Fighting his instinctual need to exchange blood, he feathered a trail of kisses from her throat to her abdomen. His mouth was on her flat stomach, his tongue swirled around her belly button, that intriguing sexy dimple he had so greatly admired. Her hands stroked his back, her body softening slightly, once more preparing to surrender to him.
Destiny was determined to give herself wholly to him, to take him for herself. She had been alone too long, needed him too much. He was everything she had ever dreamed about. She would do this!
Laughter hissed in her ear, evil and taunting. The monstrous creature was dragging her by her hair as she fought him, pounding into her, heedless of his size and strength. Uncaring of her broken bones. Uncaring of tearing her body in half. The pain was beyond anything she had ever experienced, and it was endless, trapping her there. She felt the taste of blood in her mouth as he forced her to drink from that dark, corrupt well. It was an acid burning her throat, her stomach, a blowtorch burning her from the inside out. You will be like me. The stench was overwhelming, part of the madness of her existence. Evil permeated her pores, seeped into her from him.
Abruptly she pulled her mind away, tears leaking out of her closed eyes. She wanted this. She ached for Nicolae with every fiber of her being. He was as necessary to her as breathing. She wanted him, but darkness was descending and her lungs refused to work. A heavy stone was crushing her chest; hands seemed to be gripping her throat, strangling her. She could have stopped Nicolae long ago, but she had insisted. She was unclean. She would always be unclean. Nicolae’s love couldn’t make her whole again. Pure again.
She would only disappoint him, hurt him, risk his becoming as she was.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” she whispered, turning her face away, jamming her fist into her mouth to keep from screaming. She was humiliated beyond imagining. To tease Nicolae, bring him to this point and not be woman enough to give him what he needed, was intolerable. She tried to pretend, to recapture the intensity of her desire, but the walls of the chamber were shrinking, threatening to suffocate her. She knew she could not be what Nicolae so desperately needed.
“I can’t do this.” Destiny shoved hard at the wall of his chest, panic-stricken, fighting just to breathe. “I tried to tell you I wouldn’t be able to be intimate, but you wouldn’t listen.” She shoved again, desperate for space, desperate to breathe.
Nicolae shuddered with the effort to control his body, to contain his passion. Her blue-green gaze shimmered with tears, darkening with turbulence, a foreshadowing of her rising instincts to fight her way out of a situation she couldn’t handle. He felt her resistance in his mind, in his body. She was rigid, straining away from him, trembling. And there was fear, waves of fear swamping her, clouding the air between them. The childhood memories of atrocities were sharp and terrible, poised like a knife over her heart. Over his. He forced air through his lungs, through hers. Nothing else mattered to him but that she be comforted and reassured. Her eyes, enormous and shadowed with memories, held so much sorrow it nearly broke his heart.
“Destiny, slow down, take a breath. I am not going to do anything you do not want. We are intimate each time we look at one another. Each time we draw breath. That will never change between us. You think yourself tainted, but there is no greater light for me than you. If we can only have what we have right now, it is enough.” Sensing that the feel of his body pinning hers down was a large part of the problem, he rolled off her onto his side. She felt helpless against his enormous strength, and he knew that emotion was triggering her fight responses.
Nicolae’s arm circled her waist firmly, possessively, his body curving protectively around hers. He made no move to hide his erection, thick and hard, hot and rigid, pressed against her buttocks. “I do not expect the memories of things done to you in violence to disappear. But that was not making love. It was an abomination of what is meant to be. Here, between us, we are only expressing with our bodies what we feel in our hearts. Lovemaking may be rough or tender, may be fast or slow, it may be many things, but it should always be an expression of love.”