by Alison Paige
Nickolas exhaled through his nose, his lips sealed tight, turning white around the edges. He shook his head, glanced at his feet and then up toward their family as the distance between them grew. “How long did it go on?”
“A few months,” she said. “Akram doesn’t stay in one place long. He can’t risk that someone might discover the possession. Though I’m always careful to choose hosts who have little or no family and friends. When we moved on, I never saw him again.”
Nickolas nodded, shifting his gaze to his feet again. “Any others?”
“No.” She’d learned her lesson with David. It wasn’t not easy being a lover to a Raven. The need to be free, to roam where her instincts urged her, was difficult to explain to a human who wanted to put down roots. Hiding her need to indulge in her gifts, to relieve the foolhardy of their pretty, shiny things, was an obstacle she hadn’t even tried to overcome with him.
At least with Akram she could be who she was, what she was, and he wanted her, anyway. He wanted her despite her flaws…or because of them. The thought warmed through her mind.
“It took time to get used to having only Akram in my life. David was one last attempt at resisting my fate,” she said. “It was a mistake. The relationship couldn’t work.”
Nickolas nodded, his face still tight, but softening by small measures. “It’s okay. I…I can forgive you.”
The knot in her shoulders eased with her exhalation. She hadn’t even realized she’d been holding her breath. “I’m sorry, Nick. I never imagined you’d save yourself for me. That’s…that’s just amazing.”
She wanted to be grateful, to be overwhelmed by his gesture of chastity. But even though much of Nickolas was familiar, his scent, his voice, the way one side of his mouth rose higher than the other when he smiled. It’d been so long since she’d last seen him, the man he’d become was virtually a stranger to her.
“Morrigan,” he said, a strange smile flickering across his lips. “I’m a man. I’ve been with dozens of women. You can’t possibly expect me to have endured a cold bed with so many eager to warm it.”
“Then what’s with the indignation at the possibility I’d done the same?” She could hardly breathe around her outrage. “You think there weren’t men eager to warm my bed?”
“No doubt. But you’re a woman, Morrigan. Your bed is for your husband alone.”
She blinked at him, her mouth agape. This was the life she’d longed to return to? This was the belief system she’d cried for night after night for years?
“What kind of logic is that? What kind of woman would accept such a double standard?” She’d always seen her time with Akram as an imprisonment, though she’d grown accustomed to it, even comfortable. Now looking back on their years together, compared to the life she’d lead with her flock when Akram let her go, she realized she would always be held captive, and only the jailer would change.
“It’s our way. It always has been. It’s better than whatever you’ve got going with that demon,” Nickolas said, his disgust curling his lip. “Bringing him victims to murder.”
“Some people deserve to die,” Morrigan said. “Akram’s not very picky. Being demon food is almost too good for some of them. Child molesters, killers, rapists…”
“You like being his huntress?” Nickolas asked.
“No. I mean…he can’t help what he is. He had to choose someone. Liking it, him, or not has nothing to do with it. Because of my enslavement to him, the rest of you will never be culled by a Leshii demon. I was payment. The flock sacrificed me to save themselves.”
She’d never said it out loud, and the moment she did she wished she could take it back. Never mind it was the truth. She sucked in a quick breath, held it, waiting for his response.
Nickolas stared at her for what seemed an eternity, then shook his head. He glanced at their family nearly all the way down to the beach now, then back to her. “I swear to you, Morrigan, none of us saw it that way. I hate that you’ve been gone so long, that you’ve been with him, but I never once imagined you were suffering.”
“Not suffering. I didn’t say that.” After all, she’d wanted for nothing, save emotional contact, during her time with Akram. He was never abusive, never caused her harm in any way. She was lonely, hurt by her family’s abandonment and consumed with guilt over using her powers to bring harm—even to those who may have deserved it.
“If I’d known,” he said, as though he hadn’t heard her. His mouth was tight again, the lips going white, his hands balling to fists. “I should’ve known. We all should’ve known. But don’t worry. You won’t suffer another second at the hands of that bastard demon. It stops here. Now. I’ll find a way.”
