Shadows of Darkness (7 page)

Maybe he should have stayed there. Maybe he'd been wrong to escape. Maybe he'd been wrong all this time to think he could stay sane once he was out.

Maya studied his face, her beautiful, intelligent eyes searching his, her expression devoid of any fear or wariness. "How do you kill? With your weapons?" She touched his arm, her fingers brushing over the brands that had been locked down for so long.

He shook his head, but didn't move away from her touch. It just felt so amazing to feel her skin brush against his. He'd been without human contact for so long. Maya's touch made him feel like he was a human being, like his soul still existed somewhere in the depths of all the stains he'd poured into it over the centuries. "Through the skin. I absorb the life force of my victim. Silent and unseen, I suck the life out of them until they're nothing more than an empty physical shell." He didn't try to sugarcoat it. As much as it would break him to walk away from her, he couldn't lie to her about who he was. She deserved the truth.

Her eyebrows shot up, and she pulled her hand back from him, breaking physical contact. "What about your Calydon weapons?"

He shrugged casually, even though a part of him shriveled and died at her retreat. For his entire life, he'd lived in isolation, and he was fine with it, but Maya made him burn for connection with her. To be so close, and then have her retreat actually made his chest hurt.

"I don't kill with my axes," he said, trying to stay focused on the conversation, and not on how badly he wanted to bury himself against her. "And I don't kill by accident. You can touch me without being afraid." He hadn't meant to say it, as if he were trying to convince her to touch him, but the words had come on their own. No one had touched him voluntarily in his life, at least that he could recall, except to hurt him. Even if people hadn't known who he was, they'd sensed how dangerous he was, and they'd stayed away. A few women had been attracted to the danger, but their touches had been clinical and meaningless, only for the purpose of getting a night of hard sex. Maya was different, and it made him want more.

She glanced at his arms again, but didn't touch him. "If you did use your weapons to kill someone, would it trigger the old cravings?"

He felt like his blood was on fire, burning through him with the need to touch her. Was it because she was his
sheva
? He didn't think it was. She represented more than a mate to claim. She was the life force he'd been searching for, the energy that could sustain him forever, the one that would fill him with all he'd ever wanted to be. He was hungry for her, hungry to the depths of his soul, not as predator and prey, but as if a part of his own soul had gone missing, and she was the key to making him whole again. "No, using my weapons is just a path to doing what I need to do, which is feed."

She cocked her head, studying him thoughtfully. "So, if you defended me with your weapons, it wouldn't trigger it? You could murder that man you want to kill with your weapons, and you'd be fine? Is that what you're saying?"

He stared at her, processing her question. Slowly, he realized that she somehow believed there could be an easy solution to this. "There's no happy way out, Maya. I was locked up because there's no way to kill me, and no way to stop me. You're the only one who can kill me, if we were to bond completely. Even if I don't use my powers to kill someone, I can tell the need is building again. Killing someone will make it happen faster, but it's going to happen. I need you to kill me before it takes over." There. The truth was out. The ugly fucking truth. It was completely foreign to be standing here, being honest with someone, but with Maya, he had no other choice. He needed her to know him, to see him for who he was, to give her the truth no matter how ugly.

She stared at him. "Really?"

"Yeah."

"That's why you said yes to helping me? Because you planned to cement the
sheva
bond with me, and then have me kill you?" To his surprise, she didn't look horrified. She looked
thoughtful.

He nodded. "Yeah."

"Huh." She walked past him, stopping just beside him, but facing out toward the woods, as if she were thinking. Her shoulder was so close to his that he could feel the heat from her body. "And if I killed you, then I'd kill myself, right?"

He balled his hands into fists. "I already said that won't happen—"

She turned back toward him, and her eyes were bright with determination. "There is only one thing that can save my kingdom from the shadows, and that's light. They're natural opposites."

He narrowed his eyes, studying her, suspecting that she was about to propose an idea he wasn't going to like. Yeah, he admired her bravery, and he appreciated the fact she was working her ass off to save the kingdom, but there were limits to what he wanted to hear. "So?"

