Reaver(73)

Harvester’s fingernails raked the stone, scoring it with thin gray lines. “Stop it.” She inhaled a ragged breath. “Just stop it.”

Not happening. He sensed that they were at a tipping point, a critical place that would determine the course of their relationship forever. He’d hated her for so long, desired her at the same time, and it was time to stop the game of Ping-Pong they were both playing with their emotions.

If it took Harvester longer to catch up, he’d wait.

He pumped into her slowly, showing her with each stroke that he could take care of her without the brutality she was no doubt used to. That she probably expected from him.

“Fuck me hard.” She pushed back against him, her insistent grinding motion making him suck air. “Damn you, stop with the slow, tender shit. I don’t want it, you haloed bastard.”

Clenching his teeth and conjuring the least sexy things he could in his mind—hellhounds… so not sexy—he slowed even more.

He kissed a blazing trail to her ear. An overwhelming need to hold her, protect her, make her his washed over him. Oh, claiming Harvester wouldn’t be easy or, likely, smart. But this was a second chance for both of them, and this time, he wouldn’t let them fail.

“I told you to stop it!” Her nails grated on the stone. Tendrils of smoke drifted up from the score marks.

He thrust again, and ripples of pleasure hummed down his shaft to his balls. “No.”

“Stop!”

Another thrust. Faster. Harder. More ripples that made him groan. “Come.”

“I hate you.”

“I know.”

Harvester cried out, her tight sheath clenching around him and pulling him so deep he cried out himself as he grasped for control. “I. Hate. You.”

“Come, dammit,” he said into her ear as he rocked into her in a wild tempo that vibrated the walls around them. “Make me spill everything I have into you. Only you. You’ll have all the power, Verrine.”

That did it. She shouted both a curse and a prayer, her body tightening and jerking under him. Ecstasy engulfed him and he came violently in a flash of blinding light.

And just as she’d scored the wall, she’d scored his soul. Again.

He felt it, the mark she’d left thousands of years ago, and it was almost as if nothing had changed. She’d marked him back then, but he’d been too fucking stupid to know.

This time, she’d marked him but she didn’t know.





Twenty-Two





Thank you, wall.

Harvester kept repeating her mantra of gratitude as she leaned against said wall, its cool stone easing her fever and lending much-needed support. No way would her shaky legs hold her up if she wasn’t sandwiched between Reaver and the rock surface.

God, that had been good. Amazing.

And devastating.

Reaver hadn’t followed her orders. Instead, he’d taken over and gave her not what she wanted but what she needed. Somehow the bastard had known she was trying to protect herself, trying to keep her emotions at bay, and like the son of a bitch he was, he’d been patient and kind. And beneath the sexual intensity, there’d been a tenderness that would bring her to tears if she thought about it.

I’ll never give you a reason to not trust me.

What kind of shit was that? Why would he say that? The only reason she’d survived as long as she had was because she learned to not trust anyone. Trust got you killed. Or worse, it got you tortured.

Some quack human psychologist would probably say that her inability to trust started before she was even born, when her father rose up against the other archangels and started an insurrection. If he’d truly cared about her and her mother, he wouldn’t have done that, right?

But according to him, he’d done it for her. For her mother. And she’d actually believed him. Over the course of her time spent in Sheoul, he’d told her how the other archangels plotted against him because he had been recognized in the womb as a potential Radiant, the most powerful of all angels. He’d told her he’d loved her mother, even though their mating had been arranged in hopes of producing another potential Radiant.

It hadn’t, but he’d told Harvester that he’d loved her from the moment of conception, and that he wished he’d have been there for her birth.

And then, on the day she’d needed him to prove everything he’d said was true, he’d branded her a traitor and sentenced her to an eternity of the most unimaginable torture he and his minions could devise.

So, okay, she had trust issues. And daddy issues. And probably some new issues with sharp objects.

“Harvester?” Reaver slapped his palms on the wall and pushed off her so she wasn’t squashed, but he didn’t withdraw from her body the way he had when he’d taken her virginity.