A Love Neverending

by Rowan Larke

  26

  Rowan Larke

  Tamiel was staring at her. He hadn't moved. Hadn't spoken. Instead he seemed to be waiting for her. Jason wished he had the same patience. “Clarissa,” he said, knowing she wouldn't hear him. “Oh God, Clarissa.” His heart broke, mended, fell into a thousand pieces while he made his own decision. Fear and fury and resignation all balled together within him and made his voice rasp when he spoke again. “If you've got to move on, move on. Be happy.”

  Tears stung his eyes, and pain banded his chest as he held the rest back. If he let himself grieve, he might never stop. “I love you,” he whispered and stepped back into the shadows, determined to watch, as always, to punish himself.

  * * * *

  Clarissa stared at him. What had possessed her to bring a man here? It would never be the same. Never be her sanctuary. It would reek of sex and longing and…something more desperate, something she'd never been able to name. She should tell him to go away. Leave her in peace. But something shifted in those eyes—black as obsidian, as night, as every cliché she could think of. Something like light on the edge of a knife—it was sharp and dangerous, and while she was wary of it, she was aware of a rush of hot need between her thighs.

  “What do you want?” he whispered, and when he said her name, it was like a prayer on his beautiful lips.

  “I want…” She started but couldn't finish. She couldn't say aloud what it was she longed for. Couldn't admit that deviance. “I need…”

  …punishment…

  …pain…

  …death.

  No, she couldn't say that aloud. Instead she just looked at him, feeling her desperation grow.

  Then he kissed her. A tender exploration of the contours of her mouth, a careful stoking of the fires within her. She pushed him away, fear, fury, and desire coursing through her veins in a hot rush. “I don't want that.” Her voice was as cold as she was hot, though it shook a little as she tried to keep her conflicting emotions under control. They roiled within her, too close to the

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  surface. Too close to that part of herself where they'd need to be acknowledged. Where she'd have to deal with them.

  She shoved them all aside, even as she launched herself at Tamiel. “Don't be gentle,” she commanded. “Just…don't.” She fumbled with the button of his jeans. Her hands were shaking. She let them drop away and stood on tiptoe to press her pelvic bone against his erection, grinding against it for his attention. “I need release,” she whispered in his ear before taking it between her teeth.

  He growled then, and the sound was almost inhuman. She shivered from head to foot, but she didn't back away. Whatever he unleashed, she'd take. She needed. He met her gaze once more, a forever-long second of time. Gold and silver flecks battled within his eyes, until they swirled into the darkness, and his irises were solid black once again. He nodded as if to indicate he'd made a decision. Then he surged forward, and his hands grasped and tore at her clothes. She was naked before she understood he'd literally torn them, both the skirt and shirt she'd been wearing. She hadn't bothered with underwear, so she was completely bare, and she shivered with the sudden rush of air against her skin, as well as the molten heat of his gaze.

  “You need,” he snarled in her ear, and she heard it—the threat of violence, the promise of fulfillment—and she quaked in his arms. “I can give you what you want,” he murmured, and she understood he knew, knew without a doubt, what it was she was really looking for. The tremors that seized her nearly flipped her straight into orgasm, the feelings were so intense, and she pulled herself together with difficulty. Long enough to sigh into the skin of his arm where her face lay.

  Long enough to whisper, “I need.”

  Excitement coiled low and tight, making the muscles of her pelvis and thighs tingle. Her pussy clamped over nothing, the muscles clenching and unclenching in need of something that wasn't there. Death, her mind whispered. He knew what she wanted. He could deliver. Another tremor, another series of muscles fisting over air. Oh dear God, she wanted. He was naked a moment later, his clothes folded neatly in a pile and out of the way. “I will,” he whispered. “I will give you what you want.” He sounded certain and sad, and Clarissa

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  fought back sudden tears. After a long pause where they faced each other like competitors—like conspirators—he spoke again. “And I'll take what you offer.”

