“You look like somebody lit your fart and it singed your ass, Breakwind,” the Reaper said as he came abreast of Randon.
“One more crack out of you and you will be taking your nourishment from a tube down your toothless mouth,” Randon warned.
“Trouble with your little life-mate?” Darkyn quipped. He turned and began walking backward, facing the Nightwind. “Did she get a look at your teeny-weeny wittle weenie and go bye-bye?”
Randon whipped out his hand and grabbed the Panthera Reaper by the belt buckle, picked him up and slung him down the hallway. Sorn hissed, gave the ear-splitting yowl of a feline whose territory has been invaded by another cat, and changed in midair to his black leopard form—landing on all fours at the end of the hall. His green eyes pulsed red and he lowered his upper body, hiked his hindquarters in preparation to spring. His long tail swished once before he launched himself at the Nightwind.
The incubus shifted into an identical black leopard and the two clashed in the middle of the hall—shrieking, biting and clawing. They tumbled heads over tails and the sound they made as they fought drew the attention of unwanted eyes.
One set of those eyes belonged to a visitor to Tearmann and when his voice broke through their furious battle, it was like a bucket of cold water being thrown over them.
“Knock it off!”
At the thunderous command the big cats leapt apart though their fangs were still bared and fur bristling. They hissed at one another, dared make the territorial yowl almost in tandem once more before the visitor shifted to his own animal persona. His enraged howl startled them and they backed away with tails low, backs arched, facing him warily as he shot out a massive paw to swat at them.
“Thank you, Viraiden,” the Supervisor said.
The Prime Reaper Viraiden Cree changed back to his humanoid form and gave both felines a dangerous glare that didn’t bode well for their continued good health.
“Change back,” Cree ordered. “Now!”
Randon and Darkyn shifted immediately. It was one thing to goad one another and quite something else to risk the ire of the Prime.
And especially not Viraiden Cree who was far older than both of them combined and ten times more powerful.
“I don’t care which of you started it, it will stop,” Cree told them. “It’s bad enough having Abaddon here. Isn’t that trouble enough for one millennium?”
Darkyn’s mouth sagged open. “The archdemon is here? At Tearmann?”
“Aye, and expecting us to help him find and capture three creatures who are on his shit list,” Cree grumbled. “As if we have nothing better to do with our time than cater to him.”
“Abaddon is here,” Darkyn said and swiped a hand over his sweaty face. He cast a quick look at Randon. “Is that what got your panties in a wad?”
“He’s claiming my woman as his Blood-mate!” Randon shouted. “You satisfied now, Sorn?”
“Go find your life-mate, Kayle,” the Supervisor ordered the Nightwind. “Explain things to her before he does.”
“Man, I’m sorry,” Darkyn said. “That sucks.”
“Don’t pretend you give a shit how this affects me,” Randon snapped.
“I don’t care, but it sucks for her,” Sorn told him. “She seems nice.”
Randon shot him a nasty look, nodded at Cree then hunched his shoulders as he left, the other men watching his departure.
“This is fucked up,” Sorn said. “I hate the demon’s guts but he doesn’t deserve to have Abaddon take his woman from him.”
“The archdemon isn’t taking her from him,” the Supervisor said. “He is offering to share her with the Nightwind.”
“Shit, that’s almost as bad!” the Panthera Reaper commented with a groan.
Cree snorted. “I know how I’d react if it were my Bronwyn the bastard was after. Sharing is the same as violating in my book. I don’t blame the incubus for being in a foul mood.” He looked pointedly at Sorn. “But you? Keep your stupid remarks and your juvenile attitude to yourself until this is settled. Am I making myself clear, Sorn?”
“Perfectly clear, sir,” Darkyn acknowledged.
“Don’t give me cause to reprimand you,” Cree warned. “You won’t like my punishment.”
“I understand, sir,” Darkyn replied.
“Now get the hell out of my sight!”
Sorn bowed respectfully and hurried away.
“I don’t need this shit right now,” Cree groused.
“Neither of us do, but what choice do we have? I could complain to Mo Regina but you know what She would do,” the Supervisor replied.
“Laugh in your face and tell you She doesn’t interfere with Her husband’s bastard brat,” Cree said.
“He’s not entirely evil.”
“Nor entirely good,” Cree amended. “Just watch him.”
“It would not be that bad if it weren’t for the woman.”
Cree shrugged. “That’s the way of this world, milord.”
“Not so on your homeworld, eh?” the Supervisor asked with a grin.
“Nor the way it was when I first came to this one,” Cree replied.
“They’ve come a long way, baby,” was the Ridge Lord’s quip.
“Aye, they have,” Cree agreed with a mock sigh. “The females move forward and we males have learned to get the fuck out of their way.”
* * * * *
Randon stood at the door to Kenzi’s suite with his hands braced to either side of the panel. His head was down but he wasn’t feeling defeated. He was pissed and striving not to let it show. He couldn’t afford to for he knew the archdemon would make good on his threat to send him back to the Abyss. That, he could never endure again. Besides, he knew in his heart that Kenzi was the woman who was going to set him free of ever having to return. To lose her would be to lose what minute bit of soul he had left.
Sighing heavily, he inched his right palm to the scanner but stopped just short of placing his hand on the reader. Instead he moved it to the intercom.
“Yes?”
“It’s me,” he said tiredly.
There was a pause then she asked him why he didn’t enter.
“I’m trying to be respectful of your space,” he answered.
“Oh for the love of Pete,” she grumbled and the portal slid open.
He raised his head and met her eyes. One look at his face and she closed her mouth for it was clear she’d been about to chastise him.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, reaching out to touch his arm.
He tensed. “We need to talk.”
Her brow furrowed. “All right.” She removed her hand and stepped back to give him room to pass her. When he did, she pressed the control on the door to close it then turned to face him. “Has something happened?”
Randon glanced at the sofa. “Let’s sit down, okay?”
“Okay,” she said, drawing the word out as though whatever he was going to say might not be something she wanted to hear.
Sitting down at the end of the sofa, he expected her to sit beside him. Instead she moved to the chair across from him and perched there like a little girl waiting to be reprimanded.
“The creature is not a wendigo,” he said. “He is much worse than that.”
Kenzi blinked. “I thought wendigos were the worst.”
“There are varying degrees of evil, Kenzi,” he said and ran a hand over his face. “What was in that cell is far more dangerous than all the creatures in Tearmann put together.”
“Was in that cell,” she repeated. “As he is no longer in the cell?”
He could hear her heartbeat speed up, smell the fear that suddenly engulfed her.
“You have nothing to fear from him,” he was quick to tell her. Seeing the unease, the fear shifting through her wary eyes cut him to the core. “He would never harm you.”
“He almost gave me a heart attack,” she said.
“That image wasn’t for you. It was for the Supervisor,” he told her.
“Why?”
“Because he wasn’t ready to show his true face to us,” he replied. “The face he first showed to you.”
“That’s what he really looks like? Like Declan Brady?”
“I’m afraid so.” He settled back on the cushion. “Strange that the actor you find so mesmerizing could be Kerreyder’s twin.”
“Kerreyder?” she echoed. “That’s his name?”
“Kerreyder Abaddon.”
Her eyes widened. “Abaddon, as in the Destroyer, the angel of the bottomless pit of the abyss in the book of Revelation?”
“Archdemon actually,” he corrected. “But aye, that Abaddon.”
“There are those who believe he is the antichrist,” she said. “The devil himself.”
“He’s not the devil. The devil’s name is Yn Drogh Spyrryd. I know because I have seen him, but it would not surprise me if Kerreyder is the antichrist, though…”
“Though what?”
He smiled with a dark menace that made the hair on her arms stir.
“The Jehovah’s Witnesses believe Abaddon is another name for the resurrected and enthroned Jesus Christ.”
“He can’t be both.”
Randon shrugged. “Actually, he can. It is said he is neither entirely good nor entirely evil and that both sides—the good and the evil—consider him their ally, their champion. Until the Seventh Seal is broken no one will know for sure whether he is the antichrist sent to unleash hell on Terra or the archangel who will rein in Satan and chain him in the pit for a thousand years.”
“Why is he here now?” she questioned then turned pale. “Is the world coming to an end?”
“No,” he said with a shake of his head. “He is here looking for creatures who have disobeyed Yn Drogh Spyrryd. He is here to take them back to the Abyss where he is the warden of Prysson, the bottomless pit.”
