Damien (30 page)

“Let us add ‘propaganda’ to that,” Noah suggested. “A regular gathering of this very kind every month, in the open, well publicized, so that those who follow us understand what our goals are. This time, I intend to do everything I can to see that Nightwalkers remain on speaking terms all around.”

“Agreed,” Siena said quickly.

“Agreed,” Tristan and Malaya echoed.

All the others agreed at exactly the same time, and it was vibrated into them by the musical pitches of the Mistrals’ voices.

Syreena walked slowly down the empty hallway of the old Romanian compound. Damien’s homeland holdings were enormous, by aboveground standards. There were catacombs as well, which only added to the maze of stone, both natural and built up, rather reminiscent of Siena’s holdings in their turning and twisting confusion of pathways.

Jasmine had gone back to the California manse and would return the next night. Damien had left to hunt quickly before dawn arrived. He had first guided Syreena to this place and told her to wait within the walls, that she would be safe there.

She was, unless she could be threatened by cobwebs, of which there were plenty. The main house, a cross between a castle and some kind of institutional rectangle of endless rooms, was not in any disrepair. It was clear that Damien did not neglect his property, even when he spent decades away from it. Still, it had not had a two-legged visitor for quite some time, by the look of it. If not for her still-healing arm, she would have turned into the falcon and flown the centers of the looping hallways, under and over the webbing that seemed to reach out and cling to her from everywhere at once.

The arm would be perfectly healed in another day or so, and a few cobwebs were not going to hurt her. Besides, she would never admit that the things just gave her the willies.

She had an image to uphold, after all.

“Oh yuck,” she complained as she ran face first into one of the silken traps. She pulled it from her face and hair, frantically trying to shake it from her fingers.

“I think you have a spider in your hair.”

Syreena gasped, reaching for her hair as she spun around to face Damien. “Where?”

“Right behind that part of your head that likes to contradict me in front of half a dozen or more visiting dignitaries,” he said dryly.

“Damien!” She slapped his shoulder, very hard, forcing him to take a step back for balance as he chuckled at her. “That is not funny!”

“The big bad former Monk trained to kill with her bare hands being afraid of spiders?” His smirk told her he thought otherwise.

“It is my job to contradict overinflated royal egos, especially when they want to run off and get their heads chopped off,” she retorted tartly.

“I never realized you had so little faith in my abilities,” he said.

“Yes, actually, you did. You told me yourself that you would never take on Ruth by yourself.”

“When did I say that?” he demanded.

“The minute you rescued me,” she pointed out.

“Explain that, if you please. I seem to recall you being unconscious at the time.”

“Answer me this, then,” she countered. “Why didn’t you face down Ruth then and there? You had opportunity, time, strength, and all of your power. Why not take care of her once and for all?”

“Because I was busy saving your impertinent, ungrateful backside!”

“One life in trade of the dozens of others you would have been saving?”

“One very important life,” he argued, although a bit more gently. “Very important to me.”

“Good. Remember that the next time I contradict you in front of half a dozen visiting dignitaries.”

Damien sighed deeply, reaching to rub at his temples. “Remember, or regret?” he asked blandly.

“Ha. Ha. Ha.”

He smiled at her, unable to help himself. Even when he was angry with her, she delighted him.

“I have a feeling,” he said, reaching out to brush a remnant of webbing off her hair, “that this thing we have might actually work out in the long run.”

“I am glad
you
think so,” she said, giving him an impish grin.

“Provided I do not kill you before then.”

“Good provision,” she agreed.

Damien was silent for a moment, and then he grasped her wrist, using it to tug her closer to him.

“Will you be happy here?” he asked as they mutually settled her against the fresh warmth of his body. “Will you be happy away from your home?”

“Goddess, yes,” she breathed, as if with relief. “I have outgrown the Monks, and Siena does not need me any longer. Perhaps my absence will help her get over her fear of having children, when people start looking at her even more closely in search of an heir.”

“Siena is afraid of children?”

“Terrified. She just does not realize it yet. She thinks she is doing it for convenience or because her marriage is too new. Lucky for her, her husband is pretty much a huge chicken about fatherhood, too. Though I suspect he might come around faster than she will.”

