He tossed down the torch, drew his sword and rushed out of the room, down the darkened corridor to the steps, shouting as he sped upward.
Above, the house was already in an uproar. Liveried guards swept into the hall.
“Scour the grounds,” he shouted. “He has escaped! Question everyone. Trust no one who’s been out of your company. He could be wearing your companion’s face.”
The sergeant-at-arms quickly turned and shouted more orders, breaking the men into teams to spread out around the estate. Nicolas didn’t stay to see to the preparations. His concern now was with his wife whom he’d left sleeping in bed and his brother whom he hadn’t seen among the men who’d rushed into the hall.
With his heart at the back of his throat, he ran up the steps to the apartment he shared with Anaïs, his steps slowing as he heard muffled, feminine laughter from beyond the door—and a man’s voice, low and straining.
Dread tightening his belly, he pushed open the door. Anaïs gasped beneath Armand and dove beneath the covers, calling out his brother’s name.
Something in Nicolas’s expression must have registered, for her eyes widened with shock and her gaze sliced toward the man who rolled naked from the opposite side of the mattress.
His brother stood, a small, sly smile curving his lips. “I was only getting a little taste of this freedom you’ve been enjoying, brother,” he murmured.
Nicolas stared, a dawning horror sending a rush of heated rage through his veins. Armand’s hair was loosed from its perpetual queue. His expression had lost its pinched, dour displeasure that made his appearance so discernible from his own that no one ever mistook them.
“Haven’t you always urged me to enjoy my life?”
“Not with my wife,” Nicolas said, his voice taut with fury.
“She’s delicious, you know,” Armand said, stepping away from the bed. “Why shouldn’t we share? We’ve always been like one, brother.”
Nicolas’s jaw clamped tight at Anaïs’s choking sobs.
Armand’s gaze glittered feverishly, excitement reddening his cheeks. “I’ve seen you together. I’ve seen all three of you together.”
Nicolas continued to stare at his brother’s face. He heard the words Armand spoke, but though the voice was the same, he knew it wasn’t Armand who uttered them.
His brother, with his unbreakable vow of celibacy, stood with his cock glistening with his wife’s fluids. In that moment, Nicolas finally believed the myth of The Devourer, understood the true horror of his nature.
His brother was possessed by a demon.
“Armand?” he asked, his voice shaking. It was his brother’s face, but his soul no longer resided in that body.
Anaïs looked at Nicolas and shook her head. “Nico, I thought he was you!” she sobbed. “He bears your face. Smiled your smile. Touched me like you do.”
“I don’t blame you, Anaïs,” he whispered, at last realizing how precarious their situation was. Armand stood between him and his wife. “I don’t blame you at all, love. Armand?” He stepped toward him.
Armand smiled, his lips widening, his expression losing its gleeful excitement, becoming cold, sharp-edged. Feral. For a moment his eyes seemed to glow red, then faded.
Anaïs’s eyes widened. “It’s him!” she cried out. “It’s him, isn’t it?”
“Come around the bed, wife,” Nicolas said, edging closer to Armand. “Get behind me.” He held out his hand to her for she seemed rooted on the mattress.
Naked, she slid her back along the wall then slipped from the end of the mattress and scurried behind him and out the opened door.
“She’s so lovely. So fragrant,” Armand drawled. His hand slid down his belly to caress his slick cock. “Such a generous piece of flesh. She thoroughly enjoyed it, moaned so sweetly when I thrust it into her—”
“Silence!” Nicolas shouted, gripping his sword tight.
Armand gave his cock another slow stroke then let it go. “What will you do? Slay me? You will only free me to find another body.” His eyes narrowed. “Shall I take yours? Will your cock please her any better?”
Nicolas hoped Anaïs called for more guards to arrive and help restrain his brother, because he didn’t know if he could resist killing the beast who’d stolen Armand’s life.
Both he and his brother had transformed, his brother to carry out his duty, he to enjoy this life he’d bargained for. At last his brother had earned his peace.
