by Tawny Taylor
Within two heartbeats, she was sagging with relief against Maks the man.
He held her tenderly in his arms, kissed her sweetly as he walked her away from the corner she’d been huddled in. “You understand now why we waited?”
“I do,” she said to his very human-looking chest. “ I was petrified.”
“You know we couldn’t hurt you,” Cy reassured her, pressing his hot, hard body against her back. “No matter what form we’re in.”
“Maybe. But would you be too upset if I asked you not to do that again?”
“No.” Maks nibbled on her neck. “Though you’ll probably change your mind about that someday. Want to play?” he offered, against the sensitive skin at the crook of her neck.
She let her head lob to the side. “Yes. Let’s play.”
Maks broke the kiss and together he and Cy made her Alyria’s happiest woman.
They tied her spread eagle to the St. Andrew’s cross, a dildo on a spike standing between her legs, so that the very tip just barely penetrated her pussy. With dildos and vibrators and butt plugs and whips, they tormented her to the point of begging. Once, twice, three times.
And then, they fucked her. Both of them. Again, and again and again, until she was finally sated and sleepy. They carried her to her room and that night she slept between them, her hulking Masters. Sometimes cradled against Maksim’s thick body and sometimes against Cy’s.
She wasn’t a nobody any longer. And it hadn’t taken the story of the century, a cover spread on Time, or fame and fortune to get her there. It had only taken a sexy romance novel, a drop of blood, and a couple of patient, loving barbarians to teach her that she’d always be a somebody, if she let herself.
* * *
Smiling, Kieran slipped out into the night.
He would have to wait a few weeks, but it would be worth it. Even though he’d lost his only contact with the human world, he knew he’d find his way back there again. And next time, he’d make sure the Knights didn’t stop him.
He would destroy the portal, if that was what it took.
Passion Unbound 3: Wanton Nights
Tawny Taylor
All rights reserved.
Copyright ©2011 Tawny Taylor
Chapter 1
This wasn’t a dream. It was real. Terrifyingly real. Wickedly real.
Two domineering men were standing before her, nude, hard, ready. The lust in their eyes scorched her skin.
She quivered.
Ronan lunged toward her, snatching her wrists in his huge fists. He coaxed her away from the door then turned to crush her between his powerful body and Cayne’s.
Two men. Two powerful, seductive men wanted her. Couldn’t get enough of her. She shuddered as lips skimmed over her cheek, teeth scraped her neck, hands branded her breasts and stomach.
She’d never thought she’d ever have the guts to be dominated by two powerful men, like in her favorite book. They were about to make her darkest fantasies a reality. Fantasies she’d never realized she had. She hadn’t thought it was possible. But ohhhh, the wicked pleasure…
Oh. My. God. What brilliant stories these authors came up with. How the heck did they do that? This author outshined them all.
Kaitlin Doyle had read many a steamy romance novel, but Her Dark Knights blew the others away for so many reasons. She’d read romance stories, bondage stories, ménage stories, stories about vampires and warriors and werewolves. But Lucifer’s fallen angels? Who would have ever thought that she’d find evil beings so freaking sexy?
In the movies, Lucifer’s angels, aka demons, were always hideous creatures with huge, protruding horns and thick, wrinkled skin like an elephant. To make them beautiful...that was a stroke of pure genius.
Kaitlin squinted at the glaring red numbers on her alarm clock. It couldn’t be two o’clock in the morning already. Thank God it was the weekend. She could sleep in as late as she wanted tomorrow. She leafed through the remaining pages. Only a few chapters. She didn’t want to stop reading now, couldn’t stop. The heroine was about to do The Deed with her two yummy heroes for the first time.
But first, a snack and something to drink.
She padded barefoot through her apartment to the kitchen. The only sounds interrupting the constant, heavy silence were a hollow drip of her bathroom faucet and the low rumble of the furnace. She passed through a blade of silvery moonlight knifing across the darkness engulfing her living room and shuffled into the kitchen, snapping on the murky yellow light from her range hood.
