, and she would be pulled in for questioning. The law knew what a banshee was capable of, and she would not allow herself to be jailed for this.

Fingers slow and clumsy, Mia felt the back of her dress to be sure the buttons were done up properly. The coffeepot was steaming, and she carefully put her empty cup away in the cupboard before unplugging the pot and setting his filled cup on the coffee table beside him. She turned the music down, and guilt prompted her to drape an afghan over him as if he was sleeping. His clothes went into the hamper.

Silent, she stood above him in her coat. “Goodbye, Tom,” she whispered before gathering her groceries and quietly leaving.

Fatigue hit her anew when she found the sidewalk. The rain had stopped, and the sun was peeking past the heavy clouds. Fumbling, Mia put her sunglasses on. Traffic hissed wetly, and she breathed deep when a couple passed her, hotly discussing the amount of the tip one of them had left. It was a sour taste after Tom’s love, and she let it eddy behind her unsipped.

She glanced at her watch and picked up the pace. Digging in a pocket, she found her wedding ring and put it back on. With a shamed slowness, her fingers slipped back into the pocket, running through Tom’s life force, pooled and condensed.

Delicate features pulling into a grimace, Mia took out a handful of tears, slipping the lightest one between her lips and sucking guiltily on it. His strength poured into her, and her pace quickened, heels clicking smartly against the concrete shining with the new sun.

Stupid man,
she thought as she waved and jogged to catch the bus. The wish did work. Well, perhaps it would be more fair to say it
had
worked. It had worked very well when she met Remus—savage, angry Remus whose psychotic rage had been strong enough to bring Holly into existence. The love had come later, until now, she, Holly, and Remus were a real family. Like any family on the street, and Mia was proud of it.

Holly was the first banshee child to know her father, plying him with innocent love and devotion. It had been watching father and daughter that Mia learned it was possible to force emotion back into a person, lulling them into thinking they were safe while making themselves more vulnerable. The child had, in her innocence, returned to her species all the cunning and power human laws had taken from them, and for that alone Holly was going to be revered among her own. Once she learned how to walk and talk, that is.

Breathless, Mia smiled at the bus driver as she just made it to the door, fumbling for her bus pass. Tom, dead in his apartment, was hardly a glimmer of memory as she settled beside a young man smelling of cologne and shedding lust Mia knew to be from a new girlfriend. Easing back, she soaked it in, sated.

Her lids fluttered as they rumbled over the railroad tracks, and she looked at her watch, mildly concerned. Remus would likely throw a bloody-hell tantrum that she was running late, being unable to go to work until she got home to watch Holly. But they would both enjoy her kissing him into a calm state, and he’d get over it.

Besides, little Holly was hungry, and it wasn’t as if
he
could do the shopping.

TANYA HUFF
lives and writes in rural Ontario with her partner Fiona Patton, six cats and an unintentional chihuahua. Her third novel in the Confederacy of Valor series,
Heart of Valor
, was published from DAW Books in the summer of ’07 and she is currently working on book four,
Valor’s Trial.
When she’s not writing, she’s keeping an eye on the production of
Blood Ties,
her Vicki Nelson books adapted for televison. She’s recently become addicted to homemade chai latte and thinks life would be pretty much perfect if the crawlspace would just quit flooding.

MARJORIE M. LIU
is an attorney who has lived and worked throughout Asia. She hails from both coasts, but currently resides in the Midwest, where she writes full time. For more information about her books, which include the bestselling
Dirk & Steele
series, as well as her upcoming urban fantasy,
The Iron Hunt
, please visit her website at www.marjoriemliu.com.

New York Times
and
USA Today
bestselling author
CHEYENNE MCCRAY
has been writing ever since she can remember. She always knew one day she would write novels, hoping her readers would get lost in the worlds she created, as she did in her favorites.

For St. Martin’s Press, Chey writes the bestselling “Magic” series, most recently
Shadow Magic
and the upcoming
Dark Magic.
She also writes romantic suspense novels, including the high-octane thriller
Moving Target
and the soon-to-be-released
Armed and Dangerous: Zack.
Cheyenne is married to her college sweetheart, has three sons, three dogs, a messy house, and will do anything to get out of cleaning, which may be why she writes so much. Visit Cheyenne’s website at www.cheyennemccray.com.

L.A. BANKS,
(aka, Leslie Esdaile Banks) is a native of Philadelphia and graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Wharton undergraduate program, as well as holds a masters in fine arts from Temple University’s School of Film and Media Arts. After a ten-year career as a corporate marketing executive for several Fortune 100 high-tech firms, Banks changed careers in 1991 to pursue a private consulting career—which ultimately led to fiction and film writing. Now, with over twenty-seven novels plus ten anthology contributions in an extraordinary breadth of genres, and many awards to her credit, Banks writes full time and resides in Philadelphia. Look for her Vampire Huntress Legends series and a full listing of her published works at www.vampire-huntress.com or www.LeslieEsdaileBanks.com.

Born in the San Francisco Bay Area,
SUSAN KRINARD
received a BFA from the California College of Arts and Crafts and “fell” into writing after her dream of becoming a SF/fantasy cover artist fell through. The author of fifteen novels and several short stories and novellas, Susan focuses on the combination of fantasy and romance in her work. Her most recent novel,
Lord of the Beasts,
reached the
New York Times
bestseller list. She now lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with her husband Serge, a cat named Jefferson, and her dogs Freya, Nahla, and Cagney. You can reach her at [email protected].

KERI ARTHUR
was born and bred in Melbourne, Australia, and grew up sharing her life with dragons, elves, vampires, werewolves, shapeshifters, and the occasional talking horse. Which worried her family to no end. Of course, now that she actually makes a living sharing her life with the above-mentioned creatures, they no longer contemplate calling the men with the little white coats. When not at her keyboard, she can be found with her hubby in front of the TV, or taking her two dogs for a walk. For more information about all her books, head on over to www.keriarthur.com.

Bestselling, award-winning author
HEIDI BETTS
combines believable characters with compelling plotlines to create stories that focus on the commitment of one man and one woman to each other. She has written more than a dozen historical and contemporary romances, with several more projects in the works. Her first book for Silhouette Desire hit number one on the Waldenbooks Series Romance Bestseller List, where her books have continued to make an appearance ever since. Heidi loves to read, write, watch movies (and just a little too much television), and surround herself with furry, four-legged friends in her home in the beautiful hills of Central Pennsylvania. You can visit her website at www.heidibetts.com.

LILITH SAINTCROW
was born in New Mexico and transplanted to England at an early age, where she imbibed some very odd notions about tea and language before being violently uprooted and returned to the U.S. She is the author of the Dante Valentine series as well as other interconnected books about Santiago City, which exists only in her head—despite what you may have heard. You can learn more about both the city and the books at her website, www.lilithsaintcrow.com.

Bestselling author
SUSAN SIZEMORE
lives in the Midwest. She loves canines, basketball, and coffee. When she isn’t writing she’s knitting, or wasting time on a couple of blogspots. These blogs can be reached through her website http://susansizemore.com.

DENISE LITTLE
is a writer, editor, anthologist, and former bookseller. Her recent and forthcoming releases include
The Official Nora Roberts Companion, The Valdemar Companion
(with John Helfers), and the anthologies
Mystery Date
and
Front Lines.
She lives in Green Bay, Wisconsin.