by Lara Adrian
Dev roared with the realization of how fast he was falling for her. His hunger swelled, need overcoming him. He rocked against her, merciless as he watched another orgasm rise up to take her.
“Come for me,” he rasped. “Do it now, angel.”
She screamed as the pleasure swamped her. Dev soaked it up, unable to keep from drawing her sexual energy into him as his own climax rolled over him like a tsunami.
The sweet honey taste of her juices was like nectar in the back of his throat. The even sweeter force of her orgasm fed the demon side of him, all of it proving too much to bear.
Dev plunged deep, his entire being gripped by the power of his own release.
He never spilled his seed inside a lover. Not any of the humans he’d seduced over the years, and most definitely never with a Nephilim.
Not once, not in centuries of living.
And yet, he couldn’t stop the flood of heat that rushed through him now—a wracking wave that exploded out of him as he buried himself to the root in the tight velvet glove of Nahiri’s womb.
He swore viciously, shouting with the intensity of his orgasm.
And even after he was spent, Dev couldn’t summon the will to withdraw. He couldn’t keep his hips from pumping into her, nor his cock from rousing right back to life, ready to do it all over again.
Had he told Nahiri this wasn’t wrong?
Christ. What a bastard he was.
Because real or not, right or wrong, he knew this thing between them could not continue. He couldn’t allow it.
He had to send her back to her home. Back to the temple, where she belonged.
And soon.
Before he took anything more from her.
CHAPTER EIGHT
He seemed different after they had freshened up in the tasting room’s private bath, and were dressed once more.
Nahiri couldn’t decide what had changed in Dev, or precisely when, but their conversation in the time after they’d made love had taken a markedly less familiar turn. Gone were the questions about her past and her life at the temple. And his replies when she attempted to engage him were perfunctory at best.
There were no more intimate glances or tender, seductive caresses. Dev still looked at her with hunger, but there was a sharper edge to his gaze now.
There was reservation in his golden eyes. Darkly troubled contemplation in the flat line of the sensual mouth that had given her so much pleasure just a short while ago.
She had asked him if she’d done something wrong, but he’d denied it with a stern scowl and clipped words that hadn’t done much to reassure her.
For the past several minutes, he’d been talking in private outside the tasting room with his brother, Naell.
The two Gravori men stood in the hallway, conversing in low, serious voices. Every now and then Dev sent a grim look her way as he and Naell spoke. Nahiri couldn’t pretend his sudden distance and grave regard didn’t put a lump of coldness in her chest.
She felt his abrupt detachment as if a wide crevasse had opened up between them.
It confused her.
Wounded her more deeply than she might have imagined.
Finally, the Incubi brothers finished talking. They both strode into the room where she waited, feeling awkward and out of place on the sofa where she’d given Devlin Gravori her virginity.
She’d given him a piece of her heart today too, if she were being honest with herself.
And she couldn’t deny that she felt a bit used now, looking into Dev’s impassive face when her body still thrummed from the intensity of their lovemaking.
“Naell will take you back to the citadel, Nahiri.”
She glanced at his handsome, sandy-haired brother before looking back into Dev’s sober gaze. “What about you?”
He gave a small shake of his head. “I have things to settle here. It could take a while yet. You go on ahead of me.”
She cocked her head at him, eyes narrow. “Aren’t you concerned about leaving an enemy Blade in your House without you there to ensure your family’s safety?”
His mouth flattened in a wry, regretful smile. “You’re not the enemy, Nahiri. You never were, and you never will be.”
But she wasn’t a part of his House either. Not a part of his family.
Nor would she ever be.
A bitter thought—an unfair one too, perhaps. He hadn’t made her any promises, after all. She had been the one who let him into her heart. If she’d walked willingly into an Incubus trap today, naively trusting that she wasn’t just one of Devil Gravori’s stable of willing Thralls, then she had no one to blame but herself.
She didn’t want to believe the worst of him, but she also wasn’t fool enough to think this wasn’t some kind of good-bye.
“Go with Naell,” he told her. “I’ll be back at the villa in a few hours. We’ll talk then.”
The gentleness of his voice made it clear to her.
He regretted what happened between them today. He’d told her it wasn’t wrong, that it was real, and now he was looking at her as though he wished he could call the words back.
The hurt of his rejection sapped all the moisture from her mouth. She had no voice, which was probably the only thing preventing her from making an even bigger fool of herself in front of not only Dev, but his brother too.
Praying he couldn’t see her wounds through her eyes, Nahiri nodded, then followed Naell out of the room. Dev stood in the threshold behind them, watching her go.
Watching, but making no move to stop her.
Nahiri tried to tell herself it was for the best if they kept their distance from each other.
She needed to remember that she wasn’t his lover. She wasn’t even his guest.
She was his prisoner.
At worst, she was merely a pawn to him. A piece he’d swiped and would keep until he decided he no longer needed her.
Those troubling understandings followed Nahiri for the duration of the flight back to Gravori House. She didn’t look at the breathtaking scenery this time. She sat numbly in her seat, staring straight ahead and wondering how she’d allowed herself to feel so strongly for Dev.
