Malachai Page 15

  “You got it, man,” Todd returned.

  Malachai rotated around. “Courtney, take ten of your best and plant explosives all around the fence. Post Jules outside the gate for a change and position your mines on the inside. Arm every door to blow and…..” He spun around and jabbed his finger into the crowd. “Becca, get over to the Eavesdrop and get Rooster over here. We’ll need him.”

  A young girl scuttled away. Malachai rotated around the other way. Dozens of pairs of eyes gaped at him from all sides. He never heard the war room this quiet before.

  He waved his hands. “Well? What are you waiting for? You have your orders. Get out of here.”

  The mob scattered and the room burst to life. Everyone ran for the exits—all except Isabelle. She eased close to his side. “What about me? What do you want me to do?”

  “You stick with me,” he murmured down at her. “You don’t go anywhere.”

  She stuck with him, all right. She moved with him when he moved. She glued herself to his shadow. He saw that without really looking. He put her out of his mind—for now, at least. He didn’t have to worry about her doing the wrong thing.

  He rounded on the Slaughter boys. “You two listen up. I want you two to guard Isabelle against all comers. Once the shooting starts, I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to stick close to her. I’ll probably have to shift to defend the building. If I get separated from Isabelle, I want you two responsible for protecting her. Get her out of here and get her up-country to your people. No one can hide her better than you. Understand?”

  The brothers nodded and turned their unflinching focus to Isabelle. Her eyes widened and she shrank closer to Malachai. He laid both hands on her shoulders and faced her. “Listen to me, Isabelle. None of us knows what will happen when the military shows up. They wouldn’t plan to attack the building if they didn’t know what they were getting into. We can expect them to bring it with a vengeance. If we get separated, I want you to go with these two boys. They’re bears so they can protect you if anyone can. They’ll get you out of Anarock and take you somewhere you’ll be safe.”

  Her deep blue eyes glistened with moisture. “Don’t send me away, Malachai. You can’t. This is my fight as much as yours. Let me stay here and fight.”

  His heart ached at those words. “Please listen to me, Isabelle. You don’t want this fight. I need to know you’re safe. I need to know you’ve got a way out if it comes to that.”

  She shook her head and set her curls bouncing. “Don’t make me leave. Let me stay with you. You can’t send me away. Don’t you even dare think that, Malachai.”

  Her voice cracked with suppressed emotion. He had to put his arms around her and he hugged her to his chest. “I won’t send you away if I can possibly avoid it, but I need to protect you. I need to know you’re safe. Nothing else matters.”

  She pushed out of his arms and turned her startling gaze up to look at him. “What about you? Are you saying you don’t matter? I can’t accept that. Let me stay with you. I don’t want to be anywhere else. That’s all that matters to me. Doesn’t that count for something?”

  He couldn’t listen to this. He enfolded her to him and kissed her hair. He didn’t want to send her away—not ever. He never wanted her away from him. It took this moment to make him realize that. He didn’t want to admit it, but now he knew it.

  He pushed her back gulping down the lump in his throat. Coop and Nolan observed them from a few feet away. Malachai cast a glance at them and shrugged. “You boys get yourselves armed. Meet me back here in half an hour and we’ll take it from there.”

  They left for the armory and Malachai turned his attention to Isabelle. He took her hand. “Come on. We’ve got work to do.”

  18

  Isabelle matched Malachai stride for stride. He stormed through Ogru-Kuche talking to everyone and snapping orders right and left. He was starting to scare her, but that only made her shrink closer to him. She couldn’t find any safety except near him.

  He climbed from one floor to the next and checked his people. An armed gunman covered every window and flanked every door. He worked his way down from the roof to the depths of the underground warren.

  By the time they got to the armory, they found the bunker deserted and nearly devoid of all equipment. He unlocked and opened a steel wall cabinet and started pulling down guns. “What do you want? What’s your poison?”

  He stuck a semi-automatic .44 into her hands. She drew back the slide and checked the barrel. “Give me another one of these and a few grenades—maybe an Uzi if you have one.”

  He strolled down the wall to another cabinet. “I don’t have an Uzi. Those damned Mannings got down here first. They got their greasy mitts on ‘em. Here. Take an AK instead.”

  She took the gun out of his grasp and inspected it. Her early training started to come back to her. “I never thought I’d be handling one of these again.”

  “You ain’t in the lab anymore, girl. It’s time to roll up your sleeves and get some dirt under your nails.”

  She studied him over her weapons. They infected her blood with curious energy. She wanted to fight. She wanted to shoot something. “What about you? What do you need guns for when you can just shift and burn the ever-loving shit out of everybody?”

  He snorted. “I don’t want to shift and burn the ever-loving shit out of everybody—not if I can avoid it. When you shift and burn the ever-loving shit out of everybody, sometimes you wind up burning people you didn’t want to burn, kinda like at the cottage.”

  She stopped dead in her tracks and stared at him. “What about the cottage? Did you…..?” She didn’t want to finish.

  He flinched. “Yeah, well, let’s just say those guys weren’t the only ones who made a mistake.”

