by Aja James
“Devlin,” she moaned softly, “come inside of me. I want to see your eyes when you come apart.”
He heeded her this time, levering himself up on his elbows, releasing her wrists. She opened her thighs and wrapped her legs around his hips, bringing his pulsing erection to her weeping core.
Eyes locked with his, she stared into those amazing sapphire orbs as he slowly entered her, thick and long and hard and satiny. He pushed deeply to the hilt and held there as she quivered with sparks of incandescent pleasure around him, comprehending with crystal clarity that no one could ever make her feel this way.
Only him. Only Devlin.
“I love you, Grace,” he said in that low, smoky baritone, husky with emotion, staring deeply into her eyes.
She gasped, caught unawares as her body came apart at the seams, as her heart pounded its way out of her chest, and her spirit soared to dizzying heights.
And only then did he begin to move, stroking her higher, deeper, harder. Keeping her suspended at that glorious peak, crashing wave after wave of ecstasy upon her.
“Devlin,” she breathed, holding his face in her hands, lost in the glistening pools of his eyes. “Come with me.”
His body obeyed, and she saw with vivid fascination the crimson flush of his pleasure that traveled up his chest, his throat, his cheeks, the beauty of his crisis blooming on his face, contorting his features in something like anguish, a breathtaking pain, as if he were dying, as if she had slain him.
She felt the hot gush of his seed wash over her womb, the shaking of his body as he lost himself to passion, the voracious pulls of her sex for more of him.
All of him.
She pulled him down to her finally and sealed his mouth with hers, breaking their gaze.
But it was too late.
She would never forget the way he looked as he released his seed, along with his heart and soul, into her.
The devastating way he loved her.
*** *** *** ***
The Creature had a simple plan to drive a veritable chasm between the New England Dark Queen and her Pure allies.
But it was in no hurry to execute the scheme. Preparation and planning were key. It enjoyed games that required cunning and strategy. And it absolutely delighted in building the anticipation for a glorious climax.
No, the Dark Queen could wait while it set wheels in motion.
Meanwhile, it had a few tricks up its sleeve to accelerate the expansion of the fight clubs.
Recreating the Genesis serum, on the other hand, presented a larger challenge. Fortunately, it was one that its Mistress seemed less concerned about. Perhaps she had some tricks of her own that she didn’t share.
Shrugging the responsibility of engendering mass chaos, violence and destruction aside for a moment, the Creature decided to take a stroll down its favorite street in Brooklyn, to visit its favorite shop.
As it passed by the gleaming, newly washed window of a flower shop, it looked to make sure it was in the right skin, like an insecure teenager checking her makeup.
Just to be sure. It wouldn’t do to reveal its real face to the lovely old Mama Bear, Estelle Martin. She’d never call it Binu again.
The sun had just set as it arrived at Dark Dreams. It loved the sound of the little wreath of bells jingling as it opened the door.
Estelle was facing it as it entered, sitting at her oval tea table.
She was not alone.
“Welcome, Binu,” she smiled, though her smile seemed dimmed at half its usual wattage. “Come join us for some biscuits and tea. It will only take me a few minutes to prepare your favorite coffee.”
She hustled away without waiting for its reply, leaving it to awkwardly face two individuals it had never met and one who made its stomach tie itself in knots.
“Hello,” Sophia said warmly, smiling shyly in greeting. “There’s plenty of space for one more. Come sit by me.”
She pulled over a nearby chair and patted its cushion as if to advertise its comforts.
“Is that your name—Binu?” the blonde woman it had never met in person, but knew about from reports, asked curiously. “What a coincidence. The word has a special meaning where I come from.”
She smiled and stood up, gesturing for it to take the seat that Sophia offered. “Please do join us. We don’t bite. My name is Nana Chastain and this is my son Benjamin.”
Its eyes finally riveted on the little boy with golden curls, who at first sight appeared to be a miniature version of his mother, but when it looked closely, the shape of the boy’s face, its angles and planes, curves and valleys looked nothing like his mother’s.
“Hi,” Benjamin chirped happily, unaware that a real life monster was not two feet in front of him.
The boy’s face was so familiar it couldn’t look away, even as it was aware that it had been staring for an uncomfortable length of time.
What was it about the boy? Where had it seen that nose before? That chin and those cheeks?
“Are you all right?” it heard Sophia’s voice like a distant echo through a fog. She had stood up too and was coming closer to it.
“Have we met before?” she asked, almost close enough to touch. “There’s something familiar about you.”
“Here we are,” Estelle called out as she reemerged from the kitchen. “Black and smooth with a dollop of cream. Just the way you like it, Binu.”
It didn’t realize it was backing away until its back met the front door. The three women and child stared after it with similarly puzzled and worried expressions.
“I—” it couldn’t finish the thought as it turned and all but fled the shop.
Its long strides ate up the sidewalk as it headed away from Dark Dreams, heedless of the direction and distance.
The only image in its mind was the little boy’s face, Olivia’s face.
Olivia, the human woman who had been obsessed with it, whom it had toyed with and destroyed.
