Everafter Series 2 - Nevermore (20 page)

“She didn’t.”

And then the words struck home. Clavier had given her blood. Someone else’s blood. Fury rose in me, sharp and blazing. The panther flexed, and if Clavier had been in the room, I would have let her come.
Mine.

“He did this while you were unconscious?” When Val nodded, misery etched in every line of her face, I gripped her legs tightly. “That’s like rape
,
damn it!”

“That’s what I said when I woke up. That’s what it felt like. Feels like.” She looked away again, her jaw working. “He insisted that he had only done it for my own good—that without the blood, I would have been too dangerous. And maybe he’s right. I was…it felt like I was going crazy.”

“What does this mean?” What was happening in Val’s body? Would my blood still be able to keep the parasite in check? Or had Clavier jeopardized all of that? “For you? For us?”

“I don’t know.” Val’s whisper was agonized. “I don’t think anyone knows.”

In the ensuing silence, I battled back my rage by focusing on the possibilities. If my blood stopped being effective, the parasite would eventually complete its conquest of Val’s circulatory system. She would lapse into a brief coma and emerge from it a full vampire: stronger, faster, more ruthless. Unable to walk in the sunlight. Some believed that in the transition, a full vampire lost her soul.

I wanted to promise her that I’d never let that happen. I wanted to reassure her that receiving someone else’s blood hadn’t changed the potency of mine. It broke my heart to know I could do neither. But Val was acting as if this news would change the way I felt about her, and I couldn’t stand that. My love for her wasn’t attached to any conditions. When would she believe that?

“I love you,” I said. “And I am not leaving you, Valentine.” They were the only truths I had.

She stared at me for a few moments before burying her head in her hands. When her shoulders hitched, I rose to my feet and gently pulled at her wrists. She made a sound deep in her throat, and the sheer animal nature of it stirred my panther’s protective impulses alongside my own.

“Come lie down,” I said, tugging insistently until she stood. I maneuvered her until the backs of her legs were pressing against the bed, and then pushed on her tight shoulders. Obliging me, she stretched out on top of the comforter, one arm thrown over her eyes. Her chest rose and fell rapidly, and the first thing I did when I slid into place next to her was to rest my palm against the fluttering skin over her heart. Her next breath sounded more like a sob.

I curled into her then, my face against her neck and my arms wrapped tightly around her. Val rarely cried, but she needed to right now, and I wished she would just let go of all the emotions that were strangling her like a vine choking a tree. Instead, she fought them, her body taut against me as she struggled to rein in her tears. I stayed still and quiet, doing nothing more than holding her and occasionally letting my lips skate across her pale skin, until she began to relax.

As her muscles loosened, I raised myself up on one elbow and pulled her arm away from her face. Her eyes were still shadowed by fear, but when I traced one cheekbone with my thumb, she smiled wanly.

“I’m—”

Not wanting her apology, I sealed my mouth to hers. The kiss was our first in weeks, and it seared my soul. Val felt it too, her fingers clutching at my shoulders as though she were drowning and I was her lifeline. In a way, that was true. But her need echoed mine, and I was determined to prove it in every way that I could. I lost myself in her mouth, remembering her fully in the dance of our tongues and the wet slide of our lips, and I didn’t pull away until I felt her tugging at the hem of my T-shirt. I trapped her body between my knees, then sat up and ripped off everything separating my breasts from hers. She followed me, the muscles in her stomach contracting as she kissed the skin I revealed.

Not to be outdone, I undressed her, my knuckles skimming over her torso as I divested her of first the shirt and then the sports bra beneath it. I sucked in my breath as Val’s full, beautiful breasts were freed. She gasped as I cupped them in my hands and lightly rubbed my thumbs over her nipples. They were the loveliest shade of dusky coral, and they hardened at my touch.

“Oh, Val,” I murmured between the kisses I placed along her jawline. “Val, you feel so good.”

When I pinched her between my fingertips, her strength gave out and she called my name, collapsing back onto the mattress. I followed her down, marveling at the power I held over her in this sensual moment, and brushed my breasts across her glistening mouth. The loving swirl of her tongue inspired a groan from deep in my throat. She always made me feel so desirable. So cherished. But in that moment, I didn’t want tender romance. I wanted to feel the potent depth of her need for me—a need beyond pleasure, beyond even love. I needed her teeth in my skin.

