On the Edge of Love (Mama's Brood Book 1) (26 page)

“That’s what it’s like with my blades.”

“Blade dancer,” she teased.

He pulled her knee over his thigh. “I like that. Blade dancer. Me and my blades dancing to the tune of the blade’s spirit.”

It was probably a bad call on her part to indulge his delusions, but she had to admit there was a certain divineness to how he could work his blades.

“So are you going to train me on how to use them tomorrow?”

“Yeah. Tomorrow we’ll dance together. With the blades.”

“You better not cut me, Zeus. I’m serious.”

“Woman, I’m not some green boy. I cut only when I intend to.”

The stadium went into an uproar, and Zeus sat up and surged toward the television.

“What happened?”

“Try.”

“Try what?”

Again, he looked at her as if her name was Idiot. “Big fucking hit. Turnover. Try.”

“Is that good?”

“For the All Blacks it is. That Wallaby half-conscious on the ground, he’s done in. He won’t think it’s so good. ”

“So why are they holding the guy up by his shorts like that?” she asked later as one guy’s teammates lifted him in the air by the shorts to catch the ball.

“Not a good time for questions.”

She huffed and leaned back into the pillows. She intermittently watched the game and watched Zeus watching the game. He wasn’t one of those animated fans. He sat on the edge of the bed silent, still, and engrossed.

Sabrina closed her eyes after a while. The game was interesting and fast moving, but she didn’t know enough about it for it to keep her from resisting the pull of sleep. Maybe my exhaustion also comes from the fact that my body is still healing, she thought.

“Hey.”

The word drifted to her from across an ocean of darkness, but the utterance might as well have been the anchor dragging her to the deepest fathoms of sleep.

Chapter Thirteen

Zeus leaned on his side as he watched Sabrina sleep. He’d turned the television off, and her features were submerged in shadow. She was curled in a fetal position on top of the bedcovers, a section of the comforter folded over her legs. Zeus reached down, flipped the comforter off her, and dragged his hand from the knobby part of her ankle all the way up to her hip. Her skin was melted chocolate beneath his fingertips. When would the need, the pleasure, from touching her skin cease?

He brushed a twist of hair away from her face, only to watch it spring back to its original position. He played in the soft mass just because he liked the feel of it against his rough palm. When playing in her hair wasn’t enough, he rose from the bed and stripped. Naked, he paused, experiencing another rush of pleasure. She was sleeping in his bed. His. He got hard, his dick straining to claim her. She was in his bed, was his to satisfy. Confident with that knowledge, he left the room and took a quick shower. As the water ran over his skin, he felt as powerful as the god his mother had named him after. He was rich with possessions that he could use to tempt Sabrina to remain with him. She wasn’t used to having much, so she’d be grateful. He would share what he had to get what he wanted, which was her body, available for his use for as long as he wanted to use it. And if being the benevolent god didn’t work, he had no problem embodying the demons the priests had accused him of being possessed by.

Returning to his bedroom, he saw Sabrina hadn’t moved from where he had left her. In his shower fantasy he’d imagined her awake and naked on her back, legs bent and spread wide, liquid ready for him to climb up and push into her. He watched, mesmerized by the rise of her breasts as she breathed. She was deeply asleep, beyond this world, but he was talented enough to bring her back and send them both to a place they would inhabit together. And like Adam and Eve, they would be the human inhabitants, and the only snake the one dangling between his thighs. Leaning over, Zeus slowly turned Sabrina onto her back.

She made a sound somewhere between a moan and sigh, and he froze in the process of angling his knife toward her shoulder. He remained still, not wanting her to wake up. He hadn’t gotten to play yet, and he suddenly wanted to play.

Once she’d settled, he resumed cutting the strap of her nightshirt. He spread her arms and cut the sides, from beneath her armpits to the hem. He removed the top piece, humming with pleasure. Her breasts were ripe and waiting to be squeezed and sucked, but he tuned them out, diligently cutting the ugly drawstring pajama bottoms from hip to ankle. When he made his way to the inseam between her thighs, he closed his eyes and rested his head against her pelvic bone, shaking with the level of restraint needed to go slow. All he wanted to do was bury his face in her crotch and suck her essence straight into him.

