The Darkest Joy (7 page)

In response, she reached up and kissed him softly on the lips. His eyes drifted closed when she took over the kiss.
Caim
fanned the flames of desire as he slowly memorized each inch of her naked skin. Bliss’s fingers shook a little when she held on to his muscled shoulders. Her skin felt hot, and he loved the way she shivered while he trailed his fingers up her rib cage to cup her breasts. A gasp of pleasure escaped her as he plucked the sensitive tips.
Caim
moaned when her leg lifted slowly over his thighs. He could feel her press more intimately against his cock.

He rolled, suddenly pressing her into the soft bed, his long, lean body on top of hers, settling between her smooth thighs. Bliss arched in pleasure when he kissed and licked her neck. The combination of her body under his and her tongue licking his shoulder was sending delicious frissons of pleasure along the nerves in his body.
Caim
reached and captured her hands. Twining his long fingers with hers, he held them above her head. This is how it felt to be loved by a woman, to feel a connection that nothing could break. His senses were filled with her. Every sound she made drove him to the brink of madness.

He lowered his head to suck her nipples into his mouth. “Heaven, you taste like heaven.”

“
Caim
,” she moaned his name softly. “Please, more.”

She raised her hips and pressed against his hard cock, which was rigid between her thighs.
Caim’s
breath hissed though his teeth when he felt the wetness of her pussy against the tip of his shaft. He rolled her suddenly, pulled her on top him, and buried his hands in her hair. The kiss turned wild and untamed. Their tongues mated sensually. It was the edge of desperation Bliss couldn’t wait any longer to feel him. She took his hard length in her hands and slowly took him inch by inch until he was buried deeply inside her.

“Oh God, baby, you don’t know how good this feels,” Bliss panted.

He looked at her arched above him like a statuesque goddess with the sunlight bathing her back.

“I have never felt this before.”
Caim
closed his eyes and gritted his teeth as pleasure infused him. “Move on me, my love. Let me feel you.”

She gladly obliged, teasing him with the slow movements. He could feel her pussy, wet, warm, and wrapped around him. Each time she let her velvet sex slide onto his hard manhood, he throbbed inside her. She rocked against him, torturing him, making him ache for more until he couldn’t stand it.

“My turn,”
Caim
said suddenly and flipped her under him once more. He pushed into her velvet sex, pounding into her deeply with every thrust. Her body shuddered under his onslaught.
Caim
could hear the tiny sounds of pleasure that came from her merging with the manly moans and harsh breaths that escaped his lips. He never knew he could feel this amount of rapture, the pure heat and joy of being with a mate. He slipped his hands under her hips and pulled her more firmly under him. Bliss wrapped her legs around him, and he felt her hips lift into each of his thrusts.

“More,
Caim
, I need more of you!” She gasped out in pleasure. Her fingers gripped his hair as they traveled to dizzying heights. “I’m going to come. Please don’t let me fall alone!”

“Oh my, Bliss, I’m here with you, all the way. Let us fall together. Let go with me!”
Caim
encouraged. He felt his body reaching for new heights, and for an instant, it felt as if he were soaring with the angels once more. Her soft, low cry of release and the shudders of her body signaled her orgasm. His body was taut above her as he spilled himself inside her with a guttural moan.
Caim
couldn’t stop touching her. His hands roamed and touched every expanse of skin he could find. His heartbeat tried to slow to a normal rhythm.

Caim
lifted his head and looked at her. Then, he rolled to his side and pulled her next to him without even breaking contact. “I have never felt anything like that in my entire existence.”

Bliss giggled. “You make yourself sound so old,
Caim
.”

“I am older than you think,”
Caim
said softly. “It feels as if I have waited forever to feel this way.”

“
Caim
, I have waited all my life for this one perfect moment.”

“I think I am crazy in love with you,” he murmured and kissed the top of her head.

“I don’t know how or why. It has just been a few days.” Bliss laughed as if she was amazed. “But I have fallen completely and madly in love with you too.”

“There are some things I have to tell you, Bliss, about me and my life. Things you need to know,”
Caim
explained. He felt a terrible trepidation in his heart that she might turn away from him when she knew. But it had to be done for him to be human.

“Not right now,
Caim
, please. Let’s just have a little more time.”

Bliss poked him in his ribs and giggled. She pressed soft kisses to his chest.
Caim
let himself be swayed. It was only for a little while longer. He wrapped his arms around her and tickled her in return. Her squeals of delight caused him to smile, and for the first time in a long time, he could feel his own laughter rumble in his chest.
I’ll talk to her later. I
will tell her all,
he promised as he filled his senses with the scent of honeysuckle in her hair.

* * * *

Bliss walked the halls of
Merry’s
hospital with a spring in her step. She had spent the entire day with
Caim
and left a note on her pillow next to him. With a soft kiss, she left him sleeping while she went off to work. The mayhem of the ER did nothing to dampen her mood. She took blood samples with her usual finesse while Amber and the other nurses on call teased her unmercifully about
Caim
. She took their jokes good-naturedly, because when her shift was over, he would be at her house waiting for her.

She replayed how he had stood on her doorstep, shivering in the rain with a look of pure agony on his face.
What could he be going through?
As he fell asleep,
Caim
had said he needed her to save him from the dark. She didn’t know exactly what he meant, but it felt so ominous that hearing what he had to say scared her. But she couldn’t not hear him out, because if she could, she would take his burden and make it her own.
I love him. I have to help him.

