“Why?” she asked, fearing she knew the answer. “Do you know the Arion’s motivation?”
“The Arion leader wishes to rule the world. Perhaps he aspires to rule the universe.”
She blinked. It was hard enough to think with Diego both naked and on top of her. Add to it a story too wild to conceive, and her head felt clouded. “This is crazy. I feel like I’m in the twilight zone.”
“You of all people should understand the realm of possibilities. You have powers others don’t. Some believe you’re evil. Others say you’re simply make-believe. My point being, you are very real and very gifted. What I’m telling you may be hard to comprehend but it is nevertheless quite real.”
He was speaking the truth. She could do things normal humans could not. If she possessed such unique skills, how could she reject what she couldn’t conceive? Marcella believed Diego. In her heart and soul she trusted him as well. She reached up, her finger tracing his bottom lip. “Tell me more,” she whispered.
He smiled, his eyes saying he knew he’d received her acceptance. “We need your help.”
“Then I’m right,” Marcella said. “It’s my healing power you desire?”
“Ah, my sweet,” he said, desire suddenly alive in his words, lips brushing her cheek, her jaw, her lips. “It’s your body and soul I desire…and your heart.”
Her eyes felt heavy, her body warm. His cock was hard, pressing between her thighs. Her body responded, dampness gathering from the need to feel him inside her.
“Diego,” she whispered. “Please. I need to understand.” His lips brushed hers, his tongue sliding past her teeth and stroking, sucking her into a whirlwind of passion. Marcella forgot for a moment what she was going to say. A pause. Another kiss. She tried to focus, needing answers. “I can’t think like this.”
His hips moved, sliding his length along her mound, following the trail of wetness. A moan escaped her lips. “Diego.”
“I need you, Marcella.”
She felt his hands travel her body. No, his mouth. Both. He touched, kissed, nipped. All with sweet, passionate love. It was like nothing she’d ever experienced. Where he had pinched her nipple before, he stroked it with his warm tongue, making her arch her back. Her hands went to his amazing hair. She loved how it felt. How he felt.
The burn where he wasn’t, but should be, made her squirm. “I want you inside me.”
His head lifted from the nipple he suckled, his eyes dark. Mesmerizing. She stared into them and lost her breath. It was as if he had crawled inside her and wrapped himself around her very soul. She felt an inner touch. An invisible connection. A pleasure of a new kind heated her inside, potent with the impact. His eyelids were heavy and she knew he felt it as well. The words he spoke not long before came to her, “your body is binding to mine”.
It was as he said.
They were as one.
His mouth closed down on hers, hungry with its demands, and she moaned against his lips. And then gasped as his cock slid into her body. “Marcella,” he whispered.
She felt her name like a caress.
Her body arched, her butt lifting as she pressed her hips against his. All she could think was closer. Harder. More. He moved in slow, sensual strokes, in and out of her body. One of his hands playing with her nipple, palming her breast. And then a hard thrust injected her with a rush of pleasure.
“Diego,” she rasped.
He held himself above her, palms pressed into the mattress, and slowly, inch by inch, slid backwards, his cock positioned with only the tip inside her. His eyes met hers. For long moments they stared at one another, her breath caught in her throat. Her heart pounding at double time. The room faded away with the force of their joining.
And then, in a slow, sexy progression, he slid back inside her, giving her not just his body but also something beyond. Still holding her stare, she felt his mind open to hers. He buried himself to the hilt and then his face went to her neck. Images rushed through her brain. Flashes of events. Battles. Diego doing surgery. Monsters battling men Diego called friends. A human woman bonding with a man she knew to be the Black Knight’s Leader. And then her…naked in Diego’s arms as she was now.
Where she belonged.
Suddenly his mouth was on hers, the images replaced by red-hot desire. His hips beginning to move. His long, hard cock stroking her inner walls with back and forth motions. Lost in everything he was, her body reached for his. Her hips lifted from the bed, driven by an absolute need to feel complete. And he was her only hope of making it so.
Diego’s lips were like a silky caress, touching her with sensual tenderness, tasting lips, her neck and her shoulder. And then his teeth scraped her shoulder. Sharp but erotic. The pinch of pain she felt somehow only made the next thrust of his cock more amazing. She called out his name, her neck tilting backwards. Her fingers sunk into his back as the pleasure burst and then splintered like a million pieces of bliss shattering through her body.
She shook with the potency of her release, feeling Diego’s teeth on her nipples and then his tongue. The touch of his mouth seemed to make another ripple. And another. Until slowly…she stilled. Diego brushed hair out of her face, leaning on his elbow and staring at her with dark, passion filled eyes. “You are so damn beautiful,” he murmured.
Her hand went to his fingers, bringing them to her lips and kissing them. “You didn’t come,” she whispered. “It’s your turn.”
“I wanted to watch your pleasure,” he replied, his voice heavy with passion.
Her body was still squeezing and stroking him, the aftershock of her orgasm intense. “I want to watch you.” She suckled his finger into her mouth, her eyes locked with his, begging him to take. Mimicking him, her teeth scraped his finger and then his wrist, hands gliding up his arms.