Soon. I will wake her soon, he thought as he finished cutting away her clothing. Perfection. He reached out and squeezed her breast, playing with it before lowering his head to the puckered nipple, sucking. “Wake up,” he commanded.

Sabrina writhed, her body undulating beneath him as her gaze locked on to his, silently pleading for more. He sucked so hard on her nipple he wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d drawn milk. Trailing kisses from her solar plexus down to her navel, he moved toward the springy curls that veiled his heaven.

He massaged the flesh covering her pelvic bone with his thumbs before stroking his hand over the roundness of her ass. He inhaled the moist scent of her arousal mixed with his soap, branding her head to toe as his. Before their time together was done, he would have marked her so deeply, any thought of sex would always resurrect his image, his taste, his touch, him.

He pushed a finger deep inside of her. Her breathing stuttered. So fucking
wet
. He pushed another finger inside and worked her with both hand and mouth, lingering because this gave him so much pleasure his dick was on the verge of exploding without even being inside of her. He was losing himself in her, and he didn’t lose himself with women. He may suck, he always fucked, he came, and he left. He didn’t want anything more, and he didn’t give anything more.

He was so attuned to Sabrina he felt the moment her breathing changed and she began her descent. She came in an explosive wave of orgasmic energy that flowed into him.

Once her body calmed, softened, her hands stroked his hair, fingers both light and soothing. He stilled and closed his eyes, savoring the gentleness of her touch. He would never forget this one moment. He would engrave it in his memory, in his sensory structure. No one had ever touched him this way before. No one had ever played in his hair. He’d had it grabbed from the back once as his attacker used it to slam his face into a grimy stone wall back when he was young. He’d had it raked with impatient, manicured fingernails, even had it chopped off by nuns who hadn’t the patience to deal with its unruliness. No one had ever played in it. He likely wouldn’t have tolerated it if any woman other than Sabrina had tried.

His body grew lethargic as he enjoyed a sensation so compelling that it overrode his need to come. He rested his head on her hip and pulled his fingers out of her warmth, reaching around to hold on to her thigh. He sighed. Sex in a minute. Soon, he promised as he his body grew heavy and his mind slowed.

THOUGH ZEUS WAS asleep, Sabrina continued to stroke hair soft as sheared silk. It should be a sin for a man so hard and unmanageable to have such soft hair. A part of her believed it wouldn’t matter if his hair was coarse, locked, thin, permed—well, maybe not permed—she would find pleasure in gliding her fingers over it.

She liked this intimacy, liked that he allowed it, seemed to take pleasure in it. She smiled. He’d liked it so much he’d been distracted from finding his own release.

Feeling his stubbled cheek against her naked skin, Sabrina frowned. Didn’t she have pajamas on when she went to sleep? Looking down, she saw she was naked and Zeus had cut the clothing from her body. Lord, she thought as she resisted the urge to grab his oh-so-fucking-soft strands and toss him off her. She definitely did not have enough clothes to have him cutting them off her when the mood hit him.

Instead of abusing his hair, she soothed herself by continuing to stroke it. I’ll just tell him, she thought. No more cutting up clothes. He had the capacity to be practical sometimes. Maybe he thought it was romantic to cut the clothes off his bed partners. Her snort of laughter filled the room, causing Zeus to growl in his sleep. He’s just like a big jungle cat that doesn’t like being disturbed, she thought, smiling. Zeus settled, gripping her hip as if she were his custom-made pillow.

She closed her eyes, relaxing into the moment. It was a terribly bad idea to indulge in feelings of fondness, intimacy, and connection when it came to Zeus. He was a killer, and she was in hiding, hunted long before this Kragen guy came into the picture.

She’d promised herself she wouldn’t have anything to do with disturbed, violent men once she’d left Ernesto. Zeus was as disturbed and violent as any man she’d ever known, and she was lying in bed with him, still wanting him inside of her, embedded so deeply they both forgot what it meant to be apart. That’s how deep her damage went. She hoped this wasn’t yet another Samora curse—attracting and being attracted to killers. She should get up, go to the smaller room, and in due time walk away from a bad choice before a choice had to be made. Five minutes, she promised herself as she relaxed into the pillow, not fully ready to let go of his warmth or the steadiness of him pressing her into the bed. In five minutes, she would leave.

