by Trina M. Lee
Hands on the wall to brace myself, I gasped softly when I felt the heat of his breath against me. Nova gripped my ass, spreading me apart to expose every part of me. “I knew you were a natural redhead,” he murmured.
Of course I was, but vampirism had a way of enhancing the colors of hair and eyes. Not that any of that mattered when he followed the observation up with a taste. Just a teasing lick along my wet slit that continued up to include my ass. Surprised at that, I jumped.
Nova’s devious chuckle rang all around me. “I am going to have so much fun with you.”
My face burned red hot. What the heck had I gotten myself into?
Before I could overthink it, he ran his tongue back the other way to tease my clit. I moaned and twitched away from him, like that would help me to dodge his persistent tongue. Not that I wanted to escape but Nova’s touch was intense on a level that bordered on too much. And still, I sensed he was holding back the thrall, keeping its full strength at bay.
Gripping my ass tight to hold me in place, Nova drilled my pussy with his tongue before attacking my clit. Only when I was ready to beg did he ease off my clit to lap at the lusty juices seeping from my entrance. Every pleasure sensation was heightened. Each nerve ending sparked, coming alive in a whole new way. Nova hadn’t just been talking with his ego when he claimed that an encounter with him would leave me forever changed.
He brazenly licked my ass again before returning to my clit, sucking it into his mouth. Glancing back, the visual of Nova on his knees, wings tucked in around him as he pleasured me, brought me to a sudden climax. Legs shaking, I whimpered and moaned, needing so much more of him.
His hands left my ass. Once I was able to move, I turned around to find him shirtless, thumbs hooked in his pants as he slid them down. When his cock sprang into view, I licked my lips, a little nervous and a lot ready for every thick inch.
A tattoo on his chest above his heart drew my gaze. About the size of my fist, it was an upside-down star made of twisting vines and thorns. Aside from a long scar that slashed over his ribs on the same side, Nova’s body was unmarked. He had a warrior’s build: tall and muscular without being bulky or abnormally big. He looked as if someone had made him with painstaking care and detail.
Enamored, I stared at him as if, for the first time in my life, I saw real beauty.
When I failed to do more than lean against the wall and gawk at him, Nova grinned. “Like what you see?”
“You know I do. Why are you holding back? I can tell that you are.” Because if Nova had let the thrall run rampant over me the way I knew he could, I wouldn’t be able to think so clearly. Did he think I didn’t know?
He moved in close so I could feel the heat rolling off his body, pressing his cock against my stomach. A groan escaped him when I wrapped a hand around the shaft. “Because I don’t want our first time together to be based on some mindfuck. I want you present here with me. Not to mention that I don’t think you can handle everything I can do.”
Nice guy and jackass all at once. I could appreciate his honesty though. “That’s not for you to decide, but I appreciate your consideration. Really.” To show my gratitude I sank to my knees before him and took the head of his cock into my mouth. Peering up at him, I took great satisfaction in the way he cursed softly while tangling a hand in my hair.
“Fuck, I knew your mouth would feel better than any masturbatory fantasy could conjure.” Try as he might to withhold his power, the pleasure of my mouth wrapped tight around his shaft made his control slip. The surge of incubus heat that followed caught us both in its powerful grip.
Gathering my hair into a ponytail in one hand, Nova wound it around his fist, holding it up and out of the way so it wouldn’t obscure my face. He wanted the full view as I teased the head of his cock with the tip of my tongue before sucking it deep into my mouth. After watching me for as long as he could stand, Nova gently used his grip on my hair to nudge me back to my feet.
I glanced expectantly toward the bed, but Nova just shook his head. Lifting me in his arms, he put my back against the wall, holding tight to my ass. His cock strained between us, rubbing against my entrance but not yet slipping inside.
Our eyes met and my breath stopped.
Nova saw me suck in a breath and hold it. A dark brow quirked in question. “Still all on board, cherry bomb? I can stop, but I’d much rather nail you to the wall.”
