The Dark God's Bride : Book 2

by Dahlia Lu

  “Easy,” she heard him said to her. His was voice was filled with restraints.

  She didn’t want easy. She didn’t want restraint. She just wanted to reach. Reach higher than she’d ever been in her life. Finally it came. Pleasure so overwhelmingly intense it almost felt like pain. She couldn’t tell the difference. Didn’t need to.

  She cried out from the most amazing orgasmic ecstasy she’d ever experienced. Every cell in her body came to life as a warm, transcending wave surged through her body. Her muscles contracted violently, convulsing around him. She cried out again when another wave hit her.

  “Mortal,” he said through gritted teeth, barely any traces of self-control left. “You’ll be the death of me.”

  Noctis flipped her over on her back in a single fluid motion. He crushed her mouth with a bruising kiss and drove into her. She thought she couldn’t go any higher, but she was proven wrong. Her fingernails dug into his sweat-slicked back and only realized she’d drawn blood when the scent of iron filled the air.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “I’m over here,” Nala said to the man coming to finish her off. She turned on the light of her hospital room and smiled at Damian, who was looming over the empty bed. He was expecting her to be in it. “Oh come now, Damian. You should have gone for my neck. But then again, it wouldn’t look like a mugging gone wrong, would it? You need it to look like an accident.”

  His teal eyes narrowed. “How do you know my name?”

  “I know everything about you,” she said casually as she entered the room and climbed onto the bed. Her voice was as cool as the surface of a slab of marble. “More than you know about yourself.”

  “Do you know I’ve come to kill you?”

  “Why else would you be here? Check up on me to see if I was alright? No, Damian. You are one of the most hardened demons I know. Now stop letting me establish rapport and go for it already.” She swept her hair to the side and revealed to him her slender neck. “Go for the major arteries.”

  “I am not letting you establish anything.”

  “You are still talking to me,” she pointed out. “Soon enough you’ll form a bond with me and you won’t be able to kill me.”

  “That never happened to me before,” he assured her.

  “You are still talking to me,” she pointed out.

  “Are you suicidal, woman?”

  Nala shook her head. “No,” she replied honestly. “No, I am not.”

  “You care very little for your own life.”

  “Not true,” she disagreed. “I value my life as much as the next person.”

  “You are provoking me to kill you.”

  “Damian, you’ve gone soft.” She smiled up at him.

  He reached for her neck. “I don’t do soft.”

  Noctiam appeared in the room and immediately grabbed Damian’s wrist. “Let go,” he warned.

  “She must die,” Damian decided.

  “Let go of Nala, you brute!”

  Damian stared at Noctiam and then at the girl in his hand. Shocked, he promptly released her.

  “Oh, Noctiam, you ruined everything!” Nala glowered.

  “He was going to kill you,” Noctiam reminded her.

  “You don’t know that. Now we’ll never find out.”

  Noctiam sighed in frustration.

  Damian examined her from head to toe, and then searched her eyes deeply. “Nala?”

  “Raya,” she corrected him. “You will call me Raya from now on.”

  Damian grabbed Noctiam by the throat and slammed him against the concrete wall. The building shook. The light briefly flickered on and off. “What have you done to her?!”

  “Let go of him,” Nala commanded. “I was the one who asked him to remove my core.”

  “What?!”

  “You play your part very well, too, Damian.” She looked down at her abdomen. “Thanks to you, there is no doubt about me in Trent’s mind.”

  Damian followed her gaze. “No…” his voice broke. A pain expression warped his handsome face. “I didn’t know…”

  “You did well,” she praised him.

  “No!” He bellowed. He closed the gap between them. Shaky fingers hovered over her abdomen. He looked into her eyes, angry and confused. “Why?”

  She framed his face with her hands and pressed a kiss on his lips. “You were part of my plan, Damian. Do not blame yourself.”

  “You are cruel,” he whispered.

  “Yes, Damian,” she acknowledged. “You did beautifully. You both did beautifully.”

