Her boots were easy; they were lace-up leather combat, and wardens almost always wore them. He could have laced and unlaced them while unconscious. He slipped them off her feet and tossed them to the floor.
Then his fingers were curling into the waistband of her jeans. They flexed there, and he fought with the tremendous urge to simply shred the impeding garment from her body. Her eyes raced back to his and he stilled.
It would have taken immense strength to rip them apart, strength he knew he shouldn’t have. But it was strength he knew he did have, and he was beyond ready to use it.
For her sake, he didn’t. Instead, he held her beautiful, ruby gaze and un-snapped the top button. The zipper lowered tooth by tooth; he tortured himself with the slow and steady release, displaying his control over time. Finally, he again curled his fingers over the material and pulled.
At once, he felt Helena’s fingers on his grip, sliding over the backs of his hands to his wrists, where she held tight and used him as leverage to lift herself off the bed – helping him rid her of the garment. He smiled darkly, never taking his eyes from hers. He lowered the jeans down the length of her legs, revealing ever more delicious, edible beauty with every second. She was smooth, slim, tight and perfect.
Will felt drunk with some alien emotion – happiness, joy, hope – and his head was light as her jeans hit the floor along with the boots and shirts. All that remained between them were her tiny white cotton panties.
Those he did shred.
Helena cried out in surprise, but there was no stopping him, and they were gone in an instant. In the next, he was leaning over her again, only needing to be closer to her. Her warmth engulfed him as his body pressed into hers. He went to his elbow, his free arm snaking beneath the small of her back to wrap entirely around her. She was so small, and he was so tall, it was easy to encase her completely.
But there was still too much between them. His own jeans barred him now.
He claimed her lips with determined strength, impatient and hungry, and bit down in warning until she parted them for him. Then he delved deep, pulled his hand out from beneath her, and ripped open the front of his jeans, freeing himself at last.
His arm slid free of her waist so he could grasp her legs, his grip just shy of bruising but overtly possessive. His hands curled around, his fingers digging in firmly. He used his grip to pull her legs apart inch by inch. “Open for me,” he told her, breathing the words across the taut skin of her neck beneath her ear. He touched her pulse with his tongue, then his teeth, and felt it jump in response to what he was doing.
“Will…” she moaned again as he won the small struggle, and she granted him entry. He tried like the devil not to grin in victory, and failed. He laughed against her ear, nipped her lobe gently, and turned his face to kiss her temple. “That’s my girl.”
*****
Those deft fingers of his moved up her creamy thighs, inching their determined way to her moist, waiting core. It was radiating heat. His mind whispered epitaphs written in lightning, jagged and ancient. His body hurt more and more with each passing, racing heartbeat. It ached relentlessly, driving him on.
He brushed his fingertips slowly along her slick opening, and she bucked beneath him, quaking in response, and he made a sound that he turned against her throat, deep and guttural. He held her beneath him, knowing what was coming when he pressed two fingers between those heated, wet folds, and her body squeezed him tight, promising and perfect.
“Will!” she cried out when he wouldn’t allow her to move away. More lightning wrote across the backdrop of his mind, slicing it to electric ribbons.
She tossed her head to the side, her slim form trying for all it was worth to evade him, nothing but old brain preservation in charge now. Her back and neck arched, her fingers curled into claws against his chest, her knees bent at his sides. He knew the sensations were too much; he was not what he appeared to be. Just like her, he was so much more.
And his fingers were invading her now, pressing inward, gliding deep. She made a desperate sound, her teeth clenched. Fate help me, he thought mindlessly. He was no schoolboy, but this was Helena. He couldn’t wait to feel her around him any longer.
She was burning through him, erasing all he’d ever been and replacing it with need. His cock throbbed, his head swam. Every muscle in his tall, strong body was flexed tight with need, his skin slick, his hair damp. He was on fire.
