The beast’s grip on her tightened, drawing a whimper on another flare of pain from her chest. As cold as she recalled the man’s eyes and face being, heat like the summer sun poured off him and soaked deep into her skin.
“Fine,” Steve snapped.
A flash of bright light. The stranger’s grip fell away. She stumbled forward into Steve, who caught her by the shoulders and eased her onto the edge of the sofa next to Cassy. Warmth flooded her, a different sensation that soothed her aches and pains until they nearly vanished. She narrowed her eyes on Steve, her mouth dry. She tried to take a deep breath, but her heart beat so fast she could barely suck in enough air to keep her conscious.
“What is going on, Steve? What is…” She shook her head, rubbing a hand over her face. “Your hair? Your eyes?” She pointed to the beast, who arched a slanted brow in response. “And what isthat?”
The beast flipped his dagger around. Steve threw up a hand before he bothered to look over his shoulder at the man.
“Thatis my brother, Thaddeus. He possesses severe social ineptness, as you witnessed, sadly. He’s not a people person. More or less a hermit.”
Thaddeus.
The man fit the name, elegance wrapped in murderous intent.
Lovely.
With a deep, controlled breath, Steve turned to his brother. “Put the fucking blade away before I do it for you. You’ve nothing to prove here, other than how detached you are from humanity.”
“I hold no loyalty to humanity. Why would I care to associate with such creatures?” Thaddeus uttered the words in a voice created to be merciless in a woman’s ears and brutal on her heart. A seductively accented voice brimming with certainty, authority, and threat.
Rori dared to lift her gaze to the creature standing a few feet behind Steve, his ornate dagger ready for a strike. It didn’t escape her that Steve seemed unfazed by the man who a few minutes before had held that same dagger to his neck, making him bleed. She glanced at Steve’s throat, realizing she hadn’t seen blood after his appearance changed. Sure enough, there was no evidence of a cut, or blood, on his skin. Only a small smear on the collar of his white shirt gave any hint of a previous nick.
“Steve, who are you?” she whispered, her brows furrowing deeper. She was on the brink of losing control to either a wave of tears or a fit of mad laughter. Thiswas notnormal. It wasn’tpossible. “Please.”
“Steve. Is this the bloody name you’ve been using?”
The beast twisted his blade around and sheathed it in an ornate ivory and gold case on his hip. Rori tried not to take notice of his expensive-looking clothing, black pants with a fancy leather and gold belt, silky shirt with gold threadwork, and the gold bits woven through the three braids that ended together at the back of his head. Hair, she hadn’t taken noticeof while trying to survive the chaos, that reached his narrow waist in a pale gold curtain.
She really tried not to give him any more of her time and observation, and failed miserably. The bastard demanded attention,herattention, and she was so shaken she couldn’t help but look. Stare. Admire. And seethe because shedidadmire a man who evidently wanted to kill his own brother while laying blows on women without an ounce of remorse.
A heartless, soulless beauty is all he is. Empty.
“It appears you’ve fallen into quite a predicament,Cael,” Thaddeus mused, replacing any essence of where humor might’ve been found with contempt and disgust. Those icy eyes roved over Rori, a path she felt along her skin like a heat rash. How could a man with such a sub-freezing gaze leave her burning? “A pity, truly.”
“Oh, brother, they don’t know. Ordidn’tknow.” Steve—or was it Cael? The surprises kept coming tonight—raked a hand through his new, longer hair and straightened up. Rori used the distraction to look over her friend. She appeared to be sleeping, her breaths coming even, her face relaxed. A hand on her shoulder brought her attention back to Steve. “She’s fine. I made certain of it, just as I did you.”
He rolled out his shoulders and faced the beast.
Brothers.
There was no denying the resemblance, though Thaddeus stood a couple of inches taller and held himself with far more grace and poise—certainly more danger—which simply wasn’t fair for him to possess. How could two bothers be such polar opposites? There was not a smidgen of alarm that Steve induced in her gut. All of that came from Thaddeus.
“You’ve always been one to complicate matters,” Thaddeus groused. Even after his abuse, that deep husky tone lit a fire lowin her gut, and she hated it. Hated how the startling contrast between his fair looks and dark clothing made her heart patter a bit faster, the residual spicy scent that tickled her nostrils from his earlier nearness lingered and made her breaths falter. A flicker of blue skittered across his chest where his shirt lay open—she stole a split-second peek at the hint of fine muscle between his pecs—like webbed lightning across a storm-strewn sky. “Erasing memories would’ve been convenient, but now impossible.”
“You’re still as dense as you were the last time we met over a century ago. You barge into my home and complicate matters for yourself. Apparently, you’re the one in the predicament, not I, dear brother.” Steve snickered and shook his head. “Not I.”
“Century?”
Both men looked at her. She swallowed the sudden lump in her throat, the one that grew out of sheer embarrassment at the unwanted attention. Ohh, to melt away into oblivion right about now…
Steve grinned mischievously while Thaddeus’s scowl deepened. He groaned and gave them his back before stalking a few feet away. Rori steeled herself against the whispering curiosity to admire him from behind and managed to direct her attention to Steve. She shifted on the sofa, bumping into Cassy, whom she’d all but forgotten about.
She needed to go home. Sleep. She’d been under tremendous stress lately. School, exams, bills, Rich. Those miniscule cracks in her psyche she’d been working to heal had been dealt a blow tonight, threatening to break wide open. When she woke up from this nightmare, Cassy would laugh at her for letting life get the best of her. She’d laugh along with her friend and agree, and figure out some way to remove stress triggers from her life. This was all a result of stress.
This simply wasn’treal.
“Yes. That was the last time I saw the prick, although Iwillsay our last encounter wasn’t nearly as dramatic. Rather, it consisted of him calling me a few names and me laughing it off like I always do because Thad has a way of being, well”—he waved a hand toward his brother, who had turned to glower down his sharp nose at them with his icicle gaze—“dramatic.”
