Shadowfae, p.7
Shadowfae, page 7
part #1 of Shadowfae Chronicles Series
“It wasn’t a waste. I . . . umm . . . had a good time.”
He didn’t drop my hand, and my skin burned even hotter. He was teasing my wrist with his fingertip, wearing a tragically innocent look on his face. A shiver whispered up my arm, delicate, genuine, not a contrived shimmer of rapture but honest desire. I thought of my flat, humid and dark, sour with that blue-drenched smell. I didn’t want it to smell of Nyx. I kept Nyx in my heart, where he belonged, not smeared on my floor like excrement. I wanted it to smell of rogan josh, the sweet smoothness of lassi and the dark, fresh aroma of Rajah’s sweat.
I swallowed. “Rajah?”
“Yeah.” He slid his fingers over mine, tracing them one by one, watching, transfixed.
I didn’t pull away. “You’re still here.”
“So I am.” He brought my hand to his beautiful lips, and his clever tongue flickered tingles over my fingertip.
I couldn’t help but gasp at the rush of desire that flooded me, burning, all the way to my hardening nipples, my trembling thighs, the desperate ache starting between my legs. I wanted to slip my finger into his hot mouth so he could suck it. “Didn’t you say something about disappearing?”
He gave a sultry half smile and nibbled my fingertip again, this time grazing it with his teeth. Damn, his wicked mouth turned me on. “Do you want me to disappear?”
God no. I wanted him to undress me, trail his mouth over me, worship me, plunge his tongue between my legs and drink me until I screamed. I shifted closer, and I could feel the beginning of slick wetness down there, where that ache was getting worse, my flesh swelling for him, blood pounding. “You mentioned kissing me good night, too.”
He guided my hand into his satiny black hair, gentle but insistent. “I think I mentioned not kissing you good night, actually.”
“So how’s that looking?” I grabbed a handful, dark locks caressing my wrist, my nails grazing his skin.
“Not good. Keep doing that and I’d say hopeless.” He tossed his head back, sighing in pleasure.
The action brought me even closer, and my tight nipples scraped his chest through my rough linen dress. Pleasure zinged straight to my sex, so immediate that I moaned. He must have felt it, too, because he crushed me against his hard body, his hand leaving mine to cup my waist, strong fingers holding me, supporting me.
I dragged his head down to mine, my fingers clenched in his hair, and his eyes gleamed with anticipation. I was mesmerized. I inhaled, my lips parting, tasting him in advance, that cardamom flavor doing wild things to my pulse. He groaned and bent his tempting lips to mine.
The kiss seared my lips, shocking. Blood throbbed in my clit, and I staggered, faint. Rajah pressed me close, keeping me upright, his lips caressing mine so beautifully, sliding hot over my mouth, taking me exactly where I yearned to go. My mouth sparkled, alive with his energy, not edible and nourishing like Kane’s but pure sex, spearing through me, filling my womb, making my flesh weep with longing.
He danced his tongue lightly over mine, playing, teasing me until I whimpered, begging for more of him. Then his tongue plunged into me, taking me like he might with his cock, long smooth strokes that had me gasping and locking my arms around his neck, pressing against him to feel his straining erection.
The taste of him made me drunk and reckless. God, I wanted him filling me. A man who cared what I thought, who actually gave a damn what I wanted. And it wasn’t like it could ruin our friendship. Nothing to ruin. Just because I told him my most humiliating secret, and he not only sympathized but actually understood, didn’t mean I cared, right? And it certainly didn’t mean he did.
But I knew from the way we kissed, the way his body responded, that he craved me, too, wanted to take me hard, with his cock, his tongue, his deft fingers, everything. My breasts ached against him, burning for him to suck them, and my swollen clit demanded the same. I hadn’t wanted like this in an age. My eyelids swelled, treacherous tears cool on my hot cheeks.
He gentled the kiss, his mouth leaving mine to brush the tears away, his lips tender and soft on my face. “Good night, Jade.”
Urgency speared through my veins. He probably didn’t like me, not really. Just liked turning me on, liked my body and the idea of fucking me, another way he could get one up on Kane. But I didn’t care. I twisted my fingers in his hair, yearning for him.
“Stay.” Hell, that sounded desperate. I was desperate. For him.
