Darkness Bound (A Night Prowler Novel) Page 23

  God—tight—beautiful! His breath rushed out in a hiss.

  She leaned over and kissed him. He sank his fingers into her bottom and thrust up, hard. She cried out and he thrust again, loving her expression of pure pleasure, loving the way her nails dug into his shoulders as she clung to him, gasping, riding him and rubbing her breasts against his chest. She arched back and he sucked a nipple into his mouth, nipping with his teeth, nipping harder when she moaned how good it felt, encouraging him with her hands around his neck and her hips undulating with each of his thrusts.

  He sat up, taking her with him. He sank so deep inside her they moaned together, his own husky sounds muffled by her breasts. She wrapped her thighs around his hips and rocked against him, shaking and breathless, her heart pounding against his chest, keeping time with the furious beat of his own.

  “Namorada,” he whispered, gazing up at her face in rapt amazement. “Namorada minha.”

  She looked down at him, their eyes locked, and Hawk felt as if time itself had stopped, and all of the universe had shrunk down to the few inches between their faces.

  “We’ll always have this,” she whispered back, her voice shaking with emotion, the look in her eyes almost tortured. “No matter what happens in all our tomorrows, we’ll always have tonight. Promise me you’ll never forget tonight.”

  Hawk slowly nodded.

  He knew in the darkest part of his mind, where he kept all the truths that were too hard to bear, that his life had reached its peak in this moment, and there could be nothing in all those tomorrows to come that would ever compare to this. To her, so fine and fierce in his arms, to the way his soul seemed to have expanded to encompass everything around them, the room and the trees and the forest, the world itself.

  He’d never felt so alive, or so humbled. Or so full, as if he’d been empty for all eternity, and it had taken this one human woman to breathe life into him until he was real and complete, the Tin Man who’d finally been given his heart.

  Jacqueline nodded back. A silent pact was sealed.

  Tonight would brand them—for better or for worse—forever.

  As gently as he could, Hawk eased her down to the mattress. She told him with her eyes and her smile that it was fine. It didn’t hurt. Still inside her, he bent and kissed her and she wrapped her arms around his back, raising her legs and crossing her ankles around his waist to cradle his body with hers. She coaxed him to move with a fluid motion of her hips when all he wanted to do was stare down at her, memorize the pattern of freckles across the bridge of her nose, count each golden eyelash, note every fleck of blue and green and silver in her eyes. But his body was a slave to her, subject to her will, and that motion of her hips coerced him in a primeval, irresistible way.

  He began to thrust. Slow, shallow strokes as he watched her face for any signs of pain.

  “Deeper,” she breathed, running her hands down his back and arching against him.

  He complied, flexing his hips, the animal inside him roaring with pleasure when she gasped his name. He thrust again, and again, each time with added force, until she was clawing at his back and crying out, her head tipped back and her hair spread wild around her.

  He began to lose himself.

  Sensation pummeled him from every direction. The warm, clean scent of her hair and skin, the heat of her, the satiny curve and weight of her breast in his hand. The sound of the rain and her cries and his own, ragged breathing, the feel of the blood rushing through his veins. Pleasure, searing, white-hot, surged up his spine, and just as she opened her eyes and looked up at him and gasped, “Yes, now—please—with me now!” Hawk slid over the edge of reality, utterly abandoning himself to her, to the magic they made together.

  He pumped deep. Once, twice. He felt her sex clench around the length of his shaft, felt the rhythmic pulse and throb of her orgasm begin, and he shouted, jerking, as his own orgasm ripped through him and he spilled his seed inside her.

  The intensity of it stole his breath.

  It went beyond pleasure, closer to pain, a burning that scorched his body and emptied his mind and spun him off into wordless oblivion. He could only make hoarse, haggard cries as he throbbed and twitched, delirious, his head thrown back, every muscle in his body tight.