Will withdrew his fingers from her molten core and grasped Helena’s face between his hands, forcing her to turn her head toward him. She writhed beneath him, desperate sounds of disappointment escaping her bruised lips. “Look at me, Helena,” he commanded. His voice filled the room, echoing and deep. There was an accent to it now that he faintly noticed, but that Helena was oblivious to.
“Damn it, Will!” she hissed through her clenched teeth. She fought him, her nails drawing blood. He ignored the damage she did, his thumbs gently brushing her flushed cheeks. He wanted to look into her eyes when he took her. He wanted to see her soul.
“Helena,” he repeated, hoping against hope for the patience he needed. But he was nearly delirious with pain now, his need was so great.
At last, she obeyed and blinked up at him. He caught her gaze and held it. There in the center of the Promised One’s dilated pupils was a flicker of crimson red as bright and unnatural as the very fire that was consuming him. It was the slightest reflection of her primordial, fateful power. The fire was hypnotically entrancing and would have been grounding had he not already been so far gone.
But as it was, he defiantly gazed into that power, matched it with his own, and covered her mouth with his hand. In one hard thrust, he speared into her.
Helena screamed into his hand as he knew she would. Her arms wrapped around him to hold him tight, her nails drawing more blood as he claimed her. Long, thick, and un-givingly hard, he filled her aching tightness to the exaction of ever more pain. But it was delicious pain, bliss and agony and the wrapping of each around the other the way it was meant to be.
A rumble escaped his chest, rose from his throat, and echoed in the room as he sank slowly and steadily all the way to the hilt, and rested there so very deep inside her. She gasped desperate cries into his palm, her small body attempting to adjust to the massive invasion. But he couldn’t give her much more time. He was seeing stars, swimming motes of delirium threatening his sanity.
He braced himself on either side of her, his nerves riding that lightning that wrote itself across his mind before he slowly started back out of her sweet, ultra-tight core. Helena went suddenly still beneath him; she knew what was coming. He slid his hand off her mouth to the release of tiny, wanton gasps and grinned. “Forgive me,” he warned her.
Her eyes widened. He trapped her lips in a glorious kiss, his body begging him for mercy. But he didn’t want his cousin taking down the door at the sound of Helena’s screams, and he fully planned on wringing more out of her.
Again, he thrust into her, this time a little faster and harder than before. She cried out against his lips, and he drank the sound, teasing her tongue with his own in a dance that could have lasted forever. He sank so perfectly deep into her, he felt he claimed her completely, connecting them unbreakably. It was heaven.
The world was being overrun with Dark World monsters, Cain was free and furious, and they were running out of time. But in heaven, there was nothing but time. Nothing but Time.
And its master.
The swimming stars finally exploded in Will’s mind, a supernova of profound magic that swirled around his strong form as he gripped the sheets of his bed in tight fists and pulled himself out of his mate to take her once more. Harder.
He sank intensely, the sensations so strong they shook the foundation of all he’d thought he knew. She was encompassing him, changing around him, and he was changing within her.
As she adjusted to his subjugation, he broke the kiss and whispered across her lips. “Helena…” he said softly, just to say
her name, thoroughly enjoying the sound of it on his tongue. He rocked back, quickening his pace, his need rising to an undeniable crescendo.
Helena’s rasping breaths brushed his lips, but she smiled a lost and helpless smile as that fire in the heart of her eyes continued to burn. The tight glove of her canal pressed in on him, crushing him like a wicked dream, the rings of muscles around his length squeezing back with just as much need as he showed her.
The magic he’d unwittingly released continued to encase them, forming a thick cocoon of power that glowed like the Aurora Borealis in winter and brushed against their naked flesh like a lover’s caress. Its presence was but a whisper beneath the thrumming drum of his heartbeat and the endless, vicious rhythm of his massive need. He drew back and plowed into her with passion just shy of fury, brutal but tender, always teetering on the line between.
