Broken Vow (14 page)

Sonya quivered at the backhanded compliment, feeling the magnitude of emptiness that followed once the heavy door creaked shut. Her heart bled in devastation and loneliness. God she missed Nimbus so much. The hole he'd left inside of her only grew the more time went on. If something didn't fill it soon, she knew the chasm would swallow her whole and consume her with eternal darkness.

Chapter Seven:

Soulless

Dante knew Sonya was in trouble, but he had to wrestle with the demon inside of him for quite a while before he finally did anything about it. The fiend, whoever he was, apparently wanted to hurt Sonya, but the wolf in him couldn't bear it.

Dante hurried back to Drakkar's mansion in time to see the vampire drive away with a woman and a man who looked very familiar, but Dante couldn't place where he knew him from. He sneaked around to the back, somehow sensing that Sonya was still inside the house. He broke a window and climbed inside.

It was strange to feel some kind of invisible pull calling him toward her. He'd never experienced that with anyone before, only with her. He followed his instincts down to the basement. He knew Drakkar had turned it into a dungeon.

Sure enough Sonya was sitting on the floor in the dark without any clothes on. His fists clenched in rage. Drakkar had used her and possibly the others had too. Dante flipped the light on and watched her squint as she attempted to adjust to the sudden change in brightness.

“Sonya, it's me.”

She glanced up at him and her jaw dropped in astonishment as sincere relief entered her fetching brown eyes. “Dante?”

“I came to get you out of here.” He remembered where the key was from back when he worked with Drakkar.

“How did you know where I was?”

“I followed your scent here. I've been trying to get a hold of you all morning. What did they do to you?” He unshackled her.

“Dante, behind you!”

He whirled around to see Alfred, the butler pointing a revolver at him. “You don't want to do that, Alfred.”

“Oh no, Sir, you're the one who doesn't want to continue on your course of action,” Alfred countered.

Dante raised his hands slightly. If those were regular bullets he'd be fine. If they were silver bullets then he was in deep shit. “I don't want to hurt you, old man.”

“He took advantage of me,” Sonya told him.

The old man was going down. Dante's fangs lowered and his eyes changed as he attacked the man. He knocked Alfred unconscious and was about to finish him off.

“Dante, no! You stopped him. Don't kill him. It's not right.”

“I'm a vampire. I've killed before.”

“You have a soul now,” she reminded him. “I don't want you to have to live with the guilt of murder. Please, it's not worth it.”

He couldn't resist her when she pleaded with him so earnestly like that. Dante stood and unchained her. After she quickly redressed, they climbed out the broken window and made a mad dash across the lawn.

“I hid my car out of sight,” he told her while they ran. “How could you correspond with another man behind my back?”

“Excuse me? What are you talking about?”

They climbed into the car together and he fired up the engine and sped away.

“You know damned well what I'm talking about.” His knuckles clenched white against the steering wheel as he flew down the road. “I followed you here earlier. I overheard you tell Alfred that you were responding to Drakkar's ad in the personal column. You want to explain to me what that's about?”

Sonya looked annoyed by his suspicion. “I was on a mission.”

“To get laid?” he snorted in jealousy.

Her features pulled together in aggravation. “No! I was supposed to kill Drakkar, but it didn't work. He's not just a sanguinary vampire. He's a more advanced breed and he's something else, but he wouldn't tell me. I don't know how to kill him.”

“The demon knows. I used to own the sex club,
Ane Rouge,
with Drakkar, but once I got a soul, he threw me out in disgust. I used to know what he was, but once I saw you at his house, the memory of his species vanished,” Dante explained, shaking his head in frustration. “I think the demon inside of me is stealing memories of important information to keep me from helping you.”

“Why?”

He turned and looked at her seriously. “He wants to hurt you, Sonya. I don't know why, but he wants to hurt you very badly. If you knew some of the thoughts he puts in my head sometimes, you'd never speak to me again.”

She placed her hand on his thigh to comfort him, but the simple gesture made his cock happy in his pants. Christ, he wanted her. He wanted her so bad he was tempted to give into the demon and just have his way with her. His violent, passionate, soul-damning way, her feelings be damned.