“I don’t understand. What has any of that got to do with me?” she asked. “He said he had been waiting for me. Why me? What am I to him?”
“That’s what we need to talk about,” he said.
“And we will.”
The words startled them and they looked around to see Kerreyder standing by the door.
“How did you—” Kenzi began as Randon shot to his feet.
“You may go now,” Kerreyder told the Nightwind.
“No,” Randon said, shaking his head. “I will stay.”
“You. Will. Go. Now,” the archdemon ordered and with a flick of his wrist Randon disappeared.
Kenzi scrambled out of her chair and put it between her and Kerreyder. “What did you do to him?” she asked in a trembling voice.
“When he wakes up, he’ll find himself in the cell into which he put me. He’ll not like it but better there than the Abyss, don’t you agree?”
“Don’t hurt him,” she said, hiking up her chin a notch.
“I have no intention of hurting him. He poses no threat to me.” He walked to the sofa and took a seat. “Sit, McKenzi. I have much to say to you.”
“I’ll stand,” she said. She was digging her fingers into the back of the chair for the room around her wasn’t exactly steady.
“You will sit,” he said pleasantly and she found herself in the chair with her hands gripping the arms.
“Stop doing that!” she said.
“Sorry,” he said. “Force of habit.” He smiled apologetically. “I forget you are not accustomed to magic and that which it entails.”
“Before today I thought magic and creatures like you were a myth,” she said and could feel the blood pounding in her ears as her heart raced.
“There is always some semblance of truth in all myths,” he said.
“I am deeply sorry I frightened you, McKenzi,” he told her. “I did not want the Supervisor to see my true form at that time and the image of the wendigo is what he was expecting to see. I was trying to reassure you with the wink but I realize now the act was misconstrued. In retrospect, I should have wiped the memory of what you saw from your mind. I didn’t at the time because it seemed a violation and I did not want to start our relationship off on a bad note.”
“I wouldn’t have known that you had done that, though, would I?” she asked.
“No, but I want honesty between us, McKenzi. Trust and confidence. I never want to do anything to make you distrust or fear me.”
“You scared the hell out of me,” she said, tearing her eyes from him for his blatant handsomeness was unnerving. She’d never actually seen a man in person who was so flawlessly beautiful to the eye.
“Again, I apologize. I am sorry I caused you even a nanosecond of distress.”
“Please don’t do it again,” she asked. “My heart can’t take that kind of stress.”
His brow furrowed. He tilted his head slightly to one side then frowned. “There is a problem with you heart?”
“I have A-fib,” she said, and when his frown deepened, she knew he had no idea what that was. “My heart has an extra beat.”
His gaze dropped to her chest and she knew without a doubt he was listening to her heart beating.
“I did not know such a thing was possible,” he said then lifted his eyes to hers. “Is this dangerous for you?”
“It puts a strain on my heart and poses a greater chance of stroke,” she said. “I take medicine—a blood thinner—for it and I have had my heart shocked back into natural sinus rhythm a couple of times.”
Disquiet settled on his chiseled features. “Does that not hurt?”
“They put me asleep to do it and it only lasts for a second or two. I don’t feel anything, although I’ve had a rash where the pads were placed. The conductive gel and I don’t get along very well.”
“Can nothing permanent be done?” he questioned.
“I can have a cardiac ablation and that’s probably down the road for me,” she said then looked down at her lap. “Or have a pacemaker installed.”
“Cardiac ablation?” he echoed.
“It’s a procedure where they go up through an artery in my groin into my heart to destroy the area that is causing the problem.”
Shock registered in his blue eyes and he slumped against the sofa. “They destroy a portion of your heart?”
“It’s a safe procedure.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “That will not be done to you.”
He moved so fast she didn’t see him leave the sofa, didn’t realize he had until he was leaning over her with his palm pressed tightly over her heart. Before she could protest what he was doing, she felt a deep warmth spread through her chest and for just a moment she experienced a ripple of dizziness. There was a brief flicker of discomfort that made her whimper then everything went dark.
Kerreyder lifted her from the chair and carried her into her bedroom. The fleeting pain he had unintentionally caused her beat at him like a barbed whip. He had not meant to cause her any hurt but apparently her heart was damaged more than she knew and the healing of it had taken an extra boost of energy she’d felt. He’d willed her into unconsciousness the second he realized he’d hurt her. But it was over and done with and her heart completely healed.
Gently, he laid her on the bed then sat down beside her, running the backs of his fingers along her soft cheek.
“My pretty lady,” he whispered.
He studied every inch of her face from the soft curve of her eyebrows and long lashes to the perfect bow of her full lips—lips he wanted so badly to taste but would not. Such a thing would not be gentlemanly and to his mind constituted a violation. So he contented himself by staring at the slightly parted perfection of those lips and contemplating how sweet they would be beneath his own.
Sighing deeply, he got up from the bed and went to the armoire in the corner of the room. He opened drawers until he found a nightgown. With his back to her, he stared down at the garment until it vanished from his hands. He stood there for a moment with his eyes closed then turned, knowing he would find that gown caressing the gentle curves of his woman’s body and she would be beneath the bed covers.
He moved to the chair beside the bed and sat down, crossing his ankle over his knee and bracing his elbows on the chair arms as he steepled his fingers, watching the steady rise of her chest over the tips.
“So long have I waited for you,” he said quietly. “So long have I known anything but abject loneliness and growing despair that I would ever find you.”
He closed his eyes and laid his head along the back of the chair. For the first time in his life, he was experiencing a modicum of contentment and it was an emotion that humbled him.
“One day your Blood-mate will be presented to you, placed in your care by Destiny,” his mother Queen Eisheth had told him. “You will know her the moment she is near you. She will be your consort, your eternal companion, the center of your Megaverse. When you take her, your seed will render her immortal—never to age, never to wither and die. Let no man, no entity rob you of your Blood-mate. She is yours though not yours alone.”
“Now I understand what you meant,” he said aloud as the face of the incubus flitted across his mind’s eye.
“If there is another with a claim to her, respect that claim. Do not harm the male for your Blood-mate will curse you for doing so. You will lose what ground you will gain with her if you harm one hair on the male’s head. It is important to us he survive.”
But his mother had said nothing about tossing the bastard into the Abyss, he thought. Though he suspected his lady might take umbrage should he send the Nightwind back where he belonged.
He knew all there was to know about incubi and more than he had ever wanted to know about succubae—one in particular—and he understood the bond between Randon Kayle and McKenzi’s maternal linage. Kayle had sworn a blood oath generations back with a witch of her line and was linked to the women of her family for eternity. That was the way of Nightwinds. He would be made to serve the women until he found the one who would redeem him, who would return his humanity to him.
Kerreyder smiled. It was ironic the incubus had found that woman in McKenzi only to have her become immortal, his time with her finite unless he could coax her into allowing him to sign—in blood—her Book of Shadows.
A book he doubted she even knew existed.
A soft sigh from the bed made him open his eyes and lift his head. His lady had turned her face away from him in her sleep. Tenderly, he used his powers to turn it back to him again so he could watch her. His gaze roaming lovingly over that beautiful visage, and as it did, he felt a tugging at his heart. Already he was in love with her—had been the moment she had appeared at his cell door.
Now he had to make her fall in love with him.
* * * * *
Naamah sat in her cell and listened with growing fury to the thoughts of the man she considered her mate. He was mooning over some human bitch he believed to be his.
Calm yourself, her sister whispered to her from galaxies away. His mind is clouded to you but if you allow your emotions to fester, the ruse will be up and he’ll know you are there with him.
“I will tear that harlot apart with my bare hands!” she said aloud.
Bide your time, her sister cautioned. There is more than one way to skin a cat.
For a week longer than her mate had been incarcerated, Naamah had endured the stench and filth of the humans who had caged her. She had allowed herself to be captured, have offensive creature hands upon her sacred person in order to be in this vile place before he arrived.
For billions of years she had loved Kerreyder Abaddon as much as she loathed humankind. He was the only thing in the Megaverse she cared about. He was the only male she had taken to her body with joy.
Into her body with the greatest of desire. In her eyes, he was her eternal mate and always would be.
She had been his first lover when he was but a green youth of ten and four. She had made him a man. She had taught him all he knew of women. Of sex. Of the pleasure the sexual act could give. Though it galled her to do so, she strove to overlook his experimentations with other female creatures, his peccadilloes with goddesses who ventured secretly from Jeeoil—the home of the gods—to lie with him. He was hers and she intended to see that it remained so.
