Crave (Tainted Angels Book 1) (19 page)

Air filled my lungs too rapidly and I gasped, choking on my own need to breathe.

“Relax,” Rax soothed. “Small slow breaths, Seraph.”

Opening my eyes and focussing on the depths of his velvety chocolate eyes, I did as he encouraged and gradually brought my panting to slow, steady breaths.

“Okay?”

I nodded, blowing out securely. My eyes scanned the room and I frowned at the familiarity of my own room. “It was a dream?”

Rax remained silent but the caution in his eyes had me hesitantly looking over my shoulder. Both disappointed and relieved to find my skin still intact, my nightgown untorn and whole, and sans wings, I sagged onto the headboard only to shoot back up. “Lincoln!”

“He’s okay, Willa.”

My heart started to beat again and I nodded when I felt the regular pulse of Lincoln’s own heartbeat in the next room to mine. Then something occurred to me and I frowned at him. “How do you know?”

“Know?”

“Why I’m worried about Linc. If it was a dream, my dream, you wouldn’t know why I was worried about him.”

He squirmed and looked away. Something wasn’t right and I grabbed his arm. “Rax?”

“It was a dream,” he said quietly. “But it wasn’t your dream.”

“What?”

“You were summoned into someone else’s dream.”

“You’re not making sense. How can I be pulled into someone’s dream?”

He turned to look at me, a soft smile covering his handsome face. Lifting his hand, he tenderly drew his fingers across my cheek and I winced when his touch left a sharp pain. A memory of my cheek scraping across a rock when I’d tumbled with the green demon had me slowly making my way over to the mirror above my dressing table.

“Oh my God.” A graze the length of my cheekbone glared back at me as if mocking my sanity. A deep gouge in my neck played the memory of the green demon’s talon digging into my jugular. They were healing quickly, my healer’s blood doing what it was supposed to, but I could still make out the muted scars. “How can this be? It was just a dream.”

It was only when my eyes moved to Rax’s in the mirror that I caught the state he himself was in.

“Shit, you’re hurt.”

I scurried over to him, softly moving his head to the side to study his wounds. Whole chunks of his flesh were missing; some of the gashes still oozing thick blood. Bruises covered the entirety of his body, and due to my own selfishness, it was only then I noticed his laboured breathing. “Oh my God, Rax!”

“I’m okay,” he lied. It was obvious he was far from okay. “Just a few broken ribs.”

“But why aren’t you healing?”

Looking like he was going to faint, he slowly lowered himself down on my bed, trying to disguise a grunt of pain with a small cough when he physically winced with the pain he was in. “I’m a warrior, not a healer, Willa.”

“But you have my blood.” My cheeks flushed with heat as I remembered the night he took nearly all of my damn blood. Surely with the amount he’d taken, he should heal easily - at least quicker than he was anyway.

“It obviously doesn’t work like that. I’m fine.” As if his body wanted to prove him a liar, he coughed and a spray of blood splattered across my face. Rax’s eyes widened and he reached out quickly, his fingers attempting to wipe me clean.

“Bloody hell, Rax!”

I swallowed back my anguish then pulled my hair to one side and extended my neck. Catching on to what I wanted, Rax shook his head like a lunatic. “No way!”

“It’s either this or die!” I narrowed my eyes on him, daring him to argue.

He scrambled backwards, his face growing paler by the second with his blood loss. “I’d rather die than put you through that again!”

“And I’d rather die than watch you slip into the Ether.”

His eyes snapped up to mine as recognition at my declaration sank in. “What are you saying?”

“You heard me.” I pulled my shoulders back defiantly. “Yes, I’m stupid enough to fall in love with you too. So quit being a stubborn ass and sink those fucking nasties into my bloody vein!”

He inched closer, trying to drag his ailing body across the space between us. Struggling but determined, his feather light touch on my face made my skin tingle as I pressed my cheek into his palm. “You mean it.” It wasn’t a question, more of a statement.

Nodding, I moved my head to the side more, encouraging him. “Yes. You were right. We can be destined to be mated, but not fall in love. And I feel your love deep within my soul, and I know you feel it in yours too.” The deep vein within my neck throbbed excitedly as if it knew what was coming. Weirdly, it felt like it was plumping itself up, making itself juicy and appealing, seducing my man with its scent and its tasty cells.

“Seraph,” he whispered as he moved in for the kill, unable to refuse what was offered.

The moment his teeth popped my skin, a thunderbolt of pleasure fired throughout me, a gasp bursting free as Rax growled in gratification. The soft noise of him sucking made me shiver. My belly throbbed, my pussy slicked, and my nipples pressed against the cotton of my nightgown.

Shit.

“Try not to kill me this time, huh?” I rasped, trying to take my mind off the desire seeping into every one of my bones.

I froze when Rax’s fingers slid down my face, slowly along the length of my throat and then, quite savagely he crushed his fingertips into my breast.

Okay.

“Uhh,” I mumbled, my eyes closing instinctively as wave after wave of lust rolled over me, my breast craftily pressing further into his touch. It had nothing to do with me – absolutely nothing! “So, who was Shrek?”

Rax frowned, lifting his eyes to mine whilst his jaw carried on moving up and down like a baby suckling on its mother’s breast. “Shrek,” I repeated. “The Jolly Green Giant. The demon who … I dreamed about.”

He rolled his eyes, yet I wasn’t sure if it was at my description or in pleasure. I smiled, noticing the deepest wound in his neck start to close up.