In two minutes, she was asleep.

* * * *

Maxim was back at his hotel suite before the clock struck midnight. With the witching hour upon him, he felt compelled to do something dark and dangerous. Unleash the rage he’d held in check for the better part of the day as he lay in the hospital.

He couldn’t go back to his house on the coast because he believed the police or the people protecting Sabrina would follow him and find out about the location. He didn’t have Sabrina. No, not only did he not have her, the oversize ape who’d killed two of his men and almost had him arrested had her. Maxim didn’t want to contemplate what Zeus was doing to her. No one, not even the police, knew where he had taken her. If the police knew, Maxim’s informant would have reported the information to him.

To top off this hellacious day, he was back in the overcast gloom of San Francisco. He was really beginning to hate this city. A phone, his phone, rang somewhere in the suite, but he ignored it. He hobbled to the bathroom to examine the damage the flat-eyed killer had done to his shoulder. Eight bloody stitches. And if it hadn’t been for the ruthless negotiation of one of the best lawyers money could buy, he and his eight stitches would be secured in housing generously provided by California’s correctional system.

Maxim shifted his gaze in the mirror and saw Reed’s reflection in the doorway, holding a phone out to him.

“No calls, Reed.”

“It’s your father, sir. He won’t be put off by some ‘brainless flunky.’ He said he would talk to you by phone or in person, your choice.”

Maxim didn’t hold back his sneer. Reed was more intelligent than any person on his father’s staff, and unlike them, Reed was pleasant to be around.

He stepped forward and grabbed the phone, taking it off mute. “Father.”

“Maxim, imagine my disappointment when I received a call from Elias stating you were under investigation for kidnapping.”

“Must I?” Maxim said, stepping back to the mirror and retaping the bandage covering his shoulder wound.

Silence stretched out on the other end. Maxim could picture the angry flush spreading across his father’s face. It was there every time Maxim said something “impertinent.”

Gin and tonic
, Maxim mouthed to his assistant. After the day he’d had, it was more than acceptable for him to drink straight from the bottle and chase it with a handful of pain pills if he chose.

“Why are you doing this? You should have moved on from that indiscretion years ago, but no, you take this woman who was nothing—no family, no status—and you pretended she was more than she could ever hope to be. How many times have I told you, boy, you let nothings go. You never hold on to them. But you. No, you track them down and play out some parody of love. I will
not
let you put your mother through the humiliations of having to deal with your twisted infatuations again. You end this.”

The
or else
hovered, unspoken, but Maxim heard it loud and clear.

“Threaten me, old man, and I may be forced to react.” The bastard knew Maxim did not react well to threats. He always had a habit of retaliating in very unseemly ways. “So, I trust the gathering in the UK is going as you planned?” he asked, stepping out of the bathroom and flicking the light switch off.

* * * *

“Goddamn it,” Zeus shouted as he shot up in the empty bed. What had happened? Had she drugged him? She was conniving. He wouldn’t put it past her. One minute he’d been in her, readying her for a deeper invasion, and then…nothing. She’d drugged him or knocked him unconscious or…

Where the hell was she?

He pushed off the bed, naked save for the crumpled pieces of her clothing stuck to his skin. Frustration urged him to shred them into confetti-like bits.

“Sabrina,” he yelled, something he normally didn’t do. He felt a slight unease when there was no response. He grabbed his kukri and his Bowie and stepped out of the bedroom into the empty kitchen, only to be greeted by more silence.

The Bowie began to tap against his thigh as he imagined Maxim’s men coming to his cabin, disarming…disarming…
Hell.
He hadn’t done a perimeter check, set the alarm, or cuffed Sabrina to the bed frame before he’d lost consciousness. She could be long gone. She could have taken his keys, fought off her killer rabbits, and left him.

“Sabrina!”

Silence.

He stalked toward the front of the cabin and froze at the opening to the living room. The room was spotless and gleaming, but it was the sight of Sabrina sitting on the sofa wearing a tank top and boy shorts, his earphones on as she played
Insidious Realm
—one of the best role-playing games ever—that had him cocking his head in confusion.