She eyed a bag of chips then checked the refrigerator, considering a few other options. Fruit. Some wilted leftover salad from lunch. A bowl of cereal. In the end, she went for an apple -- healthy -- with some yummy caramel dip -- not so healthy. Gathering a small knife and a paper plate, she headed back to her room and flopped on the bed, propping the book up as she sliced the apple.
Hot. Tight. Desperate with desire, she whimpered as her Master cupped the back of her head, tilting it so he could kiss her. His lips slanted over hers, hard and demanding. His tongue speared into her mouth, a possession, not a shy exploration.
Everything felt different with these men. The way they touched her, kissed her, made her feel inside…
Completely drawn into the story, Kaitlin ignored the sting on her thumb where she’d nicked herself with the knife and turned the page.
She didn’t just want to have sex with these men, she wanted to be overtaken by them, to surrender her body to them, and experience what she’d only read about…
She dunked the apple slice into the sticky dip and popped it into her mouth. “I think I’d want to surrender too, if I was being kissed like that by two scrumptious men.” She swallowed and sighed. “Some people get all the luck. I’d be happy with just one semi-scrumptious man. Where is my yummy real-life hero? Is he out there somewhere? Waiting for me?” She sighed again, sliced another piece off the apple, and flipped another page. A single droplet of blood fell on the bottom margin. She wiped it away with her napkin then wrapped the paper around the wounded digit to stem the bleeding. “Come on, Mr. Fantasy. Find me already, would you?”
The story carried her deeper into the characters’ erotic fantasy world, of submission and domination, healing and discovery. It was the kind of story she’d never forget, the kind that haunted her dreams.
That night, of course, she dreamed of two wickedly sensual heroes. Who happened to look just like the guys in her book. And they did all those naughty things to her.
Several hours later, still semi-asleep, straddling the line between wakefulness and her dreams, Kaitlin felt her fiancé climb into bed with her, run his hand down her back, over the swell of her derriere. Feeling warm and soft and feminine, she smiled and arched her back, teasing, “Not now, I’m sleepinggg…”
Ohmygod!
She wasn’t engaged anymore, hadn’t been for over a year.
Completely disoriented, she flipped onto her back. The shadow hovering over her was way too big to belong to Jim.
“What the --”
A huge hand clapped over her mouth, cutting off the rest of the expletive. Blinking to clear her sleep-bleary eyes, and filled with terror, she thrashed and kicked and swung her fists, striking the enormous person standing over her anywhere she could, as hard as she could.
No more than a few seconds later, she was hauled backward against a second huge, hard body. Hot breath warmed the crook of her neck as crazy jolts of energy zipped through her body. Who? Why? What was going on?
She remembered the book.
Could this be another dream? It felt so freaking real!
Hot, hard male body.
The very real sensation of being held.
And oh my, what was that hard thing pressed against her bottom? It was too big to be… couldn’t be…
She sucked in a ragged gasp and went into full fight mode again. Because there was a steel band -- which looked like a man’s arm but sure didn’t feel like one -- wrapped around her chest, pinning her arms
to her sides, she had to use her feet to fight. She threw in the occasional backward head butt. Sadly, all she accomplished was to make herself dizzy and nauseous.
“She’s strong for her size,” her captor said as he clapped a hand over her mouth and carried her kicking across her room.
Who was he talking to? Was there another man in the room with them? She screamed, but the sound came out too muffled to travel very far. Even her neighbor, the light sleeper that Mr. Aberline was, wouldn’t hear her.
“Did Kieran get through?”
“Yeah, he’s gone already.”
“Good. Ready to head back?”
“Yeah.”
Back where? Where were they taking her? Who were these men and what did they want with her?
This couldn’t be happening. It just couldn’t.
Because she was being held face-out, her back flat against the kidnapper’s front, she had a clear view of the path he was taking. And it looked like he was going to walk smack dab into the wall. The door was clear over on the other side of the room.