“Elijah as a father,” he mused, his humor at the thought evident. “He is used to getting them from someone else, fostering them as
Siddah
after the age of eighteen or so. He will not have a clue what to do with a baby.”

“I know,” she giggled. “Come to think of it, I am quite glad I will not be there for this. They would exhaust me.”

“Their children?”

“No, the parents!”

He laughed. “And what of our children, sweetling?”

She tilted her head and looked up at him with arched brows. “Do you want children, Damien?”

“It is one of those more important questions we have not gotten to yet, is it not?”

“Yes. It very much is. I am not certain if you know this, but I have always wanted to have a lot of children. To fill the house.”

“Not this house, I hope,” he chuckled.

“No. Definitely not enough to fill this house.” She flashed a grin. “I guess we’ll have to get a bigger house when the time comes.”

“Very cute,” he said, reaching around to pinch her bottom in punishment.

“Stop that!”

“Then be serious. Tell me what you really want.” His tone became serious to make her understand it was important to him that she put her taunts aside for a moment. “I want to know what you want.”

“I want to be happy,” she said simply. “One day at a time. One discussion at a time. One baby at a time. Life is too volatile to plan too far ahead. Especially now.”

“I understand your point. But at the same time, I do not want us putting our lives on hold because of fear of what Ruth will do next.”

“No? But we can run off at the drop of a hat and risk our lives? That is okay?”

“Syreena…”

“I’m serious, Damien. I do not understand your distinction. Safe some of the time, reckless others? You want me and children, yet an hour ago you were contemplating something tantamount to suicide.” She shuddered. “I don’t expect either of us to sit idly by while others risk themselves for us, but I do expect you to remember you are not the only one you have to consider anymore. Don’t you know that you take my heart with you everywhere you go?”

“Just as you take mine,” he assured her softly, bending to kiss her forehead gently, his eyes sliding closed. “You are right, and I am sorry. I promise I will take more care for your feelings and thoughts in these matters in the future. I was upset earlier. I am still adjusting to this new depth of emotion I find myself privy to all of a sudden.”

“You have always felt strongly. You could not be the leader you are if you did not.”

“Yes. But now it is even stronger still.”

“Damien, do you trust me?”

“What kind of a question is that?” he asked abruptly, pulling her head back so he could look down into her odd-colored eyes.

“I was just wondering if you were ever going to complete the Exchange with me,” she said directly.

“Why would I not?”

“Because it is daunting, to give away a part of yourself without knowing what it will be.” She reached to stroke warm fingers over his cheek. “I did not know what I was doing when you first received the part of me that makes you the raven. I did not have a choice to make.”

“Do you regret that?”

“Actually, I don’t. I am glad things happened like they did. I might have been too hung up to make the choice myself. Remember, I was not very good at deciding things for myself then. I still am not.”

“But you are improving,” he noted.

“Yes, I know,” she laughed.

“Do you want to complete the Exchange, Syreena?”

She hesitated a moment, knowing his expectant gaze was on her face the entire time she considered the question. She had only known about this thing for a couple of hours, and the information on it had come from Jasmine, a source that had proven to be untrustworthy when it came to complete disclosure. It was not that Syreena was squeamish about the act of drinking blood, either. She was mostly an animal, when it came right down to it. She had dined on an omnivorous selection all of her life. The main concern was what an added power might do to one of her design.

Then again, what was she if not a guinea pig? Her entire existence was the result of an experimentation in the combination of Nightwalker abilities. When she had been ill as a child, Windsong had Spirit-sung Syreena back to life, sharing her spirit with Siena’s and Syreena’s own spirits. Syreena now suspected that this was where her avian half had come from. Mistrals only became birds. It could not be a coincidence that one of her forms was a falcon. With all of those spirits in her at once in that moment of near death, anything could have caused her to become the combined soup she was, the split being that she was.

Now a whole because of Damien’s spirit linking it all together at last.

It would only be fitting to truly add his blood to hers in such a way, also adding whatever part of himself that seemed to belong mixed in with the rest of her soup.

