Broken Vow (16 page)

Drakkar stood, gaping at him and then walked over as a big grin played on his face. “Well, well. It's good to see you, wolf boy. Did you miss your man?”

Aramis' eyes widened in fear. “You?”

“Yes, church mouse, it's me. Rumor has it you've been trying to hunt me down to kill me.” Drakkar stepped forward, rubbing the bulge in his pants. “Is that any way to treat your life mate?”

Aramis glared at him and stood. “We're not mates. I despise you.”

Drakkar shrugged. “Well, I hate you too, pretty boy, but I did bite you.”

“And I'm going to kill you for that and the other heinous crimes you've committed.”

Drakkar's hand moved to his fly. “Or we could just make the best of it.”

Aramis bolted and Jude's fangs lowered, but Drakkar stopped the vampire from pursuing him.

“Oh, let him be. I'll deal with him soon enough. I'll let him continue with his assassination plot and then turn on him.” Drakkar's lips gathered up into a suggestive smile. “Oh, the sweet blasphemies that lie in store for that wannabe preacher.”

Jude grinned and unchained Nimbus. “It's good to have you back again, old friend.”

“It's good to be back,” Nimbus agreed. “He's going to warn Sonya. I need to get to her before he does. Have a car ready. Once I grab her, we're taking her somewhere they won't find her.”

Drakkar grinned. “I think
Ane Rouge
would be the perfect place for that.”

“Are you going to change back into your own body, or hide in Dante's for a while longer?” Jude asked.

Nimbus smiled. “Sonya likes surprises. Let's give her a memorable one.”

Jude laughed. “Oh, how I've missed you, you cunning bastard. She will definitely remember this one.”

Nimbus headed out with them. It felt good to be back again. He was free, soulless. Now it was time to make his naughty little mate pay.

Chapter Eight:

Truth

Sonya put on a rusty, pumpkin-colored satin baby doll before bed. Dante hadn't returned. She knew he could take care of himself, but she still worried about him. How could they have a future together when the demon within him constantly warred for control of his body? She couldn't lose him, though.

Perhaps she should put on something less revealing to prevent tempting him in case he returned. Where did he go? Was he coming back? He had to. It was just a fight. They would get past it and be as strong as they were before.

She heard the front door unlock and open from the other room. Dante was home. He came back to her. She knew he would. Would he want to discuss what happened earlier in the shower between them?

She should change. They didn't need a repeat of that episode. His footsteps came down the hall, alerting her to the realization that she wouldn't have time to change out of her lingerie into more modest pajamas.

Her heart was in her throat when the bedroom door opened and Dante walked in with a smoldering look that reeked of testosterone. His pupils dilated when he saw what she wore. Something was different about him. She couldn't tell what, but there was a hint of danger in the air. Perhaps his attack on her earlier had her on guard, but she didn't think that was entirely it.

“Dante.”

“You look nice.” His tone came out ragged and husky like he held back with her when all he really wanted to do was devour her whole like a serpent.

“Thank you. So do you.”

The silence that followed was heavy and awkward.

Dante walked over to the bed and lay on it on his side. “Lie with me.”

“You know we can't.”

He looked irritated. “I didn't mean we would engage in sexual intercourse. At least cuddle with me, woman. You owe me that much.”

The hostile bitterness in his deep tone surprised her. She climbed onto the bed and sat near him on her knees. “Dante, what are we going to do? We can't go on like this. We'll either go crazy trying to keep our hands off each other, or we'll end up sinning and I'll wind up in hell because of it.”

His eyes took on a sinister appearance and his lips twitched as if pleased by this. “Wouldn't that be a shame?”

“It would. Maybe I should move out.” Sonya felt a lump forming in her throat. The suggestion killed her, but she must think of him instead of herself. “It's selfish of me to expect you to go the rest of your life without sex.”

“Yes, it is.” He pulled her arm so her body came down on the mattress to rest near him. “I won't hold back with you any longer.”

Tingles of excitement sparked inside of her when he drew her near for a kiss. “We can't have sex, Dante. I'm really sorry. I want you so bad, but we can't.”

“Shh,” he lulled as his warm exhale fanned against her face. “Just one kiss, Sonya. God isn't going to throw you out of heaven for that.”

