“Wait!” Gray called from across the room. “Do you have it, Olivia?”

“Get him gone now,” Marrok snarled as he ran for the exit, hoping he could make it through the door before Olivia mentally or verbally answered.

Before he could escape, she cried, “Yes!”

Marrok carried Olivia down the long gallery and up the stairs. The hard chunk of his shoulder pressed into her belly, his hot hand wrapped around her thigh. Blood rushed to her head—and not just from being upside down.

“Put me down!” She squirmed, fury racing like lava through her veins. “Damn you, now!”

Marrok didn’t say a word as his sneakers stamped across the marble floor. He smelled like sweat and man and hard work forged in steel. Olivia tried to ignore his scent and her great view of his ass. Better to focus on the fact she was pissed off.

“How dare you drag me out of there like some—some child in need of correction!”

“Did you think before you spoke?” he grunted as he mounted the stairs. “Before you blurted out something that might help Mathias?”

“Mathias?” she shouted to his back, despite the fact the impact of his every step on the stairs jolted her stomach. “Richard isn’t the dirtbag’s right-hand man anymore. He assured me.”

“So of course you believe him?”

“I’ve been reading magical history books. Three of them. He became a hero! And he’s concerned about me. I don’t think he’s going to sell me out to evil. And he knows more about the diary than anyone. Before you barged in and nearly strangled him, he promised to help us. He may have more information about the book’s secrets that might free you from your curse. How the hell can we learn anything if you won’t talk to him?”

“We will discern what we must.”

“Really? You’ve had fifteen hundred years and haven’t made a lick of progress. Maybe we should try it my way. My father has apologized for the past. You have nothing but circumstantial evidence. I have actual proof that he did the right thing, yet you’re determined to believe the worst. Why can’t you give him a chance?”

Marrok paused halfway up the stairs. “We know little about him, except he was once Anarki and he never bothered himself to meet you until recently. That does not inspire trust, and I will not risk you.”

Olivia saw Marrok’s point, but without proof, she wouldn’t believe that her own father was lying to her or still had ties to Mathias. “Those books described my father as Anarki enemy number one.”

“Deceit is in his blood. I can smell it.”

“Um…his blood is my blood. Does your little statement include me? I’ve asked you this before and, you know, I never got an answer.”

“Because only you can answer that question. I cannot prove or disprove that you and your father are hatching a scheme to steal the diary.”

Pain ripped through her that he could believe that possible. “Hatching? Hatching? Unbelievable! You don’t trust anyone. You blow suspicions out of proportion. You abducted me, just because I had violet eyes and reminded you of Morganna.”

“You are le Fay.”

“Which doesn’t make me an evil, lying bitch, but you don’t believe that either. Let me go!”

He began climbing the stairs again. “Never.”

Now he was pissing her off. “You threw me out of Bram’s office and are trying to keep me apart from my father because you’re afraid of what I’ll tell him. Admit it.”

“All right. Aye. I understand you want your father’s affection, but it cannot be at the expense of your safety.”

“And the diary’s. Isn’t that the real issue? Your ‘protection’ is to keep me away from Richard so I don’t tell him what I know. And your tenderness is a lie to keep me with you because you probably need me to open the book. But you don’t give a shit about me.”

Marrok simply snorted. He might be bigger than her, but she wasn’t taking this crap and certainly not while hanging upside down.

She shoved her hands into his sweatpants, groping around for a waistband to boxers, briefs—whatever. She might not be able to fight him with her fists, but a really vicious wedgie would bring him to his knees.

When her hands slid over smooth, well-muscled cheeks, she realized the problem: he’d gone commando.

“You’re not wearing underwear?”

“Never wore them in the Dark Ages. Why start now?”

Argh! This was not happening. “You aren’t taking me into the bedroom for ‘time out’ or whatever. It’s my emblem, my father, my decision.”

“You are my mate talking to someone who wishes to steal my book.”

Impasse. Left with few choices, Olivia took one of her few remaining options: She shoved her hands under his shirt and dug her fingernails into the hard flesh of his back.

Marrok tensed, but kept walking down the looming hall to their bedroom door.

“Is that meant to hurt?” he taunted.

Oh, the jackass! She dug harder into his skin.

No response.

Desperate times were upon her. She dragged out the desperate measures.

Olivia slid farther down his back, until he had to grab on to her knees to keep her on his shoulder. With a smile, she reached around his hips for his balls. If she could just reach low enough to twist them, no doubt he’d fall to his knees. Yeah, he was a tough warrior, but he was still a man with a man’s vulnerabilities, right?

She maneuvered herself to one side of his back, and bracing herself with her knee, reached to his front.

And felt his massive erection.

Oh, hell.

She gasped. “This drag-me-to-the-cave stuff has you all torqued up?”

“You hold the answer,” he quipped.

And then some. She might as well use his arousal to her advantage.

She nipped at his lower back in an erotic lick and stroked his hard flesh in her palm.

Beneath her, his entire body tensed. “You are playing with fire, woman.”

Maybe, but his steps slowed. He faltered. She hoped her touch was setting him on fire, because coiling her fingers around his erection was making her uncomfortably damp.

Suddenly, Marrok stopped, turned. He swatted her ass with a broad palm. A sting fired its way across her butt as he jerked her down, against his body—her back unexpectedly against the wall. Her shirt crept up her torso. Her bra was no match for his determined fingers, and soon he flung both on the floor.

“I warned you.”

He growled the words, eyes narrowed. Olivia swallowed, aware that she was half-naked in a hallway that anyone could wander down.