“You make it sound like minestrone,” he teased her softly.

“Would you rather I used a mixed-nuts metaphor? With you being the biggest nut of all? Stop nosing around in my head.”

“Sorry. I could not resist. You looked like you were working so hard at your thoughts. Curiosity got the better of me.”

“So now you know my answer.”

“I do.”

“Yes. I do.”

Damien reached to pull her close, grasping her beneath her knees to slide her toward him. She slid easily over the sheets until her hips touched the insides of both his thighs and he was leading her legs around his back. They sat facing one another, so close now that her thighs rested atop his and they each had their ankles linked behind the other’s back. Damien’s hands slid up her beautifully shaped legs until they rested lightly on her waist. Their foreheads touched, their noses rubbing gently together as he reached to kiss her several times. The tips of her naked breasts brushed lightly against his equally bare chest, and he liked the reaction that immediately followed.

“I love the way you feel,” he said softly against her swelling lips.

Syreena smiled briefly before he kissed it away, exchanging that pleasure with another and then another as he slowly searched the taste and moisture of her mouth, feeding her the same from his own. Her hands slid around his rib cage to his back, the warmth and smoothness of his taut skin such a sensual delight that she spread her fingers far apart to cover even more of it. She liked how his muscles contracted in little twitches every time she moved her palms and fingertips to new places. If nothing else did, this would tell her how much pleasure he took in the exploration of her hands.

Damien’s hands moved into her hair, making the living strands curl happily around them, trapping them to the warmth of her head so it could constrict his fingers and wrists like a hungry nest of boas. Within moments, he was wrapped up to his elbows in it, his forearms snugly held in its pulsing shafts.

She kissed him as her hands continued to move over his skin. She forgot about the dust and barrenness of the enormous household around the master suite he had taken them to, even though every breath she drew seemed to echo into every near corridor. The must and cobwebs around them seemed to disappear, replaced solely by his masculine scent in combination with hers as they wafted together around the small world they had created between their close bodies.

They were both completely nude, save for the bandage and hard splint still dressing her right arm. But even that small restriction could not interfere with the total access they desired for this moment. Syreena felt as though it had been ages since they had touched one another, in spite of the fact that she knew she had never been touched by another being in her lifetime as much as Damien touched her. It seemed as though he could even caress her from a distance, with only his eyes and the very obvious desires within them that always took away any and all space between them.

“Let go of my hands,” he said with humor as he gave a curl of her hair a tug.

“Why should I?” she asked, her thoughtfulness and mischief coming through loud and clear.

“Because I know you want me to touch you,” he said with the assuredness of a telepath.

She could not argue with him, so she relaxed, releasing the stranglehold her hair had on him. Once he had slipped free of the loving snarl, he stroked his fingers over her face, down her throat and shoulders and arms. He started over the pulses in her neck, working his way down the path of the pounding arteries all the way to her fingertips.

Damien laced his fingers with hers, giving them a momentary squeeze. He released her almost as quickly, so he could stroke the backs of his knuckles down her chest, starting at the hollow in her throat. He followed a straight path over her collarbone and breasts. After briefly slipping his caressing fingers past her erect nipples, he turned his hands so he could cup the full weight of her within his palms.

For Syreena, every moment of the searching caresses was a slow beat that thrummed like a bass drum through her body. She closed her eyes, drawing in a deep breath as his hands flexed around her, their heat somehow more than the steady temperature that was normal for him. Perhaps it was her own hot skin that made it so, the eddy of it warming him incredibly, but if that were the case, how would she note the difference?

“Damien, I love the way you touch me,” she murmured against the rub of his lips.

“I know,” he told her before catching up her mouth with a depth that transcended the physical capabilities of their meshing lips and tongues.

His right hand released its loving hold on her breast so it could skim over her side and hip. He grasped her firmly and drew her completely up his thighs and into his lap, seating her with incredible intimacy against him. It was contradictory for him to be so blunt and bold when he had been so patient and tender until then. She made a gasping sound of surprise as iron hardness and heat swam through the exterior dampness of her body, but surprise immediately gave way to pleasure, and the gasp turned to a long, sweetly pained moan.

