Gideon's Promise (Sons of Judgment Book 2)

by Morgana Phoenix

  It was her uncertain question that only seemed to amuse him further. “You’re not sure?”

  “No! I mean, yes. Yes, I’m sure and yes I was...” Bowing her head, she scrambled to the bed where one of his mother’s laundry baskets sat, piled high with neatly folded clothes. “Your mom asked if I could help with some of the chores and since I’m hopeless in the ... the bar, I thought ... I was going to put them away...”

  Gideon put his hand up, stopping her rambling. “It’s fine. Next time, just leave the basket on the bed.”

  Nodding her head, she hurried towards the door.

  “Imogen?” he called her back. He turned as she did with one hand on the doorknob. “Thank you.”

  Blushing furiously, she bolted out, leaving the door wide open for another figure to stroll in. Valkyrie raised an eyebrow, but there was no amusement on her face.

  “Come in,” Gideon said as he made his way to the bed. “I have an open door policy.” He rifled through the basket Imogen had left behind, dragging out clothes. “I think I might get a timestamp card, or charge an admission fee.”

  “What was she doing here?”

  Gideon knew perfectly well what she was referring to, but she was in his room and he had never been very good at being commanded there. That was his domain. That was where he did the commanding.

  “Who?”

  “The banshee,” she retorted.

  “You mean Imogen? Just chatting. Can you close the door please?”

  She did, but remained inside the room. Gideon wondered if he should tell her he was about to get dressed, but decided against it. She clearly had something on her mind.

  “You know,” he said slowly as he shook out a t-shirt. “You should try being nicer to people. You know, make friends.”

  He didn’t have to look to feel the force of her glare. “I don’t need friends.”

  “Everyone needs friends, even you.”

  “I’m a Harvester—”

  “That doesn’t make you immune to all the little things the rest of us require, like love and affection.”

  “I have the love and affection of my family. That’s all I need.”

  He turned his head in her direction. “I don’t think you want me to get into that.”

  Valkyrie straightened her shoulders. “I find it strange how you defend your family so vehemently and yet I’m not allowed to defend mine.”

  The shirt dropped back onto the bed from his hands as he twisted his entire body in her direction. “Because my family doesn’t need me to self-mutilate myself in order to prove my worth. My family doesn’t put me down, degrade me, and make me feel like I’m worth nothing—”

  “My family doesn’t—”

  He stalked towards her. “You are so brainwashed by them that you can’t even see how completely isolated you are. Being a Caster isn’t a competition. It’s not about who is faster, or stronger. It’s about protecting those who can’t protect themselves. It’s about working as a team. You don’t even know what that means.”

  “I know what a team is!” she hissed through her teeth. “But a warrior has to fight alone.”

  “Maybe sometimes, but they should also be smart enough to know when they need help.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

  The door behind her made a muffled thump when she came up against it. Gideon had no knowledge of backing her up until she was flat against the wood surface. Something about the defiant tilt of her chin, the hot anger and vulnerability in her eyes, and the rapid rise and fall of her chest had his senses jumbling. For a moment, he couldn’t remember what they were arguing about. All he could grasp was how completely at his mercy she was and how much he wanted to take advantage of it.

  “Why are you here, Valkyrie?”

  He saw the smooth, white column of her throat bob as she swallowed. Watched as her tongue swept over her lips. She could pretend all she wanted, but she wasn’t immune to him. She felt the pull as much as he did.

  “I...” her voice wavered. She cleared her throat and tried again. “To help catch the—”

  He shook his head. “Why are you in my room?”

  She seemed to realize this as well and her gaze flicked past him to the bed, then to his barely clad state. Her blue eyes traveled the width of his chest, moving downwards to settle on the towel slung around his hips. Her lips parted and a soft pink darkened into her cheeks before she tore her attention back up to his face.

  “Do you make it a habit of inviting girls into your room while you’re barely dressed?”