“Blood-mate, bah!” she snorted. “I will squash that human toad.”
Be careful, sister, Lilith warned. You do not want to risk the archdemon’s ire by harming the woman.
Naamah flung out a dismissive hand. She and Lilith were powerful succubae, potent demonesses who had once lain with the First Man on Terra to corrupt him and had given him children from their bodies. It had been Kerreyder who had seduced the First Man’s wife in the Garden so it only had been fitting that First Man get his revenge for the adultery in the arms of her and Lilith. The three of them—as well as her older sisters Eisheth and Agrat—had always had dominion over the sexuality of the human race—no matter upon which planet those putrid weaklings thrived. They were, after all, called the angels of prostitution, she thought with a laugh.
And didn’t Kerreyder hate being called that! Tarred by the same brush that had smeared his mother.
But Kerreyder was no saint by any stretch of the imagination. He could be as cold as the ice on the Plaines of Geschäft or as hot as the sands on Helios-5. His temperament ran from as gentle as a newborn to the full-on lethality of an enraged ghoret. To get on his bad side was never a good idea for he could hold a grudge longer than any male she’d ever known.
And it had been nearly seven centuries since he’d lain between her thighs. All because of one silly argument she had had the misfortune to win.
Use the incubus, Lilith advised. Kerreyder dares do nothing to harm him but a cog in the wheel can only be to your advantage.
“Use him as a wedge?” Naamah asked.
Precisely. Lie with him if you must to get him on your side.
“Not going to happen,” Naamah growled. The thought of putting the Nightwind’s rancid flesh to hers was disgusting. Lilith might not have had a problem with doing it but she would rather slather warthog entrails between her legs than have the incubus there.
He hates the archdemon, Lilith reminded her. His human is being usurped and the Nightwind’s ire is growing with every breath he takes.
“Serves him right,” Naamah said. “He deserves whatever hurt can be sent his way.”
She heard the phantom sigh of frustration that came from her sister’s throat and then there was silence as Lilith pulled away. They had shared millions of males over the eons but Randon Kayle would never be one of them as far as Naamah was concerned.
But…
She would work with the worthless bastard if it meant she might have a chance to take Kerreyder’s mind from the human.
The end game was even more important for it would see the humans reap their just reward.
* * * * *
In his cell, Randon paced from one wall to another, growling like the caged beast he was. The uncontrollable fury that rode him caused him to lose all semblance of humanity, to revert to the revolting creature he had been in the Abyss. Hunched over, his claws extended, his fangs snapping at the air, he could think of nothing else save the fact that the archdemon was at that moment with the woman the Nightwind loved.
Rutting her.
Putting his seed within her.
Giving her pleasure.
The sound of laughter hit his ears.
He stopped, sniffed the air, and then hissed. Something was close by that was setting his fangs to tingling. Something he wanted to rend and rip and tear and devour. Not the archdemon—for he was immortal and could not be hurt—but something that was like a sandspur embedded in his paw. Shaking his head violently to rid his nostrils of the stink, he had just enough presence of human mind to understand whatever was disturbing him was in one of the nearby cells. Any creature that could goad him so savagely needed to be dealt with once he was free.
As if you could deal with me, you slug.
By the gods he recognized that evil voice! It belonged to Lilith’s youngest sister Naamah, a fallen angel he despised almost as much as he did Lilith. If the succubus was imprisoned here at Tearmann, it was because she wanted to be and something evil was about to go down.
He stopped and dropped to all fours, shaking his entire body like a wet terrier, then sank his haunches to the cold floor. Pushing his anger deep down inside him, he willed himself to return to his human form. If he were to do battle with Naamah, he had to have his wits about him and that wouldn’t happen in beast mode. Calming his racing heart, slowing his blood, he slowly got his nature under control and shifted. When he was fully cognizant he was irritated that he was sitting in the middle of the cell as naked as the day he’d come from his mother’s womb. His clothes were shredded and lay scattered over the floor.
“Fuck,” he grumbled and—not for the first time—wished he had the power to rearrange molecules as the Reapers did so he could fashion new clothing. He could remove them with a thought but he couldn’t replace them. Sitting bare-assed when the Supervisor or Sorn came to release him was an embarrassment he didn’t need and would never hear the end of from the Reaper. Somehow he had to get Sorn to show him how it was done, yet not be beholden to the little shit.
He’s fucking your woman right now and you’re worried about covering your skinny little cock?
“Get the hell out of my mind!” he yelled and heard laughter skirling through his mind. He slammed his hands against his ears as though that would help but it only made her vicious laughter louder.
I’ll make you a deal, she said. You help me get him away from her and back to Treigeilys and I’ll see that he stays there.
He knew the demoness had no more control over Kerreyder than he did. Not even the archdemon’s mother Eisheth had control over him. It was doubtful his sire, the Father-God, did either. The good in his father canceled out the evil in his mother, leaving Kerreyder stuck in the no-man’s-land of ambiguous morality.
I can control him, you warty newt. Have no worry on that account.
“How the fuck do you think you can do that, you diseased twat?” he said with a growl.
He came here to find five creatures who need their paws slapped. Help him find them quickly and he’ll be back at Prysson torturing them and not between your bitch’s thighs.
He’d always wondered why Lilith had sent him to work at Tearmann. It was something totally unexpected and beyond his comprehension. What possible reason could she have for wanting creatures that frightened or harmed humans to be caught and incarcerated? It was a puzzle he had never been able to solve. He’d been there since before Kenzi was born—in between the women of her family who were witches and to whom he could blood-bond his services. Now it made sense. Lilith had known one day the two of them—he and Kenzi—would be at the facility together and he was willing to wager she knew Kerreyder would be there as well. It was just one of her many ways of punishing him.
I could think of some very painful ways of punishing you, myself, Naamah said with a chortle. Very painful, long-lasting ways that would take what little sane mind you have left.
The demoness had once been an angel before she had taken sides with Samael to war against their Creator. She’d picked the wrong side and had been cast out, flung into the Drochtom Arc—The Under—with the other Fallen. Though she had power, it was limited to those with whom she’d lain or could seduce. Thankfully he had not been one of them.
As if I’d have you.
She would, he thought with a smirk. As would her sister Agrat, but he belonged—body and soul—to Lilith until the day Kenzi would claim him solely as her own. With Kerreyder now in the picture, that day might never come, and he was sure Lilith had known that all along.
Comprehension struck him then and he reeled. The sisters—no doubt all of them, but with Lilith at point—had set this in motion. It was by their hand the insurrectionists against Yn Drogh Spyrryd had fled Treigeilys and come to Terra to hide. The whores had set the beasts free so Kerreyder would be forced to track them down.
And meet Kenzi, the woman whom the Fates had decreed his Blood-mate.
“You bitches,” he whispered, feeling the betrayal, the retribution all the way to the marrow of his bones.
You were never meant to be free, incubus, Naamah told him. We knew to the second when the Blood-mate was to come into life. That she was also your only salvation was icing on the cake of vengeance.
“And she is the only one who can control Kerreyder,” he said miserably.
You are not as stupid as you look.
Another realization hit him—apparently as the demonesses intended. Kerreyder would be forced to take his captives back to Prysson and he would be gone a long time. He would return, but in the interim Randon would have the pleasure of Kenzi’s company, which would make the archdemon’s future return all the more hateful.
He’s willing to share the cunt. Be glad for what crumbs you’ll get, Nightwind!
* * * * *
Kerreyder pursed his lips, annoyed at his aunt and the way she was taunting the Nightwind. He almost felt sorry for the incubus as he sat there beside McKenzi and listened in on the conversation from the cells. And he could afford to be magnanimous and show the Nightwind some compassion for he had his Blood-mate and would make her his at the stroke of Midnight, the traditional time of Joining, while the incubus would be forced to suck hind teat.
Aye, he almost felt sorry for the male.
Another brutal taunt struck the defeated demon’s shoulders and Kerreyder had heard enough.
Leave him be, Naamah, or suffer the consequences, he ordered and smiled hatefully at the startled gasp that came from the whore’s throat.
He snorted. Did the bitch actually believe she and her sisters—including his malicious mother—could hide anything from him? Did they think he was unaware of their nasty little conspiracies?
