My Darkest Passion (36 page)

He drew back his hips and thrust slowly forward, and every nerve in her body flexed with that motion. She reared up and bit the meaty part of his shoulder while that blazing dual magic worked its way through her, around her. He leaned toward her mouth. “Harder.”

She bit down, and then the muscles of his torso flexed, and he slid a finger, the nail now razor sharp, along his shoulder, and they adjusted, both of them. He slowed the roll of his hips against her and then his blood slid across her tongue, hot and sweet and infused with whatever the hell was happening between them.

Time slowed. Stopped. Widened. The world ceased to exist; there was only the vast pool of his magic and hers. Double-sided. Double-edged. And in between all the spaces, folding around them, were the physical reactions of their bodies and her need to dominate him.

Harsh went still. Not for long. Just long enough to bow his head and press three fingers to his forehead and hell if that didn’t help ramp up her need to drive this encounter. He continued moving in her, and she wrapped her legs around him and allowed him in her body, her mind. She pushed at his shoulders and put a pulse of power in the contact. With a grin, he picked her up and maneuvered them so he was sitting up and she straddled him again. Her thighs tensed because his penis went deeper. He let his head fall back, and she rolled her hips on him until he groaned. They both did.

“Whatever you want,” he said. The words were accompanied by an upward thrust of his hips. He remained in human form, but flecks of yellow spun through the field of red that ought to be his irises.

The slice he’d made along his shoulder, narrow and still oozing blood, drew her attention. Her teeth had left an imprint in his skin, but he was already healing from that. She slid her tongue along that marked skin, licking away the blood. His body flexed, tensed, then released.

With the taste of blood came an expansion of their mental link. In that shared space, she experienced his urge to drive into her at the same time that he held back, at the same time he was turned on by her, at the same time he wanted to touch her, at the same time he liked that she was leading them.

She turned her head to his and flicked her tongue along his throat before she whispered, “Change. But don’t move unless I tell you to.”

His eyes widened. They both knew it was an order he was not magically bound to obey. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

He took on one of his true forms, but aside from removing his hands from her and laying them flat on the mattress, he didn’t move. He was as big like this as Bejar had been. Black, leathery hide swirled with unreal colors tinted with saffron and red. A monster from the pages of any medieval manuscript. She traced her fingers along his face, the ridges around his eyes, the ridges and muscle of his shoulders.

“Change back before you come.”

He nodded, and she connected with that alien understanding of her. He knew her, this creature. Better than anyone.

She pressed her palms flat on his upper chest. Slowly, she slid them down, over the muscle and hide that was feverish hot because he’d stopped bothering to regulate his temperature. She let her fingertips slide over his nipples and started again the rhythmic roll of her pelvis. “You feel good inside me.”

When her nail flicked across his nipple, she gasped with him. She didn’t need to tell him she found him beautiful because her reaction to his physical form was shared with him. She told him anyway. Her nightmares about Bejar were not like this, nothing like this. She wasn’t panicking the way she’d always feared she would if she ever agreed to something like this. She trusted Harsh absolutely.

She said, “It’s okay if you touch me.”

He did. His hands, thick and heavy and tipped with razor sharp talons touched and glided across her and she knew how aroused he was, and the depth of his control, and his touch sent her heart racing, her body speeding toward the oblivion of orgasm, and she was safe and she wanted this. God, this, what his body could give her in this form.

He grabbed her head, holding her until their eyes locked. “Is that what you want?” She consisted of nothing but need. Her ability to form coherent words had dissolved. A smile twisted his mouth, and she wasn’t sure if he spoke out loud or directly into her head. “Tell me.” His fingers tangled in her hair. “Tell me, warlord. I’ll do whatever you want.”

She bared her teeth at him and then bent over him, her hands on the mattress on either side of his head. “Fuck me harder. Now.”

38

H
arsh shuddered when she said the words.

Fuck me harder
.

Power infused every syllable she uttered. The words and meaning sank into his skin and his mind and resonated because she was a warlord, and he was not bound.

