Arrow to the Soul

by Lea Griffith

  In that second their gazes clashed over her body, he was a man, and she was a woman, and their need was the most important thing in his world.

  He rose and positioned himself at her entrance. Her muscles coiled beneath her cream-colored skin and he knew she’d fight him. He grabbed her hands before she could blink and raised them over her head, holding both of hers in one of his as he lowered his head and skimmed her lips with his.

  She smiled and it shot straight to the head of his dick. “You taste of lust spiced with citrus. It is desire mixed with the fragrance of snow-kissed cedars. It is need flavored with passion and light.”

  He grunted but remained hovering at her opening—waiting for what he knew would come next.

  “And now, Mr. Collins, do you know what you taste of?”

  He shook his head, emotion screwing into a tight ball in his chest. She was throwing his words back at him.

  “Now you taste of me.”

  His scalp prickled. There were words on the tip of his tongue he didn’t understand and could not comprehend the urge to voice. “I don’t recognize this need I have for you,” he said harshly.

  She didn’t respond, simply lifted her chin in a mulish gesture. He laughed and recognized the darkness of it. Emotion moved through his gut, a fire demanding to be quenched. He couldn’t name it and refused to try. The heat from her body coated the tip of his cock and Adam strained to go slow.

  “It will hurt,” he told her in a hard voice.

  She smiled and Adam’s heart broke. He lowered his head to her chest and stilled.

  “Already you’ve given me more pleasure than I’ve ever known, Mr. Collins. I would give you something in return.” Her words were a vow.

  His heart—which belonged to another—lay broken in his chest. “You’ve given me more than I had a right to ask for, Saya.”

  Her breasts called to him and while he still held her hands in his grip Adam figured he damn well better take advantage of it. He licked the underside of one and she moaned. He took the tip in his mouth, suckled, and her back arched beautifully.

  “Please,” she said around a moan.

  Her hips rolled under him, bringing him so close to his goal, but he held back. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  She opened her eyes then and settled her gaze on his. “Bodies are weak things, easily overcome with strong minds. Pain is to be borne, Mr. Collins. It is to be embraced. With pain you know you are alive.”

  He froze on top of her, lifting his mouth and releasing her hands. In the blink of an eye, he shifted, turning to his back and pulling her on top of him. Surprise made eyes go wide, but she remained silent. He could no more hurt this woman right here and right now than he could stop breathing.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, and there was the woman he knew lay under the killer façade.

  His heart began to beat hard and his cock flexed. Under her skin beat the heart of a warrior, yet she’d voiced her insecurity, and it blew Adam wide open.

  “I can’t hurt you,” he said harshly. “You will have to take me if that’s what you want.”

  “I don’t—”

  He took her hand, charmed suddenly by her virginal hesitance. He’d never taken a virgin, but never had he wanted one so badly. He lowered her grip to his cock and when her small hand settled over his engorged flesh he drew in a rough breath. Silk over his steel, her touch burned.

  “This,” he said patiently as he squeezed her hand before he moved and caressed her mound. “Goes here. Deep in here.”

  A single raven eyebrow arched and she licked her lips. “I know the mechanics, Mr. Collins,” she said waspishly.

  “It is your move to make, Saya.”

  She cocked her head and placed a hand on his chest, supporting herself as she lifted her hips. With her free hand, she positioned his cock at her entrance.

  “Slowly,” he demanded.

  Saya rolled her hips and sank to the hilt. She gasped and her gaze met his before her eyes closed and she bit her lip.

  He growled, unable to handle the feel of her body tightly gripping his. Her movement breached her maidenhead, and her muscles strained to take his girth. But as they rippled along his shaft, he felt her fire. Her flesh bathed his cock, but it was his heart she sought to take. The damaged organ pieced together when she’d taken him.

  Taken him…

  No! She could not have him. But the protest was weak, and though he gave a single thought to a different woman, he could not remember that woman’s name. There was only one name and it tripped through his mind on a continuous loop…

  “Saya—” It was a strangled groan cut off when she rotated her hips experimentally. His hands dugs into her hips, releasing and clenching again on the bounty of her ass.