Sonya gasped and pulled away. She sat up, feeling her eyes mist. Nimbus said that to her once long ago. Hearing the same words come out of Dante's mouth now messed with her head.

“What's wrong?” he inquired.

She shook her head. “Nothing. It was just a memory.”

His dark eyes were knowing and mysterious. “Of whom?”

“It doesn't matter.” She sat on the edge of the bed, feeling miserable. “I think I might have made a mistake by moving in here with you. If we keep playing with fire we're going to get burned.”

“Yes.” His provocative whisper sizzled against the top of her hand when he kissed it.

“I guess I'll move out tomorrow,” she said, feeling a cloud of numbness overtake her. “You can still visit Faith, though. We'll take turns with her. That way she gets to know both of her parents.”

“You're a better mother than you used to be,” Dante muttered.

Sonya shot him an indignant look. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

His eyes turned vicious and cruel. “I think you know damned well what it means. Personally, I find a nurturing demon mother far above an angel who would kill her own son to redeem herself.”

Sonya got goose bumps. “How do you know that?”

“A friend of mine told me,” Dante replied with a disturbing nonchalance.

“Which friend?”

“It doesn't matter. And you're not leaving me again.”

“I don't have a choice.” She gasped when his chilly palms cupped her breasts. Why were his hands so cold?

“Yes, you do,” he whispered against her neck before kissing her gently there. “Choose me, Sonya. You won't regret it.”

Her heart ached. “Dante, we've been through this. This is my one chance at redemption and if I blow it that's it.”

“Now wouldn't that be just awful.” His tongue traced circles on the mating mark Nimbus gave her long ago.

Her belly tightened with arousal and wonderful, wicked sensations gathered in her pussy. She purred at the way he nipped her love bite before bestowing her with soothing licks of his tongue.

“You're a stumbling block to me, Dante.” She wouldn't let him go all the way with her, but perhaps they could play a little and escape condemnation.

“Do you know what the best kind of orgasm is?” he asked in a dark, heated timbre as his cool, soft lips peppered her neck with delicate kisses. “Where heaven and hell meet in the unholiest of unions. When a person stands at the crossroads of what they want and what they're supposed to want and turns their back on what's expected of them to obtain what they desire more than anything, the consequences be damned.”

Sonya shivered at his words, feeling as enticed by them as she was afraid of them. “Dante -”

She moaned into his hand when he covered her mouth, willing her to be silent.

Dante alternated between licks, kisses and sucks on her neck and bite mark in between whispering seductively to her. “When you release your inhibitions and choose to lie naked in the arms of the damned rather than pursue the light which stifles you, then you will truly be free. When you accept what you really are deep down and give into the temptation clawing for dominion over you and taste of the highest crescendo of pleasure, you will gladly burn for it. You will lose your soul to be with the one you love and when you can accept that, you will come harder than you ever have in your life.”

Sonya gasped into his palm when he slipped the thin straps of her lingerie down so her breasts were out in the open. She moaned and arched into his palm when he groped her tit. A tiny wail emanated from her when he tweaked the nipple and it emitted a slight trickle of milk that rolled down her breast.

“You can't resist me, can you, cow?” he taunted quietly into her ear.

Being referred to as a farm animal should’ve been a turn off, but it sounded hot coming from him. She could be his bovine if he wanted her to. Hell, she might even moo for him if he asked her nicely, though she'd probably feel silly doing so.

His palm moved from her mouth and raised the hem of her skimpy baby doll so he could get a good look at her pussy while he played with it. Raging bolts of electricity shot through her, ravaging her system in a white-hot fire that would be her undoing if she didn't stop this now.

She'd always been attracted to Dante and the sex had been phenomenal, but somehow it seemed better still now as though a barrier had been removed and he was free to do with her as he wished. Being helpless to his will made her hot, cold and shaky.

But she must resist. She would.

“Dante, please stop. It's getting harder and harder to resist you,” she pleaded, hoping his love for her would reinstate his usual barely-restrained self control.

“I won't stop, Sonya.” His steamy whisper sizzled against her sensitive flesh like an erogenous fire that threatened to burn her alive. “This is what you want. To be loved by a soulless being. To be pleasured by demons.”

