He did, however, agree that Paimon wouldn’t have waited if it wasn’t needed. Something kept him from just taking the debt and getting out of Dodge.
And here they were. Raven sat on the bed, her eyes on Nicolas. Dexter had retreated to the kitchen, likely scrounging the cupboards for whatever alcohol they had on stock. She didn’t blame him. She was about to become full daimon, or die trying.
“We don’t have to do this, sweetheart,” Nicholas murmured. He was on his knees in front of her the next second, his hands running comforting laps up her thighs. “Not tonight, at least. We can try and find another way.”
Raven swallowed hard and tried to put on a brave face. “Do you really think there is another way?”
His eyes answered her immediately. His mouth was a little more reluctant. “No,” he said after a long minute.
She nodded, glancing down. “I die either way, you know,” she whispered. “If not today, then tomorrow. If not tomorrow, then next week.”
Nicholas raised a trembling hand to her bare arm and nodded, caressing the length of her skin with the backs of his curled fingers. “We can wait,” he said. “If you need—”
“I think the wait alone would kill me.” She forced a smile to her lips and shook her head. “There isn’t another choice, Nicolai. We both know there’s not. This is it.” There was a short pause. “And if I’m going to die, I want to die on my terms, not his.”
He nodded, brushing a kiss across her brow. “That’s my girl.”
“I do this, and the world doesn’t end. It’s a win/win.”
“It’ll only be a win for me if you wake up. If you’re still…” Nicholas shook his head, his jaw clenching and his nostrils flaring. He was grappling for control, fighting the outrage that had been so prevalent among his objections just hours ago. It was still there, his desire to scream in protest and tear the town apart until he was offered a more concrete alternative. It remained, but they knew collectively they had no other choice.
There was nothing else. There was only this.
“I’ll be okay,” she replied, attempting a smile which quickly faded. “You’re with me.”
Nicholas nodded fiercely, his fingers curling around her wrist and raising her hand to his mouth, his lips caressing her palm. “Always.”
The way his voice shook seemed to take the ground with it. “Do we wanna go over the pros again?” Raven asked. “You’re my anchor. I’m human-girl with daimon-recessiveness.”
Almost indiscernibly, he nodded again. “I’m a big, bad vamp,” he replied, reaching for the hem of her shirt. It was gone the next second, rendering her naked save for her panties. There was no sense putting on bras when she wasn’t going outside. No sense in putting on pants if she wasn’t leaving the bedroom. She was bare before him. Her small breasts filled his hands the next second, her nipples the playthings for his thumbs. “Human-recessive.”
“My human side completes your human side.”
“My demon…yours.” Nicholas leaned forward, his blunt teeth skimming across the claim mark. “We’ll defeat it together.”
She gasped, seizing him by the upper arms and squeezing hard. “Together,” she agreed, sighing when his mouth began a cool, steady descent. She felt him kiss the hollow of her throat. Felt his lips murmur small blessings down her skin, between the valley of her breasts until he had one of her nipples between his teeth.
“Nicholas,” she whispered, her hands wandering upward until they were wound in his hair. It was natural, the way his name rolled off her lips now. It didn’t feel strained or forced. It didn’t feel like something she said to appease him, to confirm that she knew he was as much the incarnation of this life as he was the last. His names were interchangeable because the same man lurked beneath them.
They were linked. They always had been. The claim had only turned something already known, already understood, into something concrete. It had given their connection a name and an unspoken vow in blood. A vow, like their bond, that had been there all along.
Dexter believed the claim was the reason she would survive. Her daimon wouldn’t face the invading presence of a vampiric demon alone. Her daimon would have Nicholas. Their connection completed her strength, and together, they would beat it out. Her human side would recede and her daimon side would prevail. She’d be hardened into an immortal form, something for which she’d always been prepared for anyway, as the mate of an immortal creature. Her strength would be insurmountable.
This was the reason Paimon tried to keep them apart. Strangely, by keeping them apart, he’d led them right to the answer.
If it were indeed the answer.
“You taste so sweet,” Nicholas murmured around her breast, sucking hard on her nipple as his fingers trailed down her stomach. “You always have.”
Raven inhaled sharply. “Have I?” she asked.
He nodded, a harsh breath whispering through his lips. “I remember the first time I tasted you,” he replied, his tongue flicking over her rosy flesh, eliciting from her a long, needy moan. “You were so different. No powder. No perfume. You smelled like soap and the woods. Like the night.”
She chuckled, massaging his scalp lovingly. “Translation: you were sweaty and gross and covered in demon-guts.”
Nicholas released her breast with a wet plop, glaring up at her. “Putting words in my mouth?”
“I just think if you really think I smelled all nice back in the days before body-wash, you’re either repressing a horrible memory of Ravenstink, or really blinded by the love whammy I put on you.”
“Love whammy, eh?”
“Men should fear the powers of the love whammy.”
“Mmm…” Nicholas licked the underside of her breast, then turned to give her other equal attention. “And how many men do you think you’ve whammied?”
“Oh, dozens.”