“Your wife, Anaïs…she’s very sweet,” the creature wearing Armand’s face said, sipping on his fingertips. “But will she bear your child…or mine?”
Nicolas threw down his sword and lunged for him, ready to tear him limb from limb.
Armand rolled, grasping Nicolas’s face, kissing his lips as Nicolas squeezed his hands around his brother’s throat.
Only when arms encircled his waist and fingers pulled back on his, did he release his grip and let the guards pull him away.
As they held him from Armand, restraining his arms behind his back, he stared into his brother’s face—his twin. He’d failed him. Let him be taken.
While he’d ridden a black gelding—a gift from the woman who had taken his own soul.
Armand smiled, his teeth gleaming brightly, his grin stretching into a wide, savage grin. “Will it be my child or yours?” he repeated then laughed, even as fists pummeled his belly and face.
Nicolas looked away, shrugging off the men who backed up, their glances averted. He strode through the door of the apartment, but didn’t find Anaïs hovering outside, waiting for him.
Some inborn instinct led him down the hallway to Inanna’s room. At first it appeared empty, and then an odor he recognized all too well assailed his nostrils.
Burned flesh.
Sunlight streamed inside from between curtains that had been thrown apart to reveal the balcony overlooking the garden below. Dawn had broken.
Dread knotting his belly, he forced one foot in front of the other until he stood just beyond the streaming light and looked onto the balcony with its pretty, scrolled iron balustrade. A body laid draped over the rail, long red hair the only part of the scorched remnant of a person to indicate her identity.
Nicolas’s breath caught on a sob, and he reached into the light, ignoring the blisters that bubbled on the back of his hand, to snag the long hair and pull Anaïs’s body inside. Despite the horror he embraced, he knelt and cuddled her form against his chest, tears leaking down his cheeks.
“Who did this?” he cried out, his voice echoing in the room.
“She did it to herself.” Inanna’s quiet voice came from the doorway.
“Why?” he asked, his throat thickening.
“She didn’t wish to bear the demon’s child,” she said, tonelessly. “She couldn’t risk it. She sacrificed herself for us all.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Inanna’s tense expression crumpled and she sped toward him, falling to her knees beside him to cup his cheeks. “Nico, what do you mean? Do you think I would harm her? She’s my damu, my granddaughter,” she said, tears streaming from her eyes. “And you are my dearest servant. Do you truly think I would cause you pain apurpose?”
Nicolas shook his head, his jaw tightening to hold back a sob, yet unwilling to believe his Anaïs, his impish sprite, was gone. That she’d destroyed herself.
She’d been alone while he wrestled with a demon. He’d spent his anger on Armand’s killer while his wife stepped into sunlight. His tears spilled faster.
“Focus your anger on the one responsible for this tragedy, Nico,” Inanna said, her voice growing harsh and urgent. “It is him, The Devourer, who has robbed you of your wife and your child! Stay with me. Guard him. Make him suffer for an eternity for what he has taken.”
Nicolas closed his eyes and pulled his face from her hands. He pressed a kiss to his wife’s hair and settled her body on the ground.
He let Inanna lead him from the room, down the hallway past the silent retainers who
quickly filed into the room behind them. Inanna took him into another chamber, stripped his clothes from body, and bathed him while he stood silently, woodenly aloof. When she’d finished, she led him to the bed and pulled a blanket over his naked body.
Nicolas closed his eyes, wanting to sleep forever.
The bed dipped beside him and Inanna came over him.
He murmured and reached out to push her away, but she stretched over him, warming his chilled flesh.
He must have slept for a while, because he woke to find her deep beneath the covers, her warm breath and lips kissing his belly. His cock was already rigid, swollen, his balls filled with urgent, painful need.
Inanna’s hands enclosed his shaft, and she worked the skin clothing his cock, up and down, up and down, relentlessly, robbing him of his mind and his grief.
Awash in sensation, he closed out the memories, concentrating instead on the needs of his flesh and sex. He widened his legs, raising his knees to flatten his feet on the mattress and push deep into her throat. With her approving murmurs vibrating along his length, he let the pressure in his balls explode, spilling his seed into her throat as her swallows caressed the tip of him with her greedy gulps.
