“That kind of work.”

Her stillness returned, but only for a moment. “I agree.”

God, that was what he needed to hear and hadn’t known it: The idea of her staying safe gave him a rush so great he had to blink his way through it.

And as soon as it passed, Assail shed his clothes quickly, the fine fabrics floating off the edge of the bed onto the floor. Then he was skin on skin with her, poised above her parted thighs, his rock-hard c*ck nonetheless content to wait.

When he finally positioned his head at the entrance of her sex, he knew he was going to be lost forever if he completed the act. Or maybe that was a lie. Maybe … he had been lost since that first night he’d met up with her out in the snow.

Pushing inside slowly, feeling her arch up against his chest, watching her eyes roll back, he wished they had never met. As good as this was, he didn’t need a weakness like her anywhere near his life. But like a wound filled with salt, she was permanently in his skin.

At least she was going to stay here with him and be safe.

That was his one solace.

Moving slowly, carefully, he eased himself in and out of her slick hold, his c*ck getting stroked on all sides. He had to grit his teeth and lock his lower back to keep up the steady, even pace—he wanted to go faster and faster, but that was not an option.

And yes, he knew exactly what she was after: She was using him as an eraser, and he was more than willing to fit the bill.

Anything for her—

Marisol repositioned her herself, wrapping her legs around him, angling herself so that he went even deeper. One stroke later and she was holding on hard to his shoulders. It was getting close for her, so close.

“I have you,” he said into her hair. “Let yourself go and I shall catch you.”

Her head threw back and her nails dug in and her body tightened, and he froze, feeling the tugs on his arousal, the subtle pulls that cranked him up.

Turning his head into her neck, he meant only to get closer, feel more of her, be further responsive to her needs.

But she moved unexpectedly, arching her body, shifting her position—and her neck pushed into his mouth … his fangs.

The scratch was minor. His taste of her was anything but.

Before he could stop himself, he scored her more deeply.

His Marisol moaned and swept her hands down to his hips, pulling at him as if she wanted him to start moving again.

“I’m on the pill,” she said from a vast, vast distance.

His clogged mind didn’t know what that meant, but the sound of her voice was enough to snap him back to reality. Lapping at the wound he’d made, he both closed it and took more of her blood into him—although it was such a small amount compared to what he wanted.

“Keep going,” she said. “Please … don’t stop—”

Assail was tempted to take that the wrong way and bite her properly, take from her completely. But he would not do that without her permission. Rape could happen in many different ways—and a violation was a violation, especially when only one side got pleasure from it.

He would, however, finish the sex.

Hitching a more complete hold on her, he drove in and relented, drove in and relented, swinging his hips.

At the last moment, he pulled out and came all over her lower belly, the jerking spasms kicking out his scent on her skin.

As much as he wanted more of this—and he intended to have her again, right now—he would not complete the act within her until she knew the full truth about him. Only then would she be able to honestly decide whether or not she wanted him as a lover.

With his lips at her ear, he said, “More, yes…”

The rippling moan she let out was the perfect reply. And before it had even faded, before her nails once again sank into his flanks and her legs squeezed his lower body closer to her, he began to move again, the sex tempered by his respect for her, and yet all the more vivid for the restraint.

He had never been with a woman or a female like this before.

After years of having had sex, he felt as though he was finally with someone for the first time.

THIRTY-FOUR

Kneeling before the bedding platform, Wrath kept time between his beloved’s breaths, measuring her inhalations as they pushed weakly against the arm he had stretched over her waist. Longer and longer between the draws, slower and slower the exhales.

And meanwhile his own heart continued to beat, and his own lungs did their duty, and his body kept on.

It seemed so cruel—and he would have traded her his health in a moment. He would have given her anything of his just to keep her with him—and as that was not possible, he put his palm on the hilt of his jeweled dagger and brought it between them.

Focusing on her parted lips, he angled the blade so that it was pointed at the center of his chest. The supports of the platform were constructed out of stout oak panels, and they happened to be at just the right height for what he required: Bracing the base of the weapon’s handle on the edge of the wood, he kept the dagger upright in his grip and leaned in, measuring the distance he had to close.

Putting his sternum to the tip of the blade, he pushed in enough to feel the pinch.

Satisfied with the angle, he turned the knife around and took the point to the wood itself, digging a circle out of the fibers, creating a lock for the base. As he chipped away, it seemed disrespectful to waste the last of his Anha’s breaths on such efforts—he should be paying mind unto her, and her alone.

But preparations needed to be made.

If he lost her before he took care of this, he was liable to make a sloppy attempt, and he needed to make sure that there was no chance of survival—

“What … do you do?”

Wrath’s head jerked up. And at first he could not comprehend the sight a’fore him.

His Anha had turned her pale face to him and was staring out from under heavy lids.

The dagger point slipped from the perch he was creating, sinking into the wrist of the hand he’d braced. The slice didn’t register.

“Anha …?”

Her tongue licked at the blood on her lips. “Our son…”

Verily, he did not hear whate’er it was she said. Tears came to his eyes and his heart pounded, and he wondered first if this was not a dream … a function of his having followed through with his own death, stabbing himself in the very place he felt the love for her most keenly.

Except no—she was reaching out to his face. Touching him with wonder—as if she too could not comprehend a return to consciousness.

“Anha!” He pressed his lips to hers and then brushed his own tears from her cold cheeks.

Abruptly, the healer’s advice came to him and he rushed to put his wrist over her mouth. “Drink, my love—do not speak unto me yet. Drink. First and foremost, you must drink!”

His Anha struggled for only a moment before she swallowed properly once. And again. And a third time.