“Whatever you want.” Which, at the moment, was a lot like saying,
whatever we want
.

She was stronger now, because she had sworn kin, and that meant he didn’t have to hold back the way he would have if she were human or one of the magekind. He took hold of her, ready to put her on her back, but he waited to be sure that was all right, that it wouldn’t remind of her of being helpless.

She blinked once, and his gut twisted with the reality that right now this minute, he was in his true form, naked with his dick in Addison O’Henry, a woman who had given him light and love. Shifting light rippled along her blue-tipped hair and he focused on the pulse of her. He pushed upward again, and his balls went tight, and their bodies touched. She was naked. Naked in a way that made his brain short circuit.

“I told you what I want, Harsh.” She put a hand on the mattress and lifted herself off him, and then she lay on her back, and he growled again. “I think you ought to give it to me, don’t you?”

He caressed her, touched her, adored her human body and the fact that he currently was not. He dropped his head to her shoulder and kissed her pale, pale skin, and he held her hips and he pushed into her, and it was the divinity he’d always sought in his life. The shape of her body did it for him, not as slender as she looked in her clothes; she had muscles. He drove into her. Hard.

“Yes,” she said.

He got his hands higher above her, balancing himself, and she groaned. She angled her hips to meet him, and her inner muscles squeezed hard. “Like that. More. More. More. More.”

Her eyes were glacier blue. Too bright for normal, and the sliver flecks were back, and she bent her knees and opened them wide and the whole time she was letting him look at her sleek, sleek body, she was giving him back the same look.

He pulled out of her and laughed at her protest as he put her on her stomach, a hand to the middle of her back, then around to her hip. He tugged up, but she was already on her knees. He entered her fast and hard, and that mental place they’d found turned white hot. She reached back for one of his hands and braced herself with her other hand. Her fingers circled his wrist as she brought his palm to her breast.

He cupped her, flicked the side of his finger over the ring there and just took in his body’s reaction to having his hand around her like this. “Yes,” she said. “That. Where the hell did you learn to fuck like this?”

With his other hand tight around her waist, he drove into her again and again and she was soft, and warm, and wet around him, and at the same time he kept that link going. He let her see the way she looked to him, the curve of her ass and waist, and hell, compared to him she was just so white, and he didn’t generally care for women as pale as she was, women with hardware in their bodies and hair that wasn’t a normal color, and he sure as hell didn’t make a habit of fucking women when he wasn’t passing as human.

He knew she wasn’t going to tolerate such a submissive position for much longer so, as much as he liked watching himself thrust into her, he drew out of her again—he was too close anyway and if he could delay an orgasm a while longer, that would be a good thing.

She turned onto her back, one knee bent and he just drank in her body, and then he bent over her and slid his hands under her ass and set himself to finding and setting off every nerve ending in her sex. Her fingers worked through his hair and she said, “You’re killing me. God. More. Please.”

He wasn’t sworn to her, and even though he knew what it would be like if he were, this was an unbelievable turn on for him, her human body, and his not. It wound him up, doing this with her, while the mage part of him flowed through him and to her. The first time she came, she didn’t hold back anything. He waited for that space between her giving in to sexual release and being sated and then he built her up again. And then he stopped.

“Harsh.”

He wrapped his taloned hands around her head and kept still. Her heart hitched when he recited the words he’d taught her all those months ago.

“Are you sure?” she said. She tightened her arms around him and tried to rein back her lust for him. “Please, please be sure this is what you want.”

“Do it. Do it, and everything will be the way it should.” He scored the side of his neck for her, and she tasted his blood, and magic worked through her, through them both, and she wanted to roar with triumph. He touched the side of a talon to her neck and lowered his head to the welling blood, and she groaned as the circuit between them closed, and he was hers again.

