Blood and Blade (Goddess with a Blade #6) - Lauren Dane Page 0,27

you in the taint.”

He winced and she laughed, shaking her finger at him.

“Can’t it just be that I want to be alone with you a while before I go to rest?” He patted the mattress.

“I’m serious about that threat so don’t test me,” she vowed as she got into bed and then moved to him, putting her head on his chest.

“I value my taint—and what a truly delightful word for it—too much to take any chances.”

She started giggling so hard she got the hiccups. “Say taint again. Please,” she said, breathless between bouts of laughter.

“Still my precious fragile flower.” He kissed the top of her head and she settled into him, occasionally snickering as she remembered the way he said taint.

“Now,” he continued a few minutes later. “I’m not going to ask you not to pursue your investigation of the Vampire and his connection to the Blood Front and the black market. I very rarely ask you to put aside your job and I know this is far more than just your job. But I do propose we share information. I know you’re pursuing lines of inquiry with Genevieve’s help. And I’m sure you know I’ve got Alice working with Nadir doing the same on my end. We’re much stronger if we work together.”

“Before I agree, I want to be totally clear. I’m going to end every last bit of the Blood Front I find. I’m looking. Hard. All this Vampire messing around with magic business has me very agitated. This violates the Treaty. I will also be terminating this Vampire fucking with the black magic and enabling the atrocities of his boss. I don’t need your permission. I won’t seek permission from the Vampire Nation to do my job. The Blood Front and any and all Vampires connected to it need to be ended. I will do that. We clear?”

He flipped her to her back so he could loom over her. “You know what it does to me when you’re like this,” he growled.

“That’s because you’re a deviant with insatiable desires. In any case, are we clear?” she repeated.

He sighed and then nodded. “We’re clear. If there are things I am forbidden to share with you as a Hunter, I will tell you about it. But I want to reassure you,” he said as he put a finger over her lips to stay her argument, “that’s not at issue here.”

“All right then.”

“Can we get back to those insatiable desires you just mentioned?” he asked, dipping to kiss her long and slow.

She hummed as his taste made itself at home within her. Her fingers slid into his hair—so thick and soft—and held him in that kiss until she wrapped her thighs around him, trapping him just where she wanted.

And yet he had her pants off one leg in three deft moves and talented fingers on her clit, before she’d barely had time to register his movements.

When he took her like this, as if there was nothing he could do but have her right then that very moment, it left her breathless. She’d never had trust that deep with anyone before. Never experienced that thrill edged with something sharp and dark.

“Only you,” she told him, knowing they both needed the words.

He kissed her again as she began to come lightning fast. His fingers moved, replaced by the head of his cock, which he pressed into her body with a thrust so swift and deep her tits bounced.

She was so wet and hot and loose from that climax she stretched against him as he fucked into her body, hard and intense, every bit of his focus on her. A lock of his hair dared break free from its brethren and came to slide over his forehead.

In that moment she could imagine him as a regency hero just as easily as a modern day spy or super soldier. The light in his eyes burned for her and she let him in and held on as he snarled. She knew he was close.

Knew her unique magic rose to meet his, blood and magic. Before there was anything else there had been blood and magic. Totemic and powerful. They sealed bargains and fates. Told truths in ways words never could. Together they were the foundation of whatever threat she and Clive faced and were about to eradicate.

Together they’d make her stronger. Make Clive stronger. That’s how they’d prevail.

He came then on a grunt of her name, the light in his eyes still burning but now