Primal
Page 20
Sajia struggled, pushing against Addai’s now-bare chest and trying desperately to get her hands free so she could grasp her knives.
His lips against her hair, he held her easily, as if her fight to get free barely registered and required little of his strength to subdue. “You have nothing to fear from me.”
“Then let me go,” she said, the words a repeat of what she’d told him in the occult shop.
His laugh was dark, possessive. “Never. But I will free you to look at your new home.”
She chilled as soft feathers fell away and he stepped back, leaving her standing in cool air and elegant splendor, in a room housing treasures older than any she’d seen in the Tucci estate.
Floor-to-ceiling windows defied the elements, daring them to rail against a structure that shouldn’t exist. Allowing for a view that drew her forward with its majesty, its harsh testament to the power of nature, snow-covered mountains and the near desert at their feet.
The sight made her breath catch, not just at the beauty but at how far they must be from San Francisco. “Where are we?”
“In the Sierras.”
Panic seized her. It was a fist around her heart that squeezed mercilessly, spearing pain through her chest and making her breathing erratic. “Take me back.”
“No.”
He prowled forward, a sensual menace reflected in the windows. She pulled her knives then, whirling to meet him.
“Why?” she asked, the question meant to encompass the entirety of his actions.
“Because you belong to me.”
It was said with complete belief. And though it galled her to consider herself property that could be passed on to another, she denied his claim. “The Master didn’t give me to you. He wouldn’t as long as Corinne is missing.”
Addai’s smile held the promise of death. “Think of any other male as your master and I will slay him.”
He lifted his hand and it was as if a tear appeared in reality, a sheath of air and light from which he drew a sword.
Cold menace radiated from both man and blade. In reaction her fists tightened around the hilts of her knives as she prepared to duck and lunge.
His smile became a snarl. “Do not fear that I will use my sword on you, Sajia. I would die before I let any harm come to you.”
His voice rang with truth, stunning her. Confusing her even as an insidious warmth spiraled through her. Desire reawakened. Awe that he could want her, care about her to such an extreme.
With the flick of his wrist the sword disappeared. He stepped forward, uncaring and unafraid of the blades she held. She stepped back, unwilling and unable to attack until he answered her.
His wings spread out behind him, bars of a feather-soft cage. His hands reached, but rather than try to disarm her, they settled against the glass behind her, trapping her at the expense of leaving himself vulnerable.
A dare? No. The arrogant curve of his lips spoke of utter confidence.
For a split second she was tempted to draw blood as she had in the occult shop. “Why me?” Sajia repeated.
Addai wanted to dismiss the question as easily as he’d dismissed the fate of the Tucci scion. Desire rode him and restraint threatened to fall away now that he had Sajia alone.
His earlier pragmatism and willingness to linger in Oakland were gone, washed away by hot lust and insatiable craving. Thousands of years of waiting had him nearly shaking with the need to have her lying beneath him, her bare skin and curves pressed to him, her legs open and her body welcoming his.
His gaze flicked to the scorpion-shaped pendant and he decided to answer the question, to tell her the truth, though not all of it. There would be time to tell her she wasn’t human. To unravel the angelic spell glowing in ice blue script on her flesh, to free her from it so she would be fully Djinn.
Once she’d been mārdazmā, able to change into another shape, though without a non-corporeal form. The need to bind her to a human form suggested that reborn she could shapeshift, though she might well have a higher caste’s ability to become little more than unseen particles.
Until he had her heart, her loyalty, her love, he couldn’t risk her knowing she had the ability to leave him, perhaps escape his reach altogether by discovering how to cross from this world to the Djinn kingdom deep in the ghostlands.
He dropped his hand from the window to cup her cheek, marveling at the heat of her skin, the features so perfectly re-created, so well loved and so often dreamed of. He stroked his thumb over soft, trembling lips. “I would die before I let any harm come to you because once you were my lover, my wife. I failed you in that life, and because of it you were killed, slain by my kind. I won’t fail you in this life, Sajia.”
Denial screamed through Sajia. What he claimed was impossible.
Yet on the heels of that came doubt. Before mankind had nearly destroyed the world, vampires and Weres were a thing of fiction and dark fantasy, and the ghostlands called Purgatory or Sheol, or something else depending on culture and belief. From the moment she’d first encountered Addai his name had resonated through her in a way that made no sense, as if some part of her recognized him and was determined to have him, regardless of the urgent need to find Corinne.
Corinne’s name was like a knife paring away everything unimportant. The past had no relevance, not now or in the immediate future.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said, ill-conceived words she regretted the instant she saw Addai’s features tighten into a ruthless expression.
Hurriedly she tried to undo the damage and steer him toward reason. “I have no memories of our life together. Without them I’m not the same woman you knew.”
He crowded closer, wings pulling in and forward so they touched her arms in an erotic, feathery caress, a cocoon of sensual heat. His thumb brushed over her bottom lip again, sending a fresh wave of tingling desire downward through her body.
“We will make new memories, Sajia.”
