Black Widow Demon (16 page)

He freed his arm, braced himself on one palm, and pushed up to examine her. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

She rolled to her back and gazed up at the harsh, shadowy outline of his face, and wondered what had led him to become an assassin. Despite his facade, the role did not suit him. He was a caregiver by nature, someone who looked after others. Not much wonder he had run from such a life. The real question was why had he come back here, especially if it was inner peace he sought?

“What was your childhood like?” she asked.

She felt him retract the memories that surfaced at her question, to bury them even deeper than before so she could not explore them. He was very good at hiding what he did not want her to know.

“It was difficult,” he said. “But no more so than yours.”

She suspected that was not true, although hers had been difficult enough.

The fingers that explored the curve of her cheek dipped to her neckline, then wandered along her collarbone. A sharp, delicious thrill shot through her midsection.

He was trying to distract her from her questions. That made their answers all the more significant. She wanted to know him, to understand him better. She had only the short time until they reached Creed to do so. “Do you remember your mother? Your father?”

His fingers stopped their casual exploration. He did not want to answer, but she knew he would.

“No,” he said. “I don’t remember them at all. I was raised by an uncle.”

“What was your uncle like?”

“He was a Godseeker. A favorite. A lot like your stepfather.”

“You hated him,” Raven said. She could feel it in him, which told her the extent of the emotion he carried.

“Very much,” he admitted. His hand had curled into a tight fist where it rested near the base of her throat. She doubted he knew he had clenched it. “I eventually grew too big for the beatings, and when I was fourteen, I killed him. Unfortunately, he was a successful mine owner. After his death, the mines failed, jobs were lost, and I was blamed. So I left.”

He sounded so matter-of-fact when he spoke that Raven decided it was the memory of those beatings she sensed he was having difficulty dealing with. His treatment by people who should have helped an abused child and the fact that he had murdered his uncle did not seem to trouble him as much. She understood.

“That was when the assassin trainers recruited you?” she asked.

“Not exactly. I trained on my own at first, taking work a Godseeker assassin wouldn’t touch.”

She drew her fingertips over the back of his fist. Fractured memories came through to her now, whispers of things of which he didn’t speak but chose to share with her now. Her heart ached for him. “You were a boy. Alone at fourteen.”

“I knew right from wrong. I wanted to live.”

“If you only wanted to live, why did you leave the security of the temple after the trainers recruited you? You could have had a good life with them.”

“I never formally left them,” he said. “I went off to fight demons and never returned.”

“That was brave of you.”

“No. It was arrogant and ungrateful of me.”

He turned his face to her in the darkness, and she knew whatever had happened to him during that period of time was the root of the fear he had found so difficult to suppress in the demon world. One name drifted to the surface of his thoughts.

Ruby
.

Raven caught an image of a lovely, red-haired woman, somewhat older than Blade, and a little rough, perhaps, in demeanor. She doubted if the name and image came to her by accident. Blade had his thoughts and emotions under tight control.

This was meant as another distraction.

She decided to allow it. “Who is Ruby?”

“The woman who helped save my life.”

Raven did not know him well enough to be jealous, although she did feel a twinge of an unpleasant, similar emotion. She wondered if Ruby was still important to him. If so, it made what had happened between them in the demon world more awkward, not less, and she felt guilty for it. “Tell me about her.”

“There is little to tell. We were friends. In the end, friendship wasn’t enough for either one of us, and we saw no hope for anything more than that in what we felt for each other.”

So Blade had left Ruby behind and started across the desert toward his boyhood home in search of…

Peace, just as she had thought.

To Raven, that did not seem as if he had wanted only friendship from Ruby. The unpleasant sensation that was not jealousy spread. She did not want to know any more about this other woman. Not when Raven was the one lying in his arms.

“If she helped save your life, I assume the demon fighting did not go well,” she said.

“No,” he admitted. “It didn’t. As I said, I was arrogant.”

Until three months past, demons had enforced isolation upon the lands of the Godseekers, the place where goddesses had once deigned to walk. It had made the favorites, like Justice, overconfident and secure in their positions. They believed demons would not touch them, especially on goddess land. Many who tried to pass through demon territory had been proven wrong. While the goddess amulets they wore warned of a demon’s presence or approach, it did not give them protection.

Blade was too young to have been a favorite, though. To her his attempt to cross demon territory spoke more of desperation than arrogance, and he had suffered for it.

And Raven knew that while he did not blame her for being half demon, or even seem to hold it against her, he would never forget it. It tangled at the edge of his consciousness with the other memories she knew haunted him. He did not hide any of it from her or try to obstruct the fact that he wanted her in spite of it.

Heat shot through her belly and thighs, and all she could feel was his skin against hers. She wanted him, too.

His hand unclenched. Turning her cheek slightly, she pressed a kiss to his palm.

He froze, his other palm splayed above her breast, and she arched her back so that her shirt gaped open, exposing her skin to the faint moonlight.

He looked at her for a long time. Then, he gathered the edges of the fabric closed and rolled away from her.

She moved with him so that her upper body draped across his chest, her mouth hovering close to his.

“You don’t need to do this,” he said.

“Is it so difficult for you to believe I might want you?” she whispered.

She felt him assessing her words in the darkness. “Considering you just told me you aren’t a whore, then yes.”

“You told me I owe you nothing,” she said. “Therefore, this is something I give freely because it’s something I want, too.” She hesitated, suddenly uncertain, wondering if she had misread him. “Unless this is something you don’t?”

“I want it. I want you.” One hand cupped her chin, the other her hip.

Tendrils of excitement crept through her limbs in response to his touch. She lowered her head, taking his mouth with hers in a hesitant kiss. His fingers tightened, holding her to him as he deepened the exchange. He exerted slight pressure, parting her lips with his, and then his tongue found hers, stroking and caressing until she was shaking with need.