Morrigan was never so happy to have the long, uncomfortable evening at an end. She collapsed onto the French antique love seat in the suite Akram had procured for them. Two rooms, both extravagantly furnished, with king beds, thick mattresses, clean sheets, heavy comforters and piles and piles of plump pillows each.
An absent thought went to her family, sleeping in their moth-vented tents on the beach. All of them crowded beneath smelly old blankets, people wedged side by side to fit as many as possible.
Campfire smoke scented their hair and clothes, and there was a time Morrigan had thought the closeness comforting, the smells endearing, the financial uncertainty exciting. No more. A shudder rocked across her shoulders and she pushed the image from her mind.
It wasn’t just the tension pressing between Nickolas and Akram that’d made the evening an exhausting experience. It was Morrigan herself. She’d spent too many of her years with Akram trying to forget what it was like to be with her flock, refusing to indulge in the heartache of missing her family. It seemed she’d succeeded.
She thought she hadn’t changed, that time had stood still for her. It hadn’t. She wasn’t the girl Akram had plucked from the fold all those years ago. And they weren’t the people she remembered, the people she thought they were. She loved them dearly, but she didn’t fit in their world anymore. For so many years she knew she’d go home one day, but now she realized when her time with Akram was done, it was home she’d be leaving behind.
Akram leaned a shoulder against the wall next to the doorway that joined their rooms. She showed no signs of having heard him. Why would she? Morrigan was lost in thought.
About what? he wondered. Her young Raven lover? Akram’s jaw tightened, muscles in his gut clenched.
“Why so pensive?” he asked, fighting the acidic notions that threatened to color his tone.
Morrigan flicked her gaze to him, forced a smile that never quite reached her eyes. “Nothing. Tonight…wasn’t what I expected.”
He pushed off with his shoulder and crossed the room to her, settling on the sofa beside her. “You and the young male Raven have a lovers’ spat?”
Morrigan met his gaze, her dark brow knotting. A curious smile flickered across her lips as though she thought he might be joking. Akram didn’t joke.
“No,” she said. “Well, yes, but… We’re not lovers. We were close when we were kids. He’s just having problems accepting that I’m not the same girl he knew all those years ago.”
“He’s angry that I’ve kept you from him so long,” Akram said. The young man had spent the evening puffing out his chest and taking exception to everything Akram did or said. He’d been looking for excuses and Akram had had half a mind to give him one.
Killing the young upstart would gain him nothing, though. He feared that Morrigan, too, was forever on the prowl for a reason to despise him, to deny these inexplicable sensations swirling between them like a mighty storm on the horizon.
Akram couldn’t name them, wouldn’t name them. But he couldn’t deny them, either. And despite his supreme Leshii intellect and all he knew to be of worth or merit, he could not bear the thought of never again feeling the way he did when she was near.
“Nickolas thinks I’m suffering at your hand. He can’t believe I haven’t been pining away for him all these years,” she
said. “And yeah, he doesn’t like you much.”
“Suffering? Is it such a hardship being my companion, my huntress?” His chest squeezed, his lungs holding his breath as he waited for her reply.
“Yes,” she said, and the single word stabbed through his heart. He looked away, his eyes strangely hot, swimming with a sensation he didn’t know, didn’t like.
“I mean, it was hard…at first,” she said. He felt her shift beside him on the couch. The heat of her thigh pressed against his, her small hand smoothed across his shoulders. “I was young, I missed my family. And I felt so guilty about using my gifts to lure people to their deaths.”
He looked over his shoulder at her. “You harm no one, Morrigan. The damage is mine.”
“But I make it possible.”
“You make it easier. I would feed no matter what. I must.” He turned, took her hands in his. “Without you I would take what I could, where I could, with no thought to their crimes or innocence. By hunting for me, choosing for me, you save people, good people…you save me.”
Her dark eyes held his for a moment, then shifted to his lips and back again. “I know that…now.”
