Was that why she had turned down his offer of marriage?
Whatever the reason, it was plain to him now that he had not made her feel as if he valued her. Pain froze the muscles in his chest, making it difficult for his lungs to expand and contract. Ruby had deserved better from him.
Raven deserved better from him now.
“You saved my life in the demon world and again tonight,” he said, choosing his words with great care. “Am I indebted to you for that? Does that make me your whore? Is that what you think?”
She was too taken aback by the unexpected twist in argument to reply.
Weary, he gentled his tone. “You either owe me nothing or I owe you in equal measure. Whichever it is, in the future I suggest we negotiate the terms in advance of lovemaking because right now I’m too tired to haggle over them with you.”
An owl settled into the sagging branches of a nearby juniper.
“You’re angry,” Raven said.
Blade stretched out on the rough bed and jerked the blankets over him. “Not with you.” He was angry about circumstances that he did not wish to explain.
She crawled in beside him. When she would have put distance between them Blade slung an arm over her shoulders, drawing her close so that her back was snug against his stomach. She was soft and warm, and if he had not known how tired she, too, must be, and that she had been ill, he might have given more thought to negotiating those terms now.
Gradually, the tension in her body seeped away.
“Blade?” she whispered, her voice drowsy.
He longed to kiss the side of her neck as he had done each night previous when she had been unaware of his presence. “Yes?”
She shifted beneath the weight of his arm so that she faced him. One of her knees slid between his thighs to steady herself, and he dragged in a breath at the intimacy of the action.
“Why have you been so kind to me?” she asked.
His attention was diverted more by her unintended provocativeness than her words. “I’m hardly kind.”
“You are. You say I don’t owe you anything. If not, why are you helping me?”
“I was the cause of the snakebite and hallucinations.”
“Before that.” She draped her arm over his waist. Her fingertips rested between the blades of his shoulders, her elbow on his hip. “You followed me from town. You said I would have been making a mistake by killing my stepfather, and you stopped me. Why did you do that?”
There were so many reasons. The simplest one was also the most complicated. “Because you wanted to live.”
“Most people do.”
She was not going to let it go. He stared, unseeing, into the black night. He did not often explain himself. “Once, a long time ago, strangers saved my life. I wasn’t used to kindness. I suppose I recognized that you weren’t used to it, either, and I didn’t believe there was any harm in helping you.”
“And now?”
“Now I do.”
“I see.”
He could tell by the pain he heard in her voice that his bluntness had hurt her. He had not meant for it to do so. Gripping her knee between his thighs so that she could not turn away from him, he pressed his lips to her forehead. “While I believe you don’t purposely intend to bring danger to others, through no fault of your own you have…abilities…that are beyond those of the people around you. I know very well what can happen when circumstances force a person to use whatever means are at their disposal in order to survive. I’d be the last one to blame you for it, and I’d also be the only one who wouldn’t.” He ran a thumb across her cheek and felt her slight quiver of response. “The night I first saw you, when Justice denounced you in front of the town, did anyone step forward to help you? Even knowing or suspecting what he had most likely done to you?” She remained very still, absorbing his words. “I watched you hesitate. You hadn’t wanted to free yourself. You hoped someone would save you,” he added. “Am I right?”
He had to bend his head forward to hear her whispered reply.
“Yes.”
“Yet you were forced to reveal yourself to them because no one came to your aid.”
“No,” Raven said. “I didn’t reveal any more of myself than I had to, and what I did that night could be rationalized by them. Perhaps the links in the cuffs were weak or not properly set. Fear might have given me extra strength. I was also used to working with metals. Perhaps I knew some special trick.” She paused. He felt the deep breath she drew in, then again as she exhaled against his skin. “What I didn’t want to reveal was that I wouldn’t have burned in that fire. That is what Justice knew and wanted everyone to see.”
Blade pondered the ramifications of that. The Godseeker wanted Raven alive. He also wanted to prove that spawn truly existed. But he could not have both by exposing her to the Godseekers, could he? They would never allow her to live.
There had to be more to this. Blade did not know what it might be and was at a loss as to how to extricate her from her current position.
She had enormous faith in her friend Creed’s ability to do so, however. She seemed to have no doubts at all that he would be willing to protect her. Roam’s message reinforced her conviction. Blade wished he could share in her confidence, but he had learned long ago that few people deserved such a high level of trust.
“Why were you there?” she asked him, interrupting his thoughts. “In Goldrush, that night?”
They were again approaching murky areas he had no wish to explore. “I needed supplies,” he hedged. “And a bath.”
“Why?”
“Because I’d spent several months crossing the desert, and I didn’t smell very good.”
She continued to press him. “I mean, why were you crossing the desert in the first place?”
“I had nothing better to do, so I thought I might look for the goddesses’ boundary and see if it can be crossed. I’ve always been curious about what’s on the other side, and if anything of the Old World remains.”
“That’s not the real reason you came here,” she said.
