The Cursed (League of the Black Swan) (28 page)

“I need you,” he ground out.

“Well, you should have thought of that—”

He snarled, cutting off whatever defiant remark she’d been about to finish. “Take off your clothes.”

She actually growled right back at him. “Are you out of your tiny little mind? After what you said to me this morning? Don’t even think—”

He prowled across the room toward her, throwing off his shirt as he went, sweeping his hot gaze from her head to her toes and letting it linger on her beautiful breasts until she blushed again.

“Take them off,” he repeated, his voice low and menacing.

A distant part of his brain recognized that he could not—he
would not
—take her without her consent, but he’d be damned if he’d let her go without a fight.

He clenched his hands into fists at his sides to keep from touching her, his cock so hard it was already straining the fabric of his jeans. He ached for her; he
throbbed
for her, and nothing would calm the savage monster inside him until he was driving his cock into her hot, wet heat.

“You have about ten seconds to run away before I rip your clothes into shreds,” he warned her. “Run now, tell me no, give me some indication that you don’t want me, but do it
right now
, because in less than a minute I plan to be fucking you right here on my desk.”

She gasped, but she didn’t back away. She
didn’t run aw
ay
.

Deep in her amber gaze he found the acceptance he wanted and needed so badly, but he didn’t pounce until she raised her hand and touched his face.

“I need you,” he repeated, broken and desperate.

“I need you, too,” she said, and the words were the tinder to the flames burning his body.

He shoved his jeans down and kicked them off, groaning in relief as his cock sprang free from its denim restraint. He was so hard that the head of his erection pointed straight up into the air, and he could almost feel individual veins and nerves pulsing with hunger and need.

“Now,” he said, because that was all he could manage. It was the only word he could find in the roaring conflagration of his mind.

Hunger dominated reason; need overpowered caution. He bunched the front of her shirt in his hands and ripped it down the middle. Her breasts, barely hidden from his sight in a scrap of blue lacy fabric, begged him to touch them and lick them and suck on them, so he lifted her by the waist and took one hard little nipple into his mouth and sucked, hard.

She cried out and tried to put her legs around his waist, but it wasn’t enough, she wasn’t naked, and so he lowered her back down to her feet and stripped her clothes from her with so little care that soon they were lying in shreds on the floor.

“Need you now,” he growled. “Need to fuck you now, so hard and so deep that the memory of me is burned into your soul.”

She captured his face in her hands and pulled his head down to kiss him, and the monster inside him, never balanced so far over the abyss as at right that moment, shivered with pleasure.

“Make love to me,” she said, and he was lost, because she was right, it wasn’t about fucking, it was about loving.

He dropped to his knees in front of her, right there and then, and took her sweet, wet heat with his mouth. He licked her and speared his tongue into her, reveling in the creamy evidence of her desire for him, and then he fastened his lips to the little bud that brought her so much pleasure and he sucked on it, just as hard as he’d sucked on her nipple.

This time she screamed.

He immediately stopped what he was doing and stood up.

“No. You will not come until your body is locked around my cock,” he ordered.

Her head fell back and she panted with short, quick breaths, and he stared at her, frozen and struck mute by her rosy loveliness, but then she opened her eyes and glared at him.

“Now, already,” she demanded.

His incredible, wonderful, amazing woman wanted him
now
.

“Yes,” he growled.

He picked her up and positioned the head of his cock at her slick entrance and then he pushed forward at the same time he lowered her body, letting gravity help him to thrust as far into her as he could go.

“Mine,” he said fiercely, loving the passion that glazed her eyes and the way she clung to his shoulders as if to a lifeline in a storm-tossed sea.

“Oh, Luke, oh, Luke, oh,
Lucian
,” she said, crying out again when he started walking, still fucking her, over to his desk.

The rhythmic movement seated his cock even more deeply inside her, until he was sure he was going to explode before another heartbeat passed. He reached his desk just in time, and shoved everything off it with one hand and then gently lowered her onto the desk while he was still deep in her body. She lay back on the desk, her arms over her head, and the visual feast of having her nude beauty spread out in front of him nearly made him weep.

“I need you,” he said, and the welcome in her eyes and her body began to heal his damaged soul.

“I need you, I need you, I need you,” he said, thrusting into her again and again, because it was the closest he could come to saying he loved her. The only words that he was brave enough to say.

“I need you, too,” she said, barely able to catch her breath.

“Come for me,” he demanded, and he pushed his thumb against that magical little bud, rubbing and stroking, and he fucked her and fucked her, so hard, and so deep, and so right.

And then somehow, without him knowing how or why, he wasn’t fucking her at all.

He was
making love
to her.

“I need you,” he said, torn apart by the realization. “Come for me now.”

Her eyes widened, and she shattered around him, screaming his name.

His
real
name.

“Lucian, it’s too much, it’s too much,” she screamed, shaking and writhing on the desk in the throes of the passion he’d given her.

He’d
given her. She was his, and she always would be.

He pulled her up and into his arms, and his cock, already swollen beyond the bounds of endurance, demanded relief. He let the release smash through him, shouting out his triumph and pleasure as he came, long and hard, deep inside her.

