Forbidden (23 page)

When Damon got sick she treated him and
cleaned his face of vomit, and when her legs became red and swollen
from the bite of so many mosquitoes, it was Damon who rubbed them
down with cooling salve and wrapped them until she
healed.

They talked, they laughed, they bonded
and everything was perfect.

Except … except that when they fell
asleep at night it was with a barrier of palm fronds between them.
It was as if once Jocelyn disappeared behind that green wall, she
cut herself off from him in more ways than one. Damon found himself
growing increasingly desperate to have an excuse, any excuse to
tear the damn plants down.

Then one night, he got one.

* * * *

Jocelyn was just drifting off to sleep
when she heard it. There was a crash from outside the shelter and
suddenly Damon was cursing from the other side of the barrier. He
heart pounding, Jocelyn sat up and reached for the leaves
separating them to ask what was the matter, but he tackled her
before she got the chance. Beneath the sound of air rushing out of
her lungs as he landed on her she heard something pawing and
snorting in a rage. When Damon rolled off of her she saw that most
of the shelter had been torn apart and on the other side of the
damage, turning around in preparation for its next attack, stood
the boar. He was a huge animal and would have reached well past
Jet’s knees had the horse been there with them. His eyes were
black, emotionless disks and his snout twitched and searched as he
got a smell for the camp. His tusks curved up from his mouth thick
and sharply pointed. When his lips pulled back from his teeth she
saw that his mouth hid a good few inches of those dangerous weapons
and she shivered as she tried to make it to her feet. Only it was
moving again, charging with its head lowered and its eyes trained
on her, and all she could do was scream….

An arm slipped around her waist and
dragged her out of the way just as the boar lifted its muzzle and
slashed his tusks through the air where she’d been. Damon let her
go the next second, shoved her out of harm’s way so she fell into
the dirt on hands and knees. She scrambled a few more feet away,
thinking Damon was doing the same thing but when she turned back
she saw that he couldn’t get to her. The boar kept blocking his
way, kept lunging forward until Damon was forced back on his heels,
teeth bared in his own animalistic warning and his face sheened
with sweat. As she watched the boar tor past Damon’s defenses and
into his side and ripped his tusks deep into his side. The tusks
flashed in the dim light and they were soaked red and beneath the
roaring that filled her head, Damon made the most horrible, pain
filled sound.

Jocelyn’s world stopped.

Across from where she sat, Damon lifted
his leg to kick the animal away. His bare foot landed in its snout
and as it shook its head, dazed and enraged, Damon threw himself to
one side to grab the spear he kept leaned against a tree. When the
boar had regained his equilibrium, Damon was crouched and ready. In
the moonlight that slipped through the canopy of trees Jocelyn
couldn’t see where he was hurt, but she smelled the metallic stink
of blood. The boar seemed to sense it too because its eyes zeroed
in on and followed Damon as if he were a walking meal.

There was a brief moment of madness
where Jocelyn wondered if boars ate people, and then the animal was
on the move again, stubby legs a blur as he shot across the ground.
She met Damon’s gaze and at a look from him she turned her head
away just as he raised the spear and brought it back down
again.

The scent of more blood filled the air,
the boar gave an agonized scream, and the wet, meaty sound of a
blade cutting through flesh had Jocelyn convulsing in
horror.

Then silence.

“…
cess. Princess, are you
alright?”

Damon’s voice seemed to be coming from
very far away and it was with a sick jolt that Jocelyn realized
that she had been staring down at her hands. They trembled, a fine
shake that was slowly taking over her whole body and as she stared
down at the pale, graceful digits her eyes filled with tears. Then
Damon’s large hand was placed over hers and he was covered in
blood, and yet he didn’t shake. Didn’t falter. Her laughter was
thick with tears and the fading edges of panic. The damned man was
too much of a fool to fear for his own life. Jocelyn supposed he
simply left such petty concerns with her since she did it so much
better.

That brought the tears on in
earnest.

“Hey!” He sounded afraid now. Why he
would when she was simply crying Jocelyn didn’t know. “Hey! Stop
that. Shit. I mean. It’s alright. Everything is fine now.” He
crooned and reached for her. His hand on her shoulder was big and
awkward but she fell into his embrace all the same. Pressing her
face against his bare chest and sobbing until his arms came around
her and he rocked her back and forth. He smelled like something
wild, he smelled like blood and violence and death. It hit her, as
she was struggling for breath against his chest, that first
instance that she’d smelled the metallic tang. Damon was hurt. And
here she was weeping all over him like a little girl. Pulling
abruptly away from the circle of his arms she looked up into his
face, hating that she couldn’t see him clearly in the
dark.

“You’re the one injured. I should be
asking you that question.”

He shifted and tried unsuccessfully to
hide his grimace of pain. “Don’t worry about me. I can’t die. I’m
evil incarnate remember?”

Remembering some vague reference to the
title during one of his and Ava’s more heated arguments, she pushed
away from him to get to her feet. Then she hurried to the remains
of their shelter and grabbed the trampled mess that was her
gown.

“Come on. We have to get you cleaned
up.”

His brow lifted, “Are you a doctor on
top of being a princess now?”

She bent and ducked under one of his
arms, grunting as she helped him to his feet, “You’d be surprised
where my talents lay.”

“I’m sure I would.” He gave a throaty
chuckle that lost none of its appeal even if he was bleeding like,
well, a stuck pig. It took a long time to work their way back to
the old shelter on the beach. They had to make frequent stops and
each time they did Damon’s face got paler and he began to let
Jocelyn carry more and more of his weight.

