Bound By Fate: A Novel of the Strong (24 page)

“Which would be?”
 

“A simple fertility spell would do the trick.” Arman held his breath.
 

“What?” Feliks’s face contorted with confusion.

“I need the Tenn to impregnate his bride on his wedding night,” Arman explained. He added pointedly,
“It’s the law.”

“What the hell does any of this matter to me?” Feliks yelled. “I don’t give two shits about your moronic daemon law.” He pressed forward, the white of his teeth flashing in the moonlight. “Why the fuck am I here?”

Arman allowed the spellcaster’s temper to subside before he chose to answer.

“Because I want the throne.”

His admission was met with silence.

“You what?” Feliks asked at last.

“I want the throne,” Arman repeated slowly. “And I am prepared to pay most handsomely for any assistance in securing it, specifically… your magic.”

Feliks opened his mouth. Then closed it. After a moment, he opened it again to say, “Isn’t it expressly forbidden for Vimora to buy magic for personal use?”

“Come, come, Feliks,” Arman laughed, hopeful that he finally had the spellcaster’s ear. “Let’s not let silly superstitions sabotage the possibility of a deal between us. Just hear me out. I can promise you that you’ll like the terms.”

His heart beating wildly, Arman watched with bated breath as the spellcaster chewed his thumbnail.

“Not that I’m agreeing to anything… yet,” Feliks hedged, “but how much are we talking?”

Arman smiled.

“I can promise you all of Baltia.”

You’re joking,” the spellcaster scoffed.

“I assure you that I am not,” said Arman.

Feliks’s amber-colored eyes filled with suspicion.

“You’d give up the richest region in Venn Dom,” he asked, “if not all of the Mythos?”

“The diamond mines mean nothing to me.”

“Nothing?”

“Unlike my counterpart Narcyz, I care nothing for riches,” Arman answered smoothly. “I care only for power. And, as the undisputed ruler of the
right and true
Venn Dom, I will have that power. I will have the respect that is due to me and the house of the Tenn.”

“Arman, you surprise me.” Feliks looked him over before giving a begrudgingly approving nod. “But just so we’re clear,” he was quick to narrow his gaze, “you’re saying that should I help you, I will receive all of Baltia?”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

“What if you fail?”

“With your help, my friend,” Arman said, smiling his most ingratiating smile, “I cannot fail.”

“I am not your friend,” Feliks answered, not smiling. But, almost immediately, the tenor of his emotions changed as he got down to business, the riches of Baltia squarely in his sights. “Other than the fertility spell, which is simple enough, what else do you need from me?”

“Just a few small things,” Arman answered. “But I need them quickly. As in tonight.”

“What are they?”
 

Arman told him.

“Is that all?” Feliks barked out a laugh. “Seriously?” The skepticism in his eyes almost drowned out the thunderless venna that stormed in the skies above.

“Yes, that’s all I need from you.” Arman tongued his cheek before adding, “My nephew’s currently employed taking care of what else I need to steal his crown.”

In the pulsing darkness of his bedroom, Toran raised his head and aimed a stare exactly where he knew she stood. Venna lit the night, revealing his faine. She wore a white silk robe that fell a few inches below the crease of her bottom. Her honey-kissed hair was wild and tousled around her shoulders.
 

Hungry fascination gleamed in her darkened eyes as she took in his naked vulnerability.
 

Against all reason, Toran opened his knees wider in invitation while his hand resumed a slow and easy rhythm. His venna, insistent with needs of its own, raged in the air around him.

Their eyes locked in the darkness.

“Come to me, faine,” he thought he whispered. Lightheaded with pleasure, Toran adjusted his touch so that just the tips of his fingers and the inside of his thumb worked his flesh in a slow, languid motion. Glancing down his body, he could see a drop of pre-cum glistening in the moonlight.
 

She, too, saw his need. He could almost feel the caress of her gaze on his aching shaft.

Lost in breathless agony, Toran felt more than saw her approach. When she placed a small hand on his knee, a shiver raced across his skin. At her touch, a soothing yet demanding power commanded him to take her to bed.

