Shadowfae (24 page)

I squared my shoulders and stepped away from his embrace, turning to kiss him once more. “You bet. Just watch me.”

He kissed me back, tentative, exploring. Shy, like we hadn’t just come together in the shower with the dead guy we’d murdered lying eight feet away. Emotion welled up inside me, suffocating. He still didn’t think he owned me, not even after everything we’d done. Astonishing. Humbling. Heartbreaking.

Tenderly, he grazed his thumb across my lips, his gold-flecked eyes warm. His mouth quivered, words about to spill out, but then he bit his lip and vanished.
See you soon. I’ll be the invisible guy jumping you in the lift.

“So you say. It’s an express, remember. The fastest elevator in the southern hemisphere.”

Unseen lips brushed my ear, delicious.
Don’t relax too much. I can accomplish a lot in forty seconds.

18

H
ours later, I shuddered, dazed, aftershocks still rippling through deep, impossibly rising pleasure. “No, I can’t. Not again.”

“You can.” Rajah pressed his long body against my back, his thigh sliding along mine. He glided his cock in and out, massaging the shuddering knot of nerves deep inside me to unbearable tension. His arm slipped over to embrace me, his lips warm and loving on my cheek. “Come, princess. Come on my cock. Let me feel you.”

And I did, trembling, breathless, thrusting my breasts into his warm hand as I spasmed with insane delight. Tears slid down my cheeks, slipping salty into my quivering mouth. He was amazing. The things he did with his cock were amazing. And everywhere he touched me, every crevice he licked or sucked or stroked, memories sloughed away, wiping away years of disgust and brute, loveless contact. Our sweat and body fluid soaked his pale sheets, the heady smell of our coupling heavy in the air. He’d understood my need to cleanse, to use him to erase my shame, and offered himself freely to everything I’d asked. We’d done everything. He’d covered me with kisses, sucked my nipples, slid his tongue and his fingers inside me, pulled me up to my knees to bite my ass and push his tongue into the entrance there. I’d trailed my tongue over every curve of him, tasted his skin with my teeth, rubbed the inside of my mouth with him, swallowed on his orgasm, felt his thighs ripple in my hands and his cock pressing down my throat.

Now, my eyelids flickered, and my body slumped against him, my energy drained. A side effect of too many orgasms with an incubus. Exhaustion had never felt so good. But the more energy I lost, the more he gained. I could already feel him twitching like a speed freak, his cock straining hard in my dripping, sated flesh. If he didn’t finish again soon, he’d be biting his nails and jerking around like he’d swallowed a bag of coffee beans. And there was one thing we hadn’t done yet, one place he hadn’t made me fresh and new.

I shifted my tired hips, slipping him out of me, letting his wet cock slide between the curves of my ass. “Take me.”

His fingers tightened on my breast, his breath short. “You don’t have to—”

“I want to.” It was as much for him as for me. He’d had to fuck Luna too. Still, I couldn’t help but tense up. My experience at this hadn’t been friendly. Most men didn’t see it as an act of love.

But even before I felt him touch me, his gentle fingers spreading my slick fluid, opening me delicately, I knew Rajah would be different. He guided himself to my entrance, pressing effortlessly into my ass, cradling my face close to his, rubbing his cheek against mine. My muscles clenched, nervous. “Hush,” he whispered, kissing me, and slid in farther, so slow, so gentle, I nearly cried again. His compassion for me was intense, intimate, deeply erotic. He worked me, groaning softly as I accepted more and more of him, until he was fully inside, his warm belly flat against my ass. “You feel . . . oh, such a gift, Jade. Thank you.”

His arm tightened around me and he rocked me against him, his cock moving in me ever so slightly, awakening nerves I never knew I had. The sensation was amazing, my whole body tingling. And then he slid his hand between my legs, slowly massaging my wet flesh, and I moaned. He pulled his cock out a little farther, drove it in a little harder. My clit jerked under his clever fingers, pleasure sudden and intense. I must have tensed, because he groaned and pushed harder. “Ahh. So tight. You perfect, beautiful girl.”

