Blood Deep (Blackthorn Book 4) (34 page)

And it did.

Maintaining a hold that was as firm yet gentle as his kiss, he finally parted her lips, his tongue meeting hers with a slow and purposeful ease as if their mouths belonged that way, as if their lips were made for the very intention of meeting.

The heat that burned in her chest pooled equally deep in her abdomen at knowing he finally stood in front of her as raw and honest as he could be.

She clasped his jaw as he clasped hers, reciprocated his kiss, relishing in the warmth of his mouth, the heat of his lips, the reassurance of his hold as one arm slipped around to hold the small of her back, his other sliding up to the nape of her neck.

She caught hold of his hip, feeling the hardness of his erection pressing against her. Only this time he was in no hurry to take her – but
she
was to take him.

She grasped the hem of his T-shirt, tugging it up between them, hoping her intention was clear enough.

He loosened his arms, pulled away from his kiss only long enough for her to get the clothing over his head.

She pressed her palms flat to his chest, his hard body, his smooth, firm skin beneath her sensitized palms forming a fist of longing deep in the core of her sex. She reached between them, finding his belt, her trembling fingers unbuckling it before tearing open his jeans, Eden doing nothing to stop her as she backed him against the sofa.

As he fell down into it, his strong arms braced, her kisses against his bare chest as she knelt between his spread thighs were as instinctive as sliding her fingers down over every taut groove on her way down to his boxers to free the hardness already breaking against its confinement.

Exposing him slowly, she glanced back into his eyes – eyes whose glossiness mirrored her own need. She pressed her chest against his, kissed along his jawline, his stubble grazing her cheek as she lingered on his tense, warm neck, on his fast-beating pulse throbbing beneath her lips.

And as she coiled her hand around the base of his silky, rock-hard erection, it was her turn to kiss him. He remained motionless as she placed one then another feather-light kiss on his lips, before gently running her tongue between them, tasting him like he had tasted her.

Sliding her cupped hand gently up and down his shaft as he parted his lips to her, she let her tongue meet his again, only pulling back slightly as his hand closed over the top of the one that she held him with.

He glided her hand up to his tip, smeared her palm over his pre-cum before sliding her hand back down again, encouraging her to tighten her grip, letting her know he was anything but fragile. With his other hand, he gently gripped the hair at the back of her head, guided her down to take him in her mouth as he held the head of his erection towards her.

In a move that was carnally instinctive, she licked from where their hands gripped his base right up to circle the underside of his head before licking off what he had to offer at the tip.

His fingers tightened in her hair, the muscles in his abdomen clenching beneath her palm. But when she released him from her mouth only to look him in the eyes, she saw his frown was anything but one of disapproval.

It spurned her on more; gave her the reassurance she needed.

She kissed gently back up his torso, relishing its warmth, tasting his skin, her lips grazing over every finely honed muscle on a path back down over his belly button. His erection jerked as if to meet her, his hand still holding himself towards her, his hips lifting slightly, eager for her to take more of him.

But this was a moment she wanted to savour. She slid both hands up his chest, feeling the smooth curves under her palms as she glided them up across the breadth of his shoulders, back down over every hard muscle before taking him into her mouth again, consuming at least the first two inches of him before gradually taking him deeper.

His groan was almost feral as he spread his thighs further in a move that was painfully masculine. She adjusted her position to take him deeper into her mouth, as deep as she could without choking, the fingers of his clenched hand brushing her lips.

Despite handing the control to her, he still had moments of impatience. Entwining his fingers in her hair, her encouraged her to take him deeper still.

When she looked back up at him, his head was resting back on the sofa, his eyes closed, his teeth gritted, his hand having freed the nape of her neck to clutch his own.

She couldn’t remember having seen anything more beautiful, more sexy, more compelling. And she knew in that moment, as impossible as it felt, as implausible, that she was well and truly falling for him.

Her own need escalating off the back of his, needing to feel the thrust of his hips elsewhere than against her mouth, she slid her lips slowly off him.

Her toes tingled as her gaze met his again, her thighs trembling as she kissed back up his chest. She slipped her knickers off, unbuttoned her cardigan, her damaged dress parting across her bare breasts.

Both hands clasping her behind, he had her astride him a second later, her thighs parted either side of his.

The second she felt his rigidness against the pliability of her sex, she knew she wanted to relish the moment. Seemingly so did he as he tugged off her cardigan, throwing it away before fully opening the front of her dress, sliding it down her arms to expose her to him. Eyes fixed on what she was offering, he took both breasts in his hands, massaging them with a firmness that clenched her insides, his thumbs working her nipples in firm, circular strokes before locking his mouth over each in turn.

As he sucked hard on her nipples, one hand then flat to the small of her back to help her balance, she arched her back against it, rested her hands behind her on his strong thighs as she stroked her sex gently back and forth against his length, knowing she couldn’t take it much longer before having him back inside her.

