My Darkest Passion (29 page)

She rinsed out the washcloth again. No blood this time. Shoulders, chest, pecs. Arms. He was cut, but given what he was, that was expected. The whole point of that perfect physique was to attract a human woman. She doubted he had any trouble at all. He opened his eyes again, and that sent another jolt through her. All the way south.

He was gorgeous. Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous. She went easy on the worst of his nearly healed chest, then moved downward. He shut his eyes again and tipped his face to the water while she washed his stomach and then his penis. Because she was thorough. Because he was recovered. Because neither one of them was stupid about what it meant for them to be naked when they were both healthy. Because she trusted him.

Her head rush came back when she straightened from washing the front of his lower legs, and he was watching her again. Harsh Marit. The right-hand of the warlord Nikodemus. Oath-bound to her now. Their eyes locked, and it was like he’d found a way to take all the air without using magic.

“You’re all better now, right?”

“Yes.”

“Is this okay? I’m not doing anything you don’t want?”

“No issues. You?”

“Oh, well, you know. A few, but they’re not about you, specifically.” She didn’t move when he brushed her wet hair away from her face. She didn’t move when his attention moved off her face and went lower. There was heat in the way he looked at her and all she could think about, and he knew it, was his penis thrusting into her, or his mouth on her in intimate places.

His hand dropped away from her cheek and drifted down to her shoulder. A touch, a slide along her wet skin, and the way he was looking at her made her think, oh, hell yes, she wanted to do this. The pads of his fingers slipped along the upper curve of her breast. The kin touched each other like this all the time and there was never anything more about it than contact and the comfort that came with it. Right?

She was standing in front of Harsh Marit, and he was naked, and he was touching her in this not-impersonal way, and it was fantastic. He touched her nipple ring and while he did that, there was this warmth stealing through her, around her, and God, it was like fantasizing about having sex. Only better.

He tugged. A little, and he might as well have been giving her head, it was that good.

“Harsh.”

“Mm?” He flicked the ring, and that was more than she ought to be expected to endure. “Did you do this because you’re sexually submissive?”

“No.” She laughed and shook her head. “I didn’t know about that meaning at the time.” He totally had his hand on her breast, touching, cupping her. “I figured it was like eye surgery. You never do both at once in case something goes wrong. Later, I didn’t have enough money for the other one. Besides, two. That just seemed like a lot of bling, you know?”

“I’m not sure I agree.”

She was having all those human hetero-female responses to him, just like it was supposed to happen, only there was also the whole oath issue that kept changing everything. His finger, slippery wet, moved over her nipple, and this sound came up from her throat, part moan, part purr, part despair. Her eyes flicked open again, and he was standing so close and he was hard and he was still touching her.

“Ms. O’Henry. My oath to you does not make me your slave. It does not take away my free will.”

The link between them went hot and alive. Zinging with tension. She could feel both kinds of magic, but to be honest, what mattered was who she was with, not what he was. His hand slid to her waist.

“If you were to order me to have sex with you when I did not want to, an actual order, mind you, I’d be surprised if that didn’t release me from my oath.”

“So, when we get to Nikodemus, all I have to do is order you to have sex with me and we’re good?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” He kept his hand on her. “I can tell the difference between your sexual arousal as it relates to me and you compelling me to do something that is not in my best interest.”

“Wow.” She took a step forward and about melted when their torsos touched. “You have some serious talent, because that just made me insanely hot.”

He smiled at her and tugged on her nipple ring again. “I do like this. More than I thought.”

“I can’t wait til you see my tat.”

“You haven’t got one.”

“The one I’m going to get.”

He was thinking about sex, too. The way bodies fit together and the anticipation of orgasm and all the things he could do that would get them there. He palmed her breast, then drew his fingers upward, from the bottom, over her nipple—contact that sent a jolt of arousal through her. “You’re far too young for me.”

“You bastard. That isn’t even funny.”