She was intuitive and knew too many things about him already. He discovered it did not bother him as much as it might if she were anyone else.
“What do you think the reason is?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
He knew she was frowning. By the subtle tightening of her body against his, he also knew she had just lied to him.
“I’ll let us both know if I find out, then,” he said. “Go to sleep.” He tucked the blanket more securely over them both.
If her father came for her again tonight, he would not find her alone.
Chapter Nine
Raven lay with her cheek pillowed on Blade’s arm, the rise and fall of his chest steady against her upper back. Despite his efforts to make her comfortable and her overwhelming fatigue, she could not find sleep. He had said she owed him nothing, and she believed he’d meant it, but the cost to him for helping her was too large to ignore.
She knew he searched for peace, and that was something a man like Blade would never find by helping a woman who was half demon.
Black mountain peaks cloaked in midnight leered over her. Every breath of beating wings or rustle of leaves and grass left her heart racing. She shifted, not wanting to wake Blade, but she had not yet overcome her fear of the dark and all that it harbored. In the demon world she had no choice but to repress it. Here, she slid her fingers into his hand, burying her face into the crook of the arm nestled beneath her. With his body wrapped protectively around hers, she permitted herself to acknowledge the true source of her fear.
The blackness of night was isolating. And she did not want to be alone in it for the rest of her life.
Blade’s hand tightened over hers. His other fingers touched the curve of her cheek, tucking a curl behind her ear. He did not sleep either, then.
He freed his arm, braced himself on one palm, and pushed up to examine her. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
Sh
e rolled to her back and gazed up at the harsh, shadowy outline of his face, and wondered what had led him to become an assassin. Despite his facade, the role did not suit him. He was a caregiver by nature, someone who looked after others. Not much wonder he had run from such a life. The real question was why had he come back here, especially if it was inner peace he sought?
“What was your childhood like?” she asked.
She felt him retract the memories that surfaced at her question, to bury them even deeper than before so she could not explore them. He was very good at hiding what he did not want her to know.
“It was difficult,” he said. “But no more so than yours.”
She suspected that was not true, although hers had been difficult enough.
The fingers that explored the curve of her cheek dipped to her neckline, then wandered along her collarbone. A sharp, delicious thrill shot through her midsection.
He was trying to distract her from her questions. That made their answers all the more significant. She wanted to know him, to understand him better. She had only the short time until they reached Creed to do so. “Do you remember your mother? Your father?”
His fingers stopped their casual exploration. He did not want to answer, but she knew he would.
“No,” he said. “I don’t remember them at all. I was raised by an uncle.”
“What was your uncle like?”
“He was a Godseeker. A favorite. A lot like your stepfather.”
“You hated him,” Raven said. She could feel it in him, which told her the extent of the emotion he carried.
“Very much,” he admitted. His hand had curled into a tight fist where it rested near the base of her throat. She doubted he knew he had clenched it. “I eventually grew too big for the beatings, and when I was fourteen, I killed him. Unfortunately, he was a successful mine owner. After his death, the mines failed, jobs were lost, and I was blamed. So I left.”
He sounded so matter-of-fact when he spoke that Raven decided it was the memory of those beatings she sensed he was having difficulty dealing with. His treatment by people who should have helped an abused child and the fact that he had murdered his uncle did not seem to trouble him as much. She understood.
“That was when the assassin trainers recruited you?” she asked.
“Not exactly. I trained on my own at first, taking work a Godseeker assassin wouldn’t touch.”
She drew her fingertips over the back of his fist. Fractured memories came through to her now, whispers of things of which he didn’t speak but chose to share with her now. Her heart ached for him. “You were a boy. Alone at fourteen.”
“I knew right from wrong. I wanted to live.”
“If you only wanted to live, why did you leave the security of the temple after the trainers recruited you? You could have had a good life with them.”
“I never formally left them,” he said. “I went off to fight demons and never returned.”
“That was brave of you.”
“No. It was arrogant and ungrateful of me.”
He turned his face to her in the darkness, and she knew whatever had happened to him during that period of time was the root of the fear he had found so difficult to suppress in the demon world. One name drifted to the surface of his thoughts.
Ruby.
Raven caught an image of a lovely, red-haired woman, somewhat older than Blade, and a little rough, perhaps, in demeanor. She doubted if the name and image came to her by accident. Blade had his thoughts and emotions under tight control.
This was meant as another distraction.
She decided to allow it. “Who is Ruby?”
“The woman who helped save my life.”
Raven did not know him well enough to be jealous, although she did feel a twinge of an unpleasant, similar emotion. She wondered if Ruby was still important to him. If so, it made what had happened between them in the demon world more awkward, not less, and she felt guilty for it. “Tell me about her.”
“There is little to tell. We were friends. In the end, friendship wasn’t enough for either one of us, and we saw no hope for anything more than that in what we felt for each other.”
So Blade had left Ruby behind and started across the desert toward his boyhood home in search of…
Peace, just as she had thought.
