My Soul to Keep

by Sharie Kohler

  He nodded grimly, his mouth hard. “You loved him.”

  “Very much.” For some reason, she resisted adding that she’d loved him like a father. Like the father she’d never had.

  Jonah looked her up and down before glancing to her Louis Vuitton luggage. “It appears that he left you with a comfortable living.”

  “Gervaise was a wealthy man. Quite a bit older. I doubt I could spend his money in several lifetimes.”

  A muscle rippled in his jaw and he suddenly didn’t look so sympathetic. “How fortunate for you.”

  “It’s given me freedom, true. Before I met him, I was barely surviving on the streets.”

  He arched a dark gold eyebrow, his expression smug, as if he understood, knew why she had married Gervaise, which of course he didn’t. He couldn’t understand. Couldn’t understand their relationship, the connection they shared. “I’m glad for you. Hope the price of marrying some old man made it all worthwhile.”

  Anger rolled through her. “Gervaise taught me a great deal,” she defended hotly.

  “I bet.”

  Heat fired her cheeks. “About life, and the arts … how to dress and comport—”

  “I get it. You were a rich man’s toy—”

  Her hand itched to slap his face. She curled her fingers inside her palm. “Get out.”

  He shrugged. “I never thought you would give yourself so cheaply.”

  She opened her mouth to deny the charge, to convince him, to explain. She stopped, shaking her head. He would believe whatever he wanted to. Let him.

  “Why not?” She thrust out her chin. “I gave myself to you. Offered myself freely. Remember that, Jonah?” Even as she asked, she hated herself for mentioning it. Still, the dam had opened and she couldn’t stop the flood of angry waters. “In exchange I received only heartache. Why not make sure the next time I put myself out there for a man, I get something out of it?”

  His eyes glowed, pale light twisting at the centers. “What’s happened to you?”

  “Life.” Her lips curled. “I’ve grown up.”

  “I liked you better before.”

  She laughed hoarsely. “Yeah. Well, I couldn’t tell. You certainly didn’t show it. Not that I care what you think of me anymore.”

  Then something came over her. A bold, brazen part of her she’d never thought to expose to him. Tossing her towel to the floor, she untied the sash of her robe and shrugged it off her shoulders.

  Cool air rushed over her. Her nipples pebbled against the damp silk of her top.

  She approached him slowly, with measured steps and a seductive roll of her hips. “Really, Jonah? You don’t like what I’ve become?” Looking down at him where he sat on the bed, she brought her hand between the vee of her breasts, brushed her fingers down her silk-covered belly. “Don’t you want me? Men do.”

  “And you love that.” His lip peeled back from his teeth in a snarl.

  She stepped between his splayed thighs and dropped her voice. “C’mon, Jonah.” She stroked her hand back up her belly, slowly, palming her breast, gratified to feel her nipples crest against the silk. “You didn’t expect me to stay fifteen forever, did you?”

  His eyes grew brighter, more intense. “I thought you were dead. In my mind, you were always fifteen. I could never have imagined you like this.” His gaze deepened, clung to her, the bright flame writhing in his eyes.

  Her fingers moved to one thin strap, sliding it down her shoulder so that her left breast lay exposed, peaked and wanting. He angled his head, studied her, stared hard, devouring.

  “You liked me well enough in Alaska.”

  “Yeah. Well, that was before you moved into my place and declared yourself a demon slayer in training.”

  “Why should that matter?” she demanded, feeling an unreasonable flash of anger. Would he reject her again?

  With determination burning inside her, she sucked a finger into her mouth, intent on proving him wrong. On breaking him, ruining him for any other.

  Locking her gaze with his unflinching stare, she slipped her wet finger from between her lips and rolled it over her bared nipple.

  “What are you doing?” he rasped, his voice quick.

  Trying to show him she wasn’t the inexperienced girl he had brushed aside before.

  Trying to prove to him that he wanted her. Her—Sorcha.

  Words weren’t needed. Sucking her finger into her mouth again, she repeated the process, laving her nipple until it stood glistening wet and engorged.

