Schattenwandler: Kane Read online

  “What you’re asking . . . it will be hard for me. Let me explain,” he said hastily when she frowned. “All of my life I’ve been trained to use the powers of my mind in all ways and in all things. Demons use their powers as reflexively as humans draw breath. I will never mean you any harm and I do not intend to lord my power over you, but my need to use power is unthinking. Just as you would thrust your hands out in front of you to break a fall, if I were in danger . . . if you were in danger, I would not be able to help my reaction.”

  She had to give him credit for his honesty. He had the power to make a promise and then do as he wished, wiping her memory of any transgressions or trespasses.

  “That I can promise you,” he said, interrupting her thoughts. “I can swear to you never to erase your memory of anything again . . . without your express permission. It is my philosophy that our experiences, both good and bad, shape our character. It does us little good to constantly remove what is ill from our memory. Yes, it gives us peace from trauma, but it is hard to know if that serves us or harms us in the long run. There may even come a time, in the future, when you will beg me for my skill and I will need to deny you. Understand I will do so only because it is morally right and hopefully best for you in the long run. My heart, however, will wish only to spare you any and all pain.”

  Kane reached up to touch her face, his pinky coming to trace over the high sculpture of her exquisite cheekbone. He took that peaceful moment, his first in so many days, to marvel over the contrast of his dark skin in comparison to hers. Oh, yes, in that part of himself which he had left behind in that room in Noah’s castle, his blood still raged for her. His body ached for her. But for that single sweet moment he could treasure this one gorgeous difference between them, and the spectacular way his darkness enhanced her crisp, clean beauty.

  Her lashes were a brilliant red, as were her brows, perfect complements to her spiraling hair. Her skin was rich like peaches and cream, the way he remembered it from before she had become so ill and come so close to death.

  “I think,” she whispered softly, close to his lips, “I read your mind before.”

  The confession took him aback, almost completely shattering his control over the illusion they were dwelling in. It was things like this, easy distractions like this that marked him as a youth amongst Demons. But to be fair, he’d had no clue she’d walked in his thoughts, and the fact that she had was proof positive that they were becoming more and more bound together.

  “It’s . . . it’s a mark of the Imprinting,” he told her, “though I confess I had not expected it with you being so weakened.”

  “They were . . . very vehement thoughts. It wasn’t like when you speak into my mind. That’s much clearer. These were weaker, with almost an echo, and yet there was strong emotion attached. Yes—” she searched his eyes hard. “It was more like reading your emotions than your thoughts, although I heard the words. You said, ‘I just need to get through tonight . . . I can give you the romance as well as the passion. I can give you everything!’”

  “It’s true,” he swore to her on a soft breath. “I know I’m behaving like a beast, taking advantage of the chemistry the Imprinting has created between us, but I don’t want it to be all about chemistry, Corrine. I don’t want you to think that predestination is all this is; that I’ll take our connection or you for granted; that I’ll treat this as something easy or a foregone conclusion.”

  If anything, Corrine thought, he had proven just the opposite. Every time she had been overwhelmed by the ferocious heat of the Hallowed moon, he had done something to negate her desire, to distract her from it or break it off. Even this very illusion had been a way of veering off and away from the need that had overwhelmed her. And she was new to it all. From what she was understanding, it was even worse for him, and he had been suffering it for ages.

  “Kane,” she said, “take us back.”

  “Back?” he questioned, his voice full of breath. He was a telepath. There was no need for him to doubt her intentions or what she said. It was just his way of dodging the onrush of emotion and excitement that was flooding him. “Don’t you . . . wouldn’t you rather be here? Free from . . . from the way I am back there?”

  And the real point of the illusion he’d created became clear to her. If he was here, orchestrating this scenario with all his will and concentration, then he could not subject her to the beast lashed by her side. He was protecting her from him. Trying to buy himself some time from what she understood was inevitable torture. Even now, as she glanced upward into the night sky, she could see the stars vibrating, making white, unstable streaks in their bed of darkness. His focus was unraveling.

