Primal

  “Please,” she said, knowing she couldn’t allow herself to waver in her resolve. “This is important to me. Surely the boat has a cabin. We can take shelter there. It should be safe enough in open water, and if danger comes, I’ll go willingly. A blink and we can be in your home, your bed.”

  “Our home. Our bed,” Addai said, resolve melting with her entreaty and the soft pleading in her eyes as she looked up at him.

  He was glad none of the brothers allied with the Djinn were here to witness his defeat. He conceded it only because he could tell himself that traveling to and from the chalet with Sajia posed a greater danger than taking possession of the Constellation for the night. With the sigils on her skin weakening, her Djinn nature might reveal itself as they traveled. His own passing through the metaphysical plane created little more than a ripple, but a Djinn breaching it left a trail of sound that would summon angelic enemies if they were near.

  They would arrive with the intention of killing her. They would die in the attempt. But there was risk even in that, and victory over them wouldn’t come without a cost.

  He couldn’t capitulate without giving her fair warning. He leaned in, lips touching hers, the image of her bound to the bed arriving in his thoughts as he issued his threat. Don’t think to control me with your body, Sajia. Soon enough you’ll discover that I am the master of it.

  She shivered. Not fear, her scent and the hardening of her nipples spoke only of arousal. He smiled as he contemplated turning defeat into a chance to give her the first of her lessons in submission. No boat left the dock without a multitude of ropes onboard it.

  “Let’s go,” he said, denying them both the kiss they craved, the exploration of wet heat and the thrust of tongue against tongue, the sharing of breath that bound their spirits together more tightly each time it happened. Her whimper at the loss of his lips against hers was a soothing balm laid over the turbulent, intense emotions her presence created in him.

  The farther they got from the Victorian-lined street with its clubs serving human vice, the more deserted the red zone became. Shops gave way to clusters of homes where the poor lived, and then, as the air took on the smell of the ocean, to twisted steel and rusted ruin, what remained of cranes and shipping containers from the days of the humans’ Last War.

  Beyond the jungle of ruin, the exposed hulls and sunken debris of ships turned the harbor into a treacherous, watery graveyard. As they boarded the Constellation, Addai said, “Throw off the ropes. I’ll start the engines.”

  He was unconcerned about navigating the dangerous outer harbor. Tir’s memories were his. His brother had been the one to recover the Constellation for Araña and guide it through the minefield of wrecked ships.

  To ease Sajia’s mind, they searched for the fishing boat Saril had described until darkness crowded into dusk. Then Addai insisted they stop, and, as the anchor dropped, a hot swirl of desert-scented wind blew across the deck, announcing the arrival of a Djinn.

  Irial’s eyes lingered appreciatively over Sajia’s form, settling briefly on the scorpion pendant at her throat before meeting Addai’s. “So this is the reward my father spoke of. Now I understand why I was sent with food . . . and bedding. Perhaps I’ll remain and aid you in the latter.”

  Addai took a threatening step forward before he could stop himself. With a laugh, Irial set down the basket he carried, then disappeared as suddenly as he’d arrived, choosing to take no form rather than become the raven of his House.

  “Your brother?”

  “ No.”

  “He called me your reward.” There was no anger in her voice, just the hesitant question, Your reward for doing what?

  For traveling down the path your death set me on, Addai said, choosing to answer intimately, in a reminder of what they were to each other. There is nothing I’ve done that I wouldn’t do a thousand times again if that’s what it took to get you back, or if doing it would rewrite the past so you were never lost to me in the first place.

  Sajia’s heart turned over in her chest at his pronouncement. “I’m not the same person,” she forced herself to say, silently confronting the fear she harbored, that one day he’d realize he loved the memory of who she had been in the past more than who she was in this life.

  He crossed the distance, arms enclosing her. His expression harsh as his lips descended, claiming hers in a taking that left no room for resistance.

  In all the ways that matter, you are the same, he said, his hardened cock an exclamation mark against her mound and belly. Never doubt it, Sajia.

