Taking Back Sunday (12 page)

“Go on then,” she said, slapping his backside as he turned and started walking. She couldn’t see his face, but she was sure he was smiling when he shook his head as he reclaimed the seat at the table.

Dinner carried on much in the same fashion, with the two maintaining a flirtatious banter that toed the line between overt come-ons and subtle innuendo. After dinner, the pair took the conversation into the living room.

The elation of attraction subsided, and they eased their way from flirting to just talking—
really talking.
It was frightening how seamlessly they fell into the comfort of one another’s company. Cyrus nearly forgot whom he was talking to and what had brought them together as he delved into the story of his life. Unlike the previous night, Cyrus wasn’t thinking about what was too much or too honest to tell Sunday.

Suddenly, it didn’t matter that he was pent up on all sides with the strain of his cursed life. With Sunday, he opened up. The mask of his stone façade waned. Simply by listening, Sunday had carved a path into his soul. He told her things he told no one. He talked about his life before and since the attack that made him the monster he now was.

Pausing, she let herself drink in Cyrus’ sincerity. He was being
real
. She knew it. She felt it. This was a man unaccustomed to emotional intimacy, but at this moment, Cyrus’ resolve was cracking. Through those cracks, Sunday felt him beaming. She couldn’t help but reciprocate. And god, she needed it. Together, Cyrus and Sunday were making the decision to drop the pretenses. It was an organic exchange, and when one removed a stitch, the other shed in kind. Soon, she was holding his hand in hers as she waxed on about her life, truths, and more truths until all she had to say was the word “Incarnate” for her to be completely exposed. Had Cyrus not felt just as naked, he would have hated himself for perpetrating a con.

“I’ve just always kept moving,” Sunday told him. Her voice was distant even though she was looking directly at him as she spoke. “One day, I woke up, and everything I thought I had, everything I thought was real and important and true… I just didn’t have any of it anymore.”

As she talked, her fingers tightened lacing his tighter between them. She fidgeted, pulling her hands apart and then bringing them back together. The facts were, at this stage, irrelevant. What she was spilling were
truths
, and only truths. It was more honest than she’d been with anyone for a decade, maybe even longer.

“Thing is,” she confessed, “I wanted it that way. It made sense.
Just keep going
, I kept telling myself. There’s so much more to see, so many more places to travel and people to meet..., but that’s just what I’m telling myself. I’m trying to sell this to myself. The truth is that everywhere I go, shit follows me. I don’t know that I actually
want
to keep from setting roots into the ground. I just know that I
have
to keep going. I
want
to make connections. I
want
to have a home. I just….”

Just when Cyrus was going to say he knew exactly what she feeling, Sunday dropped her head and stared into her lap. One of her legs draped over the side of the couch and the other one bent under her. Their bodies faced one another on the sofa. Cyrus leaned closer to her, pushing up from his arm that rested across the top of the cushions. He drew his hand to her chin and tilted it so that she could meet his gaze. Sunday grabbed his forearm, gently pulling him closer as he rubbed the tips of his fingers over her pouting lips.

Cyrus’ body edged over to Sunday’s as she pulled him closer. She looked at him through tear-filled honey eyes, her eyelashes blinking away tears that she had silently begun crying as she’d hung her head.

“What’s wrong?” Cyrus asked.

When she dismissed the question by shaking her head, Cyrus pressed his lips softly to hers. He pulled away slightly so that he could ask her again. With his face so close to hers, Sunday could feel the concern oozing from his pores. It battled her self-control and begged for her to talk to him.

“It’s nothing,” she answered, wiping the tears from her face and rubbing her eyes.

“Tell me, please,” Cyrus pleaded.

Sunday breathed a heavy sigh and tried to regain some semblance of composure. She’d invited Cyrus over for a distraction, some flirtation, and maybe even something more physical. Yet there they sat, threatening to tell each other more than they should about themselves and their lives.

“I feel like I’m always trying to outrun Destiny or something, and Destiny’s made up its mind that I should be miserable and alone.”