The first time she had been the aggressor. But only because he had permitted it, she now realized. Any tenderness she had sensed in him earlier was gone, replaced by a single-minded desire on his part to possess. Her inner demon stirred with anticipation.

Blade eased her shirt over her head and tossed it aside, its raw-cotton whiteness stark against the blanket of night. Gooseflesh pebbled her arms as the cool air brushed her naked skin, but Blade shifted beneath her, radiating such heat that she instantly warmed. As he trailed his lips from her jaw to the curve of her breast, she did not know what to do for him. Lust was hardly foreign to her, but acting on it was still new.

“Touch me,” he said, his breath chasing chills where his mouth had dampened one taut nipple.

She pressed her hands to his waist, slipping them beneath his clothes. His skin rippled over hard layers of muscle, and he murmured words of quiet encouragement that increased her boldness.

His palms browsed her ribs, his fingers unlacing the string at the waist of her trousers before peeling them from her hips. Eagerness quickened her breath, and she helped him remove his clothing. Soon they were tangled in bare flesh and earthy heat. The length of his arousal against her inner thigh ignited a blazing fire of anticipation in her abdomen.

The first time they had made love, she had sought to confirm to both him and herself that she was no different from any other woman, with the same need for the intimate touch of a man she desired. That it had nothing to do with her demon allure.

Now, she thought blindly of pleasure.

She arched her back when his fingers dipped in her slick heat to stroke her, enjoying his touch. When his mouth caressed the sensitive curve of her neck, she drew a sharp breath as her demon clawed at her in a desperate need to respond.

A niggle of fear nudged at her consciousness. She felt her body tense. She did not want her demon unleashed. Not right now.

Blade did not pull away from her or stop the soft caress of his fingers, although he misunderstood her hesitation. “It won’t hurt this time.” He kissed her with an arrogant assurance that made her smile against his mouth. “Touch me,” he said again. He guided her hand to his erection, thick and hard between them, and she curled her fingers around him. “Like this.” He helped her establish a rhythm, his eyes closing with pleasure.

The feel of him in her hand and the way he moved beneath her touch gave her a soothing sense of power. Having that measure of control took away much of her fear that her demon might somehow escape her.

She slid her hand lower, to the base of him, and cupped the tender rounds of flesh. The backs of her fingers brushed against twisted ridges of skin marring the surface of his upper leg, and she frowned. Thick ropes of scar tissue extended as far as her probing fingertips could reach.

“They’re very old,” he said, dismissing the scars, although she could feel an anxiety building in him over what her reaction to them would be. “They’re nothing.”

She did not need to know any details. A part of her already knew how he had gotten them. Instead, she kissed him, long and deep.

While he allowed her to set the pace, his own explorations of her body did not cease. He shifted her weight so that her knees rested on either side of him. One of his palms slid the length of her torso, coming to rest on the soft swell of her bottom as she rocked against him.

“Tell me what you want.” His voice came out low and strained. “Tell me what you’d like me to do.”

She stroked the heavy length of him as explosive heat built in the lower regions of her stomach and raced to her thighs. “I need you inside me.”

He positioned himself, helping her guide him, raising her hips slightly, then entering slowly. Raven sucked in a breath of sheer bliss when they joined.

He had told her the truth. This time there was only exquisitely mounting ripples of pleasure that she could not contain. Throaty, guttural cries drifted in the night and dimly, Raven realized they came from them both.

She sprawled across him after, with her limbs threaded through his, and buried her face in the crook of his neck. She had not expected this connection, this possessiveness on her part, or the sudden, languid melting of her bones.

He ran his fingers in a lazy pattern up and down her spine as if his thoughts were far away. She did not trespass on them.

She had begun to drift off to sleep when he broke the silence that had settled between them.

“Your eyes glow,” he said quietly. “When your emotions are…intense. They shine like blue diamonds.”

The observation was unexpected, and she did not know what else she could say.

“I didn’t mean to offend you. It’s a unique quality. And very…appealing.” He sounded as if he found it amazing.

It was odd, she thought, that his hatred of demons did not seem to extend to her, even though he never quite forgot what she was.

She did not forget it, either. “You got the scars on your leg from fighting a demon,” she said. “Am I right?”

His fingers ceased their languorous movements. “There was very little fighting involved,” Blade replied. “I challenged it, and as a reward for arrogance, it tried to eat me alive. If a friend hadn’t come to my rescue, I would have died.”

Some of her pleasure died as the reality of his past sank in. Blade might find Raven’s glowing eyes appealing right now, but in the long run they would serve as a reminder to him of people and events he would rather forget. There would be no peace for him while they were together. Turning to Creed for protection would be a kindness to him.

The mood had broken. She nestled beside him, not bothering to dress because he did not, and went to sleep with a silent hope that she would not dream.

She said no prayers, however. Now that she knew who received them, she would never do so again.

…

They had crossed through yet another narrow mountain pass when Blade suddenly stopped. He could see nothing out of the ordinary. The sun shone brightly in a brilliant blue, cloudless sky. Birds sang from the trees. The air was crisp and clear. Yet something didn’t feel right.

That was the problem. He had grown up in these mountains and once knew them well. There should be smoke drifting from chimneys, and the sounds of people at work rising from the valleys.

Behind him, Raven’s hand instinctively went to her quiver and the shaft of an arrow.

“What is it?” she asked.

“There used to be a village in the valley beyond that ridge,” Blade replied, pointing.

Her fingers dropped from the arrow she’d partially drawn from its quiver. “It’s difficult to say from this distance. Perhaps there still is.”