Undeniable (10 page)

He flinched as he felt his blood, unable to merge with hers,
cutting a path through her veins. Unless he claimed her by filling her with his
seed and giving her enough of his blood to carry her through the day, her veins
would grow raw from the battle raging within them.

Already her body recognized that his blood was the stronger
of the two and craved more. She writhed on the bed. Her silent cries filled his
head.

He didn’t have to look at the clock to know he had very
little time to save her. The skin on his back already shrank away from the heat
of dawn’s approach. If she really was his soul mate, he couldn’t leave until he
completed what they’d begun, even if it meant facing the sun unsheltered, even
if it meant dooming Diana to eternal darkness without her consent.

Pain twisted his insides, paralyzing him, as he knew it would,
as his mother knew it would. Terror engulfed him.

The assault of Diana’s agony immobilized him.

Sebastian fell to his knees.

Chapter Four

Seconds after something sweet slid down her throat, Diana’s
veins began to ripple, twitch and burn as if lava, not blood, flowed through
them. Strangely detached from the pain, she searched her mind for the cause of
the deluge of liquid fire and birthed an image of spiders, scorpions and an
army of red ants. A panicked scream lodged in the back of her throat.

Terror wrapped icy fingers around her pounding heart when
her mind envisioned her veins bursting and releasing thousands of the venomous
insects into her body. She could feel millions of tiny legs skittering beneath
her skin, feel thousands of sharp pincers piercing her raw flesh. Her heart
faltered when she imagined them crawling up her throat, injecting their fiery
venom as they battled each other in their rush to escape the confines of her
body. Her lungs seized.

Breathe.

The moment the command entered her mind, blessed air filled
her burning lungs, hope soothed her tortured mind. But then a beast took up
residence deep within her ravaged body, tore at her insides and demanded she
sate its hunger. She sank deeper into whatever hellish world she’d dreamed up even
as her mind grasped that this was no nightmare. She tossed her head from side
to side, refusing to accept such torture could exist in the real world.

Her body craved something, would trade the air she breathed
for it. But what? The craving grew unbearable, the inferno in her veins
threatened to engulf her, and still she had no idea how to appease this
undeniable hunger. Scalding tears filled her eyes, burned a path down her
cheeks. She wanted. She needed. What? What?

The beast she imagined clawing at her stomach roared at her
ignorance.

As if unknown hands had yanked on her tendons, pulling them
until they nearly snapped, her body arched up off the bed, her toes and fingers
curled, her jaw locked shut and for one brief moment the pain subsided.

A dream, she silently chanted. This had to be a dream. It
started as a dream, didn’t it? One moment she was sleeping on a cloud while the
chatter of those around her mingled with that of the birds. The memory of the
passion that had followed created a flash fire of desire that overwhelmed the
conflagration in her veins and melted her tendons enough to drop her back down
onto the bed.

Still, the hunger she could neither understand nor identify
clawed at her. Balling the sheets in her hands, she struggled to comprehend how
such an erotic dream could have evolved into this nightmare.

She recalled the voices that had filtered into her mind,
voices discussing plans for vengeance. One drop. One kiss. A mere taste of the
sweetest elixir. Abandonment. Her heart shattered.
Oh God, no! Don’t leave
me like this!

Hold on, Diana. For Mina’s sake, hold on.

She didn’t recognize the voice, but she felt as if she had
heard the masculine timbre before, whispering in her mind all week as it
whispered now for her to open her eyes. Peering out from beneath her lashes,
she turned her head to the side. Her phantom lover stood beside her bed. A
fresh wave of tears blurred her vision, tears of hope, relief and joy.

A bright white orb appeared in the window behind him, a
shimmering, brilliant, minute dot peeking over the mountains. While the light’s
warmth bathed her cheeks and soothed some of her pain, her phantom flinched
like a man whipped.

All week he had followed her. Even when she had not seen
evidence of his presence, she had felt him hovering, watching, protecting. At
the lake when the strange mist had swirled around her body, she had known the
mist and her phantom were the same and had welcomed his return.