  Her breath fell faster, the sound ragged and wet. From his hard stare or his presence or the simple act of arousing herself, she couldn’t know for sure.

  He lifted his hand toward her. Not quickly but not slowly either. She held her breath, waiting for his touch.

  His fingers grasped her bodice, clutching the flimsy neckline in his curling hand. In one move, he ripped the silk clean down the center.

  FOURTEEN

  Sorcha stood before him, naked from the waist up. She fought the urge to cover herself. She knew men liked her body. They’d told her before. Being a dovenatu gave her a certain advantage … provided her with the kind of body women visited gyms and plastic surgeons to achieve.

  She was all lean lines and hollows with curves where they should be. High-tipped, swelling breasts and flaring hips that had eluded her at fifteen.

  He looked her over slowly, leisurely.

  “Do you like what you see?” she asked in a voice that sounded far more confident, far more seductive, than she felt.

  His gaze snapped back to her face. “Who wouldn’t? You’re perfect.”

  Men had said that to her before, too, but from his lips the words sounded different. Hoarsely deep, he sounded as though he meant it. As though he had never seen anything as lovely. She shivered.

  Flattening her hands on his warm chest, she pushed him back on the bed. He dropped easily, willingly, watching her intently with his unblinking gaze.

  She stared at him for a moment before turning toward the cracked bedroom door and closing it.

  Facing him, she advanced, strolled through the soft moon glow. She climbed into bed, working and moving her body in a way that she knew showed it to advantage.

  Back dipped and ass thrust out, she reached around him and pulled back the covers. She didn’t want to talk, wanted only to satisfy the deep burning ache that Jonah had awakened in her from the first moment she’d seen him.

  Maybe that was the real reason she’d come here. Not to learn the tools necessary to avenge Gervaise. Maybe she wanted Jonah to finish what he’d started when he kissed and touched her in the tundra. He was like her. He could satisfy her in ways a human man never could. A few had scratched the surface but never penetrated the deep ache, never gave her true sexual fulfillment.

  Rolling onto her back, she wiggled herself out of her pajama bottoms, all the while feeling his hot stare on her. Swallowing her nervousness, she flattened her feet on the bed and bent her knees. On her back, she dragged her thighs open, splaying herself wide for him.

  There was no part of her not exposed to his view. It was an explicit invitation. A call to mate.

  He stood up from the bed and circled around to look down at her, his gaze roaming, missing nothing, not a bare inch of her. His eyes glowed as bright as the moon watching them through the window. Finally, he spoke. And when he did, it was just one word.

  “No.”

  She jerked. A slap in the face. Just like those years ago.

  Propping herself up on her elbows, she hissed at him, “Can’t handle one of your own kind? Thought it might be an interesting experiment after all … to fuck someone with no fear of breaking him.”

  “And I thought you preferred humans,” he shot back in a voice just as furious.

  She gazed at him, bracing herself for when he would turn away from her. Walk away like before. Her body wept, ached with need. His nearness tormented her. Cool air rolled over her naked body, a dragging kiss. She needed satisfaction. Nee
ded him. And maybe that was it, maybe he sensed that need in her. He’d told her he couldn’t stand to be needed, after all.

  The longer he stood there, staring down at her, unmoving as a giant rock, the hotter her body burned … and her rage. He would do this to her again. Reject her. Humiliate her. No. Not without suffering for it.

  With a curse at him, she slid her hand down her belly and into herself. She played in her moist folds as he watched. “What’s wrong? Afraid you’ll disappoint me? Afraid you can’t measure up to other lovers?”

  “I don’t want to hear about your other lovers,” he growled.

  “No? What do you want, Jonah?” she demanded, her voice a purr as she slipped a finger inside herself. She gasped. His eyes sparked brighter and his nostrils flared, scenting her. As she stroked herself she imagined it was him inside her, dragging against her tightening flesh. Moving with her, against her.

  Her channel clenched around her finger, and she rolled her hips.

