Succubi Are Forever (17 page)

His red eyes flared with need and he ran a hand down my thigh. He hooked his hand behind my knee and tugged it open further, exposing me to him. Then his hand skimmed back down my thigh and brushed against my sex with his knuckles. “You’re so perfect. Look at how wet you are for me.”

I felt his finger dip into my sex, felt it slide deep and I was indeed wet with need. I moaned, my gaze rapt on him as he lifted that slick finger to his lips and tasted it. His eyes grew even redder with lust, his fangs elongating. “Taste so sweet.”

“Taste me,” I begged. “Bite me.”

“Later,” he promised huskily. His hand went to his cock and he guided it to my entrance, where I was aching and ready. I whimpered as he began to push in, loving the sensation. Normally he thrust into me with speed, knowing that it excited me to be quick and dirty—and okay, a little rough. But tonight, he was exquisite in his tenderness for me.

Inch by inch, he pushed deeper into my body, his red eyes watching me as he pressed forward. When he was seated fully within me, he let loose a hissing breath and then leaned closer, gently kissing my mouth again. His movement was slow and exquisite. The stab of him deep inside me, along with the matching thrust of his tongue—I moaned, feeling my body tighten in an oncoming orgasm.

“That’s it, Princess. Come for me,” Zane murmured, kissing me again. He continued to rock into my body, sinking deep with each careful, prolonged thrust. My movements grew more frantic, though. I writhed under him, needing him, unable to articulate just how much. When the orgasm shot through my body, I whimpered my release, feeling my sex clench around him, deep inside me.

He groaned, about to lose control, and his soft, seductive kisses stopped for a moment. Teeth scraped at my lower lip and he groaned again, then pulled back. Zane lifted his head from mine and watched me with intense, burning eyes. Then he sank deep inside me, rocking forward and thrusting once more, beginning the delicious, rhythmic torture again. I raised my hips a little with his movements, my hands sliding to his ass to cup those delicious bundles of muscle and holding him tight against me, deep inside me.

“I want you to come again,” he said, and began to thrust harder into me. It was a slow piston of his hips, and I felt the answering flutter deep inside me, so deep and needy that I almost missed it. But at that flutter, I gasped.

“Perfect,” Zane said. His hand went to my hips and tilted them, holding me pinned against him at an angle.

When he thrust again, I felt that sensation in every nerve ending of my body. My eyes widened and I gasped. “Zane—”

“I’m here,” he rasped, thrusting again, harder, hitting that perfect spot once more. He was rubbing a spot deep inside me that was exactly what I needed. My moans grew louder, my nails digging into his shoulders as he continued to rock into me, his intense gaze devouring my every response, watching me intently.

That heated gaze seemed to focus everything in my body, my muscles tensing with need. When he hit that perfect place deep within me in his next thrust, I cried out and came again, clenching hard around him, my legs quivering.

Zane bit out a curse, and I felt him lose that measured control. His slow, measured thrusting became hard and wild. The orgasm racing through my body didn’t stop, just cascaded around me, growing in intensity as his body driving into mine stroked us to a fever pitch. My cries became a keening moan.

When he finally stiffened on top of me, shouting my name, his fingers digging bruises into my hips, I was lost in the intensity of the orgasm, my limbs locked around his. I felt him shudder, felt him come deep inside me. He rocked hard against me one more time, then slowly fell forward, panting, his sweat-slicked body covering mine.

I languidly wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed his face like I always did, my body twitching after the orgasm. I wasn’t tired after marathon sex. I usually felt pumped; energized. I did right now, but Zane’s sweating skin and heavy breathing implied that he’d need a moment to recover. So I brushed my fingers through his wild hair and tried to pull my thoughts together.

The ceiling above our heads was the first thing I noticed. It was the same soft green of the moss from the tunnel, but it seemed low. As if I could reach out and touch it. That didn’t make sense. I glanced over to my side and noticed that the cave we were in had a lip, and when the lip ended, I could no longer see the floor.

That… didn’t seem right.

As I turned my head, I noticed that it was propped on something. I reached behind me to feel… fabric. Wet fabric. Pain pulsed in the back of my head at the slight touch and I jerked my hand away, remembering.

