Immortal Beloved - Kith & Kynn Book 2

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Immortal Beloved: Kith & Kynn Book 2

  Copyright ã 2004 Jeya Jenson

  ISBN: 1-55410-210-3

  Cover art and design by Martine Jardin

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.

  Published by eXtasy Books, a division of Zumaya Publications, 2004

  Look for us online at:

  www.zumayapublications.com

  www.Extasybooks.com

  Dedication:

  This book is dedicated to my friend, Luisa, who took the time to read and comment on the early drafts. Thanks so much!

  This book is also dedicated to my editor, Stefani Kelsey. Without her demon-slaying abilities, this story would not have been written.

  Prologue

  Warwickshire, England—1906

  Adrien Roth wasn’t sure what awakened him. Perhaps it was the sinking of the sun, the gradual darkening of the chamber already shrouded in shadows by heavy velvet drapes drawn across the windows.

  Or perhaps it was dread rousing him from his restless sleep, causing him to twist his wrists against the silken ties binding them to the headboard of the canopied bed. He cursed the unyielding restraints. No matter how much he writhed, he simply could not free his arms. The skin under the ropes was badly chafed and raw. More struggling only served to deliver fresh pain. He ignored it, his hands balling into tight fists to fight the ropes yet more.

  Helplessness consumed him, and a wild-voiced cry echoed through his head. They’re coming… His eyes slipped wearily shut. Silence hung heavily, the lack of sound even more disturbing than a scream—or the sound of ominous footfalls on the hardwood floors. His heart hammered in his chest, beating against his ribs with a fury threatening to steal his breath away. He gasped, running his parched tongue over his dry, cracked lips.

  Opening his eyes, he focused on the dim light behind the drapes as though it were a beacon, the only source of illumination in the world. He silently prayed to God unceasingly. Without allowing himself to think of what was to come, or of how it would end, he vehemently cursed the source of his misery. When more thoughts of torture invaded his mind, his gaze clouded over and his lower jaw trembled. The wait was excruciating.

  Minutes dragged like hours, all hope beginning to fade with the last precious rays of day. As the raven of night spread its wings over the land, misery and horror were given fresh birth in his guts, slashing through his bowels like ground-up shards of glass. Fear became more intense.

  He did not hear them, but felt them, the way one would become aware of a spider crawling across one’s skin.

  His eyes widened when the door swung open and two figures entered silently, a man and a woman. He knew them both, better than he cared to. The man was Devon, Lord Carnavorn, seventh Earl of Hammerston. Tall, well over six feet, his features were strong and commanding; piercing gray eyes, sensual but cruel mouth, tousled brown hair. The outfit of dove gray trousers, white silk shirt, silk vest of a lighter gray well fitted his muscular frame.

  The woman… Oh, blessed virgin and tainted whore. She was his angel and his demon, savior and tormentor; appropriately named, for she would consent to lie beneath no man.

  Lilith. Her name was a whisper on the lips of pious men, the screech of a night owl, the shimmering frost on the accursed north wind.

  In one slender hand she carried a gold-gilt candelabra. The flame guttered as she walked, throwing a wavering light on her strangely pallid flesh. Clad in a white silk dressing gown decorated with Chinese embroidery, she was a lovely creature to behold. Loosely open at the neck to reveal just a glimpse of her sumptuous breasts, the sheer material whispered around her legs. Delicate as a porcelain doll, black hair cascaded around her shoulders, falling nearly to her waist. Silver-flecked crystal blue eyes, a pert nose and a pouting little bow of a mouth finished her oval face.

  Devon Carnavorn’s probing stare raked over the naked man. “I hope you’re ready for the coming evening. We have something special in store for you this night.” His accented voice was smooth, untroubled, as if all his guests were usually trussed like a Christmas turkey ready for roasting.

  Adrien gave a final feeble tug, wishing the ties would magically dissolve, that he would awaken from this nightmare. The shocking part was that he was awake and there was no hope of rescue.

  He was afraid—not for his life. Life was a temporary thing, something he had been prepared from childhood to sacrifice in the name of the hunt for the creatures inhabiting the night, stalking the weaker human prey. But his immortal soul? No amount of preparation or prayer could sustain a man when eternal damnation beckoned. All he had left was his faith in God and church. Through the days, he’d prayed when conscious, dreamt that he was praying when unconscious, his times in restless sleep refusing to let him find solace or peace.

  He began to pray anew, speaking as clearly and loudly as he could, attempting to wrap himself in the words as if they were a shield. “Our father who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven—”

  Carnavorn angrily recoiled from the words. A look of scorn colored his face. “Your prayers will not be answered! Your God does not exist here!” Hands fisted in anger, the venom in his voice temporarily silenced Adrien. Recovering his composure, he continued in a smoother tone. “I know the old prayers as well as you do. They are meaningless. Nothing.”

  “You mock the words of my faith, demon!”

  “They say the devil can quote scripture for his own purposes,” Devon countered with an icy smile. “That itself is true enough. I certainly have one that perfectly fits our, ah, situation. Something you may recognize, about an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”

  A shiver clawed its way up Adrien’s spine. He felt his guts turn to liquid. “If you’re going to kill me,” he rasped. “I’ve no fear of death.” How many days had he been held captive? He wasn’t sure. He only knew that he was growing weaker, resistance fading each and every time the demonic pair descended.

