Finding the Blood Assassin [Lords of the Expanse 3] (Siren Publishing Allure) (10 page)

“The pain of it feels so very good, though.” She lifted slightly and into him. “Let him out. Raven, let your beast out as well as yourself. Love me, Raven, trust that love enough to know that even the beast won’t hurt what is his.” And she was his.

He wanted to even if it was only for her, but he didn’t yet trust himself enough, let alone the beast inside, to not hurt her. Brushing his lips to her throat, he continued to move in and out of her pussy in slow and measured strokes. “I can’t hurt you, Jamison, and yet I am already,” he whispered, desperately needing her to understand. “I can’t help the need I feel to have you, to claim you, to mark you as mine for all time, but the beast is dark inside and not fully sane. The Syndicate, when they held me, damaged the control I have over it and brought the beast to an even darker place. It could kill you, Jamison.” He gave her the admission with soft words and wondered if she still could accept him after what he’d said.

Cupping his cheeks gently, she laid her lips over his and kissed him slowly. When she parted from him, she shook her head with a slow smile of understanding. “I love you, Ra. Then take what you need from me, as you need it.”

Staring down at her, he kissed her back slowly, searching and finding something amazing in her gentleness, and, before he could reconsider, he gave her all she wanted. Letting the beast loose, he prayed he and she would not regret what he was doing. But as soon as it was loose, the beast sank its teeth into her throat as it made him lift her hips in his hands and pound his cock into her pussy. The gentleness was gone. Now there was only driving need and eternal desire.

She gasped and held onto him. She reveled in the feel of her man taking her as he needed, as he wanted. The slap of their flesh, the burning from the silver, it didn’t matter because the pleasure was blindingly intense, so hot that it would burn through the densest of materials. “Raven!” she shouted as she came a second, third, and fourth time, but he kept slamming into her. She loved rough loving, and this, this was what she needed, what she wanted. She didn’t even think, just felt her fang slide free and sank it into his chest as he took her hard and fast.

Growling against her throat he felt her bite into him even as his mind processed dimly that the moment was perfect, something he’d never had before. He felt a surge inside and then a release through his incisors into her flesh. He didn’t recognize it for what it was, as deeply buried in the beast as he was, but he knew he had to release her throat, he was taking too much from her. Pulling his teeth free, he licked gently at the twin marks and sealed them even as he shifted to give her better access to his chest, his cock still pounding her pussy, and then with one last violent thrust he came hard. His whole body shook with the force of his release and he bellowed out her name.

She exploded with him again. She released his chest and licked at the hole before shuddering against him as his body filled hers to capacity and beyond, his seed squeezing out around his cock.

Collapsing over her, Raven wrapped his arms around her and held her close. Panting hard, he pushed the beast back down into the deep dark abyss within, and he rubbed his cheek to her skin gently. “Are you all right?” he asked softly, worried he’d hurt her when he’d foolishly given into the needs of the beast.

She nodded for a time, her breathing hard as she smiled slightly. “Yes, I’m more than all right, Raven.” The backs of her fingers trailed over his cheek. “That was the most incredibly amazing of things.” She was still gasping for air, but looked happy about it.

“On my ship,” she spoke softly. “You wanted to know something about me that no one else did.” Looking up, she brushed his hair back from his face. “I like it really rough. That’s the first time I’ve ever had the beast side of our nature making love to me, Raven, and I will want to do that again. Are you all right after all of that?”

“I think so,” he murmured, shifting and lifting his head. He was about to continue when a dark mark caught his gaze and he froze. Staring at her throat, he lightly touched the mark of his House lineage and breathed out between his teeth.

She clenched on him and hissed out a pleasure-filled sound when his fingers trailed over the mark. “Raven,” she moaned. Her pussy clenched tightly around his cock with each stroke of his fingers to her throat. “What are you doing to me?”

Glancing at her sharply, he stopped moving his fingers. “I marked you,” he whispered softly, still amazed that he’d done such a thing. She would never be able to be with another, not that he would have let her go. “You now carry the mark of my House, Jamison,” he murmured softly, wondering if she’d be upset.