A low moan escaped his throat just before his mouth claimed hers, and he thrust with power. Yes, she whispered to him in her mind. More.
She felt the animal in him roar, and she seized the beauty of awakening it. In her heart she saw the wilder part of him, and thrilled at his more animalistic urges. For some reason it made her hot. Burning beyond belief. The more he gave her, thrust after thrust, the more she wanted. Something about this man and all he was charged her with a sexual high she’d never known.
His head lifted, dark hair falling forward, eyes wide. She stared at him, her gaze feasting on the magnificent male perfection that was him. Her man. Her soul mate. She knew it to be so. Wanted it. Accepted. Even burned to feel all it could be. The low groans he made as he thrust echoed in her head and made her press her hips into him, now taking and giving.
But her eyes stayed on his face. She was watching the moment he exploded. The moment the wild roar of complete pleasure ripped from his lungs. “Oh God,” she whispered, so completely shaken by what her body, both inside and out, felt. A flutter in her stomach, and then to her utter shock, her body rippled with yet another release. “Diego, I…” Words were lost to pleasure.
They shuddered and shook. When finally they stilled, they lay intimately wrapped together, naked, body and soul as one. And they slept.
* * * * *
A loud pounding on the door made Marcella jump.
Diego raised his head, his body tensing. She could feel the readiness ooze from him. “Marcella, are you in there?”
David.
Marcella’s eyes riveted to Diego’s face, her hand snaking out to his arm, shackling it with anticipation. He started to get up, anger rolling through him like a part of the very air. She felt it in her mind. And in her body as if it breathed for her as well. “No,” she said. “He’s just trying to protect me.”
David’s angry voice bellowed again, the pounding getting louder. “Marcella.”
“Just a minute,” she called across the room, afraid David would wake the neighbors. It was a moment of distraction Diego took advantage of, pushing off the bed in a quick, agile move. Her hand fell away from his arm despite her best attempt to control him. Somethi
ng raged within him, dark and dangerous.
“Diego,” she said, a plea in her voice. He stood above her, ready to charge the door, naked as the day he was born.
The broad muscles of his chest expanded as he sucked in a deep breath. “This is between me and this man.” A muscle in his jaw jumped. “You go into the bathroom.”
“What?” she gasped, lifting her body onto her knees. “If you think for one minute—“
“Marcella,” David called through the door. She frowned. Now she was hot. At both of these two fools. “Shut up and wait, David!” she yelled at the door, and then refocused on Diego. “You better get one thing straight, mister. I’m not some wimpy woman you can boss around.”
Diego stared at her, not moving, his eyes locked with hers in silent challenge. “And I’m not sharing my woman.”
“Your woman?” she demanded. “Is that what I am?”
“You wear my mark.”
“I don’t know anything about a mark. But if I am your woman—and right now the way you’re acting—it’s if,” she warned, “then you need to believe in me.” She paused and then softened her voice. “Trust me. I don’t want David, but I do appreciate him looking out for me and you should too!”
His lips tightened. “He has motives.”
“David is an honorable man. He’s never acted out of line with me. I’m getting dressed and answering the door. I am begging you to stand by my side and support me. You’ve asked for a lot of trust from me. I need the same from you.”
He reached for her hand. “I will always stand by you.”
She looked up into his eyes and knew it was true. For reasons she still didn’t fully comprehend, she belonged with him. “Prove it now. Get dressed and meet David. Treat him like the man who protected me until the day we came together, you and I.”
“Answer one thing first.”
“All right,” she whispered.
“Are you my woman?”
“You know the answer.”
His mouth came close to hers. “Say it.”
“Yes,” she said a bit breathlessly as his mouth closed down on hers.
* * * * *
Diego stood next to Marcella as she opened the hotel door. He reminded himself of the need for control. The possessiveness he felt for Marcella was new, his way of dealing with it far from defined.
David looked from one to the other, and then his eyes locked and focused on Marcella. Anticipating his move, Diego’s hand shackled his wrist, as it was about to claim Marcella’s arm. “Don’t touch her,” he warned and then released his grip.
David’s eyes flashed with anger. “Marcella, you need to come with me.”
“Come inside,” Marcella said, taking Diego’s arm and stepping backwards. “There is much we need to discuss.” David didn’t move.
“You don’t even know this man,” he argued.
“I do,” she said, and responding to the doubt so evident in his eyes. “I do.”
“Please,” she added.
He stared at her a long moment and then let out a breath, taking a reluctant step forward. Diego was surprised when David’s eyes locked with his, a challenge in his hard stare. Diego watched him walk several steps into the room and turn to face them. Marcella shut the door and then laced her arm under Diego’s elbow. It was a clear message to David showing her commitment to Diego. This didn’t displease him. But he also knew she did it for another reason.
A desire to keep him in check.
“How do you know him?” David asked.
A muscle jumped in his jaw. “My name is Diego Montez, not him.”
David’s brow lifted. “Okay, Diego,” he said, a sharpness to the way he said the name. “How do you know Marcella?”
