by Aja James
He needed her. But he also wanted her.
While his program struggled with this confusing anomaly, she walked slowly back to him and sat down on the bed again.
Tentatively, she reached out a hand to cup the side of his face.
He flinched slightly at the contact. His body needed contact from hers so badly his skin practically sizzled with awareness.
“I’m not leaving you, Dalair,” she murmured. “I can’t release you yet, I’m sorry. I’ll do everything else for you that I can.”
He considered her, staring deeply into her warm brown eyes.
“Fuck me,” he demanded.
She almost flinched, but resolutely schooled her features.
“No.”
He analyzed her some more.
She obviously wanted to. Her body was primed for it. He could smell her wet, female musk permeating the air around them.
His cock jerked and leaked a stream of pre-cum, responding to the call of her body. He was primed for it as well.
“Need you,” he grunted, flexing his hands again, straining to touch her.
She held his gaze with determination as she said, “I need you too. I want you desperately. But, Dalair, it’s never just fucking between us. Do you understand? Can you understand?”
He didn’t. He couldn’t. It was beyond the scope of his program.
But…something inside him stirred.
“I want to make love to you,” she said in that soft, husky voice, sending goosebumps across his naked skin.
“With you. I want to love you. I do love you. I always have and I always will.”
Blinding pain split through him like an earth-rending fissure at her words, taking away his breath, his sight. His very heart seemed to stop beating.
And the last thought he had before he sank into black oblivion once more was:
I don’t believe you.
*** *** *** ***
Sophia lay naked and spread across Dalair’s body like a second skin. Just like before.
Though the surveillance cameras were deactivated, and they had absolute privacy, she still covered both of them with a light sheet.
It helped to pretend that they were simply lovers lying entwined in bed. That he wasn’t shackled and bound to the padded metal table. That she wasn’t taking him into her body for any other purpose but to consummate the love they felt for each other.
Right.
Sophia might have expected a tad too much from bed linen.
Though he blacked out earlier, Dalair’s body remained hard for her, all but pulsing to join with hers. As she was quickly learning, the separation between his soul and physical shell seemed absolute. One could be fully functional—a thinking, talking, active machine—while the other remained dormant. If it still existed at all.
As if impatient with her delay, his erect cock jerked against his drum-tight stomach beside her hip.
Fuck me, it practically demanded. In the same brutal way Dalair had spoken the words.
His body needed hers to heal. Was it simply their chemistry? Would any female have sufficed?
But even as a cacophony of doubts clanged in Sophia’s mind, she knew instinctively that Dalair needed her. Only her.
His member bobbed against the sheet again, wetting the fabric with his pre-cum, while Dalair himself breathed deeply in a fitful slumber, his brows drawn together in a mask of tension, even pain, his full lips flattened in a grim line.
“What am I supposed to do with you?” Sophia murmured, lying half on top of his body, half on her side, face to face with him, as she turned his head toward hers.
Unsurprisingly, he didn’t reply, though a muscle ticked in his clenched jaw.
Could he hear her when he was like this? Could some deeply buried part of him feel her touch, her heat?
Tentatively, she placed her hand on the side of his face, gently caressing his sharp cheekbone with her thumb.
The furrow between his brows seemed to lessen somewhat at her touch, as if it soothed him.
Emboldened, she moved her fingers over his hard jaw, his soft mouth.
He slowly unclenched, his lips parting slightly, invitingly.
“Do you have any idea what you do to me, Dalair Al Amirah? How you tempt me? And here we are, naked and alone. On a bed of sorts…”
She huffed a sound that was half groan, half laugh.
“And I want to Mate with you in every way until neither of us can walk for a week. A month! But you’re not even you! You let me have your body. You need this to heal, to get stronger. I feel it. But it means nothing beyond that for you, does it?”
In a whisper she added, “While it means everything to me.”
She brushed her thumb across his lips and pressed the tip of it between them, seeking the wet warmth of his mouth.
Unexpectedly, his tongue glanced across her digit so lightly she thought she imagined it, but the tingling in her thumb told her she hadn’t.
Helplessly, she shifted closer so that she could press her own starving lips against his pliant mouth, kissing him softly, desperately, her whole body quivering with need.
He didn’t respond. He simply lay there unconscious, his face turned toward her, the furrow between his brows deepening again.
Her heart pounding, her body heavy with passion, Sophia lay fully on top of him and grasped his head between both hands, kissing every feature on his face with increased urgency and desperation—his brows, his closed eyes, his cheeks, his nose, lips and jaw.
Wake up. She beseeched him silently.
Wake up and kiss me back. Love me back. Please! Wake up, Dalair!
But he didn’t. He remained unconscious beneath her even as his body tightened, his muscles bunching, hardening, as she kissed her way down his neck, his collarbone and chest.
His breathing deepened, became rougher, more agitated, but that was the only sign that he felt what she did to him.
That, and his body’s instinctive response. His veins raising beneath his skin to vie for her attention. Penetration. His musk growing stronger, permeating the air around them, until she wanted to breathe nothing but him. His flesh heating as his blood flowed hot within him, begging her to drink it.
