Page 54

Chapter 12

Kostas

“ Y ou sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine,” Malcolm snapped. He kept his arms crossed as he marched through the leaves, crunching them underfoot like he had a personal vendetta to settle with them. With all nature, maybe.

He’d been none too amused when Kostas had pulled a leaf out of his long brown hair. He’d shot Kostas a narrow-lipped glare, stuck out his chin, and turned away.

Kostas had to point him back the right direction.

Heading toward the car was a bad idea. Who knew if the kidnappers were still watching it? Anyway, it wouldn’t get them far if they’d done anything to it. So they were hiking.

Sort of.

Malcolm was in entirely the wrong kind of shoes.

Kostas couldn’t stop thinking about those damn panties, discarded so carelessly on the cave floor. Or the fact that Malcolm was walking around, full-on commando. That couldn’t be comfortable, walking this much.

He couldn’t stop thinking about all that smooth skin, the way he moved—constantly in motion but ever graceful. Terribly tempting.

Maybe he was caught in the incubus’s web, but he didn’t feel worse for it. Truth was, he’d expected Malcolm to take and take and take from him, to drink him down and save himself.

He hadn’t. At least, it hadn’t felt that way.

When Malcolm fed, it was like he was tapping into an ocean that surged between them. There was no way to drink down every drop.

Kostas tried to tell himself that Malcolm simply hadn’t tried. And maybe he hadn’t. Maybe he’d held back and only taken what he needed.

Maybe it was enough. As stubbornly as Malcolm marched through the underbrush, his gait had picked up a strange cadence. It took Kostas a while to realize he was limping. Malcolm’s posture was so perfect, his shoulders set, his head up, that it was hardly noticeable.

It hadn’t even been twelve hours since a bullet had torn through the man’s leg, ripping a hole in the front and back of his thigh. Even if his skin had smoothed over, the pink pucker of a scar the primary evidence of his pain, that didn’t mean all was well.

“Well, you are fine,” Kostas agreed, shooting the incubus a lopsided smile.

Malcolm huffed, blowing his hair off his forehead.

“But maybe we should rest. Just for a few minutes.”

Malcolm narrowed his bright eyes Kostas’s way, but he teetered to a stop, bent over, and rubbed his leg like he could work the gunshot wound out like a knot.

“Do you need to feed again?” Kostas stepped closer.

Malcolm snapped up. Crap on a cracker, Kostas had never seen eyes that lit so easily with anger. “We’re getting out of this fucking forest, remember?”

“Can’t do that if you pass out on me.”

“I said I’m fine.”

Kostas held up his hands. “Fair enough. Would it help to lean on me?”

“It would not.” His nose in the air, Malcolm started walking again, just to prove a point.

Kostas fell into step beside him. For a while, they went on like that, quiet and tense and awkward, Kostas feeling like he’d withheld something from Malcolm—something he needed—even if he couldn’t put his finger on what.

“Do you know why those men took you? What they wanted?” he asked when he couldn’t stand the silence anymore. It was talk, or start humming, and that’d just drag any passerby in the woods straight to them.

Malcolm scoffed. “Erectile dysfunction.”

Kostas stopped and blinked. “Seriously?”

Suddenly, Malcolm was looking away, biting his bottom lip. When he swallowed, it seemed difficult. Pained. His lashes fluttered.

“Sort of. I—” He swallowed again, and Kostas wanted nothing so much as to reach for him, wrap his arms around Malcolm and chase away any shadow that’d passed over him. “I think the idea was more to use me as a social lubricant. Get humans more, uh, in the mood. Whatever it is they actually want.”

“ Fuck .”

“That’s the idea.”

Those humans—they’d taken Malcolm. They’d wanted to use him as some kind of supernatural date-rape drug. Or worse.

It was barbaric.

And it was exactly what Kostas had spent the last day—his whole life, really—thinking about incubi. They were simple predators. Horny users who’d take all they could and give nothing back.

Malcolm McKittack was a pain in the ass, but that hadn’t been Kostas’s experience so far. Maybe he’d needed to touch him to feel it, to see his vulnerability behind all that snark and tailored finery.

Now, the incubus’s shoulders were hunched. He turned away again, started to walk, and Kostas couldn’t let him go.

He reached out, wrapping his hand around Malcolm’s wrist. Malcolm flinched, jerking back. “What?” he demanded, all sharp words and brittle anger.

Kostas dropped his wrist, but he stepped closer, and when Malcolm didn’t jerk away again, he let the barest brush of his fingertips pass over the edge of Malcolm’s palm.

“I am so sorry, Malcolm. You’re more than that.”

He scoffed. “I’m really not.”

Kostas frowned. What else could he do? A day ago, he wouldn’t have believed it either. But Malcolm was more than that. He was strange and persnickety and stubborn, and everything he said was either meant to draw you in or slide a blade right between your ribs.

He was complicated and hard and beautiful and?—

And Kostas was confused. Surely this wasn’t just because they’d fucked.

He felt... protective. Like he hadn’t felt about anyone since he’d left his home in the Mediterranean and turned his back on his siblings.

All this, over a demon. But the sorrow and doubt in Malcolm’s frown and downturned gaze ached in Kostas’s chest too. The only solution was to find the humans who had trapped this demon, hunt them down, and tear their fucking hearts out.

Kostas gasped past the sudden swell of rage. His vision tilted, but he shook it off.

There, past Malcolm, he saw a cabin.

He jerked his chin that way, and Malcolm turned to look.

“Let’s rest there. Find something to eat.”

“I don’t need food ,” Malcolm spat.

“Well, I do. And you should rest that leg, at least for a little bit.”

The fight went out of Malcolm too fast. He was tired, sure, but it was more than that, and Kostas was worried.

“Fine.”

“Let me go first.”

Kostas approached the cabin carefully, stepping as lightly as he could, his claws out, his arms tensed to attack. But he didn’t see anything. Didn’t hear anyone inside.

The front door was unlocked.

He’d hoped the cabin was abandoned, but inside, it smelled like fresh smoke. There was a quilted throw on the couch, the kind that was an heirloom no one would just leave behind, and there was only a faint layer of dust on the shelves.

Still, it was empty—for now—and they wouldn’t stay long.

“It’s clear,” Kostas whispered, waving Malcolm forward while he stared into the cabin still.

But Malcolm didn’t approach, so Kostas turned.

There, beside the incubus, holding the barrel of a sawed-off shotgun just beside Malcolm’s furious face, was a human. Old and wrinkled, his beard full and dirt on his cheeks.

“Not so clear after all,” the old man said, voice hoarse like he barely used it. “Now y’all sonnies better tell me what you’re about, trying to break into my cabin, or things are gonna get ugly real fast.”