My eyes go round and heat flares over my body, head-to-toe, his dirty talk spurring me on.
I’m so close, so close.
“Oh god,” I cry out, greedy sounds escaping my mouth, and then with another brutal thrust from his hips, I’m coming, sideswiped by it all. It feels like my mind is obliterated, my limbs boneless and wild, shaking like I’m possessed by a ravaged demon.
Above me stars explode, falling down on us, gold against the grey world, sizzling against my skin, and then…
“Fuck!” Solon bellows, his nails carving into my skin, another guttural animalistic roar torn from his chest, and I’m squeezing him as I come, my body holding him tight until his hips begin to slow.
Holy hell.
I collapse against the table, cheek pressed against it, trying to breathe, staring blankly at the grey world. The remains of the stars still glitter with gold, then they slowly fade. I don’t know if that was magic or a result of fucking in the Black Sunshine, but it definitely felt appropriate.
Solon exhales, breath shaking, and runs a trembling hand over my ass, soothing the skin where I’m sure his handprints still remain. “I don’t know my own strength sometimes,” he murmurs by way of apology.
I don’t even have anything to say. I’m so blissed out that it feels like someone took my head off and screwed it on backward. My body doesn’t even feel like mine, it feels like it belongs to the universe, made of stardust and space.
Eventually he pulls out of me, leaving me hollow. I hear the zip of his pants, feel the table shift as he gets off it. He comes around the table and over to me, appearing in front. His lids are heavy, his smile lazy as he gazes down at me. Strands of hair have fallen on his forehead, giving him a mussed-up look that he rarely has.
“I have to say, I’ve never done that before,” he says, reaching for me. He grabs me by the waist and hoists me off the table like I weigh the same as a feather.
My feet wobble in my heels, so I lean back against the edge of the table, looking up at him in surprise. “You’ve never done it doggy style before?”
He rolls his eyes to the ceiling, lip curled, probably in distaste at my phrasing. “I’ve never fucked in the Black Sunshine before.”
“Oh. Did you see the stars?”
“I did. That was…peculiar.”
“Well, you proved your point,” I tell him, giving him a sloppy smile. “We definitely have rhythm.” Then I reach out on my tippie toes and brush his hair behind his ears. “Are you okay? Did you…feel like I was in any danger?”
He shakes his head, staring down at me. “No. Not this time.”
“Perhaps everyone watching us kept you on your best behaviour.”
He eyes the ghostly vampires who have barely moved. “I would hardly call that my best behaviour, my dear. Your ass might be pink for days.”
“I heal fast, remember,” I remind him, straightening his tie before I make sure my boobs are back in my dress. “Shall we rejoin the real world?”
He nods, and with a snap of his fingers, the flaming doorway appears behind us.
“Okay,” I tell him. “You have to teach me how to do that.”
“I bet you already know how.”
Then a look of gravity comes over his face. He reaches down and grabs my hand, giving it a comforting squeeze before he lifts it up to his mouth, placing a soft kiss on the back of it, his eyes never leaving mine. “You’re my weakness, Lenore,” he says quietly against my skin. “I never had one until now. Until you.”
My heart skips a beat at his words and I’m melting like gold.
Lord, this man owns me.
I can’t even respond.
But I don’t have to.
He brings my hand away from his mouth and then leads me through the burning door, back into the other world.
The flames fall away and disappear and we’re back in color.
Color and noise and smells and about ten vampires staring at us with wide eyes.
“Impressive, Absolon,” a female vampire with long blonde hair says, looking at both of us with a sly smile.
I try not to blush. We must have only been gone for a minute, and they must have seen or felt the shapes of us fucking like animals at high speed.
He says nothing to the woman, just holds my hand tighter and leads us out of the cigar lounge. I’m still totally out of it, overwhelmed by what happened, trying to recall each moment because I don’t want my brain to short-circuit like it did the last time he fucked me good.