Giving in to gravity, I slid down until my mouth was next to her ear. “I want you slow, Valentine. I want you to take your time with me. But not right now.” Her body went taut and I punctuated my words with a sucking kiss to her sensitive earlobe. “Right now, I need you not to hold back. Right now, I need to feel you come with your teeth in my neck.” She shivered, and I hid a triumphant smile against her skin. “Take me. Please.”

The weakness, the hesitancy, the doubt—all of it disappeared in one powerful surge of her muscles. And as I stared into her handsome face, her cheeks flushed with desire and her eyes dark in passion, the world righted itself. This was where I belonged.

“Off,” Val growled, making quick work of the buttons on my jeans. She kicked away her shorts and then there were no barriers between us. She cupped my cheek as she slid one thigh against me, and I knew the moment she felt how very wet I was by the thirst that twisted her lips.

Her hand against my face began to move, sliding down over my shoulder and along the outer curve of my breast—Valentine mapping me, anchoring me with her possessive touch. As her fingers slid between my legs, I closed my eyes in pleasure.

“No,” she said harshly, stilling her hand. “Keep them open.”

“Val…” her name left my lips on a groan as I obeyed. When my eyes locked with hers, she stroked me, a whisper-light touch. I cried out, my entire body clenching, the pleasure made all the more powerful by the intensity of her hungry gaze.

“You’re mine,” she said, lowering her head as she continued to tease me. Overwhelmed with sensation, my back arched. And then she was kissing me—a fierce, bruising, possessive kiss. She stole my breath before trailing her lips down, down from the corner of my mouth, over my jaw, down along my neck where the staccato of my racing pulse was strongest.

“So beautiful,” she said, tracing the lines of my veins with her lips. “Alexa. I need you.”

The sharp flash of pain as her teeth broke my skin merged with the inexpressible pleasure of her fingers pushing deep into my body. She claimed me fully, and I screamed. I pulled her closer as every muscle contracted, tangling my fingers in her hair and twining my legs with hers. Her hips surged, and through the blazing tide of my release, I rejoiced that she had found hers.

Val drank and drank, coaxing every last shudder from me until I lay quiescent. When she stilled her hand and withdrew from my neck, I shivered at the loss. She stayed where she was, pressing me into the mattress, tenderly licking the tiny wounds closed as she eased her fingers from my body.

Peace suffused me and I drifted, dimly aware of Val turning down the covers and sliding me between the sheets. She wrapped herself around me and I turned into her embrace.

“So good,” I slurred, burrowing my face into her neck and breathing in the fragrance of her familiar, beloved scent. “Don’t you see? No more pushing me away. Promise.”

She stroked my hair. “I can’t live without you,” she said, and though she meant the words to be reassuring, the note of sorrow in her voice made my heart ache.

“Val—”

She shook her head and deepened her touch, massaging my scalp. “Sleep now, baby.”

“But what about everything that’s happening?” I said, struggling to muster my thoughts. Helen might have told both Val and me to lie low, but I knew Val wouldn’t be content to cool her heels while the maelstrom raged around us. And neither was I. “First Brenner, and now this disease. What are we
going to do?”

I expected her to stop then, to turn her focus from me to what our plan of action should be. But the soothing rhythm of her fingers never faltered. “We’ll figure it out later,” she said. “Rest. You need it. We both do.”

Sighing, I let myself relax into her touch. We were together again. Everything would be all right. I knew it. I’d prove it to her, day after day, until every one of her doubts disappeared. Surrendering to my own exhaustion, I let the cadence of her words pull me under.

“I love you, Alexa. Sleep.”

Chapter Seventeen

The conference room adjacent to Karma’s office was barely large enough to fit us all, but it had been the only viable option. Trying to be circumspect, I moved my chair to the right to put just a few more inches between myself and Sebastian. My panther, sensing his connection to the powerful alpha who had terrorized us across the ocean, was on high alert. She radiated distrust and suspicion, and had it been up to her, we would have been on the other side of the building by now. Her unease was compounded by my own; Sebastian still regarded Val with the kind of propriety look that wasn’t appropriate on anyone but me. Had he not been our ally, I would have been tempted to teach him a lesson.