He pressed my hard nub of pleasure, grinding it against the bone, and when I shrieked at the force of my impending release he sucked my earlobe into his mouth. My orgasm crashed over me, his merciless fingers making me spasm again and again, milking him as he lost control. He pumped me hard, my body welcoming his pleasure, seeking it, and when at last he buried himself and came with a long groan, his energy flowed into me, over me in a hot golden wave of pure perfection. Our spirits mixed, melded, rolled together in a breathless, loving surge. I shuddered, overcome. He was everything I needed, everything I ever wanted.

He buried his face in my shoulder, enfolding me in his warm embrace. “Thank you,” he whispered again. “For everything.”

I closed my eyes, tears pressing, the sheet warm against my cheek. His soft hair caressed my face, and I inhaled the spicy scent of his sweat, the taste of our endless kisses on his breath, the warm comfort of belonging. Emotion flooded me that I didn’t want to analyze. Instead I let myself drift into a fuzzy dream of contentment, and as I lay there dazed, it occurred to me that the next 850 years might not be so bad if I could spend them here.

S
he’s sleeping, and Rajah eases away from her, careful not to awaken her. His sweaty skin unsticks from hers slowly, reluctantly, leaving him cold and bereft. Her hair drifts on the pillow, caressing her sweet face, and it’s all he can do to make himself let go. But let go he must, and it’s no compulsion of time or hunger driving him but some all-too-telling burn in his heart.

He walks slowly to the shower, his limbs weak and unwilling, his feet sticky on the soft carpet. The energy they shared still prickles under his skin. Without her the bathroom is cold, empty. He closes the door, flips on the soft yellow light, and wrenches the water on hard and scorching. Once the steam rises he leans on his forearm against the glass and lets the hot water flow over his face, blinding him, dragging his hair straight and flat on his cheeks, streaking his body, washing her intoxicating flavor from his skin. He doesn’t know whether he’s desperate, or sorry, to be rid of it.

Anyway, the rough slough of scalding water only reminds him of loving her.

He can’t get the images out of his mind. Her heartbreak, the shock and self-disgust on her face when she finally shook off Dante’s tricks and saw her own blood flowing over her skin. Her courage, her mouth trembling and her fingers tightening around his while Luna tortured her in the most humiliating way. The anguish ripping from her gaze as she tried frantically to scrub herself clean, nails scratching like a captive animal’s claws.

He’d longed for a good scrub himself after helping her kill Luna, though he couldn’t deny that having Luna’s muscles spasm around his cock in the throes of death had felt fucking good. But Jade’s need was fiercer, the need of a lifetime of self-loathing, and he’d wanted to smash his fist into the tiles, scour the earth for the fucking pricks who’d used her, and rip their skin off. But the way she trusted him to understand, to help wash her clean with his touch, overflowed his heart with such dangerous wonder, he’d barely contained it.

Hell, he hadn’t contained it. He’d sighed the L-word right into her mouth, and as he exploded with the hottest, most skin-melting orgasm he’d known for years, the truth of it slammed into his guts like a vicious elbow, so hard, he’d nearly dropped her.

Rajah bangs his forehead into the glass in frustration, his wet hair dragging clean streaks in the condensation. This isn’t part of his plan. Not until he’s sated his need for vengeance with the four magical souls and cut Kane screaming from his heart forever. Then, when he’s mortal, he’ll have all the time in the world for love. Not before, and certainly not with the woman he must cheat of her lonely, desperate dream in order to be free.

Madness, this flame in his heart. He wants it to sputter out, wants to shrug her off like countless others with a regretful sigh. But he can’t deny what he feels. His hellbound soul zings with her, the taste of her pleasure still coating his lips. The burning instinct to keep her safe overwhelms him, the same blind compulsion that made him tempt Dante’s wrath at Luna’s. Heaven knew what he’d been thinking. Only a fool challenges a vampire, and Rajah’s usually the guy who talks his way out of fights with a smile and a wheedling hint of rapture. But seeing Jade scared and hurt ignited his blood with rage, and the thought of Dante sliding his teeth into her—of any other man claiming her—inflamed his anger beyond reason.

