by Black, Paula
“Neva, look at me,” he coaxed.
Biting the inside of my cheek, I forced myself to obey. God those eyes, with their fiery green passion. I thought I’d been lost in Dante’s dungeons, but when I looked in those eyes, I was utterly done for.
“I told you I had some things to tell you. Dante’s deportation was one. But there is more.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, swiping at my tears. I’d had my rant, he deserved his say, even if it could be nothing good.
He tucked a stray lock of hair behind my ear. “You’re right. I was served with a Removal Order by the British Government. They had no choice.” His shoulders lifted in a shrug. “I entered this country on a falsified visa, using a fake passport. I have no right to stay. We sat down to talk. I explained that I was AWOL from military service, and why. Even blind and bed-ridden, Dante has enough choke chains on the senior military and politicians in my country that as soon as I set foot on Ukrainian soil, they will be baying for my blood.”
“They’ll lock you up?” I stammered. Or worse, Dante would give the order from his death bed to have him killed. In my selfish wallowing, I’d only considered the consequences of his leaving from my own blinkered perspective. It hadn’t even occurred to me his life would be in danger. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he said, and he managed a smile. “You see, they gave me another option.”
I looked at him through my tears with glum expectation.
“It seems the British Government has a use for a man with my specialist training.”
“They want you to defect?” I asked, wide-eyed.
He chuckled at that. “It’s not like the old days of the Cold War. I’m not selling out my country’s secrets. But they appreciate the part I played in uncovering Dante’s set-up, and in return for my full cooperation, they’ve offered me asylum, a new job, and a new identity.”
Concern drew my brows together. “Is it dangerous?”
“No more dangerous than what I did before.”
“Does this mean you’re staying?” I asked, not daring to believe.
He nodded and a wicked smile spread his lips.
“There is a God,” I laughed, even as fresh tears streamed down my face. I threw my arms around him and kissed that wicked smile until my lungs burned and my heart threatened to burst out of my chest. Breathing was so overrated.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The food went uneaten. My champagne dripped onto his polished floor. His kiss was my air, my nourishment, and the drug that made me soar.
His fingertips eased the straps from my bare shoulders and the dress slithered down my body, grazing my breasts, falling to a red silky puddle at my feet.
The chill air caressed my naked skin and kissed my nipples to tight, aching peaks, but I couldn’t feel the cold. Not when Konstantyn’s mouth was so hot on my skin, biting passion to the line of my jaw as his hands sculpted my exposed curves in heated caresses that stoked my blood to boiling and flushed my skin to a soft pink.
My head fell back on a moan as his tongue laved a wet velvet drag down the sensitive column of my throat. He kissed lower and my spine arched in offering, bowing to give him all the access he could want. I craved him with an intensity that only came out of me when I danced, or fought for my life. Exposed to the vast sprawl of the city lights, draped across his balcony wearing nothing but his scent and killer heels, it was an incredible exhilaration. I felt lit-up from the inside out with a wanton abandon that didn’t care who could witness this. Konstantyn had his hands on me, and I knew I was safe. This man wasn’t going to let me go, and in capturing me, he was setting me free.
His fingertips caressed my nape as he pulled the pins from my hair and I tossed the dark waves loose into the wind, half hanging over the railing in my bid to get more of him on more of me.
Konstantyn didn’t take the bait though. He mapped my curves with those strong hands, his lips lingering on the delicate skin inside my elbows and over my ribs, secret places that sparked to his lightest touch, and ignited wildfires beneath my skin. The man discovered erogenous zones I hadn’t known existed.
He laced his fingers in mine and drew my arms up high above my head, elongating my body for the silken path of his kisses. I murmured his name and he grazed his teeth over my hip, jolting me into the touch and almost tipping me over the edge. At my cry of surprise he held me tighter.
“I will never let you fall,” he promised, trailing his lips down my stomach.
“Konstantyn, you’re torturing me,” I moaned, feeling his hot breath tease lower.
There would be time enough for slow and sensual, right now I needed him inside me, and his cruel laughter incited me to action.
