Touch If You Dare

by Stephanie Rowe

  But he didn’t. Couldn’t. He was too far gone.

  Blaine leapt over the wall of the flames and landed beside Nigel just as Jarvis plowed into them. The two warriors held their ground and threw Jarvis off them, somehow managing to avoid being plunged to death by the sword. Jarvis careened backwards. He regained his balance and prepared to launch himself at them again.

  “Mother of hell.” Nigel fisted his blades. “He’s gonna go. Fuck!”

  “No! He’s not going to explode!” Reina shoved her hand into his face and blasted him with her most deadly powder.

  He swore, then dropped to the sidewalk. Unconscious, and still intact. Holy crap. It worked on him? Wow. When a girl got her mojo back, she really got it back. Nothing like fearing the loss of the one man who’d made her come alive in the last twenty years to make a girl step up.

  “Nice work, Reina.” Blaine and Nigel hauled him toward Trinity and the geranium. “Get him out of here.”

  Reina rushed over as his friends dumped him next to Trinity. “I’ve got him.” God only knew how long the dust would hold him. She needed to be there when he woke up. “Go help Cam,” she told them. “He can’t die. And please, detain Augustus for me. I need to kill him.”

  “Both Jarvis and Natalie need my healing.” Nigel took up residence next to Natalie. “I’m going with you.”

  But Blaine looked right at Reina. “Can you really take care of him?” His question was loaded with threat of what he would do if she was wrong. Loyalty to his friend that would be enforced at all costs, no matter how much his fiancée loved her.

  She met his gaze. “Yes.”

  He nodded once, accepting her words as truth. “We stay behind.” He jerked his chin at Nigel. “We need to clean up this mess.”

  Blaine turned and headed off after Cam, but Nigel didn’t move. He just stood there, staring, his face wretched as his gaze flicked between Natalie and Jarvis.

  Reina was shocked by the anguish on his face. Where was the cool, collected artist who was never rattled by anything? Was it all a facade? Because right now, Nigel looked like a warrior haunted by hells that had no words.

  Reina touched his arm. “I swear I can do more for him than you can. The best thing you can do for him is to save Cameron, right?”

  Nigel swore under his breath. “Yeah, yeah.” But he didn’t move. He just stood there.

  “Touch Jarvis,” Trinity ordered Reina. “We need to all be connected when my mom transports us.”

  Reina grabbed his hand and reached for her friend. The women touched fingers. “Now, Mom,” Trinity said.

  Reina had a split second to see Augustus racing toward her, and she went sick with the thought that she didn’t have her sickle anymore.

  And then they were gone.

  ***

  Reina hurried down the stairs to the basement cells the Fleming family had erected years ago to contain family members racing toward their deedub high.

  She peeked in at Natalie, who was still safely asleep in the first cell. Two hits by death powder in less than five minutes was taking its toll, and Reina was okay with that. Why hadn’t she thought of it before? Keep Natalie asleep and she couldn’t escape, right?

  It was Jarvis she was worried about.

  Reina slipped down the hall to the farthest enclosure. Jarvis’s arms were chained above his head, and he was still unconscious. Trinity had insisted that he go under lockdown until the men got back, because the two women alone would never be able to contain him once he woke up.

  Reina didn’t like it. Not after his years of imprisonment. And she didn’t think the chains or cell would hold anyway. As soon as they’d gotten him locked up, Trinity had gone upstairs to track down Blaine and Nigel and find out what had happened after the women had left.

  Jarvis’s hands were a dark purple, and his body was twitching even in its comatose state. “You do not have permission to die yet,” she commanded.

  He twitched again, and the purple crept up his wrists in sheer defiance of her orders.

  That was it.

  She was going in.

  She grabbed the handle of the heavy steel door, braced her left foot on the wall, and hauled as hard as she could. Her muscles strained and sweat trickled down her brow, but it finally creaked open.

  She stepped inside the cell, into a sauna that was at least twenty degrees hotter than the hallway. The hot emotion of hate was changing his environment, bleeding off him. She could feel it pricking her skin, like millions of invisible thumbtacks. “Jarvis?”

