Zauran (15 page)

Shoving black shades up onto his obsidian dark hair, he narrows his eyes at me, showing me the warning of purple fire covering his irises, “What are you going to do?”

“
I'm going to Zira Hotel. It's the hotel she's staying at. Right now she's weak, her body is going through metamorphosis, and her darling vampyre just kidnapped Zaria which means he's distracted. It's now or never Ryan. We move on her
now
, or we may never get another opportunity.”

Chapter 14

Zaria
:

“
Jowendrhan let me go!”

“
What did you do last night, Zaria? You are wearing Zauran's mark on your neck.”

“
What do you think I did last night?” I snap back, scratching down his arm and stomping on his foot.

“
Where are your clothes? Fuck, Zaria! You just turned your back on Darise as if he was nothing to you.”

“
I am nothing
to him
! The cheating asshole was sucking someone's face off last night, and it wasn't mine! And like Phoebe she looks
just like me
!” Wrestling with him, becoming breathless, I snarl when I look up at him, exhaustion building in me fast, “But you would
know that
as you two obviously like sharing your girlfriends because you're the one I know fucked her and turned her into a vampyre!”

He releases me, taking a retreating step to stare silver eyes down at me, “How the hell do you know?”

“
The supernatural world is full of gossips, Jo. How could you?! You just started a new war!”

I'm so angry and disappointed with him I give him another bitter shove.

It doesn't even move him. He seems shocked and stands statue still, gaping at me, his eyes flicking through colors so fast it's making me dizzy to look at them.

“
Darise lost me the second he went trawling for a new
me
.”

He blinks, snapping his focus back onto me, “She's an ex girlfriend of his.”

“
Božena, renamed Zena by the almighty Jowendrhan,” I sneer sarcastically. “You two idiots just did the one thing you shouldn't have. Pravus is no longer
your
hunting ground, it was
given
to the neuri! You just voided all peace agreements. You started a war Jowendrhan! A fucking war!”

I can't help it, tears sob out of me. “I can't lose someone I
love in another war! I won't! Make it right, set it back, undo whatever the hell you did. I love you, and Venix, and Darise, but more than that I
know
I love Zauran! I will not have the men I love, my adopted and extended family, at war! I won't lose any of you!”

Bashing his chest, I know I'm borderline hysterical. “
I won't!
”

He lets me attack him, a hundred emotions flicking over his features one by one as the situation hits him.

“
Take me home!” I'm in no mood to be here.

Not that I have any clue where 'here' is.

*

Božena:

Noise creeps over the cold bathroom floor where I lie splayed in a puddle of my own sweat and pain.

Footsteps come closer and I stare at the slightly ajar door, praying it's Jowendrhan.

I need mercy. I need help!

“
H-llo?” I croak through parched lips.

A tall man with twilight-citrine and chestnut hair steps into the room.

The scent of leather and dust overwhelms me with a potent waft of testosterone. God, he's dripping the hormones off him as wildfire chases out of his eyes in an amber mist, snaking tendrils of his musk at me.

“
We meet again,” he smiles, lowering to his haunches to tilt his head at me.

He looks vaguely familiar but my thoughts are scattered like dandelion seeds in a gale. Nothing sticks, stays, holds still. The room is spiraling and swaying like kelp in the high seas.

His face wavers and morphs like it's melting. I'm stuck in a Salvidor Dali painting and I'm shaking with such ferocity my teeth are rattling.

He lifts his arm to his mouth, giving me a fiery stare with orange flames curling around his unnaturally black eyelashes, and then he smiles with long teeth showing, removing his arm from his mouth and holding me down with it.

I fear I'm in the nuthouse and have completely lost my ability to logically discern what is happening.

Men don't have fire in their eyes. Vampyres always have long teeth, not just magically make them appear, and I'm strapped down to the cold floor with such strength it bites agony into the back of my head.

“
I'm not human. Go on, take a drink, it will ease your pain.”

His voice is a drug, hypnotizing me, pulling me into the pyre of his eyes and curling sienna sunset out of him to drape over me.
Into me
.

Calming, the pain receding, spicy heat pops my taste-buds into instant fever with the fluid trickling into my mouth.

I want to lick those eyes, they are so intoxicating and beautiful. The longer I stare at them the more the entire world recedes.

“
That's better,” thrums sexily over me.

I'm vaguely aware of a warm hand wiping hair off my face.

I lose him briefly, but the heat he's spun into my chest stays there, warming me and keeping the chills at bay with the fire he's kindled.

Tepid moisture swipes over my skin, and it occurs to me that he's cleansing me of my perspiration, erasing the fever.

Hoisted, I'm held ear to chest, stuck in the cradle of thick muscular arms, and I close my eyes to listen to the lullaby of his heartbeat.

Every inhalation rubs the leather of his waistcoat into my pores, bringing with it the driftwood of his day... dust, fire, wind.

He smells so alive.

Feels
so alive.

Laid to rest back on the soft folds of my hotel bed, I'm compelled to lock my gaze with his, unable to break the fixation and growing lust. Erotic images are spinning like a mirror ball across my thoughts, skipping to him naked over and over and over again.

It seems inconsequential when he removes my satin underwear and places it in the front pocket of his ink black jeans.

