The Warlord Wants Forever (Immortals After Dark #1)(15)
Author: Kresley Cole

He brushed her aside and stood, rinsing his seed away, staring at the stunning, evil creature still on her spread knees, hands on her thighs as she panted. The sight of her perfect, generous ass and her wet hair whipped all along her slim back had him stirring yet again.

But she was breathing hard and he knew he’d worked her pitilessly for their first night together. "Rise and come to me."

When she faced him, her eyes were stark, flickering in color, showing how shocked and uncomprehending she was as she stumbled to obey. He felt a stab of guilt, but made himself remember all the aching days he’d spent rolling in pain. The nights he’d sweated from f**king desperately at the very sheets to take relief. She’d reduced him to that.

She was wary, nearing him slowly, and when she was at arm’s length, he said, "Sleep," then caught her as she fell limp. He rinsed and dried her body and his own, then carried her to his bed.

This should have been a time of satisfaction – by Christ, he had a living, breathing Valkyrie in his bed, and she was his Bride – yet there was little. She was utterly under his control, but he wished she didn’t have to be.

Like a natural born vampire, he hunched over her, dragging the beauty into the shadows with him as he bedded them down in a corner.

Rise.

Myst hazily heard the command, knew she must still be dreaming because her skin was touching another’s, though she hadn’t slept with a lover in memory. She frowned, disconcerted because her body was so pliant, every muscle released of the tension she normally carried. But why was her face pressed against the naked, broad chest of a man? She was surrounded by his delicious scent that made her go warm and liquid. Snuggling closer, she dragged a leg up over his.

She heard a male rumbling sound of pleasure, and her eyes went wide. She shot up, drawing the sheet to her neck. Dread settled over her as the events of the night came back to her mind. She was in a vampire’s bed, here as a slave to his every whim. Or as she figured it, she was in hell.

"Were you dreaming about last night?"

"No," she answered honestly. She’d been thinking about licking every inch of the hard male beneath her.

"How do feel about what we did?"

"We? What you did."

"I only commanded you to take your pleasure. Of your own volition you took me into your mouth." He raised an eyebrow. "Greedily."

She turned away sharply. "Then I feel shame."

"And?" When she frowned at him, he said in his deep voice, "There’s rarely an instance where emotions do not conflict. What else do you feel when you think of last night?"

She recalled being mindless with lust as she had never been before, hungry for his huge shaft. She had wanted to straddle him and slowly work him within her. Shivering at the delicious image, she struggled to keep from admitting her desire. "A-aroused," she bit out.

"Are you aroused now?"

She felt herself blushing deeply. Myst never blushed. "Yes."

"Do you need to come?"

Oh, God, no, how could he ask her this just when she was reliving last night? "Y-yes." She turned from him, curling her knees to her chest. "But I won’t ask you."

"Even when I can give you what you need?"

"The only thing I’ll ask you for is to give me my chain back."

"You’ll get it back when I am convinced you will stay with me," he said. "Explain to me what it is." When she didn’t reply, he grated, "Answer me."

"It’s called the Brisingamen."

"Why do you wear it?"

"Punishment and to protect it."

"Punishment for what?"

She placed a hand out to her side and turned back to him, her green eyes taunting. "When I was only seventeen, I was caught in a compromising position with a demigod of no importance or standing other than his mind-shattering talent at kissing. My family was unamused."

A muscle ticked in his jaw. Demigod? Wroth was a battle-scarred vampire who would never walk in the sun with her.

She studied his expression. "Jealous, vampire? Or do you realize I’m out of your league?"

He ignored her words. "So your family punished you with a vulnerability that gave men control of your body? How many have had it, commanding you to f**k them for your very life?" When she glared at him, he calmly said, "Answer. Fully."

"There was no vulnerability. It has never been broken. I’ve been tossed by it, caught by it, even held above a pit of boiling tar by it. I’d tried to have it smelted from me in the olden days and then lasered recently. Nothing could touch the integrity of the chain before…"

"Before I pulled it free like a thread? So I’m the first." This pleased him and he exhaled in relief, only to immediately frown. "You don’t think it’s more than coincidental that you were given to me over all other females in any time and place to be my Bride, just as I’ve freed you from something that no man has been able to before?"

She clenched her jaw.

"How do you find those facts? Answer honestly. Now."

"I find them… They might be… It might be fated," she bit out.

"We might be fated." He’d already known this without doubt. He couldn’t believe his heart would beat for a woman that could never love him back. Of course, she’d said there’d been others she’d blooded – then killed.

"Yes, but just because we’ve been set up by a fate with a sick sense of humor doesn’t mean my feelings about you will change. Are you going to keep me prisoner for eternity?"

"Before I let you go philander with your demigods? Yes."

Her slim shoulders stiffened and she stood.

He lay back, proudly ogling his Bride’s ass as she sauntered around the room, studying her new surroundings. Myst couldn’t merely walk, he’d discovered – her every movement was the stuff of fantasy, her every touch as well. He hadn’t even gotten the chance to claim her last night because he’d been so enthralled with her wet kiss, but he was hard yet again and would remedy that soon.

"So what miraculous feat of engineering brought modern plumbing to this schwag place?"

Schwag? He frowned at her question, watching as she ran her hand along an old papered wall. She opened a rusted shutter and gazed out the window into the night, seeing, he knew, tangled gardens blighted with neglect. He had a sudden urge to make an excuse as to why his home was in this condition.

"You’re actually going to keep me here? Your torture is fiendish and boundless, Wroth."

He clenched his jaw, then said, "As I told you, here is called Blachmount and it used to be awing and will be so again, but the estate’s been abandoned for many years. While I searched for you, I lived in New Orleans, and in Oblak before that. I only come here on occasion." When he missed his family.