Dark Redemption

by Aja James

  She attacked his mouth with equal ardor and ruthlessness, biting, nipping, sucking, lapping. She twisted her other hand free of his grip and clawed her fingernails across his shoulder blades, down his broad back to dig into the muscled globe of his spectacular ass.

  A primitive growl emanated between them, startling in its ferocity. Even more surprising was the fact that she was the one who uttered the sound.

  Mine.

  Something inside her roared the claim, and she reached down to grip what she wanted most, taking him as if she had every right.

  Eli gasped into her hot mouth when she gripped his sex and pumped it roughly in her hand, squeezing the head of him on the way up, then back down to coat the thick column with his own moisture.

  He didn’t know it could feel like this. Every muscle, every sinew, every drop of blood in his body was concentrated on her, obeying her every will, enslaved to her every need.

  She breathed, so he filled the air with a heavy, drugging musk to fill her nostrils and delight her senses, like a shot of the strongest aphrodisiac.

  She touched, so his muscles expanded and hardened to vie for her attention, pulsing and clenching beneath her hands.

  She wanted, so he gave her the weight of his body, the heat of his skin, the thrust of his tongue, and soon, the most private, vulnerable part of him inside the deepest, secret part of her.

  He’d never done this before. Not just because he couldn’t remember, but because this wasn’t just a meeting and mesh of body parts.

  She was taking him, claiming him. And he was taking her, claiming her.

  When he joined with her, she would have everything of him. She would own him body and soul. She would have the power to hurt him, break him, tear him asunder.

  And he would let her. He would let her take it all.

  There would be no going back.

  She opened her thighs wider to make room for him, her surprisingly strong grip on his cock leading him to her entrance.

  When the head of his penis pushed against her silky, wet folds, he shuddered and stilled, breaking the ardent duel of their mouths.

  She stilled as well, her hands on his body gentling.

  “Eli,” she sighed, one hand coming back to cup his face, her thumb brushing possessively across his swollen lips.

  He breathed deeply and lowered his eyes from hers, ashamed of what he was about to say.

  “I’m afraid.”

  She now held his face between both of her palms, stroking tenderly the sharp blades of his cheekbones.

  “Of what?”

  “Pleasure,” he whispered, and shivered all over.

  She smiled though he couldn’t see.

  “Why?” she asked gently.

  He hesitantly raised his eyes to hers, and she gasped.

  Raw, open, and defenseless, he stared with his naked heart and soul into her eyes.

  “It will enslave me. Overwhelm me with…feelings. I will not stop wanting it once I taste it. The pain will be infinitely worse in its absence.”

  In her heart, Clara knew that he wasn’t speaking strictly of pleasure. In her heart, she heard the confession of his, as surely as if he’d torn it out of his chest and laid it bloody and throbbing at her feet.

  She raised her mouth and pressed a tender, lingering kiss to his.

  Then, she looked deeply into his eyes again and said, “What is the point of living if there is no pleasure? No joy and laughter? Even if pain and sadness are ever in their company, isn’t it better to feel?”

  She wrapped her arms tighter around him, her legs entwining with his.

  “Feel me, Eli,” she whispered huskily. “Feel my heart thundering, my pulse racing, my body burning just for you. Impatiently clamoring to share your pleasure, our pleasure. Dying to have you…”

  She raised her hips and unerringly captured the head of him between her nether lips, making him groan deeply and clench tight, as if she hurt him, slayed him.

  “Dying to love you,” she rasped against his mouth.

  “Let me, Eli.”

  With a quaking shudder, he gave in.

  Let go.

  She would have all of him. Own every last molecule of his being.

  Eli held Clara’s intense dark blue gaze with his as he slowly pushed his hardness through her tight, wet tunnel, watching her nostrils flare at the painstaking invasion, hearing her breath hitch, smelling her heightened arousal.

  His fangs punched fast and hard through his gums, not waiting for his flesh to accommodate the descent, breaking it and drawing blood.

