by Tessa Dawn
“And Braden,” she teased, “and your brothers…and the honor of your house.” She smiled broadly then. “I get it. And I’m fine with it.”
He hesitated, looking away. “Okay, so you get it—but tell me this: Do you think, in time, you will actually come to love it?”
“To love it?” she repeated, chiding him playfully.
He dropped his head and laughed, knowing he’d been caught. And then he raised it and held her gaze with uncommon courage and intensity. “To love me.”
Her breath caught in her throat, but she matched his courage ounce for ounce. “It’s already starting to happen,” she whispered, and then her face blushed a deep coral red.
“Come here,” he growled deep in his throat. “Show me.” With that, he hauled her forward and covered her mouth with his.
Deanna molded easily into Nachari’s arms, his wondrous height making him the perfect fit for her softer, more pliant body. She reveled in the feeling of his lips over hers and sought his tongue in earnest.
He didn’t hold back.
Giving her more of his passion.
More of his heart.
When his eyes began to burn red with intensity, she knew she had ignited a deep fire within him, and she had no intention of extinguishing the flame.
She reached up to cup his face in her hands and whispered, “Make love to me, Nachari. Here. Now.”
He growled once more, grasped her by the waist, and began to kiss her more earnestly. Eyeing the door to the brownstone, he murmured, “Let me get a blanket.”
Deanna shook her head, knowing that he was still being so very careful with her feelings, her body, her comfort. “No,” she whispered. “You don’t understand. I want you to make love to me…now.”
Nachari’s eyes darkened with fever, and a slow moan escaped his lips as his eyes met hers, almost as if searching for verification.
He got it.
Oh, did he ever get it.
Reaching for the tie to her robe, he pulled the opposite ends apart and slid it off her shoulders. As it fell to the ground, he ravished her neck, her shoulders, her breasts, dropping all the way down to his knees to taste her stomach…and her need. But feeling her urgency, he didn’t stay there.
He tugged his shirt over his head with one hand, while deftly unzipping his jeans with the other; then he kicked off his pants and made quick work of his skin-tight boxers. His movement was almost feline in its grace and agility.
At a glance, there was no doubt that Nachari was ready for her—his arousal was positively magnificent in length, width, and virility. Stunning her with the swiftness of his movement, he grasped her by the waist, lifted her onto the terrace wall—glancing only momentarily at the perilous fall behind her—and parted her thighs. In an instant, he was inside of her, pressing all the way to her womb, and she gasped at the startling sensation.
And then her head fell back in ecstasy.
His body moved with restless urgency, plunging in steady, mind-numbing thrusts as a series of moans and groans escaped his lips, each one more primal than the last.
Deanna arched her back and concentrated on the heavenly feel of him—every inch, inside and out—the magnificent flesh that pressed against her soul, causing stronger and stronger friction to build in her core; the strong, muscular arms that held her aloft and intimately, possessively close; and the harshly beautiful face that grew taut with feral pleasure as his own passion mounted.
His fangs began to extend, and she couldn’t help but stare, all the while grinding tightly against him. He was driving her out of her mind. Not knowing if she would love it or regret it, she pushed her long, layered tresses behind her shoulder and tilted her head to the side. He groaned with approval and need. “Oh, gods…Deanna.”
And then he bit her. Not like a timid animal, either, but like some kind of ferocious beast. His canines sank deep into her artery, and his pelvis pressed hard against her mound as he took all that she offered him like a being who was dying of hunger and thirst.
Deanna nearly wept with the purity of it.
She shuddered beneath him as he continued to take long, drugging pulls from her artery, swallowing as much as he could in every gulp. And then, when it seemed as if he had actually taken too much, the earth beneath her spinning in rapid waves of vertigo, he scored his own wrist and pressed it to her mouth. “Take this.”
Deanna drank like she had been born to the custom, her hands seeking the tight, round globes of his ass for purchase as she continued to grind her ever-more-desperate core against him.
He grit his teeth and snarled.
Deanna groaned beneath him as together their bodies rocked back and forth in spiraling passion. At last, they seemed to reach the peak together, hurtling over the edge without a moment’s warning, each one equally caught off guard by the intensity of the orgasms that rocked them.
Deanna clung to his shoulders. She wasn’t altogether certain, but she could have sworn she scored his back with her nails, and he responded by exploding all over again, his powerful member pumping stream after stream of seed deep into her core.
She held on until the climax stopped. Until their bodies ceased trembling, and they both came down from the heavens.
And in that perfect moment of peace—and clarity—she saw him more clearly than she had ever seen him before.
Not only his body, but his soul.
“Nachari,” she whispered, running her hands through his hair. “I see you.”
He chuckled, not quite understanding. In a deep, satiated voice, he murmured, “I see you, too.”
“No,” she argued, trying desperately to convey what she was really thinking. “I see you.”
He drew back then, his glazed, hooded eyes meeting hers. The wizard inside of him somehow heard the importance of her words, even if he didn’t fully comprehend. “Tell me what you see.”
Deanna struggled to find the right words. Grasping his face in her hands, she murmured: “You don’t need the four talismans—you never did.”
His brow creased, and he stared at her fixedly, giving her his full attention.
