Page 34 of Firebird (The Fire That Binds #1)

XXXIII

JULIAN

Malina leaped into my arms and wrapped her legs around my waist, weeping as she pressed her cheek to mine. I groaned as I kissed her soft face, then her sweet mouth, devouring her with insatiable, fevered nips and bites, skating my mouth along her jaw to her throat, pressing her body against the chamber wall, needing to feel her.

Then I confessed my heart. “By Dis, I’m dying inside, Malina. I need you.” I pulled the strap of her thin black tunic to the side and nipped, growling angrily that she was wearing his cloth, his color. “ We need you.”

My dragon burned behind my eyes and in my blood as I pressed my forehead to hers, my skin prickling, wanting to stretch and shift and carry her away. Anger and lust and love combatted for dominance as I fell to kissing her again, scraping my teeth on her skin, pulling her strap down farther until her breast slipped free. On a groan, I lowered my mouth and sucked the tight peak, scraping with my sharp teeth that had elongated without my will, needing to mark her, embed my scent in her.

Rather than beat me off, my firebird fisted her fingers in my short hair and pressed me closer, moaning and grinding her pussy against my abdomen. Her scent had me reeling, groaning.

“Yes, yes,” she crooned, “taste me, please, bite me, yes .”

My dragon purred at her desperate cries for more, my hands shoving up her tunic, my fingers finding her slick center before I slid a finger inside her.

“Gods!” she cried as lightning crashed and thunder boomed overhead.

“I need you. Fuck, I need you,” I growled repeatedly like a mantra, a plea, a prayer.

“Shh,” she whispered against my mouth, reaching down between us and pulling up my tunic until she could wrap her hand around my hard cock.

“Malina,” I begged, my entire body trembling with desperate want. I thrust into her hand, pulling my finger from inside her to grip her bottom and lower her.

“Shh,” she breathed softly again, her mouth sliding open as she notched the head of my cock at her quim.

With a feral grunt, I thrust deep to the hilt, shivering at the sweet tightness of her body taking me all the way in. “Yes, my love.”

She gasped, dropping her head to the wall, baring her neck for me.

I kept still, the raging storm outside mimicking the one inside me, mocking the rage of emotions tearing me apart. I had her. In this m oment, she was mine. But it was a fleeting, stinging moment, knowing I’d have to let her go again.

“Gods above and below,” I rasped into the silken skin of her throat, “you are fucking mine, Malina.”

I slid out to the tip and thrust deep inside her again, pounding her against the stone wall. She didn’t seem to mind, whimpering with pleasure at my roughness.

“Mine,” I growled again and licked her skin.

She kept her fingers fisted in my hair, her blunt nails scraping my skull as she lowered her chin and leveled those hauntingly beautiful green eyes at me.

“As you are mine,” she breathed on a whisper. “Now show me that I am.”

Squeezing her flesh, I pressed her against the wall and pumped deep, over and over, driving inside her sweet body, her slick pussy. She locked her ankles at my back and pulled my hair till it stung. We seemed to both need to mark each other, to remember and know this was real. No matter where we were when we parted, we belonged to each other and no one else.

I lifted one hand, my body pinning her to the wall, and sank my fingers into her hair, beneath her braid, gripping her skull in my palm.

“I feel you, my love,” I grated against her lips, while tears slipped down her cheeks. “I feel all of you.”

I pumped faster, my soul drifting into hers in an ecstasy of passion I had never known. Nor would I ever know again. My firebird was my end and beginning. No joy could surpass this belonging, this bond winding us into each other.

“Yes,” she whispered on a sob, “I feel it too, Julian.”

She moaned so sweetly, so exquisitely. Then she was coming, her pussy squeezing my cock. I groaned as she leaned forward and bit the bare skin above my collar, screaming into my flesh as she climaxed .

“Yes,” I hissed, fucking her hard and deep, our flesh slapping. I couldn’t stop as she shook and trembled in my arms, needing to bury my cock deeper and deeper.

The dragon roared inside me, his growl vibrating out of my belly as my cock swelled bigger. Then I speared her hard and spent my seed, rumbling my pleasure as I released inside her.

She unlatched her mouth from my shoulder, shuddering and panting, her sex still throbbing with her orgasm as she tilted her head to nuzzle her nose against mine. Her voice a pained whimper as she whispered, “I love you.”

I kissed the tears that wet her cheeks, my heart bursting at her admission, the storm overhead seeming to diminish and drift away. “Don’t cry, love,” I begged, sliding my nose alongside hers, grinding my cock deeper while it still pulsed. “You’re breaking my heart.”

She smiled, and the sight gripped me with a wave of tenderness. “They are tears of joy,” she promised, kissing me sweetly, tenderly.

I accepted her sweetness, her soft caress of lips and tongue, the beast inside me satiated for the moment. Gently, I pulled out of her body on a hiss. She made a soft noise of disappointment. I kept her in my arms and settled on a stone bench, pulling her legs across my lap and her head to my chest.

There was a mess between her legs, which I wiped with a fold of my tunic. Her soft, tender flesh made me stiffen with dread. When I’d tucked her close against me, I finally asked, “Has he touched you?”

“No,” was her immediate reply. “As I told you, I’m able to protect myself.”

But there was a catch in her voice.