  Noctiam heaved a lengthy sigh. “You are indeed very cruel, Nala.”

  “…nine hundred and ninety thousand… one million!” Amara dropped the last stack of a hundred dollars bills in the largest bag she owned. Parts of her didn’t want to give this much money away, but the other parts of her just wanted to get rid of it as soon as possible so she could get on with her life. She knew that paying a blackmailer wasn’t the smartest thing to do, but she could see no other option. She wanted Jonathan out of her life for good and she wanted him to keep his mouth shut about her whereabouts.

  Amara wanted to remain dead to the world she had grown up in. She wanted to live her life without all of the baggage of that past.

  “What are you doing?” Daisy asked suspiciously.

  Startled, Amara looked up at the young maid. She quickly zipped the tote, but not before Daisy saw what was inside. “What do you want?”

  Daisy handed Amara the cordless phone. “There is a man on the phone for you,” she reported. “He said he must speak to you.”

  “Okay, thanks.” Amara received the phone from Daisy. “You can leave now.”

  Daisy’s eyes were floating over the bag fat with money as she was leaving.

  “I said I’ll call you,” Amara said to the phone.

  “I’ll come see you,” Jonathan said from the other line.

  “No!” Amara protested. “Meet me at the playground in Sunset Park in an hour. I’ll be there with the money.”

  “Come now, Amara. Don’t expect me to believe that you came up with a million dollars in cash overnight.”

  “I have the money and it will be in your hands as soon as I can deliver it. I expect you to keep your end of the deal.”

  “Amara,”

  “One hour. Be there.” Amara hung up on him. As she did that, she also mentally slammed shut the door her past had tried to crawl out of. It didn’t matter how she rationalized it. It didn’t matter how hard she’d tried to convince herself that it wasn’t her fault. She felt responsible for her father’s death. If she hadn’t told him what Jonathan did, her father wouldn’t have left home angry. Things could have been different. Her father would still be alive.

  It was not her fault. She knew it to be true, but she couldn’t believe it. She couldn’t deal with it, couldn’t face it. Therefore, she chose to keep it locked up until the day she could.

  Amara took a deep breath, gathered herself together, and left the room with the bag full of money. She called for a taxi to take her to Sunset Park. It took the taxi driver half an hour to find his way to the mansion, it being in the middle of nowhere. Half an hour later, the taxi dropped her off at the park.

  She walked down the curves of the pathway and stopped at the playground. It was early in the morning, so there were no children around. Jonathan was already there, waiting for her on the swing set.

  Amara walked up to him and tossed the bag at his feet. Her stepbrother looked up at her with doubt in his eyes. He slowly reached for the bag and unzipped it.

  “Take your time and count it,” she said icily. “After you’ve confirmed it is one million dollars, leave me the hell alone.”

  “Where did you get the money?” Jonathan asked.

  “That’s my business. Hurry up and count it.”

  He was examining her again. “I’m afraid to draw conclusions.”

  “Then don’t.”

  “What happened after the accident, Amara? Where did
you go?”

  I was homeless for a few months. A demoness took me in and raised me as her own. I am currently the prisoner of a not-so-fabled god.

  “Again, that is my business,” she answered coldly.

  “You’re still holding a grudge against me.”

  “I’m a woman. I hold grudges,” Amara lied. The only grudge she was able to hold onto was the one against herself.

  “We were children!” He bolted up. “I was barely thirteen! I didn’t know what the hell I was doing!”

  “What do you want? Forgiveness?”

  “I want to make it up to you,” he said straightforwardly. “After your dad died, you went missing. We were all very worried.”

  “Who is ‘we’?”

  “Your family! Our mother! Me!”

  “My dad passed away, so that means there is no relation between us. Get the facts straight. Now, take your money and get out of my sight!”

  “I don’t want the money,” he muttered.

  “You said you wanted a million dollars. Well, there is your million dollars.”

