His Redeemer's Kiss

by Diana Castilleja

  Chapter Twelve

  “Was he for real?” she gasped, stunned and shaken, clamping her jaw like a vise to not let her teeth chatter. She stared at the ground where the body had been splayed. There…then gone. Nothing left any indication he had been there at all. No blood, no ash. Just…nothing.

  Joaquin barely moved from where he collapsed next to her, leaning against the wall with his head resting on his forearms supported by his knees. Exhaustion radiated off of him.

  “Unfortunately. I am sorry.”

  She jerked up straight at his tone, studying him. “For what?” There was rued apology in his words. She knew Kurt’s appearance wasn’t his fault, just as she’d caught those brief glimpses of his wife in his memories and knew her death was not his fault. He held the blame when there was none. Although she’d be the first person to admit to being a converted believer in the impossible now. She was getting used to the idea of Joaquin being a vampire, and Tani and even Diego. Kurt was the type she never wanted to meet again.

  “It was because you are with me he found you. He sensed the energy—” He pinched his lips, silencing his next words with a clipped sound.

  “Hey. You saved me from him. You can’t hide like that anymore.” She looked into his thoughts without thinking twice and shuddered when she ran right into the pain radiating from his shoulder, and his exhaustion. It surprised her more to discover he was blaming himself because he had been using so much of his own energy to keep them from view. It had led Kurt to them like a beacon. She pushed his hair away from his face and sucked in a deep breath to not cry in alarm. “You’re pale!”

  He only shrugged.

  She grabbed his arm and shook him. “Look at me, Joaquin!” She shook him again to add emphasis to her order. Her lungs hurt when he did and met her searching gaze. His skin was taut and he was deathly pale. “How often do you have to eat?” She studied his face, waiting and watching. She knew Diego took care of himself and Tani nightly. “How long has it been?” she demanded when he refused to answer her, belying the order with a tender sweep of his hair from his features.

  “Two nights. It’s not important. I will see to myself soon enough.” He let his head drift to rest against the wall behind them, his eyes closing. She wanted to groan loudly at his answer.

  Now she understood why Titania was regularly wanting to strangle Diego. She suddenly had the urge to do exactly the same thing to Joaquin. It was too late to yell at him for not taking care of himself. She shifted to her knees, and cradled his face in her palms. “Joaquin, you haven’t seen yourself. You need…whatever it is you need to do.”

  “I will not leave you,” he said in denial, rocking his head back and forth to punctuate it. “I will take you home.”

  She ground her teeth together. “And then what? Hope to find someone out on the street at this time of night when you’re done making sure I’m safe at home?” Which was exactly what he would do. She wasn’t sure she wanted him finding just anyone. The idea of it bothered her. She shook her head, unsure why it did, and unable to name the reason behind it. “Look, I know you didn’t want to before, but Joaquin, you have given me so much already. This is completely different. Let me do this for you,” she entreated him.

  His eyes popped open. “No. I won’t do it. Not to you.” Tenderness was woven through his words on laces of steel.

  She swallowed, wondering at her own sanity, at the direction her thoughts were taking her. Looking at him, the sharpness emphasized in his skin, she knew she had to. He wouldn’t ask either, which left her no choice. She pushed away the uncertain feeling threatening to rise inside. She had been frozen with fear seeing Kurt stare at her, those long fangs of his shining in the night like daggers.

  I’m not thinking of really doing this, am I?

  No more than I did a week ago, she mocked herself. Looking at Joaquin’s face, though, apparently, she was. He needed her. She took a steadying breath, not dropping her eyes from his, and made up her mind. This wasn’t the same thing as the bond she’d thought she wanted. This was straight survival. If what she had could help him, heal or cure him in whatever manner they needed, then there was no other option. Not for her.

  She studied him for several silent, stretching moments. He remained stoically quiet, hardly blinking. “Titania said it doesn’t take much, right?” she queried, albeit a little on the wobbly side. She swallowed to shove the feeling far away. “Enough to give you back your strength would help, wouldn’t it?”

  “I will not take from you,” he said, his face growing stiff with the strength of his own will. “You have suffered. I will not do this to you.”

  She pictured her hands around his throat and made sure to send him the image. She was trying hard not to get mad at him, but it wasn’t working very well for her. His expression never changed, and it appeared his eyes may have glittered even more in defiance. Implacable was a word that suited him well.

  “You haven’t seen your face,” she repeated. She purposely flipped her gaze to the blood stain on his shoulder. She couldn’t tell if the wounds were still bleeding, but she knew the punctures, as much as his not taking care of his needs since her breakdown, were causing him problems. He needed this. It wouldn’t be a far off the mark guess to believe he didn’t like to leave the perimeter of the house after what had happened between them. Just because she’d never felt him, she was more than positive he’d rarely left.