He caught his breath, closing his eyes for a moment. “Don’t. Please. You’re upset, you don’t really . . . I can’t.” He sighed, reluctant, and gently but firmly set me away from him.
“I’m okay. Really. I just . . .” But I couldn’t stop the tears falling. It was that easy for him to take it or leave it. He didn’t really care what I wanted. Just some mortal remnant of his conscience, stopping him from screwing a woman in tears.
He bit his lip and lifted his hand to my face, but checked it before he touched me. Instead he reached over to trace his fingertip in the dusty glass on my door. Digits. His phone number. “Just call me if you need anything, okay?”
And before I could say anything, he’d vanished, only his delicious scent lingering.
7
Rajahni Seth stalks down the dark street, his shadow long and black like a hellish shade. He’s seething, his palms burning and lust trembling in his roaring blood. That Jade. Like her. Want her. Damn her.
So delicate, almost translucent in her beauty, yet wild and passionate, sighing into him like she meant it, the acid scent of her wet sex—wet for him—seeping over her to drown him. His cock aches to fill her, bring her off, make her scream. His mouth waters at the thought of tonguing her hard little nipples, her smooth flat belly, the fragrant creases at the tops of her thighs. Wrapping his lips around her secret flesh, feeling her blossom and come in his mouth, with no thought for soultrap or nourishment or thrall, only her pleasure and his, over and over . . .
He kicks at a pebble, sending it skipping into the gutter. He wants her, so hot and hard, his desire almost blots out the torrid shock of her words from a few minutes ago.
But not quite.
Vorenus Luna. Hearing the name on Jade’s lips nearly floored him. The face floats in his mind, the memory nearly four hundred years gone but still fresh, bleeding.
Rash hatred fills him, mixing seductively with his lust. Luna. Trickster, thief, confidence artist, oozing latent aptitude like he oozed sex appeal. A magnificent predator. They’d been enemies, fierce competitors, reluctant but compelled colleagues, attracted by some fell magnetism of mischief. They’d whispered in dark ocean grottoes with demons, made love to soul-stealing fae in candlelit stone halls, dragged ghosts screaming from their rest to demand the answers to death itself, just for the sheer hell of it all.
Until Luna decided he wanted the power more than he wanted the fun, and betrayed Rajah to Kane in return for immortality.
Luna is here. In Melbourne. The lost echoes of Rajah’s power call to him, in the whisper of the wind at midnight and the electric buzz of neon. But he can feel Luna in his blood, too, in the same cells that sparkle in delight at the sweet potential whetting this infant city’s pristine air. Luna will have sensed that also, with whisper-sharp perception both stolen and innate, and if there’s one thing our Luna will never miss, it’s a party.
Sweat curls around the rolled edges of Rajah’s bangles, running over the magic words inscribed there. Odium—hatred—he’s done with. Next comes primordium—the origin—and primordium has Vorenus Luna written all over it. The origin of his thrall. He just knows that when he finds Luna—which was what he intended to see Angelo Valenti about tonight, before he got distracted by a stunning handful of intoxicating, sexy woman—when he finds Luna, that aura will leap out like wicked sunshine.
He wonders how long before Jade realizes the same thing.
He doesn’t know what odium means to her. It could be anyone. But from the heart-wrenching story she told tonight, Luna and primordium are one and the same.
They can’t both drink Luna’s soul. And if they don’t drink Luna’s soul, they can’t be free. Frustration claws at his heart, and he almost wishes he’d left her bleeding on the footpath by Valentino’s. Why did it have to be her? Why now?
For four hundred years, Rajah would have sent any soul on earth to hell in order to be free. But Jade engages him like no other in all those centuries. Never mind that tonight he couldn’t take his eyes off the smooth inviting shape of her hips, her kissable breasts, that tiny bud of a mouth he wanted to claim over and over. Her heartfelt misery calls to him, makes him forget thrall and freedom and centuries of servitude. He wants to shield her from her sorrow, thrill her, prove to her with wits and humor and the sheer joy of living that death isn’t the only answer to thrall.
The hottest night of wild pounding sex she ever had might help, too.
