Assassins Bite (22 page)

I looked into his black eyes. He was concerned for
me
.

How did I explain? Yes, I was afraid. I was afraid this amazing thing we had together wasn't real. But I had to find out.

Days of kisses, touches, suckling,
biting
… They were all steps along a path leading here. Leading past here. Leading, maybe, to more disappointment—all the powerful grace that was him couldn't want bumbling me—and my disappointment would be a burning crater.

But maybe, just maybe, this was leading to something
better
. Something lasting.

Fuck fear. Here, now, I wanted Aiden Blackthorne more than I wanted to avoid being a Ruffles.

So I said it straight. “I'm not sure either. But how will we know if we don't try? Maybe I'll be happier.”

When that still didn't move him, I said, “Please, Aiden? Maybe both you and I will be happier as an
us
.”

“Us?” The world whirled around me. My back slammed into mattress, air huffing from my lungs as my arms were flung up and back.

Aiden knelt above me, between my legs, his fingers threaded through mine and pressing our joined hands into the mattress, his gaze nailing me motionless except for my pounding heart and shallow panting breaths. My thighs were spread and my sex exposed but the heat of his body kept me warm.

His eyes closed. He was trembling.

“Us.” The head of his naked cock touched my pussy. Brushed it ever so lightly. Almost tentatively, unheard of for the assured, deadly assassin.

“Yes,” I said. “You and me together.
Us
.” Excitement buzzed like live wires inside me. I swallowed, trying to keep still, trying not to bumble this moment…I realized what I was doing, still anxious to avoid being a Ruffles, and boldly undulated my hips, slotting the head of his penis in me.

But he shook his head. “Sunny, if we're mates, ‘us' won't be just you and me.” He blew out a great gust of air, and another. Still grasping at his slipping control. I couldn't imagine all the training he'd done to amass that degree of self-discipline and restraint. I was ready to burst.

But he grappled with it, trembled with it—not simply because he didn't want to be a father. Not only because he didn't want to do that to a child.

But because he was thinking about me, and even more, about an
us
beyond him and me.

Our future family.

That moment told me it wasn't simply lust. “Aiden,” I whispered. His eyes on mine were the deepest black. “It's okay. It's good if ‘us' is more than you and me.” I hesitated. My life would never be the same. Could I live with that?

Yes.

I threw away the last of my fear. “Because I'm falling in love with you.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

Fierce joy lit his eyes, a sheen of moisture over the black. He roared and filled me in one powerful thrust.

I gasped.

That massive control had been holding back a force of nature. Released, he plunged into me, pounding us into the mattress in seismic waves. He rode me so hard it felt like he was trying to merge bodies. Each rhythmic smack juddered through me, ramping my excitement.

“More. Deeper.” I wasn't sure who said it but he responded by seizing my ankles and lifting my legs over his shoulders.

He plunged deeper. His chest rose and fell over me, muscles mounded with tension, nipples pinprick hard. The sight ratcheted my arousal sky-high.

I curled my legs off his shoulders to clamp around his waist. He grabbed my mouth in a kiss. He rolled into me, driving harder and flatter. I spun arms around his neck and my heart around us both. We pumped together like a well-oiled machine, his purr rumbling through us as we raced toward fulfillment.

He took my mouth with a kiss that claimed me. I kissed him back with the same urgency.

His plunging slowed. His cock swelled inside me. He stroked once, long and deep. His mouth moved to my neck, his breath rolling hot against the skin. I shivered with it.

He stroked again, even deeper. I arched with a gasp. He pressed fang tips to my throat.

“Please.” I mewled it. My panting chest fluttered against him, sharp anticipation ripping through me. “Bite me. Now!”

His fangs forked lightning into my veins. He drove himself into me to the hilt.

Complete implosion, soundless.

Explosion. Light, color. Screaming in my ears, mine.

He roared, his cock jerking in my pussy as it erupted hot desire. Buried as deep as he was, the contraction of his balls tugged on me, pulling more out of me, a ricochet of continuous after-explosions.

His arms collapsed. He fell onto me, heavy, but I rejoiced in the weight. I wrapped him tight in my arms.

It crushed the air from my lungs. My ears were ringing but I must have made some sort of noise because he licked the bite closed then managed to heft himself off me, none too gracefully, landing with a
whump
at my side.

I fell asleep to his gentle, regular breath.

Several times that night and through the morning and afternoon he woke me with what, just a day ago, I would have called inventive sex. Now, I was starting to feel it was lovemaking.

