Burn For Me (Phoenix Fire #1)(44)
Author: Cynthia Eden

He blinked, and for an instant, seemed lost.

“So remember that,” she muttered and grabbed his head. She pulled him down toward her and pressed her lips against his. The kiss was fast, hard, frantic, and meant to prove a point.

Fear doesn’t make me want you less.

She slipped her tongue into his mouth. Tasted him. Felt the press of his fingers against her ass. She let the kiss linger, savoring for an instant, but . . . Eve pulled her lips from his. “All humans aren’t the same.” It was a lesson he needed to learn. “I’m not going to come at you with a knife in my hand.”

Another smile from him, but this one . . . this one made her heart hurt. “Yes, you will.” He pulled away and headed for the stairs.

Eve stared after him. She’d thought that she was the one with the trust issues. It looked like they both had to learn how to deal—fast.

Cain’s hand was on the banister. “We’ll leave in ten minutes.”

Looked like sharing time was definitely over. “Where are we going?”

Another step. “You’re going to a safe house. You’re out of the game.”

She wasn’t going to rush after him. “This isn’t a game.”

“I’ll take care of Wyatt.”

While she what? Sat in the corner like a good little girl? He obviously had her confused with someone else. Wyatt had come after her. He’d killed her friend. She wasn’t walking away from that guy. “I can help you.”

“You can get captured again. Tortured.” Cain turned back to her. “The fire doesn’t hurt you, but from what I can tell, everything else out there does.”

She swallowed. He was right.

His gaze raked her. “You know what I am. I didn’t keep that secret.”

No, he hadn’t.

“But baby, what the f**k are you?”

Eve stiffened. That hurt.

“If you die, will you burn and come back?” he asked her. “Are you like me?”

A phoenix. She lifted her chin. “If I am, does that mean you’ll want to kill me, too?”

He didn’t answer. Maybe that was an answer.

She tried to sound calm. “I’m not a threat to you, Cain.”

“Yes,” he bit out, “you are.”

“Why?”

“Because a phoenix can only die—truly die—in that one moment when the fire rises and pulls us from the ashes. When we’re coming back and the flames surround us . . . we’re vulnerable.”

But those flames burned so hot.

“Most can’t touch us then. Most . . .”

Eve understood. Other phoenixes would be able to reach through the fire.

“In that one instant,” Cain said, “we can truly die. And not come back.”

A vulnerability. He shouldn’t be telling her this. Why was he telling her this?

“That’s why we kill our own kind. Phoenixes . . . we’re the only ones who can stand the fire. The only ones who can reach through the flames to kill.”

But . . . but she could reach through the fire, too.

“Are you like me?” he asked again, staring down at her. “If you die, Eve, will you rise again?”

She could only shake her head. I don’t know. She’d never known what she was. Maybe that was why she spent so much time looking for the truth about others.

I can’t find it for myself.

Cain said, “You can’t help me fight Wyatt. You’ll just slow me down.”

Well, crap, the guy sure wasn’t pulling any punches. But she had an ace up her sleeve. “Before you go tossing me into some safe house, there’s one thing you should know.”

“And what’s that?”

Eve offered him a smile that showed lots of teeth. “I wasn’t totally honest with the vampire.” So sue me. “Thanks to my little abduction last night, I know how to find Wyatt.” She kept her expression determined. “As soon as we rendezvous with Trace, I’ll tell you both everything I know.”

The wolf shifter wasn’t at the meeting point in Charlotte. Cain’s fingers tapped on the steering wheel. Eve was curiously still beside him. The woman had never been this quiet before, not for so long.

They’d been waiting twenty minutes already. There was no sign of the wolf.

Cain cranked the engine.

Her hand flew out, and her fingers wrapped around his. “We aren’t leaving,” she told him, her voice almost a growl.

He turned his head toward her. Met that bright blue stare. “Yeah, we are.” He was definite on this. The longer they stayed there, the more danger they could face.

She had to see the writing on the wall. She had to. Trace wasn’t meeting them because the wolf couldn’t meet them.

Eve hadn’t been the only one taken last night, but she had been the only one rescued.

Two vamp bars. Two traps. One missing wolf.

Cain frowned. He should have known that Wyatt would have a backup plan in place.

They’d picked the old park as a meeting point because it was isolated. Private. But it looked like the meeting wasn’t going to happen.

Cain eased the vehicle—another stolen ride—away from the curb.

“Take me to the bar,” Eve whispered.

From the corner of his eye, Cain saw her hands clench in her lap. He knew which bar she meant.

Thirty minutes later, they were in front of Bite—the vamp bar that Trace had visited the night before.

There wasn’t much left of the place. Charred bricks. Ash. The shell of a wall in the back. Humans—probably arson investigators—were combing through the wreckage and yellow lines of tape marked off the area, keeping the gawkers back.

Hell.

“Wyatt has him,” Eve said. There was no emotion in her voice.

Cain kept driving past the bar. Nice and slow. Their windows were tinted so no one would get a good look at him and Eve, and he sure wasn’t doing anything to attract attention to them, not yet.

He also didn’t respond to Eve’s comment. Wyatt could have the wolf shifter—

Or Trace could be dead. If the wolf had fought back, death was a strong possibility. Cain knew other paranormals who hadn’t been taken alive. Wyatt just burned their bodies and moved on to his next target.

“You said that you knew how to find Wyatt,” Cain said instead, trying to keep her focused and away from the wall of worry he could almost feel growing around her. As soon as he learned what she knew, he would be dropping Eve off with a supernatural who owed him more than a few favors. The guy would keep her safe—until Cain made sure Wyatt wasn’t coming after any of them ever again.