  His body began to twitch and his eyes flew open, blind and unseeing. His eyes rolled back in his head and his body began to convulse.

  “Jarvis! It’s me! Reina—”

  An inhuman shriek of such horror, such suffering, and such fury ripped out of Jarvis’s throat. He fought the chains, screaming as if he were being skinned alive. Blood streamed from Jarvis’s wrists and ankles as he yanked at the chains. He charged and was jerked off his feet by the chains. His head slammed back against the steel with a brutal crack.

  “Stop it! This is not the way for you to go!” She bolted across the cell and threw her arms around his neck, pinning herself to his writhing body as he staggered to his feet again. “You’re not hate!” she shouted over his screams, nearly losing her grip in all the blood. “You’re still in there! I know it!” She wrapped her legs around his waist, clinging to him as he bellowed again, clearly not listening to her sage and loving advice.

  She grabbed his hair, forced his face down to hers, and kissed him.

  He didn’t even notice. He wasn’t even holding onto her. He was still fighting his chains, battling for freedom, trying to rip the world apart. Hello? Where was the ego-inducing fall-on-his-knees response to her kiss?

  He was being consumed by hate, but she knew that there was a good man inside that body. She’d seen it in the way he’d protected her, in his determination to find his brother. She was not going to let hate take this man. Not this way. He deserved better.

  Hadn’t he told her that the opposite of hate was love? That the trick was to convert hate to love? That was his brother’s specialty?

  Screw Cameron-the-unhelpful. She knew love. Yeah, Jarvis was too crazed to respond to poetry or candlelight, but he was a man, wasn’t he? Men were never too insane for sex. And since men and women always confused sex with love, it might just work.

  It was time to bring out the girls.

  She pulled back from him and ripped her shirt off. His eyes were unseeing, blindly staring past her at some demon she couldn’t see, the one coming for him. She tugged her jeans off, her hands shaking. More skin, more skin. He needed skin.

  His sword was pulsating with purple and black smog. He screamed again, sweat streaming down his temples. The veins were standing out on his neck, and he was the epitome of power, of strength, of fury.

  He was everything she needed right now, and she was keeping him. But first, she had to get him naked, and she had to do it before he accidentally killed one of them.

  “Okay, nappy time, big guy.” She waggled her fingers at him, tapping him with just a wee bit of powder. Enough to give her two minutes.

  He shuddered and sagged to the floor. The chains kept his heavily muscled arms stretched awkwardly above his head, tweaking his shoulders horribly.

  The silence was deafening in the small room. She swallowed, suddenly nervous about what she was going to do. Did she really have that much faith in him, and in her?

  She thought of the way he’d kissed her so desperately in the woods, how he’d come back to himself after their connection. It had happened again and again. Yes, he’d never been like this, but they’d never taken things as far as they could.

  The connection between them was beyond the explainable, but she’d felt its strength and power in every fiber of her spirit. This would work. They could do it. He would never walk away from her, and she wasn’t going to abandon him.

  She wiped her clammy hands on her bare thighs and then
reached for the chain buckled around his wrist. “Don’t prove me wrong, Jarvis. I don’t want either of us to die.”

  Then she unhooked his chains.

  ***

  “It’s okay, Jarvis. Everything is okay.” Reina frantically stroked Jarvis’s chest as he struggled to regain consciousness. She expected him to leap to his feet in another rage, but his heart rate calmed and his breathing quieted. He was still out.

  She still had time.

  Desperate now, knowing she had only seconds, she tugged his shirt over his head. His muscles were bunched, and a light smattering of dark hair covered his chest. A few scars, probably from a time before he became immortal under Angelica’s care. The rest of him was flawless. A warrior who had healed every injustice done to him. No evidence, except those in his heart.

  He shifted under her, and his face contorted as if he were fighting demons inside his head. Which, of course, he was.

  The sands were falling too quickly through the hourglass.

