by Kim Knox
Ash closed her eyes and let herself be held by Lucas. He stroked a warm hand down her spine and it was soothing rather than sensual. It let the myriad questions firing through her brain find some form of order. “You heard? You saw?”
“Distantly.” Lucas moved, eased the tangle of their bodies so that she sat on his lap and his arms still held her. “I could see and hear, almost touch the place the marker showed to you. But being Kairas…” He snorted. “Well, it explains a lot.”
“Kairas?”
“There’s a myth about one of the lines that feeds into the current imperial family.” Marek stopped his stride across the room. Light slanted over his face, dropping his tense expression into heavy shadow. “That they ruled here because the patriarch fathered a child with a Kairas, a demon from the east.” His mouth thinned and she felt his hard glare. Lucas’ hand tightened against her hip, his strength an armor against Marek’s anger. “The imperial dark souls.”
The words sank through her. She met Marek’s narrowed gaze. “I’m like you?”
Lucas was the one who answered. “A different breed,” he murmured. “Marek and I are Dardanas, descended from a demon who found a home in the far north.”
Anger flickered in Marek’s eyes. Yes, he was still having trouble accepting his demon heritage. And now that made two of them. “So the emperor is a dark soul?”
“No.” Marek shook his head. “I know him. There’s not a glimmer of magic in his blood.” He ran his hands through his hair. “They’re using dark soul blood to secure a dark soul object. The power it’s guarding must be terrifying.”
“A beast…” She shivered. “It was some form of animal.”
“Impossible—”
“I was there, Marek. I felt the thing nearly eat me.” Lucas’ palm stroking slow and even down her spine eased the anger from her blood. “It showed me a broken temple, an arena—I don’t know—something old and vast, built under a burning sun. Something swept around me, invisible, powerful…growling.” She held down a shiver. “It bit into my chest. If I hadn’t been the right candidate—the protector of the marker—it would’ve eaten me whole.”
“I need access to my books,” Marek muttered. “I need to study Bukhara’s early history.” His shoulders lifted. “It’s unlikely that they’ve broken into the cellar—”
“That’s insane!” Ash stared at him. He couldn’t risk going back to his townhouse. It would be crawling with custodians, no doubt trying to break into the very room he wanted to go back to. “You have no guarantee that they won’t have broken past your magic.”
He shrugged. “We need to get to whatever this is first.”
“Why?”
He pulled on his leather tunic, buckling the straps across his chest. “Because if they get to it first…” He yanked the last leather strap. “No one is meant to have an artifact from the time of ancient magic. No one. Anyone who thinks they can control that sort of power? They’re insane.” He ran fingers under his collar, flattening the smoothed leather against his neck. “And we would be the first ones to die.”
He let out a heavy breath. “Lucas, guard her with your life.”
Lucas’ body tensed around her and she could almost feel the push of emotion from him, but he nodded. “With my last breath, primary.”
Marek approached her. He stopped at the edge of the bed and his thumb stroked her cheek, curving around to tease her mouth. “You will know if anything happens to me.” His murmur fell heavy on her and her heart missed a beat. “If it does, leave here, because the magic guarding this place will fail.”
“Marek…” She touched his hand and he pulled in a quick breath.
He leaned forward. His mouth brushed hers, warm, wanted, and she ached to deepen the light, unsatisfactory kiss. Marek eased back and pressed his lips together, tasting her. “If I’m to protect you, then I need to go.”
“Yes.” She couldn’t stop him, she knew that. “Be careful.” The words sounded trite, obvious, but she had to say them. Both men had eased under her skin in too short a time and she couldn’t fight the connection. She didn’t want to. “Please?”
He twitched a smile and the heat in his gaze rushed through her blood. “I promise.” Marek stepped back and the hard mask of a custodian fell down over his face. He turned, raided the bag on the table for bread and fruit before he disappeared through the archway without a backward glance.
Ash let out a slow breath. “He shouldn’t have gone alone.”
“You’re safer here. If we were with him, then he would have us to worry about too.”