He snorted around a mouthful of her flesh, the hand at her stomach easing her back against the mattress. Her legs fell open and before she could prepare herself, she felt his fingers dancing over the thin strip of cotton guarding her pussy. “Dozens?” he asked, biting her nipple playfully. “I’ll need names and numbers.”
“I’ve only whammied back with you, dummy.”
“Doesn’t mean these asses don’t need to get dismantled for thinking about you in the whammy sense.”
“One word: Octavia.”
Nicholas snickered again. “You’re never gonna let that go, are you?” he asked, his mouth abandoning her breasts completely, making a pathway of hot, wet kisses down her stomach. “I don’t want her, kitten. I don’t think I ever did.”
She released her grip on his hair. “Yeah-huh.”
His tongue dipped into her belly button, and he grinned when she squealed and wiggled beneath him. “I thought she was the best I could do.”
“Whatever.”
“The rest of the time I dreamed of you.”
“You didn’t know it was me,” Raven countered, arching her hips off the bed when his fingers finally slipped under the elastic of her panties and slid the soaked material down her legs. It was slightly embarrassing how wet she became at his slightest touch, but for the desire clouding his eyes, she could tell he didn’t mind. “Y-you thought I-I was…some…”
“You’ve always been my night angel, Raven,” Nicholas said, his voice gentle but firm, his hands slipping upward again until he gripped her thighs. “Accept it.”
“Mmm…”
“Always.” He dove for her center without warning, his tongue plunging into her pussy and assaulting her with lick after lick. He slurped at her, drinking her honey as though parched and she was the only thing that could quench his thirst. Sensation exploded, blazing through her veins and making her skin so hot it was a wonder when it didn’t melt right off.
“I can’t lose this, you hear?” Nicholas growled between licks. “You can’t die on me.”
“I’ll…uh…I’ll…keep that…in…oh Nicholas…in mind.”
He growle
d again, his mouth abandoning her opening to tease her swollen pearl. At the first flick of his tongue, she knew she wouldn’t last.
“Nicholas, please…”
“Raven…”
“Stop.”
He glanced up at her, and how he managed to pout with his lips wrapped around her clit, she didn’t know. Only that he did and it made her insides quiver with need.
“You don’t want me to…?”
“I just want you.” She smiled when he took a defiant lick of her wet flesh, running her fingers through his hair again. “Please…”
“I want to commit every inch of you to memory,” he replied. “Your smell. Your taste.” Nicholas expelled a long breath and slowly untangled himself from her grip, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and rising to his feet. He paused to look at her, his gaze both softening with love and blazing with desire as they took her in. Lying back, her skin hot and her hair tussled, her lips swollen from his kisses, her breasts wet and tender from the attention of his amorous mouth, her legs open and her pussy drenched for him. She saw everything he saw. She saw her reflection in his eyes.
“Every inch of you,” he repeated, turning his hands to his jeans. In seconds he was as naked as she, and his thick cock bobbed eagerly against his stomach. “I know it’s only been days, but…” Nicholas shuddered and looked away, blinking rapidly. “I can’t imagine living in this world without you in it.”
“Nicholas—”
“Without your hands. Your arms. Your sweet little smile. Your beautiful hair.” He shook his head, sighing hard. He met her eyes again but couldn’t hold her gaze. “I can’t imagine…”
“It’ll be okay.”
“We don’t know that,” Nicholas countered. “We don’t know that this isn’t just a load of wishful thinking. If I do this…Christ, if I kill you, and it…We still have four days. We don’t—”
“You already said you don’t think there’s anything else.”
“I don’t, but that doesn’t mean—”
Raven sat up, tucking her legs beneath her so she could rise up on her knees. “Look at me,” she said softly. When he didn’t, she seized him by the chin and jerked his head downward. “If we don’t do this now, we’ll just be doing it in four days. I don’t want to wait. I don’t want to risk the chance that Dexter is wrong about Paimon not having the power he says he has. If not now, then—”
“Kitten—”
“Nicholas, make love to me.” She lifted herself so she could reach his lips with her own. “I want you.”
A dark shudder rode through him. “I want you, too,” he all but gasped. “Always. Every minute. All the time.”
“Then take me. I’m right here.”
There were no other words. Nicholas moaned in defeat and swallowed her moan with a kiss, following her as she led him back. She fell against the mattress again, welcoming him as he rolled between her legs. She thrust herself up against him, rotating her hips to tease him with the wet waiting flesh of her pussy. She wanted this to be about nothing but them. She wanted to focus on nothing but feeling him. She wanted to feel nothing but Nicholas moving inside her and his whispered kisses against her skin.
If she thought about everything else, she might not make it.
“Love me,” she whispered against his lips, her own hand reaching between them. She wrapped her fingers around his cock and grinned when he gasped, stroking him tenderly and rubbing his silky head against herself. “Feel me.”
“Oh Raven…”
Her smile grew wider, and she lifted her head to kiss him, at last positioning him at her vaginal opening. A little thrill raced through her when she felt her flesh draw him in, and as her muscles relaxed to welcome him home, she determined privately that the demon who tried to take this away from her would face a hell of a fight.
She wouldn’t quietly. She never did.