  “I only said that because I didn’t think you’ll have it.”

  “What the fuck do you want from me?!” Amara cried.

  Jonathan spread out his arms in a gesture of appeal. “I want to apologize.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “What?”

  “I’ve been festering with guilt and I don’t know what to do about it. I was the reason why you ran away from home. I did some inappropriate things, and I’m sorry. I was no more than a child at the time, but that’s no excuse. I’ve done a lot of growing up since then. Please give me a chance to make it up to you. We’ll start on a brand new page. I want to be the brother you want me to be.”

  Stinging mists were hazing her vision. “If you want to make it up to me, then just leave me alone.”

  “What I’m concern with right now is where did you get the money? What are you doing with your life?”

  “I’m doing fine,” she lied. He sensed it.

  “All of this brand name labels… a million dollars in cash… what are you doing with yourself?”

  She gasped when she understood what he was indicating. “I’m doing nothing of what you’re thinking!” She retorted. “Get your mind out of the gutter!”

  “Then explain to me.”

  “I-I borrowed it from a friend,” she stammered.

  “Your lover?”

  “Yes, my lover,” she admitted.

  “How many are there?”

  “Did you come today to apologize to me or to insult me?”

  “I’m worried.”

  “Don’t!” She warned. “I’m not selling my body so rest your conscience and go back to your life. Good bye!” She turned, marching off. “Forever.”

  He caught her hand. “Don’t go yet! We have a lot of talk about!”

  “No!” She struggled to pull her hand back. “I have nothing to say to you! Let go!”

  His male strength was superior. He pulled her against his chest and encircled her body with his arms. “Amara, listen to me!”

  Amara’s eyes widened when she saw Noctis standing several meters away. Daisy was standing next to him with an accusing pointing finger.

  “I told you they’ll be here! She stole your money to give to her lover!”

  “Let go!” Amara stepped on his foot and yanked herself away as hard as she could. The pain made him released her and the momentum sent her straight for the ground. She landed on her knees and elbows. She tried to sit up and saw Noctis holding Jonathan off the ground by the throat.

  “Don’t kill him!” Amara screamed. “He doesn’t deserve to die! He came to–”

  Jonathan’s body combusted into a flame that quickly died out, leaving behind a dark grey figure. A gust of wind passed by and whisked the shape into a cloud of ash.

  “…apologize…”

  Amara sharply turned her head when she heard Daisy screaming her bloody head off. The girl stumbled onto the ground and scuttled back against a tree trunk. Fear warped her face as if she were staring at Death himself.

  Noctis eyed the girl.

  “No!” Amara pushed herself off from the ground and grabbed his arm. “No more killing! Please! You like her! Remember? You like her!” She turned to the girl and shouted, “Run!”

  He shrugged her off. Menace plagued his blue eyes.

  The girl hurriedly got up and ran for it. She didn’t make it to the path before a white fireball hit her back.

  Amara felt faint.

  Noctis turned to face her. He strode toward her and gently brushed the dirt off her clothing. Her body was shivering on its own. When he reached for her arm, she unconsciously flinched. The air was suffocating. She felt like she couldn’t breathe. Grey eyes slid back.

  Noctis caught his bride just as she fainted. He scooped her up in his arms and teleported them both back to their bedroom. He carefully laid her on the bed, and then gently tapped on her cheek. There were no traces of warmth on her skin.

  “Mortal… mortal… Amara…”

  Dark lashes parted, revealing her eyes. She spared a swift glance at him and then turned on her side, facing away from him.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked.

  “Fine,” she answered flatly.

  “Do you need a doctor?”

  “No.”

  When he reached for her, she shied away from his touch.

  He shifted to the other side of the bed. She shot a glare at him and then turned to the other side.

  “You’re avoiding me,” he observed.

  “I don’t even want to look at you, so just leave me alone.”

  “Do you have a specific time frame in mind?”

  “No. I just don’t want to look at you right now.”