Knifing upwards, he fisted her hair and pulled her down towards him.
 

Their connection burned.
 

Desperate to feel her naked flesh, he unleashed a surge of venna. The faine cried out as his otherworldly power ripped the robe from her shoulders and tossed it to the floor. Now bare to him, the rose-tipped buds of her breasts heaved tantalizingly close to his mouth.

Unable to resist, he licked a puckered tip before greedily taking the whole of it, and more, into the heat of his mouth, laving and sucking wetly, the bead a delicious morsel hard against his tongue. Her arms wrapped around his head, holding on tight as she writhed against his mouth, her breathless little moans filling his head, spurring him on.
 

Toran pulled back, eager to witness her need. Naked and beautifully aroused, her breast wet from his mouth, the faine’s eyes blazed with desire.

Mine.

Hand tight at her neck, Toran twisted her down and pinned her body to the bed. Nudging her knees open, he rolled into her welcoming heat, his cock poised and ready in the cradle of her thighs, the tip perfectly cupped in the dip of her core.

With a single thrust, Toran could be inside her. His body shook under the weight of the temptation, his venna growing restless and eager to take its share.
 

Though every instinct within him screamed
take her
, the tiniest prick of conscience flickered in his brain, a whisper of warning that what he was about to do was wrong.
 

Gods help him, Toran feared it wasn’t nearly loud enough to stop him from taking what was his to take.

*****

Since the last strains of venna had bled from her body nearly six hundred years ago, Liv had yearned for a connection with this daemon, the dream in her heart so intense, it had almost been enough to drown out the sadness of being lost in a world without touch.
 

Now, body alive with his venna, his shaft hard and insistent against the pulsing ache at her core, Liv knew her dreams were just that… the silly imaginings of a girl who was clueless about what it meant to feel.
 

Nothing had prepared her for the cacophony of sensations that crashed against her soul. She strained into the heaviness of hard muscle and bone, the heat between their bodies growing slicker and hotter with his sweat. Her skin prickled under the ticklish rasp of his whiskers as Toran licked and nipped her sensitive neck. She called out his name as calloused hands cupped and squeezed her breasts, his rough touch made gentle with the tender swipe of thumb against achy nipple.
 

At each new assault on her senses, the need she had for him intensified. Wrapping her legs around his hips, she pressed her pelvis hard against his length.
 

Wherever their bodies touched, the insistent vibration of venna buzzed, its electrifying caress like a thousand fiery tongues flicking against her skin.

Straining to take his mouth in a pleading kiss, Liv was beyond begging him to take her.

Yet, instead of heeding her call, Toran turned away from her seeking lips. Levering up on straightened arms, he shifted abruptly onto his knees. She cried out at the loss of his touch, digging her fingernails into the skin of his shoulders, desperate to keep their connection.
 

Grimacing as if in pain, he shrugged off her hold. His tension––and guilty hesitation––were palpable.

At his slight, Liv blinked in embarrassed confusion before scrambling to try to escape from where he held her caged within his limbs.
 

“No,” he commanded, his voice a raspy growl. Collapsing down, Toran wrapped his arms around her waist and pressed a stubbled cheek to her chest, pinning her beneath him.

“Just give me a minute.” His breath was uneven, his venna hot against her breast. “Okay?”

She gave a hesitant nod.

They lay together in awkward silence, him on his haunches, his face buried in her bosom… her, uneasy.
 

Long minutes later, he lifted up, his breath still unsteady, his beautiful body taut with tension. Quivering with need, Liv watched as Toran tentatively shifted to press once again against her heat.
 

His eyes slid shut.

With a low and needy moan, she arched her back to intensify their connection, reveling in the feel of the heaviness that probed gently at her opening. She clutched his shoulders.

“Oh gods,” Liv whispered as she pressed up hard and wanting against him. “Please, Tor. Please.”

She felt the moment his control slipped. At her whimpered plea, his venna crashed bright in the night. Liv’s world was spun topsy-turvy as Toran flipped her to her stomach and pulled her roughly to her knees.

