Lucinda, Darkly Read online

  “No. It isn’t complete. You still have a chance if you go now.”

  Talon shook his head.

  She lunged for him, her movement rough and jerky. Struck at him and missed, those lethal claws plunging into the ground as he darted away.

  Nico didn’t know what this was, dream or reality. All he knew was that she fought Talon, and that Talon was trying to save her. The weight of the demon cuffs flared warm against Nico’s waist, reminding him of their presence. Without hesitation, Nico grabbed them and snapped them around Lucinda’s wrist. A quick twist, wresting her arms behind her back, and he secured both her hands together. Only her weakness allowed Nico to do so. Only her weakness kept her from breaking free of the restraints.

  “What are you doing?” she snarled, thrashing beneath him.

  “Trying to save you,” Nico snapped back, pinning her to the ground. Weak though she was, it still took effort to restrain her.

  “You cannot do that: save me.”

  “But Talon can.”

  “He cannot. He is not strong enough. All he will do is die when I die.”

  “He is strong enough to keep you from ghosting, you foolish woman. Stop being so selfish!”

  The bitter accusation surprised Lucinda enough to stop struggling. She looked up at Nico with bruised eyes. He steeled his heart against them, sensing that softness would not win this fight.

  “How can you say that?” she whispered.

  “I say only the truth. If you die as you seek to do, you leave us alone and unprotected.”

  “My brother . . . Halcyon will take care of you.”

  “Someone who does not know us or care for us.”

  “Halcyon is honorable. Good. Far better than me. He will protect you and avenge my death.”

  “He will likely kill us himself when we bring him news of your death. When we come to him with no proof and only wild claims.”

  Lucinda shook her head. “He is not like that. He will give you fair hearing. And there is Talon. Talon is your proof.”

  “Talon will likely die with you,” Nico said harshly. “And gone will be our proof.”

  Silence and her quiet despair painted the barren landscape an even duskier hue, as if reflecting her emotions.

  “Why do you fight to die when you should fight to live?” Nico asked roughly. He could not understand that. “Why?”

  Nothing but that agonizing silence.

  “Why?” He demanded again, shaking her in his frustration. “Tell me why.”

  A tear overflowed, trailed slowly down her cheek. “I am evil. I do not deserve to exist or be happy.” Her voice was a bleak and desolate sound.

  “You are not evil. Who called you that?”

  Her answer stunned him. “My mother. Because I’m a bastard. She named another as my father instead of the High Lord. Then she killed herself, leaving me behind.”

  “And you believed her?”

  “Her blood runs in my veins. She was beautiful and cruel. Some called her evil.” Lucinda laughed. “And I am her daughter.”

  “Halcyon has her blood also, does he not?”

  “Yes, but he is more the High Lord’s son. The spitting image of him in looks and personality, as I am the mirror reflection of my mother.”

  Nico released her arms, smoothed her hair roughly away from her face, and cupped her cheeks in the palms of his hands. “Would your mother have claimed two rogues as her own? Would she have risked her life for theirs?”

  Lucinda answered quietly, “No.”

  “Then you are less your mother’s daughter than you think. However much you may resemble her in looks, your actions are different. Do not pattern them after her in this last and final act, in seeking your death.”

  Her eyes hardened, glinted dangerously up at him, and her words came out chillingly cold. “Do not think that you know me by my actions of these past few hours. Believe me, that is not how I usually act. I am not usually so nice.”

  Nico laughed with genuine amusement. “Nice is not how I would have described you. But neither would I call you evil. I’d use the words that you applied to your brother: fair and honorable.”

  The air quivered for a moment in silence, in denial.

  “Dying is the easy way out,” Nico said. “I know, I tried to take that route also, but you would not let me. Now it’s payback time.” He gripped her face gently, urgently. “Stop being a coward and fight to live. Or take us with you now, Talon and I. We are not leaving you.”

  A moment passed as they gazed at each other. A brief weighing and measuring of will and resolve before she asked mildly, “Do you plan on removing these handcuffs?”

  “Yes,” Nico said slowly, “I do.”