  Furious at his stillness, at his absolute composure in the face of her surrender, she whimpered, “What do I have to do?”

  Still he did not move, only watched her as she shook with desire.

  He was immune. Nothing could entice him. He didn’t want her to talk about other lovers? Well, she would do just that. There had only been a couple. Never anyone close, no one she could let in. But he didn’t need to know that. Let him think that after Gervaise parted, she had to install a swinging door in her bedroom.

  “Sometimes I have two, three men in one night. However many it takes.” She thrust her pelvis against her hand. “Maybe you can satisfy me, Jonah. Maybe I won’t require anyone else.”

  He growled low in his throat. The sound was decidedly inhuman and a little frightening, and nothing she’d ever heard from a man she was about to give herself to, but still she continued, pushing him toward the breaking point. “I like it hard, Jonah. And fast. Can you do that?”

  With her free hand, she cupped her breast, squeezing and kneading, rubbing her nipple between her thumb and forefinger.

  His eyes narrowed, impossible to read as he watched her.

  “I love it when I feel out of control. Problem is, I can never do that. I have to stay the one in control …”

  That much was true. Explained her lack of orgasms. Impossible to achieve an orgasm when you’re focusing on staying in control.

  With Jonah, it would never be that way. He was just as strong, stronger even … the one capable of hurting her. Being with him was complete trust. The prospect terrified her. A dark road never traveled. But she desperately wanted to go there.

  Only he still hadn’t spoken, still hadn’t made a move.

  She whimpered in frustration and was about to give up her efforts when he broke.

  He was so fast, a blur on the night she could not have escaped even if she wanted to. He grabbed both her ankles and slid her down the bed until her ass balanced on the edge of the mattress.

  “Is this what you’ve become?” he hissed in her face.

  He released one ankle. She heard the slide of his zipper and her heart seized, the pulse skittering in her throat as she gazed up at his hungry face, his expression stark and pained. She nodded mutely, the sheets cool against her bare back.

  “You want me to use you? Treat you like a whore?”

  His hands moved back to her ankles. He forced her thighs wide, positioning her feet apart. Her bent knees quivered with anticipation. She hungered for his hands to touch her, glide up from her ankles and explore her aching body, her heavy breasts.

  “Touch me,” she pleaded.

  “You’re not in control anymore, remember?” he bit out. “Isn’t that what you wanted? No more men to play with like toys, fuck and toss aside?”

  She opened her mouth to answer him, to admit she had exaggerated that, but all thought fled, the words lost as he buried himself deep inside her with a single shocking thrust, locking himself inside her to the hilt.

  Sensations overwhelmed her. She arched, threw back her head and screamed at the force, at the pulsing thickness of him buried deep, at the pleasure bordering on pain.

  He buried his lips in her hair. “I don’t even know you anymore.” Clutching a fistful of her dark hair, he pulled back to look at her face. She had never thought eyes so bright, so alive with hunger, could appear so dead. So hateful.

  “Did you ever?” she choked out.

  “Oh, I knew you. Maybe better than you did.”

  She was beyond words, unable to disagree.

  His hands circled her ankles like manacles as he worked himself over her, splaying her wide for his pleasure. And hers.

  Her body bounced up and down on the bed from the force of his thrusts. Pressure built, twisting tighter and tighter. A strange, new heat rose until the throb at her core burst open.

  She cried out, splintering apart, but still he thrust himself inside her, invading her so fully, so totally, that he brought her right back to the edge. Tension coiled tightly in her again, rising and building.

  She jerked and clawed against him from his repeated thrusts, desperate for more, faster, harder. He released her ankles and grabbed her by the hips. His fingers dug into her tender flesh. The sensation of his hands gripping her, anchoring her for his assault, reduced her to a boneless mass. Limp as a doll, she fell back, could do little more than surrender, letting him ravage her body as he would.

  As his movements became fiercer, the twisting pressure low in her belly exploded again. She arched, pressed her mouth into his chest and bit down. The impulse to bite him was primal, instinctive. It had never happened before and it horrified her. Still, she couldn’t have stopped herself.

