In this moment, she had been worth it.

When he finally lifted his head, they were both panting. Marrok felt himself swelling inside her. This time, she would find satisfaction with him.

“I seek to pleasure you. To help you. To share a bond with you.”

He cut off the rebuttal he saw gathering on her face by pushing inside her again, harder this time, right against a sensitive spot at the very end of her channel.

She gasped, grabbing fistfuls of his hair. Her sex began to flutter. Good. He was so bloody ready, the top of his head was about to explode.

Her teeth nipped at his shoulder. Her breathing went ragged. Hundreds of years ago, he should have held his own emotional funeral. Yet even he could feel her outpouring of confusion, need, fear, and desire.

“No. You pity me!” she sobbed out. “You merely do your duty by me.”

Pity? Duty? Did she think pity made him hard? Or that mere duty made his heart ache when he saw her tears?

She was beyond beautiful, and the fact she’d remained untouched until their mating told him something had been desperately wrong with her life before they’d met.

In the back of his mind, he knew he should not care for her so. What if betrayal flowed in her veins?

Right now, as desire sizzled up his spine and emotion flooded his heart, none of that mattered.

“Pity and duty never crossed my mind, Olivia,” he gritted out, withdrawing, then sinking deep once more. Every downward plunge into her body brushed her clit, too. She gasped and dug her heels into his thighs.

“I might have sought to use you at first. That changed when you Called to me as your mate. Fate, magic, Kismet, whatever you believe, put us together. You are mine.”

Olivia’s gaze locked onto his with his words. Shock reflected in those violet depths, confused and hopeful. Wary. But her body yielded, taking him deeper, closing around him more. As her cry rang in his ears, something in his chest twisted and roared.

Her sex clasped him fiercely in release. Everything inside him demanded that he let go again, cement this bond between them that was too strong to fight or deny. Make her his mate in word, deed, and truth.

He surrendered to the pleasure, to the need he sensed within her, and gave her everything inside him with one last push. The white-hot ecstasy shimmered inside him, seeming to last forever. He filled her with seed, with need, with everything he was.

This time, in the aftermath, she spilled no tears. Marrok was grateful. Listening to her cry was like pouring acid on an open canker in his chest.

Instead, she lay quietly in his arms. And for the first time, he felt an odd peace lying with a woman after a thorough loving. She belonged here.

Dangerous to feel such for a woman whose help he needed to be uncursed. What if this was another of magic’s practical jokes, to be cursed by one le Fay and have his heart ripped asunder by another?

“Why?” she breathed, so quietly, Marrok almost missed it.

He reared back, looking down into her face. “Why keep you? Why make love to you again?”

Olivia’s tortured gaze tore at him. So afraid and confused…Did she not share his lazy bliss? His sense of rightness?

“Why try to convince me I matter? We need each other. I must be with you to stay alive, and you can’t—”

“Climax without you? Aye, but that is not the only reason—”

“You need me to break your curse.” Her flushed face mottled as fresh tears threatened.

But that was not all he needed her for. This caring for her, it was reckless. Yet, he could not leave her in such pain.

“We require one another. Why does that frighten you?”

With a desperate push, she tried to wriggle out from under him. Marrok anchored his elbows to the bed, rendered her immobile by spreading her legs wider with his knees.

He had some suspicions about her past. Time to find out how true they were.

“Tell me about your mother,” he asked softly.

“No.” She looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. “You don’t care.”

“You have no notion how I feel, Olivia. I want to know. Please.”

“You want to lay me bare? Fine.” Anger screwed her expression. “When I was seven, I was picked to play the lead in our school play. Mom always browbeat me to be average, but I didn’t want to be like everyone else. She loved the theater. I thought she’d be so proud to see me onstage. I practiced for days and days, giving up playtime, TV.

“After the first performance, all the other kids’ mothers brought them roses and hugged them. I’d really hoped…” Olivia swallowed. “She told me I would have been better in a nonspeaking role and that I was making a spectacle of myself. I quit the next day, but even that didn’t please her. She just nodded and went on.”

Her words made Marrok’s stomach churn for the young girl seeking her mother’s approval and finding none. “You cried.”

“It was nothing new. Mom took care of me, protected me. She was obligated to do it, and she never let me forget that. She was afraid of whatever magic I might hold, but at the time, I didn’t understand.”

The picture became clearer now. He ached for her. How could any woman with a heart treat her own daughter so coldly? “And you looked to her for love. When she did not provide it, you felt rejected. Lacking. Like a burden.”

Olivia bit her lip. She said nothing, but her expression told him that his guess was accurate. That explained why she was so eager to embrace her long-absent father, despite knowing so little of the man.

Which only made his next words more difficult. “So meeting your father was a dream fulfilled.”

She nodded. “He won’t reject me because I’m magical and he won’t feel obligated to care for me. He understands. And you rudely dismissed his every suggestion to keep me safe.”

“Do you think me incapable of protecting you?”

“In the human world, no. There is no one I would trust more. It’s the magical one I’m not so sure of. What do either of us know about this Mathias and his Anarki?”

“This place has magical protection. The book is hidden, locked. And until we discover its secrets, it is useless. Believe me, I know.”

“But my father—”

“While sharing blood ties to you, is someone you know not.” When she opened her mouth to object, he laid a finger over her lush lips.

“He hid from the Anarki for a long while, I know. Do you not think it curious that he never once felt safe enough to seek you?”