‘Would it be so bad?’ he asked, tracing his kisses up her neck as he still clasped her breast, his voice low and raspy against her ear. ‘Being owned by me? Doing this every night? Every day? Whenever the mood took us?’

‘Or what if I owned
you
?’ she asked, lowering her head to look him in the eyes. ‘What if I chose to keep you down here? What if I took you whenever the mood took me?’

‘Are you
daring
to threaten me again, Jessie?’

She smiled against his. ‘I’ve seen that soft inside, Eden. Don’t try and play the hard guy now.’

He took a sharp intake of air through his teeth. ‘There you go again, thinking you’ve got me all worked out.’

‘Then surprise me.’

He grasped hold of her behind, lifting her so he could guide himself into her sex.

Hand tightening on her neck, he pressed his mouth to her ear. ‘Don’t tempt me,’ he whispered.

And he thrust.

Jessie coiled into his shoulder with a shallow intake of breath, one hand slamming onto his chest, the other clutching the back of the sofa.

When she could force herself upright, she stared into his eyes – deep, dark eyes; eyes she had thought she understood. And she searched them as he pressed his body up against hers to give himself more control as he began his slow, purposeful, albeit brusque, penetration.

She locked her hand on the back of his neck, his eyes unsettling in their sincerity, a surge of panic and thrill washing through her. She panted open-mouthed at the firmness of his grip, the force of his thrusts as if he wasn’t letting her go even if she wanted him to. The compulsion to instead sink deeper into him, onto him, was all-consuming.

Just as she started to relax into it, she felt it.

She wasn’t tingling with arousal. The warmth coursing through her wasn’t just from the intimacy. She widened her eyes in panic, her arms tensing either side of Eden as she lowered her head.

It couldn’t happen then. There was no way it could happen then. But the spark at the pit of her spine was undeniable, the heat rising up every vertebra, the tingle of static in the air around her.

‘Jess?’

She clenched her jaw, trying to fight it, but the burning sensation engulfed her back.

She was going to hurt him, if she didn’t get him away from him soon, the static alone could kill him.

He caught hold of her arms, urging her to look at him. ‘Jess? What’s wrong?’

She yanked herself from his grasp. ‘Eden, get away from me,’ she hissed quietly, turning her back on him and crawling away.

She kept her back to him, fell onto her haunches, her forehead to the floor, her hands balled into fists as the heat continued to spread along her back. She slammed her palm down onto concrete, sending fractures through the ground beneath her.

It couldn’t happen then.

It
couldn’t
.

E
den tugged
up his shorts and jeans and stood. He couldn’t tell if she was in pain or in shock. If he’d hurt her somehow.

As her hand slammed against concrete, he flinched as he saw the floor crack.

But as he took a step forward to check on her, the light nearly blinded him.

He recoiled, the backs of his legs hitting the edge of the sofa, causing him to topple back onto it. He snapped his head to the left, shielded his eyes.

When he looked back the brief flash of light had eased. What was left of it spanned outwards from her spine like sparklers making patterns in the night sky – iridescent sparklers that were violet one minute, then silver, then gold, charged by the air around her.

Sparks never retained one form, the twelve-foot-long outline constantly fluctuating.

But he could still identify the shape they drew in the darkness. He could see exactly what spanned out of Jessie’s back.

What ignited the dark room in front of him was the static spark of wings.

‘
Y
ou’re an
angel
?’

His words may have been whispered, but he could have screamed them for all she was able to focus on him right then. She clenched her hand against her forehead to ease her pounding headache as the images hit her hard and fast – so many images, like a displaced puzzle, rapidly forming into some kind of semblance of order, engraving itself in her memory like they had already happened.

Faster and faster the images came, the screams, the voices, flashes of light, dark landscapes, blood, so much blood, fire, the wounded – her skull feeling as though it was going to splinter if she didn’t get them out soon.

‘Jess?’ he said again as she eased back on her haunches, her back straightening again. ‘Jess, can you hear me?’

She struggled unsteadily to her feet, tugged her dress sleeves back up over her shoulder as she felt the sparks die down, no doubt still singeing the back of her dress as she wrapped it around her chest to cover her modesty. Spine tingling and aching, her fist locked to her forehead in a futile attempt to keep the flashing lights at bay, she looked at Eden’s blurred, swaying figure through squinted eyes. ‘You need to go,’ she said, it hurting to even tilt her head.

‘I don’t need to go anywhere.’

‘I’m
telling
you to go.’

‘What the fuck just happened – did I do something to evoke it?’

‘Eden, I’m not in the mood for wild stabs in the dark. And I’m not in the mood to talk about this. Please, just
go
.’

She winced as the blood rushed to her head with every movement, sending shooting pains down the back of her neck and shoulder. She exhaled with impatience and marched over to the hidden door.

She was in too much pain to argue; too much pain to care what the impact was going to be of what he would see. She yanked the metal shelving unit away from the wall, sending it crashing to the floor before she shoved open the hidden door to her inner sanctum.

