Possessed by a Dark Warrior (25 page)

Her fear tainted
his
blood.

The darkness lifted as primal instincts roared to the fore and the words that had been jumbled before fell into order.

He was killing her.

Bleu forced himself back and looked down at the female in his arms. Her face ashen. Throat ravaged.

The dragon.

His mate.

He felt it keenly in his soul as he stared at her where she lay in his arms, her beauty stealing his breath and making him burn even as what he had done hollowed out his chest and left him cold.

“Taryn,” he whispered as he carefully shifted her in his arms, cradling her in his left one, not feeling the pain that burned through the still-healing bones. Not caring about his own suffering. It meant nothing. His mate meant everything. He stroked her bloodied left cheek, brushing the backs of his fingers across it. “Taryn.”

He willed her to wake and answer him, desperate for her to look at him and let him know that he hadn’t killed her.

He couldn’t have killed her.

“Taryn,” he bit out, harsher now, unable to stop the surge of darker emotions as they swept through him, unleashed by his fear that he was going to lose her.

She didn’t respond.

His strength drained from him, hope dying with it, and he curled over her, burying his face in her fall of violet-to-white hair as he clung to her. Fuck, what had he done?

Tears burned the backs of his eyes and he growled into her throat, clutching her closer to him, near mad with a need to feel her warmth against him and hear her tell him that she would be fine. She wasn’t going to die.

Her pulse grew weaker, the timid beat echoing in his chest, affecting his own heart.

His eyes widened.

The bond.

Gods, he had triggered it by biting her and taking her blood.

Now it linked them, incomplete but powerful, entwining their bodies.

He pulled back and set his jaw. He wasn’t going to let her die. He refused to lose her.

He placed his right hand over her heart, closed his eyes and focused on her blood in his body—on his connection to her. The link shimmered in his blood, began to grow stronger until it burned in his veins. His head turned, the effort draining him, but he refused to stop. He didn’t care if he killed himself.

He only cared about saving her.

In his mind, he reached out and caught the ribbon of red that now linked them, curled his fingers around it and clutched it so tightly his knuckles burned.

Warmth flowed through him and he sank deep into the connection, drifting through it into Taryn and using his psychic abilities to forge a stronger link between them. His strength leached away as his powers took their toll on him, but he kept pushing, using all of his will to hold the connection between them open so he could hijack control of her body.

The warmth became a fire, a blaze that burned through him, and flames licked at his throat, white-hot and fierce.

Bleu opened his eyes and stared at the wounds on her throat as they burned on his.

He turned his focus to his body—to his heart—and willed it to beat harder. He drew deep breaths, slowly and steadily filling his lungs, and gradually his pulse grew stronger.

And hers grew stronger with it.

His arms shook where he held her, trembling against her back as his hand quivered against her chest, pressed between her breasts.

Her heartbeat gained strength beneath his palm and in his chest, his own one fuelling hers, keeping it going as he silently urged her to find her will to live again. She was strong. A dragon. Her healing abilities were on a par with his. If he could keep her heart going for long enough, her body would restore enough of her lost blood to keep her alive.

Lost blood.

He sneered at that.

Blood he had stolen from her.

He had almost killed her. What kind of male did that make him? What kind of mate? He was meant to protect her, to keep her safe and never let anything bad happen to her. That was his duty as her mate, and he had failed.

He had failed to protect her, but he wouldn’t fail to save her.

He wasn’t sure how long he sat with her, the link between them held wide open by sheer force of will alone, his heart beating for hers. Everything faded until there was only Taryn, lying in his arms, teetering on the brink of death.

Until there was only the terrifying thought of losing her and the grim determination to stop that from happening.

His strength faded as he poured all of it into saving her. The world around him dimmed and his hand rested lax against her chest, his body no longer able to power his muscles. All he could do was sit with her resting on his lap and cling to the slender thread of the link between them.

A slender thread of hope.

