High Voltage (Fever #10)(76)

    “It wasn’t my first,” he said. “Though the initials are the same. It’s the one I took when I made my home here. We change our names to fit the clime, the time. I’ve kept that one awhile.”

“So, you talked to Kat, she told you my hand turned black, and from that mere fact alone you deduced I was turning into a Hunter?” At least I’d had the vision to go on, the Ready? You fly, too. Although I couldn’t decide if it implied I would actually physically transform into a Hunter or just turn completely black, become lethal to the touch, yet receive the small consolation prize of being able to astral-project into the stars on occasion. Superhero rules are pretty obscure.

He inclined his head in one of those imperious nods.

“Some people might have thought it had infected me, and I was dying,” I told him. I’d briefly entertained the notion myself. It hadn’t resonated in my gut and, although I prize my brain, I value my gut just as highly. A lot of times more.

“I’m not some people.”

“You’re not even people.”

“There is that. Are you so sure you are?”

I shot him a sharp look. “You don’t think I am. And why didn’t I know you met me before I thought we met?”

His gaze shuttered.

“You wanted rules? Fine, I’m making one. One of ‘ours,’ which means we both obey it. Full disclosure or don’t bloody well interfere in my life. Don’t even try to be a part of it. Don’t you think,” I threw his own words back at him, “it’s time we cut everything loose? I might be gone soon. Soaring around in space. A Hunter. You might never see me again. I bet then you’ll be sorry you didn’t talk to me.” I didn’t say, I bet then you’ll be sorry you went away for two years and wasted them. But I wanted to. Except people have to want to stay with you and he clearly hadn’t.

    He jerked and snarled, “I’ll bloody well be sorry I didn’t do more than that with you, Dani. I wanted to make love to you. I wanted to fuck you, I wanted to cut loose with you like I’ve never been able to cut loose with a woman in my entire existence. I wanted to explore every ounce of that brilliant mind and every inch of that powerful body of yours, learn your deepest desires, be the one to rock your goddamn world, watch the great Dani O’Malley abandon herself to passion, see her in the one place she’s never conflicted, and revel in being alive.”

Holy hell, he felt it, too.

“The Nine have no equals,” he said, eyes glittering with crimson fire. “We always hold back. An eternity of being careful. It’s not our nature to be restrained. Especially not when we fuck.”

I’d never thought about it that way. Like me, he could break people without even meaning to. Restrained sex: oxymoron any way you looked at it. To have so much inside you—all coiled up and ready to explode, waiting, always waiting for someone to come along who can see it, who can handle it, and never being able to let it out—I know what it feels like.

Pain.

A pain that, unlike the others I’ve mastered, I’ve never been able to figure out how to stop feeling. I don’t know that you can. It’s life trying to happen.

“A woman like you is a once-in-an-eternity opportunity. Every bloody one of us was waiting to see what you’d become when you grew up. I told you, you’re a fucking tsunami. I knew it even then. You didn’t smell like other people.”

The Nine had been watching me. Waiting to see what kind of woman I’d become.

“And Christ, you ran on pure adrenaline, unchecked aggression and sky-fucking-high dreams. The most fearless thing I’d ever seen. God damn it, Dani, everything I’ve done since the day I met you has been about keeping you alive. To never cage you or take away your choices, to see you rise, watch you become.”

    “What? A bloody Hunter?” I demanded.

“I had no fucking idea that might happen,” he snarled. “If I’d known your hand had turned black, I would have factored that into my linchpin theories about you, and drawn conclusions sooner. It might have affected my actions, changed them. You withheld a critical piece of information.” He was angry about it, and not even trying to hide it, his face no longer cool and composed, but savage, fangs distending.

“As if you don’t all the time,” I flung, on the verge of vibrating, melting into the slipstream without even meaning to. Papers on his desk gusted, his hair ruffled.

“Breathe,” he ordered. “Get control of yourself.”

“Practice the preach. Your fangs are showing.” But I closed my eyes and took a moment to center myself. Then my eyes flew open and I said, “What the hell, Ryodan? What if I actually become a Hunter?” My voice broke on the last word, pain lacing it. Was I just one of those people who never got to belong? In this world but not of it? Never, ever once really of it?

He was silent a long moment, as if trying to decide what to say. A muscle worked in his jaw. Finally, he said carefully, “If you become a Hunter, perhaps you won’t care about this world, or those of us in it anymore. Perhaps it’s what you’re meant to be. Your journey takes you somewhere else.”

“You don’t believe in Fate,” I rejected flatly. “You believe in you.”

“Ah, Stardust, I’ve seen too many patterns unfold during my existence that hold a startling, cohesive symmetry. There’s a plan and it’s way the fuck bigger than you and me. The universe has an agenda. For a long time, everything I did was in defiance of it. Then I began trying to protect that agenda, so I could, at least, have some small say in the details.”