  Both of her hands were on his chest, fingertips digging deep into the muscles there as she moved this way and that trying to find a rhythm. She would unman him.

  “It is beautiful, this taking,” she murmured.

  And Adam could take no more. He pulled her head down to his and took her mouth even as he began guiding her up and down on his shaft. She caught on perfectly and as her pussy fluttered over his cock, he wanted to ravage her. Steal back what she’d managed to rob from him.

  He flipped them again and settled in the cradle of her hips. “Open your eyes, goddamn it,” he commanded her.

  She did as he bade, and her golden gaze skewered him.

  “You cannot have me,” he said.

  “Kore wa sudeni okonawa rete iru.” Her voice was soft, yet her words, whatever they were, reverberated through the quiet room.

  The sounds of their breathing ricocheted off the walls, his moans, her sighs combining into a symphony that accompanied the movement of their bodies. He pressed forward and rotated his hips. She bit her lip and gasped. She squeezed her legs around his waist and he cursed, long and low. The bed creaked but even that was sensual, the small noises a cacophony that was somehow right in the midst of the most intense sex Adam had ever experienced.

  It began to build—a tingle along his spine, heat wrapping around his balls. Her internal muscles milked him as her hands tried to meld into his skin. He balanced on his hands, hips driving into her body over and over, and it was ecstasy. Her body undulated, meeting his thrusts and demanding more of him with every flex of his hips.

  So much heat it was hard to know where she began and he ended. Her skin shone opalescent in the low light and her skin tasted of salty plums. Bodies slicked with shared moisture, they were one entity moving toward completion. Her passage was wet, hot, and so fucking tight Adam’s jaw clenched as he tried to hold back his yells.

  And still it built, flames burning toward a fiery crescendo. Her body tightened and he licked along her jaw, nibbling her chin before he took her mouth and drank her cries. Her muscles locked, and as he tried to pull out he was held inside by the convulsing of her pussy on his cock.

  So he pushed deeper, not withdrawing but pushing as far into her body as he could. The press of his pelvis against her clit sent her into another release. Her eyes opened and as they focused on him, Adam’s soul tumbled end over end, into her as she consumed him.

  His release was explosive. He yelled her name into the pillow beside her head, and still his body sought to mesh with hers. It was the hottest thing he’d ever experienced, and in the midst of it was an irrefutable knowledge.

  Adam had a taste for her now. She was in his blood. The game had changed.

  Chapter Eighteen

  His hands ran through her hair and Arrow shivered. There were no words for what she’d experienced in Adam’s arms. Pain, pleasure, comfort…joy. As he’d taken her over, and then succumbed himself, the thought flashed through her mind that she would never be the same.

  Her body still trembled in the aftermath of their passion. He had long since turned off the bathroom light, but he’d returned to her, sliding them both between the covers and pulling her into the curve of his body. The shadows of the room hadn’t
been able to touch her in his arms.

  And now here they were, still enemies but lovers, as well. Arrow had never been a lover.

  A killer.

  But never a lover.

  “You have always called me Saya,” she murmured into the silence. “Why?”

  It took him a long time to respond, but his hand never stopped sifting through her hair. “It is how I see you.”

  His voice rumbled through his chest. She both heard and felt it. “A simple enough answer, and yet not an answer at all. I am Arrow,” she said firmly.

  “Yes.”

  His tone was guttural. Perhaps his thoughts were as deep. She suddenly wanted to see his face. Arrow irrationally hoped it would be filled with contempt so the waters of her mind could still once again. Unrippled water…she needed peace. Adam Collins stirred emotions in her she’d never felt and was not comfortable with. While her mind was conflicted, her body recognized the shelter she found in his arms. Strong arms. Capable arms.

  She pushed away from him, unable and unwilling to draw him further into the darkness that held her. She was the butterfly in the spider’s web. Could anyone hear her screams?

