Chapter 33
Chapter Thirty-Three
Evie threw back her shoulders and faced him. Here came the anger Dom expected. Hell, he deserved it. Instead, she asked, “Where are we?”
“Somewhere safe.” His reply came out distracted since he hadn’t finished his scan of the area to ensure they had arrived in an empty house. No other entities detected, he flipped on the lights to the kitchen.
“Lyra. That’s the name of the one who is the reason for everything that hurt you and tortured you for centuries. Now what?” Evie stood in front of him.
She’s incredible. Terrifying, but I can admit she’s a miracle. He backed up to sit down in his kitchen chair. The fatigue from the combination of blood loss and energy expenditure could no longer be ignored.
When he didn’t reply, she said, “She’s yours. She’s not what you’d expect.”
“Neither are you.”
“Are you sure you can let go of centuries of fear just like that?” She snapped her fingers.
“Won’t be simple. She’s unexpected. I mean…” He cradled his forehead. “I won’t hurt her. I think I already said that.”
“I have your word on that?”
“Yes.”
“If you try to kill her, I will end you.”
“As you should. As should any of your boys or Efrem.”
“What now?” Her body deflated. “Are you going to fuck six years apart out of your system? Then you’ll toss me back to my own fate as if my life has nothing to do with you?”
He opened his mouth to reply but stopped. Evie wasn’t done.
She paced in front of him. “That’s what you do.
You show up, maybe ‘rescue’ me from something awful or maybe just give me a mind-blowing night.
Then you disappear. Sometimes you’re gone for a week.
There was one time it was two years.” She held up two fingers.
“That was utter hell. I can’t live through that again.
I survived with uncertainty about you for what felt like forever.
You refused to commit or even lend me more than a piece of yourself.
Now you think you can waltz back into my life.
Why? Because you’re tired of me not remembering you when it was you who took away my memories? ”
His reply burned his throat, but she wasn’t ready to hear him yet.
“I gave you everything of me every time I saw you for a long time. I handed you my heart. I trusted you. In return, you erased me. Poof.” She clapped her hands for effect. “Because it was the easiest solution.”
“It wasn’t that simple.”
“Seemed like it was.”
“It was the only choice.”
“A choice implies there’s more than one path. When are you going to believe I can protect myself? When are you going to trust me?”
“I do trust you.”
“Not enough.”
“I had issues with the Conclave. They threatened you back then, but they’re not going to come after us anymore. I do have things to sort out with some of them, though.”
“Yet another problem that you’ll no doubt use as an excuse to disappear for months, maybe years.” She strode away from him. Then stalked back and put a hand on his chest. “What happened to make you not know how to trust your heart?”
He dropped his chin and blew out a long breath. “I was in love long, long ago. Well, I thought it was love, but I was wrong.”
“You were?” She drew back as if he’d slapped her. “You said there’s no such thing as love.”
“I loved her with everything I could, but it turned out I was young and na?ve. I was barely twenty. She wove my emotions tight to her through skillful seduction. Sex became an addiction. What I perceived as special was nothing but a careful plan to get to my father. He was the most powerful man in that time. He may have married my Romani mother, from whom I got these powers, but he slept with many women. That’s how I ended up with a half-brother by a different Romani mother.
My mother fell ill around the time I thought to seek marriage with this woman.
I hadn’t realized she had been sleeping with my father almost as long as me.
I overheard them speaking one night, talking about killing people.
I let it slide then. Death was a commonplace discussion at a warlord’s table.
They were speaking of my mother and me. We were the two people in her way.
She convinced my father we were in the way of them finding happiness together. ”
Evie took his hand in hers and knelt in front of him.
He continued. “Days later, I came home earlier than anticipated from my patrol as a border guard. I was ill from bad water. I found my mother swinging from the rafters as if she had taken her own life, which I knew was a lie. Her religion prohibited suicide. She was also too sick to hang herself without help. Someone skewered me with a sword from behind. The idle mage power from within me woke up. It blasted free and protected me. In that explosion, I killed the woman I thought I had loved. The one I had trusted.” The memory of her bleeding from her nose, eyes, and ears with the gaze of death haunted him off and on in dreams for a long time.