A crack like a gunshot, and Remy had gone down. Then a second shot and darkness. I hadn’t even seen if Noah had gotten into the tomb or not. Those bitches had shot me in the back of the head. I made an outraged noise in my throat.

Zane pressed a kiss to my neck, breathing hard. “Glad to see you awake.”

Anxiety swept through me. Phryne was here. She was after the halo, and she was too damn close. “Where is she? We have to stop her.” I struggled to get up.

“Don’t,” Zane said, pressing a hand to my shoulder to keep me down. “Let your body heal. You were out for a long time. It was a bad shot.”

It must have been if Zane was awake. I knew we’d been down in the cavern for a while, but surely not an entire day? “Remy?”

“Still down there. I couldn’t grab you both.”

True. And he couldn’t heal her. Well, not unless he offered her sex, and while I adored my best friend… she could wait a few hours for her own lover. I brushed my fingertips over his mind, diving into his thoughts to pull the information. I had so many questions, and I knew the answers would be quickest this way. I pressed past the collage of current thoughts, images of my breasts bouncing as he fucked me, the softness of my lips, real fear as he’d found me unconscious in a pool of my own blood, and dove deeper.

In Zane’s memories, I saw him awaken at dusk.

Both he and Sophie had been concerned that no one in our party had returned, and white-hot fear had shot through him when he’d found out that Noah Gideon had followed them.

He’d rushed up the cliffs, following the traces of my power signature, and found Ethan collapsed near the secret door, fast asleep. Someone—and he had a nasty suspicion as to who—had been here before him and put the Enforcer to sleep. Zane had pushed on through the tunnel and bypassed the stairs, gliding down to the bottom with only his wings fanning out to slow his drop, and then flown over the lake. It had only taken a few minutes for him to catch up to the others.

There, at the stone door that stood as the entrance to the maze, he’d found Phryne and another woman—Ashara—running their hands over the circular door, trying to find their way in. Noah Gideon was nowhere to be seen—he must have gotten through the door and trapped Phryne and Ashara on the other side.

The sight of Jackie’s limp, bloodied form had driven him to action. As he’d descended, rage had overtaken him, especially when he saw the gun in Ashara’s hands. A shot to the back of the skull on an immortal would put them out for a while. It was clever… and evil. That they’d done it to his woman filled him with fury.

My mind filled with rage—Zane’s rage. I watched the flash of memories become choppy, watched Zane attack the two succubi, Ashara’s gun going flying as she slammed into a wall. He grabbed her face and pounded her into the rock, her head crushing like a melon. Turnabout was fair play. And when he saw Phryne—the crafty one—run for Jackie’s unconscious body, he grabbed Jackie and hauled her into the air. There’d been an alcove high in the ceiling, away from everything, and he’d taken her there. He’d propped her up with his shirt and then set about to bringing her pleasure, since succubi healed through repeated flare-ups of their curse.

In other words, orgasm.

My mind flashed back to his brutal punch of Ashara, how her head had shattered under his hand as he’d pushed her into the wall.

“Don’t, Princess,” Zane said softly, jarring me out of his thoughts. He rubbed a thumb over my nipple, distracting me. “If she hurts you, I’m going to hurt right back.”

I nodded, not surprised or upset. Just… startled at the brutality of it, I supposed. Zane had so much strength, and he never used any of it against me. I sat up slowly, wincing at the pounding in my head. My jaw felt better at least.

“Here,” Zane said, moving close, and his chest was all I saw as he loomed over me, tying a strip of fabric around my head as a bandage. “That’ll stop the worst of the bleeding.”

I smiled up at him. “You’re a good man.”

He laughed at that. “I am anything but good, Princess, and you know that.”

Well, that was true. I did know that. I looked over at the ledge of our small cave and moved toward it to peer over the edge. Zane put a warning hand on my back but I only peeked over, wanting to see everything.

We were so high up that everything below seemed like it was occurring in an ant farm. Up here at the top of the cavern, I had a better idea of just how vast this cave network was. I felt dizzy staring down at the floor far, far below. How had the cliff been so very hollow? This was big enough to house a city. Far below, the tomb stretched and curled in a riotous mess of walls and small rooms. I stared over the ledge at it, frowning. It seemed to stretch on for miles. “What is all that stuff?”