He adjusted himself over her, thighs spread so she’d have to open her legs, and thrust into her, and she accepted his body. In silence, he fucked her hard and in the process she wrung him out and then he was there. Teetering at the edge of his orgasm, and they both stilled. He retook his human form, and she gave him a wicked, wicked smile when he came so hard he lost himself in her.

39

T
he only flower Harsh could find in the garden was a plain yellow daisy. He clipped one and brought it back to the kitchen. While he waited for the pancakes to finish cooking, he found a vase for the daisy and arranged it on the tray he was getting ready. Though he knew Tau and the others were up and about, they were keeping to themselves. The quiet was strange in a house that he was used to being packed with Nikodemus’s kin, but not entirely unwelcome.

He was pulling another two shots of espresso when Tau appeared in the doorway. The African demon leaned a shoulder against the frame, but Harsh waved him in. They were direct allies once again, both sworn to the same warlord. “There’s plenty of food. Latte or cap when I’m done making this one?”

The African demon came in. “Espresso only. Thank you.”

He slid over the plate of extra pancakes and the fixings. He enjoyed cooking and when he’d bought this place, he’d outfitted it with the geekiest kitchen possible. He’d been out once already to restock the food. “Help yourself.”

“She’s fierce.” He tipped his head toward the ceiling.

“Yes.” He stacked three pancakes on the plate he meant for Addison and finished arranging the rest of her breakfast on the tray. Orange juice, toast, pancakes, coffee, all served on the good set of dishes and his silverplate, kept locked away when he wasn’t in residence.

Tau used his silverware with precision. He took a bite of his pancakes and when he’d swallowed, he said, “This is very good.”

“Thanks.” He got Tau’s espresso going. The African demons kept to themselves so successfully that most of what Harsh knew about them was rumor and speculation. He’d heard they maintained a far less adversarial relationship with the local magekind. Less adversarial and far more cooperative. “I would appreciate the opportunity to talk with you about how you came to be in the States.”

Tau ate more of his pancakes. He used his knife as if he were calculating what it would take to turn it into a weapon. “Do you think Nikodemus will ask to have your oath back?”

That question was a safer way for Tau to ask whether Harsh intended to stay bound to Addison this time. A fair question, and full marks to him for watching out for Addison’s interests. He was less uncertain of his answer than he had been forty-eight hours ago, but he matched Tau’s cautious evasion. “What Nikodemus might do isn’t as important as the fact that she felt strongly about the promise she made to me.”

“A warlord keeps his word.”

“Which she did.”

“She swore to Nikodemus for you.”

“You had the opportunity to object.”

“That is so.” He lay down his knife. His eyes flickered. They locked gazes, and Tau shrugged. “We Sarahans don‘t make bonds on a whim.” For the first time, it occurred to Harsh that Tau might be one of the Entelechy. “When I swore to her, I knew she deserved all of my loyalty and that I would give her that.” A smile twitched at his lips. “I’m free of those abominations because of her.”

“Damn right you are.”

“Tell me, what would you have done if she had not promised to return you to Nikodemus? Would you have chosen to die?”

He served up Tau’s coffee. “She would never have put me in that position.”

Tau nodded. “When we heard this was happening when the Europeans came to my country we did not believe it.” Again, Harsh felt a mental jolt when he realized Tau was not referring to events of the present. “The mages here.” Tau shook his head. “This is not right, what they do.

Harsh picked up the tray. “I hope we can talk further about that one day.”

Tau bent over his coffee, breathing in, but, as it happened, also hiding his face. “We’ll see.”

Harsh carried the tray upstairs to his bedroom. Addison was asleep, or close enough to it that he caught the occasional edge of her subconscious while he set the tray on the bedside table. He was very much at peace right now, despite the uncertainty of the near-term future: unfriendly magekind bent on producing a generation of demons born into slavery, and far too willing to involve innocents.

Addison stirred and broke through the sleep her human body required. She turned her head toward him and blinked several times. She stretched out a hand, and Harsh took it in his. “Hey,” she said. “Good morning.”

He leaned down and kissed her on the mouth. “Good morning. Are you hungry?”