He laughed, and she did not stop touching him either. His ass was curved, and she kept coming back to his chest and just, wow. He locked tight with her power, drawing from her, and she was so into that. Totally. She could practically taste his blood. She wanted to. She wanted that intimacy, craved it, and he knew now that she wanted to put her hands and mouth in interesting places that involved a hell of a lot of intimacy.

“Yes,” he said. His voice went soft, but underneath that was a challenge, and she couldn’t help responding to that. She was pretty sure he did that on purpose. “And you, as well, I think.”

She reached behind her and turned off the water. He slicked his wet hair out of his face. He was erect. Big. Really big. And she took her time looking at him. “You better make good on that, buster.”

A smile lit up his eyes. “My specialty. Making sure the warlord gets what the warlord wants.”

“I have payback planned.”

“Excellent.” He pushed open the shower door and after she followed him out, he picked her up and carried her to the bed. She would have been all over him, except he knelt on the edge of the mattress, muscles going tight in his thighs and abdomen as he balanced, and the sight took her breath.

He tipped his head to one side and flicked a finger at a diagonal across the lower part of his neck. A thin line of red appeared on his skin and he smiled, slow and wicked, and what that did to her turned up the heat another hundred degrees.

He was offering himself first because she was the fucking warlord, and that was the protocol. “That’s really hot.”

“I’m beginning to like your hair, too.”

She grabbed his hand and pulled him onto the mattress. His skin was warm, feverish, and she wanted to sink into that warmth almost as much as she wanted the taste of his blood. The first time she’d felt that compulsion in the context of sex, she’d just about come apart, but now she was prepared and could handle it. She curled her hand around the nape of his neck and pressed her mouth to the nick he’d made.

Their bodies touched, skin to skin, and one of his hands slipped around to the small of her back, holding her close. As if she’d ever want to let go. Just like before, she responded to that calmness, the solidity of him. He accepted what he was and everyone else could just go get fucked. Including her, and wasn’t she lucky?

She pulled away and swear to God, she felt a little drunk on him. There were concessions to be made now, and she knew that, too. She wasn’t new to this anymore, to sex with someone like Harsh. She had only her physical human form, and Harsh understood that, and he very smoothly brought her arm to his mouth and made a nick in her skin, a neat bypass of the issue of whether she would have offered her throat. She would have, but his solution was a good one.

Their psychic link went hot the minute his mouth touched her skin, and though she knew what happened at a time like this, she wasn’t as prepared as she thought. Not that the experience was new or overwhelming. But this new dimension, with the oath between them, that made things different enough to keep her off balance.

He drew hard enough on her skin to leave a mark, and then she was falling back, and he came over her. He was naked and wet and she adjusted her body to his—they adjusted their bodies and, God, the reverent look on his face when he pushed inside her, that killed her, sent her into some kind of sexual paradise. He felt so good. His cock felt so good inside her.

The connection was bigger. Wider. Deeper. Everything was more intense. For half a second there was an awkward pause when she gasped because he’d gone as far in as he could, and it was the most amazing sensation, him filling her, and the glide of her wet hands on his damp back. They locked gazes with him hard inside her, and her magic whipped up.

“Should I stop?” he asked.

She lifted her legs and wrapped them around his hips and pushed her pelvis toward his while she said, “If you stop now, I will make your life a living hell, I promise you.”

He smiled, slow and easy, and then he started moving, and it was like her body had been supersensitized, already racing toward orgasm. He started a rhythm that worked for her and had her mindless, and there in the middle of all that was that buzz of the magekind part of him and she was so far gone, she didn’t even care.

The man knew how to fuck. Jesus, she lost her mind.

She came first, decimated by the power of her body’s reaction. When she could speak again, she raised her hand and found their fingers intertwined and him still hard. Slowly, deliberately, she unraveled their fingers until his palm was face up, and then she licked from his wrist to the base of his index finger. When she was done, she looked up, with her mouth a breath away from his palm. “Good?”