Sophia couldn’t help herself, couldn’t stop even if she wanted to, from touching him with impassioned longing. Possessive. Obsessive. The need to stake him as hers made her Pure female fangs punch through her gums without warning.
Along with undeniable, uncontrollable primal need, something dark and violent brewed within her, making her savage.
Despite her words earlier, in this moment, she was all fury, greed and selfishness. She wanted to take everything he offered, fuck him hard and raw. Devour his sweet, hot blood, and wring the life force from him until he was bone-dry.
Yes! His body would fuel her powers. She would become stronger than ever. She could raze the world and everyone in it, and no one would be able to stop her!
What was the point of living if he couldn’t love her back? She would take everything that was left of him and send a farewell fuck-you to the rest of the universe. She could—
Unbidden, the earlier conversation she’d had with Eveline, Rain and Benji during supper buzzed like annoying insects in her mind, distracting enough to make her pause.
“Benjamin, my dear, you are quite ingenious to think of the ancient Egyptians,” Eveline thought out loud as they sat around a long table to dine in a separate part of the enclosure.
“Since Rain told me about the Paladin’s condition, I’ve been researching in the Ecliptic Scrolls, as well as human histories that are available in the Dark Ones’ archives. As far as human histories go, the earliest conception of the soul seems to originate in the ancient Near East—Egypt, Persia, parts of China, where Buddhism blossomed.”
Sophia knew this very well. When she was Kira, she’d been immersed in the studies of body and soul as part of the healing arts that were typically forbidden to women.
“However,” Eveline continued, �
��if I trace back in the Dark Ones’ mythologies, and as all of us Immortals know, souls have always existed. It is the soul that could live forever, or have multiple incarnations, while the body is mostly temporary. Not all souls, but those with the Goddesses’ spark. It is the soul that dictates the mind and heart; the soul is the essence of who we are.”
Rain nodded. “This is why, in Eastern healing arts, it’s just as important to heal the soul as it is to heal the body. Without the body, the soul has no substance; it is not ‘alive.’ And the same is true of the body. Without the soul, the body is merely a shell.”
“My theory, without knowing the specifics of how Medusa went about it,” Eveline said, “is that she and her scientists figured out a way to separate or segregate the various parts of the soul from the body. And that is how they are turning the soldiers.”
“If you think about it, the way vampires used to turn others is the same concept. A vampire injects a part of their soul into the subject’s body. Some humans die from the process because their own souls depart and the fragment of the vampire’s soul isn’t enough to sustain them. Others survive if their own soul is very strong.”
Sophia seemed to recall that the Dark Ones’ Hunter was one such example, according to the intelligence Aella had gathered and Jade eventually confirmed, once she joined their ranks at the Shield.
“While the vampire lives, they would have influence over the subject they turned through the fragment of their soul in the subject’s body,” Eveline continued. “But of course, there’s a limit to how many turnings they can do, given that the fragmentation of their own soul would lead eventually to madness and death.”
“Not just Dark Ones,” Rain commented thoughtfully. “Look at Animal Spirits. In the context of souls, those ‘spirits’ possess humanoid shells as well as animal ones. And in Chinese, Japanese and Korean mythologies, there is a creature known as the Nine-tailed Fox, a spirit that wears human shells.”
Eveline dipped her head in acknowledgement. “Animal Spirits have been around almost as long as the earliest gods. My point is that—if we want to bring the Paladin back to himself, it is the soul we must heal. The body is par of the course. That’s the easy part.”
“I disagree,” Rain interjected in her soft but firm way. “I think the body is also key to bringing the warrior back. Medusa and Wan’er’s experiments focused on the body from what I can tell. I do not have evidence of what else she might have done in the turnings, but the physical evidence of her manipulations can be found in Dalair’s blood. Somehow, she used the body to suppress the soul. Or fracture it and compartmentalize the pieces.”
“By that logic,” Eveline murmured as she finished her bowl of stew, “there may be a way to heal the soul through the body.”
“And vice versa,” Rain concurred.
Sophia remained silent as she absorbed the discussion, her mind awhirl with what all of this could mean.
And then Benji said, already at work on his second cinnamon roll, “I think Sophie should just love him lots. The Book of the Dead from ancient Egypt basically says you’re supposed to talk a lot, cuz magic comes from words. So just tell him you love him all the time, Sophie, like a spell.”
He eyed her sideways, stuffing almost half of a roll into his mouth.
“You do love him, don’t you?” he mumbled with his mouth full.
“Yes,” she managed to reply faintly, rather astonished by his leaps of logic.
He swallowed after chewing too few times for healthy digestion and said, “And there’s the other thing that book talks about to help the healing process.”
His expressive face scrunched in a grimace that only little boys can make.
“What?” All three women asked as one, helplessly intrigued by Benji’s extrapolations.
“Saliva.”
He grimaced again.
“There are a bunch of spells in the book that talks about healing through saliva. So I guess you can lick him a lot too. Eeeww.”
