Darkness Devours (23 page)

I sighed softly, then jumped a little as my cell phone rang.

I dug it out of the pocket of my discarded jeans, and said, “Hello?”

“I must say,” a familiar voice drawled, “I am very disappointed.”

Lucian
. Damn it, he was the
last
person I wanted to talk to right now, even if my hormones were suddenly saying otherwise. And what was it about this man that got to me so quickly? I hadn’t thought about him all fucking day, and yet the minute I heard his voice, I became a seething mass of need.

If I hadn’t known otherwise, I’d have said he’d put some sort of spell on me—except that Ilianna would have spotted anything like that.

“What do you want, Lucian?”

It was tersely said, but he didn’t seem to notice. His soft laugh ran across my senses as sweetly as a caress.

“What do you think I want? You, on me, under me. I want to feel your supple body, want to caress your silken skin, want to lose myself in the wonder of loving you.”

Each word had visions of our tangled bodies rising, and sweat prickled across my skin. I closed my eyes and sagged back against the bathroom wall. I could resist this. I could resist
him
.

“Only trouble is,” I said, the anger in my voice aimed more at myself than at him, “I don’t want to see or feel you. I’ve already told you that.”

“I may not be able to feel your need, but I can hear the lie in your words, Risa.”

“I don’t care. I said at least forty-eight hours and I meant it. Maybe next time you’ll reconsider the roughhouse tactics and try a little more respect.”

And with that, I hung up, and turned my phone off for good measure. It would piss him off even more, but I really needed to make the point.

Although what I
really
needed— I stopped the thought and frowned. Because if I was honest, what I
needed
and what I
wanted
were two entirely different things. I might need Lucian’s brand of loving with a fierceness that was indescribable, but the person I
wanted
was Azriel.

And yet, I still feared taking that step. Still feared
where it would lead, and what would happen when all this was over and he left for good.

Because I had a suspicion that if I let Azriel in, he could lay waste to my emotional being far more easily than Jak ever had.

I took a deep breath and slowly released it.

I couldn’t risk it. I
shouldn’t
risk it.

I closed my eyes and knew that more than likely I
would
risk it.

I shook my head at my own recklessness and walked into the main room. Where I stopped. Azriel was standing in his usual spot at the window, but his arms were crossed and tension rode his shoulders. Valdis was oddly silent. Neither of them was giving me any clue as to what he was feeling or thinking.

But in many ways, that was clue enough. After all, he knew precisely what I’d been thinking.

“Just because I can read your thoughts does not mean I always do,” he said softly.

“And yet you are right now.”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“And what?”

I scanned his broad back, willing him to turn around and face me. He didn’t. Meaning he wasn’t about to make this easy. This step, if I took it, would be my decision and my decision alone. Despite his words earlier, he wouldn’t do anything further to influence me. “You have no thoughts? No desires?”

“I have plenty of both, but ideally, none of them are ones that I should act upon.”

I forced my feet forward, closing the distance between
us. Even though the heat radiating off him burned across my skin, making my breath catch and my pulse race, the few inches that now separated us still felt like a mile or more.

“And realistically?”

“Realistically, I wish to plunge Valdis’s screaming heart into the Aedh’s flesh and rip him asunder.”

Though there was no emotion in his voice, I felt it nonetheless. It burned inside me, bright and fierce. I licked my lips, wondering why I was suddenly so attuned to him. “Why do you want to kill him?”

He didn’t answer, but just for a moment, flames flickered down Valdis’s side, rich and red. The color of anger. The color of desire. It stirred through the threads of my being as sweetly as a caress.

“I didn’t think reapers were capable of an emotion as strong as jealousy.” I was standing so close to him that my breath washed across his shoulders as I spoke. His skin twitched so sharply it was almost as if I were flaying him.

“It is not jealousy,” he retorted. “I simply do not trust him. And I do not like the timing of that phone call, so soon after Logan was killed.”

“Lucian didn’t kill Logan. You found the shooter.”

“Yes, but who controlled the shooter? He was a Razan, Risa. Maybe he was Lucian’s Razan.”

