The Darkling's Desire (3 page)

She felt the hand holding the knife trembling, then lowering as
she looked him over. He watched her back, curiosity playing over his features.
When he cocked his head to one side, as if trying to understand her, it broke
through her haze.

“Stop trying to glamour me!” Glaring, she again raised the
knife. Raking his hands through his hair, Jasper let his face show exasperation,
the first true emotion that she had seen him let through.

“I’m not using a glamour on you, woman.” He pinched the bridge
of his nose with two long fingers, then rose easily from his crouch. Anastasia
found herself at eye level with the widest, hardest male chest that she had ever
seen.

Her mouth went suddenly dry. She choked back a small cry when
his fingers wrapped around her wrist. Her eyes followed the movement as he
brought the wicked-looking silver knife she’d been holding to press against his
chest.

“I’ll do it. I will.” Anastasia looked up with wild eyes,
willing herself to pull the strength of her Amazon ancestors from her very core.
“I have a duty. You’re standing in my way.”

“You don’t understand.” His words were flat, but still he held
her hand, and the blade, to his flesh. “You don’t understand at all.”

Jasper’s words held the tiniest streak of…could it be
vulnerability? Something soft, at any rate, betraying the stone set of his face.
Anastasia felt tears prickle at the back of her eyes.

She’d always been proud of her heritage, but at the moment she
wanted to be anywhere but right where she was. She didn’t want to kill.

“Just go. Go away, let me do my job.” The hand holding the
knife shook, would have fallen if Jasper hadn’t held it up.

He shook his head, pressing her hand even harder against him.
She felt the sharp tip of the knife pierce his flesh, smelled the peppery
trickle of blood.

“I can’t. I have a job to do, too.” With his free hand, Jasper
took Anastasia’s chin in his long fingers, tilted her face up until she was
forced to look into his eyes. She closed her eyes, afraid that he would wipe her
mind.

“I won’t let you.” Anastasia’s words sounded fiercer than she
felt.

“You wouldn’t have a choice. I could wipe this from your mind
before you could move a step. I could make you forget that we ever met.” His
grip on her chin tightened, but she didn’t try to pull away. Glaring up at him,
she bared her teeth like an animal.

“I’d like to see you try.” She knew he could, but she’d never
given up on a thing in her life. She shoved against the wall of muscle that was
his chest with her free hand to prove her point.

She was more upset with the idea of not remembering who he was
than she was with forgetting her mission. Somehow this man—this vampire—drew her
to him like nothing she’d ever felt before.

Closing her eyes, she shoved him again. Before she could follow
through with the moment, she found herself crushed against Jasper’s big, warm
body, her lips against his, the wicked blade pressed flat between their chests.
He had lifted her right off the ground, pulling her up effortlessly until their
faces aligned, and now his tongue swept over the soft pink swells of her mouth,
demanding that she respond.

She held back for no more than a minute, warring with herself.
He had told her himself, Darklings and humans could not mix. It was law in their
world. But the sensation sparking between them seemed like something from
another world entirely, and if he would let her think long enough to admit it,
she knew that they had been coming to this since the moment they had laid eyes
upon one another.

Growling low in her throat, Anastasia wrapped her legs around
his waist, grinding the heat between her legs against the hard ridge of flesh
that she could feel between Jasper’s legs. For the first time in her life she
threw herself into the moment, gave herself permission to simply
feel.

“You’d better want this as much as I do. It has to be worth
it.” The low words rasped in her ear, his lips against the sensitive skin of the
lobe made her shiver. Anastasia buried her face in his neck, nipping along the
ridge of muscle that she’d eyed earlier.

“I do. I want it. I want you.”

Chapter Three

Jasper groaned as Anastasia’s teeth sank into the
muscles of his shoulder. She was warm in his arms, her pulse faster than it had
been earlier but still slow and steady. Its staccato rhythm seduced him, pulled
him deeper into the pool of want in which he had been treading water all
day.

