8
“Please stop,” Shilah whispered, almost collapsing when Lachlan complied immediately.
His tongue rasped against her neck. She trembled, wanting to wrench herself from his hand, yet she burned for him. She hated the awful duality of need and terror twisting through her veins. Lachlan’s head lifted, and he peered down at her. His mouth was set in a cruel, unrelenting line, his lips were ruby red with her blood, and his expression was one of violent pleasure and primal satisfaction.
“You bit me,” she said faintly, touching her neck, surprised at the smooth, unbroken skin. “You…you drank my blood. Darkans do not consume blood.” That much she knew about the dark ones.
She met his eyes, and Shilah flinched from the feral lust and cold cruelty.
“Do not fear me.”
She wondered if she had unwittingly trapped herself in an illusion. This was the second time he was issuing such an absurd command as if she would just obey it. “I…I need...” she pushed trembling fingers through her hair, desperate for some time to think.
“Whatever you need I shall provide.”
Shilah stared at him. Every touch of his mind to hers making the connection stronger, more impossible to deny or even resist. “How do you always find a way through my shields?”
“I can feel you, in me, a part of me.”
“You can?”
“The scent of your arousal, the feel of your skin, the sound of your voice feels as if it is imprinting on every cell within my body. I can see a clear bright thread of light in my mind, and it is the only light in my dark abyss, and it leads to you.”
She hated that something in her heart and soul recognized his words. Shilah closed her eyes. She could hardly reconcile with the tender somewhat poetic proclamations of this fearsome creature before her. A beast which so far had killed everything in its path but was now ravishing and touching her passionately, claiming her as his. I’m merely hungry and exhausted. “I am not sure what is happening,” she said aloud, refusing to speak along their unique pathway.
“You are my mate.”
And what did that mean? She hadn’t read the Lexicon the emperor had provided, and the rumors in the empire on Darkans only spoke of their might and unchecked brutality. No one spoke of mates. Did he simply want to mate with her as in bed her? Or was it more? “What do you mean whatever I need you shall provide? Anything?”
“Yes.” Immediate and implacable.
“So, you will not kill me?”
“I cannot harm you.”
Relief crashed into her. She did not remind him of his earlier resolve to end her life. His promise wrapped around her, soothing the fear in a manner she had never imagined. “You truly cannot harm me?”
“All the enemy needs to break me is to hurt you.”
Her lips parted, and she stared helplessly at him. Nothing inside her could imagine the fearsome man before her broken or humbled in any way. But if she was hurt…suddenly, the weight of her importance to him settled on her shoulders. She opened her psychic mind to his, gasping when she saw that silver thread with white diamond lights with a tinge of black surrounding it. It led from her to him. She reached out her fingers touching the air, tracing the connection only those with immense psychic powers could even discern. And somehow, she understood that this thread that led from her to him was the only reason he wasn’t a ravaging beast. And what if this thread were to snap? What if her light should be snuffed away?
“My retribution would burn Amagarie.”
Her soul trembled at the brutal, and unshakable promise. “You’ve just met me!”
“It does not signify.”
“I cannot mean so much to you in so little time.”
The darkness was deeply entrenched in him somehow, she was his only redemption. She didn’t want that responsibility, the fate of her realm already rested on her shoulders. His soul was too much. Yet a part of her wanted to hold onto the promise of being the most important thing in his universe. Hadn’t she always dreamt of a grand love? A sweeping, thrilling romance that would live through the ages that would inspire the poets to write ballads to be sung throughout the galaxies?
His insanity was apparently contagious. This is not the beginning of that, she harshly reminded herself, choosing to blot from her memories the way he had made her burn with a simple kiss. He was a demon of darkness, and there was nothing pure in the mind that she touched. Inexplicably she believed the man before her would give her anything she desired and would move the earth beneath their feet to see it done. Surely her imagination must be overwrought.
“I will give you anything.”
Disbelief hammered at her. Could he read her innermost thoughts? Or did her aura betray her deep yearning for the things she has yet to gain? She stared at him in deep puzzlement while her brain worked quickly and logically. “I want to be free from this cage and away from the Empire with my sister Kala who is also a captive.”
“It shall be done.”