Heat pooled in her belly and breasts. She couldn’t deny the desire she felt, doubted she could resist the temptation he posed, the allure of becoming his lover. But neither could she turn her back on her responsibilities, knowing what the cost of it would be.
“Then let the new memories begin with our finding Corinne.”
“No. One of the others will see to the task.”
His face lowered and she turned her head, avoiding the touch of his lips to hers. “Any help you’re willing to give or can arrange is appreciated, but I need to search as well. The Mas—”
Addai’s teeth closed on her earlobe in warning, a sharp bite that aroused rather than frightened, though the words following it were whispered menace. “I won’t issue another warning. Think of yourself as belonging to anyone else and you sign their death warrant. Your days of being around vampires are over. The marks on your arm will soon be gone and nothing will remain of your time with them.”
“No,” she said, fear making her pulse beat wildly in her throat, freeing her from the sexual thrall his presence evoked. “No. Even if Corinne is found by someone else, I took an oath. If I fail in my duties, then the punishment is mine alone. But if I betray the Tuccis or run away, then my family will pay for my transgressions.”
“I will see that your family is taken to another city and given everything they need to survive in it.”
“They have ties in San Francisco, lives there. Obligations to the vampires that aren’t easily set aside. And even if they did leave, can you guarantee their safety if I break my oath?”
She knew he couldn’t. Vampires were capable of pursuing vengeance over centuries. Some said their reach extended into the afterlife itself.
“As much as any human life can be safeguarded,” Addai said. “A blink of an eye in the span of eternity and millions of them are born, grow old, and pass from this world. Those you call family will die, Sajia, regardless of where they live. I won’t allow any chance of death taking you, not again. You are mine. You will remain here, out of danger.”
Cold truth and implacable will, his voice held no compassion, nothing other than resolve delivering a fate she couldn’t accept. A part of her wept even as she used the knives still in her hands, stabbed him in desperate reaction.
He danced backward rather than subduing and disarming her. Eyes glittered as blood streamed downward over perfect flesh. “If you remembered me, Sajia, then you would know this will only serve as foreplay.”
She crouched and moved sideways, away from the window, adrenaline spiking through her. Rational thought dominating in spite of the panic and fear.
Her only hope lay in changing his mind, not in defeating him physically. Only by demonstrating her determination and taking advantage of his earlier confession could she achieve it.
I would die before I let any harm come to you.
He came after her, arms held loosely at his sides and expression arrogant. Telling her without words that he didn’t need to call the sword he’d shown her earlier in order to defeat her.
“Surrender now, Sajia, and the penalty will be minimal. An early lesson in submission rather than the freedom to explore your new home I thought to allow while we became reacquainted.”
She didn’t respond to the taunt, didn’t back down when he lunged. She swung and missed, but the force of it conveyed the seriousness of her intent.
He laughed then feinted, playing with her, maneuvering her around the room. The wounds she’d inflicted with her knives had already healed, leaving only smears of blood over smooth skin.
She used the time to study her surroundings, looking for weapons and ways to escape.
Foreplay, he’d said, and she could see the truth of it. The front of his pants was tented by his hardened cock. His voice held no less evidence of arousal as he regaled her with what her lesson in submission would entail.
Kneeling naked and head bowed.
Remaining motionless and waiting for his touches as he spread them out, teaching her to crave them.
Hurrying to the bed when he finally ordered it and eagerly positioning herself so he could bind her wrists and ankles to the posts in symbolic acknowledgment of her total surrender.
Sajia found it too easy to imagine. He was sculpted perfection, a dark angel of carnal sin.
She couldn’t tell whether her traitorous heart beat more rapidly in anticipation of it or in fear of not being able to convince him of the need to return to Oakland.
He was in no hurry to catch her. If anything, he seemed to delight in the flex of his muscles, the folding and unfolding of his wings until she was driven to say, “You remind me of a male peacock.”
“An apt though perhaps unflattering description, for you are definitely the mate I intend to impress with my prowess. Put down your puny knives and after a suitable length of punishment I’ll let you handle something far more interesting.”
It was impossible not to laugh. She had no personal fear of him. How could she when desire coursed through her and she knew he would never hurt her?
But that didn’t diminish the tightness in her chest when her thoughts went to the fate of her family and her need to find Corinne. It didn’t lessen her resolve to return to Oakland.
Arrogant confidence made Addai careless. On their fourth circling pass around the living room, Sajia drifted backward, toward a door leading to a railless balcony she imagined served as a landing place when Addai chose to use his wings to fly rather than preen. As he’d stalked her, she’d been able to catch glimpses of what lay beneath and on either side of it, had discovered the house wasn’t perched on a sheer cliff, though the terrain below the balcony was steep and covered in rock and snow.
She’d mentally rehearsed her movements like a well-choreographed fight. There would be only one chance at victory.
A feint, as if she intended to make a running attack, had Addai backing up, hands beckoning, a come-and-get-me expression in place. If the stakes hadn’t been so high, she might well have answered him, determined to wipe the smug confidence from his face. Instead, she reached around her, opening the door and escaping the room.