She looked away as if such had occurred to her. Marrok did not wish to shatter her dreams of the perfect father, of finally finding parental love. But he could not bear to see her crushed, especially if the man was not genuine or only sought her because she shared a connection with the Doomsday Diary. And Bram’s information about Richard Gray troubled him deeply.

“We don’t know exactly what he’s been through. How do you know that he wasn’t concerned that, by visiting me, he would be bringing trouble to my door? I need these answers.”

And Marrok did not have them. His gut told him to be cautious of Gray, but Olivia would hear none of it. She wanted to see the man again, hear his side of the story. But until she saw reason, trouble would keep brewing.

Soon, Marrok drifted off. The predawn gray was hours away, and still Olivia was unable to sleep. She slipped from bed and studied Marrok in the moonlight. At six-four, he consumed three-quarters of the massive bed. As sleep overtook him, his big, hot body had been wrapped around hers protectively. He could be so intimidating yet gentle—when it suited his purpose.

Despite all his pretty words, she didn’t dare trust him with her heart. He’d mated with her, then withheld that fact. He was insistent on keeping her here, even if it was no longer the safest place for her. And, despite his protestations, he surely pitied her. Ugh! The sex was mind-blowing, but he wouldn’t stay with her simply for the orgasm. For freedom and death, though, he would bear anything.

Unless she guarded her heart, she would fall for all his staged concern and well-acted tenderness and fall in love. Already, she’d let him far closer than she should. He’d had fifteen centuries to hone his relationship-avoidance strategy. Olivia always led with her emotions.

If she wasn’t careful, he was going to crush her.

Maybe her best defense was to give Marrok what he wanted: the means to end his curse. If he didn’t need her anymore, he would leave. He’d take a piece of her heart with him, but she’d mend. As long as she didn’t fall completely in love with him, she’d survive.

First, she had to see her father again and get answers. Find Richard and discern what he knew about the Doomsday Diary.

But Olivia admitted that wasn’t the only reason she wanted to see her father. As a lonely girl, she’d spent hours devising tales about the man, who had, of course, died in some heroic way and would have loved her to pieces, had he lived. As a confused woman, she had to try to separate her fantasies from fact, her emotion from logic. She wanted to know the man from whom she’d received her powerful le Fay blood.

Last night, before they’d left the party, her father had pressed a piece of paper with his phone number into her hand. Now seemed like the perfect time to use it.

Vibrating with nerves, she rose from the chair and wandered into the bedroom. On the nightstand, she spotted Marrok’s phone.

And enough weapons to defend a small country scattered on the floor by the bed.

An enormous broadsword leaned against the mattress, tucked between the bed frame and the nightstand. In a nod to contemporary warfare, he had something that looked suspiciously like a machine gun, two semiautomatic pistols, and a terrible-looking knife—for starters.

“I told you I would protect you,” he murmured, rolling to face her, his voice morning rough in the grayish light.

Olivia dragged her gaze to him. His blue eyes were so focused, as if he pointed a laser at her.

“Will these weapons kill anyone magical?” She nodded to the guns.

“They will at least slow them down. In battle, winning isn’t always possible. Sometimes, gaining the advantage to make a tactical retreat is enough to save you. You have yet to sleep. Come back to bed.” Though he said the words softly, it was a demand.

“I’m going to call my father. I need to ask him some questions. I need to understand what’s going on.”

Marrok’s jaw clenched, and he swore under his breath, but wisely did not argue. “Are you planning to call at five in the morning?”

She bit her lip. Put like that, the idea sounded stupid. But the longer she stood here dithering, the more she had a feeling that time was ticking away and she needed to act fast, get answers, and help Marrok gain his freedom—before he had the chance to rip out her heart.

“I’ll leave a message.”

Before Marrok could protest, she walked out the door, down the hall, then to the farthest corner of the house—the kitchen. In the semidark corner, she punched in the number she had memorized by heart. Then she waited.

A man’s voice, husky and slurred, answered on the third ring.

“I’m sorry to wake you. This is Olivia.”

“Is something wrong?” Sleep cleared from his voice quickly, leaving the clear tones she remembered from Bram’s party. “Did you change your mind about staying with Marrok?”

“No. I don’t know. I…” She hesitated. She couldn’t just jump ship and go with her father. Marrok’s point was valid; she barely knew the man. She’d be stupid to trust him too quickly, no matter how kind or accepting he seemed. “I’d like to talk to you before I decide anything.”

“I understand. Becoming mated, finding out you have magical blood, and so soon after losing your mother, is a great deal to cope with.”

Exactly. “I have a few more questions about the past. About the diary and the symbol on the front, my mother…everything. Can you talk now?”

“Of course. I should come there. Some explanations are better in person. Where are you?”

Olivia hesitated. She didn’t know him, but would the man who’d turned on the Anarki sell out his own daughter for the Doomsday Diary? She’d never know until they talked. Quickly, she gave him directions.

“I’m looking forward to seeing you,” her father said.

She disconnected the call and folded the cell phone in half and waited for her father—and the answers she desperately needed.

Less than three minutes later, a soft tapping at the door alerted her. She whirled to answer it. But Marrok beat her.

Shirtless and barefoot, he yanked the door open with his left hand. In his right, he held his enormous broadsword. Tucked into the back of his jeans, which were slung low over his hips, was one of those nasty semiautomatics.

He took one look at Richard, then whirled to glare at her. “You invited him here?”

“Yes. You don’t want me to go, and I need to talk to my father. I figured here would be safe, right?”