“So why are you here?” Cyrus asked. “This seems like a comfy little place for someone who’s always two seconds from taking off. What’s kept you around? Why are you still here?”

“Honestly? I shouldn’t be. I shouldn’t be sitting here. Not alone, not with you, and not with anybody. But I
have
to be here. Right now, I
have
to stick around as much as the shitstorm is almost certainly taking shape.”

Sunday gnawed into her bottom lip, staring at her fingers laced between Cyrus’ on her lap. This wasn’t turning out to be the distraction that Sunday had envisioned it would be when she had invited him over. The more Sunday tried to ignore the idea of Kayla and Sammy in danger, the more she wanted to confide in Cyrus about of it.

“I have these friends that are into some shit that could be really dangerous. They’re my only friends in the world. They’re the only friends I’ve ever had. I was so tired of running that, when I met them, it was like they were my sign.
They
were the sign. With them I could be, you know, close to normal.”

Sunday quickly snapped her mouth shut and gritted her teeth.
That
was too much, way too much. He already knew that she had some extrasensory ability, but now she was telling him about living on the road. Soon, she would end up telling him about why she didn’t ever stay in one place for too long, or why she didn’t have any other friends. By the end of the night, he could know everything, and everything was anything
but
what Cyrus or anyone else could ever know about her. One werewolf meant other werewolves. A pack of werewolves could put two and two together, and soon, the word would be out: The Incarnate lives, and she has something to lose.

“And now there’s this thing with you…” Her voice trailed off and she closed her eyes tightly, shaking her head. Her entire body slumped in defeat. Perhaps Cyrus was just another thing to tack onto that list of things to lose. Things that Sunday could never really have, just like everything else she really wanted.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

She knows. Holy fuck, she knows.

Cyrus jumped from his seat and his hands flew in front of his face. Palms out, he waved like he was showing her that wasn’t hiding anything.
Lie.
He was defensive, flushing with the need to explain himself, to tell her the truth. He had been sent to capture her, but he wasn’t planning on handing her over to the Pastophori of Iset, or even to his pack. Not anymore.

“Sunday, listen, for years, I’ve been looking for something. I can’t tell you… I want to tell you but…” Exasperated and confused, Cyrus forced himself to look anywhere but at Sunday. She’s the Incarnate, he reminded himself.

She knows. Or maybe she doesn’t know just yet, but the minute I look at her, she’ll see it in me. She’ll see the betrayal and she’ll know.

For lack of anything better to say, all the thoughts swirling in Cyrus’ brain bubbled on his lips and poured from him.

“I’ve been all over the place looking for it. Just when I think I’ve found it, it’s gone, and I have to hunt it down again. It’s been my purpose. It’s been the only thing I’ve wanted because… I’m just starting to understand this now, but the chasing of this thing, it’s the only thing that gives me a reason to keep on living. I’ve been fueled by hate and passion and it’s blinded me, but it’s brought me here. I owe it to you. I’m so sorry, Sunday–”

Cyrus stopped and started again, brushing down his beard anxiously and trying to get the words to come out. She was the thing he’d been obsessively seeking, but finding her changed everything he’d known even about himself. He could hardly stomach to reason that he would never be able to hold onto her once she learned the real reason that he was sitting in her living room at that moment.

If she didn’t know before, she certainly deserved to know now. No amount of holding her hand and listening while she worked her shit out could ever make up for what Hell he’d perpetrated on her. In the end, no equivocation absolved him. Her very real, dangerous problems were entirely his fault. Now was his chance to confess.

“No, stop it, Cyrus,” she snapped, her tone suddenly sharp and her expression stern. “Listen to me. It’s stupid, really, that all this shit is happening, and I finally meet a guy who I’m actually interested in.” She grabbed his hand and pulled him to sit beside her again. Inching closer, she continued.

“I shouldn’t let all of that get in the way of this. It’s not like me to get involved with other people’s business, but I’m doing it for my friends, and it’s not like me to get involved with dates and dinner and flirting and really getting to know a guy, but I’m doing it with you. That’s just it, okay? Things happen the way they’re supposed to. These are just some of the things I’ve got to face and not run away from.”