  And there was the girl he loved. Timid and bashful was not in her nature.

  “Do you make it a habit of waltzing into a man’s room when he’s barely dressed?” he countered challengingly.

  The pink darkened and her glower sharpened. “I didn’t waltz. I arrived on the heel of another who happened to leave you in this undressed state.” It was impossible not to sense the strong note of disapproval in the single comment.

  He couldn’t help it, he laughed. “If I didn’t know any better, I would accuse you of being jealous.” He turned away before she could hit him and walked back to the bed. “There is nothing between Imogen and me,” he told her as he rifled through the basket for clothes. “Not only is she far younger than I would ever consider, but she’s also much too innocent.” He discarded the towel, ignored her sharp intake of breath and drew on his boxers. “I like my woman feisty and capable of handling the things I would do to her. Besides,” he turned to her as he shook out a top, “my mother has all but adopted her into the family. I so much as look at her in that way and my head will be served for dinner on a silver platter with an apple in my mouth.”

  She seemed to consider this while watching him through narrowed, watchful eyes. He wasn’t sure what she was searching for, but she must not have found it, because the look never went away.

  “I don’t believe you,” she said at last. “I’ve heard all about your antics with women.”

  He stopped trying to find the tag on the back of his shirt collar and met her gaze, annoyance and anger rearing their heads.

  “Do you make it a habit of listening to everything you hear?”

  “When it comes to you and women? Yes.”

  “What do you want me to say?” He tossed the shirt down onto the bed. “That there has been no one in thousands of years? Yes, I have been with women, not quite as many as you might think, but there hasn’t been any one in over three hundred years.”

  Something flickered over her face. It was quick, barely a twitch of her eyebrows and a shimmer in her eyes, but he saw it.

  “No doubt your reputation precedes you and no decent woman would sully herself—”

  “No.” His heart gave a stuttering jolt in his chest, the first and only warning it gave him to stop before he was demolishing the safe distance between him and the woman across the room. “I met someone,” he murmured with every step he took closer to her. “And since her, no other woman will do.”

  The door thumped a second time with her failed escape attempt.

  “Maxwell...”

  “Gideon,” he corrected, coming to a stop mere inches from her. His palms flattened on either side of her head, trapping her between him and the door. “In my bedroom, in my bed, you will only call me Gideon. Say it.”

  He could almost hear the crack of her heart filling the space around them. It was interrupted only by the breath she seemed unable to catch. Her throat muscles constricted rapidly.

  “I won’t.”

  Her defiance thrilled him. It turned him on like her submission never could. This was the woman he wanted, one who fought him like a lioness in bed and ripped his back open with her nails as he plowed her violently into the mattress.

  “God, I want to fuck you,” he blurted, his brain and his cock syncing on that single train of thought.

  His declaration widened her eyes. Her lips parted and a sound between a gasp and a whimper poured out. Her weight shifted and
his gaze was drawn to her leather clad legs, to her thighs rubbing together and something snapped in him.

  “Get on the bed.” His nostrils flared. “Now.”

  It was a blur just how it happened. She might have moved of her own volition, or he may have forcibly dragged her, but she hit the mattress and bounced once with a yelp before he was on her. His hands closed around the front of her pants. The button popped off and the leather tore away from the zipper. He ignored her cry of outrage by yanking the soft material down her long legs as far as they would go without taking her boots off.

  “No!” she gasped, struggling to stop him with her hands while simultaneously helping him kick her pants off with her legs. “I can’t...”

  Yet she lay there with her coat splayed beneath her like dark wings, making no move to stop him. In her black halter, her hair a thick, black fan around her head and her pants bunched around her knees, exposing her lacy black panties, she was the picture of absolute perfection. Her pale skin seemed to glow and it prickled apprehension at the back of his mind just for a second before the beast took control once more.

  “Quiet,” he ordered her. “And don’t move.” He lifted his eyes off his meal to meet her gaze. “I mean it, Valkyrie. I will tie you down if I have to.”

