Mortal Enemy, Immortal Lover EXCERPT
Desirée was extracting his soul.
With each press and glide of her lips, Javed felt her dislodging more of its newly anchored tethers. He didn’t mind. He wanted her to have it. She’d sown it inside him, anyway. Maybe if she succeeded, their situation would stop tearing him apart.
He surrendered himself to her fever, let its flames rage out of control, his and Desi’s presence in this packed nightclub the only thing stopping him from taking what she was begging him to take. Only in his tortured imagination where he’d fling her to the ground, shred that blood-red, madness-inducing device of a dress and bury himself inside her, pound her to satisfaction and drench her with his own.
Desirée sundered the fusion of their mouths only to deal him another blow, latching her lips onto his ear, sending stimulation skewering his brain and lodging in his erection.
“Stop tormenting me…both of us…”
Her whimper felt as if it were generated inside his head, torn from his body. He bucked, nearly entering her soaking heat through the barriers of their clothing.
Why? everything within him bellowed. Why was he stopping?
Her next sob told him why. “Take me home with you tonight. I can’t wait anymore, please…I’ll die if I’m not with you tonight…”
She’d die. That was why he always stopped. Because she would die, one day. Because she was human. Because he was…what he was.
That had stopped him from claiming her that first night five months ago. And every night since. But it hadn’t stopped him from surrendering to the compulsion and torment of seeing her every possible minute of these months.
But he’d surpassed the limits of endurance. The force of her craving had corroded any pretense at control. Everything writhed inside him as she writhed in his arms, forcing his decision.
Take her before your mind gives, before that heart racing inside her stops. Celebrate her life now, until you…until she…
He froze with a dread he hadn’t considered before.
Could he ever get enough? Could he move on if she did? What if…?
He unhooked the fingers convulsing in his flesh. “I can’t…”
Thorns seemed to expand in his throat, cutting off the words. And it wasn’t from the hurt that cascaded into her eyes. It was from the panic he suddenly felt then saw in other eyes. Many eyes. Across the nightclub. Vamps.
Dammit…no. This was a humans-only establishment.
Not anymore. Not tonight. There they were. Eight of them. Fledglings, still clinging to their human habits and haunts. But they’d still recognized him. Their instinctive horror and loathing had wrenched him out of his fugue as soon as they’d seen him through the crush. Seen him with Desi.
The illusion of safety crashed around him. He’d been deluding himself that he wasn’t risking embroiling her in his hideous existence, that his enemies—his prey—would never know what she was to him.
He’d been too weak. Too damn selfish. His precautions hadn’t been enough. They never would be. He’d turn her life into a hell she couldn’t imagine, one that would end horrifically. Or worse.
This had to end now. This second. The vamps had run out and he had to perform damage control.
He ripped himself out of her arms, spilled her onto the couch. “Desi…I told you from the start that I’m not…a man you should get mixed up with. Now my reasons for not seeing you again have become irreversible. It’s over. It should never have started.”
Tears had filled her eyes when he’d pulled back, as they always did. Now they gushed, a flood that seemed to drain her very life force. They shriveled the heart he hadn’t known he possessed.
He exploded to his feet before he lost whatever was left of his mind. Succumbed. Destroyed her.
She clung to him. Everything inside him roared, Don’t look back. Or you’ll come back. You can’t…never again…
He looked back. Damn him. Far more than he’d already been damned. But if he couldn’t stop himself, he had to stop her.
He tore her hands off of him. He had to hurt her enough so that she’d forget about him.
She winced but lunged back, clung again, harder. “I can’t let you just leave my life, Javed. I will never feel like this again. And I know you feel the same.” She let go of him, fumbled inside her purse, dragged his hand, pressed a folded paper in it. “Damn whatever you’re hiding, and damn not sharing personal info…I live here, and I love you. I’ll take anything I can have with you, for any length of time, at any price.”
He’d had stakes hammered into his palms. He’d had his hands dipped in molten lead. That piece of paper hurt far more.
Her address. The very information he’d refused to seek out, as if ignorance would stop him from obsessing over her when he had to walk away. He made the mistake of looking at it. It became engraved in his mind.
“I can’t…afford for anyone to see me coming to you.”
She closed his hand tight around the scrap. “My place is far, isolated. Just come through the forest and no one will see you. I’ll wait for you tonight.”
Then she streaked away, giving him no chance to refuse. Leaving him no choice.
He had to go to her. To end it.
But he had to end the threat to her life first.