Darkness Awakened

by Stephanie Rowe

  Then he released her, and Rajak reached out. She locked wrists with him, and he repeated the words. Then Kerrick and Isaac. Liam.

  Then they fell silent. Waiting for her response?

  Ajax's hand tightened on hers. Accept their declaration, sweetheart, Ajax whispered in her mind.

  She nodded. "I am honored, and I accept."

  All the warriors bowed their heads in a show of respect, and tears stung the back of her eyes. "You all are my family now, aren't you?"

  Xander smiled. "Yes, we are."

  She watched the men as they rose to their feet one by one, their broad shoulders and muscular bodies towering over her.

  Ajax took her hands and turned her to face him. "If you die, a part of all of us will die with you, and be with you always, for eternity. You will never be alone again. Not anymore. Not in life, and not in death. Forever, an Order member will be your escort through the Afterlife and all eternity. You are one of us."

  Tears swelled in her eyes as she looked back at the men.

  All of them were smiling.

  Deadly killers, covered in blood. Grinning. Even Isaac.

  She smiled back as Ajax's hands went around her waist. "If you guys keep this up, I just might end up loving all of you."

  Isaac gave a groan. "Well, fuck that, then. I take it back."

  She laughed as the deep sound of male laughter echoed through the room.

  Ajax leaned forward. "I don't think I've ever heard you laugh like that," he whispered. "It's beautiful."

  She turned to smile at him, and was met by his mouth as he caught her lips in a kiss that made desire flare to life deep inside her.

  Something soft hit her in the back of the head. She broke the kiss and glanced back at the Order as another pillow sailed toward her head before Ajax knocked it away.

  "Get a room," Liam said.

  Ajax grinned. "I hate to say it, but the kid's finally right about something." He took her hand. "We'll be back in a few hours."

  Liam winked at her. "We'll get you if we need you."

  Xander nodded. "And we'll keep an eye on Ashley, don't worry."

  Madison glanced at the knife, the one they'd found on Ashley, and she realized that it wasn't over. Even Zion had said the worst was still coming.

  Then Ajax's hand went to her lower back, and she smiled up at him at the kindness and love in his eyes as he returned the smile, realizing that whatever came now, she could handle.

  Because of him.

  Ajax dropped onto the bed beside Madison, hauling her on top of him. He'd already decided not to make love to her. They were both exhausted, and they had so little time to rest before they had to go back to war.

  The minute Ashley woke up, they'd be off again.

  Faulk had never reappeared after they'd lost Luke, and he didn't know what to think of that. They'd have to visit him again.

  Start all over again, but time was running out.

  Right now...right now, Ajax just wanted to hold Madison.

  She nestled her head under his chin, and he brushed his lips over her hair, inhaling the fresh scent he associated with her now.

  "I'm sorry," she whispered.

  He slipped his hands beneath her shirt, rubbing her back. "For what?"

  "Lying to you. I—"

  He kissed her, swallowing her words. There is nothing to forgive. You were fighting for your sister.

  She pulled back, and he allowed her to. "I'm also so sorry about Viktor. Truly, I am. I can't imagine how I would have survived if Ashley had died." She sighed and lifted her head, propping her chin up on her hands so she could look at him. Her face was lit by the rays of dawn, coming through half-open curtains, her skin a soft golden hue. "I know you loved him."

  "I still do." Ajax was quiet for a minute, letting himself absorb the feeling of Madison's body draped across his, trusting him despite all he was. What he'd put her through... "Does it bother you? My life? What I do? All the killing?" He tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. "Do you still want to go back to Vermont and escape it all?" He swallowed hard and dropped his hand. "I won't keep you here with me if you need to go. I understand."

  She hesitated.

  He couldn't stop the stab of disappointment. Had he expected anything else? Here was a woman who'd been haunted her entire life by one accidental death, who could never afford to let go of her control or someone else would die. A woman who would be forced to kill if she stayed with him, because of what he brought into her life. What had made him dare hope that she wouldn't have a problem with who he was?

  "It's okay," she said.

  He frowned. "What does that mean?"

  "It means..." Madison wrinkled her nose while she tried to think of how to explain it, and he found himself tensing. Hoping. "It means that it's part of what makes you who you are. Without it, you're not you. And that would be wrong. It's your whole package that I fell in love with."

  "But what about what it does to you?"

  She smiled and wiggled up his body so she could press her lips lightly to his. "It's who I am," she said. "I've been hiding for so long, and it's been horrible. But you taught me how to face it, to no longer be afraid of who I am, or ashamed. I think I have to be in a place where I can occasionally release a pent-up Illusion, and with you around, I'll probably be able to do some good with it, instead of hurting innocents."

  He cupped her face, his eyes blazing. "I love you, Madison. I don't care if you're dark, and I'll never let your Illusions destroy you, I swear. I will always protect you. Always."

  The intensity in his voice went straight to Madison's heart, and the tension she'd been holding for so long finally began to ease. Despite his harsh edges and the rules he lived by, Ajax was her rock in a world that had been sliding out of control. Her support when she felt like she couldn't take it anymore. Her foundation, and her heart. "Kiss me, Ajax," she whispered. "I need you to kiss me."