  She reached up to cradle his face in both of her hands, brushing her fingers over clean shaven contours that were much handsomer when they were real and covered in a brusque sheet of whiskers.

  “Take me back,” she breathed softly, her lips barely brushing his.

  “Corrine . . . I can’t control . . .” He began to breathe hard, his hands coming to grip her by the back of her shoulders. The stars began to drop out of the sky, streaking down like burning cinders, the grass beneath her bare feet lost the texture of the individual blades, sliding like sand under her heels.

  “Then don’t.”

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” he swore harshly. “I don’t want to be what I am back there.”

  “I’m going to take care of it. This time, I will provide the escape we need.”

  And like a sudden deluge of water, the sky dropped in a sudden cloak of blackness all around her.

  Chapter 5

  Light resolved around her, the softness of the bed and the dampness of his skin jumped to life beneath her. In the span of a breath she was back in bed with him, back in that gaslit room. The moment she felt him for real beneath her, her body lit up as if it was on fire. The first difference she noticed between his illusion of himself and the reality was the rich, musky scent of his skin. It was like a personal sin, something created just for her, just to tempt her and fill her with heat. This time she welcomed the Samhain-driven need that filled her. Yes, she was throwing herself all in, having faith that everything she had learned was truth. Sometimes in order to reap the reward you wanted most, you had to take a risk. And somehow it didn’t feel like so much of a risk. The burn sliding throughout her body was no illusion, no lie. It was as natural as anything could be.

  Kane took in a slow breath, trying to order his thoughts and maintain control when he could barely hear over the noisy thumping of his heart. When she threw her leg over him and settled herself astride him, her sex brushed soft and wet across the center of his belly, the heat burning and beautiful. His sharp senses fed her sweetly aroused aroma to him and he strangled out a groan that marked his tortured conscience and his having reached his physical limits.

  “Corrine, you can’t . . . make choices . . .” He broke off when she laid herself flush with his chest, her hands braced beside his shoulders as she tempted him with the hovering nearness of her ripe mouth.

  “You can’t make choices either. You said it yourself. There is no choice here. We are chemical. A reaction meant to be. It’s true, isn’t it?”

  “You’re supposed to be—”

  “Resting? Healing? You know this will revive me more than anything else.”

  Corrine kissed him with a warmly teasing stroke of her mouth. She liked his mouth, with its too-pretty fullness and the distinctive carving of his upper lip set in relief by a few days’ worth of beard shadow. She remembered his taste from earlier and she began to seek it in slow, delighted brushes against his mouth. She was going to take the time to discover the perks of this hunger they shared.

  Kane felt the brush of her breasts on his chest, her nipples drawing across pectoral muscles amped with sensitivity to the feel of her. There was nothing like it. Never had been, never would be. It was the sensation created by a complementary chemistry unique only to them. Kane exhaled into her mouth as she nibbled tem
ptingly at him in brief, tasty little kisses.

  That was when what she had said finally sank into his hormone-befuddled brain. With a jolt he drew back from her and stared up into her clear green eyes. She was clever and smart, but this was beyond all of that.

  “You read my thoughts,” he whispered in stunned delight. “You read my thoughts!”

  “Yes,” she agreed simply, as if it weren’t a profound sign of her mind and body awakening to her Druid genetics, as well as their special connection to each other. She shrugged as if she read minds all the time. “That’s how I knew you were telling me the truth about all of this. That’s how I knew why you were bound, Kane. And it’s how I know that you’re suffering terribly without me.”

  She kissed him softly, but Kane abruptly jerked free of her again. “So that’s what this is? Some kind of pity fuck, Corrine? If that’s the case, then you can just take your ass off of me right now. I’ll wait until you actually feel something for me, thank you very much.”

  Corrine reached to touch his face and he jolted away, but there was only so far he could go, trapped tightly as he was. She caught him between her hands and stared deeply into his eyes.