"So, there's a man who is the heir of an ancient kingdom of sunlight. He's the one I bartered with. His sunlight for my kingdom, and he gets…" Something flickered in her eyes. Fear? "He gets me."

Levi's gut hardened, and his fingers instinctively wrapped around her wrist. "What exactly is your deal with him? You said you weren't engaged."

"No, not engaged. Under agreement to help my kingdom." She grimaced. "I owe him fealty. Not as queen, as a woman. Not marriage, because that would be mutual. It's one-sided, me to him for my lifetime." She met his gaze, and he saw in them something he didn't like: fear, the kind of deep, knowing fear that would haunt a man forever. "He's a bad man, Levi. He'll hurt me. I know that, but it's the only way to save my people. I owe them that. But if you and I bond after my kingdom gets his light, and I kill myself afterwards." She managed a smile. "Then I'm free from him."

"No." He tightened his grip on her wrist, his mind spinning with the number of things he didn't like about that plan. "If he's a bastard, he'll hurt your villagers, too. You realize that, don't you?"

She met his gaze, lifting her chin like the royalty she was. "He doesn't get my kingdom. He just gets me. There's a difference."

"If he marries you, he becomes your king."

She shook her head. "Not in my kingdom. We're not getting married, and even if we were, you can't marry into the throne. You have to inherit it, or be declared."

"And if you die? Who inherits, or will be declared?"

She stared at him. "I don't know. There isn't a succession plan. I always thought…I never thought it would come to this. I wasn't...I wasn't planning to die when I started this. I was going to just endure, but..." She sighed, and her shoulders sagged. "Honestly, Levi," she whispered, her voice trembling. "I am not sure I can survive him. I'm scared. Really scared. Dying with you might be better."

Hell. What kind of future was she giving herself? Eternal torture at the hands of a bastard, or death? Both options made him want to drag her against him, call out his axe, and cut down anyone who tried to harm her. But he could already tell that she didn't want to be rescued, not if it meant letting down her people. So, he tried the only tactic that he knew would get to her. "What if he takes over your kingdom?"

She was silent for a moment, and he saw the reality in her eyes. "Without him, they will all die. With his sunlight, they have a chance. It's up to them to save themselves after this."

"He's so bad that you're willing to die instead of endure him, yet you'll leave your kingdom in his hands?"

"It's not in his hands! He doesn't get it!"

"He'll get it. You know he will, if he wants it."

She stared at him, and then frustration rolled across her face. "What do you want me to do, Levi? Let the life be sucked from their bodies until they're nothing but shriveled husks, rotting away? What kind of life is that—" Her face suddenly paled. "Oh, my God. Is that what you do? Are you like them? Are you...a shadow?" She backed away from him. "Are you what killed my parents? And my sister? Is that why you were able to sense them in the cavern? Is that what you are?"

Levi caught her wrist before she could retreat. "I don't know what's hunting you, but I'm the only one of my kind that I know of. I've never preyed upon an innocent."

"How do you know? Didn't you say you lose your mind?"

The fear in her eyes seemed to ice right through his veins, and into his heart. After a lifetime of not caring what anyone thought, his brief exposure to Maya had changed everything. She was the one person who'd ever seen him as someone other than a monster, and he couldn't lose it. As long as she saw him as worth trusting, he knew there was hope for him. Without that ray of hope she gave him, he had nothing to hang onto. "Don't," Levi said softly. "Don't do this to me."

Maya's eyes widened, and she stared at him.

For the longest moment, they simply stood there. Their only physical connection was his hand around her wrist. His grip was tight, but not so tight she couldn't break it, and they both knew it. And yet, she didn't pull away.

He felt like she was holding his world in her hands. His very soul hung precariously, awaiting her words, and his only chance at hope was in her control. He was teetering on the razor-thin edge of sanity, and he had no tools to defend against the dark needs humming away inside him. Maya was his light, the one thing that seemed to ignite his humanity. "I need you," he said, his voice roughened with emotion. "Despite everything I said earlier, I need you to believe in me."