  He didn't ask why. He simply tightened his grip on her, moved her higher up on his chest so he could reach her, then kissed her.

  The moment the tender softness of his mouth embraced hers, her insides unclenched and she sighed with relief and pleasure. This is what I needed.

  His hands went to her hair and he deepened the kiss. I need it too, sheva. I'll never get enough of you. Ever. And now that the bond has made you immortal, ever means forever, and that's how long I will hold you in my heart and my life.

  The earnestness underlying his words flowed through her, sending a spiral of heat and warmth and something else, a belonging. She whispered his name as his hands slipped under her jeans and his knuckles kneaded her bottom, and her body began to move against him, desire blossoming deep in her core as he hardened beneath her, responding to her, needing her.

  She sat up and straddled him as she tugged her shirt over her head, his hands sliding up her ribs and over her breasts as she exposed them to the cool dawn air. His gaze settled on her breasts, and she felt a shiver of excitement at his intense perusal, her nipples hardening at the first touch of a breeze.

  He cupped her breasts, then raised his upper body so he could kiss each one. A tender kiss that made her tremble, then she smiled as he scraped his teeth across her nipple. His hands supported her lower back, and she leaned back into his grasp, the muscles of his forearms hard against her sides. She drank in his strength, ran her hands over the tightness of his biceps, and relinquished herself to him.

  My mate. My love.

  Her heart seemed to melt at his tenderness as he whispered the endearment. Yes, she whispered back. Your love. My love. Together.

  He shrugged out of his jacket as he trailed his lips over her collarbone, nipping and scraping, sending chills through her body.

  He tossed his coat behind her, then eased her down on the comforter, his motions so gentle and tender, as if he were afraid to break her. "This time, it will be the way I've wanted to make love to you since the beginning," he whispered as he bent to kiss her belly, his tongue teasing into the crevice
of her navel as his fingers unfastened her jeans and he began to slide them over her hips.

  Excitement flared through her, and she lifted her hips as he trailed kisses down her belly, following the path of her pants as he swept them off her. His mouth tangled in her curls, and then his hot mouth between her legs made her jerk as he swept his tongue through her folds.

  Let it go, sweetheart. His voice was a whisper in her mind, but she felt the tremor in his voice as he fought to keep his own desire under control. As if sensing her touching his mind, he pulled her into his mind, and her body convulsed when she felt his need for her, his lust, his raging desire.

  She grabbed for him and found the bare skin of his shoulders flexing beneath her grip as he wrapped his hands around her legs and parted them further, stretching her as far as she could go, exposing her until she had no defenses, no protection, nothing. She was at his mercy...she shuddered at the knowledge, at the awareness that he controlled her, that she was putting herself into his hands, thrilled in the sensation of giving herself over to him.

  You are mine, he growled as his fingers thrust into her.

  The orgasm was explosive, rising up from the depths of her soul so fast and so unexpectedly she screamed. Ajax kept his fingers deep inside her as he caught her mouth in his, driving the orgasm on and on, as her body shrieked with the pressure of the release, the cycle of power seizing her until she thought she couldn't survive it.

  But the moment it faded, while her body was still trembling with the aftershocks, Ajax shifted and she heard his jeans hit the floor, and then he was back between her legs. Fresh desire tore at her, and she slid her fingers into his hair and pulled his face to hers as his lean hips settled between her thighs. His skin was hot and slick against hers, and his upper body loomed over her. His chest was ripped with muscles and hard under her hands. A man who could keep her safe from anything, if he chose to.

  I'll always protect you, he growled. Never, ever doubt that.

  Her throat tightened at his declaration, and she realized, for the first time in her life, she truly felt safe.

  He reached between them and guided himself into her, and she drank his length and thickness into her body, shuddering at the connection as they became one, at the sense of absolute rightness. He breathed her name as he pulled back and sank more deeply inside her.

  She wrapped her legs around his waist and lifted her hips to meet him as he drove again and again, tension coiling deep inside her as his rhythm intensified, as his control began to slip. As he fell into the desire building inside him, his need, his commitment to her.

  It was against everything he'd been for the last five hundred years, for the duration of his existence, yet his walls had fallen. She felt his commitment to her in every trembling muscle in his body, in the glistening sweat as he struggled to keep control, in the tender way his fingers tangled in her hair and in his reverent kisses as he staked his claim on her body and her spirit and her soul.

  Her eyes began to sting as pressure rose in her body, and she clung to his shoulders as his hips thrust even deeper, penetrating to her very core, and she lifted her knees to draw him deeper, needing more. Emotions swelled in her chest, emotions that were simply her and him, with nothing metaphysical pulling them together. Not this time.

  It was simply them.

  God, Madison. His groan was of complete capitulation, of total surrender as he drove again, and her walls shattered.

  I put my life in your hands, for now and for always. The words sprang unbidden from deep inside her, and his body instantly went rigid as the orgasm hit him, then ripped into her. She clung to him as the tremors wracked her body, and he clasped her tightly against him as they rode the final crest together.

  As one.

