The bond that sent her emotions swirling into him, that had nearly destroyed his sanity in the moment she almost died, allowed him to feel her pleasure, the ecstasy she found in his touch— only his touch.
He wouldn’t part with her. Couldn’t. Even the thought of it burned away what remained of his control.
Tir fucked her with his tongue. Shoved it into her tight channel as he held her open, his cock doing the same to her mouth. And even when she came, it wasn’t enough of a claiming.
He pulled from her mouth before he spewed his seed. He forced her onto her elbows and knees, though she went willingly, provocatively spreading her thighs, offering herself to him, feeding a bestial urge to mate.
He covered her. Thrust into her.
Rutted like the stud his captors had so often tried to make of him. Her moans and panted pleas sent him into a frenzy. Had him convulsing in exquisite victory as jets of semen rushed through his cock in a lava-hot rush to her womb.
He wouldn’t lose her again. Now and forever, she was his.
Tir collapsed, his arms locking her to him, holding her back to his chest as his penis remained inside her, trapping his seed in her sultry depths. She shivered against him, but he knew it was in pleasure, in reaction to the intensity of their lovemaking.
He pressed a kiss to her shoulder, her neck. A question forced its way through the aftermath of desire. “What happened?”
She shivered again. And this time he knew she was remembering. Fear tried to chase away the heated remnants of lust. He tugged a blanket over them.
“What happened?” Tir repeated, his arms tightening around Araña in a silent warning he wouldn’t let her avoid his question.
Araña closed her eyes, savoring the heat of Tir’s body, the protective, possessive feel of his arms around her, the intimacy of having his cock still lodged inside her.
What should she tell him? What could she tell him?
Nothing about the Djinn. She didn’t doubt The Prince would send Scorpion assassins as terrifying and deadly as Abijah if she spoke about her kind.
“I led the guardsman who sold me to the maze into a copse of trees near where I escaped from it. He was with two others. Another guardsman and the Were from the trapper’s truck.”
“Raoul,” Tir growled. “They’re dead?”
“Yes.” She delayed the moment when they would need to talk about going into Anton’s house by rubbing her palm over the tattoos on his arm. “What do the glyphs mean?”
“They’re prayers to use with my blood.”
She heard the savage anger in Tir’s voice. “For healing?”
“Yes.”
She ached to tell him Abijah held the key to freeing him from the collar. But just as she couldn’t tell him what she’d learned of her own heritage, she feared what he would do with the knowledge.
Abijah might be bound, but he was no less powerful or deadly for it, while Tir was vulnerable. Fear stuttered through her chest as she thought about what tomorrow would bring— and the choice awaiting her if they managed to get into the maze and then into Anton’s house.
Malahel’s warnings whispered through her mind, along with the words Tir had spoken before they’d come to Oakland. Keep your secrets as long as they don’t involve me. But remember this, if I find they make you my enemy, not even the sweet temptation of your body will save you from my vengeance.
Araña took a steadying breath and forged ahead with the plan she hoped would lead to Tir’s freedom without putting him in the path of the Djinn who’d enslaved him. “When I was held at the maze, Anton summoned the demon and ordered him to bring me to the front of the cage. The demon didn’t move to obey and Anton commanded him again, in a language I didn’t understand.
“It made me realize the demon wasn’t a willing participant in the maze. Later the demon refused to answer a question until Anton repeated it three times. When he did answer it, Anton’s assistant Farold suggested a caveat be added to whatever command the demon has to obey when it comes to those running the maze. He suggested the demon be told not to intentionally kill me unless I was escaping the maze. If I’m breaking in, and the demon sees an opportunity to be free if I can kill Anton—”
“Don’t think you’re going in alone.”
“It’s our best chance.”
His teeth found her shoulder and administered a rebuke. “If I thought you’d agree to leaving Oakland and forgetting your promise to the vampires, I’d force myself out of the tight heaven of your channel and head for the bay and open waters right now.”
There was an edge of truth in Tir’s comment, as if he’d contemplated forcing her to leave. “I can’t,” she said, the image of Erik and Matthew rising from the black sea of the ghostlands pressing in on her.
Araña entwined her fingers with Tir’s and regrouped, her heart racing as she remembered the hungry pull of the flames, the desire to reunite with them and the shimmering promise of the Djinn Kingdom.
“I was dying,” she said. “You saved me. You healed me.”
Tir’s fingers tightened on hers. “And promised myself that from now on I wouldn’t let my vigilance waver, even for a moment. You’re so very mortal. So vulnerable. A blink and you could be gone from my life forever.”
Her heart thundered in her chest at what his words implied. She turned in his arms, putting aside the need to convince him to let her face Abijah alone, at least for the moment.
Araña smiled when Tir grunted in protest at having his cock forced from her body. Even now, after all they’d done together, she found him too beautiful to look at and yet so enthralling she couldn’t look away. He was masculine perfection, the epitome of unfathomable power.
If he remembered his past, would he look on her with hatred and revulsion? Would he regret touching her, lying with her?
A fist squeezed her heart, sending pain spiking through her chest at the thought of losing him. She refused to believe he would kill her if he learned she was Djinn, but she couldn’t stop herself from stroking a fingertip over the collar.
“I nearly died today in my hunger for revenge. If I asked it of you, would you turn away from seeking vengeance against the one who put this on you?”
“Don’t ask it of me,” he warned.
“I can’t promise I won’t.”
And because she wanted him to have the words, she added, “I love you.”
Tir rolled so she was underneath him, his cock once again buried deep in her heated channel. Her emotions flowed into him, fierce and aching, compelling. Devastating in their intensity. He touched his lips to hers, whispered against her mouth as his hips moved, beginning a slow climb to shared ecstasy. “Love doesn’t begin to encompass all I feel for you.”
Twenty-four
RELIEF spread through Rebekka as Levi came into sight. Seeing him made her escape from the Iberá compound more real than the chauffeured drive or the moments she’d spent in the room off the foyer with Annalise Wainwright. Seeing him allowed her to believe life would return to normal—an illusion that lasted until the witch standing next to her on the porch said, “The matriarch thought you and the Were would be more comfortable staying elsewhere tonight. She’s arranged for an escort to the shamaness’s house. It’s safe to speak in front of him, but don’t ask his name.”
The comment took Rebekka’s eyes off Levi, and she startled at the man now standing where moments ago there’d been nothing but shadows and a raven perched in a tree just beyond the gate marking the boundary of the Wainwright property.
Shapeshifter, she thought, but even from a distance, she knew he was nothing ordinary. He was clothed, where a true shapeshifter wouldn’t have been. More telling, eyes the color of a dense forest blazed with inhuman fire, while a stylized raven marked his cheek.