His vision wobbled and darkness encroached.

Her eyelids fluttered.

Bleu jerked awake and studied her face, a surge of energy blasting through him and driving the darkness back. He stared down at her, willing her to move again, to prove he hadn’t been dreaming.

She did one better.

She moaned.

“Gods, I am sorry, Ki’ara,” he whispered in the elf tongue, the flood of emotions that crashed over him battering him so fiercely he shook from the onslaught. He managed to lift his hand and stroke her cheek as he stared down at her. “I am so sorry. I never meant to hurt you… I swear it.”

Her eyes slowly opened, a frown knitting her eyebrows together. He knew she couldn’t understand him, but he wasn’t ready to say things in a language she knew, not when she wasn’t ready to hear them and he wasn’t ready to face everything.

“You tried to help me,” he murmured in his own tongue and cupped her cheek in his palm. It was cold. He rubbed it gently, trying to get some warmth back into her. “I repaid you by attacking you… and triggering this bond between us.”

A bond that relayed fragments of her emotions, enough that he could feel her confusion and how tired she was.

Bleu’s fingers shook as he brushed them through her hair, carefully working the knots out from the violet roots to the bloodstained white tips. She remained relaxed against him, not fighting his hold, not even when he found the strength to curl his left hand around her arm and draw her closer to him. He cradled her and, fuck, she was beautiful as she gazed up at him. Breathtaking.

He didn’t deserve such a beautiful female.

He averted his gaze and it settled on the reason he didn’t deserve her. Blood pooled in the gouges on the left side of her throat where he had savagely bitten her and steadily dripped onto the dirty damp floor of his cell, mingling with his.

He looked away from her and closed his eyes, shame riding him mercilessly, heart reproaching him. He had hurt her. Damn near killed her.

He swallowed hard, trying to clear the lump in his throat that refused to go away.

Gods damn him.

His fingers tightened against her arm and he gritted his teeth, bit out a string of curses in the elf tongue when all he really wanted to do was scream his rage until his voice gave out. He couldn’t. If the dragon male heard him, he might come to see what was happening, and the male would surely kill him then.

What would happen to her?

Her shallow rasping breaths filled the silence, scraping in his ears, tugging all of his fear back to the surface. He was going to lose her. He screwed his eyes shut and focused on her pulse to allay that fear, listening to her heart beating steadily.

A heart he’d had to keep working through their connection.

A heart that he should have cherished enough to recognise it had been his mate he had been drinking dry.

Killing.

His throat burned. Nose stung. Eyes felt as if someone had just poured a shot of Hellfire into them. His lips peeled back off his fangs as he frowned and he ground out another curse.

Trembling cool fingers touched his cheek, icy against his burning skin, and his eyes flew open only to close a second later as realisation blazed through him, self-reproach following swiftly in its wake.

She was trying to comfort him.

The gods knew he didn’t deserve it.

He deserved her anger, her hatred.

He didn’t deserve this tenderness, this touch that came too close to affection.

Her fingers dropped lower, caressed under his jaw, and he refused to obey that silent command and look at her. He couldn’t. He screwed his eyes closed even tighter and his nostrils flared as he drew down a deep breath, trying to find his feet again when the whole world had been tossed off kilter once more.

Taryn refused to give him that moment, her fingers pressing against his jaw, firmer now.

Stronger.

He could almost feel her strength returning, trickling back into her. Any moment now, she was going to give him hell and he wouldn’t fight her. He would take whatever punishment she wanted to dish out and wouldn’t try to stop her when she walked away from him. He knew the score. He knew that what they shared wasn’t meant to be. He wasn’t the right male for her and nothing he could do would change that. He had proven it here today.

To her and to himself.

She deserved better.

He shifted his gaze to her and then back down to her throat. Crimson seeped from the wounds he had inflicted, so bright against her pale skin. It covered her chest and stained her cream corset. Drenched the side of her face, drying dark on her skin and in her hair.