He grits his teeth, painful, and in his turmoil he flickers in and out of sight like a misbegotten shade, the air shimmering and drifting around him. He’s thinking with his hard-on, and he knows it. His heart is his own. Not to be owned or shackled, no matter how enticing the chains. If he has to use all his wiles to steal Luna away from under Jade’s cute little nose, he’ll do it. Let her hate him forever. He’ll be free. That’s all that matters.
But for some reason his heart aches, and his thoughts seethe so dark and bitter that he doesn’t notice where he’s going, not until the yellow lightglobes of the theater glare in his eyes and crowds jostle around him. Tonight’s show of Lloyd Webber at the Princess is letting out, and chattering music theater fans mill on the footpath beneath the shining cantilever. He pushes through, fingers tensing at his sides, and slips down the side street into the dark.
A scrape behind him—a footstep?—makes him pause, glancing over his shoulder to listen. Nothing. A shadow. But even shadows follow, sometimes. He listens for a moment longer, sniffing the air like a fox, and walks on.
Icy tentacles wrap around the back of his neck.
He leaps against the dark brick wall, his heart thudding, syllables of warding stinging on his tongue.
Frigid fairy fingers trace his collarbone, yellow eyes glittering in reflected streetlight. “A moment, incubus. Please.”
He swallows an angry retort when he sees her face, pale and drawn, ice crystals clogging her lashes. “Watch who you surprise like that, sweetheart. You don’t know me.”
The fire sprite smiles, but the skin around her ample mouth cracks, flaking off to shatter on the ground like glass. Ice forms in the scar, stained with sluggish amber blood, crystals rapidly multiplying. “I’d like to know you,” she husks, but no pretty sparks fly on her breath, no flame curls in her crisp white hair or leaps from her cold broken fingernails as she touches his lips. “You’re so warm. Kiss me.”
“You don’t want that.” But Rajah’s skin burns, his fingers stinging. The body yearning into his is slender, delicate, girlish, reminding him of Jade. His cock hardens, too fast, painful. Rapture writhes hot in his blood even as he registers that she’s sick, disintegrating with unnatural cold, her flame dying. Maybe what he’s heard about fae poison doing the rounds is true.
She slips one narrow hand between his legs, sexy despite the chill radiating from deep beneath her marble skin. Her glassy wings jerk, amber shards splintering over him like cold petals, and she wraps her spindly leg around him, impossibly flexible, the joint cracking sickly. Compelled, he slips a hand beneath her, pressing her tighter. His cock strains against her failing warmth, where there should be searing heat, and he gasps as rapture increases the pressure to compensate, hardening him to bursting.
“It hurts,” she gasps, her voice weary and rough with pain. “So cold, so deep inside. They say you can suck out a girl’s soul. Do a girl a favor?”
Ice crackles on his lips from her breath, and he licks them, anger and misplaced Jade-lust heating his skin. There’s something perverse about this, he shouldn’t be dying to fuck this poor girl, but he is, see if he can’t make her overflow with his heat before the life drains out of her.
She strains closer, and he tries to pull away, sickened, sympathy butting hard against his callous lust. “No, don’t—” But her icy mouth clamps over his, her phosphorous taste tainted with salt.
Defeated, he thrusts his tongue into her mouth, kissing her hard, closing his eyes to the sudden urgent shimmer of rapture in the air. A whisper of her poisoned chill soaks into him along with her energy, and she moans brokenly, her lips cracking under the pressure. Urgent now, he squirms his hand under her dress, searching for the last remnants of heat. She’s wet, but it’s cool and his fingers are burning. He finds her knotted little clit and presses, making tiny circles. She gasps into his mouth, moving against him, her brittle skin crumbling against his wrist, and after only a few seconds she cries out, shuddering. A dark mass of sour liquid flows into Rajah’s mouth, running cold down his throat, and she slumps against him, still.
The rapture sizzles in triumph, and Rajah chokes, his pulse throbbing. He pushes her aside, trying to lift her gently to the ground, but her bones crack, her skin ruptures like thin ice on a pond. Her broken body sags to the ground, her head lolling, her amber wings splintering to dust.
A fist of pain thrusts into his guts. He doubles over, and black acid spews forth, searing his throat. He coughs and spits, his mouth burning. The poisoned soul puddle writhes on the dusty pavement, shrinking, hardening to a crisp black crust.