Sonya panicked at his words, feeling ashamed at the way she creamed all over the hand that cupped her crotch. “No. I want to be good. Oh, god!”

Her elated cry came out broken and weak, readily betraying her defeat when he caressed her pussy.

“But you don't, Sonya. You want to drink deeply of forbidden pleasure until you're drunk with Tesandrela.”

“Tesandrela?” She gasped at the finger seesawing against her achy clitoris and a sharp cry wrung from her throat when he slipped a finger into her soaked vagina and fucked her slowly with it.

“It's a demonic word for the highest level of pleasure in existence. Comparable to orgasm and subspace only magnified a thousand times over. Only the damned have ever experienced it. But a person must be truly past the point of no return to experience it.” Dante traced the shell of her ear with his tongue and spoke into her canal in a searing whisper. “Let me show you, little flower.”

Sonya gasped and pulled away from him, relieved that he removed his hands from her. She adjusted her lingerie to better cover herself and stood to face him, shuddering with desire and fear. “What did you just call me?”

No one on earth had ever called her that, except for one man. A demon.

His dark eyes were knowing and possessive. “Little flower.”

“Nimbus used to call me that.”

His lips twitched to form a lopsided smile. “And you think I'm him?”

Sonya relaxed. “No, of course not. You look nothing like him. Besides, I doubt he knows where I am. And even if he did, he probably hates me after the way I left him.”

Jude's voice came from the doorway. “An interesting theory.”

She squealed in shock to see the soul vampire in her room standing next to Drakkar. “How did you get in here? You're vampires. You can't -”

“Enter a person's home without an invitation,” Jude finished for her. “Oh, it's simple. Your boyfriend lives here too and he invited us in.”

Sonya whirled around to face Dante who stood now. “What? Why would you do that?”

Dante shrugged. “They're my friends.”

“How can you say that? They used me when I went on that mission to slay Drakkar.”

He smiled. “I know. I wish I'd been there to see it.”

Her jaw dropped and her eyes stung. “What's happened to you?”

“I did a little spell on him and he lost his soul,” Drakkar explained. “That church-loving wolf that was trapped in there with him is long gone.”

Sonya quaked with fear. The man she loved was gone. All that was left was the vile demon who despised her for whatever reason. “If you come near me, I'll bite you.”

“I'll bite you back,” Dante threatened as he took another step toward her. “I know it's against your vows to let demons bite you. Shall we see what happens if I do?”

She grabbed a wooden stake and held it, preparing to strike them down. Spearing Dante with it would break her heart, but it shouldn't. The man she loved left when his soul did. As long as she reminded herself that Dante was just a shell of the man he was, she could go through with it.

He didn't look afraid of the weapon in her hand the way Jude seemed nervous. Why wasn't Dante afraid?

Drakkar had something else in him in addition to being a vampire, so he had to be killed some other way that remained unknown to her at present. What was Dante? Perhaps a stake would work on him after all.

“Stay back,” she warned, trying to keep the panic out of her voice. “I don't want to hurt you, Dante, but I will if I have to.”

Dante paused before his black eyes turned deadly and he advanced. “Then I guess we're on the same page.”

He reached for her with lightning speed and Sonya screamed as she plunged the stake into his chest where his heart was. He looked genuinely surprised that she'd gone through with it.

During that split second window before he turned to dust, his tone became ruthless and threatening. “There will be no mercy for you now.”

Dante's body turned to dust and he disappeared. To her utter shock, another body stood in his place. Five feet, eleven inches of hard, solid muscle and the heady musk of familiar cologne triggered a thousand different memories of the one who meant the most to her. His thick, soft, flaxen-blond hair and the rugged lines of his masculine face were all familiar to her. The narrow slants of his penetrating, olive-green eyes pierced her down to her soul. He still had that scar over and under his right eye. It was Nimbus.

The noise that came out of Sonya was somewhere between a gasp and a scream as she dropped the stake and fell backward into a bookshelf. She landed flat on her ass and stared up at the hard, scintillating glare of the sexy-as-sin demon who had originally cost her her soul and sired a child with her...twice apparently.