The cold took her breath. It bit into her skin, battering against her in icy blasts until the urgency of her situation allowed her to block it out.
She moved to the balcony’s edge. Positioning herself close enough to jump and stand a chance of managing a handhold instead of hurtling downward in a bone-breaking rush that would only be interrupted if Addai took flight.
Addai followed, the amusement gone from his face and replaced by a terrible beauty. Enough, he said, lips that could call for adoration or herald damnation remaining closed as he spoke into her mind, demanded, Come to me.
Every cell in her body responded, trying to force her forward. His will was a cold lash of a whip across her soul, a thing of finely honed edges, carving away her own.
Come to me, he repeated, exerting more of his power.
She fought summons with summons, calling up the faces of her family members and seeing them being drained of blood, their bodies hung from the walls of the Tucci estate as a reminder to every human in San Francisco of the price to be paid for betraying an oath given to vampires. Calling up the image of Corinne and knowing she’d failed her.
The pendant Sajia wore grew hot, as if unseen, the parents who’d died in a fire aided her. Her skin burned where the scorpion lay against it, and the pain helped achieve what horrific imaginings alone couldn’t; it drove the sound of Addai’s voice from her mind.
He moved forward then, his expression ruthless, very nearly cruel. “Enough, Sajia. You won’t escape. Even if you are so foolish as to jump, I’ll merely retrieve you. What injuries you sustain can be easily healed. And tied to my bed you will soon forget why you ever wanted to leave.”
“If forgetting my family and my charge and my oath were that easy, I would be in your arms now.”
She took a small step backward, so she stood like a swimmer at the end of a diving board, with only the balls of her feet and toes keeping her on solid ground. “You might stop me this time, but what about the next? And the one after that? I would rather die attempting to get back to Oakland than live knowing I lay with you, finding pleasure while my family experienced only fear and suffering and death. Will you keep me a prisoner for all eternity, or end up killing me yourself when I grow to loathe you as much as I will myself?”
Her words encased Addai in ice. How well he knew the power hate and rage could wield. Standing among carnage and seeing her lifeless body had once filled him with those emotions. And what he’d done in the wake of her death made a vampire’s retribution seem merciful in comparison.
His gaze went to the pendant and he cursed it, guessing that it and it alone had thwarted his attempts to use his mind and his voice to bend her to his will. She was human in form, human in belief, and with that first breath forced into clay at the dawn of their creation, they’d inhaled a susceptibility to angelic influence.
Addai’s soul and body, heart and mind all screamed in protest at the thought of giving in to her demands. He would slaughter every Tucci, the scion Corinne included, if it meant Sajia would come to his bed willingly and accept the sheltered life he intended for her.
A primal scream welled up inside him, male frustration and the anguish of conflicting needs—to keep her safe from danger, yet find the scion and bargain with the Tuccis for Sajia’s release from her oath so they’d never again return to this argument.
The muscles of his arms stood out as he kept himself from lifting them. Were he not standing on the balcony of the home he’d had built for her, he would have raised a hand to the sky and brought forth a sword of retribution, using it to call down lightning and reduce the chalet to rubble and smoldering ash.
He would not leave Sajia here unguarded. Nor did he want to leave her with anyone else. She was too precious, too long away from him to bear parting from again, even temporarily.
“Promise you will not leave me to go off hunting on your own,” he said, as close to an admission of
defeat as he was willing to give.
“Promise that you will obey if danger arises and I give you a command.” A salve to his pride.
The capitulation cost him. It wasn’t visible in his face or his voice or in the lines of his rigidly held body, but Sajia knew it regardless.
She moved from her precarious position at the balcony edge before a gust of wind could take her over. Closed the distance between them, willing to lessen the torment her victory caused him. Needing to with a depth that hinted at what they’d once been to each other, husband and wife.
It seemed natural to step into his arms, to spear her fingers into black hair as she lifted her face for his kiss. She welcomed the press of his body to hers and thrilled at the feel of his thick erection, the security of steel-muscled arms and feather-soft wings as he wrapped her in a sensual embrace.
“Promise,” he said, a command ringing in her ears and mind.
“I do.”
He claimed victory in defeat, his lips taking hers aggressively, his tongue thrusting into her mouth, giving no quarter as he overwhelmed her with sensation. Mine, his kiss claimed, and in that instant she couldn’t fight it, couldn’t deny it.
Heat poured into her, the clash of wills forgotten as lust coursed through her veins like lava running down a mountainside, scorching and consuming everything in its path.
Need didn’t accurately define what she felt. Even lust was too tame a word.
A moan escaped and the sound fed his hunger. Arms and wings tightened around her. Carnal images flooded her mind, scenes of them together, his memories or her own pulled from the depths of her subconscious, she couldn’t be sure, only that they made her shiver and crave the feel of naked skin to naked skin, hunger to have his body joined to hers.
She whimpered when his lips left hers, a protest against the loss of them. His eyes glittered, his features once again arrogant and commanding. “Do you still wish to leave our home, Sajia?”