  He thought briefly of all his toys hidden in the secret compartments of his closet and his cock gave a painful pulse.

  Not yet, he willed himself.

  “This ... this is wrong,” she panted. “I’m a Harvester. I can’t—”

  “You will still be a Harvester,” he assured her. “As much as it’s going to kill me, you’re not taking my cock inside you today, but I am going to make you say my name.”

  The wild tremble her body gave sent a tremor of delight through him. The fact that she hadn’t kicked his teeth into the back of his throat, or tried to get away, only intensified the fire burning inside him.

  He bent his head to her covered breasts. He nuzzled the spongy mounds once before taking the hard outline of her nipple between his teeth. He gave a sharp nibble that jerked her body with a lusty cry, but she quickly stilled the movement. At her sides, her hands closed in the sheets. Her unconscious obedience brought a small grin to his mouth.

  He did the same to the other nipple, going back and forth between the two onto the material was damp from his mouth and she was making weak, whining sounds of a small, tortured animal.

  Taking pity on her, he shifted down the length of her, dying to follow the path with his mouth all the way to where the lace hugged her full hips. Instead, all he could do was skim a kiss to her mound.

  “What ... what are you doing?” She tried to pull out from under him. “You can’t touch me there. That’s ... that’s for...” Her words broke off in a strangled cry that sent her flopping back down and all he’d done was press an open mouthed kiss to her nether lips.

  “Your husband?” he cajoled. “The man who will spread you open and do things to your pussy that will leave it thrumming for days in reminder?” He raised his head and peered up her flushed and quivering body to her face. “That is exactly what I plan on doing.”

  “You can’t...”

  He pressed his fingers into the little nub at the crest of her sex and sent her back arching off the mattress.

  “Oh but I can,” he interrupted casually while he rolled her clit in slow circles. “I can do that and so much more. Your body will respond to my every desire and love everything I do to it. No other man will ever touch what belongs to me.”

  She came with a frightened little squeak. Her body bucked into his fingers in wild grinds. It took a bit of effort not to let her bare thighs brush his hand as her legs flailed. Her head rocked viciously from side to side as a fine trickle of blood colored her already crimson lips where her teeth cut into the bottom fold. Gideon smirked as he watched her come undone. Under his hand, the stretch of material covering her core grew hot and damp with her release. Experimentally, he dragged his fingers lower off her switch and pushed against her opening.

  “Gideon!”

  “Want me here?” he half teased.

  “No...” she whined. “You shouldn’t...”

  Keeping his finger circling her center, he pushed himself up over her. “I want to be here,” he drawled into her ear. “I want to stretch you around my cock and watch you ride me like a good girl.”

  “Stop ... stop ... no!”

  With a desperate sob, she broke a second time.

  But he didn’t stop and he watched with twisted glee as her eyelids flew open with her third orgasm. The look of horror on her face as a fourth took her and the sheer pleasure as she came again for the fifth time made him want to say screw it and plunge inside her and feel her pussy suck all the come from his cock.

  “I’m barely doing anything.” He chuckled huskily. “You just keep coming.” His own growl rumbled between them. “Your panties are soaked. I want to lick you clean, Kyrie. I want taste you.”

  The heat between her legs intensified. She was making sounds that would forever haunt him and he wanted more.

  “Enough!” she begged, wheezing. “Gideon, please.”

  With a final roll of his thumb over the crest, he withdrew his hand and left her body trembling uncontrollably across his bed. He started to climb off her before he forgot himself and kissed her when her soft gasp stilled him. His eyes shot up to her face and found her peering curiously, but with hunger at his midsection. He followed the line of her attention and stiffened to find his erection had slipped free through the hole in the front of his boxers and jutted proudly against his abdomen. The fat, purple head glistened with precome and the veins filling it with blood seemed to pulse along the thick shaft. His fingers curled around the base with pressure to help elevate the throbbing, but all it did was make him want to come harder.