Throughout his long life he had often wondered what it was that
pulled certain people together—call it chemistry, call it lust, call it love.
Whatever its title, it was a potent force, and it had done him in the second he
had looked down from that tree and seen Anastasia’s raven-dark head as she
crouched in the mud.

Releasing his grip on her hands, he grasped the blade that was
pressed flat between their bodies and tossed it to the ground. He hissed into
Anastasia’s mouth when the silver singed his fingers. She turned her head and
sucked the injured digits between her lips, laving the sore skin with her
tongue.

His fangs descended at the pressure. He saw her immense eyes
widen at the sight of the bone white against his lips, but he heard no increase
in her heartbeat.

He didn’t scare her. The last human that he had been with, no
matter how she was drawn to him, was still wary of him. She had been an Amazon
herself, but she had feared him.

Anastasia’s strength made his soldier’s soul sing.

Burying his face in her neck, he moved his lips over the tender
skin where her pulse beat strong and true. He tried to resist scraping her with
his fangs, but sex and feeding were so tightly tied together in the moment that
he groaned with the effort.

Wrapping her free arm around his shoulders, Anastasia pressed
the fingers of her other hand against his lips, tracing the damp curves. When
her questing fingers found one of his fangs and caressed it, he shuddered-the
ache in his groin very nearly unbearable.

Jasper shifted his hands from where they were splayed flat on
her back to cup the mounds of her firm ass. He kneaded the flesh there, traced
one firm finger inside the waistband of her pants, savouring the resultant
shiver that ran through her flesh. She arched her back against the sensation,
and he took the opportunity to nuzzle his face against the plump roundness of
her breasts.

Anastasia whimpered as he closed a mouth over one taut nipple.
Even through her shirt, he could feel her heat, could sense the pulse of blood
in her veins. Her arousal smelled like lemonade, sweet and tart at the same
time.

He wanted so very badly to taste her.

He didn’t want her to think that feeding was all that this
encounter was about.

Slowly releasing his grip on her ass, Jasper let Anastasia
slide slowly down his body, his rock-solid erection scraping over her flesh,
eliciting a gasp from between her lips. With his hands now free, he used one to
slide up underneath her shirt so that he could free one of her breasts from the
cup of her bra. Rolling the tender flesh that he found there between his
fingers, he drank in her shudders and at the same time thought of an icy cold
shower, anything to keep from sinking his fangs into the paper-thin skin of that
breast as he sank between her legs with his cock.

He pulled apart the snap at the waistband of her jeans, slid
his hand under the stiff fabric and found nothing but skin. His arousal
ratcheted up yet another notch—and he’d thought it couldn’t get any higher—as
his long fingers found the slick heat between her legs.

Anastasia cried out when he slipped a finger inside of her
moist channel. He grinned wickedly as her hips jerked and slid another finger
inside of her. Looking down at his tiny Amazon, he was gratified to see her
warrior’s eyes wide and glassy, her ivory skin flushed with that sweet crimson
blood. Though he’d known the woman for mere hours, he knew that letting go like
this was not in her character.

Despite the ache in his cock, he wanted to push her over the
edge.

Jasper began to tunnel his fingers in and out of her heat,
fighting back the need to replace them with his erection. He wanted this to be
all about her. She quivered and he heard her pulse accelerate. Her hips began to
rock in time to his thrusts, and the breath huffing out from her sweet lips
became ragged.

Biting his fangs down on his lip until he tasted his own blood,
Jasper used his thumb to find her sweet spot, that hard nub of flesh that held
the potential for so much pleasure. Anastasia gasped at the first touch, then
buried her head against his chest and groaned. He felt her thighs shaking
against his, closed his eyes and savoured the feeling of her body pressed
against his.

She was close, so close. Gritting his teeth, he focused on
intensifying her pleasure..

