His Dark Bond by Anne Marsh Page B

shoulders as if she abhorred the very idea of women who would hook up, quick and easy, with one of the Fallen. He didn’t think she was the kind of woman who condemned others for their sexual choices, so he had to ask himself: what was it about the idea of a brief, hot, sexual affair in exchange for an enormous favor that made her so uncomfortable?
    “No, mates. They were special.” Women liked romance. He needed to spin this carefully. He didn’t want to tip his hand and tell her about soul mates. Not yet. “Whatever they wanted, it could have been theirs. All they had to do was ask.”
    “There’s more to life than favors and sex, Zer.”
    Damned if it didn’t make him hard as stone, just that simple little thing of her calling him by name.
    “Maybe.” When you lived as long as the Fallen had, you didn’t dismiss sensual pleasures so lightly. You took what you could, where you could, just to feel a little more alive than dead. “Imagine a lover who knows what you want before you know it yourself. Who exists to give you pleasure.”
    “It’s no gift.”
    It was and it wasn’t. He wasn’t so far gone that he didn’t recognize the truth of her statement, even as he wanted nothing more than to deny it. “All relationships are give and take,” he said. “Our females give us what we need—and we always give them what they need.” His brothers were consummate seducers. She didn’t stand a chance. She was stuck with him, with them , and the sooner she accepted her role, the sooner she stopped fighting him, the sooner he could get on with the important business.
    “Do you know what the bond mates are?”
    “Women,” she said. “Women who trade their souls for favors.”
    She made it sound sordid. Cold. And it was anything but that. No, it was the hot, heated lick of lust. The lush scent of aroused female flesh. There was nothing cold about it at all, and she’d learn that truth soon enough. “We don’t choose just anyone,” he warned.
    “Right. You choose. The woman doesn’t do anything?”
    Oh, she did. Nessa St. James would. “She chooses, too,” he whispered darkly. “She chooses what she wants. She chooses her pleasure.”
    “Why?” she surprised him by asking. Most got that glazed look in their eyes thinking about the favor and its potential. “Anything” was a powerful promise, and he didn’t believe for one minute that Nessa St. James lacked an imagination. No, she might discipline that imagination, keep it under tight lock and key, but she’d thought about the bond. And the favor.
    Even if she wasn’t going to admit it to him.
    “Terms of our parole,” he said lightly. “When our asses were booted out of the Heavens, we were sentenced to play seducer down here in this world of yours. We seduce, and your kind likes it, baby.”
    “So you were condemned to an eternity of illustrating the pitfalls of giving in to temptation—and you think I should just agree to join you in that Fall?”
    She was dangerously quick. “There’s always a price for pleasure, baby. But we make it worth your while. You’ll enjoy every minute of it.” His voice was wicked, liquid promise. “You’re enjoying it now.”
    “Am not.”
    “You are.” He smiled deliberately, a slow, masculine smile he knew would irritate the hell out of her—and stoke the fires. “I can smell your arousal, baby. Hot, sweet welcome. I touch you right now, you’re coming on my bed. For me.”
    She shook her head. There was a dazed look in her eyes that he liked. That look was for him.
    “If that’s what you want.” All she had to do was tell him what she wanted, and he’d find a brother to deliver it.
    “I don’t believe in romance.” She didn’t bother yelling this time, just laid out her words, calm and slow. “I’m not going to be a bond mate. This isn’t something you can make me do, Zer, and we both know it.”
    “You have to do it,” he countered.
    “Make me,” she breathed, and he knew that she