“Really?” she asked with a huge smile. “Does it look good?” she asked, and then her smile gentled, her fingers touching his cheek. “I’m not upset, Raven. In fact I think I’m even happier now. I know what they mean, Raven, I’m honored, I’m pleased, and I’m so happy right now that I could cry.” She cupped his cheeks in her hands. “Thank you, Raven. I know you can’t say the words, but that mark gave them as clearly as if you had shouted them.”

Staring into her eyes, he knew that she really was okay by his claiming of her. Letting out a soft sigh, he kissed her gently before he brushed his lips over her cheek just as gently. “Please don’t cry,” he murmured softly to her. “I can handle a lot of things in this world, but your tears are not one of them, Jamison.”

Pressing her lips to his, then his cheeks, and chin, she shook her head. “Not going to cry, Raven, just going to love you for the rest of eternity, be here to drive you batty, and annoy you even more if we are blessed with a child. No, Raven, I fully intend for there to be few tears in our life.”

Nodding even though he had the sense that something was amiss, he held her for a few moments longer. Or until his sluggish brain clued into just where they were. Lifting his head, he looked around his study. “We should really move, Jamison,” he murmured softly. “While this lounger is all right for a nap for a single body, it was not designed for two people to be on it for long.”

“All right, we should likely get up then.” She touched his cheek and shivered. “And a bath with water. Lots of nice, wonderfully hot water,” she added with a smile. “Will you join me for a bath, my lord husband?”

“If you wish,” he murmured softly as he pulled free of her body, hiding the wince of pain he felt just as he hid all the pain that the silver in his body caused. Getting to his feet, he helped her up and then moved to collect his clothing and dressed quickly.

Chapter 9

He had no idea what he was doing and he’d gone and marked her with his House lineage of all things, like his House was actually something to be proud of. Sighing softly, he looked to her and knew that if he could just accept what was between them she could heal many of the wounds inside. Moving back to her he held out a hand as she finished tying the pants about her waist.

Her hand closed over his as she smiled up at him. “Tell me how I can help you, Raven? Would you like for me to see about removing the silver from you so that it can begin to heal?” She had seen the slight wince when he pulled free of her, he realized.

Even the thought of what she’d have to use to remove the silver had him nearly whimpering in agony. “I doubt you can. The flesh has healed around them and it would only cause more pain to try and get them out. You can take a look later if you wish, but I have a feeling I will be stuck with them for the rest of my days,” he said softly, wondering idly just how many he had left.

“Wouldn’t you rather have a little momentary pain when it can remove the pain from you for the rest of your life, Raven?” She sounded worried for him, which caused an odd sensation in his chest. “I’m scared that you will get silver poisoning, Raven. I want to have you around for a very, very long time.”

“I haven’t died from it yet,” he commented, guiding her into the hall and up the stairs. “I have a piece inside of me that the doctors, the best of our world, cannot remove. They’ve tried everything they could, but they had to leave a piece of it behind or it would have killed me. It was a gift from the Syndicate during my stay with them some years back,” he said. “I have a certain resistance to silver poisoning it seems.” Which did have its plus side, he guessed. After all, considering the size of the piece in his body and where it was it should have killed him about three weeks after the Syndicate had put it in. But it hadn’t, which made him somewhat of a medical marvel and had pissed the Syndicate off to no ends. “You can take a look and see if they can be removed, though, because I don’t want them causing you pain.”

“I’m not worried about them hurting me, Raven, they don’t bother me.” She paused and then admitted grudgingly, “Much. But I don’t like that they hurt you like they did.” Stepping in closer she asked, “Will you do me a favor please, Raven? Will you please not go on another mission? They hurt you. When will that not be enough and they kill you?”

“I don’t know if I can promise that, Jamison, it’s who I am,” he murmured softly, looking down at her. “But I will not do anything for a time, and if something comes up I will discuss it with you first.” He offered that as the compromise knowing that she’d have a fit otherwise. Backing her into his room, he encouraged her toward the bathing chamber as he wondered how long until the Alliance contacted him once more to put his life on the line.

