The Warlord Wants Forever (8 page)

She clenched her jaw.

“How do you find those facts? Answer honestly. Now.”

“I find them…. They might be…. It might be fated,” she bit out.

“We might be fated.” He’d already known this without doubt. He couldn’t believe his heart would beat for a woman that could never love him back. Of course, she’d said there’d been others she’d blooded—then kiled.

“Yes, but just because we’ve been set up by a fate with a sick sense of humor doesn’t mean my feelings about you wil change. Are you going to keep me prisoner for eternity?”

“Before I let you go philander with your demigods? Yes.”

Her slim shoulders stiffened and she stood.

He lay back, proudly ogling his Bride’s ass as she sauntered around the room, studying her new surroundings. Myst couldn’t merely walk, he’d discovered—her every movement was the stuff of fantasy, her every touch as wel. He hadn’t even gotten the chance to claim her last night because he’d been so enthraled with her wet kiss, but he was hard yet again and would remedy that soon.

“So what miraculous feat of engineering brought modern plumbing to this schwag place?”

Schwag? He frowned at her question, watching as she ran her hand along an old papered wal. She opened a rusted shutter and gazed out the window into the night, seeing, he knew, tangled gardens blighted with neglect. He had a sudden urge to make an excuse as to why his home was in this condition.

“You’re actualy going to keep me here? Your torture is fiendish and boundless, Wroth.”

He clenched his jaw, then said, “As I told you, here is caled Blachmount and it used to be awing and wil be so again, but the estate’s been abandoned for many years.

While I searched for you, I lived in New Orleans, and in Oblak before that. I only come here on occasion.” When he missed his family.

She sighed, meandering to her pile of clothes, ripped and dirty on the floor. She stared at them then blinked up at him, clearly wondering what his next move would be. It hit him ful force that no matter how he felt about her, it was his responsibility to take care of her. His stunning wife, with her wild red hair and her soft, pale skin, who was so utterly out of place here, would be living with him under his roof—he’d best get this ancient shel of a keep back to its former glory and give her a home as befitted her.

He knew there would be things she would require that he couldn’t anticipate, because he was beyond unknowing when it came to female needs. Did he dare take her to get her things?

As soon as he’d realized where she lived, he’d left Oblak behind and had had Murdoch purchase a property far from the crowds of New Orleans where they could live during the search. Wroth could’ve traced back and forth, but the time change meant each night he’d face dawn back in Oblak. Plus he’d been weak, and tracing the shorter distance to the renovated mil on the outskirts of town had been less demanding.

Now he needed to return to the mil for the large supply of blood he’d left there. He was thirstier than usual, and claiming her in this condition would not be wise. He assured himself it was only because his appetite had been reawakened and not because throughout the day, he’d dreamed of drinking from her white thighs.

He could check in with Murdoch, send word to Kristoff that he’d found his Bride, and drink in preparation of finaly claiming her. While in New Orleans, he might as wel visit a Valkyrie den.

“We go for your belongings tonight.”

H ow are we going to do that?” she asked. “You can only trace to places you’ve been to at least once.”

“But I can drive anywhere,” Wroth replied casualy, every inch a modern warlord.

So she was to return to her home in ripped clothing, with her skin stil flushed from last night, her body stil singing for a vampire’s touch.

Lovely.

She would never live this down. And for an immortal, never was a particularly woeful proposition.

Yes, going back to Val Hal would mean a possibility for escape, but he could kil one of her sisters if they tried to free her. When he rose and strode to his closet, she studied his body, noting yet again how incredibly strong he was.

He turned and tossed her a button-down, catching her gaze just as it drifted south to his hard shaft. She almost missed the shirt and he smirked, making her jerk her face away. “Come here,” he ordered and she dragged her feet over. His hands reached out to pile her hair up, just so he could lean down and breathe along her neck, then murmur in her ear, “Bride, this is embarrassing. I think I’ve caught you staring at my cock,” making her quiver. She’d teased him the same way when his eyes had been riveted to her neck so many years ago. He added in a sensual rumble, “You like it, don’t you?”

