Angel Seduced Page 11

  “Do not touch her.” Kasabian walked closer to Kye, fastening his hand over her wrist. He gave her a slight shake of his head—Don’t let him know we’re connected—before turning his attention back on Silva. “I’ll take care of her.”

  Silva’s expression changed to one of deadly interest. “You know her. I sense her emotions where you’re concerned. Worry. Fear, both of you and for you. She cares about you.” He made a tsking sound. “So sweet.”

  Kasabian doubted she still cared after what she’d seen.

  Silva’s eyes narrowed. “Wait. This is Kye, isn’t it?” He approached, his gaze on her while Kasabian pulled her close. “How can you still care about him now that you know he’s some freak of nature?”

  Kasabian cast the hatchet out again, letting the blade rest against Silva’s neck. “You will not go anywhere near her.”

  Silva didn’t appear to be worried. “Do you see how you reach for the dark side of your nature, even when you have the Light back? You felt the dark when we were kids, yet you never sensed our kinship. So sad. I did, but I didn’t know what it was. I just knew I was drawn to you. It wasn’t until years later that someone explained what I was. What we are, Kasabian.”

  Kasabian let the blade cut into Silva’s neck. “Tell me where Treylon’s operation is.”

  Silva smiled. “See you in your dreams.”

  Then he Leaped.

  Chapter 12

  Kye had said nothing to Kasabian, merely walking to her car. Kasabian followed her to her apartment as dawn broke across the sky behind him. She had sensed his seething anger at her. Could he sense how freaked out she was by what she’d seen? Probably.

  The moment they closed the door of her apartment, he said, “What the hell were you doing out there?”

  “Saving your ass, as it turned out. ‘Why, thank you, Kye, for distracting him so I could get the upper hand.’ ‘You’re welcome, Kasabian.’”

  “You could have gotten killed!” His face flushed red, but the black Shadow crossed his eyes.

  She took an involuntary step back. “You could have, too! You sneak out of here, leaving a damned note.” She gestured to the kitchen. “If he’d gotten hold of you, taken you to his lair, I would have had only a vague idea where you’d gone. So very nice of you.”

  Kasabian stepped right in front of her and forced her to look at him. “This doesn’t concern you. You see what I’m dealing with.” His expression darkened. “What I am. He could have incinerated you.”

  Vlad rubbed against her calves, and she reached down and stroked his back. “Excuse me for caring about you.”

  “You shouldn’t care. Don’t you get that? You should get the hell away from me, from this.”

  She should. Of course she should. “You’re a Wraithlord.”

  He gave a low nod. “Apparently.”

  She could sense his shock and unease, despite his cavalier response. “You have an answer now.”

  He seemed to settle into the reality. “Yeah, I do. I have a name to go with my abomination. Bottom line, I harbor a Dragon.” Disbelief and awe filled that one word.

  “Half heat and fire and passion, half cool Caido. Then again, you were never cool and unemotional.”

  “Thanks to my father’s project, no. It explains why I’ve always felt tangled up inside, though.”

  “Silva’s in love with you. And obsessed.”

  Kasabian grunted. “I never gave him any indication that I swung that way.” He seemed to just realize the back of his shirt was torn. He ripped if off and shoved it into the garbage can in the corner. The soft under-counter lights washed over the contours of his muscles. He was lean and lethal, all hard angles and muscles like a gymnast.

  Kye spun her finger in a circle. “Turn around.” He did, and she had to resist touching the black wings that stretched across his broad back. “Your wing tattoo is completely back to normal. Not even a sign of the torn flesh.”

  When he’d brought forth his angelic essence, she had to catch her breath at the magnificence of it. Of him.

  He spun around, facing her. “Kye.”

  Desire heated his eyes as he dropped his gaze down over her. She was suddenly aware that the silk of her pajamas wouldn’t hide her tightening nipples. Not that it mattered, she realized. She was naked to him, or at least her soul was.

  His gaze snapped to hers. “Knowing what I am doesn’t change a thing.”

