Ecstasy Unveiled (16 page)

“So you grew up thinking you were human?”

“Yes.”

He had, too, but deep down, he’d always felt different, and in the 20/20 hindsight, he could see the neon signs. Like the one where his mother screamed, “You’re the spawn of the devil!” And, “I should never have let that demon plant his seed in my womb.” Sure, all the doctors in the sanitarium said his mother was insane, but her “delusions” never changed, and the friends who had been with her the night they’d “summoned Satan” had confirmed everything his mother said. They hadn’t believed the dark-haired stranger with the tattoos on one arm was Satan himself, but they were sure he was either some sort of demon, or a con artist.

They were right on both counts.

“Was there ever anything that made you stand out?” he asked, mainly to get out of the past. “Did you feel different from everyone else?”

“Not all.” She twisted one of the gold bands in her hair the way she’d twisted her palm around his cock. “I felt perfectly at home until my nineteenth birthday.”

“So you lived a normal life? Married? Kids?”

“Not even close.”

He wasn’t a historian, but he’d thought that back in those days, when lifespans were short and girls married young, Idess would have been a rarity. It was probably rude to ask, but it was also rude to chain someone to a bed, so fuck it.

“Why not?”

“It’s a long story.”

He tugged on his chains. “It appears that I have nothing but time.”

Idess shifted, but he had a feeling that no matter how comfortable she got next to him, she wasn’t going to get comfortable with this subject. He’d definitely poked a bruise here.

“At the age of sixteen, I was given as a gift to the son of a nobleman.”

“But wouldn’t you have to be of noble birth or something to marry?”

“It wasn’t to marry.”

Her pained tone set his teeth on edge. “For sex? Like, a prostitute?”

“As a mistress. I was considered very beautiful,” she said, without an ounce of pride. “My virginity was the gift. I was with him for two years, but when he took a wife, I was sent to a cruel friend of his. If I pleased him, I was to become either his mistress, or a toy to share with friends.”

“Your master was a dick.” Man, he wished he could go back in time and kick that guy’s ass. Hard.

She laughed. “Before he could touch me, my brother Rami came for me, and the friend died a suitably horrible death in battle a few years later.”

He purred with approval. “God, I love a bloodthirsty woman.”

“Well, you are an assassin.”

“I wasn’t always.” A note of defensiveness crept into his voice. “I’m more than a killer.” Though, was that true? Even he doubted his own words. He’d been nothing but a killer since the day he got his gift. And when he’d gone to work for Detharu, his killer status had only been secured. He’d even earned the title of First Assassin. How special. Yeah, he was real proud to be so good at offing people that he’d won an award.

He was such a piece of shit.

“How are you more?” There was no condemnation there. Only curiosity, and he couldn’t answer. Her hand came up to his chest, right over his slave mark, and a sweet, balmy heat broke out over his skin. “Your master… he can summon you through this, yes?”

“Yes,” he said hoarsely. He concentrated on bringing his libido down, concentrated on the odd cooling sensation in her hand. It wasn’t working. “He’s been trying all day.”

Her hand froze, and her nails dug into his skin. The luscious pleasure-pain made his breath catch. “What will happen if you don’t go?”

“The pain will gradually get worse, until I need to go or suffer in agony.”

She sucked in a startled breath. “How long?”

“Depends on how bad he wants to see me. And I’ll tell you right now that he’s got a real burr up his ass about it.”

She closed her eyes and bowed her head. Her ponytail slid around, brushing his waist, and man, what he wouldn’t give to free her hair, let it shroud his body in silk as she kissed her way down. “How bad is it? Right now, I mean.”

“It burns,” he said, and it wasn’t a lie. He felt like he had a hot iron on his chest. “But your hand… it’s cool. It feels good.”

She lifted her head. “I can get you ice.”

“Doesn’t work.” He covered her hand with his—his right hand, partly because his left was in a precarious position in the loose-fitting cuff, and partly because he could touch her with his dermoire-marked hand as long as it was still braceleted in the Bracken Cuffs. “But this is helping. I don’t know why. Your touch is magic.”

