Dark Curse (42 page)

Please
, she whispered.

He surged forward, another long stroke that nearly drove her over the edge, but he stopped with the walls of tight muscles pulsing all around him and her keening cry.

Please what?

Do it now while I am so desperate for you
. Because it was all part of the erotic pleasure and she was desperate. Every part of her ached for this, this connection, the completeness between them.

Nicolas sank his teeth deep, thrust into her mind and body, all simultaneously, sharing his joy, heightening her pleasure, giving her everything he was and ever would be. Her taste burst through him like fireworks, hot and addicting and so perfect he knew he'd never get enough of her blood or her body. He was careful to keep her body at a fever pitch, to not allow her mind to hold any thought but pleasure and he didn't linger, although he wanted to.

He took enough for a true blood exchange, sliding his tongue over the curve of her breast to close the pinpricks even as he shifted again to lock his arm around her hips and begin another wild ride. He thrust faster and harder, watching her face, watching her eyes go, seeing that dazed look of delight, the sexy pout to her mouth as she gave a husky scream when her orgasm tore through her. Her tight sheath clamped down hard, squeezing and milking and tearing his own orgasm from him. He poured his seed into her, his hoarse cry mingling with hers.

With her body rippling around his, he caught her and rolled to his side, bringing her head into the cradle of his arm.
Now, Lara, finish it.
He didn't ask. It was a demand, dark and filled with lust, with desperate hunger.

Lara couldn't have resisted if she wanted to. The waves of pleasure rocked her, took her from breasts to belly to feminine channel and back again. The call of his blood was loud, the taste of his essence already burning the back of her throat. She licked over his pulse and bit down, sinking her teeth into his chest.

His hips slammed into her hard, lifting her body, the bite of pain stimulating him even more. She closed her eyes and drank him in, taking him into her veins, her heart, every cell in her body, while he pumped in and out of her tight sheath. His taste was as primal as he was. A blend of dominance and heat, male and the night. She would forever crave him. It took a great deal of self-control to seal the pinpricks, but she was rewarded instantly.

Her orgasm hit her hard, driving the breath from her body and constricting her muscles tightly around Nicolas. He roared, clamping his hands on her hips while her body locked down unexpectedly on his shaft, tearing hot jets of semen from him. The climax continued, a brutal hot release that tore through his body, so that he plunged into her tight depths repeatedly, flooding her with his seed.

When he could move, he rolled them over so she could pillow her head on his chest. His arm circled her possessively, one hand cupping the underside of her breast. It took a few minutes for his burning lungs to manage to get air. "I want to stay here forever with you, Lara."

She managed a smile. "We might have to."

His thumb brushed the soft underside of her breast, back and forth. "I love your skin."

She ran her hand down his chest to his belly. "I love yours." She stretched her neck to nibble on his chin.

"Thank you."

Her gaze shifted away from his. "You know what I have to do, don't you?"

She was going to avoid talking about making a blood exchange. Nicolas hesitated, unsure whether to force the issue, but then followed her lead. She needed to come to terms in her own way. Because she had managed to let him take her blood this one time, didn't mean it would be easy the next time—or even that she could. He accepted that in her, just as he accepted his own peculiar quirks, formed from a lifetime of experiences.

"We have to do it together," Nicolas corrected. "You lured the entity, for lack of a better word, to the surface and Natalya was able to get it out of Savannah, but it was much easier with me there, wasn't it? Admit it."

Lara nuzzled his chest with her chin. "Yes. I don't mind admitting it. It seems a bit of a daunting task to check every single woman and Francesca said it would have to be done. She plans to try to journey with me so she can learn Xavier's touch in order to help."

He rubbed his palm up and down her narrow rib cage, savoring the feel of her soft skin, the movement more absent-minded than voluntary. "I do not understand how these things got into the women. Are there more than one?"

She frowned. "It doesn't appear so, at least not in Raven or Savannah. Extremophiles can be very aggressive about defending their territory and basically that's what these mutated microbes are."

"So once they're gone, everything is back to normal? It seems too fast."

"I think it is too fast. How did the organism get there in the first place? Whatever the source is, we haven't found it. I overheard Shea talking to Francesca right before we left. She thought there was a good possibility it was transferred from male to female and that they live in the soil first."

"She is wrong about the males," Nicolas said, his hand stilling on her breast. "And they better not think you are taking journeys through every male."

Her body felt so warm beside his, fit so perfectly and when she laughed, that soft melodic sound, teasing at his senses, he felt absolutely content—right—complete. He had always known he was highly intelligent, that he'd been gifted to be fast with natural hunting instincts, but finding her had made him a better person.

"What about you? If you are infected, then I would become infected as well."

He swore beneath his breath, a time-honored
o köd belso
—darkness take it! The husky male timbre combined with the words made her smile, and she leaned upward to kiss his jaw.

He cupped her breast, his thumb sliding over her nipple. "I did not even consider that."

"I think all Carpathians have to consider it."

There was a small silence. "Would you check?"

She frowned and rolled over, pressing her soft breasts into his chest so that his body reacted with a shudder of awareness. "If a single microbe first enters the male body and then is passed to the female, it would leave the male's body open as a host for a second microbe. As long as one resides in the woman, the second would stay in the male. But if Raven or Savannah, who are now without a microbe, have sex with their partners, and Mikhail and Gregori are infected, then they would be reinfected. This could be a very vicious circle, Nicolas." Especially if she was the only person able to detect the extremophile.

