Bound By Fate: A Novel of the Strong (29 page)

What was the significance of Saturday?

And how was it he’d been out for days?

Blinking through his muddled confusion, he asked, “What has happened?”

“You don’t remember?” Her worried eyes roamed his face. “There was an ambush.”

Toran pressed his cheek back against the pillow as disjointed frames of shapes and sounds flickered in his mind.

He and Merus had met with the traitor Kellen.

And then… there had been some sort of battle.

“My cousin… is he…”

“It’s okay, Toran. Merus is safe.” Liv lifted up on an elbow and placed a calming hand over his pounding heart. She hesitated just a moment before adding, “But others were lost.”

Rolling to his back, Toran covered his eyes with the crook of his arm.

A panoply of chaos assailed him.
 

Treachery
––black-hearted Vimora bent on betrayal.
 

Kellen’s cry for blood as he charged to save his men.

His own wail of agony as a barrage of venna threatened to take him to the ground.

Him rising and opening himself up…

As it all came back to him, his heart thumped out a violent rhythm. His skin began to burn as if it were licked by fire.

Choking back a groan, Toran flexed the venna within him, careful to keep his muscles tensed to help ensure he held it at bay.
 

It flared with naked, bald-faced aggression.

Gods, there was a lot of it.

He bolted out of bed.

*****

Eyes wild, Toran stood naked with his legs planted wide, cock proud and chest heaving, his fingers fisting at his sides.

The air was thick around him, his venna popping and hissing as it awakened with a vengeance.

Skin shimmering electric blue, he just stood there and stared at her with eyes full of fear.

But he made no move to leave.
 

From her perch on the bed, Liv watched him with quiet resolve.
 

She wasn’t afraid.

Moving with care so as not to startle him, Liv swung her feet to the floor. With an outstretched palm, she took a step towards him.
 

“Shh,” Liv murmured. Completely clothed except for her bare feet, she pressed up against the hard lines of his body. Inhaling his very essence, she opened herself up to take in his torment, all wrapped up in the sting of his venna.
 

Heart heavy with desire, she was desperate to ease him.

“Let me help you, Toran,” she said. “Let me touch you.”

At her whispered words, he groaned, his cock pulsing in answer, bumping hard against her belly. Liv pressed her lips against the heated skin of his chest. Then, lifting her chin, she caught his wild chameleon eyes just before sliding her fingers down his abdomen to take him in her hand.

Toran gasped.
 

Lightning quick, he jerked his hips away. His fist locked around her wrist and wrenched it up, his grip unyielding. A pulse of venna escaped him, a sizzling streak of blue whipping about the room in a frenzy.

He squeezed.
 

Hard.
 

Liv yelped. At her cry, he let out an anguished roar, his eyes flashing blue again, his venna seething in the space between them.
 

He tightened his grip.
 

For long moments, the only sound in the room was the commingled sound of their panting breaths.

Though her wrist throbbed with pain, Liv was more determined than ever. Taking a small step forward, she once again pressed tight against his body.

She raised her face to him.

An angry vein pulsed at his temple.

“Toran, please,” she breathed. At her plea, his eyelids slid shut. Though his muscles were drawn tight with tension, he somehow found the strength to relax his grip.
 

He trembled ever so slightly.

Liv sensed that his fear had shifted to…
misery.

“Shh,” she crooned again. Working her hand gently from his grip, Liv placed it on his chest, his skin hot beneath her fingers. She lay a cheek against his pec and opened herself to him, eager to take in the erratic bent of his emotions. She moaned as his venna seeped across her skin, through her body, warming every nerve within.

Placing a heavy hand at her hip, Toran breathed out a shaky breath and relaxed against her.

Emboldened by his seeming surrender, she feathered her fingertips up his back. “Come back to bed, Toran,” she whispered.

His muscles tensed as if to strike.

And strike he did.

He pushed her away only to crowd forward again. Voice hoarse and venna wild, he leaned down and yelled into her face.
 