Stupid, arrogant females, he thought. He had the power to nullify their abilities and render them completely unable to wield magic of any kind. It was only out of a minute drop of respect for the female who had birthed him that he didn’t. He’d never hear the end of it from her if he took away or diminished their puny powers. They served their purpose and as long as they did, he’d leave them alone to hatch their nefarious plots.
But oh, how he wanted to trash Naamah’s! For eons he’d wanted to strip her of any semblance of control she had over the males of the Megaverse. Her love of cock—of wood as she termed it—was sickening. She, alone, had caused so much grief, so much agony, and so much self-loathing for his gender. To make her sexually frustrated would be one helluva punishment for a bitch who well deserved it.
Although there had been a time when she hadn’t been quite so bad. Well, she had, but it was a type of badness that serviced him well…
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Of all his mother’s sisters, Naamah was the one of whom he was the most wary. The female was not blood kin to his mother so thankfully not related to him. She was a Fallen like his mother—one of four females cast down with the archangel Samael—and they had labeled themselves sisters. Each female had been handed a quadrant of Treigeilys to rule. His mother received Talamh in the South. Lilith was given Uisce to the East. Agrat’s northern dominion became Gaoth and Naamah took Tine in the West as her kingdom.
One morning, his mother sent him to deliver a chest of spells to Naamah. The journey from Talamh to Tine was long and arduous and meant he needed to cross the Barrens of the Midland beneath which lay Prysson, deep within the bowels of Treigeilys.
He had been on the road for three days when he camped near a waterfall for the night. The air was chill and smelled of rancid meat, the ground strewn with pebbles. The fire he managed to build was meager at best and gave off very little light and hardly any warmth. Cold jerky and a dried-out biscuit became an unsatisfying supper that he washed down with bitter coffee for he had forgotten to add sugar to the supplies in his saddlebags. Irritated, sore from riding and with his belly rumbling, he spread his blanket beneath a rocky overhang, using his saddle as a pillow and huddled in his great cape to keep warm. Around him the night sounds of things moving among the boulders above him and in the craggy cliffs off to one side kept him from sleeping. His keen hearing picked out scuttling insects and slithering creatures, the cheep of bats and squeals of rats as predators munched them for their meals. Far in the distance he could hear the rumble of thunder and worried the rain would come before morning light. Beneath him the ground shook now and again. All in all, it was a miserable way to end a tiring day.
When he woke the next morning, the stallion he had tied to a scrubby bush was gone and with it his hat and saddlebags. Furious, he had gone looking for the beast and for whomever had stolen the saddlebags. There were no footprints and no hoof prints either for that matter to show him which way the culprit went. It was as though the beast and his belongings had been snatched up by an unseen hand. Thankfully, the robber had not pilfered his canteen. He was grateful for that small favor.
Grumbling dire threats aimed at the thief should he or she be caught, Kerreyder set out into a morning that rapidly became as hot as the night had been cold. The sweltering sun beat down on his head. Soon he was sweating profusely as he trudged across the desert landscape with the great cape slung over one shoulder for he knew he’d need it come nightfall.
At least, he thought, as he began a steady climb up a slippery incline, the rain had held off but he wasn’t so sure that was a good thing. He would have welcomed a light misting to cool the sweat running down his temples and soaking his underarms.
By the time he reached Lake Loghtalid he was beginning to feel uneasy. The sky to the west was a strange yellow color across the horizon. Overhead, the clouds were mostly blue with only a few streaks of opaque white. There was a distant rumble and he wondered if that had been what he had heard the night before instead of thunder. The hair on the back of his neck bristled and his gaze kept returning to the west.
His inaugural trip to Tine was proving to be a disquieting trek across inhospitable vistas, intensified by a scorching sun and abrading wind, and by his calculations he had another two days of travel before reaching the palace. Between where he stood and the kingdom was a vast wasteland of nothingness save for mesquite and an occasional oasis from which to fill his canteen.
The first indication something was far from being right came when the mountains to the west suddenly began to shift, to roll and grow higher as though they were being punched up from the desert floor. He stood still, watching them, growing more troubled by the second. Mountains did not shift nor did they roll unless there was an earthquake yet the ground beneath his feet was motionless.
Nor did they grow darker in color and began to move toward you.
“What the hell?” he mumbled.
Realization hit him like a sledgehammer to the back of his head. It wasn’t a growing mountain he was viewing but a rapidly advancing dust storm that stretched all along the western horizon. It was getting higher and higher, more condensed as it spread across the sky—billowing, growing to gigantic proportions and rapidly increasing in speed as it came toward him.
Fear undulated down his spine and he whipped around, searching for somewhere, anywhere to hide. He was immortal. He could not die but he could be buried alive, trapped beneath the progressing ocean of sand, pressed down by tons of blistering hot silica. The thought of the sand flowing up his nose, into his mouth to choke him, to fill his lungs, sent a spiral of pure terror racing through him.
“Eisheth!” he bellowed.
His mother would hear. Surely she was attuned to her son’s dilemma and would come to his aid. He had yet to attain his powers—those would not come until he was no longer a virgin—and could not will himself from his predicament.
“Eisheth, I need you!” The shrieking panic in his voice shamed him but the storm was roiling, churning and agitating the sand as it picked up speed.
Eyes as wide as saucers as he gaped at the juggernaut rushing at him, he fumbled in the pocket of his pants for his kerchief. The wind was whipping mercilessly at him—slamming brutally against him—as he struggled to tie the bandanna around his face. He was being pushed back violently as though invisible beings were shoving against his chest. He stumbled, fell flat to his back just as the monstrous cloud of dust rolled over him. Throwing his hands over his face as the sharp shards cut into his forehead, he squeezed his eyes tightly closed and screamed once more for his mother.
* * * * *
Something weighty touched his forehead and he snapped his eyes open, crying out as he flung his arms over his face to block whatever was bearing down on him. He closed his eyes again for a bright light blinded him. He gasped—drawing air deep into his lungs—surprised that he didn’t choke. The air smelled of perfume and it was cool, not hot as the desert had been. Tentatively he opened his eyes again, giving them time to adjust to the strong light beating down on him.
“You’re safe, Kerreyder.”
The voice was feminine, sultry and filled with humor. He slowly lowered his arms—squinting against that invasive bright light—and looked up at the speaker. As his eyes met hers he had a strong sensation of being trapped, caged, owned. A nagging pain pinched at his wrists and ankles as though tight iron were clamped around them yet his arms and legs moved freely. He lowered his arms to the bed, raised his knees to make sure he wasn’t shackled.
“Where am I?” he asked, wincing at the hackneyed question.
“Safely ensconced at Geay Neear Ayn,” she replied. “Don’t you remember me, nephew?”
“Naamah,” he said and wondered why he didn’t feel relief at awaking in her palace. Instead, his foreboding only increased, which made no sense since this was where he had been bound.
“Your mother should have warned you about traveling at this time of year. This is the season of the Stoirm Deannach, the dust storms. A very dangerous time to be traveling across the Barrens,” she said. Her perfectly smooth forehead creased. “What happened to your horse? Surely you did not decide to walk from your mother’s kingdom to mine.”
“Someone took him during the night,” he said.
“Aye, that happens in the Barrens from time to time. The nomad tribes wander through there in search of travelers.”
Her explanation didn’t ring true. Had it been a nomad, surely there would have been footprints and how could the animal had disappeared without leaving indentions in the sand and loose gravel?
“At any rate, you are here now and all in one…” Her pale-green eyes raked over him. “Gorgeous piece.” She smiled and her scarlet-painted lips glistened as she ran her tongue over them. “Once you have seeded your first woman, you will be able to wield the powers that are latent within you and the next time you visit me, you can will yourself from Eisheth’s palace to mine.”
He sincerely doubted he would ever venture to her abode again. There was something very unsettling in the way she stared at him. Her eyes bore an intense heat that made him want to squirm under her perusal.
“We can talk later,” she said, turning from the bed where he lay. “I will have my servants draw you a bath. I’m sure there is sand in places it shouldn’t be.”
Her laughter made the hair on his arms stir and when she stopped at the door and turned to look back at him, he was stunned to see hunger staring at him.
“Join me when you are finished. I will be in the solarium,” she said then puckered her lips and blew him a kiss before she exited the room.
“Mother of the gods,” he whispered. That simple gesture she’d thrown his way had made his cock stiffen. He looked down at his lower body, shocked to see the wicked thing was poking rigidly at the coverlet. He stared at it in horror.