“Lucian hasn’t got Razan.”

“How can you be sure of that? He has been on this earth for a long, long time. He may now revel in pleasure, but have no doubt he has also become proficient at lying.”

“You and I know it’s more a guess than a certainty.”
I raised a hand and brushed my fingertips across the back of his neck, following the swirling tribal patterns inked into his skin. A dark fire seemed to ignite deep in the heart of them. “Lucian said he’d been stripped of most Aedh powers—how then could he possibly create human slaves
and
sustain them?”

“I am sure he can do more than what he says.”

“So you have proof of this? Or is it merely distrust and dislike?”

He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. I let my fingers slide down to the stylized black Dušan that dominated the left half of his back. It, too, seemed to gleam with a dark fire when I touched it. But then, it was alive, even if it couldn’t gain form on this plane.

“That distrust,” I continued softly, “isn’t the only reason for your sudden need to kill Lucian, is it?”

“No.”

“Then why the change?”

Even as I asked the question I had my doubts that he would answer it. But once again he surprised me.

“Because,” he said, his voice even though the air around us suddenly seemed to crackle with anger and tension—the same sort of tension that rode his powerful body. “He is the reason you are standing where you are, contemplating what you are.”

“No, he isn’t.”

“Do you deny the desire he raised when he called?”

“No.” I ran my fingers back up the tribal patterns. A tremor moved through him as I touched the one that resembled a comet trailing fire. “But he is not the reason I’m standing here, Azriel. He’s not the one I want right now.”

“But you will want him in the future?”

I hesitated, but there was no denying the reality of the situation. I would have sex with Lucian in the future—partly because I generally enjoyed being with him and partly because it was a means of self-preservation. If Jak had taught me anything, it was never to invest too much of myself in a relationship unless I was absolutely certain it was that “forever” one. And neither Lucian nor Azriel could be that, no matter how much I might enjoy being with Lucian or how strong the pull toward Azriel.

“Yes,” I said eventually, and let my hand drop back to my side. “I will continue seeing Lucian. But that does not mean I cannot also be with you. Werewolves are by nature—”

“Do not,” he interrupted sharply, “use your werewolf heritage as an excuse. It is fear that governs your actions on this, nothing more, nothing less.”

“I prefer to call it self-preservation.” I stepped back from him, though it was the last thing I wanted to do. “You said I couldn’t continue to deny what is between us. Well, I’m not. But I will not commit wholly to something that must end when all this is over. If you want otherwise, then I’m sorry, but I just can’t do it.”

“And I do not know if I—” He cut the words off and took a deep breath. Then, finally, he turned around to face me. His mismatched blue eyes were turbulent and dark, but the emotions moved through them too quickly to identify. “You once wondered what it would be like to make love to a reaper. That is not something I can share with you. You are not ready for it.”

I raised my eyebrows, but said nothing, simply because I sensed a “but” coming.

The smile that twisted his lips was a brief acknowledgment that he was still following my thoughts.

“But,” he said softly, lightly pressing his palm against my cheek, “I
can
share what it is like to be with a reaper in human form. And perhaps in the end that will be less dangerous for us both.”

He didn’t mean physically dangerous. He meant emotionally. And he was wrong on both counts. He was breaking all reaper rules, and I was risking my heart yet again—how could any form of relationship between us not be considered dangerous?

And yet, as he’d noted earlier, sometimes the gain was worth the punishment—or the broken heart, as I suspected might be the case for me if I wasn’t very, very careful.

“I don’t care what form you’re in, Azriel,” I said, meeting his gaze steadily. “I just want you. Here. Now.”

His hand slid from my cheek to the back of my neck, then gently tugged me closer.

“Well, then,” he said, his words a warm caress that made my lips tingle, “I guess I have no choice.”

And with that, he kissed me. Gently and sweetly, as if this moment was something so very rare and precious, and he was intent on enjoying it for as long as he could.

