Free Eternal Sin by Laura Wright Page A

he could manage to see through the open doorway down the hall.
    Unable to stop himself, he moved his gaze over her, pink and smooth and lush as she stood near the small bathroom window, gazing out, towel in hand. Her long legs gave way to a tight, round ass, and her beautiful belly was the perfect complement to large, heavy breasts with puckered, succulent, rosy nipples. Swell agreed with her. So did his blood. It was a good thing he had no emotional feeling—a brilliant move by all parties involved—or the sight before him, coupled with the recent memory of her fangs inside him, might have caused him to reconsider his plot to torture and kill her father.
    And that long-held goal would be met at all costs.
    She eased the towel between her legs and patted her inner thighs and her sex. His tongue felt dry in his mouth. He knew just where he could wet it.
    Behind the zipper of his jeans, his cock was straining and pulsing, begging to get free—to get at her.
    Never going to happen, prat. You’ve been there once before, remember? It’s a terribly addictive place to be.
    As soon as the sun sank, as soon as the sky turned from lavender to gray, he’d be off, past the pussy brothers and that witch of a hawk shifter, and back to his penthouse balcony. An emotionless paven seated behind his white and black keys waiting for fate to find him.
    “Admiring your handiwork or cursing it?”
    He glanced up, caught that pale blue stare. “Neither.”
    “Oh, yes.” She wrapped the towel around herself. “It would take an actual working heart to feel one or both of those things.”
    “You know you don’t have a working heart either, right?”
    Decently covered by the long white towel, she left the bathroom and walked through the living area toward him. “I may not have blood pumping through that particular muscle, but I have and give and show the true meaning of the word. Goodness, kindness, thoughtfulness.”
    “I remember,” he said evenly.
    “What?” She came to stand in the patch of sunlight in the hall, her skin pink and glowing. “What do you remember? Me pulling you into that cave? Feeding you? Taking care—”
    “I remember the night we created the balas .” The words weren’t said in a soft, sentimental, romantic tone. It was only fact. Though he wasn’t sure why he would bring up such a fact.
    Petra’s eyes were shuttered as she stared at him. Perhaps she didn’t like it when he spoke of the child. Or perhaps it was about sex. The memory of the two of them together. He couldn’t tell.
    He shouldn’t care.
    “I also remember waking up to an empty tree house,” he added. Once again, fact.
    She sniffed. “You couldn’t possibly be looking for sympathy.”
    He hesitated in answering. Was he? He didn’t think so. But there was something about the memory that poked and prodded at that dead muscle behind his ribs. “I told you who I planned to kill and you ran away to warn him.”
    “Yes. Of course I did. He’s my father.” And with that, she walked past him into the bedroom.
    He turned and watched her. Watched as she pulled out a drawer and dug through a stack of clothing.
    “How do you call that paven , that monster, torturer, and wreaker of havoc, ‘Father’?” he asked evenly.
    “Because that’s what he is.”
    “No matter what he’s done?”
    “Yes.”
    “What will you call me, then?”
    She froze, her hand deep within the drawer, her wrist covered in denim. For a moment she just stared straight ahead, breathed in and out.
    “What will you tell the balas I am?” Syn continued, unemotional but oddly curious.
    She didn’t answer him.
    “That I’m a cock-up without feeling, but Cruen is a good and worthy parent? Is that what you’re going to say, Petra?”
    Finally she released a breath. “I don’t know what I’m going to say. I don’t know what Cruen is. I never got the chance to know.” She glanced over her shoulder at him, her eyes stormy. “But I do know this: I won’t let my