River
My eyes fluttered open. I lay completely still as I stared at the night, trying to recall where I was and what had woken me. The trees swaying in the slight July breeze, the sleeping bag around me, and the fresh scent of the summer air reminded me that we’d left the wall behind and I was camped out in the woods.
Then, I heard a noise. My eyes shot to the woods. Heat burned across my cheeks when I recognized the muffled moans of sex coming from the trees to my right. I couldn’t see beyond the foliage blocking my view to who was out there. It sounded as if they were fifty feet or so away, but the forest distorted and reflected sounds so I couldn’t be sure.
Please don’t be Kobal. I didn’t think I could take it if I had to listen to him having sex with another woman.
The idea of it made my stomach turn as I was bombarded with the urge to scream or cry. Together or not, I may kill him if he were out there right now with someone else. I didn’t think he would be so cruel as to have sex with someone else so close to me, but when it came to our relationship, I barely knew up from down anymore.
A man grunted and a woman emitted a muffled cry. It didn’t sound like Kobal, but perhaps his idea of being kind was to try to cover his voice. Flopping onto my back, I went to tug the pillow against my ears to block the sounds when I found a pair of entirely black eyes staring at me from where he lay on a sleeping bag a few feet away.
The moon’s rays caressed his bare chest, illuminating the flames on him and the chiseled ridges of his abs. The term washboard didn’t begin to describe those abs. Every powerful muscle of his body was carved perfection. My hands clenched against the compulsion to run my fingers over his jaw and feel the smoothness of his hairless skin beneath my touch. My heartbeat picked up as the impulse left me breathless.
“They woke you,” he said, his voice gruffer than normal.
“I thought it might be you.” I realized my brain was still sleep addled when those words blurted out of me.
His gaze ran over my face as he propped his head on his hand. “Not unless I was with you in those woods. If you’d let me, I’d be inside of you again tonight.”
My mouth went dry at his words and the memories they evoked. I could clearly recall the sensation of his body moving over and within me. The taste and smell of him beneath my mouth and fingers. The rigid length of his erection as he pumped his hips in rhythm with mine. I felt half drugged by those memories and he was simply staring at me in that unwavering way of his.
“You returned to the fire,” I managed to get out.
It was the biggest defense I had against him right now as I completely forgot every other reason I’d been using to keep myself from him. He’d told me I was his Chosen, that he’d claimed me, but when I’d turned him away from my bed, he’d happily returned to the orgy-like sex taking place nightly at the large bonfire the demons held at the wall.
He frowned at me. “No, I didn’t.”
“Then where were you?” My voice came out more accusing than I’d intended, but the sharp knife of jealousy twisted in my heart. “You left Bale watching over me and didn’t come back to the tent.”
His teeth grated together so forcefully I could hear them. “You believed I was having sex with another?”
Obviously. “Weren’t you?”
“No. I realize you are part human, you were raised as one of them, have their emotions, and you don’t fully comprehend demons or the way we are, but you are my Chosen. You may not understand what that means to a demon, to me, but understand this, there is no one else for me. I have no desire for another woman and no one else will ever satisfy me again. I had to get out of the tent to keep from crawling into bed with you. I slept on the ground outside where I couldn’t hear you at night, but I could still keep you safe.”
Words failed me as what he’d said made my entire body tremble and my heart soar. However, there were still so many reasons why being with him was a bad idea. I merely had to remember them all, and right now, my body didn’t care what my brain stuttered out.
“I’m mortal,” I whispered.
I didn’t know why I’d said it other than it was the one thing neither of us had ever acknowledged about our relationship. I would age and die and he would still be here, looking the same and living for another millennia or hundreds of millennia more.
His nostrils flared, and his nails lengthened into claws briefly before retracting again. “I know.”
“You’ll be left alone when I die.”
“I’ll never be alone while I have your memory.”
“Corson told me about his parents. He told me his mother couldn’t handle the loss of his father and threw herself into the fires after.”