He was supposed to be seducing her. Supposed to be making her believe she was beautiful and perfect and sexy. Supposed to be doing all of that to get the fuck out of here. But suddenly, he wanted to do it because she was all those things. He brought her hand to his mouth. Though his chest began to burn again, it was worth the discomfort to be able to brush his lips across the soft skin of her knuckles. “You make me burn far more than anything my bond can do.”

She made a small surprised sound, just a whisper of air, a catch of her breath. “If you’re trying to seduce me, I told you it won’t work.” And yet, she was breathless, and he could scent her spicy arousal. When she shifted, the neckline of her top gaped, revealing deep cleavage that was at once too much flesh, and not enough.

“Oh, it’ll work,” he drawled. “It just won’t get me free.”

She bristled. “Then what is your plan? You have to have one. I would.”

He rocked his head back against the wall and watched her through half-lidded eyes. “Come closer.”

“So you can try to hurt me? I don’t think so.”

“No,” he murmured. “So I can touch you. Everywhere.”

She stared at him as if his words were a trick, but his incubus senses picked up the sound of her heart beating faster, her breaths coming in a rolling stutter, and he knew she was putting his audio to visual. “You’re a pig,” she said, with a lot less conviction than he knew she was capable of.

“You want me to turn into a raging monster?” Actually, he wasn’t in much danger at the moment, but she wouldn’t know that. He just… wanted her.

“You have plenty of slack in your chains. If you need release, you have a hand…” She cleared her throat. “The bathroom is right over th—”

“I need to touch,” he growled. “I’m an incubus, Idess. I need contact. A female. You. This is torture.” Sure, he was playing on her guilt, but he wasn’t lying. Having her so close and being unable to do anything about it was killing him.

Her chin came up, all haughty. “You ask too much of me.”

“Then, will you…” He took a deep breath. “Will you kiss me?”

Her lids flew up. “What? No. I can’t.”

“Is it against your angel rules?”

She swallowed hard enough for him to hear. “No, but—”

“Then give me that at least.”

“I don’t have much experience with kissing.” Her gaze jerked away, and he felt the odd need to comfort her.

“Neither do I,” he admitted.

“Liar,” Idess whispered.

“Not about this,” he whispered back.

Their gazes locked. Tension bloomed like a Sheoulin rose, dark, beautiful and, potentially, poisonous. And then, with agonizing slowness, she leaned forward and braced herself on his shoulders. The first, fleeting contact of her lips against his sent a buzz of lust through him. The second contact was bolder, lingering, and the buzz grew strong enough to send reverberations all the way to his toes.

She might not know what she was doing, but it didn’t matter, because what she was doing was enough. More than enough. He lifted his face to meet hers, to intensify the kiss that was already building steam. When her tongue flicked timidly across his bottom lip, he jerked as if he’d been goosed and damned near forgot why he’d asked her to kiss him in the first place.

Steeling himself, he eased his wrist out of the cuff. Flexed his fingers. Wished he could touch her, could run with this kiss and see where it would lead.

Instead, he struck.

The ominous sound of metal clamping around Idess’s wrist reached her ears a split second before Lore flipped her over and slammed her into the mattress.

“Remember when I said I’d get free and make you experience everything I had?” he growled.

“You bastard!” Still dazed from the kiss, she struck out with her free hand, but he caught her fist, tugged it up to his chained hand, and took it prisoner. Effortlessly, he pinned her with his heavy body and drove his fingers into her jeans pocket.

“I’m the bastard? You’re the one who chained me up.”

“You gave me no choice!”

“Yeah, yeah.” He smiled, and she knew he’d found the key to the cuffs. “Killing Kynan is a no-no. Bad Lore, bad.”

Snarling, she rocked her head up to catch him in his lying mouth, desperate to cause any kind of damage she could. If he freed himself… well, she didn’t even want to think about what he could do to her. To Kynan. He reared back, and she caught only a glancing blow to his chin.

“Feisty,” he mused. “I like it. Gimme more.”

“Oh, I’ll give you more.” The Bracken Cuffs prevented her from morphing into her fallen angel father’s form, but that didn’t mean she was helpless. She brought her knee up hard, nailing him on the inner thigh. He sucked air and wrestled her leg back down before trapping both her legs between his.

Cursing, he lunged, and she heard the click of the key in the cuff lock. In an instant, he was free, and both her wrists were secured. He rolled off her and yanked on the chains, tugging them taut and pinning her to the bed with her arms stretched above her. She shouted in frustration, but he must have taken it as a cry of pain, because he loosened the chains before looping them around the bedposts, effectively keeping her from getting to her feet.