She pressed her lips to his chest, silencing her own cries as he took her, and Will wasn’t disappointed when she finally bit down in a fevered frenzy, growling in her own climbing ecstasy. Distantly, Will realized the objects in his room were floating. The books were free of the bookcase, the pens and pencils hovered above his desk, and their clothing drifted. All of it glowed with Helena’s telekinetic magic, a semblance of the fire that literally burned in the depths of her gaze.
Her strangled cries vibrated against his skin, and Will relinquished his grip on the bed to take Helena in his arms again. He was heading into crazy town. There were no logical thoughts for him any longer. His mind was a Chinese New Year, filled with explosions too loud to hear, and colors too bright to behold.
Blood pooled in the half-moon wounds Helena’s short nails had carved into his shoulders and back. He felt the wetness distantly, distractedly. His strong arms held her for a moment more before he snaked one down beneath her to cup her round, tight bottom. The other, he spread across her tight abdomen, slowly moving it lower. Helena moved against him, playing into his every move. He slid lower still until he touched the wet heat of her with his fingertips once more. There, he pressed against her expertly, manipulating her in a new way. Her body tensed beautifully in response – and he didn’t let up.
A savage need, basic and necessary, was at the wheel now. It compelled him to move steady and strong inside her, but rather than increase his speed, he slowed it with lascivious intent. He was a man driven solely by the demands of obsession, wholly and inescapably under the ruthless influence of its all powerful spell. And that obsession wanted to last a little longer.
He would take them over the mountain and into the valley of insanity together. When he stepped foot in the land of the well and truly lost, he was going to make sure she was right there beside him. She was all he knew, all he’d ever wanted. He was going to make her his in every possible way.
There was no going back. The point of no return had been passed long ago, when he’d claimed her in that scrying bowl, when his emerald eyes had branded her more deeply – and more meaningfully – than any burning metal ever could.
*****
He was brutal and beautiful above her, the so-tall, green-eyed warden who was sculpted like granite and gentle like a jackhammer. She had fallen hard. She realized now, as he moved inside her and his fingers tortured her and the darkness of her world was filled at last with stars, that she’d fallen irrevocably and instantly when he’d stood over her on that desert road and offered her his hand.
Now Helena was lost in a verdant sea, in an electric miasma of pleasure and pain that continuously played out across her nerve endings, zapping her mind utterly and completely senseless. They had only just met; that was what law and nature dictated. But he fit so hard and real inside her and he owned her so entirely, she was certain she’d known him forever. Little by little, second by second, he forced her to belong to him more completely.
It hurt and it felt right.
It made no sense, it was twisted up and meaningless and there was danger all around – somewhere – yet time didn’t matter here in the heat of his embrace, as the vessel of his need. She gave herself to him. Her Will Slate.
My William.
She closed her eyes, fighting and winning against the enigmatic pull of his glowing green gaze, and surrendered to the mounting maelstrom of pleasure swirling within her. She was trembling with it, shaking in uncontrollable bliss that was too much for her body to hold, and she was rising still. He took them both higher, expertly fierce and unrestrained in his pursuit.
It was nearly impossible to do so, beyond difficult to concentrate under his assault, but she eased up her grip on the ridges of his sculpted form and lifted her hand to his head. Her fingers brushed through his thick, soft hair, and that was a bliss all its own. He smelled like night time and eternity, and she had no idea what that meant. Only that it was beyond wonderful. Beyond right. It was what she’d always wanted and she hadn’t even known it.
Will was her happy ending.
My happy ending, she thought distantly and insanely, and wondered why it even mattered. Every time he moved against her, filled her up again and stretched her to the point of madness, it felt right. So right.
He knew her. He knew everything she would do, everything she would feel. He seemed intimately familiar with her inner-most workings and knew all too well how to manipulate them. They climbed together in sweaty, tangled workings until she knew she could no longer hold back the voice of her passion, and then there he was again, taking her lips in another kiss.
He knew.
He drank in her tiny, desperate cries one after another, and she in turn felt his animal growl, low and rumbling, as it escaped his throat and rode through her. Again. And again.
