by Nya Rayne
“All Anubi get just one.” He pushed her hair back from her face. “As a descendant of Anubis, you, Blaine, own the other half of my soul. And as a reward for serving my god in his protection of you and other women like you, you have finally been given to me.”
“Descendent of Anubis? God, you make this seem easy. Hayze, we’re not talking about why water is wet.” She shook her head. “I can’t—”
“If you weren’t, you couldn’t have bound me to you.”
“I didn’t.”
“You did. It is the reason why my heart now beats and I have need of this air surrounding us. It is the reason why, from the night I first laid eyes on you, I’ve been unable to get you out of my head. And unfortunately, it’s the reason why you were attacked.”
“This doesn’t make sense.”
“I know, but all Anubi mates have two things normal human women don’t have.” He slipped his hand around her and down the right side of her lower back, pulling up her shirt. “This is one.” He traced it with the tip of his finger.
“That’s my birthmark.”
“It’s the ankh, the Egyptian symbol for eternal life. It is a mark that all chosen mates are born with. This mark is passed down from mother to daughter, and will continue until the last of Anubis’s kin, no matter how distant, is dead.”
“This is crazy. I’ve never heard anything about this. Sure, I’ve always thought it resembled the Ankh, but you can’t expect me to believe—”
“For you to have this, your mother had to have had one too, and her mother, and her mother’s mother and so on and so forth,” he cut her off. “Do remember seeing one on your mother?”
Blaine stared at him. “I can’t remember. And I don’t know any of my mother’s family to ask. I-I don’t think she had any living relatives.”
Hayze brushed her hair back from her face. “It’s okay. Blaine, I’d never lie to you about something so important. You have to believe that.”
She stared at him for a long moment, doubt fighting her instinct. “Okay, so what’s the second one?”
“It’s an unnatural ability. Some Anubi mates can see the future, others can cast spells, and soothe savagery, and some—like you—can converse with animals.”
Chapter Nine
“I DON’T TALK TO ANIMALS.” Blaine swallowed hard before continuing when Hayze didn’t say anything. “I don’t talk to animals. I just know, I’ve always kind of known, what they needed.”
“You’ve spent so much time hiding the fact that you could that now you can’t help but deny it. I read your mind when I still had the ability, cherie. It was one of the secrets you held close to your heart. Neither your adopted mother nor your best friend knew the truth, did they?”
She stared at him, her eyes wide and terrified. “No one…knew. How—”
“After you got out the hospital, I watched you for weeks. The way you worked so efficiently with the animals that escaped the fire. How they followed you with a mere look and protected you whenever you felt uneasy. Whenever I was near.” Hayze brushed his hand down her cheek. “You know all of my secrets, love. Can you not trust me with this one?”
Blaine looked away from him. “I didn’t understand it at first,” she began softly. “I must have been twelve or thirteen. It was the middle of the night and I was half-asleep at the time, so when I heard this horrible screech I didn’t actually believe I had heard anything at all. It was when I was drifting back off for the fifth time that I understood the sound was real. I climbed out of bed and followed the noise out to the alley behind our house. I thought I was crazy, Hayze, because the only thing I found in that alley was a cat giving birth. I started to turn away, because by this time I knew I had lost it, but then it spoke to me. Not in words so much, but I understood what it needed. The kitten it was giving birth to was coming down the birth canal twisted—almost folded in half. I guess you could call it a kind of breech birth.” She wiped at her face, and rubbed her palms on her thighs. “I had always had a love for animals, but after that night it became an obsession and my ability to hear them, to communicate with them, only grew stronger. I’ve never told anyone any of that.”
He slipped his arm around her shoulder and pulled her close. “With me, Blaine, all of your secrets are safe.”
The silence stretched between them, before Blaine asked again, “So why didn’t you tell me?”
“You were fighting for your life because I allowed that bastard to get around me and attack you a second time.” Hayze shrugged. “It didn’t seem feasible at the time to say anything. I guess, I didn’t feel like I had a right to.”
“I asked you about mates this afternoon and still you said nothing, Hayze.”
“You’d already lost so much; it would have been selfish of me to proclaim you to be my mate, knowing there would never be an us. And on top of that, you already believe everything you touch you destroy; I didn’t want you thinking you’d killed me or that your luck had a hand in this. I wanted you to take what little goodness we shared on this island and use it as a reason to live.”
“See? There’s nothing selfish about you, Hayze. If anything, this…what you just said shows me how selfless you truly are.”
“I am not a selfless man. It wasn’t until I met you that I found someone more important than myself. Trust me, I’m a lot of things, cherie, but self-sacrificing is not one of them.”
“You’re the most giving person I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. It’s because of you that I’m here now, don’t you see that? Think about all of the lives you’ve saved over the years. I’ll admit at first I was scared of you. I didn’t want to get to know you because then I’d have to face that night and the feelings that I’ve had for you since I first laid eyes on you. But, Hayze, when I jumped from that building, the only thing that kept me tethered to this life was your voice, the feel of your hands on my skin, and my desire to see you again.” She slipped her hand into his, forcing him to look at her. “I’m sorry I tried to push you away, but I never expected this to happen. You should have told me. You should have forced me to listen. I don’t understand why you would rather die than tell me the truth.”