For the first time, she wished she could still sense his emotions, could use the knowledge to get her out of this. Instead, she’d wasted hours burning off the blood link at a distance, feeling what he felt while safely away from him. She liked to think she was strong, but every time the lust he felt pulsed through her, she’d fallen to her knees and prayed for the willpower to not go to him.

“You’re going to pay for this!” She threw everything she had into an assault on the chains, screaming and pulling until she was sure her arms would pop out of their sockets.

Lore reached for her, but snatched his hand away at the last second. Foul words fell from his lips as he found one glove and his jacket on the floor. He tugged them on, and the next thing she knew, he was on top of her again, settling down as if her body was the most comfortable place in the world to be. His weight acted like a blanket, wrapping around her and calming her like a swaddled infant.

“There, now,” he said softly. “The tables have been turned. The captor is now the captive, and all those other fun movie lines I never thought I’d say.”

Idess’s heart pounded against her rib cage as helplessness and fresh anxiety set in. “Let me go.”

“Like you let me go when I asked?”

She swallowed. “Please. You can’t kill Kynan. He’s important.”

“Yeah. Important to me.”

“To the world.”

“I think the world will survive without one human asshole.”

Actually, it might not, but she’d found that demons rarely cared about the fate of humankind, so she switched tacks. “This isn’t just about the world. I have a personal stake in his life.”

He snorted. “What, you won’t earn your wings if he dies?”

“That’s exactly what will happen.”

He rolled his eyes, but when she just stared, he stiffened. “You’re serious.”

“You can’t even imagine.” Tremors of panic swept from her toes to her scalp. Only a handful of Memitim had never Ascended, were doomed to either guard Primori forever or spend eternity as a human, being born again and again and never making it into Heaven. Some had even been snuffed out of existence. But as terrible as those punishments sounded, they weren’t her primary motivation for not wanting to fail.

If she didn’t succeed in protecting the most important human in existence, the very fate of all mankind, of billions of souls, would be affected when the ultimate battle between good and evil erupted on Earth.

Her betrayal of Rami had weighed on her for twelve hundred years, and every day she’d prayed for a chance to beg forgiveness. But if she betrayed the human race? There would be no absolution.

Something hot and wet dripped down her cheek. A tear. Geez, she hadn’t cried in centuries. Not since the day Rami had Ascended. Before she knew it, the tear turned into a stream and suddenly she wasn’t just sniffling or even crying. She’d gone into a full-on bawl that included great, shuddering sobs and gasps for air.

“Idess… calm down… Idess?” Lore’s hands framed her face. “Hey. It’s okay. Easy, Angel. Easy…”

She cried harder. She couldn’t stop… it was as if she’d been storing tears for all these hundreds of years, and now, like a dormant volcano that had finally erupted, the flow wouldn’t be stemmed.

Then Lore’s lips were on hers, and he was kissing her. His mouth followed the trail of tears across her cheeks as his thumbs, one bare, one leather-clad, swept back and forth across skin that had grown as sensitive as if it were sunburned.

“Shh…” He tenderly kissed her ear. “It’s all right.”

“No,” she moaned, because it was far from all right.

His hands stroked her cheeks, his bare thumb drifting lazily across her bottom lip. “I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I’m not used to handling anything like this. I don’t know what to do.”

“I—” She cut off when the tip of his thumb slipped into her mouth. She didn’t think. Didn’t want to.

On impulse, she latched on to it and drew it deeper into her mouth. His eyes darkened and his mouth fell open so his piercing flashed and wow, if she’d thought she’d had power over him before, when he’d been at her mercy, chained, and needing release… it was nothing compared to now. The knowledge that she could affect him while she was restrained was a revelation.

Now she just had to figure out how, exactly, to use what she’d just learned.

Drawing on her very rusty seduction skills, she swirled her tongue around his knuckle and then nipped the pad. When he released a ragged breath, a zing of pure excitement shot through her in a powerful, almost sexual rush. Her breasts grew achy, her belly fluttered, and okay, there was no almost about it. Bringing a male pleasure was an aphrodisiac, for sure.