“That’s pretty fucking romantic,” I deadpanned, batting my eyes sarcastically before rolling them. “I don’t want you to stop. I want you to quit holding back and blow my fucking mind already. Isn’t that kind of your thing, dark star?”
Nova’s pupils widened like a cat right before it pounces. He thrust into me, easing his way in rather than forcing it, something I was grateful for when I felt how large he was inside me. My body gave him a slick, warm passage.
“Is this what you want?” he growled softly, letting his hold on the thrall slip further.
My ears rang like I’d just walked out of a rock concert as the room filled with sex-charged power. It was everywhere, climbing inside me, making me think, feel, and want nothing but Nova. All of him in all of me. As deep as he could get.
Holding onto him like it was the only thing keeping me grounded, I moaned, “Yes. Oh my God, yes. Don’t stop.”
If he noticed my little faux pas, he didn’t let on. Maybe he even liked it. Holding my ass tight enough to leave bruises, Nova fucked me up against the wall until my moans became cries. Every cell was filled with him, like the way we touched was more than physical. More than sex.
When Nova pulled out and placed me back on my feet, I thought surely now we’d head for the bed. But no, the filthy incubus bent me over the arm of the couch and entered me from behind. The sound of feathers rustling about had become familiar. A cool breeze caressed my upraised rear end as his wings flapped gently a few times before resettling.
The static in my ears grew to a steady roar of white noise. Through it I could hear Nova’s heavy breaths and moans. Every stroke of his body into mine seemed to increase the power in the room until I saw through a haze of lust and heard myself begging for more. It was pretty safe to say that he’d stopped holding back.
Nova pumped several more times before withdrawing again, something that was starting to become a real tease. The touch of his tongue gliding over my ass and down my slit sent a quiver through me. I gave a little squeal of surprise when he followed up with a firm smack on my behind before sweeping me off my feet and carrying me to the bed.
“Don’t think I didn’t see you eyeing the bed, you lazy vixen.” Nova laid me down gently, but as he hovered over me on the bed, his hand slid around my throat, pinning me down beneath him.
I blinked dopey eyes, a silly smile crossing my face. Nova’s thrall was a drug like no other. “Just didn’t expect you to want to do me on every inch of this hotel room before we made it to the bed. I mean look at this thing. It was made for sex.”
As Nova stared down at me his face took on a tender, somewhat wistful expression. His power was a strange thing, as it seemed to consume him as much as it consumed me. Lost so fully inside the magic that held us, Nova crushed his lips to mine and roughly thrust inside me.
Above us his wings stretched out to create a black canopy like the darkest, starless night. I drank in the sight of Nova, all of him. From the horns curving off the top of his head to the tail that whipped about behind him, I enjoyed every part.
The molten lava spilling through his eyes made me his willing captive. An otherworldly passion consumed me. I opened myself fully to Nova, letting him possess my body with total abandon. So deep under his influence was I that he could’ve done pretty much anything to me at that point and I’d have let him.
But the passion consumed Nova too. He gathered me close, pressing his face into my neck, breathing sexy groans in my ear. Faster he moved, filling me harder and deeper, until his name was a cry on my lips.
Everything within him fed upon this
moment. The intimacy. The lust. The power of orgasmic release. I felt him pull from me as he gave back, creating a cycle of pleasure that brought us both to greater heights.
I came with an explosion of rapture that threw my head back and turned my cries to screams. Nova didn’t let himself come yet. Pushing himself up over me so he could look down at my face, the tender passion he’d shown vanished. With a hand on my shoulder and another in my splayed hair, Nova held me down beneath him and fucked me with savage wildness. Only when he had me twitching around his cock with orgasm yet again did he fill me with his release.
Nova rolled onto his back next to me on the bed, tucking his wings beneath him. He left several inches between us but reached over to take my hand. Maybe it was the strange high playing with my head, but he seemed unsure of how to proceed from here, now that we’d crossed the forbidden line. Or maybe he was the fuck-and-leave type, and now this would get awkward.
