Then Marrok lifted her, wrapped her thighs around his hips, and thrust deep. At the sudden intrusion, pleasure shot past any pain, washing through her. She opened her mouth to scream, and Marrok covered it, driving her higher with his hungry demands.
His kiss claimed her, never-ending. He swallowed all her cries, as if he refused to share the sounds with anyone. Her body devoured every inch of his erection and squeezed, craving more. The ache inside skyrocketed, burning hot, threatening to incinerate her. Blood rushed to her swollen clit. Olivia convulsed as pleasure climbed, spiked, and overtook her.
He opened his eyes. Hard, bright, rapacious. A sizzling blue that threatened her sanity—her soul.
“Again,” he demanded.
The warrior in him compelled her surrender; he’d settle for nothing less than a proverbial white flag. But with one relentless thrust after another into her weeping core, the tightening tension and the perfect friction only strengthened their bond. It expanded outward, filling everything inside her, cocooning and disintegrating her at once.
“Feel me,” he whispered. “Tell me who you belong to.”
“No one.”
“Wrong! You belong to me.”
His determined growl resounded with passion and filled an empty place in her heart. Did she dare believe him?
“Say it,” he demanded. “Tell me.”
Inside her, he swelled, eased back, then pressed inside her again with a molasses-slow stroke that had her clawing his back.
“You!” Pleasure ripped the word from her.
“Only me. There will be no other.”
“Never!” She threw her head back to the wall.
With her neck exposed, Marrok planted his lips just beneath her ear.
“Come for me, love. Give everything to me.”
At his words, she released again in a cataclysm of sensation. Tingles poured over her, with a dash of hot ache and boneless satisfaction.
Marrok bit into her shoulder as his body tensed, jerked. He smothered his cry of ecstasy with her flesh as hot blasts of semen jetted inside her.
All between them was complete again…even if she didn’t understand his insistence. Was she more than the means to an end for him? Did he care?
Halfway down the stairs, clapping shattered the silence.
With a snap of his head, Marrok jerked around and stared over his shoulder. Bram. Olivia gasped in his ear. Covering his mate’s nudity with his own body, Marrok growled at the wizard, “What the hell do you want?”
“The way you dragged Olivia from the ballroom, I wanted to be sure you hadn’t strangled her. I see you had entirely something else in mind.”
A dazzling smile, a flash of white teeth. That rubbish worked on the ladies, but infuriated the piss out of Marrok.
“This was not for your eyes.” Every muscle in his body tightened. He wanted to charge Bram and beat him to a bloody pulp for witnessing even a moment of Olivia’s stunning pleasure.
Bram backed down a stair with raised palms in a gesture of surrender until he could no longer see them. “I heard more than I saw. Sorry. I actually came to tell you that Gray left.”
“Left?” Olivia whispered. “The Anarki are after him again. He has nowhere to hide.”
“He has hidden for over two hundred years,” Marrok said. “He will manage again.”
“Do you plan to continue training tonight? I believe Shock has had enough for today, since he disappeared after we ate. Should I send the others home?”
Bloody hell! Marrok wanted to stay with Olivia, protect her, feel her body writhe against his again, make certain she knew she was his. But Gray knew exactly where he and the Doomsday Brethren were training. Coupled with the staggering information about the keys, Marrok feared they had not a moment of training time to lose.
“In five minutes, I will meet the lot of you in the ballroom. We must continue. I’ve seen young girls wield a sword with more acumen.”
“Sod off,” Bram called, descending the stairs with a laugh.
Marrok turned back to Olivia. Her bare breasts still pressed into his chest, and reluctantly he slid from her sex as something vulnerable stole across her face.
Had he hurt her in his haze of fury and need? He was three times her size. Fear seized him as he forced his hands to gently curl around her shoulders. “Olivia?”
“That was humiliating,” she muttered into his shoulder.
“I lost my temper and my control. I never meant for anyone to find us. The responsibility is mine.”
“I care a lot less that Bram saw your bare ass pinning me to the wall than I do you carrying me out like a child in front of my father and everyone else. You accused him—to his face—of still being involved with the Anarki.”
“You make me…insane,” Marrok confessed. “I worry deeply, for I know what Mathias would do if he caught you. If I were cavalier with my trust and simply embraced Mathias’s former underling, you could pay with your life. My body might still walk because Morganna decreed it, but everything inside me would die with you.”
How could she not be moved by that? “Marrok.” Her face softened, and tears trembled at the corners of her eyes. “You say these things…”
“I mean them.”
She drew in a shuddering breath. “I would never help my father by betraying you, but I doubt you’ll ever believe me.”
Before he could say a word, Olivia wriggled herself out of his embrace, disappeared into their room and slammed the door.
Damn it.
With a heavy sigh, he righted his clothing and headed downstairs. This wasn’t over yet, not by half. Olivia had waited all her life to meet her father and resisted seeing the miscreant’s dishonesty. Richard Gray would put a wedge between himself and Olivia, should he fail to tread carefully.
At the bottom of the stairs, Bram waited.
“Is everyone ready?” Marrok asked.
“They are.”
The two walked toward the ballroom. Marrok wouldn’t call the wizard a friend exactly. Far too crafty and magical. A temporary ally, aye. But something troubled him.
“You seem to accept Gray. Why do you trust him?”
Bram sent him a cunning glance. “Who said I did? His past concerns me, obviously. But I’ve no specific reason to distrust him now. He gives every appearance of being a decent wizard and concerned father.”
Frustration clawed at Marrok. Did no one understand? “He has given us no reason to trust him, either.”