Tempt Me with Darkness (Doomsday Brethren 1)

“Have you naught to say? Or are you too busy gloating because I want you even as I hate you?”

Repeating the fact she was not Morganna would get her nowhere. She had to try something new.

Marrok’s words and the carving of an angel right beside him gave her an idea. Logic rebelled against it…while her body applauded. The plot was hasty, insane, imperative.

He wanted her. Bad. The truth was getting her nowhere. Why not use his lust to her advantage?

No reason, except she was playing head games with a madman.

Olivia allowed her blouse to fall open. Fighting back a shiver, she turned in Marrok’s grip, keeping the angel close. He towered over her, his cock nudging her belly. Oh God. Danger and desire pelted her in an unforgiving rain. The odd connection between them pulsated.

Get a grip!

Even with a sane man, she’d fear indulging this intense chemistry. She had almost no experience with sex…with touch at all. Her own mother had treated her as if she were diseased. Most everyone else had followed suit. Olivia had always felt like a freak, never expected a hunk like Marrok to want her. But as he pressed against her, she was dying to learn everything about sex, especially if having it with him would live up to the promise of the lightning charging through her blood.

No! She had to get away before she succumbed to this madness and he swallowed her up, body and soul.

Olivia shivered at the unbearable intimacy. Though this game was dangerous, if she wanted to escape, she didn’t have much choice. She had to seduce him, then when he was distracted, incapacitate him with a whack to the head and escape. While ignoring her own clawing need.

“Is wanting me so terrible?” she said huskily, but her words quivered.

“Do not tease me,” he warned, deadly quiet. “Tempt me, touch me once, and I will unleash all my unfulfilled desire on you. Consider that, in fifteen centuries, I learned a thousand different ways to fuck you.”

Oh God. Olivia’s head spun dizzily at his words. Her sex pulsed. Cramped. She swayed and grabbed Marrok’s biceps for support. When fire shot up her arms, she ripped her hands away, but the sensation still burned her fingers. What the hell is going on here?

“Why did you go through the elaborate charade of arranging a meeting through Bram? You knew how to find me. What is your game?”

“What makes you think there is one?”

“From frightened maiden to seductress in the span of a heartbeat? You underestimate me, Morganna. Sorely.”

“You’re not intrigued?” She moved as close as she dared, so near he seared her. “Marrok, stop fighting what you want. I have.”

His eyes narrowed to suspicious slits that mirrored the tight line of his mouth. Why didn’t he believe her? She’d said all the right things, hadn’t she?

“What you want is freedom. Your face says so.”

And his face said that he was beyond furious. She winced, bracing herself, but he didn’t do more than scowl. Despite that, she was drawn to him. What was happening here?

It didn’t matter. Her freedom, maybe her life, depended upon it. She had to focus, to pretend that she desired him. Well…not really pretend, just focus on her bizarre connection to him, indulge in the inexplicable yearnings he aroused, the fantasy of making love with a man who needed her—and her alone.

“You’re not reading me right.” Her voice dropped to a purr as she tousled her hair with her fingers. Marrok’s laser-focused gaze, burning her lips, her body. He clenched his jaw.

She had his attention.

Olivia placed her trembling hand against the width of his hot chest. Instantly he stiffened, as if he felt the same sexual jolt zigzagging through her body. The frightened part of her wanted to withdraw. She couldn’t, not when she needed to escape, not when her body felt more alive than it ever had.

Marrok’s heart beat furiously beneath her tingling palm. His wary, harsh stare told her that his head wasn’t willing to give in just yet.

His erection said his body was already there.

“You see this desire I can’t deny?” She pressed her breasts against his chest.

He drew in a sharp breath. A thrill rushed through Olivia.

“If you don’t let me touch you, don’t touch me back, this burning will consume me. I’m dying to know how good we can make each other feel.”

Beneath her hands, he flexed with tension. His eyes slid shut. He swore softly.

“Do not do this.” His words were gravelly and harsh. “Release me from this hell and leave me be.”

Grab the carving. Hit him now! Yet…she couldn’t. His anguish became hers. She actually hurt for him.

“Marrok, open your eyes. Look at me.”

Reluctantly, he did. A spark sizzled between them, hot and bright. Olivia paused for a shaky breath.

A new misgiving assailed her, not for her safety, but her emotional health. She’d been much too vulnerable since her distant mother’s death; her brittle shell had cracked. Loneliness and the pain of longing for someone to care about her tangled with anger. The weight of it felt crushing at times. Given how wildly she reacted to Marrok, if he treated her with an ounce of tenderness, he could strip her soul bare. Opening up to him was an invitation to her own destruction. But she had to move forward with her plan.

“I’m asking for a simple touch,” she pressed on.

Pain haunted his face. “Nothing about you is simple.”

Olivia hated to look into those troubled eyes and deceive him. A strange instinct, given her captivity. Then he leaned toward her, his lips closing in. Nerves battered her.

Then he placed his cheek against hers. His five o’clock shadow rasped against her skin—and disturbingly, he tugged on her heart. She laid her palm against the dark bristle on his other cheek, just as one of his large hands cupped the crown of her head, fingers tangling in her hair.

The carving of the angel was right there in her grasp—the perfect weapon. But against all logic, she melted against him. Breathing seemed impossible in the face of his surprising tenderness. She’d never imagined this imposing man could express such silent longing. She felt it in every stroke of his fingers, with every ragged breath.

“Kiss me,” she blurted.

His fingers tensed in her hair. “I should make you wait for half an eternity, as I have for you.”

“Is that what you really want, to keep waiting?”

He paused, backed away enough to stare into her eyes. The moment hung between them.

“God help me.”

Olivia saw Marrok coming toward her, felt his breath and heat—and did nothing to stop him. She didn’t want to.