She sighed in frustration. “The power is in you; it always has been.”
Nachari shook his head. “I’m sorry; I…I don’t understand, Deanna.”
She shook her head and drew back her shoulders. “You are so focused on the trappings that surround you—the Book of Black Magic, the incantations you learned at the University; the spells used for centuries to conjure this or that—that you fail to recognize its source.” She placed the palm of her hand over his heart. “It’s right here…inside of you.” She spoke more rapidly now, anxious to get it all out before she lost her train of thought. “You are more than just a wizard, and you could have killed Noiro with your own Magick—you didn’t need the darkness.”
Nachari ran his hands through his hair and considered her words. “What are you saying?”
Deanna stood even taller. “I’m saying that I felt it…just now. I felt all of you, and this darkness that you fear—this unnamed evil—isn’t in you. What is inside of you is a resolute passion, unbridled power. It’s the reason you survived the Abyss, the reason Noiro was so drawn to you that she betrayed her own kind. And it—not some mysterious darkness—is the reason you can command the raven and become the panther. You are the one who sent my dreams to me…all the way from hell. It has always been inside of you.”
He leaned back on his heels and stared at her in rapt fascination.
“I think that there are scars—that there will always be repercussions from the torture and the close association with black Magick—but it isn’t what you recognize inside of you. And it isn’t what you fear. You fear the totality of what you are, the immeasurable power you haven’t even begun to tap into.” She smiled then, and her heart sped up in an excited rhythm. “The puma is a part of you, and it’s no wonder he came out. You can embrace him anytime you want, and you don’t need any spells to do it.”
Nachari swallo
wed hard. “Where in the world is this insight coming from?”
Deanna shrugged. “I don’t know.” And then she sat forward. “But I know I’m right. I just need you to trust me.”
Nachari felt the truth of Deanna’s words as if from far away. And the moment he latched onto the roots, it was like a blooming seed, tugging at his soul. Blossoming toward freedom.
Not from his life or from her…or their son.
Not even from the horrible memories of all he had endured, but from the illusionary walls of confinement that had held him ever since his parents’ death. The imaginary boundaries he had never been willing to cross, even in his quest to become a great and proficient wizard.
His soul stirred inside him, and his power began to coil…
To build.
Deanna smiled knowingly and nodded her head as if she felt it, too. “Go,” she said, gesturing toward the other side of the wall. “Be all of who are you, and know that your son and I will be right here waiting…always waiting.”
Inexplicable tears clouded his vision as her voice seemed to disappear into a tunnel, slowly fading away from his conscious awareness. I love you, Deanna, he tried to whisper, meaning it with every ounce of his being, but he didn’t know if his words had been heard.
As the puma grew stronger inside of him, more insistent and demanding, he clutched his amulet for reassurance: Shelby—his twin—had been the most pure, untainted soul he had ever known. If he could produce such powerful Magick while connected to Shelby, he could be certain that the source of it was light.
Sleek, nimble legs began to extend gracefully beneath him—almost as if they had always been there—each one resting on a gigantic, level paw. Smooth, silken fur began to take the place of his skin, downy and black as the night, but absent of any taint of evil. And as his jaw extended forward, his mouth filling with sharp, carnivorous teeth, he finally understood what he couldn’t comprehend from such a place of fear and uncertainty: The day he had eaten the demon, he had not absorbed a soul of evil.
The light had consumed the darkness.
He wasn’t tainted.
He was victorious.
Just like his ruling lord, Perseus, the Victorious Hero—the one who had never left him, not even in his darkest hour.
As the panther supplanted the vampire—if only for a time—he threw back his feline head and roared at the heavens, a deafening sound of triumph. And then he turned to measure Deanna, hoping he hadn’t scared her into hiding.
She was still standing on the terrace, naked and ravishing in all of her feminine splendor, with tears streaming down her alluring cheeks. Never had Nachari Silivasi seen anything more beautiful. Never had he felt more pride or gratitude in his heart.
She nodded her head in solidarity. “Yes, Nachari. Yes.”
And didn’t that just say it all.
Yes, she would be there for all the days of his life. Yes, she would accept him exactly as he was, even as he became more. And yes, she was the perfect match of determination, strength, and wisdom to complement his immortal soul.
For this reward, he would spend a dozen lifetimes in hell.
As he bounded to the top of the terrace wall in one smooth leap, he looked back behind him one last time. There was the singular world he had known until then, and the plural world he would discover—with Deanna—going forward. And who wouldn’t gladly make that leap?
Purring deep in his belly, a sound of rumbling satisfaction, the puma bounded over the wall and sprinted into the forest, eager to run and play and embrace the shadows, all the while being guided by the light of the moon and the stars.
Epilogue
Sunday — before sunrise
Damien Alexiares paced the floor in his underground lair, feeling the confinement of the colony more acutely than he had ever felt it before. His stomach literally hurt, and the helplessness that consumed him made him want to fly off in a rage and commit indiscriminate murder. The sun would rise at six thirty-five AM, and with its arrival, he would lose his eldest living son, Saber.
And there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to stop it.
Even if they were willing to go to war, they could not survive the sunlight.
