Darkness Awakened (Primal Heat Trilogy #1) (Order of the Blade) (25 page)
Read Darkness Awakened (Primal Heat Trilogy #1) (Order of the Blade) Online
Authors: Stephanie Rowe
Grace burrowed into Quinn’s body as she slowly regained her breath and her equilibrium, as the trembling faded from her limbs. He was draped over her, his whiskered face buried in her neck, his leg flung over hers, his arm snagged around her belly, trapping her in the curve of his body. His fingers were loosely clasping her wrists where they rested against her chest. “Quinn?”
“Still with you.” He inhaled deeply and swore quietly. “I’ve marked you. Your scent has changed.”
Grace waited for tension to hit her, but it didn’t. It was more like resignation. How could what they had just shared
not
have marked her? It had been far more than sex, and they both knew it. “I smell different?”
“To me.” He released her wrists and wrapped his palm around her forearm. “Your skin’s hot.”
He flipped her arm over and raised it up so they could both inspect it.
Up by her elbow, on the top side of her arm, were some faint silver marks in her skin. Her breath caught. “Is that it?”
He laid his arm next to hers, showing her his brand, the thick, dark lines woven into his skin. The brand was in the shape of a beautifully intricate sword, with a long blade and a carved handle. His arm was well-muscled and strong, with curls of dark hair dusting his skin.
The designs on the handle of his sword matched up perfectly with the lines on her skin. An exact replica, except hers was faint silver and his was an angry, black brand. Her stomach thudded, the mark on her skin dealing the final blow to the shred of hope that had remained coiled inside her that the legend had had no truth.
Gone was the steady, hopeful conviction that she had remained above some all-powerful metaphysical destiny, that a horrific fate hadn’t clawed its way into her life to try to catapult her toward a future it had pre-selected for her. “So, that’s it then. It’s real.”
“It’s always been real.”
Grace extricated herself from Quinn’s arms and sat up, drawing her knees to her chest under the quilt and wrapping her arms around her legs. Her chest ached, and she almost rolled her eyes with the irony of how much she wanted to crawl into his arms and feel the beat of his heart against hers while they figured out how to resist that which drew them together.
Now was not the time to turn to Quinn for strength or comfort. She needed to feel her independence. She needed to prove to herself that she could survive without him, even while she was yearning for his touch. “So, what now?” She kept her voice cool and reserved. Strong.
His eyes were stormy. Unsettled. “Even though I know it’s screwed up, it feels damned good to see my brand on your arm.” His gaze went to her mark. “It makes you mine, and I like it.”
She tensed at the possessiveness in his voice and body language as he leaned over her, his bulk dwarfing her in the bed that suddenly felt too small. “I’ll never be yours,” she said.
“You’re mine already.”
She kicked off the covers and jumped out of the bed, her bare feet slapping against the floor. “Dammit, Quinn! I’m not! Stop talking like you’ve already given in!”
He didn’t move, but his body was vibrating with a dark energy. The muscles in his shoulders were taut, his abs like steel across his lean torso. “I said you’re mine. You are. I’m yours. It’s the way it is. But that doesn’t mean we let it rule us.”
“How can we not?” Grace gestured at the covers that were torn askew from their lovemaking. “Look at what we just did! That wasn’t just sex. That was some major metaphysical stuff going on, and you know it. Neither of us wants this future. We knew sex would take us closer, but we did it anyway. Dammit. It’s already controlling us.”
“Oh, Grace, you are so wrong.” Quinn rolled onto his back and lightly clasped his hands over his head, the muscles in his arms flexing with the force of his action. His eyes were lighter now, almost peaceful. He almost looked like he was laughing at her. “We didn’t have sex
because
of the bond. The bond just intensified what we already feel for each other. We had sex because we wanted to, because we belong together and we both know it.” He raised his brows in a challenging gesture, daring her to step up and admit the truth. “The attraction is us, Grace. Just us. There are no excuses.”
