The Darkling's Desire Read online

  “You escaped.” Jasper’s voice held no surprise—he was simply stating fact. Anastasia was infuriated at his lack of ire, until she got close enough to see the surprise flickering through the stormy depths.

  She had surprised him. The moment she understood that, she wished that she hadn’t. It took the edge off of her anger, and she couldn’t have that.

  She had to kill him. He would never let her fulfill her mission otherwise. She would be justified in doing so—he was interfering in Council business, which made him a rogue himself.

  Worrying her lower lip between her teeth, she forced herself to walk slowly, calmly, until she stood over him, his long, hard body curled into a crouch. She narrowed her eyes when she thought of how uncomfortable she’d been in that same position earlier.

  The bastard looked like he could stay that way all damn day. And his arrogance angered her—if he’d truly wanted to hide from her, he would have.

  He wasn’t afraid of her, and she deeply resented it.

  Looking down at his sculpted face, she raised her knife, held it high. “I have to do this.” She hoped that he couldn’t hear what she could in her words, the feeling that while she had to complete her mission, she didn’t want to, not at all.

  No, what she wanted to do was to drop down on her knees beside him, to feel his lips against her again. She wanted to run her hands over his shoulders, wanted to nip at that cord in his neck.

  She felt the hand holding the knife trembling, then lowering as she looked him over. He watched her back, curiosity playing over his features. When he cocked his head to one side, as if trying to understand her, it broke through her haze.

  “Stop trying to glamour me!” Glaring, she again raised the knife. Raking his hands through his hair, Jasper let his face show exasperation, the first true emotion that she had seen him let through.

  “I’m not using a glamour on you, woman.” He pinched the bridge of his nose with two long fingers, then rose easily from his crouch. Anastasia found herself at eye level with the widest, hardest male chest that she had ever seen.

  Her mouth went suddenly dry. She choked back a small cry when his fingers wrapped around her wrist. Her eyes followed the movement as he brought the wicked-looking silver knife she’d been holding to press against his chest.

  “I’ll do it. I will.” Anastasia looked up with wild eyes, willing herself to pull the strength of her Amazon ancestors from her very core. “I have a duty. You’re standing in my way.”

  “You don’t understand.” His words were flat, but still he held her hand, and the blade, to his flesh. “You don’t understand at all.”

  Jasper’s words held the tiniest streak of…could it be vulnerability? Something soft, at any rate, betraying the stone set of his face. Anastasia felt tears prickle at the back of her eyes.

  She’d always been proud of her heritage, but at the moment she wanted to be anywhere but right where she was. She didn’t want to kill.

  “Just go. Go away, let me do my job.” The hand holding the knife shook, would have fallen if Jasper hadn’t held it up.

  He shook his head, pressing her hand even harder against him. She felt the sharp tip of the knife pierce his flesh, smelled the peppery trickle of blood.

  “I can’t. I have a job to do, too.” With his free hand, Jasper took Anastasia’s chin in his long fingers, tilted her face up until she was forced to look into his eyes. She closed her eyes, afraid that he would wipe her mind.

  “I won’t let you.” Anastasia’s words sounded fiercer than she felt.

  “You wouldn’t have a choice. I could wipe this from your mind before you could move a step. I could make you forget that we ever met.” His grip on her chin tightened, but she didn’t try to pull away. Glaring up at him, she bared her teeth like an animal.

  “I’d like to see you try.” She knew he could, but she’d never given up on a thing in her life. She shoved against the wall of muscle that was his chest with her free hand to prove her point.

  She was more upset with the idea of not remembering who he was than she was with forgetting her mission. Somehow this man—this vampire—drew her to him like nothing she’d ever felt before.

  Closing her eyes, she shoved him again. Before she could follow through with the moment, she found herself crushed against Jasper’s big, warm body, her lips against his, the wicked blade pressed flat between their chests. He had lifted her right off the ground, pulling her up effortlessly until their faces aligned, and now his tongue swept over the soft pink swells of her mouth, demanding that she respond.

  She held back for no more than a minute, warring with herself. He had told her himself, Darklings and humans could not mix. It was law in their world. But the sensation sparking between them seemed like something from another world entirely, and if he would let her think long enough to admit it, she knew that they had been coming to this since the moment they had laid eyes upon one another.

  Growling low in her throat, Anastasia wrapped her legs around his waist, grinding the heat between her legs against the hard ridge of flesh that she could feel between Jasper’s legs. For the first time in her life she threw herself into the moment, gave herself permission to simply feel.

  “You’d better want this as much as I do. It has to be worth it.” The low words rasped in her ear, his lips against the sensitive skin of the lobe made her shiver. Anastasia buried her face in his neck, nipping along the ridge of muscle that she’d eyed earlier.

  “I do. I want it. I want you.”

  Chapter Three

  Jasper groaned as Anastasia’s teeth sank into the muscles of his shoulder. She was warm in his arms, her pulse faster than it had been earlier but still slow and steady. Its staccato rhythm seduced him, pulled him deeper into the pool of want in which he had been treading water all day.