  “Mistake!” she gasped. “How can you call it that? Those assholes tried to kill us both. They would have if you didn’t kill them first. Don’t you dare call that a mistake.”

  He raised his soft eyes to her face. A sad smile touched his lips. “That’s nice of you to say. I’m sorry you had to see me like that. I know it’s not nice.”

  “Well, it’s who you are, isn’t it? What’s wrong with that?”

  “It’s not what you want.” He snapped a clip into an AK of his own. “You don’t have to sugar-coat it.”

  She frowned at him. She didn’t like this. “What do you mean?”

  “I’m not human. You don’t have to spell it out for me. You want someone like yourself. I don’t blame you for that. In fact, I understand.”

  Her jaw dropped and she gasped out loud. “Is that why you want to send me north? Is that why you want to get me out of New Orleans? You think I want someone human?”

  “Why shouldn’t you? You want someone the same as you. Everybody does.”

  She fought down her temper building to explode. “Are you out of your fucking mind? Do you think I just spent last night with you because I want someone human? Is that what you fucking think?”

  He shrugged, but he wouldn’t look at her. “Last night was very nice. I’m not complaining.”

  “Nice! Is that what it was to you—nice? You fucking bastard, Malachai Griffin!”

  “What?” he asked. “Wasn’t it nice?”

  She launched at him and smashed her fist into his shoulder. “You fucker! How dare you? You think I want someone human? You asshole! I want you! Don’t you get that?”

  He blinked at her stewing in bloody rage. “You do?”

  “Yes, you dimwitted freak! What the fuck do you think I was doing last night—getting my rocks off before I ran off north to find some nice human guy? You bastard!”

  She spun away fighting back tears. She didn’t know last night meant as much as all that—or rather, she didn’t realize beforehand that it would mean as much as all that. She knew while it was happening, though. She saw it all looking up at him moving over her.

  Someone human! She couldn’t survive the horrible pain of those words. She didn’t want someone human. She
didn’t even want anybody New Breed. She wanted him. No one else would do. She couldn’t live without him.

  If this whole invasion thing went straight to holy Hell the way it looked like it was going to, she wanted to die right here in Ogru-Kuche with him. She didn’t want to go north. She didn’t want someone else. She wanted him.

  Now here he was talking about last night being nice. It wasn’t nice and it wasn’t fun and it wasn’t even pleasurable. It was devastating. It was world-shattering. It ended her life and replaced it with this, this creeping dread that someday, something would part her from him.

  He came up behind her and massaged her shoulders from behind. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I didn’t know.”

  “Well, you should have,” she snapped over her shoulder. “Don’t you know what you did to me last night?”

  He buried his face in her neck. His hot breath gusted under her hair. “I’m sorry. I thought I was the only one.”

  She clamped her eyes shut against the tears stringing her sinuses. She didn’t want to break down now. She needed her head clear. She needed to be ice cold and deadly. She couldn’t afford to feel this way.

  His arms snaked around her waist. He gripped his fists against her stomach and rocked her off her feet until she tilted into his chest. In that moment, she became aware of his stifling breath searing up her ear and into her brain. She dissolved into the hardness of his granite muscles.

  Adrenaline danced up her insides. Her ribs seized. Quicker than she could think, the energy shifted between them and she knew. He was coming for her and she couldn’t stop it. All the soul-destroying meaning from last night swept up her cheeks. It flooded her eyes and poured through her veins.

  He had her in his arms and he didn’t plan to let go anytime soon, if ever. He had her where she couldn’t get away even if she tried. He possessed her at a visceral level. He owned her very responses. He whispered his commands through her pores, through her lungs, through her spine.

  He dropped a scorching kiss on her neck and down to her shoulder. That breath, those lips, that silent insinuation wormed into her heart and soul until she couldn’t break the spell. It plunged her into a vacuous pit of unstoppable passion that consumed everything in its path, everything she was.

  He raked his torturous fingertips down her hips to her thighs. He scratched up her jeans getting closer to her molten pussy, closer all the time. Her pussy lips burst into flame. The juice hurt oozing from her slit.

  She teetered on her heels. She couldn’t hold herself up, but that didn’t matter. He had her. He supported her. She leaned back against his solid frame. He felt so big and true back there behind her, so hard against her ass, so powerful. He made her small and soft and vulnerable, but she was safe there in his arms.

  Even the aching agony of his fingers trailing inside her legs to the tender territory around her crotch—even that felt good. The pain and the hunger and the taunting torment burned her up inside until she needed him beyond reasoning.

  He dragged his lips up her neck. Without warning, he sank his teeth into her ear. She sucked in her breath against the intensity, but the next instant, it transformed into the most relentless passion she ever experienced. She sobbed in mortal desperation for him.

  He pressed one palm against her pelvis and pushed her ass back into his bulging package. He stabbed between her ass cheeks and she knew then and there he meant business. He intended to take her right now, right here in the armory.

  She just didn’t care anymore. She wanted him too bad. She couldn’t live without him in her mind and heart and being. If this was what he wanted, she could give herself to that, too. She had to.

