Assassin's Heart

by Monica Burns

  Chapter 15

  THE woman had him on the brink of breaking every rule he’d ever made where she was concerned. He bowed his head to keep from looking at her, feverishly trying to clear his head so he could think straight. That blatant look of desire on her face was enough to pull him off the edge into an abyss from which he wouldn’t be able to return.

  How in the hell had he gotten himself into this predicament? Right. Her charging into his bedroom like a Praetorian on the loose. The sound of his door crashing open had thrown him into reactionary mode. He’d learned never to question. It was a quick way to die. Or worse.

  It wasn’t until he’d seen Phaedra flying backward and hitting the wall that he realized his mistake. An error that could have easily killed the one person who meant the most to him. Then he’d tried to walk away from her—away from those brown eyes glowing with an invitation he desperately wanted to accept but knew he couldn’t. But it wasn’t her eyes that had made him turn around. It had been her thoughts. He’d not meant to read her mind, but his resistance where she was concerned had been almost nonexistent.

  He’d been so busy trying not to make love to her right here on the floor, he’d barely noticed that he was reading her thoughts until the word “coward” sounded in his head. He’d almost shouted his denial at her unspoken allegation, but stopped himself just in time. The fact that he’d come so close to exposing his secret infuriated him. He’d almost lost control. The next time he might not be so lucky.

  Now she was asking him to believe that she really wanted to be here with him. Merda, he didn’t have any trouble believing that at all. No, his biggest problem was that he was teetering on the edge of giving way to her demand. She was so fucking determined, and he was fast losing the battle against her persistence. Especially when she smelled so goddamned good. Christus, what was she wearing?

  Nothing from the waist up, his brain answered, even though he’d really been trying to identify her sweet scent. He lifted his head slightly to study her breasts. They were full and lush. Seeing them locked away in that damn bra had driven him to rip the thing off her. He’d always been a breast man, but Phaedra’s made him hard just looking at her.

  His mouth watered at the thought of swirling his tongue around the tip of her, and he heard her gasp then watched in fascination as she arched her body forward. Merda. With her hands pinned above her by his mental hold, she was the most tempting creature he’d ever seen in his life.

  “Please, Lysander, touch me. Touch me with your hands, so I know this is real.”

  Soft and husky, her voice stroked him, enticed him into doing what he knew he shouldn’t. He leaned forward and caressed one breast with his mouth and the other with his hand. As his tongue swirled around a hard nipple, his thumb rubbed against the other. She tasted as good as she smelled.

  He heard her moan with pleasure, and it drove him to work his mouth up to her shoulder and then the nape of her neck. With every caress, one more brick in his wall crumbled into dust. Deep inside he heard the roar of warning, but he ignored it. Just another moment, a few more seconds of denial.

  That’s all he needed. To touch her like this, breathe in the scent of her. He was going to Tartarus for this, but holding her again was worth the price he’d eventually pay. His mouth grazed its way along her jaw, and he deliberately took his time as a whimper echoed out of her. Deus, he loved the way she responded to him.

  Loved the way she quivered against him. She abruptly turned her head, and her lips brushed across his. The explosion of desire her kiss ignited slugged its way into every cell in his body. Pleasure and need mixed with darker emotions he didn’t want to face. Her teeth tugged gently at his lower lip, and he automatically deepened the kiss and swept his tongue into her delicious mouth.

  In the next instant, he was drowning in a bloodred haze of passion as her tongue swirled with his. Christus, he wanted her. Needed her. Right now, right here. His body was hard, and the urgency driving him had him making short work of her jeans, shoving them downward as her feet slipped out of one leg and then the other.

  The towel whipped off him, and then it was nothing but hot skin, just like the last time. Desire blinded him to everything but the urgent need to slide into her hot folds and stay buried there. There wasn’t time for seduction. He’d been without her for too long. He just wanted to sink into her silky depths and drown himself in the sensation.

  His hands cupped her buttocks and he lifted her up until his cock found the sleek creamy center of her. With a low cry of satisfaction, he rocked inside her, his body on fire at the way she clutched at him. It was like having a velvet vise around him growing tighter every second only to release him for a tantalizing moment before her body renewed the process.

  He released his mental hold on her wrists and she immediately wrapped her arms around his neck to arch away from him, making it easier for him to thrust up into her. Beneath his mouth, her silky skin tasted like peaches. Hot, sweet peaches. He’d missed her so damned much. It was as if he’d been starving and hadn’t realized the extent of his hunger until this moment. He couldn’t get enough of her. He’d gone without her for so long, and now he was like a starving man unable to keep from satisfying his hunger. And she felt so damned good wrapped around his cock. With each surge into her tight core, her body responded with tiny spasms that rippled over his erection, hard and fast. He shuddered. Fuck, he was ready to come right now.