With a shout that ringed of defeat, he plunged into her wetness.

*****

At his merciless thrust, Liv cried out in what sounded like pain. Toran’s conscience reared up in answer only to be drowned out by the pounding heartbeat between his ears.

Ah, gods, her heat.

Adrift in a sea of lust, Toran was helpless to stop himself.

Desperate for more, he leaned back on his knees, seeking leverage, never ceasing his driving rhythm. Snaking an arm around her hips, he pulled her body harder against the heat of his friction.

His body thrummed with the need to come, his venna rumbling in eager warning.

Unbidden, his cousin’s words echoed in his mind.

Plant a babe in her.

Gods, yes.
 

He quickened his pace.
 

Eyes screwed tight in helpless concentration, Toran drove harder, deeper. The faine pressed back against him, wanting him, her soft mewling cries spurring him on.

Ah, gods, I’m about to come.

In the span of that heartbeat, he rammed to a stop.
 

Seized by a thundering panic, Toran forced his heavy eyelids open to peer down his heaving torso to where his body joined with hers. As if lost in a dream, he took in the slimness of her waist, her body so small nestled into the heft of his own, the whiteness of her bottom pressed tight against the darkness of his groin.

Though a jolt of pure ecstasy tore through him as his faine shifted her pelvis against him, a nightmare subverted all thoughts of pleasure.

What the fuck am I doing?
 

With a shout, Toran pulled out into the cold. He staggered backwards, nearly falling to the floor.

Spinning away, he fell forward against the wall, arms extended, palms wide apart, his cock jutting proudly from his groin, unsubdued and eager for more.
 

His venna seethed in the air.

Toran could not risk looking at Liv, soft and warm in his bed. The commingled scent of their sex, heavy in the room, wreaked havoc with his senses, his very reasoning.

He stood that way for an agonized minute, unable to face her, yet despairing of the loss of connection.

“Go back to your bed, faine,” he finally said to the wall in front of him.

Not waiting for an answer, Toran forced himself away. He slipped inside the bathroom and closed the door, desperately needing some distance, some time to conquer the aggression, the terror…
the pain
… that threatened to overwhelm him.
 

The bright light of the bathroom offered no comfort.

Instead, it revealed his latest shame.
 

His cock, still glistening with the juices of their joining, was stained with virgin blood.
 

Motionless on her elbows and knees, Liv was just as Toran had left her when he pulled out and away.
 

She panted in frozen confusion, her head spinning from the roller coaster of sensation she’d just experienced. In the span of mere minutes, she had felt the exquisite friction of his cock against her cleft morph into pain at his forceful invasion. A pinched sting of discomfort had quickly faded into pleasure as he thrust inside her, his venna healing any hurt in an instant.

Now, she was just stunned.
 

Blowing out a breath, she sat back on her haunches. Strength such that Liv had never known surged through her veins.

Toran's essence, so real, so demanding, so capable of eliciting such raw emotion, now opened her mind to a whole new sensation.

Liv was
pissed.

Furious, she leapt from the bed and swiped her robe off the floor. Threading her arms through the sleeves, she marched towards the bathroom.

“Open this door.” Liv rattled the knob before raising a fist and banging it against the wood.

There was no answer.

Coward.

Summoning strength from only the gods knew where, Liv tensed her body and, for the first time in her life, propelled herself on her own through the Mythos.

She found him on the other side of the door.

“What the fuck?” At her unexpected entrance, Toran ripped a towel off the rack and wrapped it around his waist. “Leave me be, faine.”

How dare he.

“No!” Liv jabbed a finger into his still-heaving chest. “You do not get to do this!” She jabbed at him again. “You do not get to do this to me. Not again…”

He wrapped a meaty fist around her fingers and squeezed. Despite the aggressiveness of his action, she sensed he was trying his best not to hurt her.

“Do not provoke me.” His voice was quiet and calm, but his eyes raged an electric blue. He leaned into her hand, his fingers intertwined with hers, and pressed it against his chest.