His fingers touched her primally, pressing expertly around the nub of her clitoris to exact a sudden sharp pleasure that speared through her, so close to the peak of release she needed, her vision swam. She gasped, incapable of comprehending the sensation, and then he did it again.
Proving the cruelty she knew she’d seen in him all along, Will suddenly slowed his pace above her to draw the torture out. His wonderful fingers slowed in their movements too, and she made a desperate, furious sound against his lips.
The bastard laughed. It was deep and filled with animal lust, but it was a laugh nonetheless. He broke his perfect kiss and looked into her eyes, chuckling darkly as he touched her in that perfect, terrible way once more, forcing her body into a writhing, clenching mess. He must have liked what he saw reflected in her gaze, because his own eyes flashed with triumph and malice, so beautiful in his heartlessness.
“Shhhh,” he commanded, the sound brushing across her swollen lips before he rose above her and the air of the room swirled against her fevered skin. Her nipples were tight and hard, her breasts swollen with the heaviness of passion, and he took advantage of this, pulling his thick, hard length completely out of her to slide himself down her already delirious body. She knew where he was going, what he intended to do, and she was vehement.
“N-noooo,” she half-moaned, half-growled helplessly, her hand fisting tight in his hair. She wanted him back, she wanted him inside her, or she was going to lose her fucking mind! But he was on the warpath, and ignored her grasping desperation to settle his hot mouth over one of her nipples and suck hard.
Again, his hand clamped down on her in perfect timing, covering her mouth as she screamed in horrible pleasure. His tongue swirled, his teeth teased, and his free hand returned to the core of her, again pressing just right.
Her head tossed, and his hand followed the movement, silencing the cries that would otherwise probably bring the safe house’s inhabitants down around them. It went on forever, this uncompromising heaven-hell, as Will explored her and played her and she swam in a sea of painful euphoria. He moved from one nipple to the other, his teeth exacting, his tongue soothing, his behavior maddening.
Finally, as the bliss around her began to even out and sound and color blended within her into something meaningless and manic and what sanity she had left feared she would
never know an end to the punishment, Will once more rose above her.
Somehow, Helena opened her eyes.
What she saw there in that moment would become forever imprinted upon her soul. He was outlined in shifting green lights that filled the room and wrapped around them and matched the hypnotic glow of his eyes. His irises were on fire, emeralds set ablaze by inhuman need, stark and glorious in his angelic face. His hair was damp with sweat, dark and perfect, and every muscle in his tall, hard body was ripped taut with pent up, volatile hunger.
He held her in those green, glowing chains as he pressed himself against the door of her slick tightness once more, and Helena’s breath caught between sudden fear and all-out need.
Time stopped. It held still, drawing the moment out for its own sick pleasure.
And then Will slid a thick, strong arm around her waist to hold her still, wrapped his deft fingers around her throat in absolute possession, and impaled her with all of his strength. He kissed her hard, drinking her in with concerted abandon as she cried out mindlessly against him and he sank into her for all he was worth. Something was erupting inside her, shaking and unsteady and out of her control. He dogged the madness on, not holding back now, claiming her roughly with each pull and thrust, sinking to the hilt each time.
His fingers tightened slightly around her neck, just enough to be a threat, heightening the already impossible level of pleasure riding through Helena’s form. Forever, she thought. She wanted this to last forever. There was nothing more important than this.
Infernal fires erupted around her, licking at her skin, blazing trails of destruction along her soul as Will went faster. Harder. Fierce and unrestrained and absolutely impossible, he rode them over a mountain higher than any human was ever meant to go.
And then, in a flash of a moment that was shattered into a thousand tiny fragments and tossed to the winds of time, Helena broke at last. The enraged longing Will had built within her hit its precipice and sprouted dark, glorious wings. She climaxed with an orgasm that wiped her mind of everything but white-out bliss, her body convulsing, her scream taken by Will’s claiming kiss.
In the Arms of the King Page 17