  She pulled off his boots and tossed them aside, then went for the button of his jeans. Unfastened, unzipped, disrobed. Not nearly as elegantly as the words implied, but hey, naked was naked.

  She bit her lip as she studied his massive body strung out over the floor. Should she re-chain him before he woke up?

  No. He’d been imprisoned his whole life, and she knew that taking choices away made everything worse.

  She would have to trust that she could do it.

  She let out her breath and straddled him. As her thighs wrapped around his hips, she shuddered at the feel of so much skin against hers. It felt right, so right. Despite the purplish discoloration spreading out from his palms to the rest of his body, of course. “Okay, Jarvis, let’s make this happen.”

  His head flew back, his body convulsed, and a terrifying bellow ripped through the air.

  “Yikes!” She threw her arms around his neck, anchored her legs around his hips, and hung on as he bucked and raged. “Hey! I’m naked, for heaven’s sake! You better start appreciating it, because I haven’t taken the time to get naked with a man since I watched my third sister die!”

  She fisted his hair, yanked him close, and kissed him again.

  He struggled to get free, but he didn’t have his full strength yet, and he couldn’t get away from her loving affections. She kissed him harder, and she shuddered when her nipples brushed over his bare chest.

  In her dreams, her reentry into the world of sex was supposed to happen after her life was settled, with a lovely man who cherished her, in which the lovemaking was a candlelit, peaceful, nurturing experience that filled her bruised heart with joy and love.

  Not a ride on a mechanical bull trying to buck her off.

  His arms suddenly went around her, yanking her down, and then he was kissing her back. Desperate, frantic, but without the force she knew he wanted to inflict on her, because he was still too drugged for full engagement. Which meant she had time to break through before he was too strong for her.

  “You’re in control, Jarvis.” She kissed his throat. “You’re not hate—”

  He grabbed her hair and yanked her head back. He nipped her throat, edging that line between pain and pleasure. Well, on the plus side, at least sacrificing her body to save her sister and the world felt good, right?

  He went still suddenly. She looked into his pitch black eyes, and she realized he had just returned to full consciousness, and only the beast was present.

  But there was agony in his eyes, a deep-rooted terror of losing control. Her heart lurched for him, for that feeling of having everything that mattered spiraling out of control. She lived with that fear every day as she watched her family die, and she knew how much it sucked. She stopped pretending she’d gotten naked in some completely altruistic need to save him from himself.

  She was doing it because she was the one who needed his touch. She needed to see his humanity return and know she’d done it, to know she’d made a difference to someone she cared about. She needed to save someone she loved at least once. She needed to succeed, and she needed it to be with him.

  He kissed her again, almost violently, and she realized that it was no longer her choice. She’d offered herself up to the monster, and he’d accepted the gift.

  His hands moved to her waist with astonishing speed, anchoring her on his pelvis. He plundered her mouth as he settled her deeper onto his lap, his fierce groan of pleasure licking at the heat already pulsing through her belly. His erection hardened beneath her, and excitement tingled between her thighs, curling into her belly. One move, and he would be inside her, plunging deep, taking her, making her his.

  Oh, dear God. Was she really going to do this? Wasn’t there something inherently flawed with the premise of making love when one of the partners was insane and under the influence of hate? Did he even know it was her?

  She pulled back. She couldn’t do it.

  “Reina.” He caught her face between his hands and she saw the smallest fleck of blue in his eyes. He was coming back. Because of her? Because of her.

  “Don’t leave me,” he said, his voice raw, throaty, barely recognizable. “I need you.”

  The entreaty in his eyes nearly broke her heart. A man like him asking for help? “I’m here.”

  His eyes flashed with a lethal darkness that made her skin grow cold, and then he grabbed her behind the neck and pulled her down. His kiss was instant fire, racing through her body. His lips were hot, his skin was burning, his muscles rigid. The internal battle was waging, but he was hanging on, fighting for survival.