I can tell Solon isn’t his usual collected self either. His step is more of a saunter than a stride, he looks relaxed and loose, his eyes bright and shining.
We walk back out into the party and Wolf is there to greet us.
Solon drops my hand and goes to slap Wolf on the back.
“Nice try,” he says with a hearty laugh, and Wolf gives him an innocent look in return. “I know what you were trying to do, golden boy.”
I’m smiling at them, feeling this warm and protective instinct toward them both, when a sulfurous smell fills my nose.
You’re the one, a sinister voice says inside my head.
I whirl around just in time to see a flash of teeth as they clamp down on my neck, my blood spilling to the floor.
Chapter Twenty-One
It takes half a second before the pain sets in, the agony of sharp foreign fangs tearing into my skin, realizing that someone, not Solon, is biting me, drinking my blood.
I scream.
The band stops playing.
The vampire sucks back my blood and then unhooks his jaw from my neck, and he’s stumbling backward a few feet with a look of awe and anger and my blood on his face, staring at me.
“It is her!” the vampire announces to the crowd. “It is the daughter of Jeremias! I have tasted her blood, I know!”
I stare at him numbly, my hand at my neck, trying to stop the bleeding. Wolf is already at my side, holding onto me, and Solon goes straight for the rogue vampire, slower than normal because of the dreamy state we’re both in, but he gets there all the same.
Solon reaches out and grabs the vampire by the throat, lifting him off the ground, squeezing so hard that I think he might decapitate him that way. It takes everything in him to regain control of himself, his rage indescribable. Everyone in the nightclub has stopped, panic on their faces, unsure what Solon’s rage might unleash.
“Who. Are. You?” Solon ekes out his words, each of them landing like the sharpest knives. “Who are you?”
I guess the vampire is as unfamiliar to Solon as he is to me. He’s got a buzzcut and black eyes, skin deathly pale, my blood running down his chin. Solon is breathing in deep and I know the smell of my blood on someone else is making him crazy.
I think back to what I saw, the monster inside Solon, the beast who ran wild with madness for hundreds of years, and suddenly I’m afraid. Not for myself, but that this might put Solon back, tip him over an edge he can’t come back from.
Wolf’s arm goes around me, holding me to his chest, trying to comfort me, perhaps picking up on my thoughts, but I can’t stop watching the scene unfold.
“Who are you?” Solon repeats again, his voice echoing through the room.
The vampire smiles in response, bloody teeth. “Yanik sent me,” he whispers raggedly, his voice ruined by Solon’s grip. “He told me we’d find the truth. The truth you’ve kept hidden from all of us. Surely you’ve had her blood, Absolon. Even you don’t have that much restraint.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Solon says. “But if she’s the daughter of Jeremias, then that’s what she is.”
But he’s lying. Solon’s lying!
He did drink my blood. A lot of it.
Far more than this guy had.
He knows the truth about me too, he knows I’m the daughter of Jeremias, whatever the fuck that even means.
Why didn’t he tell me?
“And now you must die for what you’ve done,” Solon says, his voice
turning to steel, his eyes flashing with vengeance. “You took the blood of another vampire. That’s not allowed in this club, in this house, in this city. You will pay for this with your life.”
A hush goes over the crowd, everyone taking a step back. I grab hold of the lapels on Wolf’s tuxedo, holding tight.
Solon lowers the vampire to the floor, taking his hand off his throat, black and blue fingerprints left behind.
The vampire stiffens, makes a move to run, but Solon snaps his fingers, freezing the vampire on the spot. The vampire’s eyes go wide with horror.
Solon lets out a low, raspy growl, the kind you’d hear from a wolf about to strike, and sticks out his finger, running it down the middle of the vampire’s dress shirt, then going slightly to the left, poised right in front of his heart.
Oh, fuck.
With his eyes fixed on the vampire’s wild ones, he holds his hand against his chest, fingers curved slightly like claws. Then it happens almost too fast to see.