When the question sunk in, her eyes went wide with disbelief, the spel broken. How could he ask her that? When she would be forced to answer? His lips hovering over her shoulder, he said, “Answer me honestly.”

I want to curl up between your legs, rest my head at your hip, and draw you over into my mouth to taste you for hours, she almost said, then negotiated her mind into another honest answer: “It’s too big.”

He dropped her hair, smirking again. “So it terrifies you more than tantalizes?” he asked using the words she remembered wel.

Knowing he was getting his revenge little by little, she gritted her teeth against her answer but lost. “Both.”

He clucked her under the chin. “I’l be sure to break you in slowly, ride you easy the first few times.”

Myst of the witty banter and dripping sexual innuendo was speechless. Break her in? Arrogant! When he turned for the shower, she tried not to stare at his back and how it tapered to his narrow hips and his muscled ass with the hard holows on the sides. She’d been right, it did beg to be clutched.

Damn her claws for curling—

“I believe you like everything about me,” he rumbled from inside the bathroom.

She gazed at the ceiling, embarrassed as she couldn’t remember ever being before. Of course he’d known she was staring, probably by the holes she was burning into his skin. As she dressed, she thought that he was right—she was tantalized, and she did like everything about him physicaly. The way he’d made her feel last night left no doubt in her mind that he could not only get her to ask for him inside her, but beg.

She needed to escape before then, before he “claimed” her. He hadn’t drunk from her and they hadn’t had sex. As long as those two things stayed sacred she could get past this patch in her life.

When he returned to the room, dressed like a male dream, she felt like shuffling her feet for her ridiculous getup, draped in his shirt that fel to her knees. She had never felt insecure before. But she didn’t have long to ponder it, because he put his hands on her waist. “Are you ready?” he asked, staring down at her. Ready? To kiss him, hug him, go to her knees? What?

He puled her to his body, wrapping his arms around her. “Close your eyes,” he commanded. She did. “Open them.”

Suddenly, they were in a garage. This was the first time she’d traced and been able to think about the process. She’d dropped an intoxispel or two in her day and found tracing on par with that. She was unsteady at first, but the air smeled like bayou at high tide, which she liked, and was heavy with humidity. New Orleans, but where? “What is this place?” she asked, breaking away from him to look around.

“An old restored mil north of the city,” Wroth answered. “Where I stayed while scouring the streets for you for as long as I could manage every night. Before colapsing in agony and weakness.”

She looked away quickly, fighting a flare of guilt—and spotted his cars. She tried to be cool, but of course, Wroth caught her eyeing them—especialy the Maserati Spyder—and she knew he’d seen her flicker of appreciation. The Valkyrie prized fine things. They were acquisitive to a fault—it simply couldn’t be helped. Her own mother had told her that Myst’s first word was, roughly translated, gimme.

He opened her door to the Spyder, and once she was inside, she curled up on the soft leather, loving it. Joining her, he cast her an inscrutable expression. “We are fortunate, Myst. You’l want for nothing as my wife.”

She’d already been fortunate. She already wanted for nothing. The coven divvied their colective earnings from investments, and the take was always incredibly generous.

She had enough money to buy any clothing that struck her fancy, to purchase two thousand dolar hand-painted lingerie sets to placate her obsession. In a deadened tone, she mumbled, “Oh joy. I’m rich.”

He commanded her to direct him to her home, not in itself an unforgivable crime. They didn’t hide their address like the Bat Cave, yet they didn’t often have trespassers at Val Hal. When his breath hissed in at the sight of the manor, she was reminded why.

“This is where you live?” he bit out, forearms resting on the steering wheel, his tone incredulous.

She tried to see it from his eyes. Fog shrouded the property, and bolts of light iluminated it in a staccato rhythm. There were lightning rods everywhere, but sometimes they didn’t catch al the lightning, as evidenced by the massive oaks in the yard stil lazily giving up smoke. And the wood nymphs—those little hookers—were way behind on repairing the trees. If Myst heard them whine, “But Mysty baby, there was this orgy,” as an excuse one more time—

“Helish,” Wroth said.