During the light of day when her phantom failed to
materialize, when logic prevailed and nearly suffocated her with the
possibility that, like her father, she had somehow lost sight of the line
between reality and fantasy, she told herself that her dreams had somehow been
confused with her memories of the night.

Now, she understood and accepted that somehow fantasy had
become reality and that, like the wisps of mist rising off the mountainsides
surrounding the lake at dawn, her phantom could not last long beneath the heat
of the sun’s rays. Soon those rays would fill her room and her phantom lover,
her savior, would vanish and leave her to drown in this nightmare that had
followed her into the waking world.

Forgive me, Diana. There’s so little time.

Little time? He had no time. She knew that as surely as she
knew her mind was losing its grip on sanity. Drowning in the lava that now
seared her skin as it flowed from her pores, sure that in a second, in a
heartbeat, her mind would snap, she pressed her elbows into the mattress and
lifted her head and shoulders off the bed. Arms of steel wrapped around her
waist and cradled her in a soothing embrace.

Although his body shuddered from dawn’s assault on his back,
his lips covered hers with infinite tenderness. Diana sighed into his mouth as
she clutched onto his massive shoulders.

Drink.
The soft voice once again demanded she obey.

Like a babe at its mother’s breast, Diana suckled her
phantom’s lip the moment it slid between hers. Warm honey flowed between her
lips, down her throat and immediately appeased the army of angry insects. She
swallowed, instinctively aware that only the elixir responsible for her
torturous nightmare could tame the beast threatening to destroy her mind, body
and soul.

Her nerves, no longer raw with pain, tingled as his weight
pressed down upon her. An onslaught of butterflies beat back the insects with
their wings as she drank until all she could hear were her and her phantom’s
mingled breaths and the rustle of the sheets beneath her writhing body.
Pleasure replaced pain, fear evaporated beneath the heat of passion. Desperate
to take in all of him, terrified that if she stopped the beast would revolt,
she continued to suckle his lip long after the flow of his elixir stopped.

A kiss meant to sate the beast torturing her body spawned a
new hunger.

Her phantom lover’s body hardened. His cool skin brushing
against hers dulled the lingering sting of her ordeal. His heartbeat
reverberating through her body calmed the tumultuous pace of hers while his
breath filled her weary lungs. She felt his hands tremble as they glided up over
her ribs. Her breasts swelled, anticipating his touch. An exquisite coil of
heat tightened in the center of her stomach.

She wanted this, needed this more than air itself. Too many
nights dreaming of his touch, too many days denying he existed. He ended the
kiss and nipped his way down her neck, over her collarbone and the swell of her
breasts, then clamped her aching nipple between his teeth and tortured it with
his tongue until she arched her back and silently pled for release.

The heat from his body blanketed her, grew hotter as he
lowered himself between her legs. But when Diana felt the hairs on his legs
tickle her inner thighs, years of denial insisted she stop him, save herself
for her soul mate. Her hips sank into the mattress.
No. Wait.

You have always belonged to me, Diana. From the moment
you were born, you were mine to possess.

As his tongue swept into her mouth, she felt something hard
nudge her pulsing nether lips.

Spread your legs wider for me, Diana. Concede what is
rightfully mine.
The voice in her head demanded she obey.

Unable to deny him anything, Diana slowly spread her legs
until she felt his hands grasp her thighs and hold them in place. He nudged in
a scant inch, stretching her until she burned.

He felt too wide, too hot. Diana, still reeling from the
excruciating agony she had felt only moments earlier, cringed away in fear. Her
hand reached between them and felt a burning cock bigger and wider than she
thought humanly possible.

She peeked through her lashes at the impenetrable shadow which
was too black, too murky for her to see what dwelt within. She feared that her
phantom would invade her body and tear her apart from the inside out. Fear
waged war with desire as her hands released their grip on his shoulders and
pushed feebly at the mass of muscles rippling across his chest.

He would rip through her maidenhead, split her in two. Her
phantom had fooled her into believing he was her savior. The moment he impaled
her, she would realize he had been the beast all along.