  Noctis retrieved a grey silk tie from the drawer. He returned to the bed, wrapped the tie around her closed lids, and tied it at the back of her head. “Now you don’t have to.”

  “Why must you kill?” she murmured. “They didn’t deserve to die.”

  “You care too much.”

  “And you care too little.”

  “Will I be next?” She taunted him. “Is it possible that you suddenly wake up one day and decide that you want to kill me?”

  “Don’t you think it’s a bit too late for that, mortal?”

  “You didn’t kill me back then because you needed me to plot your revenge. What’s stopping you now?”

  “I can’t answer that.”

  “Why not?”

  Noctis recalled the moment he first laid eyes on her.

  He had sensed her presence even before the demon pointed toward the double door. Through the crack of the door, he saw her curious grey eyes peering into the room. A surprised gasp escaped her throat when their eyes clashed.

  Several moments had passed without him realizing.

  He’d forced the doors open and hurled the demon in his hand against the wall. He shifted to her and caught her by the shoulder before she had the chance to run off. He dragged her back against his body, and in doing so, he involuntarily breathed in her scent. It was sweet, feminine, and so very faint. It assaulted his senses and nearly made him shudder.

  He attributed the reaction to his having been far too long without a woman.

  Her skin was so soft and creamy beneath his calloused fingers. He couldn’t deny himself: he dipped his head for a taste. She tasted like he thought she would.

  He mumbled a curse in his language when he remembered his main objective. His thoughts were scattering and forming so rapidly that he couldn’t concentrate on any one, but it was clear to him.

  “Mortal,” he acknowledged ruefully.

  “You could tell that by smelling me,” she replied insolently in a shaky voice. “Was the lick really necessary?”

  “Let her go!” A violet-eyed beauty screeched at him.

  He ignored her. “You are the only mortal in this castle… you must be Kali,” he deduced.

  “Let her go or you will reg
ret it!” the violet-eyed beauty threatened him.

  He found her threat amusing at most. “No chance of that happening,” he sneered at her. “I will be taking this mortal with me.”

  “What do you want with her?” the violet-eyed beauty demanded.

  “She’s Lucifer’s little bride…” he said with a smirk on his face, “my instrument for revenge.”

  “What on earth are you talking about?”

  “Lucifer’s Kali…”

  She rolled her violet eyes. “I am kali!” she exasperated. “Let her go!”

  He gaze shifted from one female to the other. One was a mesmerizingly beautiful demoness, and the other, an ordinary grey-eyed mortal.

  “Do you take me for a fool, demoness? I can smell you from miles away. This mortal is Kali,” he surmised without an ounce of doubt, “and she will come with me.”

  “I’m telling you that I’m Kali!” The beautiful demoness shouted at him, frustration was visible on her face. “Take me and leave the girl alone!”

  Noctis sighed at the replay. The truth presented itself twice to him, but he refused to see it. He had seen what he wanted to see, and now he had ended up with more than he’d bargained for.

  “I’m not mentally equipped to answer that,” he muttered to himself.

  A hand lifted the back of her neck; he leaned forward to kiss her ripe, soft lips. She trembled beneath him – not from excitement, but from fright.

  “You have nothing to fear from me,” he grated softly against her ear. “I will not hurt you. Not intentionally.”

  His attempt to soothe his bride failed miserably. She didn’t believe him.

  “Maybe not physically,” she whispered, “but physical pain is not the only pain I can feel.”

  “Neither of those two was close to you.”

  “Does it matter? They’re people…. human beings. How could you kill them so easily, as if their lives were worth nothing?”

  “That is because their lives are worth nothing.”

  “You…!” Angered, she turned away from him. “You were once mortal, or have you forgotten that?”

  “I have not forgotten,” he derided. “And even then, my answer would have been the same. Time has strengthened my beliefs. The men from my line were bred for war. I joined my first battle on my fourteenth year. Since then, I have been able to make very few distinctions between life and death.”