Solon brings his arm back and then jabs his hand forward at lightning speed, driving his fingers straight into the vampire’s chest, the sound of tearing flesh and breaking bones filling the room, followed by the slick, sloppy sound of organs cased in blood.
The vampire can’t even scream, he’s held in place in much the same way I was with Atlas Poe, but the terror and indescribable pain is clearly visible.
Then Solon retrieves his hand.
With the vampire’s still beating heart gripped between his bloody fingers.
I gasp.
Someone in the room screams, possibly faints.
“Holy shit,” Wolf utters under his breath, and the fact that this is a shock to him isn’t a good sign.
Solon holds up the bloody beating heart so everyone in Dark Eyes can see.
“This is what happens if any of you ever lays a hand on her!” he booms, his voice never sounding so confident, clear, and deadly. “Let this be your only warning.”
Then he snaps his fingers as he stares up at the heart in his hand.
The heart immediately goes up in flames.
More gasps fill the room, cries, whimpers.
Solon then lowers the flaming heart and shoves it back inside the vampire’s chest. Then he steps away and the flames start to spread from the heart outward, quickly incinerating the vampire as if he were doused in gasoline.
The vampire can move again, his wild, desperate screams filling the air as he stumbles forward, hands waving wildly. He’s now just walking flames, his skin turning to charcoal as he falls to his knees in front of Solon, trying to reach for him.
Solon steps back and then brings his foot forward, kicking the burning vampire in the head.
The vampire immediately turns to ash, spilling across the rug, smothering the flames until a vague ashen shape is left behind.
Silence fills the room, peppered by a few sniffs.
Solon takes a moment, staring at the ash, breathing hard, before he looks at everyone. “Party is over,” he announces.
Then he brings his gaze to meet mine.
Is this what you want? he asks me in my head, a pained expression in his eyes. Because if you want me, this is what you’re going to get.
I shake my head. Not because he just Temple of Doomed this vampire in revenge, but because he lied to me. He knew about Jeremias and he kept that all to himself.
“I have to go,” I tell Wolf, my voice in a hush. “I need to get out of here.”
He doesn’t let go of me. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Wolf, please,” I tell him. “I can’t…I can’t be here right now.”
Wolf looks back at Solon, who is watching us warily but keeping his distance, just as everyone else is keeping their distance from Solon, hurrying toward the exit.
“Go to your room,” Wolf says to me, relaxing his grip. “Go straight there. One of us will be up there soon.”
I wrangle myself out of his grasp, gathering the ends of my dress.
Don’t turn around and look at Solon, I tell myself. Just get out of here.
I go through the doors into the house, then up the stairs, passing by Amethyst on the landing.
“What the hell just happened in there?” she says to me, noting the horrid expression on my face, my bloody neck and chest.
“Kalima,” I tell her. “I’m leaving.”
“What?” she asks, confused by my Temple of Doom reference. “Where?”
But I don’t answer her.
I open the door and step out into the night, running down the street toward the Bay. I can’t think, I can only run, the vestiges of my vampire grace enabling me to do so in my heels, my dress flowing behind me.
It isn’t until I get closer to the hotel that I realize I don’t have the room key on me, or anything at all, not even my phone.
So I have no choice.
I stop just at the base of the hill on California Street and make sure no one is looking before I make the air shimmer and warp, the flames appearing, taking on the shape of a door.
I step through the Veil for the second time tonight, but this time I’m alone.
Kinda.
Immediately I see shadows coming for me out of the darkness.
Fuck.
I start running again, up the hill, going faster and faster, the adrenaline flooding my system. I don’t look back, don’t want to see the spirit-hijackers slithering towards me, don’t want to do anything but be back in my hotel room, safe and sound.
I reach the Fairmont quickly, thanking both my natural athleticism and my now active vampire genes, and go to my room. The empty lobby creeps me out, but by the time I climb one million stairs to get to my floor, I’m too tired to care.