A sound at the door made him jerk up his head. When the portal began to open, he slapped his hands over his erection as two male servants entered. They stopped, bowed deeply, then without him giving them permission to do so, advanced on the bed. He shook his head.
“I d-don’t need help, thank you,” he said, feeling the heat flaming in his cheeks.
They either did not understand his words or were ignoring them for one went to one side of the bed and one to the other. Before he could protest, the one on the left side reached for the coverlet. He pressed his hands tighter to the material.
“I said I don’t need any help,” he stated in as firm a voice as he could.
The servant ignored him and tugged hard at the coverlet, wrenching it from him as though he were a stubborn child. The coverlet was flung to the foot of the bed and the servant on the other side of him slid his arms under Kerreyder’s back and knees without so much as a by-your-leave.
“What the hell are you doing?” Kerreyder hissed. “Put me down!”
The arms clamped around him were as strong as iron bands and though he wiggled to get free, the servant acted as though he were completely unaware of Kerreyder’s struggles.
“The gods-be-damned, put me the hell down!” he shouted, but the servant merely turned from the bed and headed to a door through which the other had disappeared.
What followed was a humiliating lesson in not being able to prevent his body from being violated in a way that was both frustrating and infuriating. He was taken into what he discovered was a bathing chamber with a very large, deep tub sunken into the marble floor. The man undressed him despite Kerreyder slapping at his hands, cursing and hissing at him, and trying to wriggle free. His erection hadn’t gone down but to give the man credit, he didn’t so much as blink an eye when it popped out of Kerreyder’s pants as they were tugged down.
“Son of a whoring Diabolusian bitch!” he snarled at the man who then picked him up and carried him—carried him!—down four steps and into the deep tub without a thought to being fully dressed himself. Sputtering with outrage, Kerreyder was gently lowered into the warm water. The man smiled at him then straightened, exiting the tub without a backward glance.
The men left him gaping after them with his mouth sagging and his eyes bulging. By the time he found the wherewithal to snap his mouth shut, his jaw was aching from hanging open for so long. His teeth clicked together, he growled fiercely and his gaze narrowed into pinpoints of indignation. He would have a thing or two to say to his aunt when he joined her!
* * * * *
Those things went completely out of his angry mind the moment he found the solarium—after getting directions from a wandering servant who barely acknowledged his query—an hour later.
Stomping barefoot down the hall—for they had taken his boots—he shoved open the glass door with as much authority he could dredge up from his offended soul and strode in with the intent of letting his mother’s sister-in-arms know just how vexed he was.
He never got the chance.
The room was so bright, so warm it felt as though he’d stepped into a sauna. The white shirt and black jeans he’d found laid out on his bed when he’d left the bathing chamber felt as though he had donned triple layers of thick wool. Perspiration sprang up on his forehead, under his arms, between his shoulder blades and over his chest from one breath to the next the room was so unbearably hot.
Which might have explained the fact Naamah was reclining on her side on a brightly colored chaise lounge without so much as a single piece of jewelry to cover her nudity. Her long burnished-red hair was hanging loose over one shoulder and partially obscuring one large breast. She was bracing her head on her fist as she smiled coyly at him.
“Hello, lover,” she greeted him.
Kerreyder’s eyes widened and his cock shot up again to tent the fly of his jeans. He had just enough presence of mind to slam his hands over the treacherous little beast to hide his tumescence from his aunt.
“We are no kin, Kerrey,” she said in a sultry, throaty voice. “It will not be incest when I do it.”
“When you do what?” he managed to croak although his cock was throbbing so hard, so painfully it was a wonder he could find his voice.
“Fuck you senseless,” she said. She lifted an elegant, slender white arm and crooked her index finger at him. “Come here, pretty boy.”
Kerreyder didn’t move. He couldn’t take his eyes from her naked body but he couldn’t have moved a muscle—except for the one that kept pulsing in his pants—if his life depended upon his ability to do so.
When he didn’t respond to her command, she turned to her back, drew her knees up, opened her legs then reached down to spread her labia apart, revealing her glistening sex to his view.
He sucked in a shocked breath, swallowed hard—his blood pounding furiously in his head and his cock. His mouth went dry as she began to stroke herself. All the while she held his stunned gaze with hers.
“Can you smell my need?” she asked, idly running her fingers along her folds.
Aye, he could, he thought. The scent of her cunt was permeating the air.
“It is such an intoxicating perfume, don’t you agree?”
He opened his mouth to berate her for her actions but no sound came out. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t control the blood rushing to every part of him. He couldn’t take his eyes from her.
She slipped a finger inside, withdrew it, slipped it in again then smiled wickedly as she removed it and held the wet digit up for him to see.
“Sweet as cream,” she said. Her eyes dipped to his crotch then lifted slowly upward again. Her smile turned predatory. “And just as good for a growing boy.”
He heard the groan that he couldn’t stop come out of his mouth and when she lifted her finger to her nose, sniffed, then parted her lips to place her finger into her mouth, he thought his knees would buckle. The sound that came out of him then was something he’d never heard any humanoid make.
“Umm,” she said, licking the juice from her finger. “Don’t you want a taste, Kerrey?”
Panic shifted over him for she was sitting up, swinging those long, elegant legs from the chaise.
He put up a staying hand as she got to her feet. “You shouldn’t do that,” he chastised her.
“What?” she asked as she took a step toward him.
Alarm spiked through his body and he moved back.
“You want it, Kerrey,” she said in that low, seductive voice he was beginning to fear. “You know you do.”
He shook his head. “No,” he said. “You’re my mother’s—”
“Sister?” she finished for him then shrugged. “In name only. Not in blood. And you, dear child, I intend to make mine this night.”
From some inner strength he didn’t know he possessed he turned to flee her advance, but the moment he did, he heard her hiss, and in that moment, something fierce and restricting wrapped around him to hold him in place. He felt his body being turned by unseen hands until facing her. He groaned for she was only a few feet away. Of their own accord, his eyes dipped to the brief patch of glistening red hair at the apex of her thighs.
“You aren’t going anywhere, pretty one,” she said as she reached him. She stopped bare toe to bare toe with him and the contact sent an electrical shock directly to his hard-as-steel shaft.
The glass door behind him closed though no one had touched it, trapping him inside the room with her.
“No,” he said.
She arched a titian brow.
He shook his head more forcefully. “No.”
Her lips pursed then parted. She put out her tongue and curled it over her bottom lip and he would have sworn on his mother’s life that tongue had swept over his straining cock. He could almost feel the wetness of it as she pulled it back inside her mouth.
“Let’s get something clear here, Kerreyder,” she said. “Your mother sent you here to me to blood.”
That didn’t sound good and it didn’t sound like his mother. He started to shake his head again, to say no again but found he could do neither. The restraint that was wrapped around his body now extended to both his head and his vocal chords.
“It is time for you to realize your powers and you cannot do that until you thrust your shaft into a woman’s body and you release your seed.” She moved so the peaks of her lush breasts were pressed against his shirt. “It is into my body that will happen.”
She turned her hand and placed her palm over his erection and molded her fingers around him through the denim. He could feel the heat of her flesh through the material and when she squeezed him, he drew in a long, shuddering breath.
“I’ve blooded many a young man,” she said. “Millions of them over the eons. I am very good at what I do and when I am finished with you, you will know you have been taken by the best.”
She was a tall woman—as tall as he—so when she leaned in even more, she had no trouble putting her lips to his ear. Her whisper wove its way through his ear canal directly to his brain then sank like a rock to his groin.
“I am going to do things to you that you have never dreamed of, pretty boy. When I am finished with you, your cock will be raw but you will be well sated. No other being will ever satisfy you as I will.”
She caressed him, stroked his cock hard through the jeans then lifted her leg to hook around him. The scent of her sex filled his nostrils and spiked in his blood.
“Now, let’s take this somewhere more comfortable.”
Her free arm slid around his waist and she clamped him to her with such force it shocked him. She was far stronger than he could have imagined and the power that sizzled from her body to his made him lightheaded.
One moment they were in the solarium and the next they were in what he knew must be her boudoir. The room was a bold combination of blood-red drapes and coverlet, shiny black lacquered furniture that looked as though it had been brought in from Chrystallus, and a scarlet and black swirl carpet underfoot. The room smelled of sandalwood.