His eyes flew open in shock when he felt her heated grasp
stroke over the head of his cock. He had already been so close that he found his
hips thrusting against her belly, his hand still strumming between her legs, as
she slipped her small hand into his pants and wrapped her hand tightly around
his member.

“No.” The word sounded choked as it escaped his throat. He
wanted to concentrate on her, but she had him so hot, so hard, needier than he’d
ever been.

He still ached to taste her, that very essence of her
being.

He would not.

Her hand stroked up, then down. Up, a stroke over that smooth,
slick tip and back down again.

Desperate, Jasper increased the pressure between Anastasia’s
legs. Her smooth touch faltered, then her grasp tightened as she cried out into
the night air, shaking as the sensations washed over her, not caring that they
weren’t that heavily sheltered, that someone could see them.. Then, and only
then, did he close his eyes and let the heat wash over him as well. He thrust
into her fisted hand once, twice, then let out a strangled noise when she
cruelly withdrew her touch.

“What?” His mind was fogged, and it took him a long moment to
realize that she had released his straining cock from his pants and undone her
own as well. “No. You. This is about you.”

“And this is what I want.” Running her hands down his forearms,
she moved his hands down, down until they cupped her ass. Shamelessly she
writhed against him. “Inside. I want you inside of me.”

Jasper lost control. Lifting her effortlessly, he dug his
fingers into her firm flesh while carrying her to one of the massive trees that
stood nearby. He entered her slick heat as he pressed her back against the rough
bark, hilting and pressing so that she would feel his entire length, filling her
up.

Anastasia gasped at the sensation. He rocked his hips back and
then forth again and she bit her teeth into the hard muscles of his shoulder,
scratching her nails into his back at the same time.

He nuzzled at her neck, but did not bite. Instead he thrust
into her, over and over, hot and hard. He didn’t care that they were outside,
that someone could see them, that this wasn’t allowed. He wanted the heat that
burned between them to incinerate every bad feeling that he’d ever had, every
dark deed he’d performed.

And then he couldn’t think at all, the denial of decades giving
way to the ultimate bliss.

As he spilled inside of Anastasia, he slid his finger through
the cleft that divided the globes of her ass and pressed firmly against the
tight flesh between, feeling the muscles give way to the pressure.

Anastasia cried out and rocked in his arms, joining him as he
fell over the edge.

They stood pressed together for a long moment, breathing hard.
Jasper didn’t need to breathe, but he felt as if the rhythm helped bring him
back down to earth. Helped him to quell the hunger for her blood.

Without thinking, he lowered his head to brush a kiss over the
mussed strands of Anastasia’s hair. She smelled of rosemary and lavender, and he
inhaled deeply, absorbing the scent.

She murmured against his chest, her arms clasped loosely around
his waist.

For the first time in decades, he felt at peace.

* * *

“Isn’t this cozy?” Past melded with present as the
words, light and sweet as spun sugar, floated across the air. Anastasia had
barely gotten her jeans back up around her hips, and Jasper had barely gotten
his goods packed away when the words wormed their way into his ears. He resisted
understanding what they meant, holding tight to Anastasia in his arms. Like that
same spun sugar melting in the rain, though, his disbelief vanished, replaced by
confusion and horror.

When he lifted his head, when he saw that the face from his
memory indeed matched that confection of a voice, he spun and shoved Anastasia
behind him. Her protest was muffled by the muscles of his back as he reached
behind himself, clasped her hips and pulled her in tight.

Grunting against the forced embrace, Anastasia shoved solidly
at his back. He was mildly surprised when she managed to free herself enough to
peer around his chest. She spoke before he was able to form words.

“Petra?” He heard the slight hitch in Anastasia’s steady pulse,
knew it was nerves. How did she know this ghost from his past? “What are you…I
mean…
Nastavnyk
. Petra. I am honored with your
presence.”

“
Nastavnyk
?” Jasper’s eyes raked
over the woman. She was dressed in something skintight and black, her pale gold
hair pulled into a severe knot at the nape of her neck. The last time that he
had seen her had been nearly twenty years ago, and she was as attractive now as
she had been then.