The dark, sultry look in her eyes sent a quick jolt sizzling through his body. Akram blinked at the sensation, noting the need hardening between his thighs, the excitement tensing through his muscles. This was not his body, but it was his thoughts, his wants and desires, that ruled the physical form.
He marveled at the fine attunement between mind, body and soul…until Morrigan reached up and cupped his face. The soft heat of her touch stole all coherent thought in an instant. His hand covered hers, his gaze tracking the sweep of her tongue across her lips.
“I am saved by you, Morrigan,” he said, slowly closing the distance between them. “I will be undone without you.”
Morrigan lifted her chin, pressed her lips to his. The heat of that simple touch ignited a firestorm inside him, burning through his veins, snapping muscles tight, swirling like a fever through his mind.
Akram let go the demon intellect and gave free rein to his spirit’s desire. He ignored the small voice in his conscience that complained such wants, such deeds, were frivolous, useless to his survival and therefore a waste of his time. He wanted this. Some part of him, some part of his spirit, wanted her—always had.
He pulled Morrigan’s slender body to his, looped an arm under her legs, the other around her back. He stood cradling her, with the ease and grace of his demon nature, taking her to the waiting bed.
Akram laid her down atop the thick comforters, and Morrigan squirmed as she willed her body to shift, to absorb her clothes so all that remained on her naked body were the earrings and necklace he’d bought her.
His gaze traveled the length of her, from the delicate line of her shoulders to the teardrop swells of her breasts, to the slopping plain of her belly and the small triangle of dark hair between her thighs. His lungs closed, his body growing so hard the sensation became an odd mix of pain and pleasure.
“Come to me, Akram,” she said. And something wholly different chilled through his veins.
Akram met her gaze, the icy freeze of fear stiffening down his spine. “You understand, Morrigan, this is not my natural form. This act…intercourse…is not an instinct common to my kind.”
She pushed up on her elbows. “You’re a virgin?”
He nodded, a sickening weight settling in his gut with the admission. There was no reason to be ashamed, he knew, but his intellect was no longer ruling his body.
Morrigan smiled, but there was no mockery in the expression, just simple pleasure. “Undress.”
Akram moved quickly, shedding his shirt, his leather loafers, his slacks and underwear, kicking them thoughtlessly to a pile at the corner of the bed. He stood naked before her, awaiting her next request, his body hard and eager.
She held out a hand and he took it, allowing her to coax him onto the bed beside her. She lay back on the pillow, placing his hand on her breast. Her warm female flesh molded against his palm, her nipple puckering, the sensation triggering a fast answering response in his body.
He squeezed, marveling at the feel of her, then moved his hand to take her breast into his mouth. Desire took hold, blocking the part of his mind that questioned his actions, made him hesitate. This was not the first woman this body had touched; what Akram’s spirit didn’t know, the body did.
His hands smoothed over the velvet-soft flesh of her chest, to her belly, then lower to the thatch of curls between her thighs. Her heat warmed his fingers as he pressed between the lips of her sex, the wet feel of her readiness pulsing a sudden, sharp need through his groin.
Release teased along every inch of his skin, every touch, every breath pushing him to give way to some strange blissful relief. He wouldn’t. Not yet. He wanted to know the feel of her, to bury his body inside hers, to possess her in a way he’d never possessed a body before. He couldn’t breathe. His jaw was clenched, breaths squeezing from his lungs.
“Had I more experience I would strive to endure this maddening pleasure,” he said, shifting his body on top of hers, nestling his legs between hers. “But if I don’t take you now, all will be lost upon the sheets.”
“Right. Absolutely. Next time we’ll go slower,” she said, her voice breathy, her hands gasping his waist, centering him above her.
The hard shaft of his sex pressed against her heat. He rocked his hips, drove himself deep. Morrigan moaned, her back arching, her body opening to him, taking him deeper. The silky walls of her sex hugged him, milked the sensitive flesh of his penis so every move, every breath, sent a mind-numbing wave of pleasure rippling through his body.