The bed was massive—larger, much wider than a king—and the headboard was an intricately carved masterpiece of a dragon crouched beneath the branches of a spreading cypress trees. He had only a moment to take in the breathtaking beauty of the carving before her voice drew him back to her.
“Lie down.”
He couldn’t disobey. No matter how hard he tried. His feet moved though his mind was screaming at them not to. He walked to the bed and climbed atop it, stretching out like a sacrificial victim with his arms at his sides and his legs slightly spread. That was no doubt how she wanted him for he was struggling to close in on himself with arms and legs tight to his body.
“Move over.”
He did, tears forming in his eyes because he was unable to resist and he hated that he couldn’t.
“Relax. I’m not going to rape you, Kerrey,” she said with a touch of exasperation in her tone. “Trust me. I don’t need to. You’ll want what I am going to do.”
Trust was the last thing he felt. He already felt violated and all she’d done was put her hand on the outside of his jeans. The thought of her wrapping her fingers around his cock set him to trembling with impotent anger. His maleness was being debased and that caused such fury inside him it felt as though his blood were boiling. He was surprised smoke wasn’t coming out of his nostrils. The moment she got on the bed and straddled his hips, he thought he might well self-combust.
She settled her shapely ass directly over his groin then leaned down to snag her hands in his shirt. With a calculating grin on her lovely face and a gleam of sheer wickedness in her green eyes, she ripped open his shirt. The buttons popped, the material tore as she savagely rent the shirt from his chest. The force of her act lifted him from the mattress as the material gave way. Human strength couldn’t accomplish that feat. He had felt the magic as it snaked out through the fabric, all but disintegrating the cotton.
He stared helplessly up at her as the warm air wafted over his exposed flesh. There was great power within her. It sizzled in the room like summer lightning.
“My, my, my,” she said with a low growl. Her attention was riveted on his chest. “I like.” Her gaze flicked to his. “I like very much!”
She put her palms on his pecs and rubbed them over the hair growing there. She ran them down his sides and trailed her fingernails across his belly.
“Nice. Very nice.”
Her hands were all over his chest and sides—rubbing, stroking, nails dragging over his stomach even as it quivered beneath her touch. All the while she held his gaze captive and he found himself unable to look away. She scooted back until she was sitting almost over his knees and his cock surged. When her fingers went to the button on the waistband of his jeans, his entire body stiffened of its own accord.
“Relax,” she cooed. “I’m not going to hurt you.” She winked. “Yet.”
Flipping the metal button open, she took the pull-tab between her thumb and index finger and began slowly to lower the slider body down through the teeth. She had some help for the thickness of his cock pressing against the tape of the zipper allowed the teeth to part with less resistance. Once the zipper was all the way down, he felt his cock spring free of the fly and tried to close his eyes.
The lids would not obey. He couldn’t even blink as she stared heatedly into his eyes.
“Now what do we have here?” she asked, lowering her gaze to his crotch.
He held his breath for he knew she was about to take hold of him. His cock—traitorous beast that it was—leapt at the thought and seemed to jump right into her palm. Her fingers closed around it and he hissed out a breath through his clenched teeth.
Her hand was cool, her fingers strong as she slid them down the straining length. With each upward circuit he expected her to touch the very sensitive head where every nerve ending in his body seemed to have settled. But she did not touch him there. She seemed content to tug gently as she ran her hand up and down him until he thought he would go insane if she didn’t touch the head.
“Eager little boy, aren’t you?” she asked, not looking up at him.
She was reading his mind and that was humiliating. He tried to shut down his feelings but the harder he tried to control them, the more they seemed to form. He could tell by the secret smile pulling at her lips that she was intercepting each dirty, licentious thought in his brain.
Or was putting them there.
“Think what you’d like to do to me,” she said.
He knew what he’d like to do. He’d like to wrap his hands around her throat and squeeze until her eyes popped out.
She laughed and her fingers became a brutal clamp around his flesh.
“Squeeze like this?” she taunted.
Her hold was painful and it became more so as she tightened it then twisted slightly.
He groaned. She was hurting him—intentionally so—yet he could do nothing about it. He couldn’t move so he couldn’t buck her off him. He was at the mercy of her hard, cruel clinch.
But just as quickly as the punishing pain came, it went as she relaxed her grip and gently stroked him.
“Be careful of your thoughts, Kerrey,” she warned. “Be very careful of your thoughts.”
She got to her knees, hooked her hands in the waistband of his jeans.
“Lift that sweet little ass, pretty boy,” she commanded.
He couldn’t resist her order. His hips hiked up as though attached to marionette strings and as she began to tug the jeans down his hips, he growled.
She laughed at the warning and continued to work the garment down his legs, walking on her knees to the foot of the bed until she could draw them from his feet.
“Now that’s what I’m talking about,” she said and her gaze on his cock was almost a living thing. He could feel it all the way through his balls—tight and aching as they’d never been before.
Wedging her knees between his ankles, she nudged his legs apart, bent over him with her palms flat on the mattress to either side of his body then moved up between his legs until she was lodged close to his groin. She hovered over him like the predator he believed her to be with her full breasts hanging enticingly above him.
“You want to taste them, don’t you?” she asked.
The words came out of him in a strange voice he didn’t recognize as his own.
“Aye,” he said and the agreement sent a shaft of shame down his throat.
“You want to lick my nipples.”
Again that strange, disembodied voice spoke for him.
“Aye.”
“Nibble them. Bite them. Suck them deep inside that sweet mouth.”
Ripples of desire flooded his lower body and his cock jutted toward her, so thick and full it grazed her belly as she hung suspended over him. He could feel a bead of pre-cum oozing onto her flesh.
“Let me show you what I want to do, pretty boy.”
The words made him shiver and when she lowered her body to his, slid her chest down his, he gasped for his cock was pinned between them and the friction of her skin rubbing against his as she slithered down him was exquisite torture.
But it was where she stopped on her downward drag that sent his senses into overload.
“I want wood,” she whispered. “I love the taste of good hard wood!”
Her face was directly above his crotch when she took him in hand then wrapped her lips around the head of his throbbing cock.
Gods how he wished he could speak now! He thought as her mouth enclosed him but she wouldn’t permit that. She was drawing on his flesh, licking him, running the tip of her tongue along the slit and he could do no more than gasp in air. Lying imprisoned by whatever force she had cast around him, he could not move yet he ached to. He wanted to thrust his hips up, push his cock deeper into her mouth. He wanted to grind his ass against the mattress, dig his heels into it to lever it from the bed. None of that was allowed and the immobility was a torment he wouldn’t wish on his worst enemy.
Her lips swirled over the head of his cock. She poked her tongue repeatedly into the crease as she kept a tight fist just under the glans. At the moment she placed her other hand under his balls and started to massage him, his heart missed a beat.
Over and over again she took him just to the brink of release then stopped. Each time he would groan with growing frustration but then she’d started again. Held immobile, unable to prevent her from tormenting him so cruelly, he had no choice but to endure her ministrations until tears were rolling down either temple.
She withdrew his aching flesh from her lips and held him still. Cocking her head to one side, she watched him for a moment.
“I know you’ve masturbated many, many times, Kerreyder, but you’ve never fucked or been fucked so you have no idea just how intense a true orgasm can be. Release?” She shrugged. “Aye, you’ve experienced that but not inside the body of a woman whose cunt will milk you even as you spurt.”
Her words sent shivers of pure lust along his spine and into his cock. He was desperate for relief—painfully so—and would have sobbed had he been able to. Frustration was turning him inside out and need was building to the breaking point.
“Do you think you’re ready?” she asked. An eyebrow quirked. “Ready to take control?”
He knew the moment she released the control over his voice for his throat felt as though a blockage had been removed.
“Unpin me and I’ll fucking show you!” he hissed.
And then the restraint on his body was gone. He didn’t think. He slammed his hands to her hips, dug his fingers into the soft, pliable flesh and flipped her to her back, throwing a leg over her as he rolled. Grabbing his cock, he probed at her opening several times only because he was in such a hurry to cram himself into her. He wanted to hurt her, to thrust so deep she would scream.
But the moment he entered her, she lifted her legs, locked them around his hips and crossed her ankles to hold him in place. Her ass came off the bed and she impaled herself deeper onto his thrusting cock. He shoved his hands under her and flexed his fingers into her the flesh of her ass.
