The Dark-Hunters (584 page)

Those lyrics brought tears to her eyes. All her life, she’d had a fantasy about a great-looking guy in a band singing to her. She knew how stupid it was, but to be here right now having Ash of all men sing to her.

It was surreal and it was wonderful. Most of all, it made her want to cry.

And when the song ended, the spotlight was turned off. Ash set his guitar on the stand by the drum set and jumped down from the stage.

“We’ll be taking a twenty-minute break,” the lead singer said.

Tory barely heard him as Ash approached her slowly and for the first time she saw hesitancy in his powerful gait. Unsure, he stopped in front of her.

Ash cringed, dreading her reaction. “I’m sorry if I—” He was going to say “embarrassed you,” but before he could get the rest of the sentence out, she pulled the sunglasses off his face and grabbed him into the fiercest kiss he’d ever known.

Everything around him receded as her lips set fire to his entire body. It wasn’t demanding or painful. It was a kiss of commitment. Of caring.

One that made him growl with need as she cupped his face with her hands, then trailed them down his body to hold him so close to her that his head spun with disbelief.

And in that moment, all he wanted was to be inside her. To have her hold him like this while there was nothing between them. Just bare skin to bare skin.

Tory couldn’t breathe as she tasted Acheron. His body was so incredibly hard. She doubted there was a single molecule not muscled and ripped. Except for his lips. They were as soft as a whisper and tasted of raw masculine power.

“Damn, Ash, get a room.”

Ash tensed at the sound of Dev’s voice as the bear walked past him. But he was still incredulous that Tory had grabbed him like this in public. No woman had ever done that before. He’d always been relegated to the shadows—to places where no one could see them together.

The fact that she’d kissed him openly …

It was heaven.

Biting her lip, Tory pulled back to see his face mottled with red. Whether from anger, exertion or embarrassment, she couldn’t tell for sure. “I’m sorry. I hope I didn’t offend you.”

Ash shook his head as he laid his hand to her cheek. Pulling her against him, he buried his face in her hair and inhaled the sweetness of her scent. It was a scent he wanted to bathe in until it coated every inch of his flesh and branded him as hers.

Tory closed her eyes at the tightest embrace she’d ever had. She hugged him back and just held him while people walked around them. She’d never really been one for public displays of affection, yet with him it was different.

Nothing seemed to matter except being with him right here and right now.

Ash squeezed his eyes shut as raw emotions tore through him.
Let her go. Shove her away.
It was the sanest thing to do. The safest thing to do.

But he couldn’t. He’d lived his entire life for other people, trying to please them and failing with every attempt. First it’d been his human father, then his uncle. The clients he’d taken.

And then Artemis.

He’d never been good enough to earn their love. Never good enough for them to make him feel the way Tory did. To her he was neither whore nor god. Neither property nor a source of shame.

He was just a man.

And that man wanted to make love to her.

Don’t be stupid. Don’t. You’ll only get hurt, Ash. You know better.

Artemis will make you suffer until you beg for death
 …
and then she’ll torture you even more.

Yet when he looked into those deep brown eyes that saw him as a human with feelings, he was lost. Most of all, he was tired of taking nothing for himself. Of sacrificing himself for other people’s happiness while he had no one who made him feel like
he
mattered.

Surely he deserved to have someone hold him close and soothe him. Would that be selfish?

His resolve bucked under the weight of conscience. Fuck it if it was.

If he had to pay for this later, he would. He’d suffered unbearably for a lot less than Tory. And she’d be worth every scar.

Stepping back, he took her hand and led her to the stairs and up to her room. He closed the door, isolating them from the sounds and people downstairs, then turned to face her.

Tory was unprepared for the ferocity of his kiss as he pinned her to the wall. He’d always been so reserved and cool that she’d never suspected how sexy it would be for him to lose control like this.

The fact that she was the one who drove him to it only made her hotter. His lips tormented her as his hands began unbuttoning her blouse. She swallowed at the heat pounding through her. She’d never been with a man before.