But he couldn't. He loved her and the would-be preacher of a wolf in him shunned the idea with a vehement loathing that was almost as strong as his forbidden desire for her.

“It's not your fault, Dante,” Sonya told him. “There's no sin in being tempted, only in giving into the temptation. Just out of curiosity, what kinds of things does this demon want to do to me?”

“It's sick stuff. I don't want to tell you.”

“Oh, come on. Tell me. Please.”

He sighed. “He wants to torture you. He wants to hold you down and rape you really bad. He wants others to hurt and use you as well. And he wants to make a baby with you.”

Her lips quirked into a cute, little smile. “Why would he want to make a baby with me? Are you sure that part's not just your desire getting in the way?”

He grinned and shrugged. “Yeah, maybe. I don't know. He wants to drag you down to hell with him and keep you by his side forever.”

“Well, Dante, I have news for you. That would pretty much describe the majority of demons. I'm sure this fiend just wants to see me fall since I'm part angelic. That's just the way they are. It's nothing to worry about.”

“I do worry about it, Sonya.” He grappled for her hand, needing to feel her warm softness against his skin again. “I knew Drakkar was part vampire and that he killed two black angels. I was appalled and wanted to save you, but I couldn't. The demon wanted you to get hurt and made me walk away from the situation. After a long time of wrestling with my conscience, I finally came back to rescue you.”

Sonya looked disturbed by his confession, but she was sweet enough not to pull her hand away from his. “I don't understand. You have a soul. Why did he almost win control over you?”

Dante shook his head, feeling cold with worry. “I don't know. In the beginning keeping a rein on him was effortless, but the more time goes on, it's like he's getting stronger and craftier. It gets worse whenever I'm around you. That's why I almost attacked you last night. If I didn't have a soul I wouldn't have been able to stop him.”

Her fingers caressed the top of his hand and her countenance glowed with affection. “It's not your fault.”

“He would've hurt you, Sonya, and maybe the baby too.”

She gaped at him. “You saw my pregnancy test on your bathroom counter?”

Dante nodded. “Yeah, when were you planning on telling me about it?”

“I didn't know how. We just broke up last night. I didn't know how you’d respond.”

“We didn't break up, babe. You left me.”

Her eyes closed in grief. “I shouldn't have.”

“Then don't. Let's get back together. We can raise our baby together and be a family.”

Her eyes reopened and her face pleaded with him. “Please don't tempt me. I really want that.”

“Then what's the problem? We don't have to have sex if it's against your religion.”

She rolled her eyes. “It's not against my religion. It's against my vows to sleep with vampires. And do you really think we can be together without having sex?”

He grinned. “No. I'd want you all the time.”

“I wouldn't be able to control myself around you either.” Her head rested back against the headrest with a sigh of longing. “Why do I always choose the wrong men?”

“Maybe you don't. Maybe you just choose to serve the wrong master.”

Her brow tilted in warning when she looked at him. “Tell that inner demon to shut his mouth. I serve only God.”

Dante's fingers tightened against the steering wheel. Why did her devotion to a deity piss him off so much? The werewolf in him wanted to be a preacher once for heaven's sake, but there was some dark part of him that wanted to turn her heart away from this God who kept coming between them. Then again, perhaps that was the demon talking, or simply his frustrated sex drive.

“Sorry. I'll try to do a better job of tamping down on his evil urges,” Dante told her.

“What if we just get Tansy to do a reversal of the Soul Fusion spell?” Sonya suggested. “Then the demon will be gone and it’ll just be you. It's fine if I sleep with a werewolf. We can be together.”

His heart clenched at the endearing way she squeezed his hand and the hopeful gleam in her dark brown eyes. “Oh Sonya, I want that more than anything, but with the intensity of this demon's ill-will toward you, I just don't trust him to leave you alone if he were ever freed.”

“That's sweet of you to worry about me, but it's no big deal. He's a vampire. I can just kill him and we'll be free.”