“A maze,” Zane said with a hint of amusement. “Old Azazel did like his games.”

Of course. A maze. That must have been what all the notations on that first page had been. At the time, I’d had no clue. Now it all made sense, and it filled me with panic because the maze had been on the Melledin Manuscript page that had been stolen from me. “Where is Phryne?”

He pointed off to the right and I had to crane my neck to see in that direction, which sent a stab of agony down my spine. “Over there. You know that door where she shot you? She can’t get through it. She must not have the code that Noah did.”

It had to have been part of the monastery wall, or the Serim had passed it along to Noah. Phryne’s page had information about the maze, but it seemed like she didn’t have the key that would enable her to even get to it. Well, thank God. I breathed a sigh of relief at that. “And Noah?”

“Dunno.” He gestured at a far end of the maze. “But there’s a ward pulsing in that direction, so my guess is that he’s using an arcane shield of some kind to hide his location while he’s vulnerable.”

Huh. “How did Noah get an arcane shield?”

“My guess is that the Serim dragged their favorite warlock out of hiding and forced him to make them some toys.”

I grimaced at the thought of Luc Stone, an old frenemy of mine. He was an incubus created by the Serim named Ariel… also not a friend of mine. “So what I’m hearing is that if we can get past the door where Phryne is stuck, we can make a clear run for the halo?”

Zane chuckled. “Princess, we can simply fly over all of it.”

“Oh.” I stared down at the dizzying maze below. “Well, that’s handy.”

Zane’s fingers brushed over the curve of my naked buttock. “But first, I think you need a little more healing.”

I couldn’t argue with that.

~*~

We dressed and left the alcove a short time later. Zane had to skip his shirt since it was trashed, and he shrugged his coat on over his bare chest. He scowled at the sight of me buttoning Noah’s shirt back on. “I see that bastard didn’t wait five minutes to get his hooks back into you.”

“He was just being nice, letting me borrow his shirt. Nothing more. He won’t force me to return to him,” I said. “You know that.”

“Won’t he?”

I shook my head. Noah was hard around the edges—more now than ever—but he didn’t want to force me to be at his side. He wanted me there of my own free will. “I don’t think he means me harm. He just wants the halo.”

“We have to stay away from him, Jackie,” Zane said, straightening and handing me his coat. His wings shuddered, a black waterfall on his back. “If you get that halo, all he has to do is snap his fingers and you’ll be forced to hand it to him. We do not want that kind of power in the hands of the Serim council. They’ll use it to wipe out all of their enemies—and I’m betting that both of us are counted in those ranks.”

I tugged his coat on over my shirt. Nice and warm. “I know. I’ll be careful.”

Zane pushed a lock of hair behind my ear and smiled down at me. “You will, because I’m going to tear into anyone who tries to touch you.” His fingers dug into the belt loops of my shorts. “Now, hold on to my neck.”

I clung to him, wrapping my legs around his waist and my arms around his neck. He pressed a quick, hard kiss to my mouth and then raced for the edge of the ledge. There was a brief moment of free fall and a scream lodged in my throat.

Zane spread his wings.

Our abrupt fall dipped and then we were gliding through the cavern, the enormous maze passing below us. He flapped his wings, getting altitude, and I kept my gaze on the sights below. On the far side of the maze, the ground cut away sharply into darkness—a gorge. A tiny rope bridge crossed it, and I swallowed hard at the sight of it. That would have been a problem to cross on foot, but with a winged vampire to carry me? It was a mere afterthought.

Past a room full of squares—I didn’t even want to know what that entailed—and toward a pair of double doors at the far end of the cave network. Flames danced in braziers. I had no idea how they’d been lit, and a sweep of stairs led to a massive, carved door. Zane dropped me at the foot of the stairs and I clung to him even as I stood at the base.

Power pulsed here, so thick and heady that it made my brain swim.

“No turning back now, Princess,” Zane said, reaching into the pocket of the coat I was wearing. He fished out a cigarette and lit it in one of the braziers as I stared at the intricate doors ahead of me. Zane took a drag, then glanced over at me. “You ready?”

I nodded, unable to tear my gaze away from the doors. “Ready.” I took a step forward, and when Zane didn’t, I glanced back at him. “You coming?”