“No!” She huffed and looked as though she was considering hitting him again. If she tried it, he was going to hit her back. He was all for equal rights. “And if I had, I certainly wouldn’t be asking you for help.”#p#分页标题#e#
Payne rubbed his stinging cheek. “Why not?”
She grabbed his arm, sending another hot bolt of lust through him, and twisted it. She pointed near his wrist.
“Because he’s your grandfather.”
Payne tugged his arm free of her grip and turned it so he could see the markings on his skin. She prodded several symbols in a row. That was his grandfather’s name? Were his fae markings a record of his bloodline?
That made him hate them all the more.
He stared at the swirling glyphs, a low growl rumbling through him, anger that poured into his veins like acid and ate away at the restraints tethering his temper and his pain. His grandfather. His pulse accelerated, heart thumping hard against his breastbone, driving that scalding acid through his body, cranking up his anger to new, dangerous heights. Grandfather. He wanted to scratch those markings off his arm, loathed them with all of his being. He didn’t want to know that somewhere out there was the bastard who had sired his mother, who in turn had spawned him. An abomination.
Devil, he wanted that man to pay for his sins. He wanted to erase his grandfather’s name from his lineage and then erase him from existence.
Elissa released an exasperated huff. “You really don’t know anything about your kind, do you?”
He growled at her. “My kind are vampires.”
Her eyes shot wide. “What on mother earth did you just say?”
Payne towered over her and growled down at her again, his lips peeling back to reveal his fangs. “I’m a vampire.”
She stared at his mouth, eyes enormous and pulse off the scale. “What you are is all shades of messed up.”
He shoved her away from him. She tripped on a stack of books and landed in the pile behind them, her right arm catching on the armchair and her legs splayed. Payne tried not to think about her naked and like that, spread for his pleasure, the chestnut curls at the apex of her thighs glistening with arousal. Tried and failed. It had clearly been too long since he’d had sex. A good century at least. Damn. He was a ticking time-bomb of lust. He had heard tales of incubi who had gone insane from lack of sexual gratification. Payne looked down at his right hand. It was probably the only thing keeping him sane, but the pleasure he took from masturbation didn’t come close to the satisfaction he gained from intercourse.
Intercourse with this witch was officially off the menu though.
“You need to work on that temper.” She winced and pulled herself back onto her feet. “You need my help if you want to get that ring. Remember that.”
“Just tell me where he is and I’ll find him without you.” He wasn’t in the mood for this. She had crossed the line and he wanted to get the hell away from her. He should’ve known better. A pretty thing like her would want nothing to do with a monster like him.
“You won’t be able to find him without my help.”
“Draw me a map.” He was not going to change his mind about this, no matter what she did. “I’ll get the ring and whatever piece of junk you want me to bring back for you.”
She folded her arms across her chest, squashing her breasts into cleavage that made his heart thump against his ribs for a completely different reason. Her lips compressed into a mulish line, her eyebrows drawing tight.
“If you want to get that ring, you will need to learn about your incubus side. I need what that bastard took from me... I can help you with your incubus side.” Those words chilled him.
“Why do I need to?” He didn’t want to learn about his incubus side. He already knew enough. It was a curse.
She stacked the books back into messy piles. “Incubi don’t live in places that are easy to find. They live in places only accessible by incubi. You’ll need to teleport me there and you’ll need to do something else too.”
“What?” Payne didn’t like the sound of this. His day had looked good but it was rapidly going downhill and he had a feeling it was about to get much worse.
“You need to pretend I’m your mate.”
Payne stared at her, his mouth dry and heart frozen in his chest.
She couldn’t know that she was potentially just that to him.
The wicked gleam in her eyes and the sensual tilt of her glossy lips warned that she wanted more than make believe from him. He could see what she desired and he couldn’t give it to her. He wouldn’t let his darker nature out to play and he certainly wasn’t about to masquerade as her lover or enter a den and face his grandfather. He wanted nothing to do with his incubus nature. He wished it didn’t exist.