  Carnavorn laughed, mouth curling up in a half-smile of disdain. “Kill you?” he spat scathingly. “Death is too good for you, Amhais. As the shadow-stalkers have hunted us, so must we of the Kynn return the favor.” He turned to the woman. “Are you ready, my dear?”

  An eager smile crossed Lilith’s red lips, showing a flash of white teeth. “I have a special surprise for you,” she rasped. Her voice was a combination of warm honey on sharp gravel; throaty and sensuous. She set the candelabra aside.

  Adrien shook his head ineffectually. Hunger, exhaustion and his weakening body were all making a play on his senses. The faces of those he’d slain drifted to the front of his mind, their corpses grasping at his legs, tugging him down into the depths of an unhallowed grave.

  He wanted to cry out, deny this evil in the name of all that was holy. Instead, only feeble words escaped his lips. “No…please…not again…” To beg was deme
aning, but he had no more to give.

  Gaze cutting to the window, he mutely cursed the velvet blanket covering the earth. These two never came out during the day. Only the night seemed to beckon them, whispering to them like a siren’s song that it was time to emerge. They seemed to derive some twisted sense of pleasure from his fear and the pain they so casually inflicted.

  Carnavorn stepped behind the woman. Hands on her slender hips, he maneuvered her to the bed. Reaching in front of her, he untied the sash of her gown and slid it off her shoulders. Underneath, she was completely naked. Her figure was well arranged; full breasts, slender waist, flat belly and legs that went on endlessly. Beautiful and feminine, hers was a body made to entice, tease and enjoy. A thin silver chain hung around her slender neck; a pendant nestled in the hollow between her breasts. Of Celtic origins, the design was that of a circle interwoven with three sharp-edged eyelets that formed a triangle around the circle.

  Looking at her, Adrien knew he should be aroused. But he was not. She absolutely terrified him. Beyond her beauty was a strange hardness—a hatred that lingered in the depths of her eyes and the cruel set of her mouth.

  Devon’s hands lifted, fingertips grazing her temples. “Beautiful, is she not?” His fingers continued their trek, tracing the contours of her high cheekbones, the lines of her jaw, down her neck to the hollow of her slender throat. Eyelids lowering, she tipped her head to one side.

  “We have a gift to share with you, Adrien.” His head dipped and he nuzzled the soft curve of her neck. His hands found her breasts, cupping their weight as if testing the ripeness of sweet melons. She made a soft sound; half gasp, half moan.

  “I don’t want your damnation,” he sputtered, words strained.

  Devon Carnavorn’s gray eyes narrowed, hard and flinty. “I don’t recall that you were given a choice. Did you show Ariel any mercy when you put that stake through her heart? She was everything to me and you took her away with the darkness of your hate and prejudice against our kind. There are truly more things in heaven and on earth than humankind will ever be able to understand. Your mind is too small to comprehend that. But your eyes will be opened, then you shall see all.”

  Adrien fought his bonds some more, feeling the chafe of the ropes against his tender wrists. “I sent her back to the devil that spawned her,” he hissed. “Just as I will send you to hell right after her if I ever have that chance!” He did not ask to be let go. To beg would be beneath him. It was clear he would not be released…alive.

  Instead of being angered again, Devon only laughed. His hands found and teased Lilith’s tender nipples, giving them renewed erectness. “I won’t let you go, Adrien. You’re going to pay for what you did, not once, but again and again and again. You’ve only gotten a glimpse of what we really are.”

  He ran his palms over Lilith’s hips, then her belly. A low moan escaped her throat. She hovered in a state of peak sexual arousal, the air around her sticky and scented from the sizzling heat of raw desire. His hand found the tender slit between her legs, that velvet treasure every woman possessed. Delving past the soft curls of her Venus mound, he stroked her clit. Her own fingers tugged fiercely at her nipples, an intense purr of pleasure slipping past her lips.

  Devon dipped one finger inside her depths. He brought it to her mouth, tracing her lips with honeyed nectar. Her moist tongue snaked out to savor her juices.

  “You want to taste her,” he said. “Admit you are as weak as the next man and that lust is ablaze in your heart.”

  “No—” The single word spilled over his lips.

  Lilith looked at him from under a fall of long lashes. “But it is, my darling.” Her eyes visually traced his nude body, settling on his flaccid penis. “How well I know.”

  Smiling, she began to finger the sterling silver charm. The edges of the triangle were sharpened and could slide through flesh like a razor. It was a charm that had meted out a lot of pain, and would deliver still more. The agony itself was not nearly as great as the apprehension of pain to be inflicted.

  “You belong to me now, beloved.”

  Adrien winced, his eyes drifting downward. A series of cuts criss-crossed his chest and abdomen, his skin red and swollen, part of the bondage and bloodletting ritual his captor had inflicted on him.

  Devon gave her a gentle push. “Take him.”

  Lilith flicked her hair off her shoulders and stretched out on the bed. The feather mattress was thick and comfortable, covered with a warm down comforter.