“I have missed you,” he said suddenly, pulling her ear to his lips so she could hear and feel the heat of his whispered words. “It cannot be more than a day since I was last here, close to your body, wrapped in your heat, but still I missed you.”

“You are not yet wrapped in my heat,” she argued, her entire being squirming against him in clear frustration over that fact.

She felt him smile against her ear.

“You seem impatient, sweetness,” he teased her, his teeth scraping over her earlobe and then releasing the sensitive flesh so he could blow a gentle breath over the dampness his mouth had left behind. She shivered as goose bumps raced along her spine and a fresh wash of liquid invitation flowed from her body and onto his.

“Tell me you are not,” she demanded, punctuating the request with an artful tilt of her hips, teasing him right back with a perfect seat that was the prelude to an even better one.

Damien made a rough, masculine sound as he felt the welcoming pulse of her inner body beckoning him from that intimate perch on the edge of the haven she was for him.

“I am,” he agreed hotly, finding her mouth again as his hands fell to her hips and held her with tight possessiveness.

He drew her forward onto himself even as she arched her hips and body to take him inside herself. There was always something so breathtaking about the initial joining of their bodies. It was a moment that could last forever in a heartbeat, their focus nowhere but on the blending fit of their heated sexes. He inhaled the shuddering groan of pleasure that she exhaled. Then her kiss seemed to come alive in tempo and intensity, twisting over and inside his mouth as if she intended to devour him.

She was steadily becoming bolder and more aggressive during their lovemaking, but she also was learning how to give herself over to him, allowing him to lead her to pleasurable places. It was all an issue of trust. In these moments, he knew she trusted him implicitly. She had to. It was an act of pure exposure and vulnerability.

It made him feel a power that went beyond his gifts of Vampirism.

Syreena put a hand against him, firmly pushing him several inches away from her chest and mouth. He pulled back, blinking his deep blue eyes at her.

Then, as her other hand slid away over the bedsheets, he remembered why they had come there.

Syreena picked up the steel poniard, the metal glinting fiercely in the candlelight, the emerald embedded in its hilt winking its fire-green facets at them. She held it between their breastbones for a moment, looking down at the haft of the razor-sharp blade. There was an inscription in Vampyr on the hilt, wending in a spiral around the decorative swirl of crafted metal.

“
I will break thee in any heart counter to my own,
” she said softy, impressing him with her ability to read his native tongue.

“Family motto,” he explained with half a smile.

“Very emotionally passionate for a Vampiric saying,” she mused in a whisper.

Syreena touched the cold blade to his chest, lengthwise, scraping it with delicate concentration over his skin. Considering the hone of it, he was amazed it did not cut him. It was her skill alone that made it so, he realized.

“Tell me where,” she asked, her breath catching nervously in spite of how excited she was on other levels.

“Anywhere. It is your choice, Syreena.”

Her choice.

The basis of their entire relationship, in two syllables.

But she would not vacillate this time. She had already been through her debates and her decisions. Now, with their bodies conjoined so perfectly and his trust as naked between them as the blade, there was no need for choice.

She moved so quickly, it was more like a twitch. Damien did not even feel the bite of the blade as it nicked his throat. Her aim was remarkable for the speed she had used, the breach of his skin under an inch wide in the lower left space just off center of his Adam’s apple. Instantly, a scarlet bead of blood welled out of the wound, quickly filling and breaking, running down his chest, over his pectoral muscle and onto the ridges of his abdomen. The thin stream of his life’s essence continued on until it disappeared where their bodies connected.

Syreena flicked up her bicolored gaze to his as she dropped the poniard over the edge of the mattress and onto the floor. She did not even notice the clatter of the metal against the stone as she leaned toward his neck.

The minute her lips sealed over his skin, Damien felt the balance of the world spin away from them. He groaned savagely as she swept her tongue over him slowly, her deft little mouth burning him like a brand, and then began to suck softly against him. He gripped her tightly as she did this, his head falling back to increase her access. His fangs made a violent appearance as the groan turned to a rolling growl of pleasure.