  “It explains why you feel possessive. That’s definitely a Dragon trait. I’ve worked with enough to know that.”

  “And the fact that I can desire you without pain, you don’t know how tantalizing that is. How tantalizing you are. From that first moment I set my eyes on you. And every second I’m with you.”

  She could see his agony, agony she knew well. Her resistance melted. She was tired of fighting it. Gods, did she want him.

  “Kye, you’re tormenting me again.”

  She stepped closer, sliding her arms around his neck. “And do you remember what happened the last time I tormented you?”

  He circled her waist. “Mmm, I do. And as good as that felt, I want more than that. Much, much more.”

  His words sinuously wrapped around her. “Me, too.”

  She felt the moment he broke, unleashing a torrent of heat and passion as he tightened his hold on her and devoured her. Within seconds, he’d pulled off her silk top. His fingers slid between hers, intimately binding their hands and holding them behind her back. He liked controlling her physically, she realized. The idea of it spiraled through her, trust and fear and arousal. She tilted her chin and exposed her neck in symbolic surrender.

  “You sure you want to incite the Shadow?” he said in a low, dangerous voice. “That’s what it wants, you fully surrendering to me.”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “Oh, love, I wish you wouldn’t.”

  “I’ve never wanted someone like this before. I have to trust my feelings.”

  She felt his teeth graze her skin, nip, and then his tongue traced up to her ear. He bit the lobe softly and growled. She found herself growling back, shivering as his hot breath spilled into the shell of her ear. He moved down the length of her throat, kissing the indent of her collarbone, and then his mouth closed over her nipple.

  She gasped as her whole body came alive, right down between her legs. His tongue circled her nipple, making the muscles in her thighs quiver and curling her toes. Then he sucked hard enough to make her cry out softly.

  “How can something hurt and feel good at the same time?” she gasped.

  “That’s how I felt when I watched you at the club.” He kept sucking. “Is it too much?” But he didn’t let up.

  “Yes, but keep doing it. I want to know what you experienced.”

  He moved to the other one. Pleasure and pain, oh yes, he knew it well. She dug her fingers into his shoulders, her breath coming quicker.

  So fast that the world spun, he threw her over his shoulder and hauled her to her bedroom. He released her to the bed, and the heated way he looked at her shivered down to her bones. He shucked his pants and briefs in one move, and the glory of him thrust out straight and hard. She kept revisiting the memory of him gripping himself. Something about his strong fingers wrapped around himself was oddly arousing. She had imagined her fingers wrapped around its girth.

  The early morning sun slanted in through the wooden blinds and gilded his body in stripes. As lethally beautiful as a tiger, he stalked toward her on hands and knees across the bed.

  He pushed her flat on the bed and touched every inch of her. She saw the beast in his hazel eyes as he claimed her with his gaze. Mine, it said, and she felt his possession of her. And some primitive part of her responded with yours. That scared and aroused her, too, how she’d fallen under his seductive spell. Trusting a man who’d told her he couldn’t be trusted. Wanting a man she shouldn’t want.

  He pushed her legs apart and touched the heat of his mouth to her core. She had craved this since the last time
and gave herself to him and the pleasure he sent coursing through her. She gripped his hair as his tongue licked and tickled and gently sucked, making her hips move in a sensuous rolling motion. As she was about to fall into the chasm, he backed off, planting chaste kisses along her inner thighs. Just when she was about to beg—beg, for gods’ sake!—he slowly, agonizingly made his way back to the part of her that ached for more. Finally, she arched as wave after wave crashed over her. And still he stroked her thighs as she slowly came down and calmed her breathing. He rolled her over and nipped, kissed, and licked his way across her back and ass. His hands followed, squeezing, stroking.

  Kye would not let him control everything, rolling over and pushing him back the same way he’d done with her. She straddled him, her thighs tight on his hips, her sex pressing against his hard ridge as she planted soft kisses across his chest. He was tanned, golden and perfect. He arched up into her, molding their bodies even closer. She nipped harder than he had as she moved down his body, leaving red marks across his abs, driven mad by hunger. He liked it, if his low groan was any indication. And somewhere in that groan lay buried her name.