And she barely knew him.

Yet she realized Pam was right. If she didn’t sleep with Ash, she’d regret it for the rest of her life. There was something about him that made her restless and calm. Something that touched her heart in a way no one ever had before.

She wanted to be with him. To hold him close and never let him go.

Ash pulled back from her lips as he opened the last button of her blouse. Her breasts, covered by purple lace, were small and inviting. Adorable and perfect. He kept waiting for her to push him away and reject him.

She didn’t.

Taking a deep breath, he reached to the gold clasp between her breasts. He met her gaze and the raw hunger there set fire to him as he opened her bra and spilled her breasts to his gaze. He cupped the right one in his hand, amazed by the softness of her skin as her taut nipple teased his palm. Dying for a taste, he dipped his head down to gently suckle her.

Tory gasped as he flicked his tongue over her nipple. With every lick, her stomach contracted sharply. His mouth was so hot as he sucked and played. His breath scorched her skin. She cupped his head to her, unable to believe how much pleasure he gave her.

He moved to her other breast as he unzipped her pants. Tory felt herself getting wet already. “Touch me, please,” she begged, dying for something to sate the fire inside her.

Ash obliged her as he slid his hand under the waistband of her panties. He let the small hairs tease his fingers as he sank his hand down further until he could separate the tender folds of her body and run his finger down her cleft.

She made a strangled cry of pleasure. Smiling in satisfaction, he dipped his hand down lower to let her moisture coat his fingers before he moved his hand up to massage her.

Tory cried out as she felt her body exploding with pleasure. She’d never had an orgasm before. It was raw and it was unbelievable and even a little frightening. Words couldn’t describe what she felt. She clung to Ash as he continued to heighten the ecstasy. He sank to his knees in front of her.

Still shaking and weak, she looked down to meet that hungry silver gaze. He reached up to pull her jeans down her legs with a feral intent that made her even more breathless. She lifted one leg and then the other so that she was completely bare from the waist down. Her shirt was open.

Ash couldn’t breathe as he took in the sight of her like that. She was so beautiful and all he wanted to do was please her—to have her hands on his body, not hurting him or demanding he submit to her to make her feel more powerful. Just simply pleasing him. Soothing him. He brought her delicate hand to his lips so that he could taste her fingertips. The scent and sweet taste made his cock so hard it was all he could do not to attack her where she stood. But he wanted to savor her slowly.

The one thing in the universe that he excelled at was this and he wanted her to know the height of his skills.

She reached down to brush his hair back from his forehead. Ash buried his face against her thigh and nipped the tender flesh there as her hand touched his cheek.

“Please don’t pull my hair,” he breathed in a ragged whisper, not wanting anything to spoil this moment.

“I would never hurt you, Ash.”

And that was why he was willing to risk the wrath of a goddess to be with her. For once in his life, he wanted to make love to someone who didn’t make him feel like shit for it. Covering her hand with his, he turned his face so that he could kiss her soft palm.

Tory was stunned by his tenderness. He reminded her of a skittish fawn as he suckled her fingers. And when he looked up at her, she saw the unadulterated pain and torment inside him. His soul was as naked to her as her body was to him.

He licked her palm in one sensual swipe before he rose up to bury his lips against the center of her body.

Tory cried out as pleasure blinded her. She reached for his hair, only to catch herself. Instead, she clasped the door knob with one hand and bit her knuckle on the other one.

Her body took on a life of its own as he licked and teased her with his tongue. He lifted his hands to spread her wider so that his tongue could flick and delve deep inside her.

Ash reveled in the taste of the most private part of her body. The remnants of her last orgasm made him hungry for his own, but more than that, it made him want to hear her scream out his name.

Dying to be inside her, he slid his finger in, then froze as he found the last thing he expected.

He went cold inside.

“You’re a virgin?”

Tory scowled at the venom in his voice as he spat the word out as if it were disgusting to him. “Is that a problem?”

He jerked away from her as if he’d discovered leprosy. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t think it would matter.”