Long after he’d spent himself, he stopped pumping into her mouth and waited for her to come off his cock. When she slid up his body, he enfolded her in his arms, letting her fill a small portion of the deep, endless void of his immortal life that stretched before him.
“Did you speak with her before she died?” he rasped.
“Sleep, darling,” she whispered, but her heart thudded heavily against his chest.
So she had. Nicolas wondered silently whether she’d tried to dissuade Anaïs from her course or had told her what she must do. He didn’t want to know the answer. They never spoke of it again.
That day, he’d finally become The Guardian to The Devourer.
His resolve had hardened to ensure the monster who’d taken his family from him would remain in his dark, cramped prison forever.
There Nicolas had stayed—with Inanna. Until he’d met a girl with suspicion shadowing her dark eyes, a chin that tilted toward the sky, and a heart as fierce and loyal as any knight’s.
Chessa stood beneath the shower for a long time, letting the stinging pulses of water wash away zombie gore and her tears. She stayed there long enough her toes and fingers pruned.
Only then did she turn off the water and reach for a towel. Only then did she let her thoughts drift back to the Revenant tied to the bed in the other room.
Her anger fading, she could finally think, finally try to make sense of everything that had happened.
She knew Nicolas. Deep inside, past all the secrets and the memories of a life they never shared, she knew him. He was, at his core, an honorable man. If he’d enlisted rogue Revenants to attack the compound, he must have a powerful motive.
He’d risked his immortality for it. Risked his life with her—and deep inside, she knew she mattered to him. Knew he might even love her.
That didn’t change the fact he’d landed them both in deep shit. She wished she could hold onto her anger. Sarcasm and fury were her favorite weapons, and she needed them now to protect what little pride she had left.
Instead, she wanted to go to him. To slip into bed beside him and love him for whatever time they had left. Damn the tiny cameras hidden around the room.
In the end, lust and want—and the need to hold him one last time—won out. She straightened her shoulders and strolled naked into the bedroom.
Nicolas’s gaze swung toward her and his eyes widened. “Thinking of adding a little torture to my misery, Princess?”
She almost smiled. The man had guts. Just one of the many qualities she admired about him. “I’m just thinking I’m horny as hell and hungry. Never did get that meal you promised.”
“I know how you like it, ma petite, but sadly, my hands aren’t free to give you what you need.”
Her gaze fell to his cock, which was perking up, lengthening along his thigh as it filled. Chessa strode to the bed, stepped onto the mattress and placed her hands on her hips. “Maybe,” she said, dipping her toes between his legs to nudge his balls, “I like playing a little rough, too.”
His gaze narrowed, his nostrils flaring as he caught her ripening scent. “Have you forgotten the cameras?”
“Do you care?” she asked, sliding her foot over his cock.
One dark brow rose. “Not really.” His lips curved slightly.
“For a man trussed up like a turkey, you look awfully relaxed,” she said, then dipped her gaze to examine his cock, “Well at least most of you.”
His hips undulated, sliding beneath her foot to stroke her sole. His expression sharpened. “Unless you intend to kick my balls up my throat, don’t you think you should…take a seat?”
“I’m still thinking,” she drawled. But who was she kidding? Her arousal wafted in the air like a damn plug-in air freshener. She knelt over his hips, pressing his cock to his belly. Then she leaned down with an elbow planted on his chest and rested her chin in her palm. “So, I’m still wondering what you would have done had the coven been in residence when you arrived.”
“Interrupted dinner,” he drawled, his easy tone at war with his darkening expression.
She teased a flat nipple into a tiny bead with her fingernail, giving her an excuse not to hold his knowing gaze. “Would you have hurt her?” she whispered.
“Never,” he said softly.
“I don’t understand your relationship with her. How you can want me. How you can resist doing her will.”
His chest rose, his gaze grew shuttered. He wouldn’t discuss the woman who’d turned him. “Ma chérie, you act as though we have all the time in the world. Know something I don’t?”
