Casting one last, long look at him, she crouched, and then leaped for the sky. Lucas shouted something after her—part entreaty, part cry—it was barely coherent, but torn straight from his heart.
“Don’t go...”
Lucas shot upright in bed, his heart thundering, his entire body rigid and aching. The room echoed with his shout.Effing hell.If he’d woken Sadie, there’d be trouble.
He strove to quiet his breathing as he listened hard. The neighbor’s television carried through the thin walls; the human never turned the blasted thing off. But Lucas didn’t hear anyone stirring within his own apartment.
He lay back, his fingers seeking the hairs... This time, he had compelling visuals that brought him to a thundering climax within seconds. So powerful, he cried out.
And then listened again with a pounding heart for any sign of movement. But still nothing. Had Sadie spent the night with whomever male was her latest conquest?
When no sound was forthcoming, he relaxed, fractionally, and glanced at his watch. Judging by the light filtering through the battered blinds, the morning had arrived. So much for getting any rest.
Sadie had been away when he’d got home. She often was, these days. Sometimes he found himself hoping that she wouldn’t find her way back.
Sadie was his stepmother. His father vanished when he was only five, so she’d raised him, and he was grateful for her ability to put food on the table when he was a child. But truth be told, from the moment he was old enough to steal, he’d been providing for the two of them.
Providing. It meant much more than just the means to purchase food.
His mind sheered away from the memories as he pushed himself out of bed and headed for the kitchen. The entire apartment reflected the mental chaos of those who lived within. Furniture lay buried beneath cast-off clothes and fast-food boxes.
Lucas spent as little time here as possible. He’d often contemplated leaving altogether, but some misguided sentiment refused to let him abandon the only family he’d ever known.
He opened the fridge and peered within, his lips compressing at the complete lack of anything edible. Whatever Sadie had spent the grocery money on, it wasn’t groceries.
“Sorry, pretty boy. I’ll go shopping today.”
The voice startled him, but it was the hand drifting up beneath his shirt from behind that caused him to flinch. The sensory hairs weren’t just hidden under his upper arm, they also ran in a line along his spine. Her fingertips brushed over those hairs, triggering the nerves at their base.
Despite his recent ministrations, the sensory overload made him shudder. He was helpless in their grip. Her other hand slid over his chest before dropping lower, caressing his belly, his hips—
Gritting his teeth against his body’s humiliating betrayal, Lucas twisted away from her. “What did you do with the money I gave you yesterday? You were supposed to get groceries.”
Sadie smiled at him. Or more likely, at his efforts to resist her. The contrast between her and his dream woman couldn’t be starker—if his stepmother had ever been attractive, it had been a very long time ago. And when he’d hit puberty, she’d proved—repeatedly and with sickening enthusiasm—that the ugliness was more than skin deep.
“I’ve been staying with someone. Didn’t need them.”
Lucas didn’t want to know the identity of her latest crystal-imbibing cohort; she had many sexual partners. They were only a few of the reasons Lucas spent most of his nights roaming the streets.
Her smile faltered. “I need more, Lucas.”
She always did.
When she stepped toward him, he held up his hands. His people were not large—at five nine, he was considered tall. Sadie barely cleared five feet in her prime; since then, addiction had shrunk her frame considerably, but the predatory gleam in her eye still unsettled him.
“I don’t have anything more to give you,” he grated through gritted teeth. “But I’ve got a score tonight.”
The smile vanished altogether. “But I’m out.”
Lucas shrugged. “I’ll get more.”
She growled at him, an animal sound that caused him to pull his own lips back from his teeth. They could pass for human—so long as you didn’t notice that the canines were longer than they should be.
Sadie’s hair rose. Morph hair didn’t vary much between male and female. Deep black, it normally stood partially erect on her head, tapering from about four inches at the crown to an inch at the sides and continuing in a band down the back of her neck and along her spine. But now every strand bristled completely on end.
He gazed down into her eyes—the green ringing her black irises glowed an unhealthy yellow, a sign of her addiction. Her brown skin also had yellowish undertones, and the spots marking it—the only ones visible at the moment were those across her temples—were beige rather than the usual black.
Morphs were particularly sensitive to crystal dust. Used sparingly, it gave them the power to shift into forms larger than their own. But for his people, there was a downside.