Syreena felt the effect she was having on him from the center of her body outward. He swelled within her, heated intensely, the increasing hardness of him pulsing with wicked life inside her. His taste was not what she had expected. It was somehow different from the rust and salt tang that she had anticipated. His flavor was bold and nearly sweet. As the warm fluid slid over her palate and down her throat, she began to get a hint of what it had been like for him the very first time he had tasted of her.

There was power in his blood. All Nightwalker blood held the power of its owner, but this was like nothing she could have ever expected. There was so much of herself within him, and so much of a combination of Nightwalker power from within herself. The addition of his essence was numbing and erotic and pleasurable beyond words. She was not prepared for the fire that flowed from her belly and into all of her limbs. If it could, it would have exploded out of her fingertips, toes, and the ends of her hair, that was how violently it burst through her.

She pulled back from the place where she fed as her entire body locked in a delicious spasm of delight. Damien felt the convulsion as it passed through her, constricting her around him so tightly he thought he might lose his mind with the intensity of the recoil of pleasure that followed. He knew what she was experiencing, if it was anything like the experiences he had had. The very idea of it was as thrilling as the feel of it.

Damien slipped his hands down over her bottom, fitting her to his palms so he could lift her against himself, drawing himself slowly out of the incredible clutch she had on him. Syreena’s hands reached out to grab his shoulders suddenly, her strength remarkable as she did so. She cried out roughly as he relaxed his hands and allowed her to slide back down over him, fitting him like a spandex glove made solely to his dimensions. Her arms slid over his shoulders, wrapping around his neck and head as he repeated the motion again and again.

Syreena closed her eyes because she could not have focused on anything, and it was making her dizzy to watch the room spin and move. She was so lost to the tearing eroticism flowing through herself that she could do little more than let him manipulate her as he wished. Without the intercourse of their bodies, she would still have felt that way. With it, she was beyond feeling any one coherent emotion or sensation.

Her shoulder nudged up against Damien’s lips, exposing it to the scrape of his teeth.

He could smell her.

Lavender, sex, sweetness, all blended into the pulse that flowed over her collarbone. He closed his eyes, rubbing his lips and his face over her skin, trying to remember that he had hunted that night already, only a short while ago, in fact.

Until she lowered her head back to the cut she had made on him and put her lips to him again.

He swore in Vampyr, a vicious growl of impatience and lustful intensity. He timed the thrust of his teeth into her shoulder with the thrust of his body. Her warmth flowed over his lips and tongue and the ever-hardening shaft surrounded so tightly by her all at once. Damien understood in that moment why this thing between them was meant to be the way that it was. This was the spice of true life. It flowed over him in liquid and emotional form and he knew that he could live twenty millennia and never grow tired of the sensation. It could have been the newfound acuteness to his feelings that made him wax so poetic in his thoughts, but he did not think that was so. This went beyond all of that. This was the blending of souls, the joining of spirits and blood and body.

It was everything.

She was everything.

“I love you,” she gasped beneath his ear, gripping him frantically as she spoke the words brewing behind his own lips. He sealed the punctures he had made in her body and pulled back to look into her eyes.

“I love you,” she repeated for him once she could see the blue of his eyes. She sobbed sharply, tears welling in her eyes as she cried with both emotion and pleasure. Her sobs and gasps mingled with one another as their movements together grew rapid and frantic.

Damien had never known the sting of tears, the rending of emotion that spiked and sparkled within the entire body right before they made an appearance. He turned his face into the blessed curve of her neck, dampness clinging to his lashes in answer to her honesty of feeling.

When she climaxed, it was as if she were thrown into a seizure. Her entire body seemed to jerk and spasm in time with the sobbing she could control no more than she could the orgasm itself.

Damien felt as if she were tearing him out of the sane world. He could barely hold her as her body writhed in his hands, wrenching at him in demand that he follow her into her bliss. For all his strength and power, he could never have denied her or himself the inevitable release she stole from him. No force on the planet could ever be that strong.