I woke up as evening approached. I turned to look at him. His eyes were closed. The thick black lashes made crescents against his honed cheekbones. He really was quite stunning.

The lashes swept up, revealing warm dark eyes, crinkled with good humor, filled with tender emotion. “Falling in love, hmm?”

Damn it, of course he remembered that. “Maybe.” I blew air. “Okay, yes. Probably.” I glared. “You can still fuck it up, though.”

He yawned and rolled onto his side. “I probably will. That should scare the shit out of me, but for some reason it doesn't. Maybe because you're such a teeny mouse.”

I swatted his biceps. “This is where you're supposed to tell me you're falling in love with me too.”

His head turned to me. His eyes were scary, blacker than the river Styx, deeper and darker than the pits of hell.

I abruptly chilled. Shivered.

He pulled me into his arms. Breathed a sigh into my hair. “It's not that simple.”

“Blackthorne, if you want out, just say so.” I struggled to get free but he didn't let go. “I'm a big girl, I can take the truth.”

“The truth.” He only hugged me harder to him. “I don't know whether I can ever love you as you deserve. But I do know I can't seem to stop wanting you. And lately…lately I haven't even wanted to try to stop.”

A few days ago that would have been enough. But now…no. His past was getting in the way. “Tell me about your father.”

Silence. Then he released me to sit up, frowning.

My damp skin was cold without him. I sat up too, suppressing a shiver.

He saw it anyway, sighed and wrapped the ends of the duvet around my shoulders. “Why my father?”

“Ric said Nosferatu caused your mistrust of authorities. But I think there's more to it.”

“Because I'm such a mess?”

“Because you're afraid of hurting
your
child. Which means pain, for you, equals father.”

“I almost wish you weren't so perceptive.” He gave me a wry, heartbreaking smile. “Nosferatu wasn't the best role model but I'd had an even worse one before that.”

“I'm so sorry.” I drew comforting circles on his chest. “Tell me?”

He looked away. “You were right. It's the past. Over and done. What good will it do?”

“You were right too. It may be buried, but it's not over.” I willed him to meet my eyes. “It's coming between us.” When he still didn't look at me I added, “I want to know its name.”

He swallowed hard. “If I'd tell anyone, it'd be you. But I've tried for so long to forget…I don't know if I can.”

“Okay.” I rubbed his arm. “It's okay. You don't have to.” I hurt for him, for the sheen of pain in his eyes, the stark tension on his face. “Tell me one thing. Was your entire childhood miserable?”

He frowned slightly, his gaze going distant. “No. Before…” He shook his head as if in surprise. “I was happy. When I lived with my mother.”

“Maybe you can tell me about her?”

His frown deepened. Then his expression cleared and he finally looked at me, his mouth quirked in amusement. “You're tricky, Ruffles.”

He'd relived part of the horror in his mind and had come through the other side. My relief effervesced into teasing. “Tricky? Naw. I'm a cop. Honest and trustworthy.”

“Strange how honest and trustworthy looks a lot like wily and crafty.” He folded me into his arms. “All right, I'll tell you so we can both see what we're up against. When I was young and still human, I lived with my mother's clan. She was Native American and my father was white, so I was a halfbreed.”

“Halfbr… When was this?”

“About eighteen hundred, more or less.”

I sucked back my surprise. “So yours was a matriarchal clan?”

“Yes, but even so I would have lived with my mother. My father…at first he didn't want me.”

“Jerk. Who wouldn't want you?” I snaked my arms around his waist and hugged as hard as I could.

His belly muscles were like banded iron but he laughed. “You're right, it wasn't
just
me. He didn't want much of anything but to trap animals and to drink. Anyway, for the first seven or eight years of my life I lived with her. Golden times, or so they seemed to me. Every day was a new adventure with my friends. They'd say, ‘What are we doing today, First Friend?' and I'd say fishing or canoeing or lying on our backs watching clouds and the clan elders would say, ‘There goes Young Chief and his pack'. But then…”

He was silent long enough that I let go to peek at him. His expression was pensive. “When she died he snatched me away—he was a lousy trapper and apparently she'd boasted to him of my hunting abilities. I kept waiting for my clan to find me but…I don't know. He took me too far away. Or maybe they would have found me eventually, but Nosferatu found me first.”

“I'm sorry.” I wrapped arms around his shoulders. The duvet fell, unnoticed.

He leaned his head against mine. “Pa got mean when he was drunk—which was most of the time. He also hit me when he disapproved of what I did—and since I'd grown up learning my mother's ways, he disapproved most of the time.”

I clutched him harder. He'd been beaten by the very man who should have protected him. “The bastard.”