  He hissed and grabbed her by the hair, pulling her back to glare hotly into her wide eyes. She felt his blood trickle down her chin and swiped at it with the back of her hand, disgust with herself at an all-time high.

  She thought she had gone too far, had pushed him too far, but he only stared at her as he continued to pump in and out of her. As if he couldn’t stop even if his life depended on it. As if someone held a gun to his head and demanded he move, work himself over her until he spent every last drop of himself inside her.

  As the pressure built within her yet again, she arched her pelvis, writhing and pumping her hips against the clasp of his hands, hot and eager, pushing and pulling at his cock with her body.

  She didn’t know how long they went on like this. Only that it was longer than any man had ever lasted with her before. Time blurred. Colors spun before her eyes.

  It felt unreal, too overwhelming, too intense, as if she were out of her body, floating above herself and watching.

  She told herself it was because he was a dovenatu. Like her. Not because he was Jonah. Not because he was someone special to her.

  Suddenly his thrusts became deeper, jarring her to her very bones. Even in the gloom, she saw his face shift, blur before her eyes, flash in and out, cheekbones sharpening, becoming more angular, his flesh more bronze.

  He dropped over her then, his blunt teeth biting down on her shoulder as he came inside her, spilled himself deep. She felt him break her skin, mark her as he reached climax. Warmth gushed over her shoulder.

  She joined him, shrieking out her release. Grabbing a fistful of his hair in her hand, she twisted the ends as he wrung yet another orgasm from her.

  Gasping as though he’d finished a marathon, he rolled onto his back beside her.

  “Wow.” He spat out the word, more like a grunt than actual speech.

  “Yeah,” she breathed, dragging a hand down her perspiring cheek. Wow. How was she ever going to have sex with a normal man after this? Nothing could compare. It’d be liked eating canned soup after tasting lobster bisque from her favorite bistro.

  He rolled his head to study her. She was already watching him. Something she read in his eyes told her he was thinking the same thing she was. There was no going back after this.

  “Have you slept with a dovenatu before?” she
asked, couldn’t help asking. She wanted to know. Needed to know.

  “No. Haven’t come across too many of us.”

  Their gazes clung, words passing without being uttered. Suddenly he stood and removed the last of his clothes.

  “What are you doing?”

  He picked up one of the pillows that that fallen to the floor and tossed it back to the head of the bed. “Getting ready for bed.”

  “I thought you were sleeping on the couch.”

  His mouth gave the barest twitch. “Now what would be the point in that anymore?”

  She swallowed, feeling suddenly vulnerable. Sex was one thing, but sleeping together? Side by side? “Is this a permanent arrangement?”

  “As long as you’re here,” he answered. “I don’t see us going back now, do you? Now that we’ve had each other?”

  “No,” she murmured, snatching up her garments. “Not much point.” Only it would be harder to leave once he finished training her. Harder to walk away from him and his bed. Pulling on her pajamas, she gave her head a small shake and slipped back beneath the cool sheets. Turning on her side, she tried not to roll into him when the bed dipped from his weight. Instead, she reminded herself that she had initiated this. Begged for it, lied and taunted him until he had no choice.

  She winced as she recalled that they weren’t alone in the condo. “Guess Darby knows what we’ve been up to.”

  “I think the people in the penthouse above us know.”

  She bit back a giggle. Just nerves, she mused. None of this amused her. Nothing humorous about the fact that she just slept with Jonah.

  “Does it bother you that she knows?” Jonah asked.

  “A little,” she admitted, and a little not. “She’s in love with you, you know.”

  “She’s in love with the idea of me as her coven’s slayer. It would make it easier if she and I hooked up … easier to keep me tied to the coven. She’s the youngest member. The other witches are older … they place a lot of responsibility and pressure on her.”

  Was that pity in his voice? Admiration? Sorcha didn’t like it, whatever it was. She didn’t like knowing he felt anything for Darby that he didn’t feel for her.