DH 05 Kiss Of The Night (10 page)

Cassandra was floored by the masculine beauty of the man before her. He oozed a raw, sexual appeal that no one could ever rival.

“Compared to the smal farm where I grew up, this is a mansion, my lady.”

“Real y?”

He nodded as he pul ed her up against him. His eyes scorched her and fil ed her with a deep, aching need.

She knew exactly what he wanted, and though she barely knew him at al , she was more than wil ing to give it to him.

“My father was once a warring raider who took a vow of poverty years before I was born,” Wulf said huskily.

His confession surprised her. “What made him do that?”

His grip on her tightened. “The downfal of al men, I’m afraid… Love. My mother was a captured Christian slave who had been given to him by his father after one of their raids. She beguiled him, and in the end she tamed him and turned a once-proud warrior into a docile farmer who refused to lift his sword lest he offend his newfound God.”

She could hear the raw emotions in his voice. The contempt he felt for anyone who would choose peace over war. “You disagreed with his choice?”

“Aye, what good is a man who cannot protect himself and those he loves?” His eyes turned dark, deadly.

The rage inside them made her shiver. “When the Jutes came to our vil age to loot and take slaves, I am told he held his hands out and let them run him through. Everyone who survived mocked him for his cowardice.

He who had once made his enemies quake in terror at the mention of his name died at the slaughter like a defenseless calf. I have never understood how he could just stand there and take a kil ing blow without trying to defend himself.”

She reached up to smooth his brow with her fingers as his pain reached out to her. But it wasn’t hatred or condescension she heard in his voice. It was guilt. “I’m so sorry.”

“As was I,” he whispered, his eyes turning even stormier. “It wasn’t bad enough that I left him there to die, but I took my brother as wel . There was no one there to protect him in our absence.”

“Where were you?”

He dropped his gaze to the floor, but stil she could see his self-recrimination. He wanted to go back and change that moment, just as she wished she could take back the night the Spathi Daimons had kil ed her mother and sisters.

“I had left the summer before in search of war and riches.” He released her and looked about his modest home. “After word of his death reached me, riches no longer seemed important to me. Disagreements aside, I should have been there with him.”

She touched his bare arm. “You must have loved your father greatly.” He let out a tired breath. “At times. At others I hated him. Hated him for not being the man he should have been. His father was a respected jarl and yet we lived like starving beggars. Mocked and spat upon by our own kin. My mother took pride in the insults, saying it was God’s wil that we suffer. It was somehow making us better people, but I never believed her. My father’s blind devotion to her beliefs only angered me more.

We fought, he and I, constantly. He wanted me to fol ow in his footsteps and to take their abuse and say nothing.”

The torment in his eyes touched her even more than the gentleness of his hand on hers. “He wanted me to be something I wasn’t. But I couldn’t turn the other cheek. ‘Twas never in my nature to not answer insult with insult. Blow with blow.”

He turned and looked at her with a scowl. “Why am I tel ing you this?” Cassandra thought about it for a second. “The dream, I’m sure. It’s probably on your mind.” Though why it would be in
her
dream, she couldn’t imagine.

In fact, this dream was getting odder by the minute and she couldn’t figure out why her subconscious would come here.

Why was she conjuring up this fantasy about her mysterious Dark-Hunter… ?

He nodded. “Aye, no doubt. I fear I am doing to Christopher what was once done to me. I should let him live his life as his own and not interfere with his choices so often.”

“Why can’t you?”

“Honestly?”

She smiled. “I certainly prefer honesty to lies.”

He gave a light laugh, then his face turned brooding again. “I don’t want to lose him too.” His voice was so deep and aching that it made her heart clench. “And yet I know I have no choice except to lose him.”

“Why?”

“Everyone dies, my lady. At least in the mortal realm. Yet I go on as everyone around me perishes over and over again.” He lifted his gaze to hers. The agony on his face reached deep inside her. “Have you any idea what it is like to hold a loved one in your arms while they die?” Cassandra’s chest drew tight as she thought of her mother’s and sisters’ deaths. She had wanted to go to them after the explosion, but her bodyguard had pul ed her away while she howled in grief for their loss.