“I don’t understand any of this.”
“What’s to understand?” Lucas teased the fabric of her tunic over her leg. “We are together. We will be for as long as we desire it.”
She stopped his hand, pressing it to her thigh. The touch of him against her skin spiraled fresh need through her flesh, but she had to deny it. He would not avoid her questions with sex…however much she wanted him to. “Rani was in the sanctuary with me. Not my memory, but there with me. He used magic against me.”
“Ash…” His fingers pushed under hers, easing her hand up her thigh and exposing more skin to his touch. “You live in Bukhara, home to so many people from over the world. Slaves captured in numerous wars, pilgrims, others drawn by the prospect of gold. The lure of the city hasn’t changed since I was bound in gold. So many people. Bloodlines mix. He could have magic in his veins, as you have a distant but powerful connection to Kairas.” His hand swept over the top of her thigh and teased the sensitive inner skin. His cock twitched against her leg. “And the best thing we can do now is get naked.”
Ash lifted her eyebrows. “Really?”
Lucas’ lips twitched, but there was a serious cast to his eyes. “What we are, a female with her primary and secondary, is—was—the basis of my home. The stronger the connection between the woman and her men, the more powerful their combined magic.”
His thumb teased the crease of her thigh and she sucked in a sharp breath. “You’re making this up.”
“Is that what you think?” He teased his index finger over her mound, drawing a light, distracting pattern against her skin. “The more I touch you, the more I need and want you.” His lips brushed her ear and the simple touch rushed through her flesh. “You’re Kairas.” Lucas’ ragged breath arched her spine and his finger dipped into her pussy. “Demon races never mix. It’s forbidden.”
“Why?” The question come out a gasp as his finger slipped through her folds to tease her sweet spot. Her hand covered his, cupping his hot palm to her skin. “I need to able to think, Lucas.”
“Why?” With a startled yelp, she found herself on her back and Lucas looming over her. “Bloods never mixed. Just matriarchal demons sniping at each other. But you…” He eased the tunic up over her hip, exposing her to him. “It explains why I can’t resist you. The lure of the forbidden.”
“And Marek?”
His eyes narrowed and that look was on his face again, mirroring his expression when he had witnessed Marek kissing her. A jealous heat that tightened the knot of need in her stomach. And again, the urge to push that emotion gripped her, instinct driving her and she didn’t deny it, all other questions falling away. Was it a part of this new bond? Very probably. It was something they had to do.
“Do you think he wants me?” She stroked her hand down his arm, playing with the hard curve of his muscles. “If only you’d stayed out longer, he and I could have explored more than the dream we shared.” Her smile turned wicked and Lucas’ jaw tightened. “Did I tell you? He pinned me to the wall, Lucas. Fucked me. It was so…”
“Ash, I know what you’re doing.”
His low growl curled through her body and she arched her spine, brushing her pelvis against his, teasing the length of his erection. “What am I doing?”
“You have to bond with the secondary. Make the dream a reality.” His body pressed down, pinning her to the bed. “Taunt me, drive me to strengthening our conne
ction.”
“You make it sound so…dull, Lucas.” She let out a soft sigh. He was right, she needed that from him and she would get it. Instinct drove her every reaction. “Now, Marek would never be dull. He wouldn’t still be talking.”
Lucas kissed her, something as hard and ruthless as Marek himself. Ash groaned, shifting her lips, her legs wanting him inside her. It was right, needed. More than that. She wanted Lucas, liked him…and maybe that had something deeper to it, something wrapped up in the dark soul binding. The insane whisper though her thoughts that she could feel more for him had her spine arching into him and she rubbed herself against his erection.
His hand gripped her ass, urging her harder. “I would love your pussy, but it’s not mine to have.” He muttered the words against her lips. “Only Marek will have that pleasure.”
“Why?”