The woman who’d claimed it had a son.
*** *** *** ***
“We have to go to London.”
Devlin finished buttoning his shirt and watched Grace gather her belongings by the door of his chamber, now texting someone on her phone.
“Why London?” he asked casually, down-playing the bomb she’d just set off at his feet.
He hadn’t been back on English soil since his ill-fated confrontation with Lavinia after he’d returned from the Peninsula. If he never set foot on Britain again it would be too soon.
“Zenn’s HQ is there. And so is its mainframe. I can’t break the encryption of the two files you flagged from afar, but if I hardwire directly into the mainframe, I can get through.”
She looked up at him. “Can someone transport my things back to my apartment? Aunt Maria has agreed to come by daily to take care of Miu-Miu, Antony and Cleopatra. I want to take them with me on the trip, but I don’t think it would be practical.”
A corner of Devlin’s lips quirked.
No, hefting a fish bowl and a chinchilla cage around while they broke into Zenn’s fortified HQ in the middle of London’s financial district right across the street from St. Paul’s Cathedral would definitely not be practical.
“I’ll have their safe transport arranged,” he assured her. “But do you think it absolutely necessary to go to London?”
She came to stand before him, trapping him with her intense, dark eyes.
“Don’t you want to solve the puzzle?” she asked, her voice filled with a strange sort of urgency, one he’d never heard in her tone before.
“Don’t you want to find what you’re looking for?” she continued relentlessly. “You sought me out to help you crack Zenn. Cracking Zenn would lead you closer to your target. Isn’t that right? So let’s do this together. I want to know why they encrypted my parents’ files.”
“Did you know that they worked for Zenn’s parent company before Zenn was spun off and rebuilt as a start-up? I need to unlock those files, Devlin. I need your help. I’ve
never traveled so far by myself. I’ve only ever been in two cities my whole life.”
She was growing agitated, and her nervousness made Devlin forget his own troubles for the time being. He smoothed his hands comfortingly up and down her arms, then kissed her quickly on the forehead.
“Of course we’ll go together. We can leave within the hour.” He flashed one of his signature disarming grins. “How does First Class on Virgin Atlantic Airways sound, darling?”
She frowned at him. “I wouldn’t know.”
And then her brow cleared and she even smiled tentatively back at him.
“But I like the way you call me ‘darling.’”
His eyes crinkled at the corners as his grin grew wider.
“Are you better now?” she asked, solemn again. “Have you healed completely?”
Devlin puffed up his chest and put her hands on his abdomen, putting pressure on his ribs. “Doesn’t hurt at all. Good as new.”
“Devlin,” she said, looking at her hands on his fine white shirt, covering those chiseled abs and steely ribs, “how big is the plane?”
“Airbus 350. It can hold over four hundred passengers, why?”
“Maybe we should sit at opposite ends of the plane,” she said seriously. “I don’t think I can keep my hands off you otherwise.”
She said the damnedest things, Devlin mused, a bubble of happiness floating through his heart. Perhaps London wouldn’t be so bad after all if Grace was by his side.
*** *** *** ***
“It was very strange,” Inanna murmured while snuggled into her Mate’s side after a slow, wondrous session of love-making.
She was flushed with the strength of his blood and seed within her, radiant with the sometimes unbelievable happiness she felt since they’d reunited after millennia of being lost to one another. But this evening’s encounter inserted a shadow of apprehension into her resplendent bliss.
“I feel like I know him somehow, the young man who came to Mama Bear’s shop, even though I’ve never met him before. And he must have felt something too, because he ran right back out as if demons were on his heels. Sophia said the same thing when he was gone. It’s as if she knew him too but couldn’t place him. Just a feeling, an awareness.”
“I wish I’d been with you,” Gabriel said, tightening his arms around her, willing his body heat to soothe her.
“My body would hurt a lot less if I could have skipped training with Tal.” He deliberately put a teasing note in his voice to help ease her tension.
“How is Papa?” Inanna asked, her worry shifting focus instead of lessening. “He hasn’t been the same since…”
She turned her face toward Gabriel as she realized something important.
“He hasn’t been the same since we visited Dark Dreams together,” she finished her thought. “A lot seems to coincide with that shop, I wonder why.”
Gabriel knew it was better to help her sort her thoughts out rather than try to distract her. This topic was important for reasons they didn’t yet know.
“What do you know about the shop and its owner? How long has it been there?”
Inanna thought back briefly to the first time she’d noticed the place, the first time she’d met Mama Bear.
“It must have been a couple of years ago,” she mused. “I used to walk often down those streets at night because there are many Lost Souls to be found in the area.”
Inanna was once the Angle of Death among her Kind. Her role had been to release Lost Souls back into the Universal Balance so that they could be reborn with hopefully a better life.
Now that she’d found her one true Mate and no longer needed to feed off the blood and souls of others, sustained completely by Gabriel’s body, she’d tentatively taken on the new moniker of Light-Bringer, as the fabled, destined hero from the Zodiac Prophesies.