  She traced her teeth across his nipples, squeezing her thighs even tighter, running her hands along his arms. She swooped in and kissed him hard and quick, retreating before he could fully engage.

  “Witch,” he whispered, but he was smiling. “The only magick I want is you wrapped around my cock.”

  She drew her fingers down his chest, then beneath him to squeeze his tight ass. Her mouth moved across his ridged stomach, feeling the slick tip of his cock graze her chin. “Mmm, want to fuck me, do you?” She didn’t like the word, but when he’d used it, its raw sexuality had stoked her.

  He tangled his fingers in her hair. “Very much.”

  She drew the magick into her mouth, swirling it around like a good wine, and then took him in. The magick tingled across his skin and over his head, swirling around his cock with hot vibrations. She sensed when he was about to lose it and withdrew, then left a trail of kisses along the faint line of hair leading up to his chest. Yeah, two could play that game. His body was trembling, his breaths coming in short pants.

  He pulled her up for a long kiss. She tasted their mingled essences, somehow erotic, as he devoured her with his tongue. When he finished kissing her, he sat up and pulled her pelvis against his.

  “I know you want to drive, my sex witch,” he murmured against the inner curve of one breast. “Because you’re already driving me crazy.”

  She couldn’t help the smile at driving Kasabian to the brink. She eased onto his large erection, glad that he’d made her nice and slick. His arms slid around her back, fingers splayed as he urged her on. Her knees gripped his hips, hands squeezing his shoulders. She threw her head back and let out a long, soft groan as he filled her. Years of abstinence, and now complete fulfillment. It was almost too much to handle. Too right. Too good. She loved this position, facing each other and allowing her to wrap her arms around him. Their bodies brushed as they moved together.

  She never felt like this, hungry and full, satiated and craving more. She raked her fingernails up and down his back out of a need to express some of that craziness zinging through her.

  He gripped her hard and uttered, “Oh. My. Gods.”

  “Any particular one?”

  “All of them. To experience this without pain or muting of desire…”

  She let the goddess lead her, leaning back and bracing her hands on his hard thighs. Kye was rewarded by the wild kisses Kasabian planted over her breasts. He gently took one of her legs and put it over his shoulder, opening her more to him. He thrust even deeper into her. When she thought she couldn’t take the intense pressure, she exploded into a thousand sparks of light. At least that’s how it felt; she’d never experienced anything like it before.

  He laid her down and drove into her again, surrounding her with his body, his heat and intensity. He kissed her and touched her and spun her like flotsam in a tornado. She scrabbled for a sense of up and down, left and right. Wrong and right.

  “You have sex magick, too,” she managed to utter. She could feel his essence flowing through her, a river of Light and stars and galaxies, with meteors flying past.

  “It’s the bond.” His breath was coming heavily as he thrust into her harder and harder. “Combined with the Shadow and our desire, it’s powerful.”

  What did he feel? She couldn’t speak anymore, could barely gather her thoughts when his body shuddered. He clutched her to him as his orgasm claimed him—and her. It rocked her through their bond and their physical connection.

  Kasabian was a tornado, no doubt about it. He’d said that once he tasted her, he would want her always. She knew what he meant, because she had tasted him, and she could now only have this. Nothing else—no one else—would ever be enough.

  He collapsed, half on and half off her, his arm slung over her middle. His leg lay over hers, pinning her to the spot. Not that it mattered. She couldn’t move. Her body had melted into a puddle.

  All she could hear was him catching his breath and a vague buzzing in her head. Slowly she began to pull her thoughts together. It took a while longer to work them into coherent spoken words.

  When he finally came back and met her eyes, she said, “I felt you come. It was crazy.”

  The corner of his mouth twitched, probably as close to a smile as he could muster. “I felt you, too.” He rolled his eyes. “Mind-blowing. It seemed almost selfish to make you come again and again. But I worked through that.”

