Silken Rapture (Princes of the Underground 2)

“I must again ask too much of you, I know this. I’m sorry, Isabel. I didn’t fully understand until recently.”

He saw her bewilderment slowly morph into disbelief. She went pale and glanced back at Morshiel. Morshiel smiled…a sly smile, the smile of a falling angel. He understood how horrified Isabel was upon seeing him. Morshiel was soulless defined. Evil defined. And yet Isabel was drawn to him against logic, against her very will, like a living, vibrant planet drawn to a massive black hole.

He understood this about her, because he now accepted it in himself.

Blaise was shocked to see that his clone had retracted his incisors. He’d never seen him do that before.

“I would do anything to touch you, Isabel. Anything. Even this,” Morshiel said.

“Even what?” Isabel asked shakily.

“Even submit to my clone, if it is necessary. It is my destiny. Blaise realized this. Now I do as well,” Morshiel said out loud. “It will be a small price to pay for the ecstasy of touching you, of burning in your fires.”

She made a sound of fear.

“Isabel, listen to me,” Blaise said, turning her in his arms. She had begun to tremble. He placed both of his hands on her delicate jaw. Her wide-eyed, trusting stare cut at him. “Morshiel and I are one. People have always thought I said this symbolically, but I mean it literally. We are separate in the physical world, but we are two sides of the same coin in the spiritual sense. He is my dark half. Usan knew this. He made us separate in order to cause a certain friction within me.”

“I know,” she said quietly.

“How do you know?”

“Usan told me. I know many things, Blaise.”

He went very still when she placed her palm on

his chest just above his heart.

“Do you understand what’s happening here, Isabel?”

She inhaled sharply, and Blaise realized it was because Morshiel and he had asked her the question in tandem in her mind. He glanced at his clone quickly. He still hated Morshiel with all of his being, but since last night, something had changed. Part of him pitied Morshiel. He would always feel the need to control what Morshiel represented, but he no longer would fight it from without. He would do so within.

And he would win.

“I cannot kill Morshiel. I can only try to control him. This was the magical mandate Usan set in my blood years ago,” Blaise explained softly, his mouth just inches from Isabel’s lush, trembling lips. “The only way I control him is by accepting fully what he is. I could never do that before, because I could not fully control my own aggressiveness, my animal instincts. Now I can, Isabel.”

“But…why now?”

“Because you taught me that I can,” he said, tenderly wiping a single tear from her cheek with his thumb, sensing her uniqueness and beauty at that moment in every cell of his being. “It’s like I told you last night. I could never hurt you. Never—because I love you. That is what you taught me. A great lesson, greater than I can ever put into words. Indescribable, really. If I can love, I know I can control the beast within me. It may be hard for you to understand what I’m saying…but I did…not…know this until last night,” he grated out.

“I understand,” she whispered. Another tear splashed on his fingers.

He tried to smile. “You understand because you’re so special. You gave me a gift unlike any other. Until you, I doubted I could control Morshiel, control myself. Do you see? Only knowing love made it a possibility.”

She appeared to be choked with emotion. She nodded.

“And now…” He glanced back at Morshiel who stood and watched them, seemingly transfixed. “We must finish this. It is a ritual. A very crucial one.”

“Let me touch you, Isabel,” Morshiel said, longing thick in his voice. Isabel turned. Blaise pressed her back against his chest and wrapped her in his arms. His body responded to her closeness, to the full, taut friction inherent to the magical moment. His cock lengthened as he pressed his face against her fragrant hair.

“I’m sorry to have to put you through this. You can refuse in a second. All I can say to comfort you is that Morshiel is me—all that is evil and vile and empty in me, yes. But me, nonetheless. I will think no less of you if you cannot accept him. But you are my soul, Isabel. If you cannot accept Morshiel this one time then I can never truly accept him…never truly control him from within, as opposed to without,” Blaise told her.

He saw that Morshiel stared into her face and sensed their gazes were locked. “I can control him,” he whispered the secret near her ear. He felt her shiver in his arms. “You must trust that I can.”

“I do trust you,” he heard her whisper. “I will do it.”

Morshiel staggered forward almost clumsily, as if her consent had magically released him from immobility. Perhaps it had. Blaise’s arms tightened around Isabel possessively as Morshiel came toward her, hands outstretched and shaking. He touched Isabel’s bare arms.

Blaise allowed it.