  As the last of the light faded, she pulled from his arms and picked up the basket left by their visitor. “I’ll set out the food and make the bed.”

  She couldn’t bring herself to ask him to keep searching for Corinne during the night, not when the risk existed that he could be pulled from the sky by a bioengineered sea creature or a supernatural one, hindered and drowned because of his wings. It didn’t stop worry from gnawing at her, but deep down she accepted they’d done what they could for Corinne today, and she had to believe tomorrow they’d find and free her.

  They ate at the small table in the cabin. Had Addai not been driven by thoughts of binding Sajia to the bed, he would have fed her by hand on the mattress. He would have dribbled honey over her naked breasts and watched as it slid over her curves, then along her flat stomach, filling the well of her navel before coating her sweet mound in an irresistible invitation for his tongue to follow.

  His cock was hard again, a near-constant state since he’d first learned Sajia would soon be returned to him. Her flushed cheeks and heated glances told him she was equally aroused, their time together at Temptation wetting a carnal appetite for pleasure rather than appeasing the hunger of it.

  He finished eating before she did and leaned back, drinking in the sight of her, his heart aching as he visually caressed the face that had haunted him for thousands of years. With a thought, he rid himself of clothing, then curled his fingers around his hardened length, making no attempt to hide his actions as he moved his fisted hand up and down on his organ.

  Her heightened flush and the small catch of her breath served as reward. The dart of her tongue as she licked honey from her fingers a sensual punishment.

  When she didn’t reach for more of the bread or the cheese and fruit that had accompanied it, he pitched his voice in a demand no mortal would have been able to deny. “Remove your clothing, Sajia.”

  A small smile played over her lips in answer. Her eyelashes lowered as she contemplated defying him, letting him know by her response that if she agreed to his demands, it would be because she chose to. “Is this how it was before between us?”

  “You’ve seen my memories of it.”

  “And if I don’t want to play the slave to your master?”

  “Disrobe, Sajia,” he said in answer, pressing more of his will on her, taking pleasure in the fact that he couldn’t truly bend her to it. Desire intensifying at the erotic fear he caught glimpses of when her gaze strayed to the soft lengths of rope he’d casually thrown onto the bed upon entering the cabin.

  Long moments passed, the sexual tension building as she made him wait, drawing out the game until he tightened his grip on his cock rather than stroke it. She knew what would come if she accepted the first of his commands.

  His heart thundered in his chest. Anticipation built along with a craving that surpassed even the desires of his flesh, for her to trust him, to demonstrate it by allowing herself to be bound as he’d allowed himself to be manacled.

  He only barely suppressed a moan when she rose gracefully from her seat and stepped away from the table, providing him an unhindered view. The shirt was the first garment to hit the floor, her breasts drawing his attention and holding it.

  Dark, dark nipples pouted in sultry beckoning, urging him to kneel before her and take them into his mouth. To bite and suck and lick until the evidence of her arousal flowed freely down her inner thighs, until the scent of it forced him to pla
ce his lips on her smooth, heated mound, to lap and thrust with his tongue before taking her with his cock.

  Seeing the hunger in him, she cupped her breasts, rubbed the hardened peaks with her thumbs until only the pain of his hand around his cock kept him from taking her to the floor like a ravenous beast and fucking her.

  He forced his gaze away from her beautiful breasts. “No transgression ever goes unpunished,” he said, a warning he suspected would become a refrain in their lives together. “Take the rest of it off.”

  Her hands swept downward in a sensuous glide he was only too eager to follow with his lips. She paused, once again lingering, taking her time in obeying, fingers slowly loosening the pants, then pushing them off her hips, down sleekly muscled legs.

  She bent with their descent, affording him the view of a delicate length of spine, the dusky curve of her buttocks as she removed her short boots before stepping out of the pants.

  He could no more stop himself from closing the distance between them than he could force himself to leave her.

  The feel of her skin against his was very nearly his undoing. It’d be so easy to lift her in his arms, to join his body to hers where they stood. One thrust. Two. And he could savor a quick release before carrying her to bed for a lengthier one.