The door unlocks as all the doors in the Black Sunshine do, and I step inside my room, closing it beside me. I create a flaming door again and step through, the flames fading. The world is colorful, normal again, the city lights bright.
And then, only then, do I exhale.
Put my head in my hands.
Wonder if the tears are going to come, how I’m going to handle this because there’s so much happening right now and I’m teetering between horror and rage and frustration and—
My ruby burns against my chest.
“Fuck!” I yell, head back. No escape.
Turn around in time to see Solon appear from the Veil, still in his tux, looking incensed.
“Why did you leave?” he cries out, coming to me, grabbing me by my forearms. “Do you know how dangerous that was?”
He’s breathing hard, grinding his jaw, eyes wild and unhinged. His grip on my arms is close to hurting me.
“Let go of me,” I tell him, trying to keep my voice firm. “Now.”
He hates being told what to do. He bares his teeth at me, a rumble coming from his chest, but he lets go.
“I told you, I warned you,” he says to me, running his hand through his hair in frustration, turning around so his back is to me. “I showed you who I was, and that wasn’t even the half of it.”
“I’m not upset about what you did to that vampire,” I tell him, anger sneaking up in my voice. “He fucking attacked me, bit me, drank my blood. Violated me, Solon. He got what was coming to him.”
He looks at me over his shoulder, frowning. “Then—”
“You lied to me!” I yell. “You fucking lied!”
He shakes his head, turning back to face me. “No, Lenore. I didn’t lie…”
“You knew! You knew I was the daughter of Jeremias. I don’t even know what that means, but apparently it’s a big enough deal that some vampire risked his life to find out, at the behest of another vampire! You knew because you drank my blood and you didn’t tell me.”
“That’s not lying,” he says. “That’s just pushing a fact to the side for now.”
“Oh my god!” I exclaim, throwing my arms out. “Is that how you’re justifying this? What the fuck, Solon, you should have told me!”
“I was waiting for
the right time,” he says gruffly, avoiding my gaze. “I needed to figure it out for myself.”
“Well, that fucking vampire you just ripped the heart out of and set on fire figured it out a lot faster than you did!”
He wiggles his jaw, growing silent.
“You’re not even going to apologize?” I go on.
His eyes flick up to mine, his gaze hard. “I’m sorry.”
I shake my head, pressing the heel of my palm against my forehead. “You asked me to trust you and I did. I did. And you just…shit all over it.”
I close my eyes, trying to calm my heart, the adrenaline in the room is palpable. We’re both worked up and on the edge and it’s not helping, but fuck, does it hurt to have him betray me like this.
“I didn’t betray you,” he says quietly.
I put my face in my hands, letting out a growl of frustration. “Please stop reading my thoughts. I deserve some privacy.”
“I can’t help it,” he says. He comes closer, his scent flowing over me. He grabs my hands, gently this time, and takes them off my face. “I can’t help myself around you, Lenore.”
I don’t want to look at him, don’t want to break my resolve.
“I know you’re upset, I know you’re hurt, and I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he says, squeezing my hands. I hate at how grounding the gesture is, hate how it causes butterflies to travel up my arms. “I should have told you.”
I swallow hard, my heart aching. “What else aren’t you telling me?” I whisper.
“There are so many things,” he says after a moment, his voice raw. “So many things that I will tell you, that I want to tell you. But for now, we can start with this one. I’ll tell you everything I know. Just…”
He lets go of one hand and puts his fingers under my chin, raising it up so I meet his eyes. His pupils are black, his eyes shadowed, and in their depths I feel something radiating off of him that I’d never felt before. An intensity.
Devotion.
“I told you that you would ruin me,” he says. “Because I would ruin myself for you. You bring me to my knees, Lenore. Right to my god damn knees.”
Oh god.
My heart feels like it’s about to detonate.
Black Sunshine Page 29