“There’s no way it’s just us.” She couldn’t accept that. She just couldn’t. “I want you so much it hurts. That’s not me. That’s something else.
That’s not me
.”
“You’re right. It’s not you. It’s
us
. Part of the reason you’re responding to me is because you can feel my need for you. We feed on each other.”
“Like animals?” Because that sounded so romantic.
He laughed aloud this time. “No, not like animals. Like soul mates who have been hunting for each other for centuries. Isn’t that what women want? Romance? Soul mates? Forever love?”
Grace folded her arms across her chest, refusing to acknowledge the female side of her that wanted to agree with him. Why? Because she lived in the grittiness of the real world, and she knew there was no happy romance down the road for them, not just because of the
sheva
destiny, but because she’d had so many dreams broken that she’d learned not to have them. “You just finished telling me how Ezekiel’s love for Evangeline caused the breakdown of the world. Call me cynical, but I just don’t see the romance in that. Do you?”
Quinn’s smiled faded and gestured to the bed for her to sit. “Being soul mates is not a bad thing, Grace. The problem comes when we fall victim to it.”
Grace chewed her lip. Trusting the soul mate thing seemed liked the fast track toward emotional devastation. “We already succumbed once.”
He grinned. “Grace, sweetheart, you are the most sensual, most courageous, most achingly beautiful woman I’ve ever met in my life. That’s why I couldn’t stop myself. You need to give yourself credit for who you are. That was you I was making love to, not the bond.”
“Stop.” She held up her hands. “Don’t say things that make me want to go all weak, Quinn. I can’t do that. I can’t fall for you. It’s too much, so you have to stop trying to get me to believe in you. I know it was the bond. I don’t respond to men and sex like that, and men don’t want me like you do. If the
sheva
thing can make me do that, what chance do we have?”
“Grace. Sit.” He flipped the covers aside to make room for her. “Not all the stages are like sex, which was driven by so many other factors. We need to talk about them, and get control of this thing going forward.”
“Control? God, I’d like some of that.” She grabbed his abandoned T-shirt from the floor, perched on the end of the bed, and crossed her legs. “Talk.” She wanted to crawl up the bedspread and tuck herself under his chin, run her hand over the muscles in his chest, breathe his air. “Dammit!” She pulled the shirt on, hiding behind the thick cotton. “What are the other stages? Don’t tell me they’re like if I eat food in the same square mile as you, or drink out of the same cup? Accidentally brush against you? Because those will be difficult to avoid.”
He laughed softly. “No, they’re more significant than that. We can’t do them by accident. There are five stages to the bond. They can go in any order. Sex, of course. Then the blood exchange.”
“A blood exchange.” Her stomach roiled. “It sounds disgusting, so no worries there. It’s not going to happen.”
“We might want it to happen.”
Oh, God, really? “Why?” Did she really want to know? The nightmare was getting worse.
“A blood exchange will let us communicate mind-to-mind across any distance. I would be able to find you anywhere, and you, me.”
“Good to remember if I decide to get kidnapped like my sister.” Her forearm began to itch and she rubbed it. “A cell phone with a tracking device would work great, as well.”
He almost smiled. “Not the same thing, darling. You know it’s not.”
Her heart skipped at the endearment, and her response made her uncomfortable. How was she supposed to hold onto who she was if she got all weepy whenever he made her feel special? “Don’t call me darling.”
He met her gaze, and she saw the resignation in his eyes. “I’ll try.”
She sighed. This whole romance thing was so not her comfort zone. It was too dangerous for her. She couldn’t afford to break down and forget how to protect herself. “What else do I need to know?”
Quinn raised his brows, clearly telling her that the sex/romance topic wasn’t over, but he granted her the respite by answering her question. “The Death Ritual is another stage. Taking a life to save mine. And I take one to save yours. Or we risk our lives to save the other. Either one works.”
Her stomach balled up in a knot. Killing someone?
Please, no. Not that.
His gaze narrowed. “What’s wrong?”
She shook her head, her throat too tight to talk.