Hitching my thigh to his hip, I reached for him, curled a fist around his tie, and hauled myself up until our lips were fused and my hips locked with his. His laughter thrummed on my mouth and he deepened the kiss on a harsh moan that drenched the flesh between my thighs. My legs tightened around him in a cage and my free hand reached down to find his straining erection. I stroked him through the silky fabric of his suit, wringing a hoarse moan from deep in his throat. He needed this just as much as I did.
That knowledge made me bold. Ripping out his shirt and popping the button on his pants, I hunted his hot, naked flesh. Victorious, my hand emerged, pumping his thick, pulsing shaft, and it was only a matter of tilting my pelvis to get him where my body wept so desperately for him to be.
The noise he made as he thrust inside me was pure, unrestrained male, and I cried out, exulting as he crammed himself into the tight sheath of my sex in a hilt-deep penetration.
His hands spanned my waist and I arched back for him once more, locking both my heels into his ass and surrendering to the confidence of his hold. His muscles bunched and my arms outstretched, giving myself over to the beautiful power of him. With the wind ruffling my hair, I felt like I was flying, every thrust of Konstantyn’s hips pushing me towards the stars. His rhythm climbed and my passion mounted with it, my cries spilling free when he rammed between my thighs and pleasure melted me around his cock.
Again and again, he surged inside me, deeper, wilder, his tempo gaining momentum until I was gripping the balcony with sweat-slicked fingers and spurring my heels into his clenching muscle, urging him to take me with everything he had.
He was magnificent, a powerhouse of tireless, perfectly honed masculinity, and his face, God those green-flecked eyes devoured me. Glazed with lust, they were a mirror to my own emotion, and I locked onto them, even as starbursts of pleasure winked across my vision. Kicking impossibly deeper, the head of his cock kissed a place inside of me that had me screaming his name out to the city lights. Low in my belly, the tight-coiled knot detonated into a million sparks of ecstasy that danced across my skin and curled my toes and fingers into claws of grasping passion. I came in vicious, rhythmic waves that clenched around Konstantyn’s thick shaft, milking him, demanding he fall as I was falling. My cry was lost as he let go on a roar, his own release coming hard on my spurring heels, and I luxuriated in the sound of my name from his lips, contracting around him in ripples as his palms bruised into my sweat-sheened skin. I relished the powerful slap of his thighs against my ass, imprinting the surging hot pulses of his ecstasy inside me.
Breathing ragged, thighs trembling, we clung to each other as we rode out the storm, and I held onto the one thing that felt real, when my life had come so close to being over.
I’m not entirely sure how we got back inside. Once our legs got moving again, I couldn’t stop kissing him, and that led to his shirt being left on the balcony, those beautiful suit trousers flung over it. My knees had wood burn and I was painted in bruises, but draped across his stomach on the bed, I was in a lazy, mussed haze of satiation and love. It was a contentment I hadn’t felt in a long time. I thumbed through the newspaper as Konstantyn ran his hand along my thigh, and my skin warmed.
“How do you afford a place like this?” It came out random, but I’d been thin
king about it, right at the back of my head.
“It’s a rental.” Konstantyn replied, and his voice was sex-sleepy and satisfied, rumbling beneath me.
“Yeah, but…” I crooked him a dubious eyebrow raise and he laughed. I guess my tone told him I was playfully imagining nefarious dealings with men under bridges.
He pinched my inner thigh, rubbing the sting when I squirmed. “Remember I told you my grandpa was a musician?”
I nodded. “The one who gave you the bullet?”
“Yes, that one. He left me his cello when he died. I inherited it when I turned twenty-one. Turns out it was a Stradivarius.” He let that hang as my brows crawled into my hairline. Yeah, alright. He could afford it. Those things sold for millions.
I turned the page and Dante’s name jumped out at me from amongst a hundred different sentences. He’d been deported, and it was all over the news.
“Hmmm.”
“Hmmm?” Konstantyn repeated. I could hear his smile.