And then went ballistic with lust, driving into her so brutally, so savagely the bed beneath them trembled. The massive headboard thudded loudly against the wall with each snap of his hips. His entire consciousness was centered in his cock and the itch that was flooding it, tightening his balls, making him ache and throb and…
Need!
Her legs were cutting into him, keeping him from taking a decent breath. Her heel was rubbing against the crack of his ass with every push of his hips.
Grunting like a wild animal, he rammed into her as hard and viciously as he could but she seemed to enjoy it. Her arms wrapped around his arms. She sank her teeth into his shoulder. He felt a trickle of blood ease down his chest but that only spurred him harder. His thrusts became more powerful, quicker, slamming into her with wild abandon until the itch began in his balls and spread like a wildfire down his cock.
The orgasm shook him to the core as it burst from him. The slickness of her cunt, the tightness of it fluttering around him as she squeezed him with her inner muscles made the release so powerful he thought his head—or at the very least his heart—would burst from the force. It went on and on as she milked him—just as she’d told him she would—until the very last shudder was taken from him and he stilled. He trembled violently, threw his head back and made a loud hissing noise that disturbed him. It was the sound a valve made just before the machinery blew asunder.
He collapsed atop her like a rock with his head and heart pounding, his fevered blood racing cruelly through his veins, his breathing a labored gasp as he strove to drag air into his depleted lungs. Sweat covered him from head to toe and both calves were cramping for he had the soles of his feet plastered tightly to the high footboard. His shoulder throbbed where she had bitten him.
Her legs were still secured around his waist, her hands roaming over his sweaty back. She was speaking to him in the old language—the language that his mother spoke when she cast her spells. The words wound their way into his ear and traveled along the neural pathways of his brain and he knew she was sowing seeds there but he was too drained, too shattered to care what magic she was weaving around him.
“I want you again,” he said, not surprised by his words. He was fairly sure she’d planted the notion in his mind.
“You will always want me, pretty boy,” she whispered in his ear.
“No I won’t,” he snapped.
“You will,” she said. “I was your first and you will always remember me.” Her fingernails played across his shoulders. “You may not like me but you will crave me like a starving man yearns for a banquet.”
“No,” he said as emphatically as he could but he knew he was lying. He would want her despite hating her with every fiber of his being. He would take her against his will. He would let her use him for whatever evil lust she had in mind for he was beginning to discern something strange, exotic and mayhap shameful she wanted to do to his body. The magic she’d whispered in his ear had taken root.
She hadn’t raped him. That was true. She had seduced him—mayhap forcefully so—but it had not been rape. He almost wished that she had raped him for then he could say he’d had no part in the outcome that had followed. But it had been he who had torn into her with such gleeful wicked intent and he was sure he had hurt her although she certainly hadn’t seemed to mind. There was no doubt in his mind he would hurt her again and she’d enjoy that just as much.
And she was right about something else.
His cock was raw but he didn’t care as he moved off her, jerked her up and flung her to her belly, snagging an arm under her waist to hike her ass from the bed and jacked her to his hips. When he entered her this time, he did so with teeth clenched and eyes narrowed.
This time it was his teeth in her shoulder as he held her still for his thrusts.
* * * * *
For over a week he slept in her bed—although if truth was told neither of them did much sleeping. He fucked her on every surface that would hold them and some that hadn’t. Two tables and a dainty divan had broken under the weight of their frenzied lust. He’d taken her in the garden and in the solarium. He’d taken her on the front lawn in full view of her servants—every one of them male—and in nearly every room of the palace. He had ridden her hard in the stable. Both of them had bruises and more than a few abrasions. Teeth marks riddled his shoulders and arms and even his thighs. The bitch was a biter but he didn’t particularly care.
He did care and got fiercely mad each time she slapped him for she had a heavy hand and seemed to take great delight in leaving her livid palm print on his cheek. He retaliated by pulling her hair, wrapping it around his wrist and yanking her head back almost to the point of snapping her neck. She didn’t care. She liked his rough manhandling. Thrived on it.
Each time he took her he could feel the power within him growing. It had been released—along with his cum—that first night and had continued to grow exponentially with every time he rammed into her hot cunt.
She taught him how to use those powers just as she taught him how to use a woman, how to pleasure one and how to keep one so besotted with him he could do no wrong in the bitch’s eyes. He was anxious to put her teachings to use for he was more than ready to conquer the female population beyond the scope of Tine.
And he was growing tired of her.
Of her scent. Of her body. Of her clinging arms that held him prisoner long after the glow of the sexual encounter had faded. Of her voice. Of her looks.
Of everything about her.
He was ready for the next woman.
And the next.
And the one after that.
Over six million years—and tens of thousands of times of finding himself locked in Naamah’s imprisoning arms—later, he was ready for his Blood-mate to arrive for he had begun to tire of sex. He no longer found it enjoyable or entertaining. It did not keep the loneliness or the depression away. He could do without pouring himself into a female’s body but he was finding it harder than hell to keep the despair at bay.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
“And now here you are,” he said to the sleeping woman on the bed.
He closed his eyes, willed her to wake, and when she opened them, her beautiful green gaze met his. He rose from the chair and went to the bed. Unhurriedly he sat down beside her on the mattress and gently reached up to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear.
“How are you feeling?”
“What did you do?” she whispered, searching his eyes.
He smiled.
“I healed you, dearling.”
“My heart?” she asked. “You healed my heart?”
“Listen,” he said.
Her eyebrows drew together in confusion, then as the faint sound of her heartbeat grew loud enough for her to hear, her face relaxed and her lips parted.
“You put my heart back in rhythm,” she said, her voice filled with awe.
“And it will stay thus,” he said. He could not stop himself from reaching for her hand, taking it between his. “I will always take care of you, McKenzi.” He brought her hand to his lips and kissed the underside of her wrist.
She was watching him intently—her gaze never straying from his face. He willed all fear of him, all unease to leave her. He didn’t replace it with anything else just simply took away her anxiety at his nearness.
“Wh-what time is it?” she asked.
“Close to ten of the clock,” he answered. “At midnight, your world will change entirely.”
Disquiet flashed through her eyes. “How?” she asked. “How will it change?”
“You and I will Join,” he said.
Her gaze faltered, jerked to the left then came back to his. “What does that mean?”
He leisurely, tenderly stroked her hand. “You will become my bride.”
Her eyes widened. “Wh-what?”
“You are my Blood-mate, McKenzi,” he said softly. “We were destined to be husband and wife. I will love and honor you, see to your protection and render unto you the blessing of forever time.”
“The blessing of what?” she asked but he didn’t want to answer. He was afraid if he did, it would frighten her.
“I cannot stay upon this plane nor can I take you with me to mine but I will come as often as I can to be with you,” he said. “When I am not with you, the Nightwind will be your sworn protector and—” He had to force himself to say it. “Your lover so you will not know being alone in this life.”
She blinked. “You would be all right with that?” she asked, obviously stunned by his words. “To allow your wife to be with another man?”
“I cannot ask you to remain celibate,” he replied. “I will not be. It is not a natural state for man or woman. The Nightwind has taken a blood oath to the women of your line and he believes you belong entirely to him. That is not the case and it angers him but the Fates made Their decision on our union long before he was a glint in his father’s eye. He will be here with you when I cannot be. He will be your champion, your guardian.”
“My guardian,” she repeated. “I don’t need a guardian.” She lifted her chin. “You make him sound like a…a…warden.”
He grinned. “Trust me, dearling, I know all there is to know of wardens and the Nightwind will never be that to you. Should he presume to infringe upon your freedom, he will answer to me. Besides, you will have powers of your own after the Joining.”
“I don’t know what that means and I don’t think I want to,” she said. She eased her hand from his grip. “I’m not ready for marriage and even if I were, I don’t know you and you aren’t…” She winced. “Human.”
“Human,” he repeated with a frown. “No, I’m not human, but then neither is the incubus and you gave yourself to him without so much as a single protest.”
“Yes, but I’ve known him for…” She stopped as though realizing she was about to say something that wasn’t entirely true. She shook her head. “All of this is beyond my ability to process.”
He watched her scoot away from him and leave the bed on the opposite side. She turned, wrapped her arms around herself and seemed to be trying to find the courage to ask him to leave.
“I came here to work,” she said.
“Aye, as did I,” he said. “But there is something more important that needs to be done.”