  Her eyes focused immediately on his canines, and her musky feminine scent bloomed deeper around them.

  He wouldn’t give in to the animal need to feed from her vein. Not yet. He didn’t want their joining to be about survival or bloodlust. He wanted to connect with her as a male with a female, two halves of a whole.

  He wanted to give her everything of himself.

  He undulated voluptuously within her, stroking her deeply, slowly, with every inch of his thickness, dragging himself through the tight clutch of her silken heat and pushing unerringly against her core of pleasure deep inside with each agonizingly slow thrust.

  Her hands that caressed him gently a moment before quickly clawed into needy talons, raking down his back and sides as if protesting this torture, yet clamoring for more. Her mouth that was soft and plump beneath his latched onto his throat with a desperate impatience, her teeth catching his skin between them, scoring him with her possession.

  He pressed more of his weight on top of her to still some of her frenzied movements.

  He wanted this to last for her. He wanted to give her the acutest, most devastating pleasure she’d ever had.

  He didn’t remember anyone before her; his body didn’t remember another’s touch. Likewise, he wanted their joining to erase every male before him in her life, until her body, heart and soul would recognize and accept no other but his.

  But she was too impatient to have all of him. Hard. Fast. Deep.

  Now.

  Her hands grabbed onto his ass and pushed him deeper into her with surprising strength. She ground her hips beneath his, revving up his torturous pace, magnifying the exquisite friction. Her core muscles squeezed him in a merciless vice.

  He gasped as her first orgasm tore through her body like a sonic boom, as her vagina clenched tightly around his flesh, ravenously milking his sex for his answering release.

  “Eli,” she rasped with barely a breath, “give me you cream. Give in to the pleasure. I want all of you. Now.”

  With a soul-shattering groan, he splintered apart on her command—his entire body clenching tightly from head to toe, held on the precipice of ecstasy for a moment and an infinity, and unraveled one muscle at a time like mountain ranges jaggedly collapsing and contorting as tectonic plates shifted beneath them, releasing scalding hot lava that destroyed and remade empires.

  Remade him.

  Endlessly, helplessly, relentlessly he jetted his seed into her, along with his life force, his heart and soul. She clutched him tightly in her hot, silken embrace, drinking all of him in, savoring every drop.

  Her mouth blindly sought his, tender and comforting now as he broke apart for her, cracked wide open upon her altar, a willing sacrifice under her spell, a slave to her every whim.

  “I love you.”

  Her words breathed into him on a long, languorous, thoroughly satisfied sigh, and he swallowed them greedily as he devoured her mouth in a kiss filled with desperation, need, helplessness and hope.

  He didn’t mentally comprehend what the words meant, couldn’t define them if anyone asked.

  But he felt her emotions with every fiber of his being.

  The way her love uplifted him, soothed and warmed him. Radiating from her every pore like rays of sun into his body, his spirit, chasing away the darkness within with her blinding light.

  The way her love redeemed him.

  She hooked her leg around his calf and pu
shed with surprising strength until he rolled beneath her, never breaking the seal of their mouths, still voraciously eating each other up, their bodies trembling in the aftershocks of their climax.

  She pushed slightly away from him with her arms on his chest, and he stretched up to follow her. But she somehow knew what he was trying to do and gently but inexorably pushed him down until their lips broke apart and she could look into his face.

  He immediately dropped his eyes, hiding the last jagged shards of his soul.

  “Eli,” she murmured, as she caressed his cheek with a barely there touch, her thumb fluttering the thick bristles of his lashes, feeling the wetness there.

  “Look at me, please,” she commanded softly as his body quivered beneath her.

  His chest expanded and fell in deep breaths to brace himself. He was afraid of looking into her eyes, now, when he was at his weakest and most vulnerable.

  But there was nothing he could ever deny her, not when she owned every piece of him.

  Slowly, he raised his eyes to hers, the moisture in them foreign and frightening, blurring his vision.