  “Shit!” he hissed, slightly mortified.

  He hadn’t had an accident since he was a teenager and Aednat Mac Craith had taken him in her mouth behind her father’s barn.

  “Do it.”

  Valkyrie’s firm command had his gaze flicking up to her face. She was watching his white knuckled grip with riveted fascination. The pink glow in her cheeks, the quick rise and fall of her breasts inside her halter, the dark desire in her eyes fanned the fire boiling in the pit of his stomach.

  “I want to watch,” she murmured.

  If that wasn’t the hottest thing he’d ever heard, he wasn’t sure what was. He obliged, never once breaking eye contact with her as he palmed his dick in quick, hard jerks. It didn’t take nearly as long as it should have for his balls to tighten. Then, just because he needed to mark her, mark that moment, he spilled across her stomach in sharp squirts. She gasped as the hot spray stained her skin. The muscles beneath quivered and her thighs came together.

  The fact that it turned her on nearly drove him out of his fucking mind with a fresh wave of arousal.

  “Fuck, this was a bad idea,” he growled.

  Her blue eyes shot up to his face, the hurt in them unmistakable. “I’ll leave—”

  “Don’t you fucking move!” he snarled at her as he pinned her down beneath him with his hands on either side of her head and his knees straddling her hips. “That wasn’t what I meant.” He tried to control his breathing, control the cock still exposed to the chill in the room, already hard and reaching for her. “Now that I’ve had a taste of you, I want more. I want to ignore everything and claim you as mine. I want to fill you with my seed and not just in your pussy. I don’t want to stop.”

  Beneath him, the leather on her pants rustled and he knew she was feeling it too. It was in her eyes, right alongside her apprehension.

  “We can’t.”

  “I know.”

  She licked her lips and he groaned. “I want to.”

  He lowered his head inches from tasting her and it was like putting an addict in a room full of cocaine and telling him not to touch.

  “I know.”

  She drew in a breath. “I want
to touch you.”

  His eyes flew open. His head reared back, his protest hot on his tongue. But it was too late. Her fingers had curled around his cock.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Gideon swore, loud and vicious as an unimaginable burst of pain and pleasure ripped through his very soul. His body all but burst into flames as the ocean roared between his ears and his skin sizzled. Somewhere in the distance, he could hear Valkyrie cry out, but she was lost in the white fog that shimmered like a veil around them. He tried to reach for her, but his muscles had locked into place as though he’d touched an electric fence with his tongue. Part of him wondered if maybe that was exactly what had happened. If maybe Valkyrie had cattle prodded him. But that didn’t explain why it felt as though he were being deep fried in the most amazing feeling, like he’d thrown back liquid bliss. Something inside him snapped into place and a rush of warmth, love, and such joy surged over him. For a moment, it was too much. It all kept tumbling over him, crashing into him. The overwhelming flood was like being lost at sea as a storm brewed over the horizon. Panic began to set in.

  “Gideon.”

  She was suddenly there, a ship in the darkness coming to his rescue. Her arms wound around him as though sensing his fears, shielding him as he was drawn into the comfort of her embrace.

  He held her back, aligning every sweet inch of her to his frame, fitting her as easily as a puzzle piece. Her scent encased him, familiar and calming. He burrowed into it and there was nothing in the world he couldn’t do, nothing he couldn’t conquer so long as she was his. She had become his only reason for living.

  The sensations never faded. They continued to coil around them until he was sure hours had gone by and even then, he had no desire to let go.

  “Valkyrie...?” He forced his body back under control and lifted his face out from its nuzzled place against the crook of her neck. “Are you hurt?”

  “What happened? What was that?”

  The golden glow of the lamp lit next to his bed provided the only light spilling over the arches of her cheeks, illuminated the soft glow in her eyes and confirmed her presence in his arms. Unlike all the other times, she wasn’t a dream.