“My father had always been an abusive creature, but it got worse until he, too, tried to murder me. He was angry to have lost a gifted bedmate. Yet, he was relieved his sick wife was gone. To him, a good fuck was more valuable than blood relatives or jewels or land. Again, this power within saved me, but it also marked me. I killed two people without lifting a weapon. Villagers wanted to quarter me and burn my parts at the stake for being a witch. That’s when Marik took me to train.
He had disappeared years earlier after a similar series of odd events.
I was terrible to everyone back then, even after he apprenticed me to a senior mage.
Most of the time I was half drunk. I was sadistic as hell, and I was broken.
It took decades to find faith and morality, but I did.
I found solace in prayer and meditation.
I found direction in the directives of the Conclave.
My inability to trust kept me alive. My unwillingness to love kept me alone. Until you.”
“That’s terrible. I get being hurt and not trusting. Yet, you’re still so skeptical.” Maybe I am too.
Her loud thought echoed in his brain.
“Both of us do trust each other.” He stood to face her, but rising to stand left him out of breath. He caught her when she paced by him to pull her into him. “We’re going to get you out of the decline.”
“Everyone dies. So what if my time is coming a bit faster? This isn’t something you can show up and fix with one foot in the picture and one out.”
“I never left.”
She continued as if she didn’t hear him.
“You can’t guest star to play the hero. One night of tremendous sex isn’t going to cure this.
” She gave him a hot once over and muttered, “I’m tempted.
It’s been a hell of a long time.” With a headshake she continued, “One bout of magical healing won’t work either. ”
“We don’t know that.”
She laughed sadly. “I want you so much my hands are shaking.” She showed her tremoring fingers.
“Being this close to you is awful, but this is only attraction. It’s not what’s real.
The only thing that might work to stop the decline is if I bond with you.
It has to be an all-in commitment, from now until forever, from both of us.
After what you just told me, I don’t think we can do that. ”
“We already have.”
“What we have…I don’t know what this is.”
He lifted her hair to kiss her ear. “We have trust.”
He felt her shudder at the touch of his lips on her. “I guess we do.”
“We have chemistry.” He moved the edge of her shirt away from her shoulder to kiss there.
She bit back a moan. “Yes.”
“From the moment I first saw you at the Seine, I wanted to take you with me.”
“You have issues, Dom. You like playing God and protecting me. Yet you don’t want to commit to belonging with me.
” She spun in his arms to kiss along his jaw.
The warmth of her lips against his skin made him twitchy to take her.
It’d been so long. “Are you done punishing yourself for being manipulated when you were young and stupid? Can you also let go of the words of a witch, which you believed to the point you made them a powerful curse on your own life?”
Ouch. But true. “When I stopped being angry at my father, I committed my life to not bringing harm to the world. If I was to be the instigator of that harm through myself or a child, then I vowed to do all I could to stop it. I tried to die. You were the one who forced me out of the river.”
“Bull-fucking-shit.” She poked him in the chest and pulled away from him. “You didn’t have to swim for me that day. You could’ve let the water take you.”
“Your voice was like a siren’s. I couldn’t refuse it.”
“You can’t even say that without sounding ridiculous. That black heart of yours is selfish. You’re the damaged son of a warlord. You wanted to live.”
That hurt. “You’re probably right.”
“Of course I am. When are you going to realize I’m always right?”
“Long ago, I didn’t kill my father or her in self-defense. I obliterated them with magic out of hate.”
“I’m a vicious bitch who would’ve done the same thing if they threatened me or you or anyone I love. I get that, one hundred percent. It doesn’t change that I want to be with you,” she confirmed without hesitation.
Not knowing where he stood with Evie had made his chest hurt worse than the demon blade. Now, that pain ebbed.