“David,” Marcella said. “Diego is like me. He’s different. We are connected in ways I can’t explain.”
David shook his head. “Tell me you aren’t serious?”
“Marcella will be traveling to my home with me. Your services are no longer needed.”
“Oh no,” David said, and he stepped forward, moving towards Marcella.
“No, David!” Marcella yelled, and her hand went out in front of her, stop-sign fashion.
David’s fist went to his chest, stopping as if he’d hit a brick wall. “What?” His eyes were wide. He took a step backward, a hint of desperation in his face. After several seconds his hand slipped to his side. Fixing Marcella in a stare, both his expression and his voice held accusation. “What did you just do?”
“I…I don’t know.” Marcella’s face registered shock. “I didn’t want you two to fight.” She looked up at Diego and her hand went to her neck. “I didn’t even know I could do that.”
Diego turned to her, pulling her close. “It’s okay. You meant only to protect him. I thought this might happen. All the power you possess is now enhanced. You are joined with me. My power is yours and yours is mine.”
“This is crazy,” David said, his voice full of force, but he didn’t move. “What the hell have you done to her?”
“Enhanced?” Marcella echoed.
Diego ran his hands up and down her arms. “Yes. My power is yours.”
“And mine is yours?” she asked.
“Together we are stronger.”
David was growing impatient. “What the hell is going on?”
Marcella looked at him. “David, I think we should sit down and talk. Let Diego explain. I can’t tell you what I have yet to figure out myself.”
The phone rang. No one moved. Marcella felt Diego’s tension level rise. It was like being plugged into his emotional outlet. Marcella looked at David. “It’s my aunt.”
“How do you know that?” he asked.
The phone continued to ring. She didn’t often allow David to see just how perceptive she was, fearful that it would be unsettling for him. Besides, sometimes she was and sometimes she wasn’t. She seemed to get feelings about things only when some deep part of her mind told her it was important. Granted, knowing someone was on the phone wasn’t in her normal skill set. Still…”You know how I know. Can I get it without you starting trouble?”
David’s face twisted. “I’ll get it,” he said, and sidestepped Marcella, about to pass her, when the phone went silent. He mumbled a curse and his eyes went to Diego’s. “What have you done to her? Something is different.”
* * * * *
Staring at David, Diego fought the urge to pick him up and force him from the room. But deep down, he felt the man’s true concern for Marcella. For this reason alone, he forced civility.
“Marcella is safer with me than she has ever been. I will die for her if necessary. Of this, you have my word.” Diego pulled Marcella under his arm, close to his side. “It will be her choice what she tells you. Leave us now. Go comfort her aunt. Tell her we will come to her soon and explain.”
David looked at Marcella. “This is what you want?”
“Yes,” she said. “Please don’t frighten my aunt. Please tell her I’m safe.” Marcella paused. “Because I am.”
“This is what you really want?” David asked, fists balled at his sides. “You trust him over me.” Not a question. A stark, cold fact.
“David,” Marcella said in a soft voice. “There are things going on beyond the surface. Things I can’t explain but I will.”
His jaw tensed. “Explain now.”
She took a deep breath and looked up at Diego. “Please give me a minute with him.”
His first instinct was to say no, but the plea in her voice was impossible to ignore. He took a deep breath and looked at David. It wasn’t outside of the man’s range to think he might grab her and run. Diego gave him a warning look. Hard eyes met hard eyes.
Marcella squeezed his arm and he gave her his attention. Their eyes locked, and he spoke to her in his mind. I will step to the window but I will not leave you alone. He is contemplating doing something stupid like grabbing you and making a run for it. I see it in his eyes.
Her eyes went to
David, lingered and then returned to Diego. He is worried.
Diego ground his teeth together. Make him go away or I will.
He’s just trying to help.
Marcella—
Fine! I will handle him.
He eyed her a moment, making sure she meant her words, and then turned away. And then he positioned himself across the room, by the window, and watched. Prepared to act.
* * * * *
Marcella gave David her full attention, moving close to him and making eye contact. “I’m safe.”
David rejected her answer. “He’s a stranger. How do you know he’s not dangerous?”
There was truth to his words and in the back of her mind she wondered at Diego’s powers. Could he make her enthralled with mind tricks? Should she trust him? Everything inside screamed yes. But was it a trick she didn’t understand? Well, one thing for sure. Diego didn’t mean to harm her. She didn’t think he could hide such a thing with her abilities. But his motives for wanting her…that might be a different story.
“Oh, I know he’s dangerous,” she admitted. “Just not to me.” She paused and then spoke the remainder of what she knew to be truth. “But there are monsters after me. Diego can protect me.”
David’s face filled with frustration. “There are always monsters after you. That’s why you hired me. And that’s why I can’t let you simply trust this guy.”
“I do not simply trust a stranger. Give me some credit. He’s different.” She hesitated, holding back the words, like me. It felt the natural thing to say, but it wasn’t true. It couldn’t be. No one was like her. “Not…like you. And neither are the men after me.” She paused again, considering. “David, they aren’t wholly human. They…are just not. Diego. Well, the truth is, he’s different as well.”