Devoured: Brides of the Kindred 11 (43 page)

The rough, deliberate pleasure
while he continued to pound inside her pushed Tess over the edge at last.

“Oh…oh, God…
Garron!”
she wailed as her orgasm pierced through her. “Oh God,
yes…take me…
fuck me!”

“That’s right,” he growled, his
fingers sliding over her slick folds. “That’s right, come for me,
lin’del.
Come all over my cock while I
breed you…while I fill your sweet pussy with my seed…”

And then she felt him grip her
pelvis so tightly she knew she would have finger shaped marks on her hips the
next day. With a low roar, he thrust into her, pressing as deeply as he could
to reach her core.

Tess felt a hot rush and knew he
was coming inside her, filling her with his seed,
breeding
her exactly as he had promised. With a soft wail, she
backed to meet him, trying to get all of him, trying to give herself completely
as she accepted his lust and need completely. As she opened her pussy and her
heart to the man she loved and the beast inside him.

“Garron,” she gasped. “I love
you!”

“Love you too,
lin’del,”
he gasped. “So much…so damn
much…”

Tess bucked back against him, wanting
this moment to never end. Wanting to feel him in her, claiming her forever.

“Garron,” she whispered.
“Garron, I…”

But the physical sensations of
intense pleasure coupled with the extreme emotions were suddenly more than her
system could handle. Sparks
of errant light danced before her eyes and then everything faded to black.

With a little moan, she
collapsed on the stone floor and knew no more.

Chapter
Forty-two

Tess woke the next morning, sore
but satisfied. She was completely naked but somehow she wasn’t cold. Why was
that?

Blinking, she looked around and
saw that she was sitting on a new fur sofa. A
white
fur sofa. She frowned. Why had she picked white? It was a bad
choice—one glass of red wine and it was going to be toast.

Then she woke up a little more
and realized the sofa was
breathing.
The
back of it was heaving up and down very slowly, almost as though it was some
huge beast and not a sofa at all. Almost as if…

“No!” Tess sat up, completely
awake at last. “No, it can’t be!” she exclaimed, looking at the
dr’gin
who was curled around her. He
raised his head and looked at her quizzically from those brilliant turquoise
eyes—
Garron’s
eyes. “I brought you
back last night,” Tess told him, beginning to get really upset. “We said we
loved each other. You
can’t
be stuck
in this form again. You
can’t be!”

“I’m
not stuck, lin’del. I simply reverted to this form to keep you warm last
night.”

The voice was unmistakably Garron’s
but Tess was hearing it with her mind, not her ears. It made her think of the
other disembodied voice she’d heard the night before—the one that had told her
to be brave. Was she going crazy, hearing voices all the time now?

“What?” she whispered, staring
back into its eyes. “Did…did you say something? And how did you say it?”

“I’m
speaking through our bond.”
His
jewel-like eyes blinked slowly.
“The bond
that all Kindred males have with their mates.”

“You…we…
what?”

“We
are bonded.”
The
dr’gin
looked away.
“For that I am sorry. I know how you must feel about it.”

“How I must…” Tess shook her
head. “I still don’t understand. What does bonded mean—besides you being able
to speak inside my head, I mean?”

“It
means we are tied together…permanently.”
The voice in her head didn’t sound very happy about it.

“How…how did that happen?” Tess
demanded.

“When
I took you last night…when I bred you…”
The
dr’gin
gave her a
look from the corner of its eye.
No,
not the
dr’gin—
this was Garron in his
dr’gin
form. The two of them were one
now, Tess suddenly understood.

“When you…bred me?” she asked.

“You
need only to look at the marks I left on your flesh to know what I’m talking
about.”

Tess looked down at
herself—really
looked—
for the first
time and sucked in her breath. There were bruises on her pale skin—mostly
around her hips—but a few in other places as well. Not only that but the skin
had been erased from her knees and elbows and the palms of her hands. Just
looking at the raw, red flesh made the wounds she hadn’t noticed earlier sting.

How
in the world…?
Then it
began to come back. Dimly she remembered kneeling on the hard stone floor of
the cave as Garron plowed into her from behind.

Probably
happened then.
She shivered
at the vivid memory—the rough pleasure of letting him take her completely—the
overwhelming feeling of being utterly owned by him.

