Dark Taste of Rapture (Alien Huntress 6)

Not sorry. Anyone who hurt Noelle deserved what they got.

Noelle!

Fear and fury battled for supremacy as Hector straightened the rest of the way. At the same time, flames sparked in the grass, where the body had been, catching, growing, then reaching the flowers, catching, growing, then slithering toward Noelle’s house. Shit!

Hector swung around, searching for any other threat against his woman. No one else stepped from the shadows. He focused on Noelle. She held a phone to her ear with one hand, was still clutching her side with the other.

Pale and shaky, she disconnected from the call and took a step toward him. “Whole crew is on the way. Firemen, medics, AIR.”

“Stay back, sweetheart. I don’t want you burned.” He held out an arm to ward her off, saw a mist of crackling blue, glowing so brightly his eyes teared. His jacket, gone. His shirt, vaporized. Skin, muscle, bone, vanished. Only that mist remained.

He’d completely atomized. Anything he touched would be razed the very instant of contact.

Horror swept through him, but he didn’t give in to that emotion, either. Behind him, the fire continued to grow and rage. He could hear the crackle of flames, feel the smoldering of the bricks.

“Let me help you,” Noelle said, silver gaze on him rather than her ruined home.

“Listen to me, sweetheart.” Smoke wafted around him, thick and black, and he coughed. “You can’t get close to me. Not right now.”

Though she looked like she wanted to argue, she leaned against the car, maintaining distance. Was his proud, strong girl trembling?

“How bad are you?” he demanded. Stay calm. Don’t make things worse.

“Not very. A few stitches and I’ll be fine.”

Stitches, a needle being threaded through her precious skin. Another spark of anger caused the azure to pulse. He grit his molars.

Finally, the medics arrived and converged on Noelle to patch her up. When one of them tried to approach him, shock and terror in his eyes, Hector issued a harsh threat that kept him and everyone else at bay.

The firemen arrived next, bustling around to douse the flames with whatever enzyme spray they used. They even sprayed him, but the blue didn’t dissipate in the slightest.

He could have run, could have tried to keep his identity under wraps, but he wasn’t leaving until someone he trusted stood next to Noelle.

As if summoned from Hector’s thoughts alone, Dallas arrived, sprinting onto the scene like the hero he was. He checked on Noelle, who erupted into a speech Hector couldn’t hear over the chaos of the sirens.

Hector turned to view the charred remains of Noelle’s home. Nothing would be salvaged, he realized, f**king hating himself. His chest hollowed out, his fears flooding him. He could have torched Noelle, could have done that to Noelle.

That easily, he made a decision. They were done. In every way. No waiting to see if he could learn to control himself. No working together. No back and forth seduction. No hoping he would change. He’d just proven to himself that he could never be trusted around her.

A frowning Dallas approached him slowly. “What can I do to help you?”

“Shoot me with the strongest damn tranq the medics have. Twice.” Without his emotions to fuel him, his arms would go back to normal. “Then take me home and make sure no one—fucking no one—comes over.”

Thirty-nine

FUCKING DALLAS, HECTOR THOUGHT two days later as he strode through AIR. Conversations tapered off. Eyes of every color watched him warily. No one said a word to him. He didn’t care.

The tranq had worked, returning his arms to normal and knocking him out all night and most of the next day. Except the bastard hadn’t taken Hector home. He’d woken up in the hospital, tubes and electrodes hooked to practically every inch of him.

He’d been utterly shocked that no government officials were waiting to bag and tag him. Shocked that reporters hadn’t swarmed the place.

Shocked that a bandaged Noelle lay in the bed next to him, sleeping peacefully, lovely and alive, and breaking his goddamn heart because he couldn’t hold her. He’d checked her file—thirty-eight stitches in her side, a small blood transfusion—and left her there.

A very worried—and very pale, befanged, and pissed off—Ava had been in the hallway, talking to Dallas, who’d been giving her the scoop. They’d tried to stop him, launched questions at him, but he’d kept going, hadn’t looked back.

Now …

You know what you have to do.

He found Mia in her office, the door open. She sat at her desk, her dark head bent over an electronic file. A soft rap of his knuckles against the frame, and her attention snapped up.

Astonishment filled her baby blues, followed by concern and resolve. “Didn’t expect you in until tomorrow,” she said. “But, okay, we can do this now. Sit down.” She motioned to the chair in front of her desk with an imperial wave of her hand.

After closing the door with the press of a button, he plopped down. “Wanted to give you my report.”

One brow arched as she studied him. Leaning back, she crossed her arms over her middle. Same pose she’d adapted when he and Noelle had been here last, requesting permission to attend the party. I don’t like it, she’d said then. Now he got, “Okay, then, let’s hear it.”

“I told Phillips I was coming after him. He sent an Arcadian assassin to Noelle’s home. That Arcadian stabbed her, and I gave chase. I caught him and killed him with my hands.”

“Hands that glowed a bright blue,” she said.

A jerky nod. No reason to deny it. People had seen. People had to be talking.

“Those hands of yours also turned Tremain’s house into a bonfire, without the use of a match.”

Another nod. He didn’t wait for the questions, just tossed out the answers. “Any time my emotions get too volatile, my arms react. They heat. They burn things. Anything. Anyone.”

“Explains a lot,” she said. “So … are you an otherworlder?”

“No. I’m human. A mistake.” A mistake that had ruined Noelle’s life.

She rolled her eyes. “That’s a bit self-deprecating, don’t you think? We all have things we have to deal with. Look at me. I’m half Arcadian.”

Took a moment for her words to sink in. “Impossible.” Half-breeds, hybrids, whatever scientist wanted to call them, were … entirely possible, he decided. In this day and age, anything was. He’d even suspected—hoped—that’s what he was, though he now knew better. He was a mistake, plain and simple.