The Darkest Kiss

“I do not hate you,” Lucien admitted softly.

“Oh, really? You look ready to vomit at the thought of touching me.”

A wry smile greeted her words, there one moment, gone the next. Anya nearly fell to the ground in awe. Finally, a true smile from him. She should have known it would be sensually potent, decadent. Addicting. Already she craved another. His grin was as radiant as the sun.

“And yet I have an erection,” he said in a tone as wry as his expression.

Okay. Who was this man? First a smile, and now he was teasing her. Her blood heated and her nipples hardened (again). “A man doesn’t have to like a woman to want her.” He opened his mouth to reply, but she cut him off. “Just hush it, okay. I don’t want to hear your response.” He would ruin the happy buzz she had going, she just knew it. “Stand there and look pretty while I think.”

“You’re purposely trying to provoke me, are you not?”

Yes, she was. A foolish move on her part, really. He’d been ordered to render her death blow. Every time she incited him, she probably made the thought of it a little easier for him to bear. But she couldn’t help herself. That smile…

“Have you no answer for me?”

“Not one I’m willing to share.” Why did he have to look so sexy standing there? The sun was acting like his lover, caressing him, weaving an angelic halo around his dark head. Yes, angelic. He was a fallen angel just then, causing her pulse points to throb and her stomach to quiver.

Why couldn’t they have been simply a man and a woman?

Why couldn’t he have wanted her the way she wanted him?

Why wouldn’t her obsession with him wane, now that he was bound to snuff her out for eternity?

“You are making this difficult.”

“You won’t break the rules for me?” she asked, batting her lashes. “You won’t do me this one teeny-weeny favor? You owe me.”

“No. I can’t.”

He hadn’t even hesitated in the delivery of his answer and that pissed her off. The least he could have done was take a few minutes to think about it. Bastard. She scowled. “I’m giving you one more chance to agree. We’d be even, the chalkboard clean.”

“I am sorry. I must again decline.”

Fine. That meant there was only one way to end the madness.

Finally she did flash to her knives. She did flash to him. His eyes widened in surprise as she materialized in front of him. With the hilt facing him, she chop-blocked him in the throat, spun while he struggled to breathe and slammed the other hilt into his temple to render him unconscious.

Contact.

Only, he didn’t sink into unconsciousness. He fell to his knees with a groan. Didn’t matter. Either way, the outcome was the same. Disappointed that it had come to this, she twirled the daggers in her palms so that the sharp tips pointed directly at him.

Her hands trembled as she stared at the top of his head. Everything inside of her was screaming not to do this, but she swung the blades into a crisscross, anyway. There were only a few ways to kill an immortal permanently and decapitation was one of them. Do it…no other way… She’d already placed the blades at his neck, needing only to slam her wrists together. Do it before he flashes!

Oh, gods, oh, gods. She did it. Moved to cut him. Instead of flesh, however, her weapons encountered only air.

He’d flashed.

Frustration and elation battled for supremacy. Before she had time to act on either, strong, viselike fingers jammed into her shoulders, spinning her around. Searing lips slammed over her mouth, prying it open and stealing her breath.

Lucien’s tongue thrust against hers in a white-hot kiss that would haunt her waking and sleeping for thousands of years to come. Dead or alive. It was bliss and it was agony. It was heaven and it was hell. Having his flavor drown her so perfectly, his strength and heat at the ready, craving more.

“Lucien.” She gasped and moaned and reached for him, dropping the weapons in her haste to have his skin under her palms.

“Not another word. Kiss me like before.”

His fervency excited her all the more. Apparently, dancing for him and throwing herself at him weren’t enough. Apparently, she had to nearly commit murder to arouse him enough to attack her.

His arms snaked around her waist and hauled her snugly into the heat of his body. The action rubbed his swollen penis against the wet, needy juncture between her thighs, and they both groaned in ecstasy.

She wanted to jump into him and devour him whole. She settled for gripping his head, fisting his hair and tilting him to deepen the kiss. A part of her suspected that he was doing this to distract her, but he never went for her throat. He just kept tonguing her as if he couldn’t stop himself.

Her nipples were so hard they were probably as sharp as her knives—which she kicked away with the last vestiges of her common sense. “Lucien,” she said on another moan, meaning to demand he remove her corset. Skin to skin. She was desperate for it. Dumb, so dumb, to allow skin to skin, but in that moment she wanted it more than she wanted freedom. “Lucien, my shirt.”

This time, her voice seemed to snag him from whatever spell he’d been under. He jerked away from her. Without him to hold her up, she almost fell flat on her face as he had done earlier.

“What are you doing?” she demanded as she righted herself.

“I can’t think straight right now.” Panting, he stepped backward. “I need to get away from you.”

There was an angry glint in his eyes, a glint that was dark and violent and utterly menacing. A shiver of fear spread the length of her spine. Fear and even deeper arousal.

What’s wrong with me?

He’d told her never to anger him, that bad things would happen if she did. Well, he’d been telling the truth. She’d angered him somehow and he’d stopped kissing her. Nothing was worse than that.

“You’re going to leave me like this? Without even giving me an orgasm?” Whoops. She’d meant to sound flippant. She’d sounded needy and whining instead. And breathless.

The glint darkened further. “We will see each other again, Anya. Soon.” With that ominous promise, he disappeared.

CHAPTER FOUR

LUCIEN WAS AT A LOSS as he escorted three human souls to the heavens later that night. He was still at a loss as the pearled gates opened wide, revealing golden streets and bejeweled, arched lampposts hanging like diamond-studded clouds. White-clothed angels lined the sides, singing a melodious welcome, their feathered white wings gliding gracefully behind them.

Once the souls crossed the threshold to paradise, the gates closed, blocking him out, and there was only silence.

He was still at a loss.

Usually the beauty and peace he encountered here filled him with twinges of jealousy and resentment, for he would never be allowed inside. Tonight, he did not care. Anya occupied every corridor of his mind; he had no idea what to do about her.

Lucien flashed to his chambers in Buda, his body solidifying at the foot of the bed. He stood unmoving, locked in thought and chaotic emotion he should not have felt. When it came to Death, he knew well the consequences of hesitation. But earlier today he had not only hesitated, he had nearly made love to his intended victim. Tongued her hard, caressed her. He’d had the opportunity to finish her off, so he damn well should have finished her off.

“I am a foolish man,” he muttered.

She had come at him with every intention of slaying him. But he’d spun her around, seen the way her glistening red lips parted on a gasp, felt her warm breath on his skin, smelled strawberries and cream, heard his demon purr and had been consumed by the greatest surge of lust he’d ever experienced.

How could he want Anya more than he’d ever wanted Mariah, a woman he’d loved?

How?