“Are you fucking crazy?”

Shaken by the dizzying swing of his emotions, Liv struggled to mumble, “It’s okay, Toran, I know…”

“You don’t know shit!”
 

The room rocked with the force of his agitation.

She fell back against the mattress as Toran stormed over to the dresser. Pulling a pair of sweatpants from a drawer, he jabbed one leg in and then the other.
 

“This needs to stop, Liv.” He stood facing away; his breath was rapid and heavy. Pumping his fist against his thigh, he muttered, “Gods help us both, I need to stop this.”

Liv watched him, her eyes roaming the contours of his back, the cut of his muscles both illuminated and shadowed by moonlight.

She could feel his anger, his indecision, his fear.

His desire for her.

She called out to him.

“It’s impossible to stop what’s between us, Toran,” she said. “I know what you need from me.” She softened her voice to add, “That’s why I’m here, in your bed.”

His shoulders heaved as he let out a tired laugh. In that moment, all the fight seemed to drain from his body, his venna softening into a neon-soft glow.

“There’s only one thing you need to know.” Toran turned his head, his profile in stark relief against the shadows. He ran his fingertips along the edge of the dresser. “And I can guarantee that after you hear it, you’re not going to want anything to do with me.”

When Liv’s hand had closed around his cock, it had felt as if the fabric of his life had frayed apart in an instant––his duty, his country, his future… each separate strand torn to shreds by his desire for her all-consuming touch.

Toran had pushed away, somehow dredging up the strength to do so in the bottomless pit of his rage.

Because, in that moment he had also remembered the significance of
Saturday
… with
Sunday
now just a few short hours away.

He was promised to another––his
fated female
, a
like-blooded
daemoness destined
by prophecy
to bear his sons.

There was simply no getting out of prophecy.

His marriage to Sarai would be announced tomorrow, his nuptials––and his duty––soon to follow.

After tonight, he knew there would be no more tomorrows for him.

Not with Liv.

And, with that, the fight had left him.

“Turn around, Toran.” Her soft voice beckoned from behind.

Eyes squeezed shut, he gave an almost imperceptible shake of the head.
 

“Turn around and look at me,” Liv commanded again.

Turning stiffly, Toran was startled to find she was just inches away, her approach drowned out by the weight of his despair.

“What do I need to know, Toran?”

“What?” he whispered from what felt like miles away.

“Earlier, you said that there’s one thing I need to know,” she answered. “What is it that you think you need to tell me?” She reached out and touched his arm. “Because I know
why
I’m here, Toran.
I know
.”

As he plumbed the depths of her trusting eyes, he could see that Liv thought she had him all figured out.

She had no fucking clue.

But when Toran opened his mouth to finally confess he’d soon be breaking her heart, he found himself confessing other sins instead.

Unable to hide from her any longer, he bowed his head, words spilling unfiltered from his mouth.

“When we were together that night, I wanted you. You know how badly I wanted you… how badly
I want you
,” he amended, lifting his head so that she could see the truth laid bare in his eyes. “When I got close…” He paused. He shook his head, his eyes sliding shut at the memory of her heat. “Gods, you felt so good,” he breathed. Toran opened his eyes, but unable to hold her heated gaze, he turned his head to study the wall. “When I got close… I panicked.” He blinked. “I didn’t want to hurt you.”

“How could you ever hurt me?”

Gods, how to answer that?

Touching his arm again, she tried to throw him a lifeline.

Reluctantly, Toran pulled away from the comfort that she offered and went to sit alone at the edge of the bed.

He didn’t deserve her comfort.

He didn’t deserve anything she had to give him.

Instead, Toran closed himself off as best he could… then lost himself in the misery of his past.

*****

Nothing had prepared Toran for the day the last calming ease disappeared from Venn Dom––the day the last of the pure-blooded faine was put to death. A simmering sense of unease had descended upon the land, one that remained until this day, a palpable tension boiling just below the surface.
 