Quinn sat up, all amusement gone from his handsome face. “Grace? You look like you’re going to be sick.”
The concern in his voice made her chest ache, fraying her composure. “No.” She pulled back from him, her body starting to shake. “I don’t want to kill. I just don’t want to.”
He leaned forward and caught her shoulders. “Hey.” His voice was quiet. Soothing. “You don’t have to kill anyone. That’s why we’re talking about it. I’m the one who knocks people around, remember? It’s what I do. The whole point of this discussion is that I
don’t
want you to kill because that will tighten the bond, okay?”
She clung to his wrists, no longer able to fight the support he offered. She was too vulnerable when it came to killing someone else, too raw, too terrified of who she was. “What if the bond makes me kill someone? Like it made us have sex?” Her fingers dug into his skin.
“It didn’t make us have sex,” he said again, for the thousandth time, as if repeating it would make her finally hear it. “We both wanted to. That’s why we did it.”
“Do you really believe that?” God, she wanted to believe that. She wanted to believe that she had some control over her actions, and that those silver lines on her arms weren’t dictating her future. But the intensity of how she responded to Quinn wasn’t natural. It wasn’t her. She wasn’t like that. She didn’t see how she could ever convince herself that the coupling they’d just had was not influenced by some magical bond drawing them together. “Could we have said no? Truly? Could you have walked away from me?”
His face darkened. “There was no chance in hell I was going to walk away, and that had nothing to do with the bond, Grace.”
The intensity of his stare was unnerving, but also reassuring. It was awful to think that all those attentions he lavished on her had been against his will. “You’re so sure about that?”
“Yeah, I am.” His thumbs rubbed small circles on her shoulders. “I like using my sword, Grace. I’m not going to let you kill anyone and steal my thunder, okay?”
“Yeah, okay.” He did have a point about him being talented when it came to knocking people off, and he’d already shut down her illusion once. He could deliver on that promise, he really could, and she had to believe that. She needed to relax. Stressing about a future that might never come wouldn’t solve anything. All that ever worked was taking it slow and having a plan. “What about the other stages?”
Quinn gave her a look like he knew she wasn’t fine. “Transference occurs when my weapon recognizes you as my mate, and you’ll be able to call it to serve you.” He began to massage her neck muscles, and she realized she’d coiled herself up into a wad of tension. “The last one is trust. An act that reveals our ultimate trust in the other one. Often it takes the form of revealing your darkest secret. Sometimes it’s giving your mate the power to kill you.” He shrugged. “Trust comes in a lot of different forms.”
“Trust?” She had learned not to trust anyone, not with what really mattered. And secrets? She shuddered at the thought of telling Quinn what she’d never told anyone, what no one would ever know except Ana. “Well, that’s safe, then. I’m not that kind of girl.”
“That’s too bad.” His eyes glittered with challenge. “I think trusting your team is the most important weapon you can have in battle. That’s the one thing I’d want us to have before we take on this hell we’re facing.”
Grace lifted her chin. “Don’t start with me, Quinn. I’m not one of your Order members. I’m just me, and I can’t do this your way, okay?”
“Trust has to come, or we fail.” Looking aggravatingly confident with his declaration, Quinn leaned back, propping himself up against the pillows, continuing before she could argue. “So, that’s what we’re dealing with. Blood Exchange. Death. Transference. Trust. And sex.”
Grace rubbed her forearm, realizing the futility of arguing with him. She’d survived just fine on her own, and she didn’t believe him that they had to be intimate confidants in order to be effective. There were many paths to survival, and for her, it was all about understanding the threats so she could deal with them. “So, as long as there’s one stage left undone, we’re okay, right?”
Quinn’s hand slid down her arm and began kneading the marks in her forearm, almost absently, like he didn’t realize he was doing it. She liked his touch; she liked the comfort from their connection. Was that the bond, or just the truth that it felt better not to be alone? She sighed, too drained to push him away. She wanted his touch, and she would take it.