Long, trembling breaths collided with her lips as he sank inside her. Her flesh molded and gripped him, his balls pressing intimately against her. His weight comforted her, and gave way to almost choked sobs of fear-riddled pleasure. He looked at her and she touched the sky. There was nothing that could take her away.
It was a bittersweet lovemaking. She hadn’t expected any less. She held him as he rocked against her, pressing his lips to every inch of her they could reach. His hands explored without direction. One second they would be at her breasts, the next slipping up the soft underside of her arms, the next framing her cheeks to angle her into his kisses, the next rubbing her clit tenderly as his cock rocked inside her. They didn’t speak, and the tempered sounds of their whimpers and pants struck her as so unspeakably intimate that she wondered if she could reach orgasm simply by listening to him moan.
Knowing she did that to him was empowering in ways she’d never known she could be empowered.
Then Nicholas pressed his brow to hers, and their eyes locked. The walls could have fallen down and she wouldn’t have noticed. She saw nothing but the ocean, and the flecks of gold which reminded her of sunset. She felt nothing but his body, his flesh smacking hers, as his thrusts gained speed with desperation of release. She heard nothing but the whines of an old bed’s springs as they pushed each other toward an unfathomable edge.
The silence between them broke the second before she burst. The silence broke with three perfect words.
“I love you.”
His bite always came with a flash of pain before euphoria. It wasn’t different this time. His fangs locked inside her, his hips thrusting hard as she spasmed and drenched him. She felt him flood her the next instant. She thought she heard herself say something but she couldn’t be sure. She wanted to tell him she loved him too, even if the words weren’t needed, even if he already knew. She needed him to know now more than ever.
The familiar second wherein he would normally pull away and lick her wound went by without ceremony, and her body spiraled into instinctive panic. She fought the need to push him away. She fought the rising anxiety and welcomed the blanket of darkness. Her ears rang. Her head felt light. Her skin was so slick with heat it might as well have dissolved. Consciousness danced further and further away until she was hanging on by a proverbial thread.
There was a voice, but God, it was far away.
“Raven, open up for me.”
Her mouth fell slack, and she tasted liquid copper.
It was the last thing she knew before the world went black.
Chapter 29
She didn’t moan. She didn’t scream. Her eyes didn’t flutter and her lips didn’t part. She didn’t call for him. She just lay there, pale as the moon and cold as death itself. She just lay there.
She didn’t moan, but she moved.
The convulsions became easier to time. Every three minutes or so, she would jerk violently against the mattress, her neck craning back so far he was convinced the demon was trying to snap it clean. Her arms would flail and her legs would kick, her body contorting in ways that would make a gymnast flinch. Each fit lasted longer than the last, and they came quickly now. He felt them approach and suffered through them along with her, knowing simply by the way her body bent how much pain she was in. Pain he’d caused by feeding her his blood.
Nicholas did his damndest to remain detached, but Christ, it was hard. Every time he felt the approach of another seizure, he had to fight the urge to scream and pound on his chest and rip the walls down with his bare hands. He wanted to piss off the High Council so much they had no choice but to march their righteous asses to the front door and deal with him face-to-face.
Not that they knew, of course, but anger wasn’t rational. Distant as they might be, a small unsound voice demanded how they could sit aside and allow this to happen. It didn’t matter, in that instant, that the High Council had been deceived by Paimon. Raven was One of the Few, dammit, and they should just know when something was wrong.
He didn’t know if he was helping or if his demon was doing anything to battle for the girl he loved. He sure as
hell didn’t feel tormented beyond the gut-wrenching agony ripping his heart apart, but that sort of pain was expected. He knew it. He’d felt it every second since she’d divulged the price. There was nothing new. He didn’t feel torn apart. He didn’t feel like his demon was fighting.
Nicholas’s eyes flooded with tears.
God. I’m losing her.
These were the sort of thoughts he’d forced aside. He hadn’t wanted to dwell on negativity because unconscious—dead—as she was, he wanted to believe she could feel him.
He needed to believe being strong for her for was helping.
He needed to believe it, but as time ticked on, hope faded closer to despair.
“Use me,” Nicholas whispered fiercely, collapsing to his knees beside her. “For Christ’s sake, Raven, use me!”
She twitched. There was no answer. He hadn’t expected one.
“Raven—”
A sudden wave of dizzy crashed over him, and without warning the walls began to spin as the floor beneath his feet became uneven. Desperation racked every fiber of his being. He thought for a second she might have opened her eyes, but it was gone before he could collect himself.
Then all was gone. The dizzy spell morphed into something unrecognizable, sending shock waves through his skin. A thousand invisible hands grappled for gray matter and tugged in various directions, and Nicholas’s body caved without even a pretense of a fight. He felt himself depart from his body, felt himself projected into the heart of a nameless struggle. A roar tore through his lips even if the air around him remained silent. He was so dizzy he could barely remember his name.
He always, however, remembered hers. As he collapsed on the bed beside her, it was the only thing he knew to say.
* * * *
Raven had seen depictions of creatures trapped within the human body before, but she’d never given any thought to how it felt. Now, detached from consciousness and only aware of the presence of an angered beast trapped within her skin, she felt she truly knew the meaning of claustrophobic.
Ripples Through Time Page 30