Shadow Boxing Read online

  “Tarin,” I muttered softly from behind my hand.

  “God you smell so good, so ready to be with me again.”

  “Tarin,”

  “I bet you taste even better.” And before I could utter his name again his tongue was delving into me, stroking me into a moaning, groaning frenzy.

  “Tarin.” His name husked from my mouth. “Tarin I need you inside me,”

  I heard him groan and he moved quickly as he could, to free himself from his jeans and slip on a condom. He pulled my jeans down my legs in one fluid motion, taking my runners and them off at the same time.

  I lifted my hips and Tarin pressed into me as I wrapped my legs around his hips at the same time, half rising off the back seat. I watched him as he panted, his fangs still clearly on display for me. I wanted those fangs in me as much as he did and by denying him fang banger sex I’d pushed him as far as he could safely go with me.

  This was dangerous territory to be in with Tarin. It was much like it had been when we’d met. Only this time, if Tarin attempted to kill me during sex, there was a witness, someone not on Tarin’s payroll. Except of course that Tarin had just paid the cabbie and extra hundred dollars to do nothing but drive us as we fornicated publically in the back of his cab.

  Oh shit.

  What a buzz kill and I was headed towards an orgasm too. Something I rather liked receiving from Tarin, a lot. And there was the crux of our sweaty, moving skin’s problem. Trust. Did I trust him enough to bite me during sex, again? The first time he’d done that to me, he’d basically put me on death’s doorstep. On purpose.

  “Tarin,” I muttered trying to clear my head as my body rode out the waves of utter joy he was bringing me. His tongue paid no heed to me and I felt the rising sweep of orgasm inside of me and all I could do was utter some guttural sound of being caught between a moan and a squeak as his mouth made me come in the back of the taxi.

  Tarin drank me down greedily fast, enjoying every bit of my release. He lapped between my legs and I allowed him to take it all as I tried to remind my body to recover from the feeling of passion he created within me. Something that was unusual to me as having sex for recreational and pleasurable purposes. When Tarin lifted his head and looked up at me displaying fang I moved quickly from under him.

  Tarin frowned as I hastily got out from under him and reached for my jeans again. I tried to ignore the look of how wounded he was, being displayed on his face. I heard the fangs snap away and again, I kept my line of sight diverted from him. I just wasn’t there yet and didn’t know if I could be, again. I heard him remove the condom and do his jeans back up.

  When a demon you meet for the first time tries to kill you during sex, it might break something within in you that is irreparable. Two weeks of playing nice, wasn’t exactly going to cut with me in terms of feeling that trust without fear again. Too much had happened between us for me to just ignore my instincts now.

  Tarin wiped his mouth with his hand and directed the driver to pull up outside his place. We exited the taxi in strained silence. I walked into his house a few steps behind Tarin who broodingly lead the way.

  7

  Ensuring I clomped up the stairs noisily behind Tarin, I followed him upstairs to the main area of the house and watched as Tarin, back to me continued to ignore me and walk straight towards his bedroom area. I knew this because I remembered it from the one time I had been in it previously.

  I looked around and wondered if I should go exploring or just leave the premises now that he’d cracked the shits with me and was giving me the cold shoulder treatment. Maybe I could steal a bottle of wine and head off, I thought, walking over to the wine rack in the main dining room. Tarin did appreciate the finer things in life and had great taste in wine.

  I was examining a bottle of red when I heard the voices. More than one. Maybe Tarin had run into Rick, is man servant, driver and would be murder accomplice. When Tarin had first tried to kill me, he’d had Rick help him with supposedly disposing of my body, and I hadn’t seen Rick since that fateful night. Tarin hadn’t seen him since a few hours later, when he’d then come to my residence in search of me and we’d had to be on the run the rest of the time.

  I put the wine bottle back in the rack and walked out of the room towards the sound of the voices. It was hard to make out exactly what was going on because the voices faded in and out and Tarin’s house I suspected was quite well designed and highly insulated. But I could tell the direction it was coming from, the bedroom area. I crept as silently as I could along the corridor to the door outside Tarin’s bedroom.