The clock in the sitting room began to chime the half-hour and he knew he had little time to do what had to be done. An hour and a half wasn’t enough but he would not wait another day to seal them together. He stood. He regretted there was no time to court her, to woo her, to allow her to grow comfortable with him, but he would not lose her. She was his.
He held out his hand. “McKenzi, come to me,” he bid her.
“This is moving too fast,” she said, twisting her hands together. “I’m confused and I’m…I’m scared.”
“Not of me,” he said. He came around the end of the bed. “There is no reason to fear me, dearling. I would rather pluck out my heart than cause you a moment of hurt.”
“You’re asking me to take a leap of faith,” she said. “I’m not sure I can.”
He lowered his hand, sensing she might consider it a threat. He tried to reassure her.
“You are a beautiful woman and I want you. I have pledged my life to you. What more can I do to convince you we belong together?”
She was attracted to him. Deeply. He sensed it. Knew it. He could smell her arousal. She was a sensual woman, not a prude, a modern Terran female who knew her own mind and yet she hesitated. He saw the disquiet in the way she was looking at him and yet her body was reacting strongly to his.
It was well within the scope of his powers to make her come to him. All he need do was command and she would obey but he didn’t want to resort to that. He wanted her to come into his arms of her own accord.
“Just lie with me,” he said. “Lie in my arms and let me hold you. I’ll do nothing that you are not comfortable with me doing.”
Still she hesitated, stayed where she was with her fingers twisting and turning over one another. Her bottom lip was tucked charmingly between her teeth and her breath was fast, shallow.
“Lie with me,” he asked again.
Her eyes darted to the bed. “On top of the covers?” she asked.
He put his hand over his heart in pledge. “Atop the covers.”
“No hanky-panky? No funny stuff?”
“Not unless it is what you want. I will be on my very best behavior.”
She took a step closer to the bed but stopped when he kicked off his loafers and lifted his leg to put his knee on the mattress. She watched him sit down, put his back to the headboard and stretch out his legs. He was careful to move slowly.
“Okay,” she said. He could hear her heart racing but it was with a normal, natural beat. She sat down gingerly on the bed and turned so she too could lean against the headboard. She folded her hands in her lap—looking prim and proper and virginal.
He thought of the night he’d first lain with Naamah. How he had felt like a sacrificial lamb being led to slaughter. Slowly he reached over to take one of Kenzi’s hands, threaded his fingers through hers.
“Let me tell you of my world,” he said softly as the clock struck the quarter hour.
He told her of the ferocious hurricanes in the South. The fiery deserts in the West. The fierce seashores of the East and the frigid ice fields of the North. He told her of the cold, lightless landscape of the Abyss. Of his mother, her sisters—omitting the fact that one of them was at that very moment at Tearmann.
“What about where you live?” she asked.
“Prysson is an unspeakable place, dearling,” he said, flexing his fingers upon hers. “It is a lonely and despairing place. Once taken there, a prisoner never leaves. Some—like those I tracked here—have managed to escape the holding cells but I always find them. I always bring them back. I, and I alone, hold the keys to Prysson. I am the only one who may leave that gods-awful place.”
“Aren’t you just as much condemned to be there as are those who are incarcerated?”
He looked over at her. “I suppose I am,” he replied. “I’ve never considered it in that light.”
“Is that why you said you would not take me with you when you leave?”
“I would not have you there because it is a terrible, violent place filled with those creatures so vile, so evil not even hell will take them,” he answered.
“Are you in danger there?” she asked and surprised him by leaning her head on his shoulder.
“I am immortal, dearling. I cannot be killed or hurt. No, I am in no danger in Prysson.”
“I will worry just the same,” she said quietly.
That made his heart jerk in his chest. “I will be fine. There is no need for you to worry.”
The clock chimed once. It was a quarter ’til and he flinched. There was precious little time left before the Midnight Hour.
“I hate that clock,” she said. “I need to turn it off. I’ll never be able to sleep with it chiming every fifteen minutes and gonging every darn hour.”
“You want it off?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said.
He lifted his other hand, flicked his wrist. “There. No more bonging or chiming.”
She craned her head to look up at him. “Just like that you made it stop.”
“Just like that.” He reached over to cup her chin. “Anything else you’d like me to do?” He wanted so desperately to kiss her. He could not wait. He lowered his head to hers and took her lips gently.
Kenzi tensed as his mouth closed over hers but the warmth of his lips, the taste of them was intoxicating. She’d always liked a man who held his woman’s face when he kissed her and Kerreyder’s hand had gone from cupping her chin to pressing softly against her cheek as he worked his lips over hers. The moment his tongue slipped smoothly, unhurriedly past her teeth she melted. His mouth was like wild honey. There was a faint scent of cinnamon clinging to his body. It was a scent that aroused her. His hand spiked outward into her hair until he was cupping the back of her neck. She felt her womb clench as he moved over her, ran his arm under the small of her back and eased her on the bed. His lower body pressed intimately against hers, the hardness at the juncture of his thighs making her womb twist again.
“My pretty lady,” he whispered against her lips then pulled away to kiss the tip of her nose, her cheeks, her chin, her forehead. He stared down at her—his mouth mere inches from hers. “My pretty mate.”
He was so handsome with his thick dark hair and vivid blue eyes. The dimples in his cheeks made him look boyish but there was nothing boyish in the way he was looking at her. That look made her ache between her legs.
“I want you, McKenzi,” he said, his breath hot across her mouth.
She stared up into that face that looked exactly like a man whose movies she’d watched—all nine of them—and who she waited anxiously to see each week on Cinemax. His azure gaze held her captive, his hard body was pressed to hers. His warm hand was cupping her neck. A strong arm was locked around her body. What wasn’t there to want? Declan Brady was the stuff of millions of women’s erotic dreams and his doppelgänger was lying atop her with a hard, thick cock paused for impalement.
“I want you too,” she told him.
She gasped for as soon as the words left her mouth their clothing was gone! Vanished! His body was wedged between her legs, the length of his cock pressed along her folds. He took her hands in his, spread his fingers through hers and locked her hands to either side of her head as he hungrily slanted his mouth over hers. The weight of him pressed her into the bed and was so pleasurable she could barely draw breath. He was feeding from her lips, his tongue pistoning in and out of her mouth but in such a way it was mesmerizing and the feeling did strange things to her lower body. He ground his hips against her, hiked up one knee to push her thighs farther apart. His hard chest surged against her breasts—flattened them—and the contact turned her nipples as hard as the sweet shaft gliding against her core.
As the clock struck the first note of midnight, he slid effortlessly into her body. He jacked his other knee up until her thighs were split wide, her hips partially raised from the mattress. Instinct brought her legs up to latch around his hips as he began to move inside her.
Second chime. He swiveled his hips.
Third chime. He pressed deep.
Fourth chime. He put his mouth to the side of her neck.
Fifth chime. He eased back, almost all the way out of her.
Sixth chime. He slammed forward, going deeper.
Seventh chime. His hands tightened around hers, sliding her arms higher along the mattress.
Eighth chime. He pulled back, shot forward with a grunt.
Ninth chime. He ground hard against her as he made quick thrusts into her cunt.
Tenth chime. His thrusts became wild, hard, rapid. She began to feel the overpowering release building like wildfire inside her.
Eleventh chime. His cock jerked inside her, he stopped moving as he spilled deep into her body, her body impaled upon his. The climax that took them both at the same time was so fierce lights burst across her vision and she felt her body spiraling out of control. Her skin itched with the release. The orgasm went on and on and…
The twelfth chime. Her entire being became one fiery inferno of unadulterated lust. She snarled as his cock continued to pour warm fluid with its every kick. He was snarling as he ground his hips brutally against her as though in doing so he could drain every last ounce of cum from his body.
At one tick past Midnight—the traditional hour of Joining—McKenzi Delaney became the undisputed Blood-mate of Kerreyder Abaddon. She would be his for all eternity. At one tick past that, her humanity was taken away to be replaced by immortality.
She would live forever as Kerreyder’s consort.
* * * * *
The Nightwind went still as death as what had happened wove its way down to him from Kenzi’s room. Ungodly pain ripped through his being and he threw his head back and howled in misery. Another male was rutting with his female and the hopelessness, the despair was overwhelming.
Serves you right you warty newt for not being male enough to protect your female from an interloper, Naamah sent to him in a goading taunt. Her wild laughter drove through his mind like a steel spike.
Fury and outrage ripped through Randon Kayle as his talons dragged viciously down the titanium wall of the cell.