  She sighed and sat on her haunches, creating a small space between them, pushing her hair away from her throat while she watched him. He might as well have been carved from stone. He didn’t so much as twitch in acknowledgement of her movements. “Joaquin, you have given yourself into my care. You are the one who made that promise and I am caring for you. Now get over whatever sense of self-loathing you are trying to hide from me for needing this.” She leaned forward until she was practically touching noses with him, meeting his gaze with a resolute one of her own. “You did not cause this. You did not cause my pain. I was wrong to put your face to my pain. I can help you. Now, damn it, do something about what you need.” Then, she tilted until her throat touched his chin and, with her eyes closed, she waited.

  She expected him to push her away again. She expected pain. She expected a new kind of agony for her offer and was prepared for it. She knew what vampires were. The one thing she knew for certain was Joaquin would not kill her. It was really the only thing she was confident in. She knew what they needed, what Kurt would have done had he gotten so far, and knew she was putting her life in his hands. She knew a lot.

  She realized, as the seconds ticked past, she knew nothing.

  His hands reached around and cradled her tenderly, as if she were a precious gift to be treasured, to be handled like exquisite jewels. He pulled her into his chest, giving her space to become comfortable, supporting her on his lap. “You are amazing,” he breathed against her throat.

  She shivered at the warmth of his touch, felt as it cascaded down her skin like a single caress. He braced her to rest against his body, and she clenched in anticipation, and a little fear.

  What she felt was not pain. She felt kisses. He dropped them everywhere, tender brushes of warmth to her temple, her cheek. He murmured soft words into her ear as he gifted those honeyed kisses of his along her jaw. She felt herself relax, becoming almost languid in his embrace.

  Shivers started and ran along her spine when he slid his mouth down the length of her neck. Sparks seemed to follow in his wake and her skin tingled.

  “Do not fear this. I can block the memory.”

  “Don’t you even dare! I’m not scared.” Okay, just a little lie, she conceded, keeping the thought as tucked into her mind as possible.

  She felt his smile against her where he pressed those decadent kisses and she knew she hadn’t stuck the little lie deep enough, but he didn’t stop anything of what he was doing, or change his method. The rasp of his tongue ignited nerves she didn’t know she had when he gently laved her pulse. Those sparks grew
into bright lights of color, exploding all along her spine. She gasped sharply at the sensation, arching into the feeling. A tossed arm circled his head, holding him closer, unwilling to let him stop.

  A slow groan rose from deep inside his body, vibrating her skin where he suckled. The near-tickle of a sharp tooth poised over her, rubbing, enticing, seducing, and she shivered with a new want. A heartbeat later, a pinpoint pain made her cry out, but it quickly transcended into a pulsating heat, something so electric she felt herself go up like a hot flame within his touch.

  Nothing in her life had ever felt like this, so all-consuming, so decadent. Lily pulled him tighter. She couldn’t help herself. She’d never felt anything like it. After years of pain and agony, she’d discovered pure bliss.

  * * * *

  Joaquin’s world exploded with the first drop. Her skin was warm, pliant, sweet, and he savored every caress he gave her on his lips, wanting to remember this moment forever. When his teeth broke through her skin, he knew his dead heart exploded into action. She was everything he had envisioned. Sweet as the forbidden fruit he had believed her to be. Heat and desire sank into him as he absorbed her selfless offer. It was as if stars were lit behind his eyelids, as if there was lightning coursing over him, over skin and nerve alike. There was so much energy, so much compassion in her, it was wrapping around him and holding him to her as tightly as any chain ever made. He had never experienced this while taking what had, since the beginning, been nothing more than the filling of a physical need. He was in awe of what he was feeling. He was in awe of the woman in his hold.

  There was no denying it. With Lily, there was something more.

  The raging need to claim her reawakened with a vengeance and attacked him ruthlessly with her taste flowing over his tongue and filling his body. The same reaction he’d had when he’d first explored her kiss. The same crying demand to make her his. The urge brought his hold a little closer, wanting to hold her as tight as he could, to never let her go.

  It wasn’t right. She needed things he wouldn’t be able to give her. She deserved a freedom in her life that had been maliciously stripped from her. A chance to find what had been stolen from her. All the longed for things he’d found within her deepest recesses—her family, her past, her future. He fought the urge down, hiding the depth of his fight from her.

  He sipped gently at her pulse, not wanting to mark her, then tenderly ensured there would be no sign on her fair skin. He had not taken as much as he truly needed, but he had taken enough to see them both safely home. The depth of her concern for him, to make sure he took care of himself, tingled with an unusual warmth near his heart. The slow realization that she was special was no longer in doubt. Unfortunately, he still didn’t have any answers to the swarm of questions that grew in leaps and bounds with every touch, every kiss, with every screaming desire that would remain unfulfilled for the angel in his hands.

  He tilted her face up to him and caressed her lips, feeling their luscious warmth beneath his own. He knew her fears and wanted to be gentle, but right at that moment, desire and passion filled his veins as much as her blood did. It was impossible to simply hold her and do nothing. He tightened his restraint. He had seen beauty within her at first sight, but had not thought of her as a woman, as a man would see her, and want what he held. Want to cherish her, to caress her, to feel her. To please her. She made him hunger in more than one way, and it wasn’t easy to keep it under the surface, hidden behind his control. That need to control himself had pushed home how vulnerable she was, and with her vulnerability, how much she was trusting him.