Sensation hummed along his skin like an electric current, tightening muscles, coiling low in his groin. He pulled back, dragging out the sweet friction of their bodies, then drove into her again…and again…
The pace quickened, though Akram’s mind was lost, his body working on pure pleasure response. His skin tingled with each stroke of his body in hers, his muscles coiling, pressure building. He dropped his gaze, caught the look in Morrigan’s eyes, vulnerability, trust, contentment. Beautiful. Hell’s bells, he loved her. He loved her.
The thought echoed through his mind, rippled like a tangible thing through his veins. It tipped the scales within him, his body coalescing with his mind and spirit, melding into one perfect, pristine being and spilling him over into the abyss.
Her body quaked around him, his release triggering hers. He lay atop her, her arms and legs wrapped tight around him, hugging him. He turned his head, nuzzled through her thick, silky fall of hair and kissed her neck.
He sighed and spoke against the sweet feel of her flesh. “The feel of you is such sweet sorrow. To finally know you in this way when our time grows so quickly to an end is indeed as much a gift as a torment.”
“Some of the most important lessons in life are the hardest learned,” she said.
“Yes. Had I known this bliss with my last Raven I would not have waited so long to share it with you,” he said. “I will not make the same mistake again.”
Her body stiffened beneath him, setting warning bells blaring through Akram’s mind. It did him no good.
“Get off me, demon,” she said. “Get off me, now.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Akram did a slow blink as though he was trying to understand something profoundly complicated. Morrigan didn’t care. She pushed his shoulders and the demon helped by rolling to her side, their bodies parting. Morrigan rolled the opposite way and she got to her feet beside the bed. With an easy thought she shifted, bringing forth her black T-shirt, black jeans and boots, along with her standard weapons.
“You’re thinking of your next Raven…now?” she asked.
Akram’s glazed confusion cleared. He sat straight, his arm relaxed across his lap, casually blocking her view of his sex. Morrigan gave herself a mental slap when she realized she’d been looking.
“I must be prepared, Morrigan. If you hav
e a suggestion that would mitigate the need, please tell me,” he said.
Her mouth opened to speak, but she snapped it closed. What was she going to suggest? That he not take another Raven after her? That he allow himself to die because she couldn’t stand the thought he’d have this closeness with another woman?
“You’ve already chosen, haven’t you,” she said, instead.
Akram swung his feet to the side of the bed and stood. “I have,” he said, gathering his clothes.
Morrigan swallowed the tightness in her chest and throat when he pulled his BVDs over the firm round of his bottom. Akram’s spirit did wonderful things for the male form.
“Tell me who,” she said, though the twist in her belly told her she already knew the answer.
“Sophia,” he said, pulling his slacks to his hips. He tugged the blue crew shirt over his head before he finished fastening his pants, casually tucking in the shirt.
“She’s only fourteen.”
“As were you,” he said. “She’s eager and well skilled in the hunt, as all the women in your line have been.”
“Eager? Only because she hasn’t got a clue what it’ll be like, leaving her family, being cut off from all she knows, using her gifts to help end lives—”
“To bring justice to those who’ve escaped it.” Akram corrected.
“It doesn’t matter.” Morrigan’s stomach churned. A sick weight settled in its pit.
“Was your time with me so miserable?” he asked, the look in his golden eyes almost pained.
She knew he wasn’t. He couldn’t be. Akram was a Leshii demon. He felt for—cared for—nothing but himself, his own wants and needs. Why would he bother asking if she was happy or miserable? Though it wasn’t the first time he’d asked.
“That’s not the point,” she said, evading the question. It should’ve been an easy answer. Yes, it’s been miserable.
But now that she’d seen the truth of her past and future, instead of the wistful fantasy her lonely heart had designed, the answer wasn’t so easy. It was her longing for what she thought she’d lost that made her so impatient and unforgiving of her time with Akram. And now that she knew she’d been longing for a life that never existed, her perspective on the past fifty years was changing.