“I just can’t stop thinking about it all.” I let the pages flutter shut as Konstantyn’s abs crunched beneath me and his voice growled a throaty, accented purr to my ear.
“Let me distract you.” He bit a kiss to my bare shoulder, and ran his hand over my ass, and the tattoo that was starkly emblazoned on it.
His fingertip traced the serpent, and I shivered at the sensation.
“You can have it removed,” he said.
He must have mistaken the tremor. I shook my head and parted my thighs slightly to alleviate the fire he was stoking between them with his absent caresses. “I’m thinking about keeping it.”
“Yeah?” The surprise in his voice made me smile.
“Yeah. Seeing as it was you that branded me. And now we have matching ink.”
He laughed, then his lips touched my shoulder again and I ran my hand back over the short bristles of his hair.
Konstantyn was still technically AWOL, but now I knew the UK wasn’t in any hurry to extradite the hero who’d rescued twelve victims from a sex ring, it just left me with one question: What would he do now?
“There’s more to tell you.” He said softly into the silence surrounding my thoughts.
“There is?”
“Umhmm. You didn’t give me a chance to finish earlier.”
“Oh I don’t know. I’d say you finished like a champion.” I purred.
His grin was smug, appreciative. “Who says I’m done with you?” His fingers slipped up my inner thigh and my head fell back, opening up the line of my throat to his kisses.
I moaned. “You are a wicked man.”
“You love it, demon girl” he teased, smacking my ass.
I glared at him, but failed miserably to hold back laughter. “I do,” I conceded.
“I love you too Neva.”
Dammit but I liked the sound of that. His lips touched the corner of my mouth and I twisted to capture him in a kiss.
“You think there’s any truth in all that occult stuff? Are we cursed?” I traced the faint outline of the handprint on his chest.
Konstantyn’s shoulder lifted in an unsettled shrug. “I hope we never find out. Dante believed, but he was a desperate man.”
“And the others?” There had been so many, it made you wonder if there was something beyond the sheep mentality.
“Perverts mostly. Sexual deviants and pain junkies, along for the ride.”
I hummed thoughtfully and nodded. “Gracie said there were others though, based in Europe.”
“Yeah, hardcore occult groups. And that brings me back to what I need to talk to you about.”
Oh yeah. I caught his gaze and tried not to get distracted again.
His hand filtered into my hair, and I got the sense he was holding on to me in case I freaked out on him again.
“When the British government recruited me, I told them I wanted in on the operation exposing the others.”
“But–” I’d only got him back, and he was planning to leave?
“Shhh. Hear me out,” he said, pressing a fingertip to my lips. I shushed, but my heart was thumping against my rib cage like a trapped bird. “I also told them I wanted a partner.”
I blinked at him a few times. “A partner? You mean...”
“You. Why not? You’re perfect. You have no real ties here, you’re agile, fearless. You proved you can think on your feet, and deep down, I know you’re still stoking a fire for revenge.”
I couldn’t deny it. A thrill shot through my belly at the thought.
“It would be dangerous,” he added, but it didn’t sound like he was trying to dissuade me, more the opposite.
“But we’d be together?” My lips curved up at the corners and his inched up in response, steadily getting wider.
“Yeah.”
“I’m in,” I said, and just like that, I bit the bullet.
*******
Enjoyed the book? Please consider leaving a review wherever you purchased Infernal. It’s a great way to support Indie authors.
Sign up HERE for notifications about new releases and giveaways.
Find us at www.RavenandBlack.blogspot.com
BY THE SAME AUTHORS
THE BECOMING TRILOGY. Irish myths, never sexier.
Book 1 Becoming Red FREE
Book 2 Becoming Bad
Book 3 Becoming Blood
The Becoming Trilogy box set edition
THE ROUSING
The Rousing. A Celtic in the blood novella.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Front cover images: Copyright Coka and Mapicss
2014
All images used under license from canstockphoto.com
With heartfelt thanks to our families, friends, supporters and beta readers - for your encouragement, continued support and much-valued feedback
INFERNAL
BY THE SAME AUTHORS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
BY THE SAME AUTHORS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