Rajah reaches blindly for the wall, the rough brick skinning his palm, and cool male laughter grates in his ears. Panting, he looks up into empty blue eyes.
“So it’s true what they say. There really is a fae-murderer at large. I do believe I’m aroused.” Sweat glistens on a pale brow, drops sparkling in dark curly hair. Crisp blue jeans, silver belt buckle, white shirt splashed with a few drops of blood.
Rajah spits, deliberately close to the man’s shoes. Got a fucking nerve, slinging around the word murderer like he gives a shit. “She was already sick, DiLuca. Fuck off.”
Dante leans his shoulder against the wall, casual, his cool smile revealing nothing. “I heard you were asking about me. No, I said, it can’t be true. He hasn’t finally come to his senses.”
“Don’t get your hopes up. I’m just looking for a guy you might know.” Rajah straightens, catching his breath. Luna will surround himself with a false, glittering crowd of liars, con artists, and vacuous beauties to prove how superior he is. The kind of people Dante delights in baiting. He’d thought it worth a try.
Slim dark eyebrows lift. “I believe your last words to me were an obscenity involving my mother and something about a cold day in hell.” Dante leans closer, and Rajah can smell him, salty and strong with blood. “Well, it’s warm in hell, Rajahni. Warm and excruciating. I’ve been there. I’m not going back. If you want my help, you’ll earn it.”
Sour guilt gnaws at Rajah’s guts, alongside fear that Dante’s been following him, has seen him with Jade. He’s always thought he’ll do anything, give anything. Any soul on earth. Any bloodstained bargain. Anything but thrall. But imagining his sweet Jade in Dante’s hands has him twitching with rage and sorrow.
His Jade. It sounds good. “I told you before, I won’t play your games.”
“Even to spare your luscious little whore of a girlfriend?” Dante shows his teeth at last, sharp and gleaming in the streetlight. “Fuck or feed, that’s always the question.”
Fury ignites, flickering like static along Rajah’s already taut nerves. Worms of irritation wriggle in his skin that Dante always knows exactly how to taunt him, but Rajah can’t let it lie. He steps closer, their shadows mingling like ink on broken concrete. “Listen to me, you sick prick. I don’t want your blood, I don’t want your screwed-up life, I sure as hell don’t want you. And if you ever threaten her again—”
“You’ll what?” Dante sniffs, testing the air, inhaling Rajah’s scent, and licks fine scarlet lips. “Finger-fuck another fairy to death?”
Rajah’s temper explodes, melting his common sense, and he slams Dante back into the wall with a vicious swipe of his gold-wrapped forearm. Dante hisses, reddish spit running on his teeth. His dark shape blurs like a spiteful shadow, and the next thing Rajah knows, he’s retching on all fours, his guts cramping and sharp grit digging into his palms.
Iron fingers yank his hair, dragging his head down, and wet vampire breath burns the back of his neck. Bloodstink sears, sickening. “Don’t provoke me, slut-boy. I’ll tear you in half and bathe in the mess you make.”
Rajah chokes, kicking, but Dante’s grip is fast. “Fine,” he gasps, slick phlegm coating his lips. “I’ll find him myself. Just leave her alone.”
“We’ll see.” Dante’s wet tongue flicks down along Rajah’s throat, tasting, and in a rush of warm breeze he’s gone, an empty space where his shadow lay.
Rajah spits and hauls himself up, twisting his neck with a crack. Dante’s spit slides on his skin, and he rubs it off, wincing. He’ll just have to find Luna himself. Stupid, to imagine DiLuca would soften at a decent request. And the thought of Dante stalking Jade with his warped and vengeful appetite churns sick disgust into Rajah’s aching stomach. He wants to seek her out, warn her, protect her, keep her for himself.
But she’s a big girl. She can take care of herself, and she never asked for his help. For all he knows, she’s into that kind of thing. It’s none of his business. Right?
He shakes his head, bile bright and sour in his mouth, and walks stiffly away into the dark.
8
The queue outside the club stretched down the street inside a black velvet rope, blue neon glowing overhead. Bats flapped in the streetlights. Cars cruised past, drivers hanging out the window to check out the scenery, and there was plenty to check out. Unseelie Court
