The Warlord Wants Forever (9 page)

Now she smirked at him, reading him so clearly. “Nikolai, if you can’t control your jealousy, we’re heading straight for divorce.” She tapped her finger on her chin and added, “Make a note now that I’l expect the house, the kids and the helhound. Actualy, you can keep the schwag house.”

He scowled before turning away, examining her belongings for more insight. Her film colection was copious. He was unfamiliar with them, as he was with most things that had to do with leisure time. “Which of these do you prefer?”

She clearly hated having to answer his questions and struggled against it each time. “I like romance and horror.”

“A bit disparate.”

She eyed him. “Funny, I used to think so.”

He ignored that and tossed a few DVDs in the bag.

She put the inside of her forearm behind dozens of bottles of fingernail polish, pushing them over her dresser into the bag. The look she gave him dared him to say something. Nail polish was out of his realm of understanding, and he merely shrugged at her.

He crossed to her bathroom, searching the cabinets and drawers. “There are no medicines. No things…females need.”

“I don’t get il and I don’t have those types of functions. Just like you, vampire.”

“None at al?” He wondered if she could get pregnant. Perhaps he didn’t have to be as careful with that as he’d planned.

“None. Why, you can force me to have sex with you nonstop al month!”

“Why would I force you when I can barely keep your hands—and mouth—off me now?”

“Wroth, darling,” she purred, smiling so sweetly. “I can’t wait for the next time I get to put my mouth on you.” In an instant the smile faded and she snapped her teeth and yanked her head back as if she was chewing something free.

He didn’t even have time to cringe because she wriggled from his shirt then. At the sight of her naked body, his cock shot hard as steel. She sensualy dragged her underwear up her legs and then bent over in only the thong to step into a skirt. Just as he was fighting the overwhelming urge to take her hips and feed himself into her, shrieks erupted from downstairs.

On edge in this place, he moved to peer over the landing outside her room and found ten or more Valkyrie downstairs. Some were lounging in front of a TV, bowls of popcorn in front of them—that they didn’t eat. One was up and sparring with what looked like a ghost or a phantom. When the pair crossed in front of the television, the others screeched and threw popcorn at them.

A smal Valkyrie stalked in the door. She was covered in blood.

“Cara!” they shouted in greeting, completely unsurprised by her appearance.

“What’d you get into tonight?” one asked from her perch on the mantle.

Cara puled her sword sheath from her back. “My human unknowingly went into a demon bar. A demoness thought to make her lover jealous using my charge.” She shook her head. “It was everything I could do to keep the demon from ripping Michael’s throat out with his teeth.”

“How’d you do it?”

Without blinking an eye, she said, “I ripped the demon’s throat out with my teeth.”

When they al laughed, Wroth raised an eyebrow, vowing that Myst would never see these malicious creatures again. Never. Without their influence, she would be kinder, gentler.

She sure as hel couldn’t get worse.

“Have Myst or Daniela returned?” Cara asked.

“No. I’d expect this from Myst—”

Because she often ran off with men?

“—but certainly not from Daniela. She never returned from the Quarter.”

“Wel, the hits keep coming—I just saw Ivo the Cruel in the Quarter.”

When they laughed again, she said, “You should know by now that I do not jest about vampires unless they’re dead.”

They sobered and one asked, “Has he returned for Myst? Somebody needs to warn her.”

Wroth quickly turned back to her room—but Myst was gone.

He traced to the opened window, then to the end of the field below when he caught sight of her sprinting away. He yeled for her to stop and somehow she kept running.

She was fast and might have outrun him with her unnatural speed as she covered miles, but he traced, lunging from that momentum to snag her ankle, tripping her forward.

She wore plugs in her ears from a music player. Enraged, he yanked them from her, heard the music blaring and threw the contraption into the woods beyond.

She’d almost escaped him. Before he’d claimed her. Thoughts grew distant. A shadow fel over his vision. He pinned her down, tossed up her skirt, then ripped the silk from between her legs, glorying in that feeling. He was finaly going to take his Bride.

Hazily, he realized she was stil struggling from him. Her words echoed inside him. “Wroth, you want it? I’l fight you for it.”

He would always fight for her, always. Would he fight her for the right to her body?