  By day Adrien was chained in a damp, windowless cellar. When night neared its fall, two silent male servants would bring him to her bedchamber. He was too weak to protest, try to fight his way to freedom. Through his long captivity, he’d been given no food and only very little water.

  Propping herself on an elbow, she trailed her palm over his chest, tracing his dusky male nipples. Her nails were long and sharp. Her touch was chilly, as if no blood flowed through her veins. Her skin had a strange opalescent opaqueness, reminding him more of stone than of living flesh.

  Her fingers moved to one of the small cuts marring his abdomen. “Don’t you like what I do to you?” she asked with a mock pout. The wounds were hardly fatal, only deep and wide enough to draw blood, but do no serious damages. They seemed to mark him as hers and hers alone. Dipping her head, she circled one of his nipples with her silver-liquid tongue, flicking at the little nub until it grew as hard as a bead. Her hand drifted over his chest, rubbing in sensuous circles, drifting lower.

  “Please—don’t—” His voice was hoarse, wavering with desperation. As if to betray his words, a strange sweet inertia began to overcome him as his member began to twitch. He could not resist her mesmerizing touch.

  “Words Ariel said,” Devon murmured viciously. “Words you ignored.”

  Lilith laughed and jerked off her necklace, snapping the thin chain.

  “Tonight, I will close those mortal eyes of yours.” She drew the sharp edge of the charm across his skin, just below his belly button. Crimson welled to the surface, and her head dipped. She soothed away the brief sting with her tongue, licking hungrily at his blood. Low snarls escaped from her throat as she drank, the way an animal would growl when its food was in danger of being snatched away. She made two more cuts, going lower with each, licking and suckling at his skin.

  Adrien shivered when she wrapped her fingers around his growing erection. What she was doing appalled him. It was against his will, but it also fascinated him on a deeper, more primeval level. His cock pulsed in her hand, alive under her touch. Even when flaccid, his penis was an impressive sight, well filling the cut of his trousers. Erect, it was a magnificent length, thick and round. He closed his eyes when she began to stroke his flesh, up and down, bringing him to full hardness. His breathing grew ragged. A tiny drop of semen leaked from its head, glistening in the candlelight.

  “You will pay for murdering my sister in cold blood,” she murmured with a hint of delight. “As you took her life from the clan, yours shall replace it.”

  There was no doubt in his mind about her words.

  He grunted when the silken veil of her long hair spread across his torso. Every time he thought that she’d drained him of all ability to attain an erection, she managed to coax yet another response out of his weakened body. He was a young man, only twenty-nine, hale and hearty as an ox in its prime. Yet since the first night of his capture by Carnavorn’s men, she had assumed all control over him, leaving him weaker—more drained of strength each time she visited. She was both aggressor and seducer, forcing him into sex the way a black widow spider spun its webs to lure its prey.

  Using the perfect pressure, she stroked his cock in a steady motion. Her eyes were alight with anticipation. She was eager to take him, pink tongue flicking out of her mouth to lick the pre-cum away from the tip. The salty taste excited her. She moaned softly, taking him inch by inch into her mouth, sucking ever so slowly to build his tension. Anticipation ran riot through his veins, his blood pounding
a strange rhythm in his temples. He felt a flame of desire shoot down to his balls, making them tingle, tighten. Her teeth scraped his rod, adding to the delight, a bit more pain to feed his own deep-seated erotic desires.

  He wasn’t willing—but he could be persuaded.

  Appalled by his excitement, he was also secretly intrigued by this strange world of sexual vampirism. Fantasies he’d never believed would be fulfilled were bursting into a painfully carnal kaleidoscope of sights, sounds and sensations. Sex was suddenly not just some to have or have done; it was a sustaining nourishment drawing from the very core of energy that could create life itself. Doubt was a fat rodent, gnawing at his conscience. Not for the first time, he began to question his sworn mission to cleanse this earth of evil. Had he indeed acted as a champion of good…or had he acted with a madman’s fanaticism?

  Such a hunger is an obscenity, an abomination against God, he tried to tell himself.

  Still, he desired it even as he despised it. The conflicting ideas were plunging him deeper into mass confusion. Sanity was slowly turning to madness as the carnal desires harbored in his heart took seed and sprouted. The devil had laid a feast before him and even though he should turn away and embrace the famine, he was only a man of desires unfulfilled.

  He hungered.

  And he ate.

  Watching from the edge of the bed, Devon Carnavorn grasped the bedpost, leaning closer. “Show him no mercy, Lilith,” he urged with sadistic insistence. “Take him in the most painful way.”

  The malicious words drew Adrien from his enjoyable apathy.

  “I was sworn of an oath to erase your kind from this earth,” he gasped, closing his eyes, as if shuttering his sight would send the demons away. “I will not stop, no matter the hell you send me into.”

  Despite his words, he could not believe he was again giving in to Lilith’s predatory assault. He was completely under the domination of these foul beasts. The ache to possess her completely worsened. Fiercer than his own disgust at his weakening will, though, was the unquenchable desire to dominate Lilith the way she was controlling him.