Nicolas sat up, pulling her with him. Her face was pale, dark circles under her eyes. She wasn't eating anymore, not even broth. And he read her mind. What if she couldn't detect the microbes once she was fully Carpathian? Natalya couldn't seem to do it on her own and she had been part mage. That would leave the entire weight of a dying species falling directly on Lara's shoulders.

"I don't understand how this happened, Nicolas. I just got up one evening and decided The Carpathian Mountains was the next area I was going to search for the ice cave, mostly because of the gaps in the memories of those I spoke with about the ice caves. Now I've got you and all this responsibility I never dreamed of. But I'm afraid for us. I'm afraid to look inside of me and see a microbe. I'm afraid to look inside of you." She framed his face with her hands, coming up on her knees beside him. "I want children and I don't want them to suffer like that, or to ever believe they weren't wanted."

He leaned forward and took her mouth, his kiss gentle, pouring as much reassurance into it as he could. "They will know they are wanted,
fél ku kuuluaak sívam belso
."

She loved the way he whispered "beloved." The Carpathian phrase had music to it, a tenderness that shook her each time he said it to her. It was always more than just the word, but the true meaning behind that word as well. His overwhelming emotion for her. And she believed him.

Because he made her believe a man like him could love her and accept her, even damaged from the trauma of her childhood, she found the strength to hunt for the microbe, to see for herself if either was infected—and only she was. The one inside of her was newly there, and hadn't had time to establish itself. Her body was still treating it as an intruder. So that meant either the men weren't infected, and Shea's theory was incorrect, or that because she had only recently gotten together with Nicolas, he had passed her the microbe and had not yet been exposed to reinfection.

"You didn't sleep in the soil, Nicolas, You stayed on the bed with me."

"We need to go talk to Francesca and Gregori about this," Nicolas said.

She would never feel comfortable around Gregori with his strange-colored eyes, but she nodded. She had to journey into the other pregnant women this evening and hopefully Francesca would be able to follow the faint trail of the killer to aid in removing the microbes from all the other women. And she wanted the one in her out—this rising.

* * *

Lara felt drained when she came out of the healing cave with Nicolas at her side. She had aided two other pregnant women and also led the microbe within her to the surface for Natalya to destroy. They had experimented, taking both Natalya and Francesca along, but Francesca, try as she might, could not detect that faint, tainted path, and something in Natalya served as a warning to the extremophile and it successfully hid its presence from them, ruling out the possibility of Natalya tracking them.

A microbe was found in Mikhail and one in Gregori. Shea was excited that she might actually be on the right track at last to solving the problem of miscarriage. She, Gregori and a man Lara had never met named Gary, retreated together to try to explore ideas on how to combat the microbe.

Nicolas walked through the village with her. She wanted to visit Gerald and check on Terry while he and Vikirnoff finally searched for another entrance to the ice cave.

"I will not be gone long," he assured.

"And you won't go in without me," she added, giving him a quick, warning look.

At the bottom of the steps leading to the inn, he wrapped his arm around her and pulled her close. "No, I told you I wouldn't. You look pale, though. If you can manage to get some broth down, do so. If not, Lara, we cannot wait much longer to convert you."

She moistened her lips. "I have avoidance issues, I think. When I don't want to think about something, I just put it out of my mind and pretend it will go away. I like being mage. I rely on being mage."

"Mage blood aids in casting and learning, but Carpathian blood does as well. Our two species were intertwined for centuries, Lara. Xavier came up with the safeguards, but in the end Carpathians improved on them. Mages had longevity, so did lycanthrope, but even mortal wounds could sometimes be healed by Carpathians, leading others to believe our species is immortal. But we can be killed."

She tilted her head, facing her worst fear. "And that's what all the experiments on Razvan are about, aren't they? It's the reason Xavier has kept him alive. He's trying to find a way to kill Carpathians."

Nicolas held her close to him. "I am afraid of that, yes."

"Then if there is a chance he's alive, Nicolas, we have to find the evidence in the ice caves. I owe him that."

He tipped her face up and kissed her gently. "I will only be gone a couple of hours. Stay in the inn with the innkeeper and wait for me."

Lara nodded and with reluctance, left his side, stepping onto the first stair. Standing there in the dark, she watched him go—a tall, handsome man striding down the walkway, long coat swirling around his legs, his silky hair flying behind him—and her heart hammered out a rhythm of love.

He shimmered, his formidable physique nearly transparent and then he was gone, swallowed up by the darkness. She stood there listening to the night, hearing so many things she hadn't heard before. She saw differently, and the night took on a special beauty. She enjoyed just standing there, drinking it in, the solitude, the peace, with the murmur of life going on behind the scenes.

A few minutes later, Lara pushed open the door to the inn and slipped inside. It was warm and cozy, the open beams giving the inn a sense of space, the fireplace giving the room a homey feel. Slavica, the innkeeper, greeted her with a smile.

"I was hoping to see you. How are you?"

Lara was aware that few villagers were aware of the Carpathian people. Of course there were rumors, old legends whispered around a fire at night, but few modern people believed the old tales. She had heard that Mikhail Dubrinsky and the innkeeper's family went back years, but she didn't want to make the mistake of drawing too much attention to herself. She smiled and nodded. "I wanted to check on my friends. Have they been down at all?"

Slavica shook her head. "I called them to see if they wanted me to bring them food, but they refused, so I've left them alone."

"
Neither
, of them has been down to eat? Not even Gerald?" Lara frowned. Both men normally had hearty appetites. "Did Gregori check on them?"

"Early last night, your friend Nicolas came and then much later Gregori stopped by. He knocked, but they were already asleep. He told me he'd be back some time this evening."