Still, she didn't move, and he felt hope crumbling. The beast within him laughed, a bitter, satisfied laugh of triumph, and he felt the darkness swell within—

Her expression shifted into shock. "I feel that," she said. "I feel it inside you. It's…evil. It's like…death itself."

He shrugged. "It's not evil. It's just instinct. A need to kill." Even as he spoke, he heard that distant thundering sound, the one that felt like a thousand snare drums in the distance, getting closer with each second, even though it was inside his own head. Crap. It was the sound of the hunt amassing within him—

"No!" Maya suddenly flung herself at him.

He barely had time to grab her hips before her body smashed against him. The need for her was so great that he didn't even think as she flung her arms around his neck. He just hauled her up against him and kissed her. He poured himself into the kiss, drinking in every last bit of goodness and honor in her soul, his body literally shaking with desire as she kissed him back.

Her lips were soft and decadent, but her kiss was fierce, a weapon she was using to claim him back from the darkness within him. He realized she'd claimed him as one of those under her protection, just like her villagers.

Something tightened inside him, a realization that this petite, fiery woman who he could kill in one breath had declared herself his champion. He was one of the most deadly assassins in history, and yet he had a protector. Somehow, she'd seen his one weakness, the one war he couldn't fight himself, and she'd given him what he needed...which was her.

Maya felt the moment that Levi succumbed to her kiss. His arms locked around her and he dragged her against him, until her breasts were crushed against his chest. His kiss was electric, plunging deep inside her, past all the walls she'd erected so long ago to protect herself and her heart.

She felt his pain. She felt centuries of guilt. She sensed the depth of the stains on his soul, and she could feel the intensity of his need to hunt, the power of the darkness within him. But inside him, buried deep, was something else. Humanity. Kindness. Empathy. A sense of self-worth. Things that were barely alive anymore, the things that she'd sensed in him that first moment when he'd touched her mind so desperately, as she was approaching him in the tunnel.

He deepened the kiss, his hands locked on her hips as he held her against him. She couldn't believe how good it felt to be kissing him, to feel his body against hers, to be so wound up in the sheer power of his kiss. He was dangerous, yes, of course she knew that. But at the same time, she felt his instinct to protect her. She'd seen it in his eyes when she'd told him her plans. She'd felt it in his kiss. And she could hear it in the tone of his voice when he'd said he needed her to believe in him.

For so long, she'd been in the role of the protector, for her dying sister and for her kingdom. It felt incredible to feel like she had someone at her back, at least for a moment. It was a completely different sensation from standing alone, fighting an enemy she knew was too strong for her, but knowing she had no choice but to see the battle through. Levi was powerful, insanely strong. He was a warrior who knew how to kill. It might be rather bloodthirsty of her, but she was in rather dire need of a man with those attributes right now.

His mouth was demanding and hard, and at the same time, his lips were soft, not bruising, as if he could somehow manage to keep all that hardness locked away behind his walls. His lips were a caress of pure seduction that stripped away every façade of independence that she'd erected so many years ago, making her entire soul yearn for connection with his.

She was desperate for more of him. Instinctively, she gripped the waistband of his pants. His stomach was rock hard beneath her touch, his muscles flexing as he deepened the kiss, dragging her tighter against his solid body.

She felt small and soft against him, but her body burned with need so hot that she could barely think. He was wearing only his pants, giving her access to so much skin. Her nipples strained against her bra, and heat pooled in her belly as the kiss ramped up.

Then, he slid his hands up her ribs. Her heart started to pound wildly in anticipation, but when his hands closed around her breasts, she was startled by the intensity of the sensation. Little shocks exploded through her body, and cravings wrapped around her. She wasn't even sure anymore if she were feeling her need for him, or his need for her, or some combination. All she knew is that she could feel every nuance of his emotions, the desire, the lust, the need to protect her, and the insatiable hunger for life…not death, life was what he craved.