  Arrow heard his deep breath and dreaded the question she knew he’d ask. “Tell me how you came to be with Bombardier.”

  “This is not a time to share, Mr. Collins. You wanted my body and my body you had. Now it is time to go our separate ways,” she said as she stood and walked to the bathroom.

  Fear bit deep into her mind. Why would he ask that? Why did he care? Nobody cared about Arrow except for Bone, Blade and Bullet.

  “Tell me how you came to be with Bombardier,” he asked again and in his voice was a dare.

  Arrow wanted to push him. She also wanted to give someone the truth of her life and call it lunacy, but she wanted him to know. He had given her more than anyone else in the space of an hour. He had taken her body and embedded himself in her memories. She would never be able to forget Adam Collins.

  She hung her head and then turned, heading to her pack and pulling out panties and a tank top. Once she’d pulled those on she headed to sit in the chair beside the window. For the telling she’d need to see the outside world, know that all she had to do was break a glass and escape.

  Because there had been times when escape hadn’t been an option and she’d been left a little mad.

  Clarity can only be achieved when the mind is centered and blank but for the target. Her sohei’s words bounced in her mind. But where was her target? Who was her target in this room where she’d found the greatest pleasure she’d ever known?

  Adam gave her time, not saying a word as she struggled to get herself together. She bemoaned the fact she needed it but it was the truth. Would that they were sparring again—it would be easier that way. Pain centered her.

  Pleasure splintered her apart.

  “I am twenty-six years old, and I was born in the Tamba Highlands of Kyoto, Japan.” She stopped there, having given him more with those words than she’d ever given another. Her sisters included.

  He accepted the silence after her proclamation, and the band around her chest began to ease. She had been conditioned to silence. Killers moved in silence. It was all she knew. Noise distracted, gave away location. Noise was the enemy. Her own voice was razor blades over her nerves.

  But Adam’s wasn’t. She shook her head and watched the moon sit in the sky, a scythe of light in the vastness of a suffocating ebony blanket. She hated the nighttime.

  “I am told my mother dropped me at an orphanage where they took one look at me and handed me off to the sohei, or warrior monks, at Akuma no shinden. Akuma no shinden literally means Temple of the demon. I was born with devil eyes, you see, the gold of them marking me a descendant of Benkei, the original Oniwaka or demon child. I had a given name, but from the time my sohei took me in, I was simply Saya.”

  She drew in a deep breath. How these words set the pond of her peace into great frothy waves that assaulted the doors of her mind. But he wanted to know, and after what he’d given her, she would grant it to him. She needed the look on his face, the disgust she knew he’d feel once he heard it, to ground her. So she continued.

  “My eyes signified the great warrior monk, Oniwaka Benkei, had delivered them a savior, and so I was revered. But I was also trained from the crib to take life. From before I could form words, the monks spoke them into my ears. Day and night, night and day, I was trained to listen, and when I disobeyed I was punished.”

  “Punished how?” he asked into her silence.

  She turned her head and met his gaze. It was slight but she noticed his flinch. It had already begun then. Good.

  “You do not want to know the ways a warrior monk can punish a child. Trust me when I say this to you, Mr. Collins. I learned quickly. I became the quietest child, speaking only when given permission, letting my eyes do the hearing and my ears quiver in the silence.”

  She glanced again to the moon and wondered if black was just another shade of blue. How she longed for Ninka’s blue, blue sky.

  “The sohei were my mother, father, brother, sister, God, and great deceiver. They were my beginning and my end, and I lived solely to protect them. Before I could walk, I began training in the martial arts of Wing Chun, Kung Fu, and Jeet Kune Do. It began with silence—learning the feel and taste of the darkness. You cannot imagine the conditioning a baby’s mind can undergo. It would seem impossible and yet in all things great and small there is possibility.”