Heat coiled in her belly and she clung to him, her fingers breaching his tunic. She found the smooth heat of his skin, teased her touch over the hollow of his spine. His soft sigh brushed her ear and she shivered, her thighs tightening against his hips. “I never thought to have the joy of virgin dark soul. That’s the privilege of a prince.” He kissed her mouth, a light gentle teasing. “It’s our rule, Ash. I break the rules and our bond dissolves.”
To break away for him, from Marek, dissolving the start of something so new, so wanted? Her heart turned over, but she didn’t blurt out the words that jumped to her tongue. “I won’t allow that.” No, her instincts stopped her. They had shared something, started something in a place only dark souls could occupy. Now they had to strengthen their bond in the physical world. Whatever was in her blood wanted to push at Lucas, force him into a reaction she didn’t fully understand. “Scared?”
He stilled against her and the next few moments stretched into silence as he simply breathed. His dark eyes held her and the first flickers of fire burned there. “Scared?”
A light smile touched her mouth. “Well, Marek is our primary. We both agree…so that must mean that buried deep down, we both know that he’s better than you. Stronger.” The sparks of fire and rage had her heart pounding and the slick ache in her pussy deepened. This was right, needed…as strange as it was. “Obviously a better man, a better soul than you could ever hope to be.”
Lucas growled against her lips and soft laughter broke from her.
“Is that all you can do?” She pushed her hands against her chest and eased free of him. He let her and his dark gaze followed her as she climbed off the bed. She tugged at her tunic, straightening its length over her thighs, feeling his hot look against her skin. Craving it. Yes, now she’d left the quiet serenity of the temple far behind. And that was right too.
Ash tugged at one of the doors and slatted light cut across the floor of a small kitchen. The cold hearth sat under the closed shutters. Next to it a deep sink with a metal tap jutting out from the cracked plaster walls. Marek’s rooms had to be close to an aqueduct for that luxury.
The wooden frame of the bed creaked and Ash didn’t turn around. Her skin burned and she crossed the wooden floor to the sink. The tap clunked and spat rust and dirt when she turned it on, but soon a trickle of clear water followed. She cupped her hands under it and splashed it to her warmed face.
Her new life was insane.
“So that’s your opinion of me?” Lucas stood in the open doorway, his face in shadow. Anger and the delicious hints of jealousy lurked under his words. “A man not equal to Marek.”
Ash didn’t look up, wiping the moisture from her face and shaking her hands over the sink. Her belly tightened. It took all of her willpower not to shove him against the wall and ravage his mouth. “You are what you are, Lucas. Neither of us can change that. Marek is…” She let out a soft little sigh, all too aware of Lucas’ tension, the rise of fury in his flesh. “Well, you don’t compare.”
“I don’t…” He pressed her against the cold, thin stone of the sink. His fingertips raked over her ass, pulling up her tunic. Ash sucked in a quick breath and gripped the cold edge of the sink. She crushed her eyes shut against the hot flow of desire in her flesh and bit back a gasp as his searching fingers found bare skin. His lips brushed the shell of her ear. “I know this is a part of what we must do.” The pleasure-pain of his teeth nipping her earlobe gripped her flesh. “But I don’t have to accept it, like it.”
“You’ll take it.” She forced scorn into her voice and fought not to push back against the slow rock of his hips against her ass. She could feel him, hard and ready and the ache to simply forget, for him to bend her over and fuck almost overwhelmed her. But she was stronger than that. She’d lain on cold marble and chanted from the third hour to the ninth, ignoring the chill and the bite of hunger. She could follow her duty. And her duty, her instinct at that moment was to drive Lucas’ jealousy, to force a reaction and for him to spill words into her open mind. “Four hundred years as gold, as a shade caught to do the bidding of whoever could read a few words. It’s little wonder that—”
“What?” He pulled her from the sink and pushed her against the cold, cracked plaster of the wall, his body pinning her there. His hard hands gripped her bare hips and he ground himself against her ass. “What am I?”
“Why do you even ask?”
Lucas yanked at her tunic, pulling it roughly over her head. He threw it to the floor. He tugged off his own shirt and the press of his hair-roughened chest to the smooth skin of her spine peaked her nipples. Her pussy tightened.