“You’re right. I’m wasting time.” She lunged for his mouth, sliding her lips over his, moaning when his tongue thrust deep into her mouth. She tucked a hand between their straining bodies and lifted slightly, just enough to grip his cock and push it where she needed it. Right into her cunt.
She broke the kiss and stared at him as she took him inside her body, already trembling, already rippling around him with delicious little shivering shocks that had her bouncing on his cock to keep them coming.
Pressing her hands against his chest she curved her back upward and rolled her hips to circle on his cock while she drove down harder.
His teeth ground together and his eyelids closed and opened. “If I were free, I’d make you come screaming in seconds, love.”
“Tell me. Tell me, how you’d touch me,” she moaned.
“I’d pinch your nipples and slide a hand down to cup your ass. Give you a swat to get you moving faster.”
A snort of laughter surprised her and she bit her lip, but ground down harder.
“I’d slide my fingers into the cleft between your buttocks and tickle your sweet little asshole.”
“Oh God, shut up,” she said, afraid she wouldn’t be able to hold it together for another moment longer.
“I’d press inside, circle, Dieu! Just like that,” he groaned as she circled her hips again and bounced. “Then I’d buck beneath you, driving my cock so deep I’d spoil you for any other man. Fill you up with my cock and my seed—”
“Jesus, I mean it. Shut up,” she said, leaning down to take his mouth again because she was coming and he wasn’t and she’d wanted to wait, to take him along, but her body was shuddering, convulsions shimmering along her vagina, milking his cock for his release.
When she slowed her movements, he laughed. A soft, husky sound that stirred the hair at her temple.
She pressed a kiss to his chest and buried her nose against his skin, breathing him in. Loving the almond and musk scent of him, wanting that to be the thing she thought of at the last moment. That and how perfect it felt to be connected with him, body and soul.
“I love you,” she whispered.
“And I you.”
“About damn time,”
a low voice said from above them.
Chessa jerked up to find Pasqual standing over them, a crooked grin on his face.
“Bastard!” Nicolas gritted out, shaking his chains.
“Wait a second,” Pasqual said, sweeping his hand in front of him. Before he’d finished, Pasqual’s coarse dark looks melted into Simon’s familiar, rugged face. “Better.”
“Not much,” Nicolas said, his voice evening.
Chessa grimaced and knelt up to let Nicolas’s cock slide from inside her, then she rolled to the side of the bed to stand. Although standing in the nude was only slightly less embarrassing than being found sitting on a man’s cock. “Why am I not surprised to see you here, Simon? You already know what’s going to happen. Want to clue us in?”
“Since I’m here, I’ve already changed the future. I can’t guarantee the outcome.” He shrugged. “I’m sorry.”
“Then what are you doing here?”
“I’m here to offer a warning.”
“Too late,” Chessa bit out. “We’re already up to our necks in trouble.”
“When she calls you before her,” Simon said, his face hardening, “try for subdued apology. Don’t force her to deal harshly with you.”
Chessa snorted. “Force her? She’s the one holding all the cards here—a straight goddamn flush.”
“Let him speak, Chessa,” Nicolas said, before turning his gaze to Simon. “Should you be saying this with the team monitoring us from the next room?”
Simon waggled his dark eyebrows. “I played a little with the feed. They will see Chessa here writhing on your cock for another few minutes. Since it’s Erika and Sergio watching, my guess is we’ll have a few minutes more while they decide to try out a few of Chessa’s moves.”
Chessa scowled at the smirking smiles the two men shared. “I still don’t know what being quiet will buy us.”
“Give her a chance to be the winner here, Chessa,” Simon said, his voice holding a warning.
“She doesn’t care about saving face,” Nicolas said.
“No, and it’s not about her pride or your betrayal. She’ll be worried about how the sabat will read her actions.” His grin faded. “You’re not safe. Not yet. But there is hope. Now, Chessa, climb back on Nicolas while I let myself out.”
Seduced By Darkness Page 21