  “Inamorato, I can’t …” He choked back a shout as he throbbed violently inside of her.

  A sob of pleasure parted her lips, and she fell forward to bury her face in his neck as her body clenched with savage intensity around him. It made him deaf and blind to everything but the way her body was loving his. Slowly, he edged his way down off the cliff he’d been standing on and carried her to the bed.

  He was going to have to deal with reality soon, but he wanted to put if off as long as possible. Gently laying her on the bed, he dropped down next to her onto his back and closed his eye. What the hell had he been thinking? This was exactly what he’d been trying to avoid for the past year. And he didn’t even have an escape route. Merda. What kind of excuse was he going to be able to use to keep her at a distance now? She sure as hell wasn’t about to let him get away with saying he’d been in need of a good fuck. That had been his excuse a year ago.

  But what had happened just now had been anything but a good fuck. If there had even been the tiniest piece of him that hadn’t loved her before, it was gone. She didn’t know it, praise the gods, but she owned him now. Body and soul. The mattress shifted slightly and a warm hand slid across his chest.

  It was a gentle touch, but the warmth of it conveyed an emotion he didn’t want to name. Christus, he was a doomed man. He didn’t have to open his eye to see her shift her body upward so she could lean over him. It was easy to see her in his mind as her dark curtain of hair brushed over his shoulder and she lowered her head to kiss him. It was a featherlight touch, but it was enough for him to ache for her all over again.

  In the next instant, he sucked in a harsh breath as her mouth touched the thin scars that crisscrossed his flesh where his eye had once been. There was little sensitivity left in his disfigured face, but he could imagine what he didn’t feel. A shudder went through him as her mouth touched his cheek, caressing every inch of his scarred tissue. Something wet rolled down the side of his neck, and he suddenly realized she was crying. He rolled her onto her back to stare down at her, his fingers wiping away the tears shimmering on her skin.

  “Don’t, carissima.”

  “But you wouldn’t let me touch you,” she whispered. The sharp edge of pain in her voice said how deep his rejection had hurt her. “You wouldn’t let me heal you.”

  “I didn’t want to see you suffer as I had.” He choked out the half-truth.

  “And at the hospital?”

  The accusation in her words slashed at him. He’d known she’d been hurt, but something in her voice said she’d been more devastat
ed than he’d realized. He didn’t want to consider what that meant, because it would explain her recent determination to make him admit that he cared for her. Make him say he still wanted her. One of them she’d just proved, and he wasn’t sure how long the thread he was hanging from would keep him from admitting the second part.

  He rolled away from her and sat up on the edge of the bed. Deep in the back of his mind, he’d known this topic would come up, but he sure as hell hadn’t expected it to be this morning. He couldn’t look at her because she’d know if he was lying to her. And no matter how many truths he offered up, he would have to lie.

  “Christus, I didn’t want anything to do with anyone.” Especially her. Truth.

  “I understand that, but you didn’t even let me try to heal you. I might have been able …”

  “What? Give me back my eye?” He refused to look over his shoulder at her. “Even if that had been possible—and I doubt seriously it would have been—do you really think I’d want my eye back at the expense of seeing you experience that kind of pain?” he growled. Truth.

  “But it would have been my choice.” Her lips placed a gentle kiss on his shoulder as he felt her come up on her knees and press into his back.

  “No healer has ever tried anything like that before. It might have killed you for all we know. I wasn’t about to let that happen.” Truth.

  “You don’t know that. Even I don’t know the extent of my ability.” She started to knead his shoulders. Had she sensed the tension in him? Hell, yes. She was an intuitive healer.

  “I don’t know why we’re even discussing the goddamn thing. It’s over and done with.”

  “No, it’s not. Whatever happened that night, there’s something dark and ugly eating you from the inside out.”

  The words sliced through him with the sharpness of a Praetorian blade. There was a certainty in her voice that made his heart slam into the wall of his chest. She was saying she’d sensed the Praetorian side of him. Il Christi omnipotentia, why hadn’t that son of a bitch just killed him that night? At least she’d never have to know about the monster inside of him.

  “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.” Lie.

  “I know better. I sensed it at the hospital and over the past year I’ve felt it. I was just too blind to understand what I was sensing in you. Worse, I can sense it in you now. It’s as if—you asshole!”

  Her sharp gasp surprised him, and the hard fist slamming into his shoulder made him

  twist his head in her direction. Those gorgeous brown eyes glared at him with a fierceness he’d seen her reserve just for Praetorians. His gut lurched the minute he saw the fury on her face.

  “You made me forget why I came in here in the first place! You went after that bastard who assaulted me, didn’t you?”