  She looked at him in confusion for a moment before registering the tension in his coffeecolored thighs, the glisten of light off his taut abs. His balls were tight and dark beneath his stiff, jutting erection. She swallowed at the sight of it, wondering how she would fit him within herself. He was massive, yet even through her confusion and worry, need tore at her with clawed fingers. Before she could speak, before she could move to accept or decline his deal, he closed the distance between them. After lowering his head to her neck, he suckled her skin before nipping at it with his teeth, then working his way down her neck and shoulder. He sank his teeth into the flesh of her upper arm, drawing a small drop of blood, which he licked with his tongue as if to ease the sting.

  The feel of his teeth sliding into her skin arrowed wet need through her abdomen, and her pussy tightened. His hands circled her waist—and it was only then that she realized how large they were and began to feel afraid—and he lifted her, wrapping her legs around his waist so that the tip of his erection brushed her ass cheek. Her other cheek came violently to tingling awareness when he freed a hand and slapped it.

  She moaned, and her head fell forward to rest on his shoulder. Thoughts evaporated, fear fled, and she was nothing but sensation. Writhing, primal need. He didn't spare her. There wasn't a single tentative slap or apologetic touch. Instead his hands landed every place she needed them—her ass was red and swollen, her breasts inflamed. He brought her nipples to painful arousal with his teeth, and continued them until she writhed in sudden orgasm in his arms. He lowered her to the floor and ordered her to rest on her hands and knees. While she waited, he pulled something from within the neat pile of his clothing, something he uncoiled with a long, whispery sigh. Leather.

  The first lash of the whip cracked across her ass before she understood what it was. Pain, pure as fire, danced across her skin and into her subconscious. Blissfully there was no room for thought. For fear. Only the delicious absence of it all.

  He lashed her ass, her back, even her shoulders. He only stopped when she reached equilibrium—that place where new pain was simply absorbed by the old and no longer served any purpose. Then he flipped her onto her back, which protested, and she welcomed the pain.

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  Jason, the name floated to her consciousness, and although it carried pain with it, the word itself held almost no meaning.

  Then Tamiel's teeth tightened over her clit, and the sudden sensation was too much pain, too much pleasure at once, and she cried out. He didn't seem to hear her but continued his torturous assault, blending pain and need together until she spiraled within them. She slid without awareness into another orgasm, shuddering with the response of her body, totally devoid of her brain. She caught back a sob, aware only as she did of the tears streaming down her face. Tamiel worked his way up her body with bites painful enough for awareness but not enough to damage her skin, and she blinked her eyes furiously, wishing the liquid to evaporate before he could see.

  When he did meet her gaze, she was astonished to see an answering moisture in his own eyes. He lowered his mouth to lick away the tears even while he pressed the head of his cock into her, stretching her wide—wider than she'd have thought from looking at him earlier, as impressive as he'd been. She had the insane idea he'd willed himself to be bigger—thicker and longer—just to put the edge of pain into their joining, but that was impossible. He pounded into her. The head of his cock ground against her G-spot, pushing just past the point of sheer pleasure so that e
ach thrust made her wince. The walls of her pussy stretched but never seemed quite wide enough to accommodate him, and she chafed. Yet she was wet—wetter than she remembered ever being—as he pounded away. Taking her. His orgasm surged through him—a full-body tremor, accompanied by a fierce growl unlike anything she'd ever heard. She pulsed around him, the feel of his hot release within her enough to spur her on, enough to make her realize the pain the rest of her body was in. The liquid soothed her pain, a hot rush against tender flesh, and she all but sobbed with the relief of it. She shuddered beneath him, her back tearing to awareness against the carpeted floor. He withdrew, though the weight of his body stayed on hers. For long moments, the only sound in the room was their ragged breathing, staggered so one sounded like the echo of the other. She curled her toes, her body restless even in its contentment. Because it hadn't been enough, despite the ache inside her body and all along it. Despite the bruises she knew he'd inflicted, the pain she'd feel for days—it hadn't been enough. It would never be enough. Not until she was dead.