But it was also a whole lot more than just a kiss, because the minute our lips met, energy swept through me, until my nerve endings were more alive than they had ever been, and quivering with… with what? It wasn’t desire, not really. It was more than that.
Bigger
than that. It was as if I stood on the edge of a precipice reaching for something far beyond my understanding.

As the kiss deepened, I wrapped my arms around his neck and pressed against him, until the only thing separating us was the thin layers of our clothing. Yet it still felt like heated flesh against heated flesh, need against need. His hand slipped down my spine, his touch light but devastating, making me tremble in a way I’d never trembled before. Because it wasn’t just his touch—it was the press of his body against mine, the flow of energy around us, the gentle dance of awareness that seemed to ebb and flow with every breath, as if somehow more than just our physical selves was involved in this dance.

Then his lips left mine and lightly brushed my chin. I raised my face and sighed in pleasure as his kisses moved down my neck. When he reached the collar of my shirt, he pulled back slightly and undid the first button, then kissed the skin he’d exposed. I closed my eyes and shuddered in delight. He moved down to the next button, slowly undoing it, pressing the shirt farther apart, then kissing the newly exposed skin.

Too slow,
I thought.
Far too damn slow
.

I raised my hands and ran them across the muscular planes of his chest. His breath hitched; then he caught my hands and pulled them away.

“This,” he said gently, though his gaze burned with determination and something else, something that made me quiver with expectation and just a tiny bit of fear, “is for you. I want to explore you, worship you. Just feel, Risa. Just enjoy.”

“I don’t—”
know if I could survive that
. Which was
silly, and yet I couldn’t ignore that niggle of fear that continued to burn within the desire.

But I’d made the decision, taken the step, and I would not back out. I doubted I could have even if I’d wanted to—the connection between us was far too strong to ignore now.

“Please,” he said softly, “let me give you this, if nothing else.”

I nodded. There was nothing else I could do. Nothing else I could say.

He undid the next button, spreading the shirt wider and kissing the exposed skin. Then he repeated the process, one button at a time, down my body. I quivered every time his lips touched my flesh, until it felt like I was floating on a growing haze of desire, need, and expectation.

Finally, when all the buttons were undone, he trailed his kisses back up my body, then briefly claimed my lips as he slid the shirt from my shoulders. As it fell around my feet, he stepped back a little, his heated gaze roaming across my breasts and stomach as if he’d never seen me naked before. Then, with a slight groan, he bent and captured one hard nipple in his mouth. I gasped, gripping his shoulders as he licked, and nipped, and teased, my body so assaulted with sensation that my knees felt weak. When he moved to my other breast, I whimpered, unable to stand the torture of being touched and yet not being able to touch. God, I so wanted—

No
. The soft word flowed into my mind, a command I could not disobey.

And he continued the sweet torture, until it was all I could do not to scream in pleasure and frustration.

Finally, he relented, and his kisses moved back down my belly again. He ran his tongue along the edge of my panty line and it felt like he was branding me. I shivered; then my breath caught somewhere in the back of my throat as he hooked his fingers under the top elastic and drew them down my legs. Once I’d stepped out of them, he tossed them to one side, then quickly rose, catching my hand and leading me to the bed.

Where, once I was lying down, he kissed me again, heated and hard, with all the desperation of a man at the edge of his tether. And the kiss… it was so much more. It was heat and desire and need, yes, but it was also a dance of beings, of souls, as if in this one moment, we were almost one, not two.

Almost.

He pulled back with a suddenness that had me gasping and, for a moment, simply stared at me. Then he closed his eyes and took a deep breath, as if he were battling for control.

Once again, he began his slow and torturous journey down my stomach, assailing me with his kisses. As my body twitched and burned, I wondered how the hell I was going to stand much more without giving in to the need to take what I wanted—him. In me, loving me. Hard.

Then his tongue flicked over my clit and my breath escaped in a whoosh as delight exploded through me. I groaned, arching up against him, urging him on, wanting him to explore further, deeper. His tongue
swirled around my outer lips as he gripped my hips, holding me steady as he tasted and teased, until I couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, could only feel. And I felt as if I were about to explode.