  “Then I would be careful with your words, with who you call coward,” she said with soft silky menace.

  “That’s my girl.” With a smile, Nico rolled off her and pulled her to her feet. “Do not think to chase us off,” he warned as he removed the restraints. Then spoke the words that he knew would hold her most effectively to the right course. “Or the next person Talon pulls in will be your precious Stefan.”

  “I hate you,” she said without looking at him, rubbing her freed wrists.

  “I know, darling,” Nico said easily. “Now what do you need to do to complete the binding?”

  “I don’t know.” She stood there swaying weakly with an uncharacteristic uncertainty on her face that almost broke his heart.

  “Talon?” Nico murmured.

  “She has to stop resisting,” Talon said in that pure melodious voice of his as he came silently to Nico’s side.

  Nico looked askance at Lucinda.

  “I’m not resisting anymore.”

  “She’s not resisting anymore,” Nico repeated back to Talon. “Now what?”

  A look of uncertainty passed across that dark face. A look this time that did not break Nico’s heart so much as scare it shitless.

  “I don’t know,” Talon said, those eerie black eyes unfocused, gazing inwardly. “It’s there. Do you not feel it?”

  The moment he spoke of it, Nico became aware of it. The hush. The quiet weight of expectancy hovering in the hot air, like something alive, something eager. But something faint. Like power waiting to ignite, but too weak to do so. Like hovering storm clouds, too scant, too few to bring about the promise of rain.

  “I am too weak,” Lucinda said, her voice emptied of emotion, but her eyes . . . they swam with regret. “I used up what little power I had trying to drive Talon away.” She gazed at the dark creature. “Send Nico back,” she said softly. “Return him, and go back with him.”

  “I don’t know how,” Talon said in a small, subdued voice.

  “How did you find him, bring him here?” she asked.

  “I just thought of help, when you were chasing me, and Nico was suddenly there. He touched me and we returned here.” Talon turned that too-large face up to Nico. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  Nico patted the slender shoulder. “Nothing to be sorry about, Talon. The solution is simple. We just need to get Lucinda back up to strength again.”

  Their eyes turned back to both their problem and their solution.

  “Can you drink more of Talon’s blood?” Nico asked.

  Rage, frustration, fatigue, and sorrow swam in those chocolate brown eyes. Too tired to stand any longer, she sank down to the ground. Nodded. “Yes, I can try.”

  Talon glided to her, a small wary creature approaching a more dangerous predator. When he stood before her, he lifted his shirt, baring the wound in his side that she had ripped with her claws. A deep furrowing gash.

  “You still bleed,” she murmured. “Why did you not heal yourself?”

  “I do not know how to.”

  “You are Floradëur. You take your power from nature itself. Healing is one of your gifts.”

  Talon shook his dark head. “I have no gifts, I have no power, and I heal slowly.”

  “That you heal at all here is miracle already.” So sayin
g, Lucinda leaned forward and put her mouth against the open wound. Her throat, smooth and golden, moved gently against the blackness of his skin as she drank from his wound. She swallowed twice, then drew back and just sat there and waited.

  The air thickened a little. Grew denser, but nothing else happened.

  “The oil of Fibara blocks the potency of his blood from me,” she said. “It is not enough.”

  “Blood is not the only way you can gain power,” said Nico.

  Her eyes were a sudden swirl of emotions he could not read. “You are correct. I can also feed from other’s ecstasy. But I do not have the mental strength to bring you to your peaks.”

  “We have to orgasm for you to feed?”

  She nodded.

  “We’re men,” Nico said with a grin. “And you are a woman, lush and beautiful. You do not have to use your demon wiles to bring us to orgasm. We could do it the basic old-fashioned way.”

  “I will not have sex with Talon,” Lucinda said.

  Silence reigned after her harsh, abrupt statement. Talon turned, would have stepped away in hurt silence had she not stopped him with a hand on his slender arm.

  “I understand, mistress,” Talon said, his face averted. “My ugliness disturbs you.”

  A finger, with nail carefully lifted away from the tender vulnerable skin, gently turned his face to hers. “You are far from ugly, Talon.”

