by Aja James
She purred contentedly in his embrace, almost drifting off to sleep, but she remembered the request that Inanna had made and shared it with him now.
“Inanna asked us to stay with them, either at the Shield or at their home in New York City. What do you think?”
He kissed her shoulder as he considered.
“I think I want you all to myself,” he finally replied, “though of course we will see Inanna, Gabriel and Benji very often. I want our ‘honeymoon’ to last at least a few hundred years.”
She smiled.
“That sounds heavenly. What would you like to do together, just the two of us? If you could wish for anything in the world, what would you like to do?”
He breathed deeply, his lips quirking with wistfulness.
“I’d like to help you keep the shop you have. Dark Dreams, is it called?”
She nodded.
“The first time I set foot inside I felt like I was finally home,” he recalled. “I love the smell of the place. I love what you do with the treasures you collected, giving them to those who truly need them. If I could have lived a normal, peaceful life, I would have continued my wood and ironworks. Perhaps I can help fill your shelves with the trinkets I make.”
“I’d like that above all things,” she sighed. “But the wooden leopard with its blue ribbon is mine alone. I would have kept the comb too, but…”
“You gave it to someone who needed it more,” he finished for her.
“Will you make me another?” she asked shyly.
“As many as you like,” he kissed her mouth. “One for every birthday that I missed.”
She laughed in delight. “Where will I store over four thousand combs!”
“Give them away if you like,” he said, “they will all be yours to do with as you please.”
She considered this and sobered. He sensed the shift in her mood.
“I have never given you a name day gift,” she murmured.
“You have given me the best gift of all—you gave me a daughter.”
She grasped his hand in hers and squeezed. She wanted to give him so much more.
“You came to see me when you were with child,” he murmured against her hair, his hand wandering from her sex to her belly, trying to imagine what she would have felt like with her body swollen with his seed.
“Yes,” she replied, “when I was a few months along.”
“You must have been frightened,” he worried, “you must have hated me.”
“I was,” she said, “and I did. But I was also over the moon with happiness that I was having something of yours—ours. That I would always have a child to love. I hoped they would look like you.”
“But then you saw me…”
She craned her neck back and kissed his jaw.
“I remember now what I really saw. You were alone in your tent that night. The blankets twisted around your body. You were in the throes of a nightmare.”
She breathed deeply as she recalled the truth, not the venom induced hallucination.
“You called out my name.”
His arms tightened around her, his face buried in her hair.
“Ishtar,” he whispered.
“Yes,” she answered, sighing shakily. “I’m sorry I ever doubted you.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you when you needed me,” he returned. “Was the birthing very difficult?”
She gave a small shrug to ease his mind. The childbirth had been excruciatingly long and difficult. She’d labored for almost two whole days. She thought she’d die from it, but she refused to give in until her babies were born.
“The most difficult part was not the birthing process itself but letting my babies go.”
He stilled behind her, his entire body tensed.
“Babies?”
She nodded and sniffed back tears.
“Twins. A girl and a boy. They took the girl, before I could hold her. They didn’t want me to get attached. And they were right, because if I’d held her even for a moment, I never would have had the strength to give her up.”
He held her tighter.
“They took the boy too. I only caught a glimpse of his hair. It was dark. I lost consciousness after his birth, and when I asked after I awoke, they said he’d been too frail to survive. He hadn’t breathed after I pushed him out.”
Tal shuddered as a wave of indescribable pain seized him, the agony of a father who lost a son.
“They?”
“Anunit and Enlil,” she recalled. “It was Enlil who brought Inanna to you. I made him swear to do it before the birthing. He owed me a favor for refusing to Mate him. I knew with certainty that he would fulfill his debt. I didn’t even know there were two of them until after Inanna had been born, yet the contractions didn’t end. I didn’t know whether Inanna would be Pure or Dark, but I wished and prayed that she would be like you, so that I could send her to you. Because regardless of whether my babies were boy or girl, Pure or Dark, I would not have been able to keep them safe with me.”
They were silent for a long time, clutching almost desperately to each other in shared pain.
Then, Tal turned her so that she faced him, his breathing quickening with agitation.
“You do not know for certain that our son died?”
“Anunit told me that he’d died, but when I pressed Enlil, he said he’d given him to the human wet nurse but he couldn’t be certain the weak babe survived.”
Tal held her cheeks in his hands, gazing deeply into her beautiful face.
“Do you think he could be alive—our son?” he whispered, too afraid to voice the hope aloud.
Her smile was so radiant it nearly blinded him anew.
“I know it. I feel it. He is alive, my love, and we will find him together.”
Epilogue
It’s amazing what modern human medicine can do.
I have two new eyes with which to see. The irises are almost the exact same shade as the ones I was born with.
The Creature has served me well. Perhaps I shall promote it.
What? You think you’ve heard the last of me? Imagining that I’m somewhere tucked away licking my wounds in defeat?