Dante shook his head. “He's not a vampire. The earliest memory I have from him is of him roaming around and taking over this corpse after a vampire was done feeding on it. I don't even think he's a blood demon. I think this body is simply cursed because it was bitten by a vampire, so the demon craves blood as long as he's possessing this body. But it's not what drives him.”

“What then?”

“It's you.”

“Me?”

“Yes. His sole purpose seems to be in finding a way to get to you so he can hurt you and fuck you. He wants that so bad that even having a soul enforced upon him is starting to lose its effect on hindering his evil ways. He wants out, Sonya.” Dante looked at her, feeling choked up at the thought of her ever falling prey to that devil. His palm brushed her cheek and he felt peace at the caring way she looked back at him. “And I'm scared to death that someday he's going to find a way to make that happen.”

“Dante, listen to me. No one and I mean no one is going to keep us apart.” Sonya rubbed his chest, appearing turned on by the muscle she found there before her eyes refocused on his again. “I can't live like this anymore. I want to raise this baby with you, but if you're hell-bent on not doing the spell again, that's fine. But it means we can't sleep together.”

Damn her vows.

“That's going to be impossible.” Dante sighed.

“It will be hard,” she agreed, “but not impossible.”

“Can we at least still kiss?”

She thought about this long and hard. “I don't know. I really want to, but I think we'd better just try being friends for now. I don't want you to never have sex again because of me.”

“Babe, I'd rather be celibate with you than fucking anybody else.”

Her eyes welled. “That's so sweet. Thank you.”

The way her eyes closed when she kissed his cheek was moving. His lids descended briefly at the soft, dulcet touch of her lips against his skin. Difficult was the understatement of a lifetime. Keeping his hands off of Sonya was going to be bloody impossible. Still, he had to try. He couldn't live without her.

* * *

Being friends turned into Sonya moving into Dante's apartment after the baby was born. They named the little girl Faith and didn't tell anyone that she and her father were partially undead. Living in close quarters led to inevitable make outs, but as tempted as they were, they were able to prevent it from going any further...at first.

Tansy watched Faith for them one night a few months after her birth so Sonya and Dante could have a date night together. They went to dinner and a movie and then wandered around downtown afterward. He led her down an alley and shoved her up against the wall in a feverish kiss. He swallowed her happy moan and lifted her shirt.

“I need you,” he whispered as he tugged her left breast out of her bra and suckled her tit.

She'd chosen to give the baby formula rather than nurse, but Dante confided in her his fantasy of drinking milk from her breast, so she let him as long as it didn't get any more sexual than that.

“Someone's coming.” She adjusted her clothing and they walked along whistling and tried not to laugh at having almost been caught.

Once they got home, Sonya got in the shower and Dante lay on the bed, listening to the water run. Just thinking about the hot water pouring down on her luscious, naked body got him hard. Vows or not, he had to have her. If intercourse with him would damn her, then they would just play around with each other and stop before it reached that point. No big deal.

Dante stripped and his cock hardened at her startled gasp when she saw him step into the shower with her.

“What are you doing?”

“I need you,” he murmured.

“I need you too, but we can't.” She looked torn and miserable...and tempted.

“We won't have sex. Just let me touch you.”

“Dante -”

He swallowed down her protest in a deep, lingering kiss that soon became feral and savage as they made out with an almost violent fervor and clawed at the other one's slick body. Dante shoved her up against the wall and kissed a trail down her face on down to her breast. He flicked his tongue against each beaded nipple, relishing her noises of delight.

“Oh, Dante,” she breathed, caressing his bald head.

The flow of her warm, rich milk passing over his eager tongue and down his throat always made him feel close to her. No one else had ever suckled from her breasts save for the son she once had and lost. The intimate act was bonding and Dante always craved her that much stronger after nursing from her swollen tits.

“Oh god, it hurts so badly,” she whispered in an uneven tone.

He kissed each breast reverently. “What hurts, love?”

She whimpered, seeming aroused by the stray trickle of milk that rolled down from her nipple. He caught it with his tongue once the drop reached the underside of her breast and she moaned.

“Here.” She guided his hand to her bare cunt. “It hurts here really bad.”