  “I am stunted and distorted, a creature of blackness.”

  “You are Floradëur, a beautiful flower of darkness. But you are young and you are virgin. Am I not correct?”

  He did not deny it.

  “I am centuries too old for you,” Lucinda said, “and I will not be your first. That you should save for someone special.”

  “I understand,” Talon said quietly and slipped away.

  Lucinda wondered at the truth of his words. Did he really understand? She doubted it.

  Another voice reached out. Stroked her in that still, twilight darkness that she had unconsciously painted like her home realm. A voice that was deep, low, and husky.

  “What about me?” Nico asked, his face unusually somber, all teasing gone as he closed the distance between them.

  “I am not a virgin,” he said softly. “Will you have sex with me?”

  NINETEEN

  IT WAS THE yearning in that blunt, rugged face that moved me most. The need, the naked wanting. Or maybe it was just him—stubborn, sweet, and gallant Nico. First foe, hunted prey, and now friend. When had that happened?

  He had such a grand heart, and he held his own life too cheaply. Was so willing to give it up in service to me. He did not value his own life as I valued it. Did not utter a single word of complaint, of accusation that it might end here and now because of me. Stranded because of my stupidity and fear.

  My intentions had been good. But you know what humans say about good intentions: that it paved the way to Hell. I laughed softly inside. Here’s hoping. But still . . . I’d rather he’d had the chance to live life fully first.

  Regrets . . . so many of them. And the noble warrior before me now—valiant and chivalrous, like a knight of old—was one of the biggest of them. A treasure thrown away by a Queen too blind to see his worth.

  I had tried to save his life, only to end up being the cause of his death, after all. Now he knelt beside me and asked of me the one thing I could still give him.

  His question hung in the air between us. Will you have sex with me?

  “Yes,” I said as somber as he, “if that is what you want.”

  Nico let out a ragged breath. Laughed. A joyous sound that brought a smile to my lips.

  “Oh, yes. I want.” Then he turned noble on me again. “But you don’t really have to. Just . . . touching me with your hand or your mouth should be enough to have me coming,” he said with a wry, deprecating grin.

  I reached out and laid my hand against that broad cheek, that strong jaw. “I would give you pleasure, if I can. But I do not know if that will be possible without my demon wiles, as you call them.” I had not known how much I had come to rely upon those powers.

  “I’m a man, Princess. All I have to do is be inside of you, and that will give me pleasure.”

  I closed my eyes at the image his words invoked, his strong body moving over me. In and out of me. The first tendrils of arousal stirred. But still the doubt remained.

  “Perhaps we should do as you suggested. You seemed to enjoy the feel of my mouth—”

  “Believe me, I enjoyed it most sincerely and will again,” Nico said with a smile that was very male. “But if you are giving me the choice, then I would very much like to know what it feels like to be sheathed inside you. That is my greatest desire. To know you in the most intimate way a man can know a woman.”

  “How can I not grant a warrior’s last wish?” Sadness tinged my smile. “As you desire. I only hope that I do not disappoint you. I am weak and without power.”

  “That’s what this is all about, Princess. To get you more power.” He grinned again with easy lightness. But his eyes gleamed with eagerness, a smoky gray hue, dark and intense. “Just lie down,” he said huskily, easing me back, “and let me do all the work.”

  I did as he said, but could not help frowning and fretting. “It feels odd to do so. To let you do all the work.”

  He laughed, his gray eyes dancing as his hands undid the buttons of my shirt. “Enjoy the novelty. As I shall, too.”

  He eased down my pants then crouched over me, parting my shirt with an almost reverent flourish, his gaze sweeping with slow quiet savor over my naked breasts, down my unveiled body, before lifting his eyes back to mine. He sighed and smiled sweetly. “Thank you, Lucinda. Just letting me see you like this . . . it brings me great pleasure.”

  His words pleased me more than any lavish praise would have. And the subtle tension that had unknowingly gripped me relaxed away. “It is just a body.” A tool. One I had used to tease and entice with, but rarely used this way, in physical coupling.