Hayze chuckled and clasped her hand in his. “You can be a little frightening when you’re angry, Blaine.”
“Don’t patronize me. I’ve seen those creatures you fight. There’s nothing I could do or say that would truly scare you.”
Hayze brought her knuckles to his mouth and kissed each one slowly. “Ah, but in this world, you, love, are the only thing I truly fear.” He slipped his arm around her and pulled her close. “I only wish I had more time with you.”
“Exactly why are you dying, Hayze? I don’t understand.” He explained Anubis’s three-day rule and the role her coma played with his inability to gain her acceptance and then pushed forward. “So, now I’m in my final days. The majority of my powers are gone and, as you can see from my graying hair and crow’s feet, I’m beginning to age, which will quicken as the days progress. It’s only a matter of time now.”
They sat in silence for several long moments before Blaine ran her hands across her cheeks and visibly steeled her resolve. “Okay, okay, I hear what you’re saying, but there has to be something we can do.” She looked up at him, her eyes shining with tears and pleading with him to give her an ounce of hope to cling to.
“If there was any stopping it, after we’d made love the first time, I would’ve sensed my powers returning to me, but there has been no change.” He pulled her close and nuzzled her ear. “I never meant for you to find out that I was dying, Blaine, because I never meant for us to become so close. My only wish was to know you better. But the more I got to know you, the more I wanted you. And the more I wanted you, the more I began to need you.”
Blaine shot to her feet, her face toward the sky as she shook out her hands. She inhaled and exhaled a few times and closed her eyes, her shoulders squared and her spine straight as a board. She was praying.
Hayze had seen humans d
o it a hundred thousand times during his lifetime. Some of their prayers were answered, but many were not. It was unfortunate that Blaine’s would also fall on deaf ears. “Your God has nothing to do with this, love.”
She spun to face him. “Maybe my God will take pity on me and kick your god’s ass, because I won’t let you leave me. I won’t lose you, not like this, not when I’ve only recently found you. Not when I’ve only just started to believe.”
“I would give anything to have a lifetime with you; you have to know that.”
“If everything out of your mouth is going to be negative, then keep it shut,” Blaine snapped.
“This from the woman who believed bad luck was her curse?”
“This isn’t about luck anymore, idiot; this is about love.” She turned away from him and paced the area between them, her mind working a mile a second. “Okay, I don’t remember binding you to me, but if you said I did, I must have. So does that mean you can bind me to you as well?”
“It’s part of the mating ritual. I say the binding spell and if you truly accept me, being of Anubi heritage, you will know the words that need to be said. But what would be the point of going through all that? My course has already been set.”
“The point would be you staying with me.” She glared at him. “Don’t you want to stay with me or have I gotten this whole mate thing all wrong? We’re supposed to be two parts of the same whole, aren’t we? You’re the yin to my yang, yadda, yadda, yadda. Right?”
Hayze could only stare at her in awe. This woman, who he at one time had thought hated him, was fretting over him, declaring her desire to be with him. Her acceptance of him. How had he gotten so lucky and so unlucky all at the same time? He crossed to Blaine and tugged her close. “Of course I want to be with you. Don’t you ever doubt that.”
“Then fight for me,” she told him. “Fight. For. Me. Because I won’t survive another loss, Hayze.”
“Blaine, it’s not that simple.”
“It is. Bind me to you, damn it.” She fisted her hands in his shirt and refused to allow him to look at anything but her. “We’re two halves of the same whole, right? So, if you bind me to you, my life becomes yours, doesn’t it?”
“Blaine? Baby?” Her determination warmed his heart. To spend a lifetime, even a human one with this woman, what wouldn’t he give?
“I don’t want to talk about it not working, because it will. It has to, because if what you say is true, these Fate bitches owe me big. They’ve taken everything from me, Hayze. Everything! They can’t have you too.”
“If I bind you to me, when I leave this life, you will be but a shell of the woman you are now. In your desperation to be with me, you’ll most likely end up taking your own life. I don’t want that for you.”
“You’re late. I’m halfway there, so what’s the difference?” She searched his face from ear to ear and chin to brow. “If you hadn’t already guessed, I’m in love with you, and I have been since I first laid eyes on you. This island has only made that clearer to me. There will never be another for me, Hayze. It doesn’t matter whether you live or die. I’m stuck with you and you’re stuck with me. So if that’s not acceptance, I don’t know what acceptance is.”
“Blaine, we can’t—”
“Please shut up,” she ordered, shoving at his chest. He staggered back toward the bench and sat down with a clumsy thump. “I don’t want to hear a damned thing you have to say if it doesn’t begin with ‘mate’ and end with ‘I’ll bind you to me.’”
Hayze was so turned on, he could hardly see straight. Blaine’s eyes were ablaze, her cheeks flushed, her breasts heaving beneath the thin blouse she wore, and, with every step she took, her tight ass jiggled under that snug-fitting skirt. He could damn near feel her heat surrounding his cock, the tight walls of her sex pulsating around his shaft. “I want you so badly right now.”
