Blackthorne (The Brotherhood of the Gate Book 1) (23 page)

Rhi needed some water to wash the taste of blood out of her mouth. Her hands shook uncontrollably as she tried to clutch a glass and open the tap. Blackthorne approached and tried to help her. She dropped the glass on purpose and turned to let a punch fly at that smugly handsome profile. Rhi Brennan might be undersized, but she was strong. A satisfying yelp escaped him as her fist connected with bone. He struggled with her as she spit and snarled at him. She tried to work one knee up to hit him where it should have hurt…
even an immortal’s crotch should be vulnerable.
He caught her in time and carried her struggling form to the opposite counter, away from the pile of glass she had created.

Ellie Mae pounded down the steps of the loft to stand in the entry to the kitchen. The dog’s entire body was tensed and the fur on her neck stood on end. A low growl issued from her throat but she didn’t attack Blackthorne. Instead, after a long moment, she gave the couple a strangely knowing look, walked into the living room and turned around three times to lie facing the other direction. It was as if the dog were giving them some privacy, although she was there if Rhi needed her.

“Damn it, Rhi…stop it. Stop it. God’s ears, what in the hell is wrong with you,” Blackthorne shouted, holding Rhi fast against the counter.

“I hate your brother for raping me…I hate your fucking club for letting him live and I hate you for bringing me into this again…you bastard.” She began to struggle again, almost dislocating an arm in her quest to pry herself free.

His face whitened at her words then his eyes glazed over. “I came for you… I loved you. I have lay awake every night for a decades thinking of what he did to you.”

“If you hadn’t broken your oath, none of this would have happened. Tell me, did you tell Raven exactly what you were? Did you tell her or rather me before you married me what you were? No, of course not.” Rhi managed to push him aside and jumped off the counter to stand on the cold tiles of her kitchen floor. “Get out.”

“No.”

“Get out or I swear I’ll kill you with my bare hands.”

“I’ll be with you when the skull surfaces, Rhi, whether you like it or not. Unlike you…I’m tired of this world and am ready to seek another.”

She pulled one arm back to punch him again. He caught the arm and wrenched it behind her back, forcing her against his body.

Her eyes blazed with fury as she looked up at the familiar planes of his face. He said nothing but the answering anger in his eyes made her suddenly feel that she should be running right about then.

He lowered his mouth to hers, his eyes never faltering. “So many years of thinking of you, Rhi. You could say I have an itch to scratch.” Then he crushed her mouth with his lips. Rhi felt like the man was inhaling her into himself. She fought his possession, her bruised lips trying to close against him. He paused for breath and she saw her opportunity.

“Like brother, like brother, huh?”

He released her instantly and pushed her away. “Go to bed Rhi. You’ll have a long day tomorrow, whether you want to or not.” The bitterness between them could be tasted in the air.

“We’ll both have a busy day, Blackthorne,” she replied as he stalked toward the living room and his makeshift bed again. He didn’t look back. “It’s close, the skull. I dreamed of how I hid it. I don’t think it’ll stay hidden long. It wants me to come for it…I can feel it. The damned thing wouldn’t even know my soul if not for you.”

The skull was closer than he could imagine, in a Bible that she had inadvertently bought in a junk store only two days before. She flushed the thought quickly. The skull might as well be in Timbuktu since Rhi had no idea how to use her powers to release it. Was she being unreasonable in not trusting Blackthorne? She bloody well didn’t feel reasonable right now. Rhi stood in the kitchen staring at the wall for ten minutes as she sipped a glass of water. Finally, she felt her soul smooth itself and become cool to the touch. She would go to bed. She would go to sleep and wake up and this would be some kind of nightmare brought on by too much partying with Pam and too many books full of tales from bygone eras.

She hurt and yet longed for the man in the other room. Every part of her body warred with itself. How could love this strong last through time? How could she live with the fury the knowledge of her past brought?

No sound arose from him as she crept past where he stood at the living room windows, staring out at the night. Ellie Mae, grumbling, rose from Blackthorne’s makeshift bed on the couch and headed for the loft.

You’d think we were keeping her from her beauty sleep.