  “Oh, no.” Nico’s long lashes swept down and his lips lowered to my neck. “It is not just a body,” he murmured and placed a soft kiss in the dipping hollow where my shoulder curved into my throat, to where my pulse would have beat, had I one. “It is your body.” Another kiss, a soft caress of lips whispering over my collar bone. “And it is like you. Lush, generous. Spilling over with generosity.”

  “I am not generous.”

  “Yes, yes, I know.” He sprinkled more kisses down the arch of my collarbone. “You are not nice. You are not generous.” He trailed a teasing finger round and round the fullness of my left breast before finally cupping it in his hand and squeezing it lightly, sending a pleasant jolt arrowing down inside me. “But your body is. Oh yes, your body is.”

  He brought his mouth to hover there, just above my nipple, plumped up by his cupping hand, his breath blowing softly across the tip. Waiting until it peaked into a pouty, pointy hardness. “Sweet,” he said, smiling, and covered it with his mouth.

  Warm wetness.

  A flick of his tongue, a rough rasp over the nipple, and my body suddenly zinged with sensation. I gasped, arched up, pushing more of me into that mouth, surprised that I could feel this way. That he could make me feel this way. I had agreed to sleep with Nico more for the debt I owed him than for lust of his body. There had not been any before. Lust for his body, that is. But now there was.

  He crooned, the trill of his vibration tripping sharply through me, and began sucking on me. My hands lifted and reached for him, my nails scraping lightly across the shirt covering his back. “Your shirt,” I muttered, twisting beneath that sucking mouth. “Take off your shirt.”

  He lifted up, stretching my nipple taut before releasing it with a wet pop, a tight pulling sensation that spilled a startled moan from my lips.

  “No,” he said, eyes dark and knowing, filled with something I had not seen in them before . . . arrogant assurance. No, that wasn’t quite right. Confidence. Filled with confid
ence.

  “I’m not done enjoying you yet,” he said, capturing my hands, pinning them above my head. And the look in his eyes, the dominance in his words, his crouched position over me, the real physical weakness that held me now . . . No one had ever dominated me like this before. Unbelievably, I found myself liking it, excited by it. So much so that another moan almost slipped free from my throat. So much so that the air grew thick with the scent of my liquid arousal, so that he knew without touching me that my body had softened, prepared itself for him. His nostrils flared wide, drinking in the muskiness of my aroma, his eyes darkening with the knowledge of what he had stirred to life. And the hot smoldering passion I glimpsed in those stormy gray eyes stirred me even more. A look that—Darkness help me—with my hands pinned above me, made me feel even more helpless.

  My body reacted beyond my control, my expectation, almost as if a stranger suddenly inhabited my body. Fear, excitement, and loss of control swirled like an unsettling wind within me.

  “Nico . . .”

  “Hush.” Staring into my eyes, in a voice gone velvet dark, he said, “Open your legs for me, darling.” A gentle command. But a command, nonetheless.

  Had I a heart that beat, it would have been pounding by now. I licked my lips nervously. “Nico—”

  “Do it.” He compelled me with his blazing eyes, the tautness of his body poised over mine, in the hard shackling strength of his hands about my wrists. Yield to me, those passion-smoked eyes demanded with a frightening will. That was his real strength, that unbreakable will.

  With a trembling sigh, I submitted. Opened my legs until they came up against his spread knees. He released my wrists, and I started to lower them down.

  “No, keep your hands like that above your head.”

  I froze. “It makes me feel vulnerable,” I said plaintively.

  “I know.” His voice was a deep husky caress, his eyes a knowing echo of his words as he brought my hands back up so that I lay stretched out beneath him, arms up and legs spread wide. “I want you to feel that way.”

  I swallowed, closed my eyes against the knowing glimmer in his. But that made it worse, made me feel even more vulnerable, and brought my other senses sharply into play so that I heard him, sensed movement, felt him shift between my legs. Cloth rustled and I opened my eyes to see those agile fingers slipping buttons free. His shirt slid off in a slow, gentle tease, falling to the ground. But my eyes were not on the shirt. They were on his magnificent chest, his bulging biceps. At the obvious strength carved out there on his flesh in swelling muscles and rippling sinew.