For several long minutes we didn’t speak. He just slid his fingers through mine and held my hand tight. The room felt off center, like we’d knocked the entire planet askew. Gradually the sensation of floating receded and the haze cleared.
“I have bad news.” Nova broke the after-sex silence in the worst way in the history of ever.
“Don’t tell me. You’re married. They always wait until the sex is over to confess.” My attempt at humor brought a tight, pinched smile to his face.
This was the part where he told me what The Circle decided to do with me. Great timing. So much for the afterglow.
Nova tore his gaze from the ceiling to meet mine. “The only way I could keep them off your back was to tell them about your blood magic. They’ve decided to hand down a punishment for keeping it from them, but you’re the one who has to face the challenge.”
“What?” I shot upright, my relaxed calm gone like it had never been. “How the hell is that a punishment for you?”
“They suspect I’ve formed some kind of attachment to you. Why else would I hide something from them? This is how they punish us both.” Using our joined hands, Nova tugged me back down and pulled me in against him.
“So what’s the punishment?” I muttered against his chest, eyeing the ink over his heart. Try as I might, I couldn’t relax completely. “It must be bad since you waited until now to tell me.”
Nova wrapped his arms and a wing around me, folding me in a blanket of feathers. “They want you to go back into the FPA base and get some kind of proof that we either do or don’t have a spy in our house. Alone.”
Despite the heat of Nova’s body at my side, a chill ran through me. “How am I supposed to do that? They’re setting me up to fail.”
His tail coiled around my ankle, fuzzy and soft on my skin. “You can do it. We’ll make it work. Most of their manpower leaves every night. I can orchestrate a distraction to ensure they all leave. You’ll only have the security staff to deal with.”
I propped myself on an elbow so I could search his eyes, though for what I wasn’t yet sure. “It can’t possibly be that easy.”
“Oh, it won’t be easy, but if anyone can do it, it’s you. You’re the strongest one in the house right now, Blaze. Once The Circle sees how valuable you are, they’ll back off. So you have to show them.” Nova pulled me in for a tender kiss that was affectionate rather than straight up lusty.
Naming me as the strongest on the team might have been a stretch. At least Ghost could control his magic. “I can see why you waited until after to tell me. Bad news is kind of a mood killer.”
“I don’t know about that. I’m ready for round two. We’re not leaving this room until you come at least three more times.” Waggling dark brows, Nova chuckled, his red eyes especially bright. “But I suppose I should tell you my theory first.”
“Theory?” I repeated, afraid to hear it.
“About your blood magic and your aura, why it’s so dark and demonic in nature.” Touching my face, Nova grew serious. “I haven’t spoken a word of this to anyone, cherry bomb, but I think before you became a vampire, you were a nephilim.”
The beat of his heart was loud in my ears, though not as loud as that word echoing over and over. Nephilim. Half human and half immortal, fathered by either an angel or a demon, a human with the powers of an immortal on a lesser scale.
“But how could that be?” I struggled to make sense of his theory. “My father was—”
“A man who sold you off the first chance he got because you were never really his to begin with and he knew it.” Nova paused, caressing my cheek as it all sunk in. “Most immortals who father an illegitimate child with a human are imprisoned. It’s a crime. This is still a theory, Blaze, but it’s one I’ll chase down if you want. It would explain your blood magic and why it’s so wild.”
Not to mention my red aura, a color only demons have apparently. Fathered by an immortal? How could such a thing even be possible? Would my mother not have told me? She and my father had slept in separate bedrooms since I was a child. Could that have been why?
Nova had just thrown a lot at me. Too much to let fully sink in while laying on a bed naked next to him. Climbing on top of him, I raked my hands down his hard chest. “Let’s come back to that later. I’m more interested in those three orgasms.”
I had to be. If I let myself go too far down the rabbit hole with Nova’s theory, I might discover something I’d never be ready to learn.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
RAYNE
“The three of you will bait the FPA and lead them on a chase. Keep them busy.” Nova pointed to Tavi, Ghost, and Corr. “I’ll be across town setting another trap for them. The goal is to keep every one of their teams busy. We want that building as empty for Blaze as we can get it.”