  The expectation of a completely different accusation left him unprepared for this charge. Caught off guard, he shook his head slightly as he tried to come up with an answer. Frustration glittering in her eyes, she planted her hands against his shoulder and gave him a hard push. He just stared at her, his brain scrambling to recover his wits.

  “Don’t you dare lie to me, Lysander Condellaire,” she snapped. “You went after him. Didn’t you?”

  “It was necessary,” he growled as he tried to keep his expression neutral.

  “Have you lost your mind?” Her question was almost a shout.

  “No.” Another lie. He’d lost his sanity the minute he’d made love to her moments ago.

  He calmly stood up and stepped away from the bed. The towel he’d dropped earlier flew across the room and into his hands. He wrapped it around his hips and tucked it into place as he deliberately kept his back to her. Behind him, Phaedra released a sharp noise of fury.

  “No?” she bit out in a fierce tone. “What in the hell made you think you could find the guy? And on top of that, you went after him alone. Christus, you know better—”

  The sound of her horrified gasp made his heart stop before it crashed into his chest. Fuck, this time she really had figured it out. She’d realized that his telepathic ability had allowed him to track the man. He slowly turned to face her, prepared for the disgust and hatred he knew would be sculpted on her beautiful features. As his gaze met hers, the air left his lungs at the look of horror and fear on her beautiful face.

  Il Christi omnipotentia, he’d known she’d hate him, but it had never occurred to him that she might be afraid of him. He took a step forward, his heart like a stone in his chest at the way she was staring at him. Her hate he could deal with, but he couldn’t bear to have her be afraid of him. He’d rather suffer again at the hands of that Praetorian bastard who was his father than have her afraid of him.

  Before he could take another step forward, she scrambled off the bed and leaped toward him. He didn’t give her the opportunity to slug him. Instead, he caught her wrists in his hands then forced her arms behind her back. The action pressed her soft breasts into his chest, and he tried to stifle the heat barreling down into his groin and the beginnings of an erection.

  “I can—”

  “Explain? Explain why you have a death wish?”

  Her furious response knocked the wind out of him. His secret was still safe. The relief made him sag slightly, and she wiggled against him. It only made his cock expand and grow. God help him. The woman was going to be the death of him in more ways than one.

  “I don’t have a death wish,” he rasped as he stared down at her mouth.

  He’d always thought she was beautiful, but when she was angry, she had a sultry fire about her that made him ache for her.

  “I don’t believe you,” she said sharply. “I can think of at least a half dozen times in the past year when you and Cleo encountered Praetorians only to hear her say you didn’t hesitate to take on two or three of them all by yourself. Actually, ‘went berserk’ was the phrase she commonly used.”

  “It wasn’t like that,” he snarled.

  “Then what was it?”

  The demand showed she expected an answer, but he hesitated. What was he supposed to tell her? Deep inside, he had wanted to die. Had he deliberately thrown himself into combats where he might die? No. That meant he wouldn’t have been able to keep her safe. He might not have any other reason to live, but watching over her was reason enough. He met her gaze and swallowed hard. Christus , he was slowly weaving a fragile web of half-truths that were so close to lies that pretty soon, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to tell the difference.

  “I was angry. Killing those bastardi was like killing the man who tortured me.” He paused, his breathing suddenly shallow as he realized how much he wanted his Praetorian father dead. “But more importantly, I knew that every Praetorian I killed might be the one that had murdered your parents. I wanted retribution for both of us.”

  “Dulcis matris Deus. Thank you,” she breathed the words as though they were a prayer of rejoicing. Arms still pinned behind her, she pressed her face into his chest, her mouth tenderly caressing his skin. “I knew you were lying to me when you sent me away that day in the hospital.”

  He shook his head as she raised her head to look up at him. Just the look on her face said his confession had pushed him into territory he’d not been willing to visit. He’d revealed far too much in the last half hour, more than he had in a year. He needed to repair the damage. Fast.

  “Phaedra—”

  “Don’t deny it. You’re crazy about me.” The confident note in her voice told him she wasn’t going to give up until he gave in.

  Where she was concerned, he’d lost the battle. But was it a battle he really needed to fight? The odds of being discovered grew less every day. He’d known he was Praetorian for an entire year now, and no one was the wiser. Why shouldn’t he grasp a small acre in the Elysium Fields? Didn’t they deserve a little bit of happiness for the high price they’d both paid over the last twelve months?

  Perhaps his best strategy was to simply not admit anything. Just let the cards fa
ll where they may and see what hand he was dealt. She’d be his and he could just live in the moment and not think about the future. It was a dangerous path to take, but she wasn’t going to let him walk away from her again without a fight. He’d make the most of what time he had with her, whether it was for hours or years. He released his grip on her wrists, and she immediately wrapped her arms around his neck.