  What was wrong with him? Was he defective? Was he bleeding? Why did his heart hurt so much? Why couldn’t he breathe?

  “Eli,” she whispered, rubbing the moisture from the corners of his eyes, coating her thumbs with it. “What are you afraid of? Why are you hurting?”

  He stared up at her until his eyes overflowed, and the clear liquid leaked out of them and down his cheeks.

  Was he hurting? Was this what pain felt like? But his body was whole and fully healed, still trembling from a euphoria he’d never before experienced.

  Yet everything inside seemed broken.

  Shattered. Eviscerated.

  Was he crying? But…

  He never cried.

  He knew this with everything he was, whoever and whatever he was.

  He never cried.

  “This…me and you…” he attempted to explain, struggling to put his jumbled emotions into words, “me inside you…feels so good.”

  He took a shuddering breath and squeezed his eyes shut, forcibly shedding the last of his tears.

  “I don’t deserve to feel good,” he rasped so low she barely heard him, but her heart caught his painfully uttered words and seized and twisted in empathy.

  “It won’t last,” he whispered. “And now that I have tasted heaven, every moment without you will be hell.”

  “Then let’s stretch this moment to forever,” she said, wiping her thumbs across his wet lashes and rubbing his tears into her fingertips, forever imprinting the salt of his soul into her skin.

  “Everyone deserves to be loved,” she murmured against his lips, sipping at their fullness with small, greedy kisses.

  “You deserved to be loved, Eli. And I’ll never stop. You’re a part of me now.”

  She turned her head slightly and trailed kisses along his jaw, pressing the vein at her throat to his parted lips.

  “Make me a part of you.”

  The vibration of his savage growl was all the warning she got before he struck his long, sharp fangs into her neck, searing her with burning pain that almost immediately metamorphosed into all-consuming pleasure.

  She clung to him with her torso pressed tightly against his, her arms locked around his head to hold his mouth at her jugular, even though he had no intention of leaving her.

  His large hands gripped her hips and moved her lower body upon his hard, throbbing sex, as he clenched his buttocks in counterpoint to her rhythm, thrusting up as she came down, pulling back as his hands pushed her away.

  Only to screw higher and deeper into her on the next round, dragging his turgid flesh forcibly through her snug, clasping, grasping vise, as if he loathed to leave her each time, and she clung and clawed for his return.

  The fiery rash of her orgasm spread from her pleasure center deep inside to her vulva, labia and clit, up her stomach, her chest, igniting countless freckles along the way like shooting stars in a dusky sky. And finally up her throat, her face and through her lips, as she sobbed out her mind-blowing ecstasy long and low.

  He held her tighter, drinking in her pleasure as she experienced it, his entire body hardening to breaking point as she convulsed against him, around him, squeezing an answering deluge from his cock as her sweet blood flooded his mouth and esophagus.

  “I love you, Eli,” she murmured into the crook of his neck, her body finally melting on top of him, her limbs relaxing from bliss and exhaustion.

  Replete and complete with his manhood still pulsing inside of her, she sighed as she eased into a deep, dreamless slumber, draped on top of his body like a comforting blanket, smelling of sex, affection and Clara.

  Eli retracted his fangs from her neck so carefully she didn’t even notice and licked the small wounds closed. He stayed inside her body below, for she refused to let him go, and he never wanted to leave her.

  It was deep into the night, when he should have felt most energized and awake. But perhaps their joining had taken too much out of him, emotionally if not physically, for his eyelids were too heavy to keep up, his thoughts too jumbled to sort out.

  He, too, fell into Hypnos’ clutches, but dark, vivid dreams laid siege to his slumber, even though he wouldn’t recall them when he awoke.

  Third millennium BC. Outskirts of Akkad.

  Another scream rent the night, long and gut-wrenching, breaking at the end into a low, growling moan.