Rio’s head lolled on his shoulder as her body went boneless in his arms, and he finally allowed himself to think the words he couldn’t say.

I love you.

The power of the thought conquered him, sweeping through him with the crystalline power of the purest magic he’d ever encountered, and he stumbled, almost falling, before he managed to catch his balance and make his way, still holding her, to his bedroom.

He spared a moment as he made his way down the hall to be grateful that Kit was nowhere to be seen, probably sleeping in Rio’s room, and then he was falling into bed, still holding Rio as close as he could, his cock still buried deep inside her.

“I’m not letting you go without a fight,” she murmured sleepily. “Miro agrees. He said he’ll use your bones for cue sticks if you hurt me, plus you should know that the goblins owe me a favor.”

Luke pulled the covers up and over them and then settled her against his chest. “You do meet the most interesting people, Rio Jones Green.”

But she was already asleep. Luke stayed awake watching her for a very long time.

“I love you,” he whispered, and the curse—or, as he thought of it, the monster who’d crouched inside his soul for so long—agreed.

He carefully untangled Rio’s limbs from his own, kissed her forehead, and headed back to his office. Maybe now, confident that she returned at least some part of his emotion, he would finally be able to think.

Rio found Luke in his office at dawn, and she handed him a mug of coffee. The long, high table in his office was covered with bottles, vials, and jars, all filled with various powders and liquids. The hair on the top of his head was standing almost straight up, as if he’d been clutching his head all night long. She glanced around and froze when she saw the evidence of the previous night’s encounter. Everything from the top of his desk was still strewn across the floor nearby.

She was the new, nonblushing Rio, however. She ignored the mess and her embarrassment and instead concentrated on what he was doing now.

“New case?”

He stared almost blindly into his mug and then placed it on the table, reached out and took hers and did the same with it, and then pulled her into a tight hug and kissed her soundly.

“Good morning.”

“Good morning to you, too,” she murmured, perfectly content to stand right there for the rest of the morning.

But he let her go, picked up his coffee, and drained it in a few long swallows. “I need to tell you something, and it’s going to be hard to hear. I think you should sit down.”

Panic and anger flared. “If this is some kind of twisted routine with you, that you have sex and then have unpleasant talks the next morning, I’m not—”

“It’s not about us,” Luke said, flashing a brief, reassuring smile before his face resumed its stern lines. “I’ve never used the expression before, but this time it applies: This is literally about life and death.”

She didn’t like the sound of that. At all. Her mind immediately started tumbling in a thousand different directions, trying to figure out what could be wrong. “What?”

“It’s Elisabeth,” he said gently. “She is in very bad shape.”

Of all the crises she’d been considering, one involving Elisabeth hadn’t even been in the mix.

“What’s wrong with her? I thought she was fine when Merelith came to get her. Is she hurt? Was she in an accident?” Rio put her coffee down again and drummed her fingers on the table, unable to stand still.

“We should go to her. Where is she?”

“That’s just it. I saw her yesterday. I went to the Silver Palace to see if I could get Merelith to talk to us about your parents, and I saw Elisabeth while I was there. She’s in a coma, Rio, and she’s barely breathing—she’s barely alive. Neither the Fae healers nor the human doctors can figure out what’s wrong there.”

He swept out his hand and knocked half the bottles and jars off the table and sent them crashing to the floor. “None of this is going to work, either. Her blood tells me nothing. Her hair tells me nothing. I have no idea why that little girl is sick, but she’s fading fast, and she’s going to die if I can’t figure it out.”

“Then you’ll figure it out.” She said it with all the calm certainty in her heart.

Luke could do anything, and he would do this. It was that simple. Elisabeth needed them, and they were going to make her well.

He stilled, and then he captured her with his hot, blue gaze. “Maybe there’s a way. Maybe if you could somehow reach her telepathically, in spite of the coma, you could help me figure out what’s wrong. Where it hurts, or what the symptoms are, or something.”

“Yes,” she said instantly. “Let’s do it. I’ll try anything.”

She pushed away the niggling fear that nothing she could do would be enough, or that she might actually make it worse.

Kit suddenly appeared in the doorway, and she didn’t look happy.

“I already put your breakfast down,” Rio told her. “It’s fish this morning.”

Kit snarled, but she was facing Luke, so Rio figured it wasn’t about the fish.

“I know. Don’t you think I know?” Luke ran his hand through his hair again, making it stick up even more wildly, as he stared with frustration at the little fox. “It’s dangerous for Rio to be anywhere around the Winter Court right now. I know. But that little girl’s life hangs in the balance, and I can’t think of any other way to try to reach her.”

“The two of you had better stop talking about me and start talking to me,” Rio snapped. “I’m going. If there’s even a chance that I might be able to help her and I don’t take it, I could never live with myself.”

Kit crouched down on the floor, as if ready to leap, and she growled, but this time at Rio.

“I’m going,” Rio repeated firmly.

“There’s no way I can get you in there without a big battle or long explanations that I just don’t have time for,” Luke told Kit. “You’re
Yokai
, and they may not like that. You’ll have to stay here. Merelith did say that Elisabeth wants to see you, so once I explain it to her, I’m sure we’ll be able to bring you with us. But for now, I’d never get past the front door.”