  She whispered his name. He looked down at her. They stayed like that, panting, gazes locked together through the final, furious waves. When their bodies slowly began to relax, still they stared into one another’s eyes as the trembling and the tautness eased, rocked by the occasional pulsing aftermath until those too had stopped, and the only thing left was their labored breathing.

  He rolled her atop his body, pushing her hair from her face and bringing her head to his chest where he cradled her, and stared up at the shadow-streaked ceiling in wonderment as his heart continued its wild, ragged beat, its song of ecstasy and madness.

  “So strong,” she whispered, her cheek pressed to his breastbone. “You have such a strong heart.”

  Hawk gently kissed Jacqueline’s forehead. He wanted to say, It belongs to you. It will belong to you forever, but he didn’t. He couldn’t.

  He could never let her know how she’d wrecked him for any other woman, or how he knew they were doomed, a modern cross-species Romeo and Juliet, or how badly he suddenly wanted to cry.

  All he could do was hold her.

  Love her.

  Surrender himself to the beautiful ruins of their unhappily-ever-after.

  So that’s what he did, all night long.

  Watching a daddy longlegs pick its way with graceful deliberation up the wall of the conference room in pursuit of an unsuspecting fly at Section Thirty headquarters in Luxembourg, Thirteen idly wondered if there was anything so ridiculous in the entire world as a religious fanatic.

  No, he decided, listening to the man barking like a rabid dog on the other end of the phone line. Miley Cyrus is more sensible than this dummkopf.

  “Jahad,” he interrupted patiently, “be reasonable. I understand your predicament, and the goals of your organization.” In Thirteen’s mind, the word “organization” had air quotes around it—Jahad’s band of psychopathic brothers who’d hunted the Ikati since the Inquisition were more akin to a serial killer fraternity than anything else. “But the surest path to success is partnership, even if our objectives seem to be at cross purposes.”

  “Cross purposes” was putting it lightly. The goals of the Expurgari and the goals of Section Thirty were in total discord.

  “They must all be exterminated!” hissed Jahad. “They will escape from any facility you build—you can’t contain mist!”

  Ah, but you could. There were ways.

  “We only need a few specimens, Jahad. A dozen at most, you can slaughter the rest—”

  “Even one is too many!” Jahad shouted. “They must be purged in the fire of righteousness! They are an abomination unto the Lord!”

  Thirteen rolled his eyes.

  “I need to call you back, freund,” he said as a blonde in a tailored black suit holding a cell phone mouthed the Chairman at him through the conference room’s glass door. Thirteen hung up on Jahad, rose from the table, and took the cell phone. He nodded at the woman—one of two hundred operatives in the facility—and held the phone to his ear.

  “Everything is ready,” said a man on the other end of the line.

  The voice was cultured yet utterly lacked any other discernible quality of individuality: it was neither high nor deep, was devoid of accent or distinctive speech patterns, and always stripped of emotion. To Thirteen, the voice sounded nothing so much as clean, or perhaps empty, and he’d often wondered if it was computer generated, or enhanced by some electronic device.

  He’d never before heard a human voice sound quite as soulless.

  Not that it bothered him. He quite liked the idea of working for a man with no soul. There were few be
tter ways to advance in this world than to lack any sense of moral compunction, and the Chairman—so called because no one in all his hundreds of multinational corporations knew his real name—had advanced very far indeed.

  “I’m having a little trouble convincing our friends at the Vatican of our agenda,” admitted Thirteen.

  The Chairman chuckled, and even that sounded empty. “We’ll give them more money. Money relieves even the most pious man of his scruples. God Himself could be convinced to look the other way if He were given a big enough bribe.”

  “We’ll have to go over Jahad’s head. He’s not the sort who cares about money.”

  “Then we’ll send the money directly to the pope himself. I’ve dealt with him before, when he was cardinal. He’s a reasonable man.” The Chairman paused. “To Jahad we’ll send a goat. Or three.”