“You
have bite marks on your back as well,”
Garron
informed her.
“I wanted to heal them but I didn’t feel I
had the right without your permission. I had to keep you warm, however which is
why I curled around you. Though I know how you must feel about being in close
proximity to me in any form right now. I hope you understand.”

Tess shook her head. “I don’t
understand
anything.
Why would I not
want to be in close proximity to you?”

“How
can you ask that after seeing what I did?”

Garron shimmered and changed
form. In an instant he was sitting there beside her on the hard stone floor of
the cave completely naked. The change made Tess jump.

“Oh, you’re back! You really
can
change back and forth now.” She
wanted to throw her arms around him but something stopped her—maybe it was the
dark expression on his face. Or maybe the fact that she was still completely
naked. She crossed her legs and draped an arm across her bare breasts as unobtrusively
as she could.

“Yes, I’m back—thanks to you.”
Garron
gave her a long, searching
look. “You saved me from being
D’fex
,
Tess. Or rather, I
used
you to save
myself from it. For that I must beg you to forgive me.”

“There’s nothing to forgive.”
Tess put a hand over his lightly. “Really.”

“That’s not true,” he said in a
low voice. “There is much to forgive. Much I did to wrong you.”

She drew her hand away
uncertainly. “Is this you giving me the “it’s not you it’s me” speech again?
Because I have to be honest, Garron, if that’s it, then I
will
never forgive you.”

“But it
is
me—I’m the one who hurt you. You did nothing but come and seek
me out, even when you knew it might mean your death. And look how I repaid
you.”

“How you…? Wait a minute…” Tess frowned.
“Is this really about last night? Or it is about you wanting to break up with
me because I’m not Nella and you’re regretting the whole ‘bonded for life’
thing?”

“How could I regret bonding
myself to you?” Garron looked at her, holding her eyes with his own. “I told
you that Nella—as much as I loved her—is in the past. You are my present.
And…my future. At least, I once hoped you were.”

“I can be.” Tess looked at him
uncertainly. “If…if you still want me.”

“Of
course
I still want you!” Garron reached for her hand, entwining
their fingers. “But I wouldn’t blame you a bit if you didn’t want me. Not
after…after last night.”

“Last night was…intense.” Her
face was suddenly hot with a blush as she remembered the incredible sex they’d
shared. “But I’m not upset about it. Not unless you are.”

“I
am
upset—deeply disturbed at the way I behaved. At the way I
treated you.” Garron looked away. “I vowed to loved and cherish you and never
treat you roughly and then I…” He seemed to have difficulty getting the words out.
“I treated you no better than your ex-mate. I wouldn’t blame you if you never
forgave me for that.”

He started to draw his hand away
from her but Tess wouldn’t let him.

“That’s not true,” she said
fiercely, holding his hand tightly in her much smaller one. “Garron,
look at me.”

Reluctantly, he met her eyes
again.

“You’re nothing like Pierce was.
Nothing.
Not even after you first,
uh, ate him and took on a few of his personality traits. You came after me at
first but then you stopped when I asked you to. Even though you knew you had to
mate or turn
D’fex.
Pierce would
never
have stopped. He took what he
wanted and didn’t give a damn about me.”

“That is not the only way I
mirrored him,” Garron pointed out. “He hurt you—marked you. I did the same last
night.”

“Pierce liked to hurt me and
scar me for his own sadistic amusement,” Tess said. “You marked me out of
passion. Not on purpose—not because you got off on it—but because you were
still in a kind of in-between state. You were channeling your
dr’gin.”

He frowned. “How do you know
that?”

“
It was pretty obvious the way you kept
flipping back and forth until I finally managed to keep you in one form. Also,
you were probably having what Yipper called the ‘three-fold reaction’ because
the emotion damper failed. Remember when all the emotions you were having at
the time the damper was implanted come back three times as strong?” She
frowned. “What happened to the implant anyway? Is it still in you?”

Garron ran a hand over the back
of his neck. “No, it’s gone—my body must have either expelled or engulfed it
during my first transition.”

“Like it did with Pierce’s gun.”
Tess shivered. “You know, I understand the clothes and even the shoes but how
in the hell did you digest a
gun?”