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  One of his large hands circled her throat, and her eyes flew open before she realized they'd been closed. “You want,” he said in a tone of wonder, but his voice was guttural, almost unintelligible—the sound of an animal imitating speech.

  For a moment, her terror was complete. He was willing to do it. Of all the men she'd met, all the men she'd fucked—this one knew what she was asking. Was she willing? Was it what she really wanted?

  Yes. Of course it was. And sadness washed over her—not because she wanted to die but because there wasn't a shred of doubt left in her. Succumbing to the sensations ebbing from her body, she was simply relieved.

  Tears slid from her eyes, into her hair, into marks on her face she couldn't remember him causing. Through her liquid-filled eyes, like looking through a kaleidoscope, she saw ten of him, and over his shoulder, Jason, staring at her with love and longing and hope and need in his eyes.

  “Watch me,” Tamiel said in that strange voice, and Clarissa kept her gaze focused on the blackness of his eyes. The black circles of his irises, which as she watched, seemed to bleed into the whites like spilled ink, until each entire eye, corner to corner, was black. His pupils were darker still, swirling vortices of darkness, pulling her in. “In,” he commanded, and she didn't understand, but she knew not to break his gaze, and so she stared at him, felt the pull of his eyes, the tug on her soul, until the darkness seemed to leak entirely from his eyes to encroach at the edges of her vision.

  She shuddered, her body finally registering the pain she was in, how close she really was to death. He was allowing her to breathe, waiting for her final decision, but her airway was tight, and she was taking shallow breaths. She was one word from death…and she couldn't speak. I want to die. Tamiel's eyes flashed as though he'd heard her, and despite his grip on her neck, she nodded. “Yes,” she whispered, before Tamiel's hand tightened around her throat, and she could no longer catch her breath at all.

  Then there was nothing.

  * * * *

  Jason straddled Tamiel, who still lay on Clarissa, trying to tear him from her. “No!” he screamed, over and over until his voice was raw and nothing escaped but air.

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  He hadn't understood until too late what Tamiel was doing. He was crushing her, suffocating her with his body and hand. Jason pounded his fists ineffectually on Tamiel's flesh, slipping through the man, reminding Jason he was insubstantial. Inconsequential too, as he tried to tangle his fingers in the man's hair, to pull him, push him, throw him off her, with no effect. Jason choked back tears as the knowledge that he couldn't stop this slammed home. When Tamiel rose, he threw Jason off as if he were nothing. Jason slid to the floor. His teeth clicked together on impact. He shook his head to clear it and was aware of Tamiel moving across the room.

  Jason turned his attention to Clarissa. A single glance was enough to tell him she was beyond his help. He stared down at her, impotent rage welling within his chest. A sense of triumphant jubilance wreathed her, tilted her lips into a smile. Her eyes were glassy and protruded a little from the strangulation. The whites were white no longer, they were red-veined pink, and Jason swallowed the bile that rose at the sight. No. Not Clarissa. No no no no…

  Unable to scream, the words echoed through his head, losing meaning, building meaning—

  they were the only barrier between his conscious mind and the other voice…the one whispering the truth in a sibilant hiss. She's dead. The words penetrated anyway. Jason let loose a wail no one could hear, sobbing what might have been her name or denial or no words at all, but emotion being given voice.

  Hatred flared within him, hot and lancing, burning through his veins, singeing the muscles of his arms and legs, which were bunched with his need to lash out. He swung at Tamiel. His fists went through him, and Tamiel didn't even flinch. Agonized, Jason hitched his breath on a sob. He wanted the man dead for what he'd done. Wanted him splayed out on the table downstairs so Jason could strangle him with his own whip, still moist with Clarissa's blood. Red tinged the edge of his vision, and he welcomed an all-too-familiar rage, all the while aware there was nothing he could do.