  The door wasn’t closed and my curiosity was too great to not want to look inside the room in question. I was expecting to see Tarin and Rick or Tarin talking on the mobile phone. So imagine my shock and surprise when I saw a naked Shaye Armadel, Tarin’s older brother, being ridden and pleasured by two females in his brother’s bed.

  “Katelyn,” Shaye ground out all sexy and smoldering at me, short blonde hair askew. Lipstick marks smearing his face as the blonde woman on top of him, opened her mouth and hissed over her shoulder at me.

  Tarin stepped into view then and glanced back at me briefly. His face looked utterly grim. The brunette in the bed didn’t bother to glance up at us as she continued to suck the breasts of the woman atop of Shaye, allowing her perky ass to bounce in front of Shaye’s face.

  “He didn’t think I’d need the room, since I wasn’t around and he knew I was with you.” Tarin smarted as the threesome continued to fuck away in Tarin’s bed.

  “Oh good, so this isn’t a spite thing then, given it’s your brother’s home, his bed and you’ve allowed a vampire into it to have sex in his bedroom and you could’ve chosen any one of a number of spare, guest rooms. Nice family, really.” I answered.

  “And a succubus.” Shaye muttered smiling before burying his face between the ass cheeks of said succubus again.

  “Told you.” Tarin muttered annoyed at Shaye as he turned his back on his brother and conquests and walked back out of the room towards me, closing the door behind himself.

  “Do you want to get out of here?” I asked Tarin, wondering what else there was to say given the oddness of the situation.

  “No.” He said and walked past me, heading towards where I knew his bathroom was since I’d used it also, once before. “I want to make love to you and have a shower, not necessarily in that order.” He muttered walking off at me.

  I watched him head into the bathroom still unhappy with me and possibly himself for wanting me at the same time as being upset with me. The life of a demon sure was confusing.

  I sighed and decided we had to clear the air or this strain between us, it would always rear it’s head at the wrong time. I glanced back at the bedroom that Shaye was in and noticed the door was still slightly ajar as the sounds of the vampire woman clearly reaching her climax became louder and louder.

  Shaye’s groaning became grunting and I watched as he sunk his very human teeth into the woman’s ass that was in front of him and she cried out, before the vampire sank her fangs into the brunette’s back shoulder blade.

  The sound of the shower came on and caught my attention again as I shuffled towards the bathroom slowly. Maybe demons had a tendency to want a particular breed of paranormal being, like vampires. Maybe Tarin just hated vampires because his body felt so driven to being with one and he personally didn’t like them.

  The bathroom door pushed open and I felt the moist air and steam greet me, as I walked in and noted the pile of clothes on the floor before the shower. Maybe Shaye had fang jealously and wanted what Tarin had, maybe that was why he was ruining his brother’s bed with the one creature Tarin despised. Were they really so petty with one another, that this was how they interacted together, Shaye and Tarin. I thought they liked each other as opposed to their bitch faced sister and her higher than mighty attitude above everyone.

  I stood outside the shower, watching Tarin stand under the water, letting it run over his
muscular form. He looked tense.

  “I don’t get it.” He said with his back still turned to me.

  “Don’t get what?” I asked, my eyes going down to the taunt cheeks of his ass and resting on the dimples above them where his lower back connected. He was so damn beautiful to look at. My insides could melt, while my pussy creamed itself just standing there, juices running down my inner thighs from the sight of him.

  Tarin turned around to face me and slicked his hair back off his face. “How I’m supposed to get you to trust me. The way you looked at me back in the cab, you clearly still don’t trust me.”

  “Tarin,”

  “I mean, haven’t I shown that I want to be with you Katelyn? Haven’t I demonstrated that you mean a great deal to me? Do you really want to fight this connection between us?”

  I crossed my arms over my chest and watched him reach for the body wash off the shower shelf.

  “Do not turn this around on me. You are the one who ruined the foundation of this connection between us when you tried to kill me!”