Leaning back against the cold stone wall of his underground lair, he stared at his remaining sons, Dane and Diablo, wondering if the waiting was killing them as much as it was killing him.
Dane bared his fangs and scowled. “Why can’t we go get him—before the sun comes up?” He had already asked the same question at least a dozen times. For a 600-year-old male, he was sometimes a little slow to catch on.
“You and whose army?” Diablo said with a scowl, sarcastically.
“The sons of Jadon aren’t gods!” Dane stormed, his face twisted with rage. “Why doesn’t anyone believe we can take them?”
Damien sighed, determined to try once again to provide his youngest son with an explanation. “Male to male, one-to-one, of course we can. They have no powers we do not also possess—may the strongest soldier win—but as a group? Our colony against their army? It’s a different matter entirely.”
“Why?” Dane demanded.
“Because they have Napolean, and even under the cover of night, he can channel the power of the sun. We can’t fight in the daylight, and we can’t fight in the light of Napolean’s being.”
Dane laughed derisively. “The king has never supported an all-out war between our houses, and he won’t support one now.” He squared his jaw defiantly. “It was different when he came to rescue the princess; she was a valuable commodity, an irreplaceable relic in the house of Jadon, but outside of that one incident, when has Napolean Mondragon ever done anything other than break up the wars and keep both sides from destroying each other, and more important, from killing thousands in the human population? I’m telling you, one expedition will not become a war!”
Diablo pulled his hair in frustration. “It’s not just that, Dane. Who in the house of Jaegar will die just to bring Saber back safely?”
“Lots of males will fight to the death for Saber!” Dane was practically incensed now, the veins in his forehead throbbing, his blood beginning to boil. “Saber has led hunting parties for decades, stood as a loyal and faithful servant to the house of Jaegar—hell, that’s how he got caught, doing the council’s dirty work—don’t tell me there is no one who will fight for our brother!” He sprang from his chair, and Damien intercepted him before he could wrap his arms around his twin brother’s neck.
“Your hatred is misplaced, Dane. I know this is killing you, but attacking Diablo isn’t going to bring Saber back.”
“Bring Saber back?” Dane echoed frenetically. “You act as if he’s already dead.”
Damien stiffened, stilling himself against the pain of Dane’s words. It was just too much to bear. Stepping outside of the room for a fresh breath of air, he seriously considered petitioning the dark lords—or even the Celestial gods—whichever set of deities might be most inclined to save his son, for help.
And wasn’t that just the dilemma of the past eight centuries—as well as the greatest lie he had ever told? The most seditious secret?
Which group of deities was he to petition?
Damien rubbed his palm against the cold, abrasive wall and then scratched a mysterious symbol into the stone with a hardened claw. Placing his palm over the pictogram to hide it, he hung his head in shame, remembering the night of Saber’s birth. Recalling everything he had done.
Wishing like hell that he could just go back in time and have that moment to do over, he shook his head in confusion: Would he, though, do things any differently, that is?
Damien had brutalized the frail human woman for days, before viciously mounting her in order to sire his first set of twins—surely, there was nothing he would have done differently there. The female had been a small, diminutive woman of little consequence: In fact, he could hardly remember if her hair had been brown or blond. He did remember, however, that she had put up quite a struggle on
the sacrificial stone as his twin sons clawed their way out of her fragile body, tearing through her innards, shattering her ribs, and forcing their way into the world. He had been forced to incinerate her corpse almost immediately in response to the horrific smell, and then he had turned his attention directly to his duty: to the requirement of the Blood Curse—sacrificing the firstborn son.
He moaned at the strength of the memory. He had turned his back on the second-born child, the one who would live, for only a second—just one second—while he had placed the firstborn child on the altar.
But that one second had been one too many. Far too long.
Why had he set the baby down?
The decision, as he thought back on it, was incomprehensible. Maybe he had wanted to keep his living child far, far away from the greedy clutches of The Blood, lest the vengeful spirit get confused and take them both. Or maybe he had just been so full of hubris, heady from the power of the rape and kill and the ensuing birth, that he had thought himself and his children invincible.
Damien Alexiares had been wrong.
Dead wrong.
And his remaining son had paid with his life when the human brother of the woman he had violated, a vampire-hunter on top of everything else, had stormed into the cavern and sprayed the child with diamond-tipped bullets, tossing him into the very fire that consumed his sister in his lust for revenge.
Damien had flown into a virulent rage. He had been utterly inconsolable. On one hand, the Blood had come for his firstborn son, taking him in an eternal cycle of vengeance that never ceased, even as, on the other hand, the brother of the worthless piece of trash he had used to incubate his children had put his second son to death.
He had been absolutely devastated—just as he was now.
Rendering himself invisible, Damien Alexiares had shredded that brazen vampire-hunter into a thousand pieces of so much trash, sending him to whatever afterlife his sister now inhabited. Yet even that had not been enough. He had stewed and paced and spat in a red haze of fury, until, in a rare moment of clarity, he had remembered the house of Jadon and the recent Blood Moon: that damnable, taunting sign that appeared in the heavens whenever a son of Jadon was given his destiny…and his own twin sons.