  He resisted, tormented them both by wrapping his arms around her, holding her heated mound against his hot, rigid length. His wings manifested, further enfolding her as he lowered his lips to hers, plunging his tongue into the hot depths of her mouth and shuddering when she welcomed it, rubbed her own against it before sucking him deeper, reminding him of the ecstasy he’d experienced when it was his cock thrusting between her lips.

  My spirit to yours. The same formal words had a variety of uses among the Djinn, and though he longed to hear her speak them, between lovers they were unnecessary. To place her soul fully into his keeping, she had only to will it so and accompany it with the sharing of breath. He had only to speak the forbidden incantation to tie himself to this world and to her.

  He craved the binding of their lives and spirits with the same desperate need he felt to join their bodies together. But where the latter required only that he push his cock into her slick, heated channel, the former required him to free her of the angelic script confining her to human form. And the moment he did so the knowledge of her Djinn nature separated and held in the scorpion pendant would flow into her.

  He couldn’t risk it. Not yet. Not until he was sure of her.

  He shuddered, fighting the urge to place his cock head at her wet opening and enter her. It was all he could do to release Sajia rather than carry her to the mattress and immediately come down on top of her.

  As if sensing his weakness, she said, Make love to me, projecting it into his mind and reinforcing it with the grinding of her mound and belly against his erection.

  The deep craving for her willing submission gave him the strength to take a step backward and say, “You know what I want. Lie down and position yourself so I can tether your wrists and ankles to the bed.”

  A shiver went through Sajia. Her channel clenched violently.

  She was so wet, so needy that tears nearly leaked from the corners of her eyes. He overpowered her with his beauty, with the depth of his desire for her.

  Never would she have imagined complying so readily, so easily. She felt his eyes on her back, on her buttocks, on the glimpses of her swollen folds as she walked away from him.

  Sajia got on the bed as he’d ordered, lifting her arms above her head and spreading her legs, loving what it did to him, hardening his face as he fought to master his lust, hardening his cock in defiance of the stranglehold he had on it.

  He stood over her. Breathing barely controlled. The arrogant mask smoothing into place, bringing with it a visceral fear, a forbidden thrill that had her canting her hips.

  His lips curved in a dangerous smile. His eyes were molten onyx as he freed his cock in favor of picking up the short lengths of rope and using them to hold her open, helpless.

  He knelt between her thighs, wings visible but no longer a physical reality. His cock leaving a wet trail across his belly, his testicles on proud display as his eyes roamed possessively, hungrily, scorching her with his visual caress.

  She didn’t know what to expect, only that she craved his attention. Needed his touch as desperately as she needed air to live.

  “Please,” she said, bound, willing to beg for mercy where he hadn’t been when he chose pain over pleasure rather than allow the vice lord to see her naked.

  “No transgression ever goes unpunished,” Addai reminded her, delivering a sharp slap to her bare mound.

  The shock of it made her gasp even as the spike of heated lust that flashed through her clit and cunt had her lifting her hips off the mattress in a silent plea for another.

  A flush spread across his cheeks as he delivered a second spank, and a third, heating skin that already felt as though it were on fire, making her cry out. Then cry out again when he braced his hands on the mattress, following the lash of masculine fingers and palm with carnal strokes of his tongue.

  She fought the bindings then. Writhed against them, not to escape and flee, but to find release of a different kind.

  As she’d enjoyed her power over him when she knelt, tormenting him with her mouth, he returned the favor, his wicked lips latching onto her clit, sucking mercilessly.

  He took her to the edge of orgasm repeatedly, denying her each time it was only a rough stroke of his tongue away, when a hard pull of sensuous lips would have sent her spiraling into ecstasy.

  Tears streamed from her eyes. Her nipples ached, and her breasts felt tight and full, her nether lips unbearably swollen.

  She was breathless from pleading. From fighting against the ropes holding her open and helpless.

  Shiver after shiver raced through her. Need as she’d never known before.

  A swirling of his tongue over her clit had her sobbing, the thrust of it into her slit had her arching upward, driving it deeper into her channel. “Please,” she begged again. “Please, Addai.”