To Raven, that did not seem as if he had wanted only friendship from Ruby. The unpleasant sensation that was not jealousy spread. She did not want to know any more about this other woman. Not when Raven was the one lying in his arms.
“If she helped save your life, I assume the demon fighting did not go well,” she said.
“No,” he admitted. “It didn’t. As I said, I was arrogant.”
Until three months past, demons had enforced isolation upon the lands of the Godseekers, the place where goddesses had once deigned to walk. It had made the favorites, like Justice, overconfident and secure in their positions. They believed demons would not touch them, especially on goddess land. Many who tried to pass through demon territory had been proven wrong. While the goddess amulets they wore warned of a demon’s presence or approach, it did not give them protection.
Blade was too young to have been a favorite, though. To her his attempt to cross demon territory spoke more of desperation than arrogance, and he had suffered for it.
And Raven knew that while he did not blame her for being half demon, or even seem to hold it against her, he would never forget it. It tangled at the edge of his consciousness with the other memories she knew haunted him. He did not hide any of it from her or try to obstruct the fact that he wanted her in spite of it.
Heat shot through her belly and thighs, and all she could feel was his skin against hers. She wanted him, too.
His hand unclenched. Turning her cheek slightly, she pressed a kiss to his palm.
He froze, his other palm splayed above her breast, and she arched her back so that her shirt gaped open, exposing her skin to the faint moonlight.
He looked at her for a long time. Then, he gathered the edges of the fabric closed and rolled away from her.
She moved with him so that her upper body draped across his chest, her mouth hovering close to his.
“You don’t need to do this,” he said.
“Is it so difficult for you to believe I might want you?” she whispered.
She felt him assessing her words in the darkness. “Considering you just told me you aren’t a whore, then yes.”
“You told me I owe you nothing,” she said. “Therefore, this is something I give freely because it’s something I want, too.” She hesitated, suddenly uncertain, wondering if she had misread him. “Unless this is something you don’t?”
“I want it. I want you.” One hand cupped her chin, the other her hip.
Tendrils of excitement crept through her limbs in response to his touch. She lowered her head, taking his mouth with hers in a hesitant kiss. His fingers tightened, holding her to him as he deepened the exchange. He exerted slight pressure, parting her lips with his, and then his tongue found hers, stroking and caressing until she was shaking with need.
The first time she had been the aggressor. But only because he had permitted it, she now realized. Any tenderness she had sensed in him earlier was gone, replaced by a single-minded desire on his part to possess. Her inner demon stirred with anticipation.
Blade eased her shirt over her head and tossed it aside, its raw-cotton whiteness stark against the blanket of night. Gooseflesh pebbled her arms as the cool air brushed her naked skin, but Blade shifted beneath her, radiating such heat that she instantly warmed. As he trailed his lips from her jaw to the curve of her breast, she did not know what to do for him. Lust was hardly foreign to her, but acting on it was still new.
“Touch me,” he said, his breath chasing chills where his mouth had dampened one taut nipple.
She pressed her hands to his waist, slipping them beneath his clothes. His skin rippled over hard layers of muscle, and he murmured
words of quiet encouragement that increased her boldness.
His palms browsed her ribs, his fingers unlacing the string at the waist of her trousers before peeling them from her hips. Eagerness quickened her breath, and she helped him remove his clothing. Soon they were tangled in bare flesh and earthy heat. The length of his arousal against her inner thigh ignited a blazing fire of anticipation in her abdomen.
The first time they had made love, she had sought to confirm to both him and herself that she was no different from any other woman, with the same need for the intimate touch of a man she desired. That it had nothing to do with her demon allure.
Now, she thought blindly of pleasure.
She arched her back when his fingers dipped in her slick heat to stroke her, enjoying his touch. When his mouth caressed the sensitive curve of her neck, she drew a sharp breath as her demon clawed at her in a desperate need to respond.
A niggle of fear nudged at her consciousness. She felt her body tense. She did not want her demon unleashed. Not right now.
Blade did not pull away from her or stop the soft caress of his fingers, although he misunderstood her hesitation. “It won’t hurt this time.” He kissed her with an arrogant assurance that made her smile against his mouth. “Touch me,” he said again. He guided her hand to his erection, thick and hard between them, and she curled her fingers around him. “Like this.” He helped her establish a rhythm, his eyes closing with pleasure.
The feel of him in her hand and the way he moved beneath her touch gave her a soothing sense of power. Having that measure of control took away much of her fear that her demon might somehow escape her.
She slid her hand lower, to the base of him, and cupped the tender rounds of flesh. The backs of her fingers brushed against twisted ridges of skin marring the surface of his upper leg, and she frowned. Thick ropes of scar tissue extended as far as her probing fingertips could reach.
“They’re very old,” he said, dismissing the scars, although she could feel an anxiety building in him over what her reaction to them would be. “They’re nothing.”
Black Widow Demon (Demon Outlaws) Page 12