The six of us stood around the large kitchen island. Next to me Blaze leaned on the counter, playing it cool despite the nerves she’d confessed to me when we’d been alone. She’d come in the previous morning just before sunrise looking guilty as hell and stinking of Nova. Now the two of them could barely make eye contact across the island.
So that had happened. I didn’t love it, but I did love that she never had that guilty look on her face after leaving my room.
After hearing from Blaze all about The Circle of the Veil’s punishment task, I’d been pissed. This was all Nova’s fault. He’d been making personal decisions regarding her right from the start. Maybe I couldn’t blame him for seeing in her what I saw, but he was the superior here. If he couldn’t stick to that task, then perhaps he shouldn’t be here anymore.
“And you,” he continued, pointing at me. “You’ll drop her off near the base and remain in the vicinity. If she doesn’t come out by dawn, go in after her.”
“Let me guess,” I added, keeping my inner wolf on a leash. “If she dies, I die. That’s the rule now, isn’t it?”
Maybe I shouldn’t have said it, but I was pissed off. Fed up with Nova’s ego, I had to call him out before he sent Blaze into a deadly situation.
Blaze peered back and forth across the island between us. “Um, excuse me? What does that mean?” When neither of us volunteered more, she added, “Nobody here is responsible for anything that happens to me, Nova.”
Except maybe the demon himself. He seemed to be responsible for The Circle’s punishment. I let myself enjoy it when she hit Nova with an especially harsh warning glare.
Pretending like he didn’t want to leap across the island and strangle me to death, Nova continued. “Give us an hour to clear the building. Then go in. Upstairs is the control room. There will be some security in the building, but most of it will be in the basement. Go up, copy any hard drives you can gain access to. Threaten, abuse, I don’t care. Do whatever it takes if you need passwords or keycards.”
Nova rambled on a little longer, covering bases with the others and answering the questions Tavi threw at him. She’d been in a real mood since the full moon two nights ago. She hadn’t wanted to come with Corr and me. She only shifted when she couldn’t fight it anym
ore. Then she’d ran like hell through the forest and hadn’t returned until morning, her muzzle bloody from a kill.
Like everyone else here, Tavi had some issues to work on. If she could learn to make her human and wolf sides work together, she’d be even more of a badass. Still she wasn’t afraid of the challenges we faced here nightly. Already her eyes shone with eagerness for tonight’s mission.
I wished I could feel the same. All I felt was a barely repressed rage that tonight had to happen at all. Blaze deserved better.
After the others left I was alone with Nova and Blaze. He held us back in the foyer.
“Do whatever it takes to get what you need and get out of there.” He pressed a thumb drive into Blaze’s hand. “And for fuck’s sakes, cherry bomb, use the damn symbols I showed you.”
He pulled her in close, and I took that as my cue to head out to the garage. Nova’s closeness to Blaze didn’t threaten me. It worried me. Demons couldn’t be trusted. An incubus demon could be trusted even less.
I pulled the black Charger out of the garage and into the driveway. I hadn’t expected to see the car again after it was left in the street during Ghost and Blaze’s arrest. She joined me a few minutes later, her face pulled into a tight frown.
“Drive slow.” She let her head drop back against the seat. “Take the long way. I am not in a rush to get there.”
“You got it.” Anything to keep from delivering her right to an enemy. The Circle of the Veil had said that Nova couldn’t help her. They hadn’t explicitly said anything about me.
Blaze’s dainty but deadly strong hand crept across the console between us to slide onto my thigh. A silent plea for reassurance graced her touch. Keeping one hand on the steering wheel, I covered hers with the other. When she remained quiet for several blocks, I said, “If you want to talk, I’m all ears.”
“Just can’t help but feel like this is some kind of trick, you know? Like The Circle is sending me in there so that I become the FPA’s problem, not theirs.” She laughed bitterly. “They expect me to fail.”