  She shrugged. “I began to train with weapons, especially the yumi and ya, from the time I could hold them. Even before my first steps, I was shooting. And again, you may find that unbelievable but it is true. The name you call me, Saya, means ‘swift arrow.’ It was the weapon I excelled at. I held a sword for the first time at the age of two.” She inhaled slowly, deeply, let the warm, cedar and citrus-scented air of the room move through her body and settle her. “I killed for the first time at the age of four and a half.”

  His attention was a blade at the back of her neck. She felt his disbelief and knew that was as it should be. Who would ever believe a toddler capable of taking life?

  “Outsiders threatened our home and I was sent on a journey through the Highlands to the camp of the enemy. A single maid went with me. She was more frightened than I was. I crawled into their camp in the darkness, poisoned their water supply with the liver of puffer fish, and then I picked them off one by one. At the tender age of four I escorted many, many souls to hell and deposited them there for the Oni to feast on.” Silence and then, “Do you know what it is like to take a life, Mr. Collins?”

  “Yes.”

  Arrow nodded. “Imagine that feeling hundreds of times over. Imagine not even understanding the concept of death, just that you are the force that will mete it out, and should you fail, it will be your life that ends…horribly.”

  “Goddamn it, Saya, stop,” he said in a brutally low voice.

  “You asked,” she reminded him, giving no quarter because he’d set the wheels of this in motion. “The blood ran like a river that night, but when I returned home, it was to find my sohei lying dead in the temple. Only one remained, my master, and he was held tightly by the black-eyed man.”

  Adam hissed in a breath.

  “I was Saya before that day, Mr. Collins. I was something completely different after.”

  “What did he do?”

  Adam’s fury stroked along her skin. Was it for her? Or because of her? Difficult questions when she still had so much story left.

  “Tell me what that motherfucker did, Saya,” Adam ordered her.

  She smiled up at the moon. “He decapitated my master sohei in front of me because I refused to go with him peaceably. I was already a killer but I’d run up on someone worse than me. He was a bad, bad man. His eyes were blacker than the pit of hell, Mr. Collins. And I knew hell. I also knew what he was capable of and in my fear I allowed him to take my sohei’s life in his big hands and snuff it out.” Another deep br
eath though the pain of her recollection was nothing more than a dull ache after so many years. “The blood splattered on me and I stood there staring at Joseph. I wiped my face and licked the blood from my hand, desperate to capture some part of my sohei before it disappeared completely. The sohei were all I had ever known. Though they raised me to kill, I loved them as much as a killer can ever love the one who beget them.” She glanced at him then. “Blood tastes like copper, but it is a beautiful color when it is first drawn.”

  “Saya, stop,” he demanded, mouth flattened, eyes hard.

  She ignored him. “He tranquilized me because when next I woke I was in the black room. No light, no food, no water. I remember the smell of the dried blood and I remember screaming. Even as a baby I abhorred the darkness though I had been born from it. I craved the light, craved the warmth, and somehow the black-eyed man knew this and he used it against me.”

  Adam was there then, kneeling in front of her, cupping her face in his big, warm hands and stroking her cheeks with his thumbs. “Saya, you’re here now, with me,” he said.

  She shook her head. “I am always there, Mr. Collins, in that small, dark, cold room in Arequipa. To be anywhere else is to lose sight of my objective.” She smiled at him then because on his face was exactly the emotion she needed to center herself—disgust. Clarity, precious clarity. “Thank you for tonight. I have never known as much pleasure as I did when I held you in my body.”

  He pulled her up and she didn’t resist as he took her seat and placed her in his lap. At some point he pulled on his sweats but his chest was bare. She hissed as his warmth pressed against her chilled skin. He pulled her closer.

  “But you are right. I am a killer, Mr. Collins. Reborn from the black swamp, death is all I know. What my sohei began, Joseph Bombardier perfected.”

  He pushed her head to his shoulder, held her tight. She didn’t deserve this from him. Where was his antipathy? “Tell me the rest,” he said quietly.

  “What is there to tell that you cannot guess?” Desperation slithered through her gut. Surely he didn’t care about her life. What was his game?