  FREE BOOK ALERT! Because you purchased Darkness Awakened: Reimagined during Release Week (or preordered it), you get a FREE copy of my sexy, fun paranormal romance novel Immortally Cursed, the first book in my RITA Award nominated Immortally Sexy series. It's included in this file, like a boxed set, so keep on scrolling to read it!

  Copyright

  Immortally Cursed (an Immortally Sexy novel). Copyright © 2019 by Stephanie Rowe

  * * *

  Note: Originally published in 2006 by Warner Books under the title Date Me, Baby, One More Time by Stephanie Rowe. The 2019 version has been substantially revised and expanded.

  ebook ISBN 13: 978-1-940968-69-8

  Print ISBN 13: 978-1-940968-68-1

  * * *

  Publisher: Authenticity Playground, LLC

  * * *

  Cover design © 2020 by Kelli Ann Morgan, Inspire Creative Services.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, disseminated, or transmitted in any form or by any means or for any use, including recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the author and/or the artist. The only exception is short excerpts or the cover image in reviews. Please be a leading force in respecting the right of authors and artists to protect their work. This is a work of fiction. All the names, characters, organizations, places and events portrayed in this novel or on the cover are either products of the author’s or artist's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author or the artist. There are excerpts from other books by the author in the back of the book.

  Chapter One

  Derek LaValle had less than four minutes to save his cousin's life, break the Curse that would kill him and his twin in a week, and prove to his family that he wasn't insane for believing in curses, dragons, and immortality.

  It was kind of a loaded four minutes.

  Which was why the billionaire, no-carb-soft-pretzel mogul was in a bit of a rush as he vaulted up the crumbling steps of the hovel that his less-than-impressive cousin, Les LaValle, was currently living in.

  As a general rule, it might seem pretty easy to make sure an unemployed pothead doesn't die in the next three and a half minutes. But when it came to thirty-one-year-old LaValle men, it was a little tricky. Like the kind of tricky that boasted a zero percent success rate for the last two hundred years. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. And dead a few more times. For four generations. As odds go, those aren't exactly fantastic ones.

  But Derek had an advantage, because he was the only one who'd realized it was a curse that had been knocking off each LaValle male at the precise moment he turned thirty-one years, forty-six weeks, four days, six hours, three minutes, and five seconds old.

  Yeah. A freaking curse. What are the odds?

  Maybe not that high, under normal circumstances. But if you have in your hot little hands a two-hundred-year-old journal by your ancestor that explains very clearly that the men in your family are cursed, then, yeah, the odds are pretty high that could be what's going on.

  Derek had the journal.

  His family? Not so much on the bandwagon. As in, spend-the-last-ten-years-trying-to-get-Derek-committed not on the bandwagon. Lucky for Derek, he had vast amounts of disposable income and had bought his way to freedom several times.

  In truth, his entire extended family had disowned him because they thought he was a freaking whack job who besmirched the family name with his insanity. Understandable on some levels, but for Derek, breaking the Curse that had damned his entire lineage trumped trying to win his family's approval.

  It was a no brainer. Screw playing by the rules when the rules wind up with you dead, right?

  Derek wasn't super interested in dying in a week, and he sure as hell didn't want his math professor twin brother, Quincy LaValle, to die two minutes after him.

  Which meant he had to break that damned Curse.

  For those unclear on how curses work, it's hard as freaking hell to break a damned curse. Derek was a master of chasing down leads on how to break curses, but guess how many times the assorted mumbo jumbo tricks and other stuff had worked?

  That's right. Zero. A
big fat goose egg.

  So, now, it had come down to this: break the Curse by beating it mano-a-mano in the battle for his cousin's life or death. Derek had come armed (thank you, baseball bat, for being a deadly weapon masquerading as sporting equipment) and ready to fight.

  Yeah, granted, keeping Les alive wasn't exactly a public service, and might even be considered criminal in some societies with basic human morals, but death was death, and Derek was so not going there right now.

  But Les was not making it easy.

  The disbelieving bastard had been avoiding Derek for the last two weeks, from the minute Derek had showed up and told him he was keeping him alive.

  And now, death was three minutes away, and Derek still couldn't find his cousin anywhere, which was, obviously, a major impediment to defeating the Curse.

  He was down to his last chance.

  If he didn't find Les here, he'd be out of time, and death would roll on through, thumbing its nose at Derek once again.

  Derek had been by twice already today, but he was trying a third time, because there was literally nowhere else Les could be. He'd been by Les's favorite bars, the park bench, and a couple alleys he liked to pass out in, but Les had been nowhere. The dude had to be home. His life literally didn't include any more possibilities. "Les! It's Derek! Open up!" He gripped his baseball bat tighter as he hammered his fist on the peeling front door.

  Still no answer.

  He tried the doorknob.

  Still locked.

  Derek glanced at his watch. Less than two minutes. Shit.

  Fuck it. He was breaking in.

  Derek shifted the bat to his right hand and sprinted around the side of the house. The rusted gate was closed, wedged in place with a pile of old kegs, a couple bald tires, some strange looking lead pipes, and other thoughtful lawn décor.