  Yes, that would be more apropos. The last time he and Jahad had teamed up to hunt the Ikati, Thirteen had unfortunately acquired firsthand experience with Jahad’s unnatural . . . fondness for the cloven-hoofed animals.

  “And if that doesn’t work, we’ll cut the Expurgari off altogether,” the Chairman added. “We don’t need them for this.”

  “True. But we also don’t need them as an enemy. They hold the worst grudges, and their power is still considerable. And if we can use their minions for the bloody work, so much the better. I don’t like the idea of putting too many of our people in harms’ way.” Thirteen had seen what terrible things fangs and claws could do to fragile human flesh. His own mother had been mauled to death by a tiger in a circus when he was a boy. The experience scarred him, left him with a pathological hatred for cats, and a thirst for vengeance, all of which served the Chairman’s purposes to a T.

  There was a pause, then the Chairman said, “If this operation goes successfully, Thirteen, you’ll be promoted to Two.”

  Everyone in the organization had a number, a straightforward indication of their status within the association. The Chairman himself was One. Thirteen sank slowly into the nearest chair, overcome. “Sir,” he whispered.

  “I’m counting on you. This is the culmination of my life’s work. If we can get even one of these creatures into captivity and conduct the necessary experiments, we can change the course of history. Tell your friends at the Vatican whatever they want to hear, and I’ll take care of their compensation.” There was a slight pause. “But I want to make myself clear on one point, Thirteen.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Failure is not an option.”

  Though his hollow voice contained not a single inflection of threat or menace, those few words were enough to convey that Thirteen’s employ with the Chairman wouldn’t be the only thing terminated if anything went awry.

  Because he was the kind of man who accepted unpleasant realities and had never held the expectation that his life would end quietly, Thirteen simply answered, “I understand you perfectly, sir.”

  He knew better than to promise success, however. No matter how well prepared the soldiers were, no matter how the odds might seem stacked in their favor, the outcome of any battle was unforeseeable. To think otherwise was only self-delusion, a mental weakness of which, fortunately, Thirteen was free.

  “The op goes live at zero five hundred hours October fifteenth. I need you at the Manaus Air Force Base at eighteen hundred the evening prior for briefing.”

  “Brazil’s military is cooperating?” Thirteen was surprised. He’d thought they were going in with the Circuit, the Chairman’s private military company. That was one of the reasons he’d needed to ensure the cooperation of the UN; the hiring of mercenaries was prohibited by the United Nations Mercenary Convention.

  The Chairman said, “I’ll give you one guess as to why.”

  Money. All things in life ultimately came down to that. He made a sound of acknowledgment.

  “And Thirteen?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “If you manage to capture only one of them . . . you know which one I want.”

  Thirteen smiled, thinking of the anonymous phone call they’d received from someone who’d said he wanted to “serve mankind.” The information he’d given had been vast and invaluable, with details only someone who’d lived in close proximity to the creatures would know—abilities, weaknesses, locations—and one particular detail that caused Thirteen to shudder in disgust.

  There was one Ikati who could Shift not only to an animal, or to a puff of air.

  One of them could Shift to anything.

  “Verstanden, Herr Chairman,” said Thirteen. Understood. He understood everything, and he felt peace descend on him, the kind of peace only clarity can bring.

  In less than a week, he’d capture that Queen of theirs, or he’d die trying.

  As would they all.

  The Queen in question was, at that very moment, flying southwest at breakneck speed over the Atlantic Ocean.

  Capture. Exterminate. Those two words had become the resident demon inside her skull.

  She’d meant to stay longer, to spy on Caesar, gain some insight into a weakness they might exploit to end his life, but then she’d heard about Weymouth, about what he planned to do to the colony, to her husband and children . . .

  Her muzzle curled back over long, sharp teeth. Fury rose inside her, sharp as knives. At long last, she’d identified the snake in the grass.

  If he lays a finger on any of them, I will hunt that bastard to the ends of the Earth.