Garron shrugged, his broad
shoulders rolling.

“The acid in the stomach of a
dr’gin
is one of the strongest in the
known universe. I could eat anything in that form—even rocks—and digest them.”

“Ugh.” Tess shook her head.
“Well, I guess you can never complain about my cooking then…”

“Don’t try to make jokes and
change the subject,” he said severely. “We were talking about how I wronged
you.”

“No, we were talking about why
you got a little out of control. And don’t forget, I
did
tell you I didn’t mind when you said you couldn’t be gentle,”
Tess reminded him. “Which was understandable—you were having the three-fold
reaction and fighting with your
dr’gin
at
the same time.”

“I
do
remember many strong emotions—feelings of guilt and shame and a
lust so strong I felt I could barely control it.” His face darkened. “Clearly,
I could
not
control it.”

“So?” Tess leaned forward. “You
can’t make love to a tiger and expect to come away without a few scratches and
scrapes. You were wild last night—
literally
.
You couldn’t help yourself.”

“That’s not an excuse,” Garron
said stubbornly. “None of this is.”

“I’m not trying to
excuse
anything,” Tess murmured. She
stroked along the inside of his wrist gently with her fingertips. “I’m trying
to tell you how I
feel
. I didn’t feel
abused or attacked last night. I knew what I was getting myself into when I
came after you in the first place—I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. But
Garron, nothing worth having comes easily. And you’re
worth it.
Worth the trauma of seeing my ex-husband eaten alive,
worth being scared to death when I came looking for you…and
certainly
worth a few bumps and bruises
and bites.”

Finally she began to see hope
dawning in his eyes.

“You really feel that way?”

“Absolutely,” Tess assured him. At
last she dared to lean forward and put her arms around his neck. Her bare
breasts pressed against his hard chest making her bite back a moan.

“Tess…
lin’del…”
Garron held her tight. “After all I’ve put you though, I
can’t believe you’re finally, truly mine.”

“I am,” she assured him. “And
that’s not going to change no matter what.”

“I
love you,”
he sent through
their new link and Tess felt the sincerity of his words right down to the tips
of her toes.

“I
love you, too,”
she sent
back, nuzzling closer to him.
“So much,
Garron. And I—”

“Teeeeeeessssss? Tess, are you
here? Teeeeesssss?”

The call was distant but clear,
floating up on the morning air currents from outside the cave.

“Becca!” Tess breathed. She
jumped up, meaning to go to the cave mouth and shout back but then she realized
she was completely naked. “Oh…” She looked around, wondering where the baggy
sweat suit she’d been wearing the night before had gone to.

“Your
clothing is over there.”
Garron
had turned back into his
dr’gin
form.
He nodded his huge head to a far corner of the cave.
“Put it on and I will take you down to meet them.”

“They’re probably looking for
you, too,” Tess said, grabbing her clothes and beginning to pull them on.

“I
have no doubt they are but they do not expect to find me. Not as a rational,
thinking being that is.”

“Then we have a surprise for
them. A happy one. Truth will be so glad—he was crying over you yesterday. He—”
Just then she heard a deeper, masculine voice calling her name as well. Becca
must have one or both of her husbands searching too.

“Come,”
Garron said, shaking
himself so that the white feather-fur rippled like silk.
“Get on my back and let’s go meet them.”

“All right…” But for some reason
Tess hesitated.

“What
is it?”
The
dr’gin
blinked at her questioningly.

“I don’t know—it’s silly.” She
looked around and sighed. “I guess…I guess part of me just wishes we didn’t
have to leave this cave. Which is ridiculous because it’s chilly and the stone
floor is really hard. But I guess I just feel like…like we finally really
connected in here.”

“Tess…”
The
dr’gin
shimmered and Garron was there again, holding out his arms.
She went to them willingly, loving the warmth and safety she felt in his
embrace.

“I know it’s silly,” she said.
“It’s just a feeling.”

“It’s not silly but you should
know that it’s not just the cave. I’ve felt a connection to you from the first
time I saw you. From the second I smelled your sweet scent in the Pairing
House, I knew I had to have you.” He looked into her eyes and spoke softly. “I
might not have admitted it to myself or to you right away, but I knew in that
moment you were the only female for me. The only one I could ever love.”