He had taken his sweater off and wore only jeans that clung to the ridges of muscles in his legs. His chest glistened in the dim light of the room with nervous sweat. She could smell the scent of him, clean sweat and mossy woods. A surge of heat rose in her gut as she stood for a moment examining him…imagining his hands on her. The heat of the thought seared her nerves. Her body ached for him, and she couldn’t control it no matter how she fought. What Manius had done was monstrous and maybe she needed Blackthorne’s touch to wipe the memory away. Rhi moved one foot toward him and stopped.

“What the hell am I doing?” she whispered.

He turned to face her in time to see the tense need that lit up her frame.

“Make up your mind, Rhiannon. I can’t take this much longer, I’ve waited too long.” His raw voice broke into the moment, forcing her another step closer.

“I need tonight, Blackthorne. No more.” She broke off when he stepped across the room in one stride and crushed her against the length of his body. Heat rolled through her. She felt as brittle as the yellowed glass of old windowpane. If he held her any tighter, she would shatter into a thousand splinters of herself. In two frantic moves, he pushed her back against the wall beside the stairs, ripping the shirt from her body with the ease of ripping wet tissue.

In the darkness he looked frightening, his lips slightly parted, the tips of his demon blood teeth showing over the edge ever so slightly. The irises of his eyes flamed to glowing cobalt blue…the light spread over them both until they were one glowing mass. Then the near-to-immortal man moved both his mouth and body into hers, his tongue invading her mouth and his touch invading her soul. He lifted her legs off the ground and she wrapped them around his waist. She felt the heat of his erection through both the jeans he wore and the already wet silk scrap of panties that was the only barrier she had left against him. Rhi desperately kissed him, wrapping her arms around his neck to bury her fingers in the softness of his hair. With a groan, he buried his face in her breasts.

“We need to get
these
off,” she said, pulling at him with desperate hands.

His speed was terrifying. She would have thought he would be suave and slick when peeling off her clothes but there was nothing sophisticated about the way he moved. It was hungry and desperate and so hurried, she felt like she was dressed one moment and naked before him the next. Her panties and sleep shirt lay in a pile on the floor.

He stood for a moment in front of her, his hands wrapped around her shoulders, his gaze raking her body slowly, devouring every inch with those strange blue-flame eyes. She trembled, feeling suddenly shy. It was not like she was a virgin…hell, she had been encouraged to sleep with her boyfriend in college, a kind boy from a wealthy local family chosen for her by her grandmother. But it had been a while…a long while. No man had ever felt right to her. No one fit. Until now.

Then he pulled her in and was kissing her again as he swept her up in his arms against his bare chest. She kept her mouth on his as she wriggled in his arms, trying to get as much of her skin touching his as possible. The heated friction between their bodies increased by the millisecond as he strode up to the loft with her and gently placed her on the bed. He stared down at her again, seeming to drink her in.

“You’re so beautiful Rhi…I’m afraid to close my eyes,” he said as he tentatively reached out a hand to stroke the delicate skin on her neck.

“Why?” she asked him, barely able to breathe when his rough fingers touched her.

“Because I’m afraid I’ll wake up again and you’ll just be a dream.”

Wordless, she reached out her arms and with the same inhuman speed as before, he stripped his jeans off and the bed creaked as his large frame joined her.

She burned with his touch and her skin became instantly sensitized to him. She moaned when he slowly ran a scarred hand across the fine hairs on her right arm. Each hair stood on end with his caress. She stroked the muscles of his back, feeling at last the strangely familiar planes and contours of his body. There were many scars, some she seemed to know and some that were new. She gasped for air as Blackthorne covered her with his body, his own breathing ragged and occasionally punctuated by growls of satisfaction. Every pore of her skin that he tongued felt to Rhi as if it would explode.

The heavy length of his cock lay along her leg, swollen and heavy, and then every inch of the front of her body was touching him as he moved over to cover her. She was trembling so hard she had a moment she feared her teeth would start to chatter…but he kept kissing her, over and over, his tongue and lips possessing hers entirely as she writhed, trying to get even closer. It was a struggle to try to find a way to get as many inches of her skin to touch his. Their lips still fused, he slowly slid a finger into her wetness, and she bucked hard, her gasp swallowed by his kiss immediately. His touch made the fire in her core flare. He took his time…too much time. Too much touching. She was about to scream with frustration when a moan tore from him as he drove himself into her depths with a slap of flesh. God, it was so tight. He was too huge and she was too…unused.

