A Mermaid s Kiss (Daughters of Arianne 1)

And Goddess help him, some part of him was delighting in his brutality, even as another voice raged at him to stop.

There was nothing more despicable than a man who hurt a woman for no other reason than the demons within himself. But those demons were hard upon him right now, and Anna was willing to give him shelter in that storm, as well as be the rocks he dashed himself against.

When his cock was gripped by her tightness, he belonged . . . somewhere. He dropped over her, burying his face in her neck, lips finding the pounding artery. Tried not to snap his teeth into it like a rabid creature.

No. He was a lord of the sky, always in control. He wanted her insane, as insane as he felt. He withdrew and pulled her legs over his shoulders, lifting her up to put his mouth between her legs. He banded his arms around her upper thighs as she lost the ability to hold on to anything, suckled her clit in his mouth, plunged his tongue deep inside her, tasting himself and her sweetness, feeling her shudders, hearing her mewling cries.

He worked her ruthlessly until she flooded against his mouth. But then he kept going as she cried out at the stimulation of her over-sensitized skin, squirmed. He could hold her effortlessly, while her struggle fired his blood. She was his. His. He didn't release her until she stopped struggling, and when she did, he saw she was weak, her eyes glazed, and her throat bared to him. Good.

He rammed into her again, no finesse or rhythm. He was pumping, pumping, impossibly hard now. But no release came. Sweat gathered on his shoulders, fury built like a storm, but it was a fever that wouldn't break, a battle rage that could only find release in blood. Bending, he sank his teeth into the top of her breast and heard her gasp, the cry she bit back. As he worked down to her nipple she tried to hold on to his arms, but he caught her hands and pinned them to the ground.

"Mine," he said fiercely.

"My lord, let me--"

"No." He snarled it. "Lie there. Take me. That's all."

"Stop."

She said it softly, so softly that it shouldn't have registered at all. But it was like the slight whisper of an unexpected gentle breeze during the fury of his storm. Jonah paused, panting, his hands gripping her wrists with bruising force, his body pressed down hard on her as if he was pounding on his tormented soul. As if he'd somehow given it to her and it was staring at him out of those eyes. Only not with the accusation he expected, but something harder to face.

Anna's heart was racing, her mind in shock at the vicious assault. He'd brought her to an intense climax with his mouth that had swept her away like a riptide. But then he'd bitten her so savagely, gripped her as he might an opponent. For just a flash, in his dark eyes, there'd been . . . evil. Hatred.

No. She refused to believe that of him.

While Mina had never said how old Jonah was, Anna had no doubt he'd been fighting Dark Ones for centuries. And now she knew he'd been around over a thousand years. The battles he'd waged had probably taken place in areas decimated by plague, in the clouds of smoke rising above the gas chambers of concentration camps, over slaughterhouses and mass graves dug by dictators and conquerors, over bare ground stripped of forests and the homes of all the creatures there . . . wherever human beings created such evil as couldn't be imagined. Not only did he have to see it below him, he'd faced the creatures that tore holes in the firmament and that were called by evil. The angels who followed him into those battles, those he trained, whom he came to care for like his own sons, often died.

While angels apparently took longer to reach a breaking point, they did have one. Physically immortal didn't mean emotionally immune.

She was out of her depth. No question. But the Goddess had made her as well as great and mighty angels, so there had to be a connecting thread between them.

"Ssshhh." She lifted her head from the ground. While she was sure he wouldn't release her hands, she brushed her mouth, then her temple against his heaving chest, her ear to his heart. "My breast. It hurts, my lord. Will you put your mouth on it?"

A quiet request, and when she laid her head back down, Jonah's gaze moved to that area where he'd bitten her. The imprint of his teeth was visible.

Staring at it a long moment while she held her breath, at last he bent, his grip easing without conscious thought, and pressed his lips there.

Light, gentle, the amazing quiver of flesh. As he relented to her need, Jonah found the soft silkiness of woman that he hadn't registered or savored in the haze of his fury. And as he gave to her, he remembered it was a much better form of pleasure than taking.

Her fingers turned to twine with his, held as she slipped the other hand free and threaded it up into his hair.

"Don't move, my lord. Simply . . . be."

When she lifted her hips, he slid deeper, into the wet, welcoming heat of her rippling over his organ. Tightening her muscles on him, she began to move. As he watched, curved over her, he stayed utterly still, mesmerized. Passion gathered energy with the slow glide of her hips, up and down, her lower body rippling like her mermaid form.

Now, instead of the relentless barrage of an electric shock, where no release from torture was forthcoming, the pleasure was building like a slow tide. The joy of feeling cool water running over his hellfire-scalded body, the slow approach to the promise of a waterfall.

"Little one . . ."

"Easy," she whispered. "Let me just feel you. Ride inside me, my lord."

Something was quaking in his lower belly, a remarkable reaction. She was so young, so much younger than he, but at this moment, the way her fingers passed over his face, it was as if that didn't matter. As if the blood didn't matter, as if she could see beyond it to something he couldn't see himself. The climax was intensifying to a level he'd never experienced before, and yet his grip was no longer bruising. He'd drifted down onto her, had his elbows on either side of her head, their foreheads touching, pressing together. His buttocks were clenching as he moved now, as unconscious and natural as breathing. Sliding in deep, withdrawing, thrusting in again, feeling her excruciatingly tight muscles holding him, stroking him. Her legs rose, clasped around him, and they were moving in one sinuous roll, perfectly synchronized like the sway of the tree branches above, the movement of wind, rhythm of the earth.

"Let me in, my lord," she said softly. "Don't deny me. I love you."

The words were simple, true and sweet. He had no defense against them. Her energy flooded into him, and while he could not bring himself to match it, create the synergy of healing that he knew she and her seawitch would find optimal, he could do this one thing for her. Passively and yet wondrously experience her energy moving through his body, clean and innocent, healing where it could. It even surrounded the deep blackness squatting balefully on top of his soul. Though it couldn't permeate it, the Joining Magic settled over it like a cloak offered to a shivering vagrant, a touch of kindness toward something lost and desolate, even as the creature spat and hissed halfheartedly at the offering.

His release came then, quiet, overwhelming. His body shuddering against hers, fingers digging into her fragile shoulders and slim upper arms. Pressing his face into her hair, he emitted the groan of a soul-deep release.

They lay silently that way for a while, his jaw pressed against her wet cheek, so that the tears on her face transferred to his skin.

When he rose to his knees at last, pulled out of her, his gaze drifted down to her thighs. Mixed with her fluids, he saw the smears of blood where he'd thrust into her. The tremble of her thighs where he'd pushed the muscles relentlessly.

He swallowed. He couldn't ask forgiveness for yet another unforgivable act. But he could offer her this. Bending forward from his knees, as if genuflecting before her, he kissed her inner thigh. One side, then the other, taking away the blood, soothing her flesh in between with his tongue while her muscles left impressions like butterfly wings against his jawline as she quivered, held her breath.

"I'm all yours, my lord," Anna whispered.

To destroy with my darkness. Bowing his

head and closing his eyes, a shudder rippled over his skin beneath her touch. "I should have David take you home," he said, his voice harsh. "You're not safe with me."

"I'm where I belong, my lord." Anna raised her chin as he lifted his head, met her gaze. "That is not a decision you can make for me."

Jonah gave her an ironic look, which indicated he was more than physically capable of making that decision for her. Her lips tightened. "It is not a decision you should make for me."

"Well, as you may have noticed, I am not necessarily making the decisions I should make these days."