Scythe could use a distraction himself, his thoughts still snagged on the uninvited mental image of Chiara emerging wet and naked from her shower. He shifted on the wooden kitchen chair, but it was no use. Nothing was going to make him comfortable.
Nothing except scratching the itch this female had pricked in him since the moment he first laid eyes on her.
Not going to happen.
He shifted again, watching through hooded eyes as she cut a small piece of steak and brought it to her mouth. Her lips closed around the tip of her fork and she sighed as she chewed, pleasure lighting her sun-kissed face.
The groan that was building in his throat must have been audible to her, because she glanced up at him abruptly.
“I got so busy outside today, I forgot to eat lunch,” she rushed to explain. “I didn't realize how hungry I was until now.”
She set down her fork and took a sip of red wine from an elegant crystal glass. The dark green bottle she’d poured from was unlabeled, the wine’s rich bouquet enticing, even to his Breed senses.
“It’s one of ours,” she said, as he tore his gaze from her and looked for something—anything—else to focus on. “This region’s soil is perfect for growing Aglianico grapes, but there’s something about our land here that brings out the complexity of the wine.”
She took another sip, and when she drew the glass away, a ruby-red droplet clung to her lush lower lip. She caught it with a swipe of her tongue, and it was all Scythe could do not to moan. He clamped his molars tight, no easy thing with his fangs looming behind the grim line of his mouth.
“It’s a shame you can’t taste this vintage for yourself,” Chiara added. “It’s so good, it’s practically a religious experience.”
For fuck’s sake. It was bad enough watching her eat and drink, seeing her soft lips and pink tongue moving in ways that made his evidently permanent erection strain with intensifying pressure against his zipper. Hearing her talk about the wine while everything Breed in him was thinking about the way her blood would taste—the way every soft, creamy inch of her would taste—was a disaster waiting to happen.
“How long has it been for you, Scythe?”
“What?” The reply shot out of him, half in confusion, half in bald panic.
“Since you fed.”
She went back to work on her steak, slicing a small piece, then wrapping her mouth around it. Holy hell. Each delicate movement of her jaw and throat made arousal wrench tighter.
Chiara swallowed the bite of meat, tilting her head at him as she reached for her wineglass again. “I feel rude eating in front of you, even though none of this is what you’d want.”
Christ, if she only knew what he wanted.
She had to know. His glyphs were pulsing all over his skin, and there was no hiding the glittering flecks of amber that were burning in his eyes.
The fact that she glanced down awkwardly, color flushing her cheeks, told him his body’s reaction wasn’t going unnoticed.
She placed her fork and knife down on the edge of her plate, then calmly stood up. “Scythe, if you need to feed, then why don’t you let me—”
“No.” He all but leaped back from the table. Never mind that putting more distance between himself and this luscious female was the last thing his Breed instincts demanded he do. “What the hell are you saying?”
His fangs ached in reflex, his senses going electric in an instant. He reined himself in with a violent curse. Even if he was starved to the brink of death, he wasn’t about to entertain the idea of slaking his thirst on Chiara.
If his reasons weren’t personal enough, the biggest one of all was the fact that even a taste of Chiara’s Breedmate blood would bond him to her for eternity.
And damned if he would ever do that to either one of them.
“Oh.” She blanched now, gaping at his furious expression. “You didn’t actually think—Oh, God. I was only going to suggest that if you need nourishment, I’m sure that if I called Bella and Ettore, they could arrange to send a blood Host out here for you.”
“Forget it.” Feeling worse than a bastard and an ass besides, he practically snarled his answer. It took a few moments for his pulse to recover. The rest of him was slower to back down from the jolt of hunger that raked him. “I fed last night, before I arrived in Rome.”
He breathed a sigh of relief that he had taken care of that physical need, at least. But the clock was already ticking again, and if his duty for the Order took more than a handful of days, he would have no choice but to seek out fresh red cells.
The thought of feeding at the villa when Chiara was in the same vicinity was nothing he wanted to consider, but leaving her unguarded to hunt for a blood Host away from the vineyard was totally out of the question.
His only hope was to wrap this mission up and get the hell out, the sooner the better.
“Shit.” He scrubbed his hand over his bearded jaw. Chiara had gone quiet now, but he could hear the flutter of her pulse beating faster as they both stood facing each other with only the table between them.
He didn’t mean to make her uneasy, but his control was being stretched to its limits.
Torture. Every second beside her was sheer agony, and that was coming from a male who had endured heinous, hellish tortures before. More times than he cared to recount.
“Speaking of the Order,” he managed through gritted teeth, “I need to check in with Trygg. Will you be all right in here for a few minutes?”
She crossed her arms. “I think I can handle finishing my dinner and cleaning up afterward without supervision.”
He frowned at her annoyed tone, but took his opportunity to retreat. It wasn’t his custom to flee a difficult situation, but damned if he knew what to do with his disturbing attraction to Chiara.