Where was he going?
She screamed but he didn’t so much as hesitate. Just before her face slammed into hard drywall, she squeezed her eyes closed and turned her face.
But there was no pain. No impact. Nothing but a soft whoosh. A puff of warm, moist, fragrant air.
What?
How?
Where were they? It was like thirty degrees outside, and yet the air was warm and damp and fragrant. She opened her eyes.
Huh?
This place looked just like the setting of her book. A world that was a blend of medieval and rustic architecture. Hard stone walls. Air that smelled surprisingly sweet, like a tropical jungle. Dark.
She tried to whip around and get a look at the behemoth carting her through the maze of dark and narrow corridors but he was holding her too tightly. Finally, he carted her into a tiny, creepy room.
A heavy door slammed behind them.
He set her on her feet.
Instantly, she dashed as far away from the kidnapper as she could get… in a room the size of a closet. Only then did she dare turn to get her first good look at him.
Oh. My. God.
There were two of them, and they were both absolutely huge. At least seven feet tall, with thickly muscled bodies, and… amazing faces. One had a slightly darker complexion than the other, but they both had long-ish wavy hair, strong jaws, and glittering eyes. They didn’t appear to be brothers, by their features.
Again, she remembered the book. That one there could easily be Cayne. And the other one, Ronan.
What the hell was going on?
“Who are you?” She ground her back into the chilly stone wall. The cold and confusion made her teeth chatter and her back tighten. A tremble quaked up her spine.
“We are your Masters,” one of them said. His voice was a deep bass. The tone vibrated through her body like a low voltage current of electricity. She felt a bizarre humming sensation spread out from her center.
“Masters? I don’t get it. I’m not a slave. And where are we?”
The one who’d been hanging back by the door, silently watching, stepped forward. “This is Alyria, your new home.”
“Ayyyy-leria?” she repeated. “Or do you mean Eee-leria?”
“Ayyyy-leria,” the man echoed.
Okay, she’d never heard of the town of Alyria. Elyria, yes. That was in Ohio, a couple hours drive on Route Eight. She’d passed through the town a few times on her way to Cleveland.
The weird part was they hadn’t even walked out of her apartment building, let alone driven anywhere. They couldn’t have gone far, not even to Elyria.
Maybe they’d drugged her? She didn’t remember passing out, but she supposed it was possible.
“Where’s Alyria? I’m so confused. We should be in my apartment complex, if not in my building…” Her heart did a little lurch in her chest then jumped against her breastbone. “Wait a minute. Alyria, you said. Right? That’s from the book I was reading. What’s going on? Why are you two pretending to be characters from a romance novel?”
She gave them a desperate can-you-explain-it-to-me look and then, when no explanation was offered, she slumped onto the wooden cot next to the wall. When she fell back, she clunked her head against the wall. “Owww!” For the next ten seconds, she saw nothing but annoying twinkling stars.
What irritated her more was what that pain was telling her. She couldn’t have slept through a knock on the head that hard. Not to mention, she was sore from her earlier battle with her supposed Masters. Yet another reason to believe she wasn’t sleeping.
The one who’d hauled her into the room moved closer, making her feel very small and overpowered. “We’re not pretending to be anyone. You remember the book?”
“Sure I do. I just read it last night.”
He nodded. “That’s our story. Your story.”
“That’s… impossible. The character in the book was named…” What had the heroine’s name been? She couldn’t remember. No doubt because she was so stressed out. “… well, it wasn’t me and how could that be my story, anyway? I mean, true events are generally written after they’ve occurred, not before. And since I know for a fact that I’d never been a love slave to a couple of huge leather-garbed… d-demons…”
She gulped. Once, twice, three times. Demons.
There was no such thing.
Okay, maybe demons or fallen angels or whatever they were called did exist. But not the kind of flesh-and-blood beings that sneaked into people’s houses and hauled them away to weird medieval-looking places like this.