She kept her hand clenched to her forehead as the floor blurred and swayed beneath her amidst fragments of images as vivid as if they were playing out right in front of her.

She reached down and grabbed a pencil from the pile on the floor and, amidst flashes of white light, she began to draw.

E
den stood
in the entrance to the dark room, the weak candlelight behind him and the depleting sparks emanating through Jessie’s scorched dress the only sources of light.

She was stood with her back to him, doing what, he at first thought, was scratching at the wall with her fingers. But as his eyes adjusted, he saw she wasn’t scratching at all: she was drawing, the graphite of her pencil rasping against painted stone.

He scanned the room, only then seeing faint outlines on the walls. He backed up and grabbed the candle, taking it in with him.

He stepped up to the wall to his left, the flame igniting the images, before he turned to see each of the four walls were covered with a tapestry of hand-drawn images. He looked up at the relatively low ceiling, the lack of windows. Whatever it had once been, it seemed to be some kind of additional storage chamber. He looked down at the stubs of pencils on the floor. And whatever
this
was playing out around him, it was weeks of work.

He stepped up alongside her.

‘Jess?’

As he looked into her focused eyes, she was glazed, fixated on the image she was drawing as if in a trance. Her hand worked with impressive speed and accuracy as she sketched, the detail intricate in whatever she was creating.

And the detail was monstrous.

Because as he passed the three foot of blank wall next to her on his way around the periphery of the room, that was exactly what the images increasingly became – monstrous.

Moving clockwise from the blank strip of wall as logic dictated, it began with two intertwined figures, one almost indistinguishable from the other. They looked to be locked inside a dome, a cityscape their backdrop, the sky above oppressive in its intensity. Despite the darkness pressing in on them, they appeared to be giving off some kind of glow.

Eden stepped closer to examine the detail in the ground beneath them, the buildings that surrounded them, to see they were constructed of a myriad of interwoven limbs and tortured faces. Replicating the images he had seen on the easel, seeing so many of them, all clustered together, was as unsettling as the dark tomb he had joined Jessie in.

He recoiled from the despair he was witnessing, glanced at Jessie still working meticulously with her pencil. As if sleepwalking, she remained unaware of him – unaware of anything other than her drawing.

Moving further along the wall, he was looking for some kind of logic, but it didn’t make sense – as if pieces were missing or they were just random images that his mind felt the need to turn into a story.

There was definitely something progressive in it though – the myriad of limbs and tortured faces revealing a whole new layer beneath by the time he’d reached the adjacent wall. This layer was even more monstrous than the one above. These images were malevolent, animated in their movements and expressions, swirling amongst each other in contortions that told him they were anything but human as they dragged themselves in and out of the fermented darkness beneath.

In the next scene along, the ground had split as if there had been some kind of an eruption – some kind of fragmentation allowing whatever was in the lowest level to seep through to the top.

On the third wall, above a collage of varying landscapes, was a star – a bright, large, disproportionate star breaking through the darkness. It should have been reassuring against the night sky but, gradually, the stars around it began to fall – bright twinkles hitting the ground and evaporating as the image progressed. With it, darkness intensified across the landscapes until one could no longer be differentiated from the other.

The pair of domed figures had reappeared, except now they were separated and no longer alone. Six others accompanied them, along with a mass of regimented figures indistinguishable from each other. The interwoven layers and landscapes were dominated by the swirling mass of a battle – so many faces twisted and contorted in anger, horror and anguish.

The starlight still glowed above, but this time it was a glow of darkness against a backdrop of light – a darkness that was intensifying as it spread closer and closer to where Jessie furiously worked.

Eden became short of breath, as if the air had been sucked out of the room. As he scanned the room again, he could hear a distant backdrop of voices, could feel the pain and desperation, the room, despite the chill, suddenly becoming stifling as if he was amidst a jostling crowd. His head started to ache as if there was something heavy above him; he felt the gush of a breeze on his neck though the candle he was holding didn’t so much as flicker.

A candle he dropped to the floor as Jessie’s body did the same, Eden just catching her in time to stop her head hitting concrete.

She lay limp in his arms in the darkness, her eyes disturbingly open for a few more seconds until all light faded.

‘Jess?’ he asked again.

But her head slipped off centre.

His heart pounded as he checked for her pulse, a wave of uncharacteristic panic washing away all thoughts beyond her. It took a few seconds to locate it, the third-species heart pumping so much slower than its human counterpart. But then he felt it – that and her breath on his cheek as he bent over to listen.

The relief that flowed through him warmed his chilled skin as he cradled her up in his arms, thankful to be free of the oppression of the room as he carried Jessie through to the sofa.

He picked her cardigan up from the floor, searched the darkness for the matches, found a candle and lit it.

He took his place in the corner of the sofa, rested Jessie’s head on his lap. He gently brushed her hair away from her face, held his hand on her neck, his only comfort, along with her closeness, being her continued pulse beneath his palm.