“Oh shit, Rax.” My voice was shaky, the tone lifting high and low as my throat started to close in when his thumb stroked over my nipple. Hunger caused my mouth to water and I leaned into both his mouth and his touch, needing more and more.

Rax moaned, sensing my arousal. His hand left my breast and gently cupped my face. His other hand skirted down my nightgown and he pressed the heel of his hand against my mound. Shamelessly, my legs slid open as though they had a life of their own.

It all happened so quickly. One minute his mouth was at my neck, taking the medicine I offered to him and the next his face was between my thighs and his tongue was thrusting in and out of my pussy. His fingers dug into my hips, holding me down as he greedily sucked on me, his head shaking from side to side as he ate me like a fucking maniac.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” I gasped as the back of my head hit the headboard and my hands grabbed at his hair. “Make me come, Rax. Quickly. Please, Jesus Christ, hurry!”

His chuckle rebounded around my swollen clit, the tips of his fangs sending me wild as they grazed over the little nub of nerves.

“Holy shit!” I yelled as my back arched and the most delicious orgasm swept through every inch of me. I couldn’t breathe with its intensity, my lungs constricting as every muscle followed their strict pull.

Feeling him shift quickly, I snapped my eyes open and gawped in both shock and delight when his cock was an inch from my face, the swollen head glistening with a drop of fluid that taunted my hunger. His fist was wrapped around the thick girth as he jerked himself off like an expert, his smooth strokes growing faster and firmer with each slide of his hand.

“Eyes on me, Seraph!”

Snapping my eyes up to his, I looked up at him, the blazing heat in his eyes making me feel like a goddess. His need for me was so potent that I was frozen under his love, his devotion as heavy as his eyelids.

I blinked frantically when he released a severe grunt and his cum hit me slap in the eye – and on my cheek, and over the bridge of my nose, and in my hairline. “Fuck!” he cried out as he kept coming and coming.

Unable to resist, needing to taste him, I lifted my fingers and wiped at his spunk, then slid them into my mouth, my eyes closing instinctively as his taste burst across my tongue.

“You dirty little devil,” he growled as his fingers grasped my chin and his mouth crushed against mine, his ejaculation now shared between the two of us. He devoured me, his tongue swiping over and around mine as our joint arousal fed us both. It was only when he backed away that I noticed the smear of my blood around his lips.

“So,” he said casually. “Red wings, huh?”

I gasped, my eyes widening in horror as I stared at his mouth then tentatively between my legs, a slight smear of blood on the inside of my thigh making my stomach hurl. “Oh God, Rax! I’m so sorry!”

He squinted at me, his brow creasing in confusion. “Why are you sorry?”

“Well, ya’ know. I really didn’t think I was due on yet. If I’d known then …”

His eyes snapped wide, then his mouth and then tears slipped from his eyes as he keeled over, howling in laughter. His head shook as he tried to come up for air.

Heat shamed my cheeks and I recoiled into the bed. Why now? I growled up at the ceiling as if The Almighty had chosen this exact time for me to start my period.

“Jesus bloody Christ!” Rax chuckled as he framed my face, tears still dripping across his cheeks. “I didn’t mean ‘those’ red wings. I meant the ones in the dream.” Swiping his finger over the smear of blood on my thigh, he smirked. “This is because I couldn’t wait to wipe my mouth after eating from your neck and then devouring your sweet pussy.”

He was still laughing as I stared at him, mortified. “Oh,” I croaked. “Oh, okay.”

“Bloody hell.” He laughed. “I fucking love you, Willa Eden.”

My heart swelled at his easy declaration and I couldn’t help but grin at him, the beam on my face matching the happiness in my soul.

Taking my hand, he pulled me off the bed. “Come on, we have to fetch Delilah. The brat was throwing a proper sulk cos’ you’d done a runner on her.”

I cringed, imagining the telling off I knew was coming my way.

“And the boss isn’t too happy you took off either.”

Even better!

S
gt Grant Miller stared at Valerie, the brightness of her white teeth seeming severe against the colour of her dark skin. He liked Valerie Henderson, the local coroner. Her no nonsense approach to all the rigmarole included in their world had Miller affording her the respect she saved for him. But right then he questioned her sanity.

“No bullshit, Val. What are you trying to tell me?”

She poked at the wound on the deceased girl’s neck, dragging the tip of her pen along the grooves of each tooth mark. “Look.” She prodded harder. “In plain English, Miller, the bottom indentations indicate human teeth, a full set. The top also replicate those of a human, however, see these deeper wounds?”

Miller peered closer and then nodded.

“These are made by canine teeth.”

“Yeah, and …?”

“Well, they ain’t like no canines I’ve ever seen before. For one they went deep.” She slipped in a prong that measured the depth in millimetres. “And the cut of the skin around shows that these specific teeth were sharp … very fuckin’ sharp, Captain.”

Miller chuckled. “So what you saying, a motherfucking vampire tore out the poor girl’s throat?”

When Valerie quirked a brow at him, a shiver trickled down his spine. But then without giving him chance to consider this, she rolled the girl onto her side, her dead arm flopping over the edge. “And this shit gets worse.”

Miller peered over the body, looking down to a small scar on her back. A thin silver line on the skin from where the girl had been stabbed looked back at him. “She was stabbed,” he said, wondering why the shit sharp coroner hadn’t picked it up.

She glared at him. “I know that! But what I’m saying is the blade was pushed through in such a specific way that it completely missed vital organs. It takes a specialist to be able to do that.”

“So he didn’t intend to kill her?”

Valerie scoffed. “Oh, he intended to kill her alright, but what it means is … the poor girl was still alive when he cut out her heart.”