It was worse than that, in fact.
She was falling in love with him.
Maybe she already had.
The realization astonished her. It had happened so quickly, and taken root so deeply.
But her entire being had responded to him as if it recognized he belonged to her the moment he walked into the temple. She couldn’t blame it all on Incubus allure, as much as she might wish to.
His brother had no such effect on her. She felt his innate power emanating from the cockpit the same way she might notice the thickening of the air before a storm.
With Dev, he was the storm.
He swept her up, twisted her inside out. Left her breathless and trembling.
Heaven help her, but he would leave her crushed and broken if it turned out that today meant nothing to him.
And if it turned out that she meant nothing…?
“Here we are,” Naell announced from behind the helicopter’s controls, dragging Nahiri’s thoughts back to her surroundings. He touched down lightly in the villa’s courtyard and killed the engine.
“I suppose you’ve been ordered to put me back in my cell now?” she asked.
Naell shook his head. “You’re not Dev’s prisoner. Not anymore. He said you can make yourself comfortable anywhere in the villa you like. We’ll leave for the temple after he returns.”
“The temple.” She went very still as the news settled over her.
He was letting her go.
No, he was pushing her away.
Back to her old life. Back to the place where they would never see each other again.
“You didn’t know,” Naell ground out. “Son of a bitch. You mean, he didn’t tell you?”
She couldn’t speak. She fumbled with the complicated set of buckles on her seat belt, then burst out of the helicopter as soon as she w
as free of the restraints.
She took off running, into the maze of gardens and tall hedges.
Naell didn’t follow her.
He had to know she wouldn’t want the company. He probably saw the misery in her face and preferred to steer clear of the tears that were sure to start falling any second now.
She didn’t wait to find out. Ducking down one twisting passage then another, Nahiri soon found herself deep within the garden maze. In a small elbow of the labyrinth, she came upon a stone bench and plopped down on it, her face sagging into her open palms.
What an idiot she was.
What a gullible fool.
Her heart ached, throat burned. Her vision swam with hot, welling tears.
“Did you get hurt?” The child’s voice sounded from just a few feet away.
Nahiri looked up and met the concerned, inquisitive face of a lovely little boy. An Incubus, although he was easily a couple of decades away from maturing into his demonic powers. A mop of pale blond hair drooped into his eyes and fell around his seashell-pink cheeks. He held a large red ball in his arms, his breathing rapid as if he’d been racing through the maze too.
She sniffled and wiped the moisture from beneath her eyes. “I did get hurt, but I’ll be all right.” She managed a genuine smile for him. “Do you live here?”
He nodded, walking over to sit next to her. His bright blue eyes lifted up to her. “Do you live here now too?”
“Oh. No, I don’t,” she said. She wasn’t sure how to explain her presence at the villa to a child, and anyway, Dev’s planned dismissal of her made it unnecessary to try. “I’m only staying for a little while.”
“Don’t you like it here?”
She stared into the guileless little face and found she couldn’t lie. “I think I probably could like it here, very much. But it’s not my home. I can’t stay.”
“Oh,” he said. “That’s too bad, huh?”
“Yes, it’s too bad.”
Restless with energy, he hopped back to his feet, shifting the ball to under his other arm. His pale brows knit together now. “What’s your name?”
“Nahiri.”
“I’m Kai,” he said. “Come on, Nahiri. See if you can catch me!”
Kai.
Marius’s son.
She watched him vanish into the greenery, feeling her heart twist with a new kind of pain. The last thing she felt like doing was playing a game of hide and seek in the gardens when her world was about to shatter in a few more hours, after Dev returned.
But she couldn’t refuse the little boy.
If for no other reason than to help give the dead man’s only child a reason to smile and laugh for a while. Her problems would still be waiting for her after her game with Kai.
“Nahiri, are you coming?”
His shout drew her to her feet. “You’d better run fast, or I’m going to find you!”
She hurried in the direction he’d fled, darting down one of the passages that cut to the left. She could hear his footsteps beating somewhere to her right, a few yards ahead. Smiling, she worked her way over to another hedge row and jogged toward the area she last heard him.
He wasn’t there.
She crept forward, listening for any sounds of movement. He’d gotten so quiet. Hiding from her, but she knew he had to be close.
She ducked around another corner of the maze and paused, searching with her eyes and ears. “Kai?”
The red ball rolled out from a row that cornered into another one up ahead.
Nahiri’s stomach sank inexplicably.
Although she had no cause to feel the dread that settled in her belly, she crept toward the errant ball, her heart pounding frantically in her breast.
Please, don’t let him be harmed.
She reached the end of the row and turned to see what waited there.
A pair of Nephilim Blades.
Not from the temple, but from the ranks who served the Three on the outside, in the realm of man. They wore black instead of undyed linen. Boots meant for stealth instead of the simple leather sandals that Nahiri wore now.