“It’s too late to help them, Cassie. We have to run.”
Her soul had screamed that day.

Sometimes it screamed even now at the injustice of her life.

“Yes, I do,” she whispered. “I, too, have seen everyone I love die. My father is al I have left.” His gaze sharpened. “Then imagine doing it thousands of times, century after century. Imagine watching them be born, live, and then die while you carry on and start over with each new generation. Every time I see a member of my family die, it is like watching my brother Erik die al over again. And Chris…” He winced as if the very mention of Chris’s name caused him pain. “He is my brother made over in face and form.” One corner of his mouth lifted in wry amusement. “And mouth as wel as temperament. Of al the family I have lost, his death wil be the hardest to bear, I think.”

She saw the vulnerability in his eyes and it affected her deeply that this fierce man would have so human a fault. “He’s stil young. His whole life is ahead of him.”

“Perhaps… but my brother was only twenty-four when he was slain by our enemies. I wil never forget the look on his son Bironulf’s young face when he saw his father fal in battle. Al I could think of was saving the boy.”

“Obviously you did.”

“Aye. I swore I would never let Bironulf die as his father had. Al his life, I kept him safe and he died an old man, in his sleep. Peaceful y.” He paused for a moment. “I guess in the end I do fol ow my mother’s beliefs more than those of my father. The Norse believed in dying young in battle so that we could enter the hal s of Valhal a, but like my mother, I wanted a different fate for those I loved. ‘Tis a pity I came to understand her feelings far too late.”

Wulf shook his head as if to banish those thoughts. He frowned at her. “I can’t believe I’m thinking of this while I have such a beautiful maid with me. I am truly growing old when I would rather talk than take action,” he said with a deep laugh. “Enough of my morbid thoughts.” He pul ed her forceful y against him. “Now why are we wasting our time when we could be spending it much more productively?”

“Productively how?”

His smile was wicked, warm, and it devoured her. “I am thinking my tongue could be put to much better use. What say you?”

He ran said member up the column of her throat until he could nibble her ear. His warm breath scorched her neck, causing her to shiver.

“Oh yeah,” she breathed. “I’m thinking that is a much better use of your tongue.” He laughed while he unlaced the back of her gown. Slowly, seductively, he pul ed it from her shoulders and let it fal straight to the floor. The fabric slid sensuously against her flesh as it left her body and cold air caressed her.

Naked before him, she couldn’t suppress a deep tremble. It was so odd to be exposed while he stood before her wearing his armor. The firelight played in his dark eyes.

Wulf stared at the unadorned beauty of the woman before him. She was even more luscious than she had been the last time he’d dreamed of her. He ran his hand tenderly over her breast, letting the nipple tease his palm.

She reminded him of Saga, the Norse goddess of poetry. Elegant, refined. Gentle. Things he had spurned as a mortal man.

Now he was captivated by her.

He stil didn’t know why he had confided in her. It wasn’t like him to speak so freely, and yet she had lured him.

But he didn’t want to make love to her here. Not in the past where his memories and guilt over those he had failed slashed at him.

She deserved better than this.

Closing his eyes, he conjured them into a facsimile of his modern bedroom. Only he made a few modifications…

Cassandra gasped as she pul ed back slightly and looked around. The wal s surrounding them were reflective black with white trim, except the wal to her right, which was made up of floor-to-ceiling windows.

The open windows were framed by gauzy white curtains that fluttered in the wind, reaching out toward them and making the candlelight from dozens of candles in the room dance.

But the candles didn’t go out. They twinkled al around them like stars.

There was a large bed in the center of the room, up high on a raised platform. It had black silk sheets and a thick black silk duvet over a down comforter. The bed was made of ornate ironwork that formed an intricate square canopy between the four posts. More of the white gauzy material was wrapped around it and was left to twist in the wind.

Wulf was naked now. He scooped her up in his arms and carried her toward the huge, welcoming bed.