She tilted her head. In the olden days they used to stick a sword into the ground to mark a grave, and she’d always fancied that the rods made this place look like one of those mass burial sites. Even at this distance, shrieks could be heard coming from within. The Valkyrie often screamed. If Annika got angry enough, car alarms in three parishes would blare.

Okay, it might be a bit helish.

“It’s time you had someone take you from here,” he bit out as he continued closer.

She frowned at him. “You forget. This is where I belong. I’m as much monster as what lies within.”

“You’re a lot of things, Bride. But you’re not a monster.”

“You’re right. I’m what monsters like you fear beneath their beds.”

“But now you’re in my bed where you belong.”

“So in this life of ours that your crazed mind envisions, I’m not going to fight?”

He shook his head as he parked down the gravel drive. “No. I’m wel aware that you’re deceptively strong. I know that other beings would rather die than risk your wrath.

But I won’t ever alow you to put yourself in danger again.”

She batted her eyelashes at him and in a syrupy voice said, “Because I’m just so darn precious to you?”

“Yes,” he answered simply, making her rol her eyes. He got out of the car, and she folowed, but he quickly traced to open it for her, looking at her as if she was crazy not to wait for him to assist her.

Perfect. A gentleman warrior. Which she was discovering she might have a weakness for.

As they walked the drive, he said, “Hold my hand.”

“Big vampire scared the wittle Valkyrie wil get away?”

He turned to her with his brows drawn. “I just want to hold your hand.”

What was that flutter in her stomach? And why didn’t she mind that her hand was slipping into his big, rough one to be completely enveloped and secured? They walked like this to the side of the cavernous thirty-room mansion.

He was tense here, ready to trace them away in a split second, and she almost felt sorry for him when she realized he’d never seen anything like her home before. He was of the Lore, and yet in so many ways he was as human as he’d once been.

When he made her point out the window to her room, showing him a destination, he was able to trace them again. Inside, he scanned the lace and silk filed space with those discerning eyes, studying everything within. She was the girlie-girl of the coven with her candles and silk sheets, her room and lifestyle the most human-like of any of them.

Her room was next to Cara’s, which housed only a spartan sleeping mat, her ancient winged helmets, and a string of vampire fangs she’d taken as trophies. Across the galery was the room of petite, timid Emmaline. Though she was part Valkyrie, she was a vampire through and through and made her little nest on the floor under her unused bed.

It could be argued that Emma proved that not al vampires were evil and that the coven could coexist with one. Yet Emma had been the daughter of a beloved Valkyrie, and that half was believed to “temper” the other. An exception had been made for her, but Myst often wondered if she was the only one who noticed Emma flinch and tremble, her big blue eyes glinting with apprehension whenever the coven shrieked and railed about kiling leeches. “Present company excepted” realy was a weak statement when one thought about it.

“So what do you want me to pack?” Myst asked.

He raised an eyebrow. “You should be used to this. Choose clothes as if you were going away with your lover.”

Her hands clenched as she crossed to her drawers that housed her Agent Provocateur, Strumpet & Pink, and Jilian Sherry colections, and those were mass purchases from just last week. “Depends on which lover.” She plucked out a red leather quarter-cup bra and a baby-dol teddy that was completely translucent, then held them up for him.

“Both,” he rasped, his expression pained. She saw he was getting hard again. He noticed her noticing and his eyes darkened.

Assuming a brisk manner, she crossed to the closet to gather a weekender bag, but he picked her up bodily by the waist and set her out of the way to gather a four-foot-long moving case. He dropped it at her feet. “Fil it, because you’re never coming back to this place.”

At his words, she nodded, making it somehow sarcastic, and he knew she was thinking to herself how wrong he was. He exhaled wearily. If he had to battle against her for the rest of their lives, he would.

He moved to assist her, but every drawer in her room was ful of thongs, hose, lace and little silk nightgowns that made his blood pound. She had a drawer for nothing but garters. It would take him months to bite al of these off her body.

He frowned. Women wore clothes like this for a lover. How many did she currently have? When he imagined them relishing her beauty, the gold chain slapping against her body as she writhed on them, he crumpled the iron post end of her bed.