Unlike when he had seen her last, his cock didn’t ache for her
touch, nor did his heart still bleed at her betrayal.

Also unlike that last time, her heart rate did not accelerate
at the sight of him. She no longer feared him, and he didn’t know what, exactly,
that meant.

His former lover levelled a look at him, her crimson lips
curving into a smile while heavy lids lowered over steel-colored eyes that
looked dead.

Anastasia seemed to sense that something was off, but lowered
her head in deference regardless. Jasper didn’t like seeing his spitfire of an
Amazon so subdued. Twisting, yet still keeping an eye on Petra, he took
Anastasia’s chin in his hand, forced her to lift her eyes to meet his own.

“What is
Nastavnyk
? How do you know
her?”

Anastasia pushed against Jasper’s back, and was insistent
enough that he finally released the grip that he had on her hips. Moving forward
until she stood beside him, she retained the deferential air, but he noted that
she didn’t approach the woman.

Smart Anastasia. Danger hung heavily in the air, so thick that
he could have eaten it with a spoon.

“
Nastavnyk
is…mentor. She trained
me.” Anastasia spoke hesitantly, as if revealing a deep secret. He watched as
emotions played over her face. She knew something was wrong, and didn’t know
why.

“You’ve come a long way.” Jasper waited for Petra to say
something, to explain.

She did not, and he couldn’t even begin to guess. His mind had
been fogged by the woman that he was trying now to protect, by her mysterious
supernatural nature, by her humanity, something that other Amazons lacked.
He…well, he felt something for her that he’d never felt before.

Now wasn’t the time to analyze that feeling, but he would
protect this woman so that he could explore it further.

Anastasia may not fully understand yet that she needed
protection—in fact, she seemed to be confused, and Jasper sensed that Petra was
someone very important to her. But Jasper knew his ex, knew how bloodthirsty and
ruthless her nature was.

Whatever Petra’s reasons for appearing here, they wouldn’t be
good.

Anastasia looked back and forth between Jasper and Petra.
“You…know each other?” The slightest trickle of mint trickled into her scent,
and Jasper recognized it as the barest whisper of jealousy.

He liked it, even in this odd, dangerous situation he liked
it.

Petra shook her head slowly from side to side, the light of the
moon glowing in her eyes as she moved. Jasper thought that the reflection made
her look more than a little crazy.

Petra smiled at him, reached out a hand in his direction. “I’m
surprised that that little brain of yours hasn’t figured things out by now.”

That “little brain” was whirling now, trying to make a
connection, to discover what Petra was here for.

“The past is the past. It doesn’t explain why you are here.”
Jasper turned back to Petra, still glaring. None of it made sense. He wanted to
hear an explanation from her deceitful lips, but was also buying time. It
couldn’t be a coincidence that Anastasia had stumbled his way, not if she was
Petra’s protégé.

“I’m here to finish what my little one here couldn’t.” Even
though her teacher spoke in sweet, innocent tones, Jasper could feel Anastasia
tense beside him.

He wanted nothing more than to pull her into his arms and to
remove her from danger. He wished that he could wrap them both in shadows. Petra
might have been an Amazon, but she was human. She would never be able to match
his speed.

He could not pull Anastasia close, though. Petra may not have
been fast, but she was cunning. He had learned that firsthand.

Petra began to move, waltzing toward them with that slow sway
of her hips, the one that had seduced him before.

“That’s far enough!” He barked out his words. Even if the past
hadn’t happened, there was something about the woman, something dark seeping
from her very core, that set his animal instincts screaming.

Petra pouted, her teeth worrying her glossy lower lip.

“That’s not very nice. Especially not when I’m here to do us
all a favor.”

“What favor? Why are you here, Petra?” Jasper felt…was it
proud? Yes, proud that Anastasia kept the tremble out of her voice, even though
he could hear her pulse quickening. “I am doing my job.”