A muscle in his jaw twitched. “And you fear the same for me?”
“More than you know.”
“Do not.”
“That’s easier said than done. In my dream, Lucifer—”
“He lied, River,” he bit out from between his teeth. “Demons are stronger when they find their Chosen, he knows that. Your powers are growing and will continue to do so, he knows that too. He will do or say anything to stop you, to stop me. You could never become like him, ever.”
The crickets chirruped around us as clouds rolled in to block some of the moonlight spilling over us. “You believe him to be my father, and he believes I will become evil. My mother always told me I was the spawn of Satan, tainted and corrupted. What if they’re all right and you’re not willing to see it because I am your Chosen?”
His lips skimmed back to reveal his lengthening fangs. “The woman lying before me, the one who held her brothers so close and with such love could never become those things. You are far from corrupt or evil. Your mother and Lucifer sought to break you, but they didn’t. You are everything you humans would consider good, River.”
“What if he uses me against you?” I whispered around the lump in my throat his words had created. I didn’t stop him when he reached out to brush his thumb across my cheek. “I’m the only weapon he has against you that he never had before.”
“He doesn’t have you, and he never will. You’re also a strength I never had before, and he knows that.”
His fingers slid over my face and he stared at me with a reverence that robbed me of my breath. He made me feel like the most beautiful woman in the world when he looked at me like that.
“I can’t condone what you did to Eileen,” I said.
The faint, fiery scent of his skin drifted to me as he moved closer to me. He smelled better than the ocean, I decided, and he was such an opposite force from the sea that had been such an integral part of my life before him. Fire and water had become everything to me.
“I know I handle things with you badly sometimes, but it’s only because I have to keep you with me for as long as I’m allowed to have you. When I saw that woman trying to kill you and I couldn’t get to you…”
He broke off, and for the first time ever, I saw a vulnerability in him I’d never imagined could exist. The molten-gold color his eyes became robbed me of my breath. I loved those obsidian pools, but these amber eyes, so much more human with their whites around his cornea, were more feral and wolf-like. They were more him.
“I snapped. I’m not saying it won’t happen again. It will if your life is at stake,” he said. “And I will not hesitate to do it again. Not for you. But I will not do it with such haste again, and I will not kill a human unless it is necessary.”
I remained unmoving, unsure of what to say or do. He was overbearing, bossy, impatient, and vicious, but he did care for me. And I had lost my heart to him before I’d even realized it. I was bound to him in some way I could never explain and couldn’t deny.
“What if Lucifer somehow gets a hold of me, and don’t say it will never happen. It could. What then?”
“Then I will do everything I can to get you back.”
“He must be stopped.”
“I know.”
I seized his hand, drawing his eyes away from my lips and back to me. “No matter what it takes, he must be stopped.”
His hand squeezed mine. “I will do whatever is necessary to put back to right what Lucifer and the humans have destroyed.”
“Including sacrificing me.”
I could feel the fury vibrating through him as his muscles bulged before me. “I will do what must be done. There are thousands of demons depending on me, fighting for me. They have been for over fifteen hundred years. I won’t let them down.”
I rested my palm against his cheek, relishing in his flesh beneath my hand. My body reacted as if it had been starved and was finally being sated as it jerked toward him and golden-white sparks of life danced over my fingers.
“I will defend your life with my own, River,” he grated.
“I’m scared of what I could become.”
“I know, but I’m not.”
I didn’t argue with him further. I couldn’t. He believed in me and I believed in him.
My hand pressed more firmly against his cheek as he held my gaze. A wetness spread between my legs as my starved body prepared itself for what it had been lacking. Him.
Growling low in his throat, his hands settled on my waist and he dragged me against him, sleeping bag and all. His teeth bashed against mine when his mouth claimed my lips in a brutal assault. I eagerly welcomed him as our lips ground together and my mouth opened to the demanding probing of his tongue. He swept past my lips and into my mouth to taste me in deep, penetrating thrusts that had me nearly going out of my mind with need.