“Whuppin's weren't uncommon in those days. Spare the rod, spoil the child.”

“Still. I'd like to introduce him to Mr. Taser.”

That surprised a laugh from him. “Yeah.”

Then he fell silent. I waited. I knew from the way his muscles quivered that he was holding back. The longer he was silent, the more his nerves buzzed, and the more certain I was that it was horrible.

I inhaled chilled air. Finally prompted, “What happened?”

“One night…” His breath caught. “One night I burned supper. He'd drunk more than usual. He beat me to within an inch of my life. Grabbed me by the head and shoved my face into the burned food. It hurt, it hurt so much…”

Pain sheened his eyes. Pain beyond even burned skin. “Oh, Aiden. What did he do? What did that monster do?”

“He said…” His voice dropped to a whisper. “He said I couldn't make a decent cook so I'd have to…” He sighed, a terrible tiny hiss.

I clutched him. Petted at his hair, blindly, because my own sight wavered with tears. “It doesn't matter. Whatever happened, you lived through it. You're past it now and you're a wonderful, amazing man I'm proud to know.”

He was silent in my tight embrace. Finally he sighed again, gentler. “Nothing actually happened. He tried, but he'd drunk too much.”

I only held him tighter. “I'd kill him if he weren't already dead.”

“Thank you,” he said softly. “I managed to fight him off. But that was why, when Nosferatu told me he'd take me away, I went. I believed anywhere else would be better. I wanted, quite desperately, to believe I was going to Paradise.”

“Oh, Aiden.”

“But it was hell, because Nosferatu's training taught me to hate. I hated my trainers and I hated Nosferatu and most of all I hated myself but I didn't know it then. I was determined to live through his horrors so that someday I could kill each and every one of them. Assassin training? I embraced it. I learned everything I could so that when the day came, I could not only kill them but make it hurt. My life became about death and retribution.”

“You had to survive.” My eyes burned. “I'm so very glad you hated him. Hated them. Because you survived.”

His breath broke. “It made me like him.”

“You're nothing like him.”

“No? When Ric came, he seemed so—naive. Helpless. And stupidly, hopelessly optimistic. Damn kid.” He rubbed his cheek against my hair. It slid like it was wet. “That finally broke through my shell of hate. I knew that if only one of us lived, I wanted it to be him, because he was the best part of me. The trusting part I used to have. Keeping Ric alive helped me hate myself less.”

“You didn't kill your trust, Aiden. Others killed it for you. People who should have nurtured you.”

“I should have fought back.”

“You couldn't. You were a child. The adults controlled food, water. Shelter.”

“You really do understand.” He heaved a watery breath out.

I could picture it all too easily. Every abuse weakened his trust in authorities. As his trust crumbled, he began to live more and more in the shadows.

My poor shadow man.

He straightened out of my embrace to search my eyes. “Ric saved me. Without him I wouldn't be the male you're proud to know. You'd hate me almost as much as I hated myself.”

I said simply, “Then I owe Ric a debt of gratitude.”

He blinked glossy eyes. “Thank you. Eventually we escaped. Ric settled in Minneapolis. Founded a household, a family.”

“Why didn't you…?” I shook my head, starting to see it. “The only people to earn your trust, Ric and Eloise, did it by living with you through hell.”

“I saw their true colors. Most people don't want to go that far to earn my trust.” He took my hands in his, his grip desperately tight. “You have.”

“I'm honored. More people would be your friend, if you let them.”

“Why should I throw away behavior that's kept me safe for two hundred years?”

He said it so simply, so regardless of the horrors he'd suffered, that I couldn't help it. The prickling overflowed into tears.

“Why are you crying? It happened long ago.”

“You're so beautiful. Even your dark side fights for life. For friendship. For love.”

His black eyes filled. He blinked. A single drop trickled down his honed cheek.

I reached out to wipe it away. “Why are you crying?”

“I don't know. My mother used to say something like that. I lost her voice again. You brought it back. I feel better. I think…I think I'm actually happy. You're healing me.” He shook his head as if he'd been punched. “I'm crying because you're healing me.”

“Impossible. I'm a Ruffles. I put the Keystone in Cop, the Stooge in Three. Where there's wedding cake, I fall into it. I fumble ineptitude to destroyer level. I don't heal.”

“Yet I feel better.”

“You're wrong. I can prove it.” I paused. He'd hate me. But he'd told me everything. I could do no less. “I broke my brother's leg.”

“A childish accident—”

“No. I broke it because I'm a violent monster.”