Always, Marrok had been a tender lover. Considerate. Gently thorough. She’d never seen this sexual beast rising to his surface. A hungry predator.

Marrok took her wrists in his hand and pinned them to the wall. His eyes burned into her with a fire so consuming, they looked damn near iridescent. Her belly flipped over. A dam burst between her legs. She shivered.

“Shouldn’t you be training Bram and the others?”

His eyes narrowed. “Right after you and I…talk.”

As his mouth crashed into hers, flattening her against the wall, Olivia sucked in a breath. There wasn’t going to be a lot of conversation.

He was ravenous, as if he hadn’t had a taste of her for a year, a decade. He sank into her mouth, an insistent male determined to take—and to give—undeniable pleasure designed to make her whimper with need.

“Marrok—” She tore away and whispered in protest. “You said talk.”

He stripped off his shirt, then braced his elbows against the wall and panted, his hot breath steaming across her skin. “We are. Eloquently.”

Maybe, but they weren’t communicating. “You think my father is helping Mathias and that I’m conspiring with him, don’t you?”

His fingers tightened. “He is your blood and you have longed to meet him, but we do not know him or his motives well. Be careful.”

“Answer the question, damn it. Do you think I’m conspiring with my father?”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

MARROK HESITATED.

“I deserve a goddamn answer!” Torn between fury and tears, Olivia shoved against the mountain of hard muscle trapping her in place, heating her breasts with his naked chest.

“As do I! You meet the man one night, ring him the next morning, which brings an Anarki army to my door. Now I discover you possess some emblem that unlocks the diary and you said not a word to me, but told him straightaway. What else are you hiding?”

“The Anarki coming to your place had nothing to do with me calling my father, since they already knew how to find you. Whoever read my mind also betrayed the location of the diary to Mathias. My father fought against the Anarki at the cottage, if you’ll recall. And the emblem? I didn’t know what it was or what it meant until now. It never occurred to me—Never mind, asshole.” She struggled against him. “You don’t believe me.”

“Why tell him?”

“Because the only way we’re going to get the book unlocked and get you uncursed is to work with him. Don’t you get that?”

Marrok just sent her a stony stare.

“Let me go.”

Against her, Marrok tensed. “Nay.”

“Your social skills haven’t grown during the last fifteen centuries. You can’t just accuse me of stabbing you in the back. I’m not Morganna.”

“Honesty from her is something I neither needed nor wasted my breath asking for. You…” he swallowed, pain shadowing his face. He buried his fists in her hair and stared at her with stark blue eyes. “Do not betray me. You will rip out my heart.”

His voice was a whisper, his words a plea. And they melted her like butter.

Was he telling her that she, a woman who had never been wanted, could bring this fierce warrior to his knees? How often had she fantasized about being wanted, having someone who would touch her freely, with affection? Marrok knew it. He could be feigning all this emotion to keep her close until he discovered how to open the diary and end his curse. When he’d met her, he hadn’t been hoping for a wife.

When he’d mated with her, it hadn’t been for love.

But when he touched her, she swore that nothing—no one—mattered as much to him.

Tears pricked her eyes as Olivia grabbed the hard line of his jaw and looked into his icy-hot eyes. “I know what rejection feels like. Why would I purposely hurt you?”

“Mayhap you resent your abduction, our mating. Or simply because you can.”

He’d given her power over him…but all she wanted was his touch, his affection. Marrok pressed against her, chest, belly, hips, thighs, as close as he could without being inside her. Then his lips followed, consuming hers in one greedy stroke.

She should stop him, sort out this tangle of thoughts, hopes, and desires before jumping into the fire. But her nipples burned into his chest, and he pulled her deeper into the kiss. Everything inside her incinerated. Letting him go was impossible.

Panting, he pulled back and drilled her with a hot stare. Without words, Olivia knew he wanted to be deep inside her. That look siphoned off her anger and inhibitions. She forgot everything but the moment as he pressed passionate kisses to her neck, his hands drifting to her breasts. His cock pushed between her legs as if begging for entry.

She burned up, itchy and hot, smoldering inside for something only he could give her. Leaning into him, Olivia opened herself to him—her kiss, her need, her heart. He took them, hungry and unrelenting. The contrast of his soft lips and rough stubble mesmerized her.

“Mine,” he growled against her mouth, challenging her to deny it.

“For now.”

“Forever.”

He sounded so determined. Marrok was looking to break his curse and die. Did it really matter to him? Did she?

He kissed her like she did, now at her mouth again, sliding deep. His callused palms burned her breasts, pinched her tight nipples. The pleasure-pain made her gasp. As Marrok unsnapped her jeans and shoved them down her legs and off, he took sensitive nipples in his mouth, one after the other, back and forth. Until she trembled. Arched. Gushed.

Olivia couldn’t believe she stood completely naked in Bram’s hallway, her back against the wall, panting for Marrok to make love to her. Worse, she didn’t want it to stop.

Marrok nipped at her breast with his teeth, then licked softly. As he repeated the process on her other, he shoved his sweatpants past his hips.

“Open for me.”

The need to feel him deep rose hard and fast. Olivia complied, and he kissed his way down until he kneeled between her spread feet. When he latched on to her wet folds with his mouth, tongue toying with her, she cried out, grabbing the dark silk of his hair as his lips spread desire all through her.

He lapped at her and her need soared. As she whimpered his name, he nibbled at her thigh, rose to kiss her belly, suckle a breast, breathe against her lips. “Release all your need unto me.”