“So you don’t want me to fuck you?” He grated the rough words into her ear and teased the cleft of her ass. “Bury myself. Take you. Have you scream my name.”
Ash pushed out a laugh. “Without Marek to tell you what to do? I don’t think you could.”
Lucas growled, a low, wild sound that sank deep into her body. He laced a string of bites along her neck to her shoulder and Ash’s fingers curled into fists. She pressed them hard against the wall. Her breath came out in ragged gasps. Damn she wanted him inside her. But she needed his anger, the lack of control that would bind them together, a faster, more certain fix than slow loving.
His hands caressed her ass, his thumbs stroking over the sensitive inner curve of her thighs…and then he knelt.
Ash’s heart missed a beat at the press of his mouth to her rounded cheek. He parted her. “You can’t deny me.”
Chapter Eight
His low voice hinted at his power, the fierce dark soul that ran in his blood. She ached to push back, for his mouth to find her, but she didn’t. Her resistance was everything. “You’re not Marek.”
She cried out at the hot invasion of his tongue into her ass. A hand snaked over her hip and he pulled her to him, his finger dipping into her pussy. Sensation rioted through her and she couldn’t help the escaping whimper. Both men had taken her body…but only in a dream. The physical touch had the first threads of her release already coiling low in her belly.
His tongue pushed, breaching the puckered hole again and again, relentless, tormenting. His fingers bit into her skin and fire chased up her spine, had her empty pussy aching in need. And still her need to push at him, to force him to speak to her, dogged her thoughts. “Is this all you have?”
His growl, burning with fury, ran hot over her skin. A finger replaced his tongue, slick from his mouth and then another followed, stretching her, sinking deeper, harder, faster. Her release pulsed in her flesh, but it wasn’t enough, not nearly enough.
Lucas’ body pressed up against hers, his skin hot, his breathing broken. “This?” His knuckles pushed her skin and the blunt head of his cock teased her hole. He guided it, stroking, teasing over the wetness of her pussy. “I could fuck you here.” His low whisper taunted her and she pushed down her sudden, sharp panic. If he replaced Marek then the start of what they had would end. He groaned at the slide of his cock through her folds. “In the physical world, still a virgin. And I haven’t had one of those for…” He sighed against her shoulder. “I can’t even count the centuries
.” His smile turned sharp. “And it’d be satisfying. Seeing my cock take your virginity.” He rocked his hips faster against her, the blunt head of his cock stroking over her sweet spot so that light danced before her eyes. “Spoil you for your precious primary.”
Her heart twisted. “No.” Her breaths came out in short gasps. “No, Lucas. Fuck me. Take my ass. Please.”
His grin burned against her shoulder. The angle of his hips shifted and she groaned at the push of his cock against her ass. His strong hands gripped her, parted her and he thrust. He breached her hole and the first fire of her release spiraled up through her flesh. “This is mine,” he muttered against her skin. “Never doubt it.”
“Yes…” The word trailed away at the hard stroke of him into her body, the fullness making her heart pound. “Yours.”
He eased back and the tug on her flesh broke a curse from her. She needed him, faster, fucking her, spinning them together, binding them. She met his next thrust and the pleasure-pain of him buried deep in her ass, of his fingers digging hard into her hips, thundered through her blood. “Again.” She hardly recognized the growling woman as herself.
Lucas obeyed, pulled back and stroked deep. Her spine arched and her body rioted. She splayed her hands against the cold wall, bracing herself, the fire in her veins, the dark heat flowing over her skin making her feel like a woman possessed. And she was. She was no longer trapped by being a ward. She was free and as much a dark soul as him.
“Yes…” Lucas’ low, satisfied groan washed over her. “I can feel you now, Ash. Feel what you are. Kairas. Delicious. Forbidden.” He thrust into her again and the ache in her pussy deepened. “Mine.”
A flare of release, short, brief, simply a promise of what was to come swept over her. She met his next thrust and the wild “other” woman broke from her. “Then fuck me.”