He seized her lips in the next heartbeat. It felt…inevitable as his mouth took her own. The tangle of his hands in her hair, the stark lust hot in his touch, the scrape of his stubble against her face…everything about him was rough.

Except his lips on hers.

After a hesitant brush, Marrok covered her mouth again, deepening his possession, making her knees weak. She’d heard clichés about a kiss having that kind of power, but believed such descriptions were overblown.

Now, she knew better.

Marrok pulled her into him, urged her lips apart, and swept into her mouth, shifting the kiss from persuasive to demanding. Need slammed into her, and her world skewed like a Tilt-O-Whirl. With every brush of his lips, his unbearably male taste saturated her senses. Clutching his shoulders, she joined the untamed kiss, hungry for more.

He was like a mountain, durable and huge. Solid. Yet he hadn’t used his superior size or strength to push her further.

He fisted his hand deeper in her hair, pulling her even closer. Olivia tried to absorb the surreal moment as another dizzying surge of desire crashed over her. Was this actually happening? The way he leaned into her, straining to be closer, flushed fresh heat all the way from her belly to her toes. The buzz in her brain picked up volume until it was like listening to a two-thousand-dollar stereo in a car the size of a Yugo.

“Your mouth…” He breathed hard against her lips before he sampled them again. “So bloody intoxicating.”

Olivia moaned. Marrok was addicting. He tasted of sin, smelled like pleasure, wrapped in mysterious midnight. Even if she escaped tonight and never saw him again, she would never forget these sensations.

“Give me more,” he murmured.

Yes!

She’d gone crazy. The man had abducted her. She had a case of vertigo that was about to knock her on her ass. The buzzing in her head was rivaled only by the boom of her heart.

So this is what desire feels like.

As if Marrok was tuned into her need, he slanted his mouth over hers once more, this possession his deepest yet.

Oh God, was she so lonely that she’d succumbed to some weird Stockholm syndrome?

No. Focus on escape. Don’t feel anything, her mind screeched. Don’t let him affect you.

Too late.

Instead of reaching for one of his nearby carvings to make it a weapon, her hands climbed from his biceps to curl around his neck, grasping at the thick column and the inky hair hanging there. Marrok’s hands were in motion, too, sliding their way from her tangled curls, caressing down her arms, encircling her waist, until he grasped her hips. She writhed against him, his hold hot and unrelenting as he urged her closer, settling her right against the hard thrust of his sex.

Which proved he wasn’t small anywhere.

“Madness,” he growled. “I cannot taste you enough.” He punctuated the sentence with a kiss even more voracious than the one before.

Olivia kissed him back, logical thought slipping away. But her body’s desire was crystal clear. Every nerve and cell strained toward Marrok, melted into him.

She wanted Marrok. No, she had to have him. Did this need to touch him stem from loneliness? Simple human need? Whatever. Giving herself to him felt necessary to her soul.

Marrok lifted his head. Wonder. Desire. Determination. The stare he sent her swam thick with each. Her dizziness returned in force. Olivia leaned against him for additional support as her knees collapsed. Even as her head screamed at her to stop acting like a nymphomaniac, her body knew he would be there to catch her.

“My God. You do want me.” His growl vibrated inside her.

Then his restless hands journeyed from her hips to her waist again, farther up, resting just shy of her breasts. Anticipation for more launched through her body.

As if he understood, he covered her lips with his own and claimed her breast in his hot hand. Olivia arched as his thumb swiped her hard, eager nipple. Breath ragged and shallow, she clawed to get closer, feeling like she’d crawl out of her skin if he didn’t give her more.

He had the same need, she realized, as he lifted her and carried her across the great room and down the hall.

To his bed.

He laid her on a mattress that smelled of cloves and moss. She craved the feel of his body enveloping her, driving deep. The glow in his silvery-blue eyes said he ached to give her that and more.

Marrok settled his body over hers and parted her legs with his own as he settled between. The heat of his body scorched her. The desperate grip of his hands on her face, along with the feel of him, seeped into her every pore.

Oh God. This was really happening.

At that moment, she couldn’t imagine him not wanting her. They were on a collision course; she had dreamed of him. Maybe it was Fate.

Pleasure rolled through her body, and she didn’t fight it. His next toe-curling kiss had her meeting him halfway. He branded her neck with his lips, nuzzled her sensitive lobe, breathed fire across her skin.

Logic shouted, He’s insane! Dangerous. Maybe deadly.

But longing whispered, He wants you. You need him.

For once in her solitary life, she was going for the fantasy. His touch was like drowning in champagne—heady, bubbly, smooth as it went down, difficult to stop imbibing.

Olivia yanked at his black T-shirt. “Marrok…”

He inched back and looked at her, framing her face in his hands. “Is this a hoax?”

She swallowed, shook her head. “I need this. I don’t understand…”

“What you make me feel is truly madness.”

“It is.” In the real world, he’d never want her. Reality was hugely overrated.

The hot, hushed whispers stopped when he reached back, grabbed a fistful of his T-shirt at the nape and doffed it in one swift tug.

As he bared his torso, Olivia stared at every bronzed ripple. Marrok was intimidating enough when his shoulders strained the seams of his shirt, but with his upper body bare, he loomed much larger. A dusting of dark body hair, myriad scars, and raised veins accented his skin, from the firm swells of his pecs down, disappearing into the waistband of his jeans.

“Touch me,” he murmured.

Olivia lifted her fingertips to his skin, bare palms to his shoulders. He was hard everywhere, back, arms, hips…the erection between her thighs, which got harder as her palms danced across his flesh. The more she felt of him, the more she wanted to take him all in at once.

Then Marrok was everywhere, his kiss dominating, his palm drifting to her thigh and lifting it around him again. Olivia gasped as he pressed right against the spot guaranteed to ignite her.