Leaning over me, staring deeply into my eyes with his well built arms bracing his weight, he whispers melodically, “Touch yourself.”

And imagine it's you...
yes
!

Still unable to break the lock of his gaze, I obey, wishing I could close my eyes. Strong hands guide my legs so my knees tent, and he moves slowly back to watch me.

“
Open yourself more, let me smell you.”

This is so deeply erotic and wrong, I'm loving it.

My dull heartbeat thumps like a singular bang on a gong, vibrating sin through my veins to pound heat into my sex, to gloss my fingertips where I rub and caress, wishing it was his tongue.

“
You want my tongue?” he purrs in a deep husky baritone.

His laugh is wicked and decadent. It brings a smile to curl my lips into a crescent. He is walking pleasure and his voice injects it right into my chest.

Withdrawing my hand for me, he inhales deeply before sucking slowly on each finger, one by one. He breaks the padlock of his gaze, leaving me floating inside a lava-hued mist of fiery orange light.

It's all over my body like a cloud of euphoria, tingling my skin and hardening my nipples. The blast of hot breath and the pressure of his tongue thrust my spine into a shocked buck, my lungs pulling in air so deep it hurts.

Slipping my fingers into baby soft hair, I inhale the wildfire, slurping languid lust deep into my womb, into my blood, into my soul.

Somewhere far away a woman shudders and a moan of pleasure breaks the strange underwateresque silence. Warm breath skates over my skin when a hot tongue covers my nipple, suctioning with brutal force before slipping higher to my throat.

A sharp pain pins my neck under my ear and the orange haze tightens round me, mingling with a new color.

Paprika red bursts spirals through the mist and I'm exploding with so much orgasmic pleasure I fear I'm about to go into cardiac arrest.

Blistering lips cover mine and a velvet tongue runs over my own.

With a hot gasp he says, “Thank you Zena. You've just helped me push back at tyranny.”

He kisses my eyelids closed.

“
Sleep. I'll see you again... soon.”

Drowsy, unable to think alone, I allow the voice in my head to guide me back into that tranquil bliss of deep sleep.

I don't know if I'm hallucinating, but I hope to keep dreaming about him. The king of fire and erotic clouds brings a tempest of euphoria to my body, my blood, my mind.

*

Sveta
:

I feel like I just got away with murder when I pull up at the meeting point where Ryan waits for me.

It's glorious up here on the eastern slopes of
Topčidersko Brdo
.

“
What is she?” he says, wasting no time with pleasantries.

Smug, I have a hunch I know what she is, but need him to confirm it.

Dismounting off my black and chrome baby, I inhale the summer wind blowing in from the Sava river. I swagger to where he waits leaning against a black pine tree. Most folks don't even know Ryan lives in this area. But I do.
Dedinje
is his home.

Withdrawing black satin from my right front pocket and with my left hand retrieving pink lace from the other front pocket, I offer both to him like prayer flags.

“
Zaria,” I wave the pink lace at him. “Zena,” I say, wagging the black satin.

“
How the hell did you get Zaria's underwear?” he says, pushing his sunglasses up and diffusing purple mist over both items of female lingerie.

“
She left them in the den. I just decided to pocket them while no one was around.”

He snatches them from me, his eyes now so completely tyrian purple they look angelic.

He clasps pink lace over his nose, inhaling hard and deep, the veins popping up across his body uncharacteristically clad in a t-shirt, rippling his arms and making him look like he just pumped steroids and weights in huge quantity.

I so seldom see us in our raw form, it gives me pause to see his power rearing up and taking hold of his body.

Closing his eyes he bellows a howl of lust.

I feel for you buddy, I do.

He fists the lace, his grip so tense I'm worried he's going to start popping blood vessels, when he then covers his nose with black satin, repeating the process.

Violet is bleeding out of his eyes, his arms trembling; he hangs his head, clears his throat, and finally looks through me with the crystal clarity of the world's most powerful neuri alpha.

“
You marked Zena.”

“
How would you know?” I swallow down the worry bunching in my throat.

“
I'm not an idiot, Sveta. You marked her because I can smell this scent inside your very soul. You bonded with light, and you know I banned Zauran from doing that, yet you did it regardless.”

The accusation hangs between us, thick and uncomfortable.

“
Zauran marked Zaria. And my fucking god,
this
is what they smell like when unshielded,” he roars in a rumbling timbre.

I nod, taking a wary step back.

“
They are both, at least partly, Slakax,” he confirms for me.

“
That's what I thought,” I mumble, coughing to clear the nerves from my voice.

I just claimed a Slakax as my mate. Shit doesn't get any deeper than this. Jowendrhan's the least of my problems now.

Bunching the material in his hands he inhales again like an addict with a hookah pipe. “This world hasn't seen a Slakax for a very long time, Sveta. How the hell did these two end up with this DNA?”

“
And Phoebe,” I add. He hasn't yet met her and keeps forgetting about the third woman.

His eyes glow, bursting out spits of indigo fire, “Phoebe!”

It's the roar of a monster just unleashed from the volcano it was held captive in. She's the one unclaimed by a neuri, the
only
one left for Ryan to find.

Oh
shit
!

My neck is gripped in a hand vice so painful I can barely move my own blood through my veins.

“
Where is she?!” he booms, blasting the hair off my face.