  “Damn you!” He hurled the words at Tamiel, who stopped in the process of pulling his jeans together at his waist. Tamiel turned to look at Jason over his bare shoulder and met his gaze for a long moment before Jason understood what was happening. Tamiel was looking at him. Seeing him. And when Tamiel's mouth opened, as if he was about to speak, he was going to speak to Jason.

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  Jason released his breath on a hiss. All his anger, frustration, pain, and hatred simmered below a feeling of wonder. Fascination. Validation. After so long, to have someone actually see him, even this man—it was a miracle laced with agony. “God fucking damn you,” he whispered. The smile that lifted the corners of Tamiel's lips was so bitter as to be cold, and Jason shivered. “It would not be the first time,” he said, and his voice was soft, somewhere between the animal grunt he'd used with Clarissa while they fucked and the velvet seduction he'd used earlier that night. It was a strange sound, full of sorrow and pain at the loss of a passion and happiness the likes of which Jason had never known.

  Jason stepped back from the enormity of it—the complexity of Tamiel and whatever he was. Because it was clear to Jason he was not human.

  “You killed her,” he whispered finally.

  “I gave her what she wanted.” As if she'd wanted a flower, or a puppy.

  “She's dead.” Tears slid from Jason's eyes, even as the sibilant voice in his head echoed the word. Dead…dead…dead. “You killed her.”

  Tamiel turned to face him. He spoke even as he crossed the space between them. “I gave her what she needed. It is what I do. It is why I am damned and double damned.” Then Tamiel stood over her body, closed his eyes, and disappeared.

  Jason stared for a few minutes, waiting for him to reappear. He had to get help. But he couldn't leave her. He'd manage to move a step, two, away from her before whirling to kneel by her side again. He thought he saw her pulse jump at her throat, and that spurred him on. If there was the slightest hope she could be helped, he had to find it. He slid through the door, a bizarre feeling, though not painful, and took the stairs two at a time. Charging through the door at the bottom of the stairs, he slid through the body of another man, whose hand was outstretched for the knob. “Oh, thank God,” Jason murmured. Then he realized who the other man was, and he barked a short laugh. Because tonight hadn't been bad enough? Now he was going to be forced to beg for help from Dom Mihai. When Mihai reached the top of the stairs, he knocked tentatively, his voice barely loud enough to carry through the door. “She can't hear you,” Jason said, and his voice was strained.

  “You have to go in.” He was pleading with the back of the man's shaved head. Go inside. Find Clarissa. Take care of her.

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  That thought wasn't pleasant. He should be the one to take care of her. But it was out of his hands. Literally, he thought with a snort. He couldn't do anything for her. The man turned as if he was going to go back downstairs, and Jason's hopes fell to his feet. He could almost hear them shatter.

  “No! You can't go.” He slid through the man again, unflinching, although going through people was infinitely more uncomfortable than going through doors and walls. Frantic and frustrated, Jason wasn't surprised that his hands shook. It all escalated as the man stepped down. One stair. Another. Jason screamed. “No!” Steeling himself for whatever might happen, he plunged his hands through the metal casing and into the thumbprint reader beside the door. The one that wasn't there when he was alive. Somehow, knowing it couldn't read his print, even if he'd been alive to use it, made him hate the contraption all the more. Concentrating so hard sweat beaded on his forehead, he imagined his hands as solid objects. Real. A shower of sparks flew up around his wrists. He heard the sizzle of electric components, the hum of power. And the door clicked open.

  Astonished, he stared at the door. Stared at the man who was halfway down the stairs. Willed him to look. To have heard the single click. To notice the door, now standing a few inches open. “Please,” Jason begged. “Please, just go help her.”

  Jason followed him, a single step behind as the Dom pushed the door to swing inward before stepping through. Mihai raced to Clarissa's side. Checked her pulse. Something there gave him hope; Jason could see it dawn on the man's angular face. He began CPR—chest compressions, blowing air into her mouth, counting quietly to himself. Jason watched, his heart thumping loudly in his chest, realizing she had a chance. She might live. She had a chance.