On her way back to her office, Amber passed her by with an armload of files. She stopped Bliss in the hallway with a big grin on her face. “What are you doing, collecting the men of
GQ
magazine or something?”

Bliss gave her a blank expression. “Huh? What are you talking about, crazy woman?”

“I mean the other
hottie
that you have sitting in your office waiting for you,” Amber said. “If you want to share this one with me, give him my number.”

Apprehension made butterflies do a dance in her tummy. She didn’t know who could possibly be waiting for her, but her instinct told her that it had something to with
Caim
. Bliss pasted a bright smile on her face. She couldn’t let Amber know that something was very wrong. How could she ask for help anyway when she didn’t even know what was going on herself?

“I’ll make sure to send all available
hotties
your way,” Bliss said, teasing her with humor she didn’t feel. “I
gotta
go, sweetie. I’ll call you later.”

Bliss hurried down the hallway. She raised her hand to wave when Amber called out her good-byes. Outside her door, she hesitated with her hands on the handle. She took a deep breath and stepped into the room. The man who turned to her was nothing if not magnificent. He turned when Bliss entered the room. The blond hair he had just seemed to capture every piece of light in the room and left it dim. Looking into his eyes was like falling into a pool of blue, and when he smiled, she could almost hear a tinkle as he showed off rows of white teeth.
No one man should be this beautiful,
Bliss thought. But even as she stared at the hunk in her office, she could feel something about him that made her cringe.

“Can I help you?” Bliss asked hesitantly.

“Bliss, isn’t it?”

“Yes, do I know you?”

“No, but we have a mutual friend in
Caim
. I’m Belial.”

“That is an unusual name. How do you know
Caim
?” Bliss walked over to her desk, trying to give Belial a wide berth. He made her
uncomfortable,
and just being behind her desk where something was between the two of them made her feel safer.

“Let’s just say we work the same place,” Belial replied mildly. He sat in the chair opposite her desk and leaned back casually as if he were meant to be there.

“So if you guys work together, why are you here?”

“I wanted to see the woman who was taking his focus away from his job.” Belial’s eyes met her directly and made her feel like squirming in her seat. “He’s in a lot of trouble, you know.”

“H-he is?” Bliss stammered. She took a deep breath. “Listen, whatever you guys do, I don’t want to know, but I want him out. I have some money saved. You can have it. Just leave him be.”

“You are willing to give up all your money just to save him?”

Bliss could hear the curiosity in Belial’s voice, along with something else. His smile reminded her of a shark when it smelled blood in the water.

“I’d give up a whole lot more for him if I had it,” she said firmly.

“Would you give up your soul for him?” Belial asked softly.

The question sent fear through every fiber of her being, and she whispered, “What are you?”

“Hmm.” Belial closed his eyes and turned his head as if he caught a whiff of a pleasurable scent.

When he did, Bliss caught a glimpse of his true face, and she knew terror unlike anything she had ever known.

“
Caim
and I are the same. But if you want to save him, all you have to do is sign on the dotted line. Give me your soul, Bliss, and set his free.”

“No-No!” Bliss shook her head vehemently, trying to wake herself from the nightmare that was all too real. “He’s good and
kind,
and I can see it in him! I can’t see it in you. You are nothing like him!”

“You can’t save him, little girl!” Belial smiled and tried to use a charming smile on her. “But if you sign, my sweet, you can ask for anything in the world, and I will add his soul as a bonus. What do you wish, fame, fortune?”

“I want nothing from you except for you to get out of my office!” Bliss stood up and pointed to her door. “Leave now!”

“A hospital is a free zone. I can enter and go as I please,” Belial sneered. “You can’t banish me.”

“But my office is my sanctuary, and in the name of the almighty God, I send you away!” Bliss said with conviction in her voice.

Belial hissed, and Bliss watched him be pulled toward the door as if by an invisible cord to her door.

“You can’t save him, bitch. He belongs to us, and when he comes home, I will make him suffer, and our dark master will make him suffer! Torment for ten thousand years will make your love seem like a drop in the bucket to him!”

When his backward steps took him to the boundary of her doorway, the door opened on its own. At the threshold, he faded from her view with one last cold stare, and the door was closed once more by some sort of invisible hand. Bliss sank to her chair. Her legs couldn’t seem to stop trembling. Her body couldn’t seem to stop shaking.
Oh my God
,
oh my God! What was he? What was
Caim
?
She couldn’t believe, could she?
Demons?
Bliss knew she couldn’t work after this. She couldn’t even function after what happened. There was only one thing she could do. She had to go home and see
Caim
, to hear the truth of what he was from his lips.

Bliss picked up the phone and dialed one of the other floors of the hospital. Claiming she was sick, she asked another phlebotomist to cover the ER for her. On the way out, Bliss stifled her irritation at everyone stopping her to ask her why she was leaving early. Stomach flu, she said and tried to stay still to hear them give her all kinds of remedies. Finally, she was at her car and heading home. She wanted to put her foot to the pedal and speed through all of the red lights, but then apprehension filled her core, and she wanted to delay the inevitable as long as possible.