  He rose above her, phantom wings spread, a dark angel embodying the purely carnal. The tip of his penis lodging against her opening.

  True damnation was being denied this, Addai thought as he pushed his thick length through swollen folds. Buried his cock in her snug sheath only to retreat then force his way in again in the sheer bliss of being joined with her.

  He made love to her until she screamed in release. Paused only long enough to untie her wrists and ankles so she could wrap arms and legs around him as he took her again, this time allowing himself the ecstasy that came with the heated rush of semen and the touching of his mind to hers, pleasure doubled then doubled again as she orgasmed when he did and slipped into satiated sleep.

  Addai rose onto an elbow, lifting away from her only far enough so he could watch her as she slept and trace her lips with his fingertip as his cock softened in her channel. He didn’t need to see the angelic script written above her heart to know where the incantation had weakened, where parts of it had faded and disappeared, leaving openings, like cracks in a vase, allowing what it contained to leak out. He could feel the breaks against his skin, the fiery core of her Djinn nature burning away the icy angelic sigils.

  Wielding what the humans called spell magic wasn’t his gift. He was thankful he wasn’t faced with the choice of whether or not to restore the bindings. It was hard enough knowing that with a word he could free her of them.

  He didn’t dare. Though satisfaction and joy pulsed through him at how much ground he’d gained with her on their first day together, he couldn’t allow her to be unrestrained by form, couldn’t trust her to remain with him instead of searching for the scion during the night.

  There were places he couldn’t follow her should she choose to leave him behind. The water held only death for him. It was a place of darkness, with impenetrable depths that defied the light. Long before the humans added nightma
re creatures to it, the kraken and leviathan called it home, and still did.

  Freed of human form, she’d soon draw the attention of one of his kind. He couldn’t allow that to happen.

  He leaned down, brushing his lips against her forehead, her skin warm despite the ocean air. He doubted she felt the cold very often, wondered if she’d noticed the change in herself. The Djinn were creatures of fire.

  The night deepened. Time to a being whose existence spanned eternity was meaningless, but because of Sajia, he marked the minutes and hours. She anchored him to them, filled them with intense emotion and sweet sensation.

  Dawn was hours away when he felt the change in her. Her skin grew more heated, becoming so hot he was forced away from her.

  He rolled to his feet just as her Djinn spirit escaped its prison of human flesh. In a shimmer, like heat rising from the desert, she became a nighthawk and took flight, going to the door and beating ineffectively against it in an attempt to escape.

  Addai gave up his physical form, turning his will, his essence into a cage made of light and power. A gift rarely used but one he was glad to possess in that instant.

  She threw herself against the unseen barrier, growing more agitated with each attempt until finally choosing another form. Feathers morphed to hard golden carapace as she became a scorpion and struck at the walls of her prison with a poison-charged tail.

  When that didn’t work, she changed again, and again, morphing from one shape into another until exhaustion claimed her and she collapsed, feathered once again, the dove she’d so often chosen when they lived as man and wife.

  Addai took form then, freeing her from the cage. A step took him to her, and once again the air shimmered.

  Feathers gave way to tanned skin and sleek female curves, the vampire scars restored like camouflage, preserved by the strength of the angelic spell placed on her. He lifted Sajia and returned her to the bed, settling down next to her for what remained of the night.

  SEVEN

  Dawn arrived with the cry of seagulls and the slap of water against the sides of the boat. Though Sajia was cocooned in warmth, held securely against a hard masculine body, she woke chilled and clammy, as if crawling from some dark, cold oubliette.

  Her heart began racing and panic set in. She had the sense of having been awake for a long stretch of night, yet her last memories were of sexual satisfaction.

  The blackouts were getting worse, lasting longer if she was right about spending most of the night awake but unaware. If she’d managed to get out of the cabin—

  A hard shiver went through her at remembering the times she’d come to in a different room or outside the Tucci estate, the times she’d found herself close to a cousin’s home, as if in thinking about them just before blacking out, she’d set a course for unconscious travel.