The irony twists in his throat. After years of tricking lovers into wanting, he’s the one yearning for some untouchable goddess. He never imagined she’d be interested in a guy like him—the words
easy
and
amoral
spring nastily to his mind, and he chews them up hastily lest he lose confidence—but something in the way she responded to his loving tells him her heart is vulnerable. Can he make a plan? Change her mind somehow? Buy some time to give himself a chance with her?

A chance to what? Fight over Luna’s soul? Stand back and watch while his dreams die along with her?

The gleeful soul buzzing in that trap poisons everything, and icy reality pierces his core despite the steaming water. His throat swells, and he chokes as clarity shines, brighter and more lucid than ever before. She is his heart, his breath, the very taste of the air on his tongue.

And he can’t have her.

Either way, it’s impossible. Neither of them can bear staying in thrall. If he takes the soultrap for himself, she’ll never forgive him. And he could never make up for the heartrending misery that is her thrall. She’ll never give up her freedom, no matter how he loves her, and once she’s free, she’ll end it.

Without her, six more centuries of thrall stretch bleak and lonely. Excruciating. Unthinkable.

Tears scorch his eyes, and his muscles shudder, wretched, but he knows what he must do. What he intended all along, before his sentimental heart betrayed him.

Forget her. Take the soultrap and disappear. Find the last two souls, steal his freedom, and never come back.

Unwilling, he flips the water off, his nerves screaming. He can’t bear the sight of her. Not now. Not her wounded gaze, the tremble of her sweet mouth when he tells her he’s leaving. He’ll do it now, before she wakes. It’s kinder that way.

He steps from the shower, water plinking on smooth brown tiles.

A cold arm snakes around his throat, choking him into silence.

Shock triples his pulse, and instinctively he grasps for leverage to break free. But an impossibly strong male body slams him facefirst into the damp wall, wet leather creaking over his back. His cheekbone bruises, and his teeth scrape bloody dents into the inside of his cheek.

A crushing thigh between Rajah’s legs jams his hips into the wall, grinding against his balls. A grip like iron yanks his arm behind his back, wrenching his elbow until a cold wedge of agony rips the joint apart. A whisper laden thick with copper drifts over the back of his neck. “I warned you, puppy dog.”

Fury ignites Rajah’s blood, sharpened to a burning edge by fear for Jade, and he jerks his head back, hoping to connect his skull with Dante’s forehead. But Dante evades him easily, and scrapes stinging fangs over the crest of Rajah’s shoulder, saliva dripping. The hot hiss of his breath slides like oil. “You stink of her. That’s mine, her stink. Give it back.”

Panic skewers Rajah’s guts, his rage overflowing with images of Jade in Dante’s blood-soaked embrace, but it’s too late. Dante is too strong. Rajah struggles, his feet sliding on the wet floor, but there’s nothing he can do to stop Dante’s teeth from sinking into his shoulder muscle.

Agony flares, white-hot, and blinding dizziness rips through him. Dante’s cool lips clamp down, and he shoves his fangs in harder, shaking his head like a dog. Muscle fibers pop, and vessels tear open with a slurp. Blood splashes, a hot scarlet mess diluting with water on the wall. Rajah jerks his arm helplessly, but Dante grips it fast, pulling harder to help the blood flow. And then he sucks, hard, sexual, and the pain is from hell, like nothing on earth.

Dante rips his teeth free with a snarl, and now his cock bulges hard against Rajah’s naked thigh, water and blood thinning the fabric between them. “Think you can keep her, lover? A pretty fucktoy like you? Think again.” His tongue slides a hot trail up Rajah’s neck, searching for the soft vein below his ear. “Death is too kind for you, Rajahni. But you’ll wish I killed you once I’m finished with her.”

Rajah chokes, his skin crawling, and tries to spit out defiant words, but too late. Dante’s breath stinks of meat, and his mouth fastens on Rajah once more. Wicked hot fangs pierce the soft skin of his throat with a horrible sweet sting. The vein bursts, exploding in a burning spurt of blood and pain. Dante sucks, then swallows with an orgasmic groan, grinding his erection harder.