He cast her a feral look that made her pull her blouse closed. “It matters. Damn it, woman!”

She was completely baffled by his unexpected response. Why would he be so angry over the fact that she’d never been with another man? “I thought men liked having virgins.”

Ash raked his hand through his hair as he struggled to keep his temper in check. But it wasn’t just anger he felt. There was shock, guilt and a hunger for her so profound he wasn’t sure how he kept himself from her.

“I’m not most men.” He picked her jeans up from the floor and handed them to her.

She gaped at him. “So that’s it? You’re just going to leave because I’ve never been with anyone else?”

“That’s exactly what I’m going to do.” He tried to reach the door, but she put herself in front of it as she raked him with her own furious glower.

“Oh, the horror of this situation,” she said, her tone so thick with sarcasm he’d need a chainsaw to cut through it. “So what you’re telling me is if I go downstairs and get laid by some other man first, I’ll then be good enough for you?”

Jealousy ripped through him at the mere thought.

She narrowed her gaze suspiciously. “You don’t like that idea either, do you?”

Ash struggled to breathe as images of her with someone else tore through him. No, he didn’t want her with anyone else, but at the same time he didn’t want to be her first. He didn’t want to hurt her and honestly, he didn’t want her to remember him or have any regrets. She deserved better than that. Someone better than him to sleep with her. “How can you be a virgin at your age?”

“I’m not ninety, Acheron. Good grief. I told you, I have a bad history with men. Every time I ever tried to sleep with one, something happened. Either someone came in on us or … in one case the guy fell off the bed as he climbed in and broke his collarbone.”

She took his head in her hands and forced him to look at her. “I want to be with you, Ash. No strings. No commitments. I’m a big girl and I’m not going to turn into a stalker. I just want to love you for a little while.”

Those words seared him and at the same time he wanted to curse because they made it impossible for him to walk away from her. “You don’t deserve to be laid in a room in a bar for your first time.”

“And that right there is why I want to be with you. You’re the only man I’ve ever met who would even think about that.”

Because he knew what it was like to be ruthlessly violated and to be haunted by it. For some reason, the first encounter lingered in everyone’s memory. It was why he’d always made sure to take special care with virgins and why he’d been so good at what he did. No one deserved to be humiliated the way he had been. To cry from the pain of it and be laughed at while he begged for mercy.

Stop your damn blubbering, whore. It’ll be over when I’m finished with you.
He’d then been backhanded so hard, it’d broken his nose.
There now. That pain’ll get the other off your mind.

Why with all the powers that he had could he not purge his own memories? Why was eleven thousand years not enough to make the pain turn dull?

All he wanted was one moment free of those memories. One safe place where no one reminded him of what they’d made him. Of what he’d done to himself.

Tory frowned at the shadows she saw in Ash’s eyes as if some painful memory tortured him. She wanted to soothe that ache more than anything. Why wouldn’t he let her? “Ash?”

He reached down to put his hand on the scar where they’d operated on her. “You shouldn’t be out of bed.”

“I’m not in pain. I don’t understand it, but I’m not. And I don’t want to go to bed alone. Are you going to make me beg?”

Anger curled his lips. “You don’t ever beg for anything.”

She pulled his head down so that she could kiss him.

Ash growled as she stirred inside him an animal part that scared him. But he refused to give in to it. “I won’t tup you like a whore in a back room, Soteria. Let me finish playing with the Howlers.”

She eyed him suspiciously. “Then you’ll be back?”

The hesitation in his eyes made her hurt for him. He drew a deep breath before he spoke. “I’ll be back.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

She kissed the tip of his nose, hoping he was being honest with her. “I’m going to hold you to that.”

Ash swallowed. She didn’t have to. Once he made a promise, he was bound by the laws of the universe to see it through or die. “Rest until I get back.” He gave her a deep kiss.

Tory melted at the feeling of his arm around her while he cupped her cheek with his other hand and ravaged her mouth.

He pulled back and drew another deep breath as if fighting for the strength to leave her.