“Is that why you’ve come to beg favors of the goddess Minerva?” I asked gently, tapping her cloth-wrapped hand where I’d watched her cut her palm.

She tilted her head back to look up at me, and I relished the sight. Her affectionate, adoring gaze must’ve been mirrored in my own. She reached up and cupped my jaw.

“My darling Julian.” She smiled again and I was her slave on the instant. But I always had been, since that moment I watched her dance beneath the moonlight in the Carpathian Mountains. “Do not worry. All is well in hand.”

“I did not know Dacians worshipped Roman gods.”

She pinched my chin to punish me, which made me chuckle. “Minerva knows me, a child of Dacia. It matters not I was born outside her favored patrons. Someone wise told me the gods know us whether we worship them or not.”

“Mmm.” I pressed a soft kiss to her forehead, inhaling her hypnotic scent. “So what have you asked of her?”

She paused, tracing her fingertips across my cheek and the bridge of my nose, seeming to memorize the planes she caressed. “For what we need.”

She swallowed, and I began doing my own exploration, tracing a single finger down her throat.

“But I had to bind the bargain with a treasure,” she admitted, her voice husky. “I had to give up the aureus.” There was heartbreak in her eyes.

“You bound your prayer with your most precious treasure?”

“No,” she answered quickly, gripping my jaw and brushing her thumb across my cheek. “I keep my most precious treasure with me always.”

When I frowned, she said, “Your love.” She dropped her hand from my face and pressed her palm to her chest. “I keep it here, well-guarded.”

My entire soul wept as I pulled her tight against me and slanted my mouth over hers. We kissed tenderly and gently—mouths, cheeks, brows—pouring our affection into each other until I couldn’t hear the rain or the storm at all anymore. The soft brush of lips and tongue eased my turmoil for the moment. Until we were interrupted.

“Malina,” someone whispered nearby.

We broke the kiss and Malina jumped to sit upright on my lap. A slim blonde woman stood in the alcove leading into this vestibule where we’d blocked off the world for a few stolen moments.

She waved for her to come. “We must go.” She looked back toward the exit. “Doro is anxious.”

Instantly, I clutched her in my arms and pressed my forehead to the base of her neck, inhaling the scent of her hair. “No,” I whispered.

“I’m coming, Rhea,” she promised and shooed the woman away, then she stood between my legs, turned, and hugged me against her breast. “When will the deed take place?”

No need to explain what deed she meant. We’d discussed killing Ciprian the day she was taken from my home.

“In two or three nights. Can you come back to the temple tomorrow? I should have a definite answer then when all the plans are set.”

She gripped my shoulders and pushed me back. With me sitting on the bench and her standing, we were face-to-face. “I’ll find a way. Same time? I believe it’s easier to get out of Ciprian’s house during the morning hours.”

My entire body locked with revulsion. “Promise me he hasn’t hurt you.” I’d already scanned her arms and legs for any sign of violence, of bruising, and had found none.

“I promise.”

I stood and embraced her close. She pressed her cheek against my sternum. “Only a few days more,” I whispered into the crown of her head. “Then we’ll be gone and I can take you somewhere safe.”

The dragon purred from within at the thought.

She hugged me tighter but asked, “Why would I have to leave if all goes well? ”

She didn’t know that I planned to kill Ciprian ahead of schedule, before my uncle and the others.

“There will be unrest after Ciprian is dead. No one should suspect me, but if they do, I don’t want Caesar to target you to hurt me.” I pressed her closer. “It would kill me, firebird.”

She pressed a kiss to my chest. Even through my tunic, I felt the warmth of her mouth and affection. Then she gazed up at me, holding my heart in that look.

“I know the story of the firebird now.”

“Do you? Who told you the tale?”

“Rhea.” She nodded toward the doorway. “My friend.” She tilted her head teasingly. “But I don’t know if that’s the right name for me. I’m not a golden dragon, Julian. Nor can I fly through the air and set men on fire.”

“You think not?”

She laughed. “You know I can’t.”

“I know nothing of the sort.” I cupped her face and pressed a hard kiss to her mouth. “Since that moment I saw you, flying across that stage, you have been burning inside me ever since. My entire soul is on fire for you, Malina.” I pressed my forehead to hers. “And always will be.”

“Malina,” hissed the girl Rhea from outside. “We must go now .”

Malina pressed one last kiss to my lips and tore from my arms. I felt the pain bodily, like something died inside me as I watched her leave. I couldn’t keep from following.

I trailed at a distance, following her and the other slave girl out of the temple and into the rain-drenched streets. I followed as they met a large slave wearing Ciprian’s collar, weaving through the sparse crowd of the Aventine. If anyone thought it strange for a Roman patrician to walk their streets, they made no note of it. None even seemed to recognize me as the famous Coldhearted Conqueror.

Perhaps because I didn’t look much like him, slinking through the streets, trying to catch just one last glimpse of the black-haired beauty who owned my very soul. Stricken with the despair of her disappearing around a corner, I realized that there was nothing cold inside me now.

A furnace burned in the deep, darkest recesses of my being. In that place where my dragon slept and watched and waited, a fire had kindled when Malina had given me her love. Only taking her back to a lair where I could keep her safe would abate the beast. If she was hurt before I could I free her, I’d set the world on fire and gladly watch it burn.