Too long. Denied for far too long.
I needed him and the rush of life and power he brought to me. Needed him inside of me, claiming and marking me again. The sensuous dance of his tongue entwining with mine had me tugging at his hair and grinding against his erection like a wild woman.
Yes, we’d both been starved, and I didn’t care how brutal it was. I wanted him inside of me so badly I found myself pawing at his back and chest. Grabbing hold of my sleeping bag, he jerked it back. I didn’t know if the zipper came undone or if he simply tore it apart, and I didn’t care. The night air brushing over my skin did nothing to cool the ardor growing within me.
A mewl escaped me when he pulled back, his lips brushing against mine as he spoke. “No going back, no denying me. If we do this tonight, River, I will never let you go again. Ever.”
His amber eyes searched mine as savagery radiated from him. I couldn’t catch my breath, couldn’t think. I knew he meant those words, knew if I tried to escape him again, he would never let me walk away. If I tried to, I may become the thing that destroyed the man he was now and turned him into something far more savage and uncaring, like Lucifer.
But could I throw myself into this? Could I push aside all doubts and worries and give myself over completely? Then I recalled Corson’s words to me right after I’d separated myself from Kobal. “Will you survive without him?”
The answer now had been the same as it was then, no.
This powerful bond between us, our uncertain future, and Lucifer’s words all frightened me, but I couldn’t continue on without him. He was a piece of me.
His eyes became distant, and his hold on me eased as he started to draw away from me while I tried to put everything together. “I won’t ever tell you to go again,” I whispered.
His body thrummed with tension before something within him seemed to unravel completely. The harsh sound he released reminded me of an animal defending its mate. My fingers curled into the thick muscles of his broad back when he leaned over me, dragging me against his chest.
His hands were curling in my shirt. Seconds before he tore the front of my shirt open, exposing my flesh to his hands, I recalled I’d started to strip before going to him to save my clothing. I’d slept with my bra on in case we had to move fast from here. He didn’t bother with trying to find the clasp before slicing the front open with one of his claws.
I sucked in a breath, arching toward him when he pulled his mouth away from mine to greedily lick and knead at my exposed flesh. I squirmed beneath him, my body begging for more, seeking release from the overwhelming sensations crashing through me. I considered myself mostly human, it was what I knew best after all, but in his arms, I was something completely inhuman. Something uninhibited and primitive.
My nails raked down his back. He lifted my hips into the air and thrust his erection against my center in a way that had my breath coming in rapid pants and my body bucking uncontrollably beneath his.
His tongue laved my nipple, swirling around it before sucking it eagerly into his mouth. He pulled on it as he nipped it with his teeth.
“Kobal!”
I had to be put out of my misery, but I never wanted this wondrous torment to stop. As he released my nipple, I felt the scrape of his four fangs against the sensitive flesh of my breast before he bit. A shriek of bliss caught in my throat as waves of pleasure battered my body. My hands scrunched in his hair, holding him closer as he marked me as his again. I didn’t realize how badly I’d missed this claiming until my entire body cried out in relief and bliss.
He released my breast before biting down on my shoulder and then my neck. My nails raked over his back again, causing him to moan. Turning my face into his shoulder, I didn’t resist the impulse to bite down. I clamped onto his flesh to once again mark him for everyone to see. I was going to orgasm just from the taste and feel of him as the tension within my body coiled higher and he ground against me.
His hands tore at my pants, ripping the button and zipper away as he shredded the cloth from me. “Harder,” he snarled in my ear. My teeth clamped down on his shoulder more as he pulled aside my ruined clothes to bare me to him. “Harder, River.”
I felt his hands tugging at the button on his pants and then heard more cloth being torn away. I bit deeper into his flesh, spilling his blood. The hot influx of it filled me, seeping into my body.