  She abandoned all hesitation and kissed him back. His response was instant, powerful, and intense. His fingers dug into her skin, leaving marks. His mouth closed over her nipple, a hot, wet assault of brutal, soul searing need. His desperation for her was ripping at her in every kiss, in every touch of his hands. She felt the hell slagging at his mind, sensed the demons he was trying to outrun. He was seeking refuge in her touch, in her kisses.

  This is what she’d wanted. This is what she’d craved. She was meant for him, for this, to be his salvation, to make a difference in his world. To use her love to temper the blackness within him. I’m here for you, Jarvis.

  She wrapped her legs around him as he attacked her breasts, and he groaned, a deep-throated sound of satisfaction as his hips began to pump, his erection slamming against her, building, preparing for the ultimate invasion.

  His body was so hot, his muscles rock hard, sliding beneath his skin as he drove against her, as his mouth consumed her, kissing her again, so deeply, so fiercely she could hear the crash of their teeth, feel his tongue so deep she felt like he was a part of her, taking over, owning her.

  His possessiveness was evident in every thrust of his body, in each demanding kiss, and it stoked fires in her that had no business responding to domination by a male who would soon explode, ripping her heart from her soul.

  But she was so empty inside, a gaping well of fear and loneliness, and his fire was filling the chasm with warmth, with belonging, with something that made tears slide from the corners of her eyes as she clutched at his shoulders. He gave her light and hope, filled her well with renewed energy. She scrunched her eyes shut. God, no, Reina. Don’t get sucked in emotionally—

  But it was too much, too intense, and she felt herself falling, succumbing to the hot desire pulsing through her, to his intense yearning and need for her.

  She didn’t want to resist. She wanted to fall under his spell. The strength in his body, the fierceness of his soul… it was intoxicating.

  He grabbed her hips again and lifted her up.

  She stared down in the turbulent depths of his eyes as he positioned her. His gaze was riveted to her face, as if she were an anchor he was holding desperately onto. She met his gaze, losing herself in the man fighting to surface.

  She felt him pressing at her entrance, and a feeling of absolute rightness pulsed through her. This wasn’t a raw slap-and-tickle to save the world. This was Jarvis
, and they were connected in ways neither of them even understood. This was right, this was their moment, no matter how it had come about, or what happened afterward.

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  He thrust. Nothing gentle, nothing seductive, just one powerful move and he was deep inside her. Oh, dear God. It felt so right.

  Jarvis went utterly still, and a feral growl ripped out of his throat.

  She knew what he meant. She kind of wanted to growl herself—

  Then he started moving, and she forgot about anything but their connection, the feel of his body sliding into hers as if this was what they’d come to this earth to do. She moved her hips, and then he was sinking deeper. Faster.

  She gripped his shoulders, bowing her head as she fought against the wave trying to take her. Trying to hang on for as long as he needed.

  “Reina. I need to see you.” His voice was still raw, desperate.

  She lifted her head and met his gaze. His face softened. “You’re okay. I’m not tainting you.”

  She nodded at the fear in his eyes. “You can’t poison me. It’s okay.”

  “It’s okay,” he repeated, as if trying to convince himself. His gaze was fixated on her as he ground deeper and faster, until she couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything but hang on and succumb to the sensations rolling over her.

  Fire began to lick down her limbs, igniting each inch of her until the sensations exploded inside her, overwhelming her soul and her body. She screamed his name and his deep roar mixed with hers, his body convulsing as he drove again and again, as if he was stripping himself of everything in his soul and turning it all over to her for safekeeping.

  He groaned and fought it, as if he couldn’t trust himself to let go, to allow it to happen.

  “I’ve got you,” she whispered. She wrapped her arms around him and cradled his head to her heart. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

  His body went rigid beneath her, his hands dug into her hips, his body did one final shudder, and then he bellowed as the orgasm took him over the edge. She clung to him as they both rode the vibration tearing through them again and again, until it stripped them both of every bit of life they had in their souls. He gave a final lurch and collapsed back onto the floor, dragging her down on top of him, his breathing raw and harsh on her neck.