Despite herself, Sophia smiled as she remembered Benji’s remarks, which derailed the entire conversation while also somehow enlightening all participants. Though none of them knew quite what to do with what he said.
They’d dispersed after that. Eveline heading directly to the Pure Ones’ library to pore over their store of ancient texts, Rain returning to her apartment; and Benji to the one he shared with Inanna and Gabriel.
Now that Sophia recalled Benji’s words, she couldn’t stop thinking about them. She thought she might even understand what he was trying to tell them.
Here she was, wallowing in despair, guilt, and needy, selfish lust, and one thought of the little boy’s nuggets of wisdom, her own spirit lifted with hope.
It was true, she recalled from her own learnings as Kira, that ancient Egyptians believed in the healing power of bodily fluids, not just saliva. Osiris’ seed, after all, was equated to the very essence of life, not unlike the way both Pure and Dark females took Nourishment from their Mates. The venom in Dark Ones’ saliva could change the chemistry of their subjects once injected into their bloodstream, either to heal or to hurt.
Just love him lots…
Was it really so simple? Could verbal and physical demonstrations of how she felt help heal Dalair? Heal his soul, as well as his body?
She had nothing to lose, Sophia thought.
All this time she’d been berating herself for taking advantage of him, for being selfish and greedy… What if this was the way to bring him back?
She braced herself on her elbows as she looked down into his slumbering, unconscious face.
“Dalair, can you hear me?” she whispered.
Unable to help herself, she leaned down to kiss his mouth, his chin, the pulse throbbing in his long, corded neck right beneath his jawline.
“I love you so much. I want you so much. It physically hurts, the way I need you. Do you feel it too?”
She lowered her head once more to nuzzle his throat, scraping the tips of her fangs along his jugular, watching the thick vein plump beneath his skin. So swollen. So eager for her penetration.
But she resisted.
Not yet.
“Your body knows,” she continued to whisper quietly, as if he absorbed her every word.
“It wants me too. Always. No matter my form. How do you explain that, Dalair? It’s not just physical chemistry, is it? Somewhere inside of you, your soul is still alive. It must be. For it recognizes mine.”
Because she was watching his face carefully, she saw the flicker of…something…that passed over him, fluttering his obscenely thick eyelashes like a quiet breeze across the surface of a still lake.
“If it’s love your soul needs, I will give you all of my love. I have an infinite store, you see. The more I love you, the stronger it grows. It fills me with such desperate sadness and aching joy. If only you would love me back…”
With a stuttering breath, she lifted her hips and positioned her nether lips unerringly over the swollen head of his sex. And with a sigh, she ground down upon him, taking him inch by excruciatingly thick, hard, satiny inch, into her body, until he was seated within her to the hilt, clasped tightly, covetously by her clenching channel.
“But I don’t need you to love me back, Dalair,” she rasped against his throat, licking his jugular vein, and sucking on his tantalizing skin hard enough to leave a bruise. Even with his Pure healing powers, her mark would take hours to fade.
And she wasn’t done. He’d bear her possession of him all over his body, in his blood, before the morning light. She would bear the same from him.
“My love is endless and unconditional. No matter what you do, or how the world changes, I will never stop loving you, never stop wanting you. There will never be anyone else for me.”
And then she began to move upon him, riding his body, wringing his cock.
Hours and hours, she took from him, making him drench her with his seed, devouring him and storing him inside. She took as much as she gave, whis
pering soft words in his ear, worshipping his body with hers.
At last she broke his skin with her sharp female fangs, sinking the small daggers into the thickest vein in his neck, and gorged on his heady, intoxicating, poisoned blood.
It didn’t matter. This was Dalair.
Poisoned, wrecked, turned to stone—she loved him still.
Even the parts that were destined to destroy her.
Chapter Five
In and out of dreams, Sophia slid.
Long-buried memories from past incarnations drifted over her like changing winds, sometimes cold, sometimes balmy, stirring up a myriad of emotions and whispering thoughts.
She chased after those memories like a child chasing dandelion puffs. Each tiny wisp carrying a kernel of truth. But until she collected all of them, she wouldn’t know the whole story.
Somewhere in her subconscious she understood the importance and urgency of knowing the full picture. If she had a chance of saving Dalair, she must first uncover all of her own secrets to comprehend how he fit into her Destiny.
He did fit.
He must fit.
Fate couldn’t be so cruel as to willfully keep him from her. And if it was, then Sophia would shape Destiny to her own will.
Nothing and no one would keep her from the male she loved…
Third millennium BC. Capital City of Akkad. Sometime before the Great War.
“Titi, where are you hiding? It’s supper time.”
The child tried to smother bubbling giggles with her chubby hand, smudged with dirt. She curled her body into a ball and made herself as small as possible behind the bushes in the back of the hut, listening for Papa’s footsteps as he came in search of her.
It was a game they often played, hide and seek. Titi loved Papa more than anyone else in the world. More than Mama, even though she felt kind of bad admitting it.
But it was the simple truth. Papa was the most beautiful, wonderful, bestest man. Titi loved to make him smile. He was so warm, so bright, like the sun.