Mine.
The word had whispered over and over in his mind, settling deep in his soul.
Feeling Kata stir beneath him, he reluctantly rolled to the side, tightly tucking her against him. He growled at the satin slide of her naked skin and the beat of her heart that echoed in his own.
He hadn’t shared her blood, but already she was an intimate part of him.
A smile curved his lips as Kata tilted back her head, a shell-shocked expression on her beautiful face.
“That was . . .”
“Only the beginning,” he promised, his hand cupping her full breast.
The dark eyes flashed with ready fire. “Hey, don’t be making plans that include me, vampire.”
He chuckled, his finger circling the dusky nipple into a hard peak.
“Then don’t be making promises you don’t intend to keep.”
She moaned, her back arching and her hands running up the bare planes of his chest. But even as he shivered with a raw jolt of anticipation, she gave a startled gasp pulling back to study his chest with a frown.
“Oh, Uriel,” she breathed.
“What?”
Her fingers tenderly stroked the scar that marred his skin. “You’ve been injured.”
With a hiss Uriel was on his feet, his hand instinctively covering the wound.
Christ, he’d forgotten.
Lost in the stunning power of his awareness of Kata, his mind had refused to remember that this was an impossible dream.
No.
It was worse than impossible, he fiercely reminded himself.
It was dangerous.
She studied his tight expression with a frown, slowly sitting upright.
“Uriel?”
“It was a long time ago,” he muttered.
Her eyes narrowed. “Then why are you still angry?” Angry?
He wanted to fall to his knees and howl at the bleak desolation that filled his heart.
It was one thing to know he was denied the promise of a mate when she was a mythical creature that might or might not make an appearance in his life. It was another to be given a glimpse of paradise only to have it snatched away.
“Because it’s a reminder that my future is no longer my own,” he said in stark tones.
Cautiously she rose to her feet, her hand reaching toward his chest.
“You sound like Yannah.”
“Don’t,” he growled, jerking away.
“Tell me what happened.”
He hesitated, before giving a faint shrug. He admired her courage too much to lie.
“I had a rather nasty encounter with a Jinn beneath the docks of London,” he grimly confessed.
She paled, her hand trembling as she pushed back the heavy tumble of her dark curls.
“A Jinn?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Two centuries ago, give or take.”
Her expression was impossible to read, although she was too intelligent not to realize the significance of the date.
“You battled?”
He made a sound of disgust. Even after two centuries it still rankled he’d made such a pansy-ass showing against the Jinn.
Hell, a dew fairy could have done more damage.
“You could call it that,” he groused. “As much as I hate to admit it, there wasn’t much of a fight. I barely sensed the Jinn’s approach before he’d killed my brother and captured me.”
“And he did this to you when you tried to escape?” she husked.
Uriel’s bitter laugh echoed through the nearby trees. “No, he allowed me to leave. This was his curse.”
“A curse?” She looked genuinely confused. No big surprise. Uriel was still trying to puzzle out what the hell had happened. “Are you certain?”
He rubbed the scar that had throbbed with a low intensity ache since his escape from the London docks, belatedly realizing that the throb had become more pronounced since his unexpected journey into the underworld.
A coincidence?
It had to be.
He couldn’t allow himself to consider anything else.
If he went postal and hurt Kata . . .
Yeah, he so wasn’t going to go there.
Not even in his darkest ‘what ifs’.
“Painfully certain,” he said, his voice clipped.
“What did he do?”
“The bastard made me his slave.”
Dropping his bomb of shame, Uriel abruptly turned to dive into the water of the stream. The cool, crystal clear water washed over his skin, although it couldn’t wash away the helpless fury that pulsed through him.
Surfacing, he shook the hair out of his eyes and turned to find Kata standing at the edge of the stream, her dark eyes troubled.
She was so beautiful that she made his heart ache.
The dark curls wildly tumbled around her lovely face. The ivory satin skin. The lush curves.
An intoxicating, earthy woman that called to a man’s most primitive desires.
“What did he do to you?” she softly asked.
He clenched his teeth against the savage longing that clutched at him.
He had to keep her safe.
Nothing else mattered.
“He said that I was to be the instrument of his revenge,” Uriel repeated the words he’d shared with Victor almost two weeks ago.
She averted her face, wading into the water until it lapped over the full curve of her br**sts.
“You think this Jinn is the father of Laylah?”
He couldn’t deny her accusation. “Since there’s only been one Jinn sighting in London for the past millennium it seems like a safe assumption.”
“And that’s why you treated me like I carried the plague.”
He flinched at her harsh accusation, not wanting to remember his arrogant disdain.
“I’ve done everything in my power to rescue you.”
She refused to look at him. “You think I’m a Jinn whore.” Even knowing it was a truly stupid idea, Uriel couldn’t stop himself from moving through the water to stand directly before her. Gently he grabbed her shoulders, battling back his surge of lust.
“I know that Marika held you against your will.”
She turned her head, her eyes snapping with her ready temper.
Kata would never be a soothing female. She was passionate, turbulent, and unpredictable.
She was also intensely loyal, courageous, and the very essence of female temptation, he acknowledged with a bleak sense of loss.
“And yet you suspect I might actually have enjoyed being trapped with the handsome demon?” she accused him.
He wouldn’t lie. Not to this woman.
“At first.”
“And now?”
“Now it doesn’t matter,” he said with simple honesty.