“We’re not demons,” one of them said, sounding insulted. “We’re Nephilim. Angels.”
“Ha! That you aren’t.” She wasn’t sure what that “neph-whatever” word meant. She’d never heard it before. But angels they most definitely weren’t.
God, she felt so stupid, so out of her element and just plain… lost. She wished these two whatever-they-were would simply escort her back to her apartment.
Or she would wake up.
Or someone would tell her something that made sense.
That whole thing about the book being her story made absolutely no sense. None.
“I am Cayne and that is Ronan.”
Cayne and Ronan. Big surprise there -- not. Of course, those were the names of the two guys from the book. Obviously, these two crazy men were determined to stick with the we’re-living-out-the-book explanation, regardless of the fact that she knew it was a pile of horse shit.
She was worn out, bone weary, too tired to think, let alone try to wrangle the truth out of these two wannabe-angels. She dropped her face into her hands and tried to concentrate but her mind was too muddy from lack of sleep. “Got it. Cayne. Ronan. And you’re from the book I read last night. We’re all going to play out the story. It’ll be so much fun,” she joked, so crazy with terror and exhaustion she was giddy. “Ooh, I can’t wait to go to the dungeon.”
“We will begin your training tomorrow,” Cayne said, his tone serious. Obviously, he hadn’t clued in to her sarcasm. “You will rest tonight.”
The sarcasm in her voice had been so thick, she couldn’t see how either one of her captors could miss it, even if they were stone deaf. Just to make it all the clearer that she was not serious, she gave them a beaming grin. “Gee, darn. I’m just itching to be tied up and whipped. Meanie.”
Ronan moved closer, his brows knitted together.
That man was one huge specimen of masculine… manliness. The other guy, Cayne, wasn’t any smaller. Where did these two come from? “Okay, seriously now, what’s the deal? Did somebody hire you? That has to be it, right?” she thought out loud.
“Undress.” Ronan crossed those uber-thick arms of his over his chest.
What the hell? “Time out!” They were taking this let’s-play-erotica thing too far. “I was being sarcastic when I said I couldn’t wait. Please tell me you knew that. I am so not into whips and chain
s. Not even a little. So whatever is going on needs to stop. Right now.”
Ronan took one step toward her.
She hadn’t signed up for any kinky games with man-whores.
He took another.
She didn’t even know how to go about hiring a male prostitute. That was not something she’d ever been interested in.
The third placed him smack dab in front of her.
Leaning back against the wall, she tipped her head up to make sure he got a clear view of the mean eyes she was dishing him. “I’m not going to take off my clothes.”
Silent and scary, he bent at the waist, returning her glare.
She bent her knees and tucked them under her chin. “There’s been only one man who’s seen me naked -- besides my doctor -- and we’d been dating for a long time before he got past second base.”
That face dipped lower. It was beautiful, but that didn’t make her racing heartbeat slow down any. In fact, it inched up another notch or two.
“I don’t strip for strangers. Take me back home.”
“We will not. You are our bride.” Ronan extended one arm, bracing it against the wall.
Close! Too close!
“I don’t want to be your bride,” she explained to his bottom lip, hearing the panic in her voice.
He extended the other arm, planting that hand on the opposite side of her head. “If you didn’t want to be our bride, you wouldn’t have summoned us,” Ronan reasoned.
Hah! She had him now. Her gaze lifted to his eyes. Dark. Intense. “I didn’t summon anyone.”
“Yes, you did.”
“No, I sure didn’t.”
“Liar.” Ronan gritted his teeth. Rage whirled in his eyes. He lurched forward.
That was it!
Ronan might be pissed, but that little sizzle of anger was nothing compared to the rage that was cooking inside her now. “What’re you going to do, Ronan the Barbarian?” she taunted, knowing it was stupid as hell, but unable to stop herself. If there was one thing she despised, it was a man who used brute strength to intimidate women. She might be something of a pushover, a peacekeeper, but that didn’t mean she’d let a strange man scare her into anything.