She sat him gingerly on the floor of
the old lean-to and felt her very soul shake at the sound he made
as he lowered himself. Trying to swallow back that now familiar
taste of panic, she ran towards the incoming waves. Ripping long
strips from the skirt of her dress as she went. When she was in the
water she dunked all the cloth beneath it and when it was soaking
she tossed the lot of it over her shoulder before cupping some of
the water in her hands. She cleaned the dirt the boar had left on
her dress from her mouth before spitting it all out. Then she ran
back to Damon as fast as her legs would take her.

The side of his stomach was torn open
and blood seeped from the gash in slow steady beats in time with
his heart. He could have died.

Jocelyn managed to hold herself
together as she cleaned the wound and the surrounding blood with
salt water. Managed to hold still when Damon groaned and cursed
from the pain, and she was reasonably calm as he allowed her to
bind him tightly with two of the longest pieces. Only when he was
cleaned and panting in front of her did she allow herself to
collapse.

The tears were scalding; they came not
from her throat or behind her eyes but in some deep, hurting place
in her gut. She wrapped her arms around his waist and placed salty
kisses around the ragged bandage, against the center of it where it
was warm from his blood and up the length of his chest.

He could have died.

She licked and bit her way up his
chest, feeling him shudder and buck in her mouth when her tongue
found his nipple and tugged harshly.

Damon could have died.

Her tongue was a brand against the
column of his throat and his head fell back under her ministrations
with a groan that rocked her body and that now familiar wetness
gathering between her legs.

Damon could have--

“You could have died.” Her eyes cleared
and she met his solemn gaze as he ran his fingers across her
cheekbones, across her lips and down her throat. His eyes followed
the path of his fingers, and he whispered the words in a voice gone
hoarse. “I almost lost you.”

She wanted to hit him, wanted to scream
into his face that she wasn’t the one bleeding on the ground. But
before the words could come, before the fear could turn into
anything else, he’d gathered her up and crushed his mouth to
hers.

She swallowed him down as if she’d been
starving. His tongue was ambrosia and lightning on her tongue all
at once. So long, practically forever since she’d tasted him, since
she’d felt the heat of his breath against her face as he fed from
her mouth. Since she’d shuddered against him as his tongue slid and
thrust into the hot cave between her lips. So long, too long. She
didn’t know why they’d kept their distance up until now when this
was something they both obviously needed. Her hands were tangled in
his hair, pulling the silky strands until his neck arched back. She
straddled his waist and leaned over him, punishing his lips with
her teeth and sucking his tongue into her mouth even as she thrust
her hips against the muscled planes of his chest in a dance she
longed for him to teach her.

He allowed her full control of his
mouth. Damon submitted to her and that gave her such an intense
jolt of pleasure that she cried out.

Damon’s hands were gripping her waist,
his large hands spanning her easily and his fingers digging into
the sensitive flesh of her backside. She liked the sharp little
spasms of pleasure/pain that radiated out from his hands, and she
pressed herself into his hands more firmly. Her chemise had risen
during all of this and his thumbs dipped into the hollow between
her legs and found the edges of her lower lips. She groaned and he
growled something unintelligible and hungry into her mouth before
his hands spread the cheeks of her butt. She gasped at the rush of
cold air over her over heated flesh and jerked back from his mouth.
Her hand tightened in her hair as he continued to open her, over
and over again until the muscles in her sex were clenching around
empty air and desperate for touch. She hated having his fingers so
close, right there on the edge of her, but never close enough. She
pressed back, arching her back as she moved and thrust in his hands
like an animal. Her lips traveled down his face to his neck, and
she bit him as her hands fumbled at the ties to his
britches.

He finally released her but it wasn’t
to help with his pants, if anything it was so he could make her job
more difficult. Reaching around her waist he opened the lips of her
sex with one hand and plunged within her with the other. She had
him halfway out of his pants and all she could do was gasp and
writhe against those clever fingers as they slid into her body. He
didn’t test her this time, didn’t prepare her, he simply sunk in as
far as he could. When his rhythm increased and his fingers began to
circle and bend inside of her desperately clenching channel she
gave a throaty cry so that he knew how very much she liked what he
did.

It was around then that his hands fell
still, but Jocelyn didn’t care. She didn’t need his help to shove
his fingers inside of her. She could feel his eyes on her as she
rode his hand, grinding herself against his flat stomach to add to
the friction. Her breasts bounced, rubbed along his chest, her face
was flushed, eyes closed tight, and her hips worked frantically but
still it wasn’t enough.

“Damon!” There was nothing shy about
her now. Any reservations she’d had with him had long since died
and his name burst from her lips part order, part plea, and wholly
shameless. He was so still that she had to wonder if his lack of
movement had more to do with his injury than any teasing. If that
was the case then she was sexually abusing a dying man.

Before she could get truly frightened
by the thought, Damon crushed any worries she might have had about
his strength by lifting her from his lap and pushing her onto her
back. He rose up on his knees between her spread legs and finished
the ties on his pants himself. Gray eyes blazing with all the
intensity of stars and his face hard and set. In low growling tones
as he reached inside of his pants and gripped the length of his
shaft in his hand, he commanded,

“The chemise. Take it off.”

Jocelyn’s mouth went dry and she was
momentarily struck dumb as she watched him caressing himself, the
head of his cock (it gave her a naughty thrill to use his word for
it) rising up from the circle of flesh as his fist pulled the
foreskin back over the engorged, purple flesh. There was a bead of
liquid on the tip of him; she saw that clearly as the moon rose
higher in the sky. He was so thick and long and when Damon released
himself to stand and take his pants the rest of the way off, his
shaft curved up to brush against his navel.

She looked up at all of that lean
muscle encased in golden skin and her mouth watered. When Damon met
her eyes through the black waterfall of his curls she felt herself
rising to her knees before him. There was hesitation yes, there was
fear and embarrassment, but he grinned at her and his face was that
of a little boy’s, those twice-damned dimples winking at her and
after that she was lost.