The hair on the back of her neck stood up and goose bumps ran up and down her body. She locked her legs around him as he thrust that amazing dick into her. He latched on to one of her breasts with his mouth and their moans filled the room. If she could have formed coherent words, she would have begged for each of his movements, each one increasing in its ferocious power. A detached part of her brain started to worry about the fate of the drywall behind her back, when a supernova burst behind her eyes and she came hard. A scream tore from her mouth and her swollen and pulsating sheath pulled on his cock until he exploded into her depths. Blackthorne’s tortured voice called her name and she continued to gyrate uncontrollably against him as he came, filling her completely.

They collapsed into a pile of flesh on the floor, both fighting to breathe and clinging to the other. Her nightmare had been washed away by clean passion. Rhi felt like she had run a marathon. Her heart was close to bursting from the physical exertion of the moment and from the knowledge that broke into her thoughts.
One night would never be enough
.

But what was this moment compared to an epic battle of mystical and mighty forces between good and evil?
Why couldn’t he have been some average guy my grandmother wouldn’t have approved of? That kind was so easy to let go in the end,
she thought. Rhi wrapped her arms around him and buried her face in the hollow between his shoulder and his heart, listening to his heartbeat, not for the first time.

»»•««

Across town, Pearl watched the raging sky from her second story bedroom window, her figure framed in the heavy velvet drapes. When the storms subsided and a decidedly golden glow arose in the night from the general area of Horse Thief Gulch, she drew the velvet drapes together and turned from the window.

“I’m glad
somebody
around here is getting laid,” she said with a small smile. “Maybe I should give Houston a call? No, he’s probably traumatized enough as it is.” On cue, the phone rang. Pearl picked it up and after a few minutes of listening to the rants of the Sheriff on the other end, she hung up and began to pull her boots back on. Beauty sleep would have to wait. Not that she needed it.

»»•««

Scotland

1897

The tang of the sea was in the air, a taste that would have once made Jack’s heart soar. The formal armor he had worn on and off for several hundred years was unusually heavy and hot this day. The breastplate bearing his family coat of arms, a black tree armed with thorns and a rampant dragon curled around the base, pulled him forward, almost making him fall. He didn’t care. She was gone.

He was too numb to feel at the moment. Maybe the fury would catch fire after the judgment. Any emotion would be a blessing to his raw mind at this point.

The location of his trial was his homeland of Scotland in an obscure castle off the coast. The cold walls of the Great Hall were covered with ornate tapestries, depicting the legendary deeds of the members of the Brotherhood of the Gate. The glories of the past mocked Jack Blackthorne from where he stood, at attention and alone, in front of the seated members of the High Council. He was not the only one awaiting judgment.

Off to one side of the hall, displayed on a platform for all to observe, stood Jack’s ambitious younger brother. Once proud beyond sin, Manius now wore rags and chains marked with runes of power to contain his renegade demon blood. For the first time that Jack could remember, Manius was not perfectly groomed. His luxurious black hair was shorn jaggedly, the perfect face unshaven and still bruised and beaten from the battle in the tunnels and streets of Cripple Creek. He was filthy, a sign of the weeks of imprisonment in one of the cells below the castle reserved for the foes and the fallen of the Brotherhood. Jack considered taking up his sword and killing his sibling then and there. Manius had ripped at her soft skin, laughed at the thought of despoiling his brother’s wife while the demon blood roared out of control in his veins. He would kill Manius no matter what the judgment was. The other man would probably welcome death before he would willingly spend another day in such an unkempt condition.

Somewhere behind the brothers sat Pearl DeVere, the newest member of the Brotherhood. Knowing Pearl, she was in the front row, dressed to the nines and ignoring the rest of her brethren gathered about her on the hard wood benches. He did not dare look at her or he might manage to feel emotion long enough to laugh at the outraged expressions on his brothers’ faces at the sight of a woman in their midst. The council had already decided her fate, however, and had finally embraced the concept that a woman could as easily defend humanity as a man. Raven had proven that to them spectacularly.