She paused as she clasped his hands in hers and stared at them, wheels visibly turning in her mind. Cyrus watched half-mad in conflict. The guilt was all encompassing, yet the part of him that wanted Sunday to want him was flying high at the revelation that she was invested in Cyrus, even if it was just for a little while.

“I don’t do this, Cyrus,” she said softly, eyes still focused on their joined hands. “I open up to people here and there, but I’m always holding back. With you, I don’t know what it is, but I feel like I’ve finally found someone that can actually understand me. Someone who
does
understand me.”

Sunday brought her face up to look at Cyrus. In it, Cyrus could read the authenticity of her words, of her feelings. More than that, Cyrus could see a reflection of his own staring back at him.

“I haven’t found someone like you. Ever. And I’ve lived a long time, Sunday. Too long.”

All the anxiety that had built up in Cyrus, thinking that she had found him out and was ready to confront him boiled over. She had not only
not
been suspicious of him, she was professing her trust. As soon as it dawned on him, the once-rising fear steamed into a leveling passion. He lunged at her, smacked his lips onto hers, and pushing her back into the armrest of the sofa, challenged her to lock her lips. Take him or deny him. Sunday retaliated by bunching his hair into her hands and giving his greedy tongue access to hers.

Even as she met the fury of his sexual aggression, Sunday pulled her guards as high as they would go, virtually putting all her might behind the strength of her resolve. She had to focus on keeping control of herself. Her body’s immediate impassioned response to Cyrus’ demand tested her will to tear open the floodgates and allow him to feed into her. She was experienced. She could get to the point of almost losing it but not quite. There was a limit and learning to master the brakes of this was just another part of managing to be the Incarnate.

But this moment with Cyrus… It was different. He was different. Besides being the perfect picture of what her dream man would look like, Cyrus was a person with whom Sunday could envision herself being truly open. In so many ways, they were similar. He was, like Sunday, a monster and a man. He moved between the desire to be alone and the despair of loneliness. The self-hatred she perceived in herself, and the self-pity she caught herself wallowing in for the shit cards Life had dealt her, those same things she could see in Cyrus.

There, too, was the passion that bubbled just below the surface of his carefully cultivated façade of control. It swam beneath the skin. What she could do with all the emotion behind his kisses would put her in uncharted territory. She was terrified. Something about Cyrus, this man, had been making her act irrationally since she’d seen him walking into the back of the cinema. But she relented, gave into him, because the attraction was so strong.

Their previous encounters and this entire night had led precisely and invariably to this moment. The weight of his body on hers, the thrusting of his thigh against her groin, and the way he grabbed her hair and yanked it, forcing her to submit to his will, gave rise to a terrible hunger in her. It took everything in her power to contain herself, and she questioned for the first time in her life whether she even wanted to hold back.

Cyrus grabbed Sunday’s hips from under her dress and pulled her sex to his. She draped her free leg around his hips and thrust her aching mound onto him. She found him erect, his thick, round head pushing through his jeans. She rubbed herself against it, moistening the seat of her panties. A feral growl rolled through his chest and echoed through hers. The farther down the spiral of sexual release she fell, the harder it became to keep a firm grip on her guards. If Sunday couldn’t catch a breath, couldn’t pause for a moment to find her center again, she would be lost forever.

“Stop,” she groaned as Cyrus’ mouth seized her again for a deep, angry kiss that threatened to overpower any thought she had to pull away.

“You don’t mean it.”

Cyrus grabbed a full cheek of Sunday’s backside and thrust his pelvis into her. “You say ‘stop,’” he spoke onto her lips, breathlessly taking her tongue into his mouth again, sucking on it, and letting it slide out through his lips. She grabbed his bottom lip between her teeth and rolled her tongue over its swollen softness. “But you rub yourself on my cock, you bite my lip like that, and then you whimper when I pull away.”

“Really,” she begged. She arched her back and bowed into him against her better judgment. “You have to give me a second. We have to slow this down a bit.”

“Then stop what you’re doing,” he bit back, his mouth in the crook of her neck now, sucking and nibbling a trail behind her earlobe.