  “I feel the same thing you do. Heat. Need. Craving that’s driving you all but mad. I feel the biological imperative, just like you do. God, if you could feel inside me, Kane!” She was shifting against him, rubbing herself onto him until his belly was wetted by her and her sensual smell was driving into his spinning mind. Sweet Destiny, there was nothing he craved more than knowing what she felt like from the inside. And yet . . .

  “I know,” he croaked roughly, “I know all of this, Corrine. But you don’t want a man for your body. You want one for your soul. That is what I want to be. Not just this!”

  “See now, that’s where you’re wrong,” she corrected him softly as she began to slide herself sinuously down the length of his body. “What I need is both, Kane. A lot of both.” She sighed against his skin as she moved further along, her fingers toying with the already opened denim of his jeans. Next he knew she was stripping the fabric of his pants and briefs away, pushing it past his knees where it wouldn’t interfere with her plans. “I guess you can read my mind and figure out just how long it’s been since I last had sex,” she noted.

  “I could,” he rasped. “But I’m a little distracted right now.” He swallowed noisily when she touched the lightest stroke of fingertips up his bared thighs. “And I’m trying to figure out why you’re suddenly willing to be with me like this.”

  She laughed, looking at him as if he were simpleminded. “Because I read your mind, Kane. For one little minute I saw everything you were thinking and feeling.” Corrine reached out and touched a fingertip to the bottom of his up-thrust shaft. Slowly, as she spoke, she drew her finger up his hot length. He was scorching the pad of her finger as she tested the texture of his soft skin and hard excitement. That burning level of heat was almost as fascinating to her as the scent of him, rich and male and ready, as it drifted around her. “I saw hours and hours of resistance against something impossible to bear up under. I saw how afraid you were that you’d hurt me. I felt how guilty you feel because of what has happened to me. It was all tumbled together at the very front of your mind, fresh and deeply affecting you.” She reached the tip of his erection and took the time to tease the ragingly sensitive nerves there with brushes of that mischievous fingertip. “Don’t you see? That’s all I’ve ever wanted, Kane. Someone who cares about me more than he does himself.” She looked up at him, a sly smile tilting one corner of her pretty mouth, making his already tight gut clench with fiery response. “Well, electrifying sex would be good too. So let’s see if you can hit two for two.”

  “Ah, hell! Tied up?” he ejected in frustration.

  “Hmm. Good point. Guess I’ll do all the work this time. You can make it up to me later.”

  With an upward glide of warm skin stroking fully against him, she slid herself back into her position astride his hips, and this time she caught him directly between her thighs, the wet heat of her sex stroking suggestively over his pulsing erection.

  Kane could hardly bear the sensation after holding himself in check for so very long. It was like a toxic dream materializing into full-bodied reality. He knew she was too weak and damaged to be playing the seductress the way she was, but the truth was that the more they satisfied the demands of nature, the faster she would heal. He couldn’t possibly get any closer than inside of her, and the energy exchanged in a sexual encounter would be phenomenal.

  Just having her at last would be phenomenal.

  But...

  “And in the dawn, sweetheart?” he asked as she began to rain soft, seeking kisses over his face and neck. “Are you going to wake to your world of light and realize you don’t want to live in the night with me? Will you want to run from me then? Loathe me?”

  The question gave her pause and she tilted her head to look at him in curiosity. Kane could have easily read her thoughts in that moment, no waiting necessary, but fear gripped him and he couldn’t bear the idea that she would want to shed him like a bad dream if only given half a chance.

  “Kane,” she said, soft admonishment lilting out of her as she kissed his mouth with heavenly sweetness. “I’ve always known that in order to enjoy a mate who thinks of me before himself, I would have to do exactly the same in return. No one can earn such devotion without expecting to be required to return it.”

  Kane surged up into her kiss suddenly, catching her mouth as deeply as he could, kissing her so hard that he knew she felt the impact her sweetly optimistic vision of their future together had had on him. It was why he’d fallen for her in the first place. Pain and betrayal littered her history, yet she always hoped for the best . . . searched for the dream she had longed for, the one she’d had imbedded in her soul when she’d been born for him.