“Then you’re mine.”

A nightmare was about to take her.

When his fingers dug into her skin, dragging her beneath him, she knocked her forehead against his. He belowed with rage, until she squirmed around and drove her elbow back into his throat. As he fought for breath, she took advantage by scrambling from him enough to mule-kick his chest, sending him reeling.

Why hadn’t she broken his neck with her elbow through his throat? She had before with other vampires. Why did she hesitate whenever it came to hurting him? She wouldn’t again, she thought as she leapt on top of him, driling her fist into his face so quickly it was like a blur. His lip split. Another two hits in rapid succession. She thought she broke his cheekbone.

“You’l get no mercy now,” he bit out, his eyes black, his deep voice rumbling almost unrecognizably. He caught her fist when she struck again and squeezed. With her other hand she swiped her claws down his shirt, across his neck, hissing in fury. Lightning came down like a hail of bulets. Somehow he caught her free wrist and turned over on her, pinning her hands above her head.

Just as she tensed to kick her leg straight between his and send him flying forward, he groaned as if in desperation, sinking his teeth deep into her neck. She shuddered and cried out, body going limp beneath him. Her eyes widened in shock as she stared at the lightning above. This wasn’t pain he was giving her.

His bite was ecstasy.

He did it again and again lower on her neck. Each bite, each time his fangs entered her skin was like the thrust of a man inside her. Each time he released her skin was like a slow, measured withdrawal. The pleasure was dizzying. Exquisite agony.

She’d never been defeated before in a contest of two—no man had ever been strong enough. And Myst had an animal need deep inside her for a powerful male—like this one who’d pleasured her, fascinated her—to win. Her mind rebeled, reminding her of what he was. She’d kiled the last three she’d blooded. Why not him? He’d planned to torture her in that horrid dungeon, planned to control her with the chain.

But his bite…It made her body demand, growing wetter, feeling empty without him shoved tightly inside her.

Please be strong enough…Please…For once in her life would a man take control?

So she could finaly lose it.

When he pinned her wrists with one hand—hard—she arched her back in delight. He used his other to rip open her shirt and bra and bare her breasts. He palmed her flesh, then opened his jeans and freed himself. His huge erection jutted between them, the sack heavy beneath.

Her eyes widened and she fought anew, digging her heels into the ground to scuttle back. Too large for her. Break her in slowly—that’s what he’d said.

His palms landed with a slap on her upper thighs, lifting her pelvis. Her hands loose, she rose up and fought him viciously—scratched, bit, hit—but it was futile. Stil clasping her thighs, he used his thumbs to spread her sex, then wrenched her down on his shaft. Yeling brutaly as she cried out in pain, he buried himself into her flesh until he was thick and throbbing deep within her.

He’d done it. Myst wil want the first man who can defeat her. That’s what they’d always whispered about her.

They’d been right. She’d chalenged him and he’d bested her. In her mind, he deserved to claim his prize no matter the consequences.

He stiled, then bent his head to her and dragged his tongue over her nipple as if to soothe her. As if somewhere in his crazed mind, he wanted her to have pleasure.

He set to her other nipple for long moments, then sucked from her neck again. Somehow the bite turned pain to pleasure, helping her body grow slick to accept the invasion. She yanked the remains of his shirt open to sweep her fingers over his splendid chest and that helped as wel.

As he slowly withdrew, he groaned, “So wet,” but when he thrust again, she hissed in a breath, eyes watering.

“Wroth, it realy hurts,” she whispered.

“Can’t stop,” he bit out. His neck and chest sheened with sweat, the muscles rigid from his effort already.

“T-tel me not to feel pain.”

“Ah, Myst, don’t hurt.” His words were ragged. “I don’t want you to feel pain from this.” Immediately, the pain muted to only a feeling of fulness.

When he drank from her, puled back his hips and then tentatively thrust, she cried out again. He stiffened. “No, Wroth…it’s good!…Keep going.”

He did. He timed each draw from her neck with the bucking of his hips, and she knew it was over, gave herself up to it, arched her back, arms limp overhead. The lightning whipped up the wind, and it rushed over her heated body, over her tight nipples.