  Skimming the underbellies of the clouds, her will held her aloft when her wings faltered. She was exhausted from her flight from England to Morocco, and hadn’t rested nearly long enough. With at least a two-day flight into the heart of the rainforest ahead of her, Jenna knew her will would be put to the greatest of tests.

  But failure wasn’t a possibility. Not with so many lives at stake.

  Sinuous and silent as smoke, the white dragon pumped her wings harder. She pushed upward into the cloud layer, moisture beading her lashes and the ruff along her neck, sliding off pearlescent scales, then punched through it like a bullet through wet cotton, trailing mist behind her barbed tail in long, looping curls. She climbed high, as high in the atmosphere as she could go, where the air was thin and hard to breathe but offered far less resistance, and soared into the heavens, shooting like a star across the sapphire sky.

  I will hunt him until the end of time.

  As anyone who’s ever been in love knows, time isn’t a fixed thing. Time is flexible. It bends. It stretches. It even stops, curling back on itself like a cresting wave, so that a single moment can be lived over and over with the suspended weightlessness of infinity.

  Propped up on one elbow on the bed, floating in that weightless space where lovers often find themselves, Hawk stared down at Jacqueline. Content, awash in a sensation he thought could most closely be described as bliss—was this what heaven felt like?—he drifted on a current outside the place where clocks tick and watch hands turn and sundials tell their tales with growing shadows.

  “Are you hungry?” He was whispering, unwilling to break the spell. Stretched out nude beside him, their legs intertwined, Jacqueline reached up and gently stroked his cheek.

  “You’ve been hand-feeding me fruit and sweets all night. How could I possibly be hungry?” She was whispering, too, and her soft laugh sent a shiver of happiness through him. He leaned down to nuzzle her neck.

  “I had to make sure you kept your strength up,” he said, and they laughed together.

  Hours and hours of lovemaking, beautiful as poetry, raw and tender and altogether unforgettable. How had he ever thought emotionless encounters with females he didn’t really know or care for were fulfilling? Those empty couplings seemed now as hollow as seashells at the shore: pretty, lovely trinkets, but ultimately dead.

  “Well, it certainly worked.” She kissed him, running her foot up the back
of his calf. “Why do you call yourself Hawk, anyway?” she said against his mouth. “You’re not a bit birdlike, as far as I can tell.”

  He smiled, gazing down into her soft eyes. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  She shrugged, coy, and he swatted her bare bottom.

  “Don’t you dare start that again!” she squealed, pushing against his chest. It didn’t move him, of course. Nothing could move him from his present spot, attached to her side securely as a barnacle.

  “You loved it,” he said, his voice thick.

  “Shut up and tell me about your silly nickname,” she demanded, smiling at him, and his heart swelled inside his chest.

  “First I want to take a look at your back. Sit up.”

  Her response was to yawn. A shiver ran through her body. All her muscles pulled tight, then she relaxed back against the mattress with a contented sigh. “Still can’t feel anything. I’m sure it’s fine.”

  Fine was something he very much doubted. He needed to inspect it with his own eyes. He’d been careful—as careful as he could be while in an altered state of crazed lust—but now he was beginning to realize he might have unintentionally hurt her, and kalum’s spirit vine concoction ensured she was in no state to feel a thing.

  I wonder what she’ll feel about last night when it wears off.

  He pushed aside that thought with ruthless determination. Time was still on his side, and he was going to enjoy every single second of it.

  “Up.” He righted himself and pulled her along with him.

  She grumbled and groused as he gently turned her away and brushed her hair over her shoulders. Then he stared in silence at what he saw.

  The skin of her back was no longer raw. It wasn’t healed, per se, but neither was it broken. It was striped pink and white in a raised crisscross pattern from her shoulders to six inches above her waist, a pattern that should have still been oozing blood and pus. It wasn’t. She would most definitely be scarred, but the healing process was . . . well, it was remarkable.