  A couple of smacks, and a baby’s furious cry, quickly soothed by the human wet nurse who dutifully offered a pricked finger oozing with blood; and when that didn’t take, a plump tit full of milk. The infant rejected the finger but latched onto the breast with voracious hunger, while its mother fought to breathe, dizzy and desperate from endless hours of mind-bending pain.

  “A girl,” Anunit said dispassionately as she looked down at the newborn with dark, serpent eyes. “And if it had been borne of your body had you Mated my sister, this little creature would be a future Queen.”

  She slid her eyes to the male who’d Bonded his life force to hers, whose strength fed her strength, whose loyalty she never reciprocated and never intended to.

  “Instead, it is an abomination,” she hissed low so that her twin, who had all but lost consciousness from the complications of the birthing, could not hear.

  You know what to do with it, she commanded him telepathically.

  “I want to see my baby,” came a raspy wail from the makeshift bed in the darkest part of the cavernous chamber, beneath a small hill miles away from the Ivory Palace.

  Anunit sent her shadow warrior a speaking look before going to her sister’s side.

  “Remember the plan, my dear,” Anunit said gently as she smoothed Ishtar’s sweat-matted hair from her forehead. “The babe cannot stay with you. She’ll be safer away from the Palace, away from our mother. Therefore, it would only hurt you if you held her. Or worse, you would selfishly try to keep her with you.”

  Ishtar’s breath came in short bursts as another contraction started to seize her body.

  “Be strong now and focus on delivering the second one,” Anunit urged. “My Enlil will make sure the little girl is safe.”

  Get rid of it, Anunit said through her mind and slanted her eyes toward the only entrance and exit of the underground tunnel.

  Now.

  He took the infant from the wet nurse, the babe now sleeping, her small red mouth pursed in an innocent pout. She seemed as fragile and light as a blue bird’s egg, her head so tiny within his palm, her swaddled body resting snugly on his forearm.

  He could easily crush her skull between his fingers if he was so inclined, then wash the evidence away in the fast-flowing river that wound around the hill toward the Silver Mountains dozens of miles away.

  But he had a promise to keep.

  A brisk breeze swirled around him when he climbed to the top of the hill, lifting his long hair from his back and spreading it like raven’s rings, tangling the s
trands with the icy air.

  All at once, he became one with the wind, while keeping the infant safe from chill in a bubble of air within the churning gusts. And in the blink of an eye, both warrior and babe disappeared.

  Less than a minute later, he coalesced back into corporeal form on top of the hill, then descended into the tunnel beneath.

  “It is done,” he reported to his Blooded Mate, his Mistress.

  Princess Anunit speared him with her intense dark stare for several seconds. She came slowly to where he stood by the entrance of the tunnel.

  Without warning, she struck him with all her strength across the face with her spiked gold wrist cuff, gauging deep gashes into his cheek and jaw and sending his head snapping to the side with a resounding crack.

  “You disobeyed me,” she said softly, emotionlessly, betraying none of the violence and fury with which she attacked him.

  He kept silent, turning his bloodied face back to her, holding her stare without contrition.

  She swung again for a second hit, but he caught her arm mid-strike.

  She struggled with all her might to get free but he was much stronger, his hold unbreakable.

  As sudden as the deadly glint and wild rage entered her eyes, they just as quickly subsided, until she relaxed in his grip, and he finally released her.

  She had wounded him a moment ago because he allowed it. He had shown quite effectively without words that he wouldn’t permit it a second time.

  “What did you do with it?” She muttered beneath her breath.

  “I took her to the Silver Mountains Colony,” he answered. “You have no cause to fear this child. She rejected the blood and chose the milk. She must be more Pure than Dark.”

  He could tell that the intricate gears of her mind were whirring and shifting at a furious pace, calculating the potential outcomes of his actions.

  Seemingly satisfied with her assessment, she shot him a glare of displeasure before walking back to her sister.

  “Shhh, my dearest,” Anunit cooed while she sat beside Ishtar on the bed. “It will all be over soon. Just one more push, I promise. And then, you’ll be free.”