Blaine stopped pacing to stare at him, her hand clutching her cane. “Don’t tell me you’re into BDSM?” Her lips puckered just enough to make him want to suck on them.
“Come here.” His cock was as hard as marble.
Blaine licked her lips and peered around at their surroundings before turning her attention back to Hayze.
“Take your blouse off,” he ordered.
“Of all times, you choose now to do this? We have things to discuss, Hayze. Like your mortality?”
A possessive, demanding growl rose from the back of his throat, and she jumped.
“Take it off.” He ran his hand over his cock, shifting it. “Or I might let what’s left of my animalistic side out.” Something primal and unyielding must have been in his tone, because her cane hit the ground and she slowly peeled off her blouse. She dropped the garment to the ground and stood before him, waiting, her beautiful breasts rising and falling, mesmerizing him. “Lose the skirt.” It looked as if Blaine wanted to argue, but thought better of it. She reached behind her, unzipping the skirt slowly before shimmying it over her sensuous hips. She turned away from him, bent, giving him a picturesque view of her sumptuously ass and stepped out of the skirt before turning back to face him.
The teal bra and matching lace thong he’d had sent to her while she was in the hospital looked more than fantastic on her. That Victoria lady was definitely missing an angel.
“Turn around, baby.”
“Hayze?”
“Turn around.” He allowed another growl to rumble up from his belly and hover in the back of his throat.
She rolled her eyes even as she blushed and slowly spun so that she was staring at the bubbling spring, her ass smiling at him. “You know, I don’t take kindly to being ordered around. And before you get any ideas, I’m not afraid of you or that freaky thing you’re doing with your throat.”
“Bend over and grab your ankles.”
Blaine glared at him over her shoulder. “Have you lost your mind?”
Head tilting from right to left, Hayze took in her ass again and envisioned his hand running smoothly over the supple skin, his lips kissing every inch, and his tongue delving between the crack. He locked eyes with her. “Grab your ankles.”
“I will not!”
“One,” he began counting.
“You can count to a thousand for all I—”
He cut her off. “Two.”
Blaine spun to face him. “Damn it, Hayze, don’t ignore me. I’m not going to—”
“Three,” he sounded off, cutting her off once more. He sprang to his feet and crossed the distance to her in half a heartbeat.
Blaine gasped when he spun her around and pulled her flush against his chest. Hayze inhaled her scent as he ran his nose along her neck while his hands spanned the length of her belly and slid down toward the heat seeping up from her sex. She leaned back into him, rocking her hips back against his groin, a soft moan slipping from her lips.
He bent her forward. “When I tell you to do something, you do it.” Hayze smacked her on the ass.
She yelped, straightening so that her back was flush against his chest again. “I can’t believe you did—”
Hayze smacked her ass again and immediately rubbed the reddening spot. “Bend over.”
“No,” she said, but the minute he moved his hand to bestow another spanking, she complied, pushing her ass back at him. “I so hate you right now.”
“Oh, you might, but you’re going to love what I’m about to do.”
Chapter Ten
HAYZE LOWERED HIMSELF behind Blaine as she used the rocks lining the hot spring to balance herself. His large hands palmed and parted her ass cheeks all at once as he leaned in, running the length of his wide tongue up from the opening of her sex to her tight sweet spot and back down.
Blaine moaned low and rose up on her toes, her head falling forward and her shoulders slumping. She’d never felt anything so agonizingly pleasurable. The man was a master of seduction. It was like he knew just how to touch her. He pushed her mind to the brink of hysteria and dangled her fragile body over the jagged cliffs
of Boreray Island.
“Every time I taste you, it’s like the first time,” Hayze told her, lifting her hips higher before delving back in. He parted her and pushed his tongue into her, lapping at her walls and pulling more and more of her juices out of her while his thumb danced over her clit.
“Hayze, please,” she begged, reaching back to grasp his head and force him in deeper. “Please make it stop.” She rocked back on his face and reveled in every flick of his tongue and slurp of his lips. Every nerve in her body was on fire and alive. Moments ago, she’d been worried sick about his mortality, and now all she could think about was her pleasure, and all the things he could do to end this demanding ache spreading from her abdomen outward.
Hayze turned her, sparing less than a second away from her body, and then continued his feast on her swollen clit. He sucked it into his heated mouth, flicked his tongue against the tip and sated his thirst on her wetness. He pulled back the hood and nibbled on the erotic button as he slipped two digits into her and brought her quickly to another agonizing end.
Blaine screamed out in pleasure as her body rolled up against his face and hand, her orgasm bursting from her in joyous spurts. Her nerves were alive, each one more excited than the next. She could barely breathe or think past the pleasure rolling through her and still Hayze continued his domination on her body.
He flipped her over and got to his feet, leaving his hands at her hips to steady her. “Did you like that?” he asked, his tone low and seductive.
Blaine nodded, her eyes clouded with pleasure.
“Tell me you liked it,” Hayze ordered. “Say it.”
The sound of his zipper lowering told her what was to come, but Blaine couldn’t move or find the strength to speak. She wanted to scream that she didn’t like it, she loved it; she adored it, and would forever crave it.