  Had this happened to her in the past? Was this somehow related to the rebirth of her spirit?

  The answer might lie behind her, his lips delivering soft kisses along her shoulder and neck as his cock grew hard against her buttocks. “Easy, beloved,” he murmured. “I’m here with you.”

  A shiver of a different sort moved through her when the hand splayed across her stomach stroked upward to cup her breast. “I will never allow any harm to come to you.”

  He took the tender nipple between his fingers, squeezing as he placed a love bite where her neck met her shoulder. She moaned in reaction, maneuvered so her opening was pressed against his cock head in wanton invitation.

  Her questions and fears melted away as he entered her, filled her in a slow slide of hot, hard flesh. His penis throbbed inside her like a second heartbeat, offering a different type of reassurance, a different type of comfort.

  “That feels so good,” she whispered, closing her eyes, laughing softly when it occurred to her that given his innate arrogance, she probably shouldn’t stroke his ego too often.

  “I heard that,” he said, biting her shoulder in teasing rebuke.

  Whether he meant her laughter or her thoughts, she didn’t know. Didn’t care as his hand abandoned her nipple to smooth over her belly and settle on her clit.

  He stroked the underside of it with his fingers. Grasped and tugged. Tormented her with the back-and-forth rub of his thumb over the tiny naked head, the sharp spikes of pleasure streaking downward to make her toes curl.

  She pushed backward, pressed swollen folds against his skin. “I could make you beg again,” he said, his voice purring in threat.

  The impulse to engage in sensual battle rose and fell with a thrust. “Please,” she said, giving him victory with the needy sound of her voice uttering a single word.

  It was his turn to laugh softly, in masculine satisfaction. “You are mine,” he murmured, lips delivering kisses and sucking bites to her skin, cock moving in and out in a slow, intimate show of possession.

  He said her name, whispered for her ears though she heard it in her mind as well. One word, and yet it translated to so much more, expanded only to condense into Lover. Wife. Mine.

  Sajia closed her eyes, surrendering to the pleasure as he brought her to an orgasm that left her wanting to stay in bed all day and engage in nothing but lovemaking. For long moments she was able to linger in contentment, but reality wouldn’t be held off.

  The cry of seagulls and slap of water were a call to get up, to continue the search for Corinne, bringing Sajia full cycle to her waking fear. “Did I try to leave the cabin last night?”

  The sudden tension in Addai’s body answered her question. “What do you remember?”

  She turned in his arms, the motion making him sigh in protest as his cock left her channel. “Nothing. I never do.”

  His expression didn’t change. And that was yet another answer, though it begged the question. “Do you know what’s happening to me?”

  Trust. It had never been one of Addai’s strong points.

  The one glaring example of not trusting in the love they shared, not fully committing to it had ended in indescribable pain and thousands of years of loss.

  Tell her. Free her, an internal voice urged.

  His gaze dropped to the scorpion pendant against her skin, sigils inscribed into it, holding information about the Djinn. From there his focus shifted to the vampire marks on her arm. In her true form she would be free of the scars, but their loss wouldn’t undo the chains binding her to the human family she’d been willing to die for. It wouldn’t rid her of whatever loyalty she felt to the Tucci scion.

  “Does it have something to do with my being reincarnated?” she asked, unknowingly providing him a way to escape the turmoil of choice.

  “It has everything to do with it.”

  Anticipating her next question, heading it off, he said, “The periods of blacking out and not remembering what happened will pass.”

  The script on her skin glowed like an accusation. Coward!

  Addai denied the charge. It was too soon to free her, too risky right now, when she might choose to hunt for Corinne on her own if the situation became dangerous and he decided to end her participation in it.

  “We should get up and begin searching for the boat,” she said.

  “When this is over, promise you’ll go willingly to our home.”

  She leaned forward, touching her lips to his, fingers stroking where his wing merged with his back and sending a shudder of pleasure through him. “I have obligations to the Tucci.”

  Her answer convinced him of the rightness of his decision to hold off releasing her from the angelic bindings keeping her human. “The Tuccis won’t stand in the wa