  “Katelyn, I explained that.” Tarin said lathering himself up. My mouth dropped open in shock.

  “Really, you think that one little night of sorry I didn’t mean it, cuts it?” I fired back at him. “What do you think I have so little value because I’m a hooker, is that it? Oh I get it, or is it that I’m supposed to be grateful that a handsome rich stranger has taken interest in street scum like me?” Tarin’s hand shot out and grabbed my arm and he pulled me, fully clothed into the shower, up against him.

  “I told you to stop talking like that.” He muttered as I sputtered under the spray of water around us.

  “And I told you, from the start, you don’t own me.” I replied brushing water off my face and looking at him defiantly as my clothes and runners got soaked.

  “I know that.” Tarin ground out angrily between clenched teeth. Tarin loosed his grip and I stumbled slightly. “I love you.” He could’ve just used a feather to knock me over, it would’ve been just as affective as his hands on me. But Tarin was there to grab me and hold me.

  “You can’t possibly know that.” I whispered staring back up at him.

  “Why because I’m a shadow demon built on conflicting emotions?” He asked me holding me against him.

  “No, because,” I paused and bit my lip. This wasn’t going to end well if I used honesty. One way or another, someone was going to get hurt. Because that was what we did, Tarin and me, we hurt people. He through his demon nature’s need to get it’s wicked little fix and me, through offering him a part of myself, that was bad for him to have, my truth-sayer blood. Tarin had fallen off the sobriety bandwagon when it came to my blood. I could see it now.

  “It’s not me you want Tarin. Katelyn Phoenix is just the packaging that the thing you want comes in and you messed it all up by binding Asha and me together to you.”

  “In order to save you.”

  “From your own attempt at my death.” I finished for him. I looked down at his chest. Everything we seemed to do, seemed so circular. So painful. Was that all we had to offer one another?

  “Katelyn, how many times can I say the same thing?” His hold on me loosened a little.

  “I’m not sure, enough to make it go away.” I looked back at him.

  “Well,” Tarin stated dropping his arms off me before turning around and turning off the taps in the shower with a press of a button. “Guess I’ll have to keep trying then.”

  I looked up at him surprised by his words. “What?”

  “You heard me Miss Phoenix. I don’t scare that easily out of a relationship.” Tarin said directly. “Unlike you.”

  “What?” I repeated, unsure what else to day.

  “We’re in this relationship together Katelyn and I’m not going anywhere that you’re not.” Tarin smirked. I could see the confidence in his eyes again. This Tarin was so different to the Tarin I’d gotten to know so far, and yet I still felt like I didn’t know him. How many differing sides where there to a person, or more accurately to a shadow demon? I wasn’t sure my emotional intelligence could keep up, it was all so new to me.

  “What?” it seemed like the only word my brain could remember to speak aloud.

  8

  We decided to raid the fridge, since neither of us were sure if Rick the man servant was still around and neither one of us wanted to go back to Shaye and his sex scene. My clothes were in the dryer and the fridge was well stocked. I settled on Tarin cooking me an omelet of mushrooms, chives and cheese and a cup of coffee for my dinner.

  “How is it?” He asked me as I cut into my omelet.

  I forked a piece of it and bit into it, chewing on it for a moment. “Omelet like, nice.” Tarin smiled over his own coffee back at me, proud of himself. Again, pride in Tarin was something I’d only just recently seen him display. Relationship Tarin was something new to the original Tarin I’d first met and I wondered if this was a true picture of who he was or who he wanted to be, for me. I wanted to read him but I knew I couldn’t. Well shouldn’t.

  “What?” He asked snapping me out of a haze.

  “Huh?”

  “You seemed a million miles away in thought, just then.”

  I forked another piece of omelet and spoke through a mouthful of food. “You told Arlow, that you had bound me.” I chewed a few more times on my food. “Were you lying to him?”

  “Why do you ask?” Tarin replied in his usual Tarin like way. Evasively.

  I brushed a bit of wet hair behind my ear. “Because there’s something going on here and I’m not sure I get it.” I stated glancing away from him.