How little you know me.
My face has healed nicely as well, save a small scar that bisects my right eyebrow and crosses the bridge of my nose. It is not so ugly to look upon. Certainly nothing compared to Medusa’s head of snakes.
I could have had the human surgeon amend it for me, for he knows the intricacies of my Kind and has the skills to operate fast enough to fix the tissues before they healed.
But I’m rather fond of my little battle scar. It reminds me never to fall prey to the same weakness.
Just as the soreness in my heart reminds me with every beat.
I have had a few setbacks, it is true. I lost my Gift—my telekinesis and telepathy. I lost my right-hand and most of his shadow warriors. I lost my plaything, my beautiful monster.
But I am not defeated.
She made a fatal mistake by letting me live, my misguided little sister.
So weak. So soft.
How can she ever hope to best me if she cannot deal the killing blow?
Even if she had ended me, she would not have ended my empire. She would not have stopped the wheels that are already in motion, well-oiled and running smoothly with or without my turning them.
I am like the Hydra that grows two more heads when one is cut off. Unlike my naïve little sister, I have never put all my eggs in one basket. Diversification is key.
Which is why when Enlil Bonded his heart to my blood, I never returned the favor. Just as my mother never fully Bonded to her Dark Mate.
It is weakness to depend on someone else, to be at the mercy of another.
I will never make the same mistake again.
It is prophesized, our never-ending battle: as the light grows ever brighter, so the dark grows ever blacker.
I am Anunit Salamu.
The Dark Star.
Chapter One
Either he was stalking her, or they lived in the same area of NYC, took the same public transportation, at the same times.
In the dead of night.
Clara’s bet was on the stalking.
But why would someone like him—the most beautiful thing she’d ever clapped eyes on—be stalking someone like her? An ordinary redheaded art teacher with innumerable freckles?
At least she had the “glow of youth,” was physically robust, and her hair shone like waves of molten gold in sunlight.
Or so she’d been told by an ex-boyfriend who dabbled in unoriginal poetry.
She thought of her stalker as a “thing,” not a person, not because she was objectifying him (even though it’s very tempting to do so when someone was that inhumanly gorgeous), but because in her mental dictionary, “thing” was all-inclusive.
She lumped into the comparison paintings by Renaissance masters, sculptures by Rodin, Michelangelo, Bernini, Phidias; man-made wonders like the Taj Mahal and natural visions like the aurora borealis (which she’d always wanted to see firsthand), and the coves of Connemara in Ireland, whence her ancestors hailed.
At least, that’s what her DNA results pointed to—through a discounted service she bought with 23andme.com—that a large portion of her genes were Irish. She just imagined she was from an idyllic place like Connemara. And maybe had a kind faerie or two in her genealogy.
And of course, her comparison included all living things as well.
The point being: the man making his way toward her on the midnight bus from Hell’s Kitchen to her destination in Brooklyn was the most beautiful thing in the world to Clara’s subjective, female eyes.
She was usually more egalitarian when appreciating beauty, for she found it everywhere, even in things others would deem its opposite. Using the eye of an artist, she’d learned to appreciate beauty in all things. That, and the fact that she was unapologetically a die-hard dreamer and romantic.
There was no equality where this man was concerned, however. No beauty that could ever match his in her eyes.
His beauty was so raw, so elemental and devastating, that it reached physically into her internal organs, deep into her blood and bones, and made the primitively female part of her sit up and growl—mine.
He looked directly into her eyes as that bit of insanity popped into her brain and shone through her no-doubt shimmering eyes, veritably bursting with stars, like the caricatures in Japanese anime.
The electrifying visual connection streaked down her spine like the split of lightning, making every cell in her body hyper aware of this male.
Unconsciously, she wet her lips with anticipation.
Anticipation of what, she didn’t know. She just…
Wanted. Craved. Needed.
She was starved for him. As if she’d been waiting for him all her life. All her lives, if one were the fanciful sort and believed in reincarnation.
Clara was rather fanciful.
Uncomfortable, and extremely, embarrassingly aroused, she lowered her eyes, breaking their connection.
He flowed past her (yes, he actually glided, moving so smoothly he seemed one with the air) to the last row of seats on the bus and sat in the opposite corner behind her.
She surreptitiously inhaled deeply as he passed by, catching a whiff of his fundamentally masculine scent, unspoiled by any cologne, fresh and clean. Bracing, like an icy wind from snowy mountaintops, the breath of the gods.
Lord almighty!
It’s as if he lit a wildfire under her libido with just his looks and his fragrance—and let’s not forget, the sinfully mesmerizing way he moved—because she flushed with pleasure from head to toe, followed immediately by a blaze of carnality and desperate need.
If he really was stalking her for nefarious purposes, she wasn’t sure she cared at this point.
Besides, Clara could take care of herself. And there were a couple more people on the bus in the seats up front, in addition to the bus driver, if she needed backup.