He raised his chest up, positioning himself on his knees. She whimpered when she thought he would withdraw, but he dragged her up with him until she was straddling him.

He spread his knees so he could thrust up inside her. He was getting too large to move within her, already hitting the end of her sex so she couldn’t take him to the hilt.

His body was so big around hers, making her feel truly vulnerable. As if he read her mind he wrapped his arms tight around her, pinning hers to her sides. He completely captured her to hold her in place while he drove into her from below.

She relaxed every muscle in her body—why not? This was a position she had never alowed before, from which there was no fighting even if she’d wished to. She knew he wouldn’t let her go or fal. She relaxed in the crushing tightness of his arms, her naked breasts pressed against his scarred chest.

He kept her immobile while he continued to fuck like a piston below them. Her head fel back and she watched the sky in a daze of pleasure, seeing her own lightning thrashing the earth.

Bliss weling up, strengthening, so close.

“Myst,” he growled, releasing her neck.

She thought he would order her to come, thought he was tightening his arms even more as if to threaten her should she disobey, but he didn’t. “Milaya, I want you so much.”

Milaya, the endearment from years ago said in his accent, sent her over the edge. She cried out from the shattering pleasure. But it only built when he desperately wrenched her up and down on his shaft as he tensed to come.

Groaning, snarling, another bite that made her shudder in her second orgasm. Then he threw his head back, neck and chest tensed with corded muscle, to below from the force of his spending. She felt it inside her, searing, palpable, seeming endless as he pumped and pumped within her. She came the entire time, her body squeezing around his thickness.

Then after-shudders. Arms loosening though she didn’t want them to. She didn’t want this to end.

When his breaths had calmed somewhat, he drew her back to search her face. His eyes had cleared. “I didn’t want to hurt you,” he rasped. “I didn’t—Your neck,” he said in a shocked tone, staring.

She brushed her fingertips over her marks. “It didn’t hurt. Even before you…we…uh, worked it out.” They were nothing and would be healed by tomorrow. “You’ve

realy never seen this before?”

“Never.”

“I was your first bitee?” Why that would please her she couldn’t know. Why she wasn’t leaping away from him in disgust confused her. She was just so overwhelmed with everything. And she felt…tenderness toward him. Yes, Myst had always been the girlie-girl of the coven, but she’d never in her long, long life felt truly feminine until this male had squeezed her in his arms and taken charge. She had never—in al the lifetimes she’d endured—experienced that much pleasure.

“I’ve never taken flesh to drink because I knew what it would do to me.” He rested his forehead against hers. “Myst, my eyes wil go red from this. I wil turn.”

He looked so horrified, the words slipped out, “Your eyes wil go red only when you kil as you drink living blood. The ones whose eyes turn drink to the marrow of their victims, sucking from the pit of the soul. They take al the bad, al the madness, al the sin.”

His jaw slackened. “Is that why pure-blooded vampires go mad?”

She shook her head. “It’s more than that. They get addicted to kiling, which means they can never drink from the same source. After years and years of different victims, the memories add up.”

He cupped his hand behind her head. “Every sunset I checked my eyes, not sure if I would turn from your blood. Not knowing if my brothers would have to kil me.”

His tone wasn’t reproaching, but hel, could she feel more guilty? This male was stil inside her, inside her body that was humming as she’d never even known it could…and she’d tortured him. “Wroth, you’re a vampire. Others might not agree, but I for one believe that you’re meant to drink. To connect, to live. But never to kil like that. And it takes decades of kiling every day for the memories to accumulate.”

In a stunned voice, he said, “I won’t turn. I’m meant to drink.” His lips curled, and he stroked her hair, stil supporting her with one arm. He would never let her go. He’s bested me—she shivered.

“And you found pleasure in it.”

It wasn’t a question, but she answered, “Your bite was the only thing that saved you from a stiff legged kick at your groin.” When he grinned, she added softly, “It was intense pleasure.”

He groaned in approval and thrust into her once more, stil semi-hard. To her surprise, she moaned, desire stoking again. “Did I take too much?” he asked. Stil on his knees, he laid her back until she was horizontal, secure in his arms, one hand cupping her head, the other clutching under her shoulder as he puled her along his length in a long, strong stroke.