He didn’t back down. He didn’t do anything to acknowledge that she outranked him and it drove her crazy. This was different from how it had been with Kynan. For one thing, once they were done with the violent sex that didn’t have anything to do with a relationship, there’d been an extended period of flirting and foreplay, so she’d been prepared and thinking about him like that for a while. They were never going to agree on which one of them outranked the other, but it turned out the competition had made the sex hot.

He shifted his body, sliding to one side of her. “Sex is not a contest.”

“Doesn’t matter. You win.” It was strange, feeling both those things: her need to have him acknowledge her rank and the fact that he was, in this odd way, outside considerations of rank.

“It’s not about winning. It’s about finding divinity.”

“I love your voice. I could listen to you talk forever.” She arched against him.

He dropped his head to her breast and licked her there, closer and closer to her nipple, and then his hand slid between them, palming her. When he spoke, his breath warmed her skin. “So pretty, warlord.”

“Look who’s talking.” She stroked a hand over his back, as far down as she could reach. “Touching you feels good.”

“Likewise.” He shifted his attention to her other breast and she was well out of her mind by the time he rolled onto his back, bringing her with him. She ended up with her hands on his chest.

“Oh, hell, yes.” Being on top worked for her right now, and he knew it and liked it. He gripped her hips and pushed up while she came down, and his slide into her was as perfect as before. The right size, the right penetration. “I think I just found God.”

31

H
arsh settled into a state of sexual repletion. His orgasm lingered at the edges of him, the memory impossibly intense. His work for Nikodemus meant he spent a great deal of time with warlords. He had not, with one exception beside Addison, had sex with any them, and never with a warlord to whom he was also bound by oath. This was new and mind-altering territory for him.

What the hell was he going to do now? Addison the warlord had his bond for the present. Addison the woman was imprinted on his spirit. Those two things struck him as dangerously inapposite. He did not see how he could serve Nikodemus and his cause and have enough left of himself to keep what he’d found with Addison. When she released him from his oath, this amazing immediacy, the vibrancy of her, of the two of them, would be diminished. He mourned the loss already.

“Hey,” she said. “You okay?”

“Yes.” For now she was naked, with all her parts in exquisite working order, and he wanted more of everything while he could still have the intensity she brought to him. He drew a finger along her spine. She had a lovely back, and he did like the way a woman’s waist curved to her hips. Hers especially. His hand looked even browner against her skin, and he liked that a lot, too.

She lay on her stomach, eyes closed, drifting with him in the aftermath. The disastrous ending of his relationship with Iskander’s blood-twin sister had taken a toll on his willingness to invest himself in a relationship. He’d lost a part of himself to Fen, as had Iskander; the end of that bond had nearly destroyed him and Iskander, too.

A similar potential for disaster existed with Addison. He was going to walk away from the very bond that had just given him the deepest and most emotionally satisfying experience—of everything—in his life. It didn’t matter that Addison understood duty and why his oath to her couldn’t be permanent.

She shifted onto her side, and stroked a hand along his thigh, watching the path of her hand. Her psychic state echoed back to him with a similar disbelief about the intensity of their encounter, but a complete certainty that it would be that good again. What he feared was that each encounter with her would make the end all the more devastating. To them both.

“Stop worrying about it.” She pressed a kiss to his hip.

“It’s my job to worry.” He stroked along her spine again, this time purely by touch.

With one hand propping up her head, she said, “I think about my life a lot, what it is as opposed to what it could be.” She met his gaze head on. “If it weren’t for you I’d either be dead or living a nightmare. Maybe even pregnant again.”

“Don’t think about that.” He didn’t want to think about what might have happened to her.

“I’m not either of those things. Instead, I have this life. I’ve learned to take my happiness when and where I can. Big doses, little doses. Doesn’t matter.” Her free hand, the backs of her fingers, traced the shape of his face. “Maybe all this ends badly. Maybe once you’re back with Nikodemus, where, admit it, you belong, you and I go back to something less intense that this. To me, this, us, is worth it.”