Tugging his phone from the pocket of his faded jeans, he cut a path toward the open living room just off the kitchen. He was pissed off and unbearably aroused, and it made his voice scrape out of him like razor blades when Trygg answered his call.
“Tell me you have something,” he muttered without greeting the other Hunter.
The plan had been that Trygg and the rest of the Order were going to get in touch with a few of their contacts and see if there had been any chatter about other break-ins or attacks in the region.
“Nothing yet,” Trygg replied, offering no further comment.
The surly male had never been much for conversation, and until now Scythe had actually appreciated that about him. But with Chiara in the other room and nothing but a long night ahead, Scythe was desperate to kill a little time on safe, solid ground.
“Have you done anything with the description Chiara gave the Order?”
“We ran it through the IID, but there were no hits.”
Scythe grunted. The International Identification Database was a relic from the days before First Dawn, back when the Breed was still living in secret from their human neighbors twenty years ago. The registry had been resurrected in recent years, but it was far from complete. Only the most law-abiding civilians in the vampire nation participated in the IID now.
Which left a hell of a lot of room for error.
“So, we can assume the bastard who attacked Chiara probably isn’t an upstanding member of Breed society,” Scythe drawled. “That leaves a few thousand other options for who we’re looking for.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” Trygg quipped darkly. “We’ve got other channels open on this. We’ll get a lock on this son of a bitch soon.”
Scythe swore under his breath. “Do me a favor and make it now.”
“Something wrong?” Trygg’s reply was toneless, but there was no mistaking the warrior’s intensity. “You sensing danger out there already, brother?”
“Yeah. You could say that.” Scythe let the answer slide past his teeth and fangs before he could stop it. “It’s pushing twenty-four hours and I’ve got nothing so far. This place is locked down and secure. Not so much as a flicker of trouble trippi
ng my internal radar.”
“So, what’s the problem?”
It could be summed up in one word, but admitting he was allowing himself to get tangled up in his want of the female he’d been sent to protect was a weakness Scythe was not about to expose. Least of all to a male who had endured, and survived, just as much as he had.
Worse, in some ways.
Trygg had eventually found the Order, a fact that Scythe could see had been his brother’s saving grace. If barely.
But Scythe had nothing.
He had no one.
Not since Mayrene and her little boy, Jacob.
A human woman and child whom he had once, foolishly, permitted himself to care for as his own.
And, now, here he was, faced with a similar temptation with Chiara.
An even greater temptation, considering she was a Breedmate and letting himself get too close might shackle them both with a bond nothing would sever.
Only death.
He shuddered to consider Chiara’s life ending. It wouldn’t—not as long as he had breath in his body. But protecting her and wanting her were two different things. One he would give his life for. The other would put both their lives at risk if he didn’t find a way to extinguish his impossible desire.
Scythe’s grip tightened on his phone. “Just do what you can. Turn over every rock until you find something on this guy and I’ll keep things on lockdown over here. I’m going to lose my goddamned mind being forced to lady-sit in the middle of nowhere for nights on end. The faster we can flush the fucker out and drag him in to the Order for questioning, the faster I can get the hell out of here.”
He disconnected the call and shoved the phone back into his pocket. As he wheeled around, he found Chiara standing behind him in the arched entry of the kitchen.
The soft light illuminated her from the back, silhouetting her curves and dark, unbound hair in a warm halo.
“Everything all right?”
How long had she been standing there? Had she heard everything he’d just said?
Her schooled expression gave nothing away, but he inwardly kicked himself for not taking more care to make sure he was alone. He'd always been able to rely on his ability to sense danger, so why was it that Chiara never triggered his warning bells until it was too late?
Considering she was literally the most potentially destructive element to his mental well-being in a five-hundred mile radius besides Mount Vesuvius, that was saying something.
“Everything’s fine,” he uttered sharply. “You should go to bed. I need to go outside and check things, make sure we’re secure for the night.”
She said nothing, merely gave him a nod then turned and walked away. He stared after her, feeling like a bastard for what he’d said to Trygg, for the fact that she most certainly heard every word.
When she had disappeared into her bedroom and closed the door, he stalked out the back of the villa into the cool night air. The darkness was a balm to his overheated skin, if not to the raging pound in his temples and in areas farther south.
As for his flimsy excuse about checking the perimeter of the property, that was a straight-up lie. The only thing demanding his full attention was the raging erection that refused to give him even a second’s peace.
Rounding the barn out back, he sagged against the weathered wood and tilted his head up to the starlit ebony sky. His left hand brushed over the nagging ache at his groin. The contact wrenched a hiss from between his teeth and fangs.
Damn, he was in rare shape.
His eyes slammed shut. In an instant, his brain supplied a wealth of erotic images in rapid succession. Chiara shoveling dark soil in the afternoon sun, her face dewy with sweat. Her perfect, teacup breasts beneath that peachy sweater, the dusky nipples tight and all too apparent beneath the soft weave. He groaned at the recollection of her pink tongue flicking out to lick the drop of wine that had stained her plump lips.
“Fuck.”