  “Like what?”

  “Again with the questions.” I muttered to myself. The fork rattled against the china plate as I put it down and looked back at him.

  “You, you’re different and me, why can’t I feel Asha pushing and pulling at me, like I did before the last fight? There’s something odd going on here and it is somehow directly related to both of us, together.”

  Tarin blew across the top of his coffee cup and sipped from it. “Do you miss Asha’s presence?”

  I shrugged my shoulders, how was I to know what that felt like? Most of the time Asha was a background to me. I didn’t relay on her too damn much and she didn’t bug me as a result. It was like we had a mutually silent agreement on how I run my life, my way, with her inside my body at the same time.

  Besides the last two weeks with Tarin, I hadn’t really done all that much with Asha than very small scale truth saying jobs. She’d only come out in me once before and since then, I hadn’t wanted to let her do that again. But after meeting Tarin, I’d been forced somewhat to do exactly that.

  Tarin walked over to me and ran a finger down the side of my neck, pushing the terry toweling bathrobe I wore away from it, so he could touch more skin. “So maybe if Asha no longer exists within you, then you might believe I’m actually attracted to you, for you.” He said as his finger circled my shoulder lightly.

  His blue eyes connected with mine and held my eye contact and I watched as Tarin put his coffee down on the table before me, out of the way and he turned me on the stool I sat on to face him.

  He pushed my legs apart and brushed the bathrobe out of the way so he could stand between my legs. Undoing the waist tie on the robe, he pushed the robe, open, so he could see me, naked underneath the soft white material. My eyes noted his own towel was tenting somewhat.

  “I don’t think you think to highly of yourself.” Tarin said, as his hands glided over the warmth and curves of my body and I sat, legs open, nipples hard, letting him touch me. “We really need to do something about that. Build up your…ahem, confidence.” Tarin said softly undoing the towel from his waist and letting it fall to the ground. Displaying his fully erect cock back at me.

  “Are you getting funny with me Tarin Armadel?” Tarin smiled softly at me and pushed my legs further apart, and pulled me to the edge of the stool, just enough so he had maneuverability to slide a
finger knuckles deep into me. I groaned back in my throat at him.

  “I want to ruin you Katelyn, utterly ruin you for anyone else.” Tarin smoldered as he positioned the head of his cock where his finger had been only seconds early. “I want to ruin you so you don’t want anyone else.” He slid slowly into me, bending his knees to ensure he could go as deep as our connection would allow. We both paused to take in the feeling of each other.

  Me utterly open and stretched wide by him. Tarin’s hands glided down the backs of my legs to grip my ass as he tilted me, dangerously on an angle, so I was forced to hold the edges of the stool with both my hands.

  “I want you.” He groaned, nostrils flaring as he inhaled our sexual scent and began to slowly move in and out of me. Instinctually I wanted to grip him, keep him trapped inside of my heated core. “God damn it, you keep that up and it’s going to get messy here.” He ground out trying to keep a slow, steady rhythm, without disrupting the movement of the stool too much, as it scrapped across the kitchen floor every now and then.

  He felt so damn good inside me. I was going to loose myself to him, I knew in that moment, I would.

  Whatever happened to me, because of me being around Tarin, because of Tarin being in my life, I was already a goner. I should have known it the moment I laid eyes on him on that dark, cold, Melbourne night not so long ago. God I was slow on the up take sometimes.

  We were so focused on the intensity of what we were both experiencing that neither of us thought to pay any more attention to Shaye Armadel than was necessary, as he walked into the kitchen and leaned against the counter, watching us make love.

  It wasn’t a big deal for me anyway, it wasn’t like I hadn’t done a scene with two males before. And I doubt it was the first time Tarin had ever shared a lover or sexual encounter with his brother before, given what I’d seen of them in the bedroom earlier on. This was probably very normal for them. Shaye pushed off the counter and leant forwards towards me to pull back the bathrobe further so he could see my naked breast bouncing with each thrust Tarin put into me.