As clear as if it had happened just minutes ago, Toran remembered the feeling of something breaking inside him.
 

“At first, I didn’t think much of it,” he whispered. “I was young. I thought that I could live through anything.”
 

It had taken several weeks for his weakness to manifest. Toran, along with the rest of the Vimora, had been too bewildered at first by their new faineless existence to live any semblance of a normal life.
 

“I had no idea.” He shook his head, trying to beat back that feeling of total disbelief that consumed him whenever he allowed himself to remember.
 

“Beatriu. Her name was Beatriu.” He looked down at his hands, his mind drifting back to the strikingly beautiful daemon girl. Unlike most Vimora females, she had been diminutive and fair.

She had looked a lot like Liv.

Blinking back that awareness, he continued, “She was my first lover. We met just before the Great Cleansing began.” As clueless adolescents, they had explored the heady new world of touching and tastes, the sensation of flesh coming together.
 

Toran had liked her. Caught up in the throes of youthful rebellion, he had even fancied himself in love.
 

Though intensely curious about being with others, he had also remained true to her. At the time, Toran had figured that over his long, near-immortal life, he would have ample time to explore the pleasures of others. Unlike his cousin Merus, it had not been in his nature to sleep around. Even then, he craved companionship.

Companionship that grew from fidelity and trust.

Like what I could have with the female before me.

He closed his eyes and hung his head.

“After everything ended,” he managed to continue, “well, my life pretty much spiraled out of control. All of ours did.”
 

He slid his gaze her way, trying to gauge her emotions. She had quietly moved to sit beside him on the bed.

In the dimness of the room, she watched him with calm, knowing eyes.

Looking down, he saw that she had taken his hand, quietly urging him on.

“Once things settled down, I went back to her. Everything was fine at first.” Toran hesitated, a heated blush crawling up his cheeks. “But at the end, when I…” He swallowed hard, completely lost in the nightmare. “When I finished, I lost control,” he said in a hollow voice. “My venna boiled her blood as she lay beneath me.”
 

My cock still buried inside her.

A heavy silence filled the room. Toran braced for Liv’s anger, her disgust. Instead, he felt her fingertips feathering ever so lightly up and down his forearm, leaving goosebumps in their wake. He closed his eyes and savored her touch.
 

He feared she would not be so free with her kindness once she heard the rest.

He hardened his voice.

“The second time I killed,” he continued, “I killed because I needed to fuck.”

Her fingertips froze mid-motion.

“I wanted sex,” he said, “so I went out and got it. I didn’t give a shit about the consequences.”
 

Toran pulled away and collapsed back against the pillows. He rubbed the heels of his hands hard into his aching eyes.

“What happened, Tor?”

Swiping his hands up his forehead to fist his hair, he shook his head and somehow summoned the strength to continue.

Nearly two centuries passed before Toran had found the courage to try again. The thought he’d never be able to come again inside a female had made him near sick with hunger. Desperate and depressed––and done with finding miserably empty relief in the roughness of his fist––Toran managed to convince himself that Beatriu was at fault for her death, not him.
 

In his mind, she became a damaged female, one too weak to take his strength.
 

After all, he was the strongest of the Strong.
 

One night, stumbling drunk and out of his mind with need, Toran had sought out a whore.
 

“I was cocky,” he confessed into the darkened room.
 

And a fool.

In his drunken haze, Toran had thought himself older and wiser, then well into his two hundredth year. As he had aged, he had grown immense in presence and in build, standing well over six and a half feet tall and nearing two hundred and fifty pounds. Already an accomplished warrior and tactician, he daily practiced pinpoint control, conducting exhaustive physical war games, thinking himself long past mastering the defiant venna that flowed in and around his veins. Despite his curse––and Kellen’s regular urge to feed it––Toran had proven both his strength and his wits, time and time again, in contentious council meetings, foreign courts, and across bloody battlefields.