  Throughout his long life he had often wondered what it was that pulled certain people together—call it chemistry, call it lust, call it love. Whatever its title, it was a potent force, and it had done him in the second he had looked down from that tree and seen Anastasia’s raven-dark head as she crouched in the mud.

  Releasing his grip on her hands, he grasped the blade that was pressed flat between their bodies and tossed it to the ground. He hissed into Anastasia’s mouth when the silver singed his fingers. She turned her head and sucked the injured digits between her lips, laving the sore skin with her tongue.

  His fangs descended at the pressure. He saw her immense eyes widen at the sight of the bone white against his lips, but he heard no increase in her heartbeat.

  He didn’t scare her. The last human that he had been with, no matter how she was drawn to him, was still wary of him. She had been an Amazon herself, but she had feared him.

  Anastasia’s strength made his soldier’s soul sing.

  Burying his face in her neck, he moved his lips over the tender skin where her pulse beat strong and true. He tried to resist scraping her with his fangs, but sex and feeding were so tightly tied together in the moment that he groaned with the effort.

  Wrapping her free arm around his shoulders, Anastasia pressed the fingers of her other hand against his lips, tracing the damp curves. When her questing fingers found one of his fangs and caressed it, he shuddered-the ache in his groin very nearly unbearable.

  Jasper shifted his hands from where they were splayed flat on her back to cup the mounds of her firm ass. He kneaded the flesh there, traced one firm finger inside the waistband
of her pants, savouring the resultant shiver that ran through her flesh. She arched her back against the sensation, and he took the opportunity to nuzzle his face against the plump roundness of her breasts.

  Anastasia whimpered as he closed a mouth over one taut nipple. Even through her shirt, he could feel her heat, could sense the pulse of blood in her veins. Her arousal smelled like lemonade, sweet and tart at the same time.

  He wanted so very badly to taste her.

  He didn’t want her to think that feeding was all that this encounter was about.

  Slowly releasing his grip on her ass, Jasper let Anastasia slide slowly down his body, his rock-solid erection scraping over her flesh, eliciting a gasp from between her lips. With his hands now free, he used one to slide up underneath her shirt so that he could free one of her breasts from the cup of her bra. Rolling the tender flesh that he found there between his fingers, he drank in her shudders and at the same time thought of an icy cold shower, anything to keep from sinking his fangs into the paper-thin skin of that breast as he sank between her legs with his cock.

  He pulled apart the snap at the waistband of her jeans, slid his hand under the stiff fabric and found nothing but skin. His arousal ratcheted up yet another notch—and he’d thought it couldn’t get any higher—as his long fingers found the slick heat between her legs.

  Anastasia cried out when he slipped a finger inside of her moist channel. He grinned wickedly as her hips jerked and slid another finger inside of her. Looking down at his tiny Amazon, he was gratified to see her warrior’s eyes wide and glassy, her ivory skin flushed with that sweet crimson blood. Though he’d known the woman for mere hours, he knew that letting go like this was not in her character.

  Despite the ache in his cock, he wanted to push her over the edge.

  Jasper began to tunnel his fingers in and out of her heat, fighting back the need to replace them with his erection. He wanted this to be all about her. She quivered and he heard her pulse accelerate. Her hips began to rock in time to his thrusts, and the breath huffing out from her sweet lips became ragged.

  Biting his fangs down on his lip until he tasted his own blood, Jasper used his thumb to find her sweet spot, that hard nub of flesh that held the potential for so much pleasure. Anastasia gasped at the first touch, then buried her head against his chest and groaned. He felt her thighs shaking against his, closed his eyes and savoured the feeling of her body pressed against his.

  She was close, so close. Gritting his teeth, he focused on intensifying her pleasure..

  His eyes flew open in shock when he felt her heated grasp stroke over the head of his cock. He had already been so close that he found his hips thrusting against her belly, his hand still strumming between her legs, as she slipped her small hand into his pants and wrapped her hand tightly around his member.

  “No.” The word sounded choked as it escaped his throat. He wanted to concentrate on her, but she had him so hot, so hard, needier than he’d ever been.

  He still ached to taste her, that very essence of her being.

  He would not.

  Her hand stroked up, then down. Up, a stroke over that smooth, slick tip and back down again.

  Desperate, Jasper increased the pressure between Anastasia’s legs. Her smooth touch faltered, then her grasp tightened as she cried out into the night air, shaking as the sensations washed over her, not caring that they weren’t that heavily sheltered, that someone could see them.. Then, and only then, did he close his eyes and let the heat wash over him as well. He thrust into her fisted hand once, twice, then let out a strangled noise when she cruelly withdrew her touch.

  “What?” His mind was fogged, and it took him a long moment to realize that she had released his straining cock from his pants and undone her own as well. “No. You. This is about you.”