Though she hadn’t the first idea what it was she was supposed to do to save the races from imminent destruction. Right now, she just focused on living and enjoying life to the fullest with her small family nucleus of Gabriel, Benji and Tal.
As well as finding her mother. Inanna believed in her heart of hearts that her mother was still alive.
“One night I passed by this shop, brand new and sparkling like the gingerbread house from the fairytales Benji likes to read, and something about it just beckoned to me. I had to go inside. And that was when I met Mama Bear.”
Inanna smiled fondly in memory. “If I were to envision the most wonderful mother, kind and sassy, full of wisdom but knowing when to let me make my own decisions and mistakes, I couldn’t have picked a more perfect person to fill the role than Mama Bear.”
She gazed into her Mate’s eyes and nuzzled his nose briefly with hers. “She helped me to fight for you, you know. She never gave me any direct advice, and I never asked for it, but she helped me understand my own heart better. She helped to embolden me to go after what I want. You.”
She kissed him slowly and lingeringly. “My love. My Mate. My everything.”
With one smooth motion, Gabriel rolled her on top of his body and entered her hot, slick passage, joining them intimately, knowing that she needed the connection.
They took not a moment of their time together for granted, having been separated for so long. She still feared losing him like she did once before. He did everything he could to reassure her, but he knew that only time would lessen her doubt.
In moments like these, he just needed to remind her that he was here. They were one. He simply held there, buried to the hilt, the full head of his sex exerting the perfect pressure on her G spot deep inside.
“Does Mama Bear have a name?” he asked, helping her continue her train of thought as she sighed with pleasure and wrapped herself more tightly around him, holding him as close as she could.
“Estelle Martin, I believe,” Inanna said, her eyes drifting closed as a warm, tingling orgasm began to build within her.
Just having him inside of her did that. Made her senses come alive, her spirit soar.
“What do you know about her?”
Inanna took some time to reflect.
Finally, she said, “Not much, really. I’ve never asked about her past or even her present, and she’s never volunteered. I know that she bakes mostly to supply the orphanage a few blocks down with treats for the children. She doesn’t sell anything in her shop, but I’ve seen her give items away to strangers. It seems to make her happy to do so. And sad at the same time too, as if she were letting go of something precious to her, some part of herself.”
“She seems like a kind lady,” Gabriel recalled.
He’d met Mama Bear a couple of times now, but Inanna was right. Although they would spend an hour or two partaking of tea and baked delights at the shop, usually chatting much of the time with its owner, he didn’t know anything pertinent about her. Where she was from, why she was here, whether she had any family or a significant other.
It was only a feeling they had of her, that she was a sweet, generous lady, for the most part joyful and ready to smile.
But there was also a darker side, Gabriel could tell. A pervasive sadness and…anger…that sometimes rose to the surface.
“Perhaps it’s just a coincidence,” Inanna said, not knowing what to make of what happened and her own feelings about it.
“Perhaps it was nothing. The young man might have remembered an appointment he was late for. And Papa…maybe something in the shop triggered a hurtful memory. He’d been through so much. Rain won’t tell me the details of her medical assessment, but she revealed enough. He is in constant, unending pain.”
Tears welled in her eyes as she held Gabriel’s gaze.
“I’ve barely just gotten him back and I already feel like I’m losing him again.”
Gabriel enfolded her snugly in his embrace and kissed her tears away, whispering words of comfort and reassurance in the old language.
She deepened their kiss and infused it with a desperate passion and carnality, devouring h
is mouth and tongue, nipping at his lips.
She needed him to come for her again, deep inside where she held him tightly, wash away her fears and doubts. And so he would.
Always.
Chapter Fifteen
London had certainly changed in the last two hundred and thirty years, Devlin reflected as he and Grace rode in one of the famous black hackneys from Heathrow to their temporary residence.
He’d watched many other cities transform with time, as if they had lives of their own, growing and sprawling and expanding in ways he could never have imagined as a human in the early nineteenth century.
But he’d always managed to avoid any news about England, or Britain in general. It took a lot of diligence to close his eyes and ears to current events given how important England was as a global economic and political powerhouse, but he’d been creative and for the most part successful in his efforts.
And now he was finally here. The place he’d been born. The place where he’d died, if not physically, then emotionally and psychologically.
He never should have confronted Lavinia. Sometimes truth shed no light. It only brought darkness.
“Devlin, are you okay?”
If Grace noticed his silence and reticence enough to ask the question, the situation must be dire indeed.
He took her hand in his and squeezed.
“Perfectly fine,” he lied.
“Where are we going?”
Devlin wished they were headed to the Ritz Carlton on St. Jame’s, or any other hotel or B&B for that matter, but while he’d been able to procure two last-minute First Class direct flights from New York to London, he wasn’t able to get a hotel room.
It was Wimbledon season and there was also some sort of international diplomatic gathering being held in the city. Everything was booked solid. No amount of charm and negotiation, and even bribery, worked.
“We’re going to Devonshire House,” Devlin said tightly, unsuccessfully trying to sound off-handed.
“Do you not want to go there, Devlin?” Grace asked, a familiar furrow appearing between her brows.