“We both have broken bits. I don’t want to fix you.
I want you like you are now, even with your annoying morality.
Even when you’re an ass.” She glanced heavenward.
“I want the real you. I don’t want the person you think you should be.
You’ve made me so sad, but also incredibly happy.
I can’t do this with you having one foot in the picture and one out. That’s not how this can work anymore.”
“I had my reasons until now to protect you by keeping my distance. But…are you sure it wasn’t you who didn’t want to fully commit? You were okay with our relationship being on your terms. You only wanted me there when it worked for you. Now you’ve decided you want it different?”
She sucked in air and shot him a hurt look. “Maybe so.”
He ground out, “You are the most stubborn, protective, and secretive person I know.” He pulled her into him. “Ask me what I want.”
“What do you want?” Her bright eyes bore into him.
“I want you. Just you. Only ever you.” He breathed out all the pain of everything else pulling him away from her and closed his eyes. “I only want you, Eveline.”
She whispered, “I despise that name.”
“I know, but it’s who you are.”
“You might be right that it wasn’t only you who was half-in and half-out. I was scared to feel.” She closed her eyes and took a very deep inhale. “Ask me what I want, Domini.”
He blinked open his eyes. “What do you want?”
“Don’t ever call me that name again for starters.”
He chuckled. “Done.”
“Swear to me once more you’re done with that stupid prophesy. That you won’t hurt one of my babies. Ever.”
“I swear. I could never hurt something that was a piece of you.”
“Kiss me for real. Kiss me with your soul, which already knows it belongs to me.”
He growled when emotions flooded him. The relief. The happiness. The love. So much love.
He wound his hand in her hair to pull her neck back. His tongue worked its way up her neck.
“Burn me alive. I dare you,” she whispered.
“You don’t get to give the orders here.” He could smell how aroused she was and knew if he barely touched her, she’d come. “Take off your clothes.”
She tugged her shirt over her head and shucked her pants, standing only in a sheer bra and panties.
He flicked open the back closure of her bra, and her breasts spilled out like they were eager for his touch.
He flicked them until the nipples were hard.
He slid his hands into her panties to find her so wet.
She moaned. He lifted her butt on the table before sliding two fingers into her and felt her clinch around him.
The hitch in her breath hinted she was close.
“Do you know how many times in the past few years I thought about this?” he breathed into her ears. She shuddered. With slow, deliberate thrusts of his hand, he brought her to the edge. “Sometimes I’d walk around hard for half the day.”
“Only half?” She kissed the muscles of his neck.
He pushed the panties down her leg to get better access. “When you blew that demon away in the garden the other night, I was so turned on I almost came right there.”
“But you didn’t.”
“When I got home that night, I came so hard,” he rasped out. “Put your legs on my shoulders.” He kissed up her leg and swiped his tongue across her.
She bucked against him when he devoured her. He gripped her thighs to keep her from getting away from him. With a cry, her orgasm hit hard, tightening her around his still invading fingers.
“Stop teasing me, Dom.”
He shucked off his pants and entered her in one stroke.
“Holy mother.” Need laced her cry. She rocked backward to allow him in deeper. Impossibly deep.
“So damn good.” He’d never get over how perfect she was around him. Like she was molded just for him. He set a frenetic pace until he felt the release climbing up his spine. He leaned in and bit her shoulder hard, claiming her as his mate in the way of her people.
Her scream rent the air. She clawed at him as she squeezed him tight. With a strangled cry, he came. In that moment he opened his eyes to see light, brilliant and blinding.
She laughed. “It’ll heal both of us.”
One deep breath revealed all his chest pain was gone. No longer did he have to struggle for each breath. “Magic. Wow.”
“Says the mage who knows everything.”
“I’m still learning.”
“Stay with me, Dom. I might live if both of us can stay together.”
“I promise then, to stay with you.”
“We do this together from now on.”
“Together. We can’t undo the past. Can’t undo the mistakes. We can only do what’s ahead. For me, that’s you.”