  Corrine swallowed down his intensity and, using the lash of her tongue, she stirred up even more within him. His bold taste burned all the way down into her belly and she devoured him in utter starvation. She was needy and stripped clean of energy, and only he could fill her up again. She kissed him until neither could catch their breath. She slid herself over him again and again, absently stroking his hard flesh over her sensitive clit until her entire body was humming with sensitive preparedness.

  Kane broke away from her for the breath he needed to shout out in fury. “Damn you, Abram, let me out of these cursed chains and give me my hands!”

  The Elder Demon who was preventing his ability to teleport ignored the demand once again. No matter what happened, only Noah’s command would sway Kane’s Siddah. And, of course, Abram had no idea where the Demon King was and no inclination to disturb him.

  “Hush,” his mate scolded him as she let her moist lips trail hot kisses down his body. “I always wanted a man completely at my mercy. Don’t spoil my fun.”

  The Mind Demon ejected an unintelligible sound she took as capitulation as she ran her tongue along the arches of his lower ribs, and then moved slowly down his belly, breathing hotly over every wet place she made or discovered. Skirting his navel, she licked down the furred line of hair leading to his groin. Her free hand wrapped around him to keep him out of her path until she was good and ready to pay attention to him. His penis was drenched with her juices, transferred as she’d ridden against him. She used this to her advantage and stroked him heavily until she deemed herself ready to take a taste of him.

  The touch of her tongue burned a wildfire reaction up his shaft and Kane’s entire body seized with the sensation. He gasped, dizzy and agonized by her teasing, frankly shocked he didn’t burst right then and there. He was watching as she slowly swiped her tongue across the head of his erection, licking away the copious pearly liquid weeping freely from it. The vision of her was such a magnificent sight to him, the stuff of his most forbidden fantasies. The savage sound and emotion roiling out of him as she drew him deeper into her mouth abruptly reminded him that she was still mostl
y human, while as a Demon suffering from the need to rut, he was a very savage and different beast. Her deprivation of energy had stunted her change, a change that was supposed to have made her able to bear the fierce brunt of Demon lovemaking.

  Suddenly he was glad he was lashed down good and tight. The way she was making him feel right then, he’d probably have thrown her down and torn her apart with his intensity. Even so he couldn’t help the blind need to thrust against her devilish little tongue. But she clearly didn’t want him getting any ideas of his own, so she released him from her mouth and went back to her position astride him. Settling herself hot and wet against him, but not taking him inside yet, she leaned forward to dance the tip of one breast against his lips. He caught her suddenly and sharply with his teeth, making her gasp.

  Tease me, will you? he thought fiercely into her mind.

  Again and again, she promised him, her voice in his head breathless and aroused. He could see the flush of excitement all over her skin and the depth of her need shining in her eyes. Samhain was just as hard on her heels as it was on his, but she wanted him well beyond that. He could feel it. He could hear the chant going desperately through her thoughts. I need you, Kane. I need you!

  “Corrine, I can’t do this anymore!” He knew he was begging for her as he bucked up against her, seeking the entrance that eluded him. Sweet Destiny, she didn’t understand! She didn’t know how long he had craved the moment she was withholding from him. She couldn’t know what this was doing to him! Kane gnashed his teeth and jerked savagely at his shackles. Wood cracked as the steel of his chains ground against it.

  “Easy,” she soothed with a slender hand stroking down his chest and belly. “I’m doing the work of two people here.” Corrine narrowed liquid green eyes on him as her fingertips reached to touch the soft russet curls framing her sex which were thoroughly combined with his own. She reached two delicate fingertips to seek out her clitoris, coincidentally stroking over the burrowing head of his penis where she held him trapped between their bodies. For a long, torturous moment she teased them both like that, the flicker and stroke of her fingertips unraveling the focus of their minds in a strange disembodied concert. She was too untried to hold their mental link on her own, so Kane chained them together with clarity and strength, the cycles of their pleasure wrapping thoroughly around one another.