  Kurt’s arrival had forced her to face more than he had ever wanted to pressure her with. Yet, she was staying with him, solid in her belief of him, and even though she feared life almost every day, she didn’t let her reality make her fear him. There weren’t enough words to describe how he saw her. And she had demanded he not dim what he was doing. She was an all or nothing type of woman, courageous without even knowing it.

  The thought made him smile while he continued to nuzzle her skin and drop gentle touches anywhere within reach, which was quite a bit of her warmed neck.

  She sighed at his continued ministrations and he wanted to catch her sigh again. So he did.

  He lifted his palm to her face and held her, his eyes feasting on the way hers grew luminous, watching him. “You are beautiful,” he whispered, dipping lower to hover over those lips he craved. He craved them almost as much as he knew he would now hunger for her taste. “Never doubt the way I see you.”

  He hesitated only a brief moment, to make her aware of what he was going to do. She was not lost in the mindless thrall he usually instilled on the ones he needed. He couldn’t remember a single time he had not blanked a mind for feeding. She was coherent of every motion, of nearly every desire swarming through his heated blood. Her welcoming reactions made his gut clench even tighter, her innocent expression of desire enrapturing him. Not a hint of fear colored her gaze, and the beat of her heart was steady, and building. Anticipation. He allowed himself to indulge in it, to savor it as he had not allowed himself when he had first shared her kiss, too shocked at the riot of intense feelings and sensations from those first stolen moments. Now, a different kind of hunger had invaded him, a desire he had believed had died with Angelica.

  When he claimed her lips, this new heat filled him, pulsed along his skin, and the first thing that entered his thoughts was that he had found heaven. The temptation to have more was strong and lured him closer, brought her nearer as he delved into the sweetness of her mouth. Everything about her was sweet. Addictive. From the sweet essence of her life’s heartbeat to the beguiling little whimpered gasps of pleasure that slipped from her lips beneath his.

  He cradled her tighter into his arms, weaving his fingers into the richness of her flaming hair. The red of a courageous heart. He traced her welcoming mouth, sipping at the sensitive flesh of her lips as he memorized every little moan passing between them.

  He wanted to plunge his hands into the thickness twined over his fingers and devour her sighs, but he reined in the heightened volcanic boil of his desire to a simmer, keeping it under the placid surface he knew she trusted. This explosive level of desire, of wanting, was not what he had expected from her kiss. The reality of his passion had been dead for centuries. How could a single kiss make him feel so much?

  It was like a new world was opening up for him. He was seeing all of it through her eyes. Colors and scents. Life all around them. She was giving all of it to him. The sensations bombarded him, growing and layering on the last. Everything that had once been barren was now verdant, his soul spread wide open like an offering to absorb the light she shared with him, obliterating any lingering darkness within his heart and mind. The gentle slide of his lips over hers created a fiery friction spurring his desires as much as her blood had only a moment before. Sipping at them when he wanted to devour drove his desires higher. When she opened for him, he slipped between her teeth and fed on her kiss like she was the finest ambrosia.

  It was too much for him. After so many bleak years, he felt close to overloading, and he refused to fail her, not now, not there. He had brought her to town to make his point that she was safe no matter what, especially safe from and with him. Instead, she had given him yet another gift, her trust, her belief, and now her own life’s blood.

  He had to pull himself away from the temptation that she was. Her lips were a glistening petal of softness. She had perfect lips for kisses. She made him feel, made him want, and he had no right.

  But he knew that wouldn’t stop him. Not now.

  He brought her closer, simply soaking up the warmth of her skin, tracing her jaw with his lips. She purred, caressing him almost restlessly, brushing against his chest with the taut peaks of her breasts wantonly. Even beneath her sweatshirt and through his own clothes, the touch of her own rising desire seared him through.

  Her fingers snaked upward, filling with the weight of his hair, holding hi
m tightly in answer.

  “Lily,” he said between touches and tastes. “Delicate and as beautiful as the flower.”

  “And I swear you’re blind,” she teased him, smiling up at him from where she rested on his lap. She seemed completely unconcerned with her position, or their location.

  “I could take eternity convincing you,” he said on a slow breath near her ear, tenderly licking at the pink shell. Daring his restraint, he shared his wishful image with her, opening his mind to her with his deepest desires pushing him.

  Moonlight played over them both in the meadow he knew she loved, the small valley hidden between the peaks of the nearest mountains where it created a beautiful haven of solitude and natural beauty. In his mind, he held her close, held her tight as he kissed her. Not just the light kisses he’d shared with her, but deep, passionate kisses that enflamed them both. Kisses that left them both yearning and craving and demanding fulfillment in a way tender kisses would never give. It was impossible to hide the truth, how deeply he craved her, wanted her. Needed her. And he didn’t try. Not now, yet here, in their shared moment out of time, he could show her, share how he saw her, desire her the way he truly felt and wanted. In his shared vision there was a measure of safety. A safety that still challenged his sanity.