Yet, even as she shook her head, even as she silently
pleaded with him to free her, her hips rose.

How could she open herself to him, offer the virginity she
had refused to all others when he was a stranger cloaked in an impossible mass
of black mist, a phantom who had come into her room to bring her life to an
end? And most terrifying of all, she doubted someone so huge could take her
virginity without killing her. She felt him pull away and moaned with relief,
even as her body arched up to reconnect.

I’ll take away the pain, Diana. You’ll only feel
pleasure. You have my word. Close your eyes. Trust me.

I can’t. I have to save myself for my soul mate.
Heat
fanned out over her cheeks. In the presence of a being that could not possibly
be of this world, her words sounded silly, immature.

Knuckles traced a cool path down her cheeks and along her
jaw.
You have been saving yourself for me, Diana. For me.

Diana closed her eyes, brought her hands up into the
darkness and let her fingers paint the picture of his face. They brushed over a
coarse, stubbly jaw, feathered over long, satin lashes, meandered down the
straight bridge of a prominent nose and came to rest on full lips that quirked
up in amusement before opening and capturing her fingertips.

She gasped softly when his tongue flicked across the
sensitive pads of her fingers and pleasure spiraled down her spine. The instant
she relaxed, he slid in deeper, fanning her burning embers, then slid out,
leaving her cold. She cried out, wrapped her legs around his hips and tried to
draw him back. Returning hotter, deeper, he stilled until she grew accustomed
to his size, until her hips rose, then began a languid rhythm, sliding almost
completely free before slowly delving back in.

As if the invasion below her waist were not enough, he released
her fingers and made his way down her neck, kissing, nibbling, until he reached
her breast. Drawing her nipple between his teeth, he tortured the sensitive
peak with his tongue, birthing a need that mocked the hunger she had suffered
earlier. Muscles she never knew existed coiled tightly until she thought she’d
scream from the tension.

Her mind focused on their joined bodies and she realized
that, with each thrust, his hips would stop far from meeting hers. She demanded
he go deeper, faster and cried out in frustration when he refused.

Say it, Diana. Say you are mine.

Please, I can’t wait any longer.

Mine.
He roared into her head.
Say it.

Yours, only yours.

No one else will ever touch you as I have. Take my blood
and seed, Diana Nostrum. Become my soul mate, my eternal mate, my only mate.
For all eternity. Mine. You will never offer anyone else what you give to me
tonight.

Diana shivered under the wrath that seemed to crash down
upon her with each word.

He continued holding back until she was nearly mad with need
before he drove himself in to the hilt, taking her virginity with a deafening
roar that crashed into her mind. His hands slid beneath her and grasped her
buttocks, holding her in place as he slammed into her again and again.

Diana shattered. Desire fanned out from her deepest
recesses, streaked through her belly and shot down her legs. As she screamed
from an orgasm much more powerful than she’d ever been able to bring herself
to, he cradled her face against his neck.

Drink, goddess. Accept me. Accept the essence of my life.

As the sweet elixir surged into her mouth, white hot pain
pierced her neck, then just as quickly evolved into exquisite pleasure. She
felt her blood rush up to the spot beneath his mouth. Her body imploded,
control shattered. His essence filled her mouth, his seed her womb. Although
she knew he felt he was claiming her, possessing her, she realized he would
forever belong to her—his blood running through her veins, his soul forever
ensnared in her heart.

“Forever,” he whispered against her neck.

“Forever,” she whispered back, absorbing the shudders still
racking his body. She longed to see his face and opened her eyes. His face
hovered mere inches from her own. His gaze met hers. How just that her soul
mate’s eyes mirrored the midnight-blue sky she loved so much.

He leaned down and gave her a gentle, brief kiss on the
bridge of her nose. Diana raked her fingers into his hair and tried to draw his
head down for a deeper, more defining kiss. A kiss that would calm the fear
trickling up from her stomach, fear that he would leave now, leave her to the
beast she could still feel stirring deep within her body. His fingers glanced
over her lids, lowering them against her will.