Karma patted my knee in reassurance as I edged closer. We had just spent an hour in her office, catching up over coffee. For a good day and a half, I hadn’t had the urge to leave Val’s bed. Wrapped around each other, we had slept long and hard, waking only to eat and make love. But the stronger I began to feel, the more stir-crazy I became. It had been a relief to leave the narrow confines of our room, though Val had vehemently protested.

Only when I forced her to admit that Karma had yet to show any sign at all of being ill had she relented. I didn’t like making her upset, and I never wanted to hurt her. But if I’d remained sequestered for much longer, the panther’s claustrophobia might have won out over my own ego.

I had several reasons for wanting to talk to Karma in private. I’d missed her over the summer and wanted to share stories of my time at Telassar. But more importantly, I wanted her take on what had happened that night, almost a week ago now, when Valentine had lost control. Once I’d satisfied her curiosity about what it had been like to confront Balthasar Brenner, I asked her to tell me about Val.

“I went to your apartment,” Karma had said. “Malcolm had just received news about Telassar from Nadia—you must have met her? She called in once she reached safe haven in Djerba.” When I nodded, she went on. “I knocked on your door, and then again when Val didn’t answer. She finally opened it. I think she had been sleeping.”

I smiled at the thought of sleepy Valentine: her features soft and vulnerable, the slow blink of her blue eyes as she tried to make sense of the waking world. But that was my Valentine, the one who woke in my arms after a restful night of sleep. I could only imagine how frantic Val had looked when she’d opened the door for Karma.

“I went inside. I told her about the siege, and Brenner. That you and Constantine were missing.” Karma had reached out for my hand. “I think I made a mistake then. She was upset, so I put my arm around her. As we kept talking, she grew more and more tense. I attributed that to her being worried about you.”

The panther’s hackles had risen as jealousy flared beneath my skin, hot and sharp. I didn’t blame Karma—she had only been trying to comfort Val—but it had been a struggle not to react. “What happened after that?”

“She was telling me about a dream she’d had. About Brenner. I was asking questions. And then…” She had trailed off, and I’d wondered if she was reliving the memory. “Sometimes I think that we—that vampires and Weres—have more in common than we realize.”

“How so?”

“Valentine fought against the impulse to drink from me. She lost.” Karma had shrugged. “How many times have I fought my jackal and lost?”

“You won that night,” I’d said, allowing the gratitude that I felt to saturate my voice.

Karma had shuddered. “It was a close thing.”

“You knocked her out and brought her here?”

“Directly to Clavier, yes.”

Another lance of anger had shot up my spine and set my panther snarling. “He gave her blood.”

“What?” She’d sounded shocked. Most shifters believed that my relationship with Valentine was perverted—a kind of slavery. But Karma knew the idea had been mine from the beginning. She saw how much we loved each other, and she respected it. “I went in to see her as soon as Clavier would let me. She wasn’t hooked up to anything then.”

I still wanted to rip him limb from limb for violating Valentine—for believing he had the right to ignore her wishes when it came to the nature of her very existence.

“Val made him take it out when she woke up.”

“Alexa, I am so sor—”

“No,” I had said gently, squeezing her hand. “You are not allowed to apologize. You did everything you could to help her, and in a way, you even saved her life.” I had shaken her fingers lightly to get her to meet my gaze. “Thank you.”

“Is everything going to be all right?” she’d asked after a moment of hesitation.

I had wanted to say yes—a confident, unequivocal yes. But I couldn’t. “I hope so.”

“We have a problem,” said Val, startling me out of my memory. As she paced the length of the small room, my gaze lingered with appreciation on the defined muscles of her upper arms, the gentle swell of her breasts beneath her tight gray T-shirt, the pale band of skin between its hem and her low-slung jeans. Even in the midst of so much chaos, she stirred my body and my heart.

“Just one?” Sebastian’s words were heavy with irony.

Val shot him an irritated glance. They had grown close in my absence, and I didn’t like it. While I wasn’t about to begrudge Val a friendship, I would never be convinced that Sebastian didn’t have some kind of design on her.