  He bent her forward. He let go of her ear. She almost lost her mind when he bit into her neck. He bit her a lot harder that time. It hurt, but it drove an unmistakable message home to her. He had her. He owned her. He bowed her to his whim with his teeth. He got inside her mind until she couldn’t resist.

  Those wicked teeth forced her down, forced her folded over at the waist while he shoved his hips into her ass. That primal instinct to join with him took over and she moaned out loud in naked lust. She was his. She was his to take her here or anywhere.

  That flat hand crept down her stomach to her pussy. He slipped his fingers between her legs and played with her clit through her jeans. She rubbed her ass against his thick member doing everything she could to encourage him, to submit to him, to nudge him harder, stronger, hotter.

  Without releasing his bite, he grabbed her jeans. He ripped the fly open. She dangled on a wire of perpetual craven obsession waiting for him to push them down to her knees. She needed him so damned bad. She couldn’t think, much less protest.

  He bared her lower body between her waist and her knees and left it at that. He didn’t need any more and neither did she. He did something behind her and then those arms conquered her, destroyed her, hauled her in to her eternal destruction. They always would. They couldn’t do otherwise.

  He pulled her back and she felt his naked spike touching her bare ass. She froze, but he refused to release her. His arms crushed her in a death grip. She couldn’t break away, but she didn’t want to. She disappeared in the volcanic torrid power of him.

  His biceps clenched her in a pulverizing grip. He lifted her off the floor and set her down on that brutal shaft of his manhood. He nuzzled between her thighs and found the slippery channel waiting for him. He didn’t have to ask permission. He already knew he owned her. She was his. Her body was his to take. They both knew it now.

  She screamed once when he bit her again. He controlled her and guided her with his teeth. He instructed her. He directed her. Those teeth told her what she was and what she would do. They declared that she would respond, that she would relax into the sensory deluge overloading her system.

  His thick member touched her engorged slit. He hovered there for a fraction of a second—just long enough to make sure of his ground. He flexed his midsection and her golden syrup coated the head.

  She experienced one more time the intoxicating terror of facing down the inevitability that she would cease to exist in his dominating attack. He would shatter her and she would become something else, something his, something sensitive to the destructive power of his attention. Could she cope with all that? Could she survive it?

  She wouldn’t survive it. She didn’t survive last night and she wouldn’t survive this. Every time he took her, he would annihilate her and leave behind something that wasn’t her, something that was his, something he could touch, something he could touch on the very inside of her.

  The next instant, he stabbed inside. She couldn’t even scream under the relentless impossibility of it. She could only whimper dying on that hot spike. It penetrated places inside her she couldn’t imagine. Its awful power electrified her beyond endurance. She couldn’t take it, but it just kept going deeper and deeper without end.

  It demanded her. It propelled her out of this world into somewhere…. else. It took her as far as she feared it would. It brought her to her knees and left her tattered and fragile.

  All this time, he moved her up and down his shaft. He arched her forward while he hunched over her from behind. That evil slab of meat kept piercing her to her core. She whined in tortured ecstasy falling farther and farther under his sway. Where would it end?

  She didn’t need to know that. He had her. He would take her there and bring her back. He would give her himself and take her for himself. She didn’t need to know anymore.

  Every ferocious inch woke her to the devastating reality of her own demise. She rotated on his spike convulsing with consecutive climaxes that tore her to pieces. She had no choice but to go there and stay there as long as he kept her there. She was his. She was his to take where he wanted to take her. She was his to occupy and possess.

  Her honey flowed around his balls. It spread across her ass and smacked with every pointed strike. It sealed her to him until he took her one more time. It christened her coming to li
fe for the first time.

  He clawed at her flesh with both hands. One crept under her shirt and gripped her breast inside her clothes. The other snuck between her legs and fingered her sensitive clit while he bored her through her middle. Everything he did thrust her higher. Every driving spank rocketed her out of her mind until she had nothing left.

  19

  Malachai set Isabelle’s feet on the floor, but he couldn’t unwind his arms from around her. He didn’t seem to be able to let her go at all. Everything about her sucked him in until he couldn’t get away.

  He hid his eyes in her neck one more time. His cock slithered out of her saturated channel and the air cooled her juices around his nuts. The last drops of his lifeblood gushed from the tip. He left his cum inside her and spattered over her ass and thighs. Now that he was out, knowing it was there infiltrated his mind with passionate heat. It made him want to get inside her again, but he had to pull his head together. He couldn’t fuck her all day long when he had work to do.

  He wouldn’t forget. His spunk staining her panties would accompany him into battle today. It would give him strength. It would give him the last push to get through this so he could get back into that dark, hot home where he belonged.

  She wriggled her jeans back on. When she turned around and glanced up at him, he detected a hint of a question in her features. She didn’t know she got into his blood. She didn’t know she poisoned him with her blessed golden cream. It wasn’t poison, though. It was a heavenly elixir that healed everything wrong with him.

  He didn’t even know there was anything wrong with him until she came along and healed him. He thought he was doing pretty good. Now he knew she healed him. She made him complete. She made him a man with her ivory flesh and her perfumed ambrosia.