Cassandra sighed as she felt the soft mattress under her while Wulf’s weight pressed down on her from above. It was like being pressed into a cloud.

Looking up, she laughed as she realized there was a mirror on the ceiling, and she saw that Wulf was holding a long-stemmed rose behind his back.

The wal s flashed, then they too became mirrors.

“Whose fantasy is this?” she asked as Wulf brought the rose forward and brushed its soft petals over the swol en nipple of her right breast.

“Ours,
blomster”
Wulf said as he parted her thighs and laid his large body between her legs.

She moaned at the rich sensation of having al his lush power lying over her. The masculine hairs of his body teased hers into an overload of sensual ecstasy.

He moved over her sinuously, like some dark, forbidden beast who was out to consume her.

Cassandra watched him move in the mirror above her. How odd that she had created him in her dreams.

She’d always been so cautious in her life. So careful of whom she let touch her. So she had conjured a glorious lover in her subconscious whereas she dared not al ow one in real life.

Because of her death sentence, she didn’t want anyone to fal in love with her or care for her. She didn’t want to bear a child who would mourn her. A child who would be left alone, frightened.

Hunted.

The last thing she wanted was to leave someone like Wulf behind to grieve her death. Someone who would have to watch his child die in the ful bloom of youth because of a curse that had nothing to do with any of his actions.

But in her dreams, she was free to love him with her body. There was no fear here. No promises. No hearts to be broken.

Just them and this one perfect moment.

Wulf groaned deep in his throat as he nibbled her hip. She hissed and cupped his head. He let the softness of her hands in his hair soothe him.

For so long he had wandered through the past in his dreams. Always searching for the one who had tricked him into trading places. He was never destined to be a Dark-Hunter. He had never sworn his soul to Artemis or received an Act of Vengeance in exchange for his service.

Wulf had been seeking someone to soothe the pain he felt at his brother’s death. A tender body he could sink himself into and forget for just a moment that he had led Erik into battle far away from their homeland.

Morginne had seemed the perfect answer. She’d been as eager for him as he had been for her.

But the morning after his one night with the Dark-Huntress, everything had changed. Somehow either during their sexual encounter or right after it, she had traded souls with him. Mortal no longer, he had found himself born into a new life.

And viciously cursed by Morginne so that no mortal could remember him. Meanwhile she had escaped Artemis’s service so that she could spend eternity with the Norse god Loki.

Her parting curse had been the crudest blow of al and it was one he didn’t understand to this day.

Not even his nephew Bironulf had known him afterward.

Wulf would be completely lost now had Acheron Parthenopaeus not taken pity on his situation. Acheron, the leader of the Dark-Hunters, had told him that no one could undo Morginne’s trickery, but that Acheron could modify it. Taking a drop of Bironulf’s blood, Acheron had made it so that al who carried his blood would remember Wulf. Furthermore, the Atlantean had given Wulf psychic powers and explained to Wulf how he had become immortal and what his limitations were, such as his sensitivity to sunlight.

So long as Artemis held Wulf’s “new” soul, he had no choice except to serve her.

Artemis had no intention of ever letting him go. Not that he real y minded. Immortality had its benefits.

The woman under him was definitely one of them. He ran his hand down her thigh and listened to her breathing. She tasted of salt and woman. Smel ed of powder and roses.

Her scent and taste stirred him to a level he’d never known before. For the first time in centuries, he felt possessive toward a woman.

He wanted to keep this one. The Viking in him roared to life. In his human time, he would have carried her off and slain any who dared try to keep him from her.

Even after al these centuries, he was no closer to being civilized. He took what he wanted. Always.

Cassandra yelped the moment Wulf took her into his mouth. Her body sizzled with desire for him. She arched her back and watched him in the mirror above the bed.

She’d never seen anything more erotic than the sight of Wulf teasing her while the muscles of his back flexed. She could see every inch of his tawny, naked body while he pleased her. And he had an incredible body.

One she wanted to touch.

Moving her legs under his body, she used her feet to gently caress the hard length of his cock.