“You need to know one thing, my lord husband,” she said simply as she started the hot water in the deep tub. “You need to know that where you go, I will follow. If you sneak away, I will find you. You see”—she tugged him closer to her with a determined look—“you will never be able to hide from me, my lord husband. Because my ability is finding things or people, and to me you are the most important person ever born.”

“That reminds me,” Raven said as he leaned against the doorway. “How exactly did you find me on that piece of rock?” he asked in a curious tone. “I vaguely remember you commenting about something or other, but I have to admit, most of that first day is rather fuzzy from the bloodlust.” And then she’d basically hijacked him and fed him her blood, sneaky dastardly female.

“Your mother gave me your signet ring. It’s locked in the console of my ship for when you want it, too, by the way.” She watched him and how he stayed so far from her. It made her heart ache because she knew that they didn’t have a chance for happiness if he didn’t give a little. “I touched it, and when I did, I was in that room with you when she put the silver in you.” The impressions left upon the signet ring were easily picked up by Jamison in one of her lesser used abilities. She knew in that moment that the good Lady Kato only wanted her son for her own gain. Her mouth went dry at the memory of what she’d gotten from the ring. “No one deserves that.” She wasn’t talking about the silver so much as the degradation he’d also had to suffer. “And then I knew where you were. For a moment I thought you had seen me, but I must have been incorrect.”

He frowned at her, a look in his eyes and on his face that said he was trying to remember something. “I did see you,” he said in a low tone, pushing from the door and pulling his shirt off over his head, tossing it to the little woven basket in the corner. Kicking his boots off, he left his pants on as he moved up behind her as she turned back to the tub. “I didn’t know what I’d seen at the time, it was too fast, and I was pretty far into the bloodlust.”

“Even when I found you, you were still pretty lost to it, my lord.” She felt him step up to her back and sighed. She wanted to reach out and wrap him up close to her, hold him tightly and make him see that he was never alone.

“I’m not denying that, Jamison.” He ran a light hand down her back, causing her to arch into the stroke. “You know, I know you’re upset with me. I can see it in the lines of your back,” he told her softly.

“I’m not upset with you,” she told him as she turned to face him. “Defeated because I realize that I will never be enough for you,” she said with a sadness in her heart she knew was conveyed on her face. “I will never be able to convince you that if you died, if something happened to you, that it would hurt me deeply.”

Frowning at her, he lifted a hand to cup her cheek. “I never want you to hurt, Jamison.” The mere thought of causing her pain hurt him. It made him ache and made him worry all over again that he’d done wrong by marking her as his. “I’m not worth that and I never have been,” he whispered, even as he saw something in her eyes that told him differently. “Jami,” he murmured softly as he felt something inside shift even as he pulled her closer to him.

Shaking her head, she placed her hands on his chest. “But you are, Raven. You are worth so much more than you can ever know. You mean everything to me. Nothing means anything without you, don’t you see that? Can’t you understand?” She placed her forehead to his chest and let out a tired sigh. “You only hurt me because you don’t believe there will be an us, a couple. You only hurt me because you keep waiting on me to walk away at any moment. I’m not leaving, Raven. I’m here forever and you really need to just get that through your thick head.”

Lifting his hand to slide his fingers into her hair, he held her to him with a gentle hold. “Everyone I’ve ever known has walked away, Jamison,” he whispered. He really hadn’t meant to say the words but they were the truth either way. Lowering his head, he rested his chin to her hair and breathed in her scent. “It’s what I’m used to, it’s what I expect. You can’t expect me to just believe that you’ll stay after only a day, Jamison, when I’ve had decades of everyone I’ve known walking away from me without a second thought.” He felt the flinch and he cursed himself. “I don’t say it to hurt you. I just want you to understand my skepticism. But,” he whispered hugging her closer. “I will try to believe, Jamison, if you will just give me some time, please.” The last word was the hardest for him. He had learned early to take and never ask for anything right at the knee of his ever so wonderful mother.