  She giggled. “You can be selfish anytime.”

  His laugh was smoky, like the finest whiskey she’d ever had. His eyes glimmered, dancing with a rare smile. His hand slid down between her legs, stroking the now very sensitive nub. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Tina Arena’s song “Chains” played on her mental radio. Kye was in chains, held by nothing more than that smile, those eyes.

  “Kasabian.”

  “Mmm.”

  “Do you feel like you own me? You were worried about that.”

  He wrapped his leg over hers, pinning her to the bed. All trace of playfulness fled his expression. “My angel is keeping the balance inside me between dark and light. Barely. Even before I was Stripped, I nearly bit Hayden’s head off, because he said he wouldn’t mind being bonded to you. I don’t trust myself. And I don’t deserve your trust either.” He placed his palm against her cheek. “Look what I’ve already done to your life.”

  Not to mention what he was doing to her heart. She saw and felt his remorse. “Kasabian—”

  “Don’t let me off the hook by blaming my Shadow. I had as much to do with giving in as it did. Maybe more.” He rubbed his thumb over her lower lip. “I know the best thing I can do for you is to send you away. I just don’t know if I can.”

  To illustrate that, he pulled her close, nestling her face against his shoulder. At the moment, what felt like the best thing for her was being right there in his arms.

  A knock on the door jerked her out of her sleep. Kye groped for wakefulness, realizing she was still in Kasabian’s embrace.

  Another knock. “Kye? It’s Mom.”

  Kye’s eyes widened as she sat up. “Stay here.” No way did she want to explain him.

  He grabbed up his pants. “When you open the door, invite her in before she feels the barrier.”

  “Hold on a minute, Mom,” Kye called out as she hastily pulled on her clothing. It was ten in the morning. She opened the door, and her mom gave her a soft smile. “Come in.”

  “I woke you. I’m sorry. I forget that you stay at that awful nightclub so late.”

  “Half of my client base goes there,” Kye said for the umpteenth time. “Is everything okay?” Her mom rarely stopped by unannounced.

  She inspected the apartment as she always did, probably finding several things she didn’t like within her first few steps. This time she didn’t mention them. She sank to the sofa, twisting her ring. “I ha
ven’t fully supported your…gift. I had hoped for something more respectable.”

  “Like talking to the dead,” Kye said.

  The haughty tone returned when she said, “It’s a lot more respectable than divining people’s sexuality.” She shook her head. “I didn’t come here to denigrate you. I came…for help.”

  Oh no. Please don’t ask me about your sex life. “I don’t think I can—”

  “I might be in love with another man.”

  Kye’s protest dropped like a heavy stone. “What?”

  “I want you to read my feelings for this man. He’s come to me for a few readings to talk to his deceased wife. We have become friends, and I have developed feelings for him. Right now it’s just friendship, but he makes me laugh. I feel good when I’m with him. I need to know if these feelings will develop into something romantic. If so, I will back off.”

  Kye could barely process it. Beyond the fact that her mother seemed on the verge of a possible affair, she’d come to Kye for the first time. If Kye could help her, she could show her mother the validity of her gift. Maybe she would say “gift” without the pause.

  And Kye didn’t have her ability. Please, please come back just for a few minutes. Kye sat down next to her and took her hands. “Think about the man.”

  Usually the feelings tingled through Kye’s hands, pooling into her in waves of colors she could see in her mind’s eye. She tried so hard to tune in, to coax the feelings. All she could think about was Kasabian in her bedroom, him in angel form. Him. Damn it.

  She considered lying and telling her mother that yes, she’d picked up romantic love. That it would be foolish and dangerous to pursue a relationship. Of course, she was thinking of Kasabian again. She simply couldn’t focus on anything but him when it came to romantic feelings.

  Kye’s eyes opened. No way could she make up something. It went against everything that was in her, everything she subscribed to in regard to her profession.

  Her mother was waiting, worry on her normally placid expression. “Well?”