Haunted by the King of Death (21 page)

Revenge.

The hunger sent cold through her.

The mage moaned against her neck and lowered her onto the bed. “I did not imagine a phantom would feel so…”

She smiled as he drew back, luring him deeper under her spell. His green eyes turned hazy.

Sharpened.

He grabbed her jaw and glared down at her. “Do not think to use your powers on me.”

Isla fought the urge to flinch away and managed to relax into the bed beneath him. “I would not… you are more powerful than I.”

A smug smile of male satisfaction curved his lips and he trailed his eyes over her, leaned on his right elbow and skimmed his fingers down her body in their wake. His pupils dilated as his fingertips traversed her breasts and she clenched her teeth when he stroked them over her nipple.

“Far more powerful,” he murmured, falling back under her spell as she loosed another false whimper of pleasure and arched into his wretched touch.

Revenge.

Life.

Just one night.

His hand closed over her right breast.

Gods, she couldn’t do it.

She struggled against him, managing to knock his hand away, and he snarled as he gripped her throat and shoved her down against the mattress.

“I am more powerful… do not fight me, Phantom.” He pressed harder against her throat and then his mouth was on hers, and she whimpered as he kissed her, forcing his tongue between her lips.

His left hand squeezed her breast and tears stung her eyes.

She tried to fight him, but he was right. In her corporeal form, she didn’t have the power to overwhelm him, her phantom side held beneath her skin by both the spell his father had cast on her and the one he was funnelling through the crystals around her, rendering her even weaker still.

He shoved his left knee between her thighs.

Isla squeezed her eyes shut, her heart thundering, and pushed her hands against his bare chest. He grabbed her wrists and pinned them to the bed, and loomed over her. Her eyes slowly opened and she stared up at him, trembling from head to toe, fearing what was to come.

Gods, what had she done?

Grave.

Her heart called for him, even when she knew he wouldn’t answer, wouldn’t hear her because of the mage’s spell.

Even when she knew it was hopeless.

“I changed my mind.”

Relief poured through her as that rough baritone shattered the tense silence in the room and the mage looked over his shoulder at the source of it.

She gasped as a hand appeared on his shoulder and then he was gone, ripped away from her and sent flying across the room. He hit the wall between two windows hard and fell to the floor, landing in a heap, and the spell over her lifted a little more.

Her eyes shifted to Grave. He stood between her and the mage again, his back to her, but she didn’t need to see his face to know how it would look, drawn tight with anger that she could feel flowing through their bond.

She had never been so relieved to feel that he was furious.

“The female is bound to me and should service only my needs. I do not like sharing.” Grave turned away from the mage as he picked himself up off the black floor and gathered her clothes, bundling them under one arm.

He walked over to her where she sat in the middle of the bed and held his hand out to her.

She stared at it, too shaken to reach out for him as she wanted and seize hold of him only to never let him go again.

He hesitated, a look on his face she couldn’t decipher, not even with their bond finally relaying his feelings to her again, and then he grabbed her wrist and dragged her off the bed and towards the stairs.

Isla looked down at his hand where it circled her wrist, strong fingers closed tightly around her, far fiercer than the mage or Snow had held her.

He was being rough with her, but she couldn’t hate him for it.

Because he was saving her.

But he was damning them at the same time. She looked back at the mage, torn between remaining silent and pleading the bastard to help her. Without another spell, she wouldn’t be strong enough to fight the demon and avenge her family, and without it both her and Grave would fade.

She frowned down at his hand as he hit the stairs and stormed down them, pulling her along with him, and then up at the back of his head, and focused on the mark on her back. On their bond. There was anger in it, but there was something else too, and it reminded her of something Melia had said.

Something that might give them the time they needed.

She had been trying to seduce the wrong male.

Grave still desired her. His hunger was there for her to read in their connection, had sparked to life the moment he had set eyes on her sitting in the middle of the bed, revealing his desire to her. If Melia was right, then she could strengthen their weakened bond by being intimate with him, as her sister had with Valador.

She had seduced Grave once to pull him into their bond.

Could she seduce him again to save him from its effects?  

A
knock at his door halted Grave in his tracks as he paced across his small dreary room in the inn. He continued to mull over what had happened back at the tower and how he had fucked everything up in a stupid fit of anger and jealousy, a slave to a fierce possessive need.

He opened the door.

A possessive need that overcame him again as he stared into Isla’s blue eyes.

He had avoided talking about what he had done during their journey from the tower to the nearest town, and she had been mercifully quiet throughout it, barely looking at him and not uttering a single word other than to thank him.

Thank him
.

Gods, he had realised in that moment that she had been terrified, and he had been the one to throw her at the mage.

What kind of bastard was he?

The worst sort, one who could sacrifice even the woman he loved in order to get what he wanted.

No. He hadn’t been able to do it, even when it had been her suggestion and she had looked ready to go through with it when they had met with the mage. He had gone mad trapped in his room in the tower, aware that male was with her.

Touching her.

Touching what was his and always would be.

He knew the moment his eyes transformed, blazing red with his fury, with his need to erase the mage’s scent from her and mark her with his own.

Isla’s eyes widened slightly, a ripple of shock running through their bond.

Grave went to lower his head so she didn’t have to see the hunger in his eyes, a reflection of the darker need rising inside him again, one he had been battling since dragging her from that castle.

Isla’s palms captured his cheeks.

He blinked at the sudden soft press of her against him and then her mouth was on his, cool but warm at the same time. His hands flexed at his sides, his breath coming quicker as he fought to convince himself this was real and to not push her away out of spite or bitterness.

He needed her too much to deny himself.