She’d taken self-defense classes and always carried her Pepper spray and Taser. Growing up in an orphanage, working and living alone as a young adult in some not-so-safe places of New York City had taught her to be vigilant and learn how to protect herself.
She’d been aware, for example, that two drunken teenagers had been following her when she was a couple of blocks away from the bus station. She’d been prepared to take action should they start to harass her, something she dealt with more frequently than she’d like.
She always wore her backpack in front so she could access her weapons easily and she’d had her hand in the bag with a firm hold of the Taser. She was also prepared to make a mad dash for the bus if the situation called for flee versus fight. She was a natural sprinter and had outrun all the boys at the orphanage growing up.
But before the inebriated frat boys had gotten too close, her mysterious stalker had walked past between them, leaving them doubled over, choking for breath in his wake.
There had been no sounds of struggle, and when Clara had looked briefly behind her, she hadn’t noticed any out-of-the-way movement from her stalker either; he never broke his stride.
But he did emanate a lethal, don’t-fuck-with-me badass vibe. And the violent glint in his eyes as he passed the teenagers should have given her pause.
Instead, she’d been strangely turned on, imagining that he was protecting her.
Just as likely, he could have been removing the competition so he could assault her himself.
That primitive female part of her, the part she never even knew existed before now, seemed more anticipatory of his potential aggression than fearful.
Maybe she needed to see a shrink.
Clara could see out of the corner of her eye, if she stretched her right eyeball really hard, about a third of him, the side closest to the windows.
He was looking out of them, his profile towards her.
And what a magnificent profile it was. All sharp angles and hard lines and intriguing hollows. Stark contrast between pale alabaster skin and long dark hair.
She almost envied him his hair. If her tresses, in which she rather prided herself, were “molten gold,” his hip-length mane was a waterfall of obsidian.
Yeah, she was that corny. Good thing she was an artist and not a writer.
Speaking of which, Clara dug out her sketchbook from her small backpack, along with a well-used stick of charcoal, and flipped to a new page.
But before she started to draw, a mad-hatter notion filled her head, madder than the other disturbing thoughts she’d been having thus far:
What if she confronted her stalker (if indeed he was that) and asked who he was, what he was doing following her around, and if he gave satisfactory answers, ask him if he’d mind sitting for a few portraits?
The output would be way better than if she furtively sketched him from the faulty memory of stolen glances.
Clara had never been the passive sort. She liked to take the bull by the horns, so to speak.
And this particular “bull” was going to be no different.
*** *** *** ***
Other Books in the Pure/ Dark Ones series:
Book 1, Pure Healing
Book 2, Dark Longing
Book 3, Dark Desires
Book 4, Dark Pleasures
Book 6, Dark Redemption
Book 6.5, Pure Awakening
Dear reader:
Thank you for reading Pure Rapture. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!
Please be sure to leave a review on Amazon, Goodreads and any other social book sharing site of your choice (a short one sentence of what you enjoyed about it will do, but feel free to expound!) I read every single one of my reader's reviews, and I endeavor to take your feedback to heart as I continue developing the series.
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Give me a shout! And happy reading!
Aja James
Glossary of Characters
Jade Cicada: Reigning Queen of the New England vampire hive. Known Gift(s): unclear.
The Chosen: Jade Cicada’s personal guards and advisors.
Maximus Justus Copernicus: The Commander. Leader of the Chosen. Known Gift(s): anticipating opponents’ moves two or three steps in advance, the ability to see through the eyes of his familiar. Weapon of choice: varies, but often fights with familiar Simca.
Simca: Maximus’ familiar. A black panther that is an extension of Maxiums, who can see through her eyes wherever she goes, and feel what she feels.
Ryu Takamura: The Assassin. Executes special, often covert missions for the Queen. Known Gift(s): to be seen. Weapon of choice: Ninja blade or ninjaken.
Devlin Sinclair: The Hunter. Hunts down and eliminates vampire rogues. Ensure security of the New England hive’s borders. Known Gift(s): photographic memory. Weapon of choice: varies, but usually a saber or gun.
Anastasia Zima: The Phoenix. Jade’s head of security, ensures safety of the Queen and assists Maximus with affairs of state. Known Gift(s): telekinesis. Weapon of choice: varies, as a lover and expert in all manner of weapons. Soft spot for daggers.
Alend Ramses: The Sage. Jade’s primary advisor on all things diplomatic. Gift(s): unknown. Weapon of choice: scimitar.
Inanna: The ex-Angel of Death or Angel of the New England vampire hive under Jade Cicada, used to be member of the Chosen. After discovering her Pure Soul as the daughter of a Pure and Dark One and having her Awakening, she is known as the Light Bringer. Human alias: Nana Chastain. Known Gift(s): the ability to see through any material and zoom in and out like a telescope or microscope. Weapon of choice: chained whip.