One of the Blades held Kai under her arm, the edge of an Obsidian dagger pressed under the boy’s chin. Scornful gray eyes looked Nahiri up and down, taking in her blue sundress and unbound hair with an obvious look of disdain.
“We were told you were abducted by the demon Master of Gravori House,” the other Blade sneered. “The Three gave us orders to bring you back, and to let no one stand in our way.”
Nahiri stared at them, appalled. “Take that weapon off him. He’s a child.”
“He’s an Incubus,” muttered the one who held him. “They’re all the same to me.”
Nahiri reached for her own weapons, prepared to kill in order to protect him. But her weapons were gone.
“Release him,” she said, looking at Kai’s innocent face. He wasn’t scared. He was a brave boy. He would have made his father proud, Nahiri had no doubt. “Release him. You’ve come to collect me and bring me back to the Three, so let’s go.”
~ ~ ~
“The Pinot noir you selected is being crated for shipment to the villa within the hour, Mr. Gravori.”
Dev looked up from the paperwork laid out in front of him on his desk. “Thank you, Louisa.”
He hadn’t been the one to select the wine for Marius’s celebration of life tonight. Nahiri had chosen it. And now every time Dev drank that particular vintage, every minute he spent at the vineyard from now until forever, he would think of her.
Damn it.
With Louisa heading back down the hall, he got up to pace in front of his office windows, anxious. Frustrated. Brooding.
Wondering how the hell he was going to make it work between himself and a certain Nephilim Blade who’d managed to get under his skin.
Nahiri had gotten in further than that; she’d found her way into his heart.
She hadn’t been gone ten minutes before he realized what an ass he was. He’d hurt her by sending her off without him, especially when his aloof send-off came on the heels of the incredible sex they’d shared.
He’d been an idiot to think he could remove her from his life, even if he was sure it was the best thing for Nahiri to be away from him.
Now, going on a hour since she’d left with Naell, Dev’s world was stale and empty, less interesting.
Passionless.
And that alone was a big problem for an Incubus who thrived on passion the way a human required three square meals in order to sustain himself.
He couldn’t send Nahiri back to the temple. He knew that now. He wanted her in his life, in his House, in his family.
As his mate.
The realization staggered him.
He’d avoided the shackle of a bond for many long centuries, yet now, after a handful of hours, he was contemplating how he might convince Nahiri to stay. To belong to him.
Forever, if she’d have him.
And he wanted forever to start as soon as possible.
He was already stalking out of his office and down the hall when his mobile rang. Naell’s number came up on the display. Dev answered the call without a greeting. “I’m heading back to the villa now. Tell Nahiri I want to talk to her as soon as I arrive—”
“Dev.” His brother’s deep voice was grim, hesitant.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s Nahiri…she’s missing.”
Dev’s heart lurched to a halt in his chest. “Missing. You mean, you can’t find her?”
“She’s gone, Dev. Kai just came in from the gardens to tell me. He said two angels with black knives took her back to the temple.”
Dev’s feet stopped moving. Every cell in his body froze, cold with dread. “Tell Ram to arrange for the jet and a pilot. Tell him to get it fueled and ready for me right now.”
The helicopter would be ready faster, but it couldn’t make the long flight to where Dev needed to go. And although an Incubus could teleport, it would be too taxing to travel tha
t distance and still be ready for battle on the other end.
And if it was a battle that awaited him with the Three or any of their Blades, he would go through every last one of them in order to get to Nahiri.
“You’re going after her,” Naell said, no surprise in his tone at all. “You care for this Blade, brother?”
“Yeah,” Dev said. “I don’t want to live without her.”
“Then I’ll take you there myself,” Naell said. “Ram and I will be waiting for you.”
“I’m on the way now.”
Dev pocketed his phone, then vanished in a tempest of swirling demon magic.
CHAPTER NINE
The pair of dark-garbed Blades brought Nahiri into the temple’s High Chamber as though she were the condemned being taken before her executioners.
As Nahiri was escorted up the center aisle of the vast hall, toward the stairs leading up to the sandalwood screen and the trio of Nephilim priestesses behind it, she realized just how apt the feeling truly was.
The eyes of her fellow Blades of the temple took in her outsider’s attire with open but silent disapproval as she was led forward at knifepoint by her guards. She felt conspicuous in the bright turquoise sundress and her unbound hair. Worse than naked without the comforting presence of her linen clothes and leather weapon sheaths.
Up ahead of her, Valina stared at her approach. The blond Nephilim stood in the position right of the High Chamber stairs today. Another Blade had been promoted into Valina’s former post.
One day gone from the fold, and Nahiri had already been replaced.
Forsaken, based on the looks of everyone who watched her now.
“Bring her forward,” one of the Three commanded from atop their lofty perch.
The two Blades shoved Nahiri into motion, the gray-eyed one using more force than necessary. Nahiri swung a glower on the Nephilim, still seething for the way the Blade had also been so harsh with Kai back at the villa. “You disgrace your station, if threatening children and unarmed opponents gives you such pleasure.”
The Blade smirked thinly. “Don’t talk to me about disgracing my station…whore.”