Gods damn him.

He didn’t want to frighten her, but he couldn’t leave her as she was. He couldn’t deny the need to take care of her. A ridiculous need. Tending to her wasn’t going to give him the result he was looking for. It wouldn’t atone for what he had done. It had been an unforgivable act.

Even with those words ringing around his mind, he still couldn’t stop himself from carefully lifting her towards him with his left arm and lowering his head to her throat. She tensed in his arms, her heart skipping a beat and causing his to do the same.

“I will not hurt you,” he whispered in the dragon tongue and then added in his own language, the one she couldn’t understand, “I swear I will never hurt you again, Ki’ara. Never. Let me take care of you… please… for this moment… let me think of you as mine.”

Her eyes searched his, implored him to speak in a way she could grasp, but he couldn’t. He wasn’t ready to acknowledge what was happening or what it meant, that it meant anything at all. He wasn’t strong enough to bare that part of himself he had guarded for millennia.

Not when he knew she would crush him in return.

“Let me take care of you,” he murmured in the elf tongue.

She seemed to get the message from the gentleness of his voice, or perhaps she was picking up on the feelings running through him, the emotions he wasn’t quite able to conceal because he didn’t know how to control the connection between them.

If it was possible to control it at all.

She relaxed and he dropped his lips to her throat, coursed them over it and breathed her in, stealing a moment with her before he began licking the wounds to clean them and halt the flow of blood, helping them heal.

A shudder wracked him, pulling a moan up his throat that he managed to swallow back down before it could escape. She tasted divine.

Resist
.

He was trying, but, fuck, she was everything sweet and light and warm and he wanted to drown in her as he lapped at her throat, running his tongue over her skin. She trembled in his arms.

Oh, dear gods, resist
.

Bleu frowned and stilled, his breath washing back at him from her skin, carrying her intoxicating scent with it.

Sweet gods… even that is too much.

His left eyebrow rose.

His eyes shot wide and he pulled away from her throat and looked over his shoulder at the unconscious female near the open cell door.

Unconscious fae female.

Unconscious
siren
.

He had drunk deeply from her, and by stealing her blood he had temporarily stolen her abilities, a skill all elves possessed and one that was normally useful.

Not torture as it was this time.

Torture because he could hear Taryn’s thoughts in his head as if she was speaking them aloud.

He stopped.

Was it wrong that he found it intensely satisfying that she sounded disappointed?

He tried to tell himself to warn her that he could hear her, that he was prying and it was wrong of him, but for some reason the words refused to line up on his lips. Lips that wanted to caress her skin again, because now that he had tapped into her thoughts, her feelings were coming through loud and clear too.

She wanted more.

Desire to satisfy his female had him dropping his mouth back to her throat and tenderly sweeping his tongue over it. He focused on cleaning it and tending to her, and that worked, pushing thoughts of a more wicked nature to the back of his mind.

Until she moaned in his damned head.

Gods, the things this male could do to me with that tongue.

Holy fuck, she had to stop thinking like that. It would be his undoing. She was weak, had suffered heavy blood loss because of him. She should have been foggy and focused on recovering, and mad as hell at him, not thinking the sort of things that were suddenly popping into his head.

Bleu screwed his eyes closed and tried to shut down the telepathic ability.

Nothing he tried worked, and Taryn didn’t help him. He couldn’t exactly focus on stopping himself from hearing her thoughts when they were all too alluring, painting pictures in his head that had him instantly hard and aching for her despite his healing injuries.

His skin is so warm. Would it feel hot pressed against mine, our bare flesh touching? Gods, it would. I can feel it now, stroking mine as he slides between my thighs, taking me.

A possessive growl rumbled up his throat and he couldn’t stop this one from escaping, not when he was imagining everything she was thinking, picturing them tangled together, and their incomplete bond demanded he satisfy his female.

She tensed in his arms.

Is it so wrong that I get flushed with fire whenever he growls?