He seized her hips and drew her up against him, moaned low in his throat as she sank into him, her breasts squashed against his bare chest and leather corset cool against his flesh. Her hands skimmed along his jaw and she pulled him closer, wrapping her arms around his neck. Her sweet whimper almost did him in, pushing at his control, and he growled as he grabbed her backside and lifted her, bringing her mouth up level with his so he could kiss her harder.

He stepped back, kicked the door closed so hard she gasped, and pinned her against it.

Gods.

The hunger for her that had always simmered in his blood boiled to the surface, stripping away his control, and Isla only gave it a firmer hold over him as she wrapped her leather-clad legs around his waist. Her heat pressed against his hard cock through his black combat trousers, pinning it between them, and he grunted as he rubbed against her, breathing hard into her mouth as he kissed her.

She tasted too good.

Warm. Sweet. Wonderful.

He groaned and deepened the kiss, tangling his tongue with hers, driving her into submission. She went willingly, stoking his need for her. His little phantom. He loved the way she was with him when she was fire and ice to everyone else in this world. He loved the way she didn’t have to be strong around him, and he didn’t need to be strong around her either.

He clutched her closer to him and shuddered as she licked his fang, stroking it from root to tip, something she had always done to tease him and make him think about her doing that somewhere else. Somewhere that ached for her attention.

He leaned in to kiss her harder and show her just how crazy she made him.

His fang nicked her tongue.

The taste of blood flooded his senses.

Hunger roared to the fore and saliva pooled in his mouth, and he snarled as he grasped her jaw to hold her in place as he kissed her deeper, desperate for more.

He shoved away from her a second later and paced across the room, heart pounding and blood thundering, his strides clipped as he tried to work off some energy. Enough that he wouldn’t hurt her.

One look at her undid all his hard work, and his bloodlust boiled back to the surface.

“Out,” he snapped.

Her eyes widened.

When she didn’t move, he stormed across the room to her, roughly grabbed her by her arm and yanked her away from the grotty wooden door. He opened it, shoved her out into the corridor, and slammed it in her face.

His hands shook as he ran them over his short hair, his whole body trembling as he battled his bloodlust, struggling to get it back under control. He couldn’t remember the last time it had been this strong, too powerful for him to harness it.

He tunnelled his fingers into his dark hair and clawed it back, breathing hard and trying to settle his mind. Impossible with the taste of Isla on his tongue.

Where the hell was Snow?

His cousin had decided to go on a mission to find some blood for them the moment he had set eyes on Grave when he had arrived at the inn with Isla. He had tried to stop Snow, aware that it was dangerous for him to be around blood, but his cousin had been right about a few things.

He needed to feed, because the bloodlust was riding him too hard, stirred to a frenzy by the thought of Isla with another male and his growing hunger for her.

Gods, just one drop of her blood had sent him hurtling over the edge.

His fangs ached, saliva filling his mouth as he remembered its sweet taste of life. Of her. Everything he needed.

He looked over his shoulder at the door and then forced himself away from it. She would stay away from him. He knew that and was glad of it. Her pain radiated through the mark on his back. She probably thought he had rejected her to hurt her, to make her suffer in a new way for what she had done to him.

He had done it to protect her.

His bloodlust was growing stronger as he grew weaker, and she triggered it too easily, her scent too sweet and alluring for him to ignore. It roused the thirst he had always had for her, an endless need to drink of her blood in order to pull her down into him, to ensure she was always with him.

Grave breathed slowly and cleared his mind, focusing on his heartbeat and his blood, and the darkness swimming in it. Control came and went, slipping through his fingers each time he thought he had it.

He closed his eyes and focused harder, afraid Snow would return and witness how weak he really was.

His iron self-control was the crux of his pride and his reputation, an unbreakable will that had all vampires whispering his name in awe and fear because he used it to master his bloodlust, allowing him to use its savageness to his advantage.

But it was also his ultimate weakness.

He looked back at the door and focused on the mark on his back and the female linked to him through it, needing to feel her.

He was beginning to believe his self-control was the reason he had lost her. His iron grip on his emotions, keeping them in check so no one knew what he was thinking and therefore no one had any power over him because he revealed no weaknesses to them, might have been his undoing after all.

If he had shown her how he really felt about her, how deeply he loved her, she might not have shattered the heart that beat for her alone.

She might not have left him.

She had confessed that a need for revenge had brought her to him, and he had been furious with her and crushed at the same time when he had heard that, but during the long hours he had been alone in his room in the tower, he’d had time to contemplate it and the things she had told him without words, through her eyes and their bond.

Revenge had brought her to him, but something else had made her stay.

If she had wanted to merely curse him to life as a phantom, a single kiss would have sufficed, and she had managed that victory bare minutes after they had met.

No. Isla had wanted more than that. She had cursed him, but she had stayed with him. Not for days, nor weeks. She had stayed months with him, rarely apart from him, and she had been happy. The woman she was now was a sharp contrast to the one he had held in his arms, had spent long lazy days with in his apartment. Something inside him had broken when she had left him, and now he believed that same something had broken inside her too.

She had loved him.

They were alike in so many respects.

More than just their feelings.

In that tower, shut away in that room, he had paced himself into an epiphany and that dawning of realisation had given him the strength to go to her, to show her that he wasn’t as cruel as this world thought he was and there were softer feelings inside him, ones that made him burn for her.

He had put himself in Isla’s place.

If someone had killed Aurora, leaving Snow alone in the world with their offspring, a constant reminder of the love he had lost, and Grave had witnessed her death, he would have done the same thing.

He would have hunted down the one responsible and taken revenge on them.

While his method would have been swift and brutal justice befitting of a vampire, Isla had chosen a phantom way. She had wanted him to suffer as her sister did, drawing out his pain.