The curse rattled out of his throat, and before he could stop himself, he unfastened the button of his jeans, then yanked the zipper down to give himself access to his erect cock.
Never had he been driven to this state of weakness. He’d been reared on merciless discipline. Iron-hard resolve. Machine-like control.
His body’s need for pleasure was a shame that had been beaten out of him—tortured into submission, first by Dragos and the sadistic Minions who served him, then by Scythe himself, years later, after Mayrene.
But physical need was merely a rope that sought to bind him.
Emotional need—like the feelings Chiara stirred in him—was a shackle he refused to don ever again.
He couldn’t bear that kind of enslavement. Not again. Not with this Breedmate who tempted him in ways no other woman had before.
Against his will, Chiara filled his senses as he stroked his shaft. He didn’t want to picture her, didn’t want to recall the sweet scent of her soaped skin and shampooed hair, or the fresh beauty of her face, her wine-stained lips and long-lashed, chocolate-brown eyes.
Damn it, he didn’t want to acknowledge the fever that licked through him with every quickening movement of his hand along his cock. He wanted her hands on him. He wanted to hear her breath racing along with her pulse as he pleasured her. He wanted to feel the soft, wet haven of her body gloved around him as he drove them both to the brink of a splintering release.
He wanted all of her.
His veins throbbed with the urge to possess her. To make her his in every way.
“No.” The denial ripped past his teeth and fangs, but it was too late. He came hard into his own hand, images of Chiara filling his mind, his senses, his blood.
He shuddered with the force of his release, and with the depth of his self-disgust. Not only for the pitiful indulgence he’d just succumbed to, but for the stupidity of his motivation.
If he thought his desire for Chiara could be swept from his system so easily, he recognized the fallacy of that idea now.
Because her name still echoed through him with each heavy breath he dragged into his lungs. Her scent still clung to his memory, sweet and enticing. The fierce hunger that had driven him outside like a base animal still hammered through his veins.
There was no taking this edge off.
He glowered back at the villa, watching as the sole light in the place—Chiara’s bedroom—winked out. No chance in hell that he could return inside now to seek his own bed. Not when it was only a few paces away from hers.
How he would endure another night—or worse, a handful more—he didn’t want to contemplate.
No, the best thing he could do was keep a healthy distance from his lovely charge until he’d done his job and could get the fuck out of here.
Scythe had never been one to ask for favors, but he sent a silent prayer up to the fathomless night sky, begging for mercy he knew he damned well didn’t deserve.
Chapter 6
Chiara stood at the back door of the villa and stared out at the torrential late afternoon rain, her frame of mind as dark as the ominous sky.
Three days. Three days cooped up in this house alone with Scythe, who seemed at least twice as miserable about that fact as she was. She’d barely seen him since the second night, after he’d made it crystal clear that he couldn’t wait to be finished with his mission.
The villa was a large, sprawling space, but it was practically impossible not to cross paths with someone else in the house at some point.
Unless her forbidding houseguest was deliberately avoiding her.
“Maybe the danger is over,” she murmured into her phone, tracing a heart with Pietro’s name in it onto the condensation gathered on the window of the door. “Maybe the break-in last week was just a random attack and whoever did it has moved on.”
Bella sighed on the other end of the line. “I wish that were the case. Ettore and the other warriors have been doing a lot of digging. The Order seems fairly certain there was nothing random about it.”
&nbs
p; Chiara frowned at the information. She backed away from the window pane, letting the light-blocking curtain fall back into place. She slumped into a nearby chair with a quiet groan.
“Honestly, Bella, this is getting intolerable. I miss my normal life. I miss my son. Pietro doesn't have to come home if the Order believes it’s not safe, but surely the two of us could go somewhere for a while. That way Scythe doesn’t have to bother with having me underfoot, and Pietro and I could be together until the Order has done their business.”
“I feel for you, but you know we can't risk it. Like Ettore and Scythe said, the best way to stop this individual is to lead him into the Order’s hands. Until he's been identified and caught, no matter where you go, this male is a danger to both you and Pietro.”
Chiara folded her legs beneath her and let her head tilt back on her tired shoulders. “Well, whatever the Order thinks this male wants with me, I wish it would happen already. I can't stand the waiting.”
Or the wanting.
She toyed with the hem of her sweater as she thought back over the past few days. Scythe had been in a dark mood that only seemed to get worse as the days went on. He hardly looked at her anymore, which only made the fact that she couldn't stop looking at him, thinking about him, all the more unbearable.
“What happened to him?” The question blurted out of her before she could call it back. “When we were at his place in Matera those weeks ago, I heard him tell Pietro that he lost his hand trying to save someone.”
And ever since, she’d been curious to know the story. Who had meant so much to the stoic, unreachable former Hunter?
Who had he loved so deeply that he’d risked, and ultimately sacrificed, a piece of himself to try to save?
“You probably know as much about him as I do,” Bella replied. “Which isn’t saying much, is it? I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that Scythe is a hard male to warm up to.”