  “And this is what I want.” Running her hands down his forearms, she moved his hands down, down until they cupped her ass. Shamelessly she writhed against him. “Inside. I want you inside of me.”

  Jasper lost control. Lifting her effortlessly, he dug his fingers into her firm flesh while carrying her to one of the massive trees that stood nearby. He entered her slick heat as he pressed her back against the rough bark, hilting and pressing so that she would feel his entire length, filling her up.

  Anastasia gasped at the sensation. He rocked his hips back and then forth again and she bit her teeth into the hard muscles of his shoulder, scratching her nails into his back at the same time.

  He nuzzled at her neck, but did not bite. Instead he thrust into her, over and over, hot and hard. He didn’t care that they were outside, that someone could see them, that this wasn’t allowed. He wanted the heat that burned between them to incinerate every bad feeling that he’d ever had, every dark deed he’d performed.

  And then he couldn’t think at all, the denial of decades giving way to the ultimate bliss.

  As he spilled inside of Anastasia, he slid his finger through the cleft that divided the globes of her ass and pressed firmly against the tight flesh between, feeling the muscles give way to the pressure.

  Anastasia cried out and rocked in his arms, joining him as he fell over the edge.

  They stood pressed together for a long moment, breathing hard. Jasper didn’t need to breathe, but he felt as if the rhythm helped bring him back down to earth. Helped him to quell the hunger for her blood.

  Without thinking, he lowered his head to brush a kiss over the mussed strands of Anastasia’s hair. She smelled of rosemary and lavender, and he inhaled deeply, absorbing the scent.

  She murmured against his chest, her arms clasped loosely around his waist.

  For the first time in decades, he felt at peace.

  * * *

  “Isn’t this cozy?” Past melded with present as the words, light and sweet as spun sugar, floated across the air. Anastasia had barely gotten her jeans back up around her hips, and Jasper had barely gotten his goods packed away when the words wormed their way into his ears. He resisted understanding what they meant, holding tight to Anastasia in his arms. Like that same spun sugar melting in the rain, though, his disbelief vanished, replaced by confusion and horror.

  When he lifted his head, when he saw that the face from his memory indeed matched that confection of a voice, he spun and shoved Anastasia behind him. Her protest was muffled by the muscles of his back as he reached behind himself, clasped her hips and pulled her in tight.

  Grunting against the forced embrace, Anastasia shoved solidly at his back. He was mildly surprised when she managed to free herself enough to peer around his chest. She spoke before he was able to form words.

  “Petra?” He heard the slight hitch in Anastasia’s steady pulse, knew it was nerves. How did she know this ghost from his past? “What are you…I mean…Nastavnyk. Petra. I am honored with your presence.”

  “Nastavnyk?” Jasper’s eyes raked over the woman. She was dressed in something skintight and black, her pale gold hair pulled into a severe knot at the nape of her neck. The last time that he had seen her had been nearly twenty years ago, and she was as attractive now as she had been then.

  Unlike when he had seen her last, his cock didn’t ache for her touch, nor did his heart still bleed at her betrayal.

  Also unlike that last time, her heart rate did not accelerate at the sight of him. She no longer feared him, and he didn’t know what, exactly, that meant.

  His former lover levelled a look at him, her crimson
lips curving into a smile while heavy lids lowered over steel-colored eyes that looked dead.

  Anastasia seemed to sense that something was off, but lowered her head in deference regardless. Jasper didn’t like seeing his spitfire of an Amazon so subdued. Twisting, yet still keeping an eye on Petra, he took Anastasia’s chin in his hand, forced her to lift her eyes to meet his own.

  “What is Nastavnyk? How do you know her?”

  Anastasia pushed against Jasper’s back, and was insistent enough that he finally released the grip that he had on her hips. Moving forward until she stood beside him, she retained the deferential air, but he noted that she didn’t approach the woman.

  Smart Anastasia. Danger hung heavily in the air, so thick that he could have eaten it with a spoon.

  “Nastavnyk is…mentor. She trained me.” Anastasia spoke hesitantly, as if revealing a deep secret. He watched as emotions played over her face. She knew something was wrong, and didn’t know why.

  “You’ve come a long way.” Jasper waited for Petra to say something, to explain.

  She did not, and he couldn’t even begin to guess. His mind had been fogged by the woman that he was trying now to protect, by her mysterious supernatural nature, by her humanity, something that other Amazons lacked. He…well, he felt something for her that he’d never felt before.

  Now wasn’t the time to analyze that feeling, but he would protect this woman so that he could explore it further.

  Anastasia may not fully understand yet that she needed protection—in fact, she seemed to be confused, and Jasper sensed that Petra was someone very important to her. But Jasper knew his ex, knew how bloodthirsty and ruthless her nature was.

  Whatever Petra’s reasons for appearing here, they wouldn’t be good.

  Anastasia looked back and forth between Jasper and Petra. “You…know each other?” The slightest trickle of mint trickled into her scent, and Jasper recognized it as the barest whisper of jealousy.