As she moaned and closed her eyes, it was not from discomfort or fear. No, it was from a vital easing, as if she were feeding a hunger that had pained her and the agony was relenting.

“Drink…” he said as everything went even blurrier. “My love … partake of me and come back…”

Stroking her hair back, he eyed his dagger. And prayed that this miracle stayed with them both. That she remained revived and soon recovered—

“My lord?”

At the sound of a deep voice, Wrath snapped his head around without moving his vein from her lips. The Black Dagger Brother Tohrture was standing just inside the closed chamber door, having entered silently.

“She is roused,” Wrath said hoarsely. “Praise unto the Scribe Virgin … she is roused.”

“Yes,” the Brother said. “And I must needs speak with you.”

“Can it not wait.” He refocused on his beloved. “Leave us—”

The Brother stalked over, and put his lips close to Wrath’s ear, such that not a word traveled: “She looks as your father did.”

Wrath blinked. Looked up. “Pardon?”

The Brother had the most incredible blue eyes, the color something that rivaled the pale aqua gems that had been specially purchased for Anha’s spring gown.

Leaning back down, the words were whispered once more. “Your father presented thus the evening he died.”

As the Brother straightened, those eyes of his never faltered. Neither did his expression. His very body.

A flash of anger had Wrath curling up a fist. The last thing he wanted intruding into this sacred space of hope was any memory of that other night of loss … when he had rushed for the castle upon a black steed, careening through the forests, risking his own life to return in time.

Indeed, much as he wished the chapters of that story to stay free of his mind, they came back to him with clarity: He had suffered an injury during the daylight hours, a slip and fall in his chamber that had rendered him upon a metal spike. The wound had made it impossible for him to dematerialize, but he had been well enough to proceed from the castle when he’d been called out unto one of the Founding Families.

When he had departed at the fall of night, he had not intended to return until the morrow.

The Brotherhood had come for him an hour later.

By the time he had gotten back to the castle, it was too late. His father was gone.

And as for appearances, some dead showed their provenance, it was true: the murdered, the maimed, the aged—in the case of his father, however, the King had just looked asleep, his body cleansed and dressed in ceremonial robes, his hair tended to, his gloves and shoes on as if he intended to walk unto his grave.

“What do you say?” Wrath shook his head. “I cannot…”

Another whisper in his ear: “Look unto her fingernails.”

As Anha’s eyes opened and widened at the sight of the Brother, Wrath leaned in and kissed her forehead. “Worry not, my love.”

Instantly, she calmed under his touch and his voice, continuing to feed as her eyes reshut.

“That is right,” he murmured. “Take what I provide.”

When he was sure she had settled once more, he glanced down at her hands and frowned. Her nails were … blue.

His father’s hands had been gloved.

“Come back,” he said to the Brother roughly. “I shall call for you.”

Tohrture nodded and walked to the door. Before he left, he said clearly, “Do not allow her to imbibe aught that has not been tasted.”

Poison? Had it been … poison?

As their chamber was shut and relocked, Wrath felt a strange calm come unto him: Strength and purpose returned to him as Anha continued to pull against his vein, the sips turning into proper draws. And the more she took from him, the more that death color faded from her fingers.

After his father’s death, he had been weightless in the world—until she had been brought to him and become his tether not just to the breaths in his chest and the beats of his heart, but his reign as King.

To think that his father might have been taken from him? And then his beloved female?

As he thought of Tohrture’s expression … he knew that there were enemies in his court. Enemies capable of murder.

Anger boiled beneath his surface, changing him in the inside … in the way steel and iron were forged.

“Worry not, my love,” he said, clasping her hand in his. “I shall take care of everything.”

And blood will run like the tears you shed in your pain.

He was King, yes. But first and foremost, he was the hellren of this magnificent female—and ahvenge her he would.

THIRTY-FIVE

“Of all the things they had to be right about…”

As Trez lay flat on the slick floor of his bathroom, he put his forearm over his eyes. He was acutely aware that his c*ck was deflating, all that meaningless sex he’d had taking the wind out of his sails and then some.

But he was even more clear on who was next to him, na**d on the fur rug.

Shit, he had to get that towel back on his h*ps and—

“Who is ‘they’?”

Grabbing for the terry cloth, he couldn’t even look at Selena. “My people.”

“What are they right about?”

“Why are you still here?”

When he realized what that sounded like, he sat up—and caught her recoil. “Sorry—I just mean, how are you putting up with my crap.”

Goddamn, she was utterly edible sitting there, that robe covering nothing but her shoulders, her br**sts still peaked, her legs arranged so that if he moved just a little, he could see her …

Selena pulled the draping across herself—and as much as it pained him, it was the right thing on so many levels. He had ruined what had been happening between them.

But for the right reasons.

“I’m sorry,” he said, thinking that he should have that tattooed on his forehead so he saw it in the mirror every morning, every night.

He should never have taken things as far as they’d gone. Ever.

“For stopping?”

“No, I’m not sorry about that.” As she winced, he wanted to kick himself in the balls. “What I mean is … f**k. I don’t know. I don’t know anything right now.”

There was a long silence. And then she said calmly. “You need to know that there is nothing you can’t tell me.”

“Be careful with that—Pandora’s box is hard to close.”

“Nothing.” Her eyes were totally clear as she stared over at him. “I have nothing to fear—from you or by you. I do think you owe me an explanation, however. Assuming that you have no intention of continuing—and if only so that I do not blame myself for this.”

Wow, okay. If he’d thought she was hot before? Now, she was in goddess territory: Physical beauty was one thing; having a spine was even more attractive.