by E. M. Moore
“Sex,” he said, pulling away. “I can’t make love to you.” I reached down between us. He was still rock hard, waiting, almost poised to do exactly what he said he couldn’t. Exactly what I wanted him to do more than anything. There was something I wasn’t understanding. “Not like that,” he said. “I just can’t. It’s not worth the risk.”
“That’s what condoms are for.”
He kissed my forehead before separating our hips. “Sometimes condoms don’t work for us. They tend to break.”
Despite the cold douse of water that should’ve brought on, all I could picture was the force of what would be needed to break a condom, and I was overheated. “Christian,” I said, half moaning his name. I angled my hips toward him and closed my eyes when his tip nestled into my sweet spot again. His careful control shook again. In unison, we brought our hips together over and over until it felt almost as if he would slide inside—except for our stupid underwear.
As if he’d read my mind, he pulled away and tore my panties down. This time, he didn’t take the time to wonder down at me. He scooted back, his head falling lower and lower down my body until I felt his hot breath between my legs. My breathing stilled, shocked at the sudden turn of events. I stared down, watching as his beautiful blue-gray eyes glittered before moving down, his tongue reaching out to glide across my center.
Oh. My. God. We were doing this? Okay. We were doing this.
He kept his eyes on me the whole time. I cried out. The intensity of the pleasure had me closing my legs, but Christian held them open, his tongue working on me just as his hips had except this time, there was no barrier. The slick glide of Christian’s tongue drove me higher and higher. I’d almost forgotten how to breathe until he made me cry out again, then my breaths came out in hungry gasps.
His teeth slid out to sharpened points. They teased the sides of my folds as he kissed and suckled me. My whole body shook. I started to raise my hips to meet his mouth, loving the way his teeth brought me quick shots of pain while his tongue was there to make it all better. He groaned, digging his fingers into my hips as he pulled me closer, curling his tongue around my nub. I ran my hands through his hair, urging him on. From center to front, he lapped at me as if I was a goddess and his only mission was to make me complete. “So sweet,” he murmured, the vibration of his lips sending a tantalizing spark of arousal through me.
I whimpered as my orgasm grew near. “Please,” I said, begging him to finish me off like this. There was nothing better than this complete skin-on-skin contact. His hot mouth had my insides tensing. His fangs scraped my sensitive skin sending a delicious spasm through me. I clenched the fabric of the sofa in my fists as Christian delivered me home. “Yes,” I said, his strokes quickening, ending with a scream-worthy swirl at my nub. “More.” He did just that, driving me higher and higher with quick flicks of his tongue until the world broke apart in front of me, a blinding intensity obliterating every other thought except for how good he’d made me feel.
I laid there suspended in a dream-like state until Christian sat back. Little by little, my fingers released their hold on the sofa, my eyes opened, my body relaxed, and my breaths returned to something that could be considered semi-normal. He knelt in front of me, his expression lust itself, but it was more than that. A lot more.
A circle of wetness spread over his boxer briefs. I sat up, my singular attention on one thing. With my palm to his chest, I pushed him over and slid his underwear to his knees. Unrestrained, he beckoned me. I’d never even thought of doing this before, wouldn’t even know if I’d be good at it, but I was willing to try. I licked him first and Christian’s head fell back on the couch. His jaw clenched, he said, “If I was a better man, I’d tell you to stop.”
Curious, I bent over him and took him in my mouth. Christian helped, moving his hips up ever so slightly. I did it again and again until he wrapped my fingers around his base and then tangled his fingers in my hair. Sweet, wonderful murmurs passed his lips, only encouraging me. Long, languid strokes turned quicker as his hands remained steady on my head. I had only one goal, wanting to make him feel as good as he’d made me. When I looked up into his eyes, there was nothing left of the serious, brooding Christian. His eyes were like silvery blue fire, burning up from the inside. When his gaze met mine, a tremor tore through his body and he pulled my head up, his own hand surrounding the tip of his penis as he groaned into the empty room, the sound echoing off the walls and filling me with a deep-seated contentedness. I sat back, watching him come back down to Earth just as I had minutes ago.
He reached for me, his arm outstretched like a lifeline, but the doorbell rang at that moment. He paused, peeking down at his lower half. “I can go,” I offered.
He gave me a hard look. “Definitely not,” he said, making a show of raking his eyes over my body. In a flash, he was off the couch and I thought I heard something in the kitchen. Then, he was next to me again, but only briefly as he stopped by to pick his clothes off the floor before disappearing again. A few seconds later, he was at the front door and I had no doubt that he was completely dressed, his hair back into place as if nothing had happened in here. As if my world hadn’t irrevocably changed.
I pulled my clothes on as I heard him chat with the pizza delivery guy. I was just tugging my shirt over my head when I heard his footsteps in the hall. “You got dressed?” I could hear the pout in his voice, but I didn’t see it until I smoothed my shirt the rest of the way on.
“Did you not want me to?” I asked, eyebrows raised. Maybe it would be like this with Christian. It would be hard to get him to lose control, but once he did, all bets were off. A muscle pulled in my stomach.
He raced next to me, his lips on mine within an instant. A short, quick kiss that took my breath away. “I don’t ever want to be dressed around you again.”
27
We must’ve fell asleep because we awakened in a tangle of limbs on the couch. The half-eaten pizza still out on the coffee table, the lid flipped open as if we were in the middle of dinner when sleep had overtaken us. That wasn’t exactly the case. We were done, but being lazy in one another’s arms. I couldn’t remember who fell asleep first, but Christian was definitely the one who woke up first. He stilled, his arms around me on the couch. I was still waking, eyes blinking at the sudden intrusion of sound when Christian pulled away, his hand searching the coffee table for his phone. “It’s Nicolai,” he said, his voice riddled with sleep. When he answered though, his voice was alert. I needed to ask him how he did that. “Hello?”
I stretched out as Christian sat up, one hand still on my hip. His fingertips brushing my bare skin where my shirt lifted.
“Yes, she’s right here.” He paused, that look of concentration back on his face that I’d been able to worm myself past. I interlaced my fingers with his, suddenly sorry it was gone. That wasn’t what tonight was about. I’d have to tell Nicolai Christian needed some time just like he did. Christian’s eyebrows rose. “What?”
His fingers tightened around mine and I immediately sat up next to him, my hand coming to rest on his shoulder. “What’s going on?”
“Yes, that was her.” Christian leaned into me. Then, he pulled the phone away from his ear and held it up to my mouth. I looked at him questioningly. “Just say hi to Nicolai so we can talk about what’s really important,” he told me, his voice filling with tense displeasure.
“Hi?” I said, my voice wavering.
Christian pulled the phone back to his ear, then, thought better of it and held it out in front of us, pushing the spot on the screen to put Nicolai on speaker. “She can hear you now.”
“Thank God you’re okay,” came Nic’s gruff voice. “None of us could get ahold of you. Is your phone off?”
I didn’t even know where my phone was. I couldn’t remember if I’d brought it with me from my room or not. “What’s going on?” I asked again, feeling a little like a scratched CD that repeats the same line over and over and over again. There was always s
omething wrong.
“The rogue vampires. They breeched The Fort.”
My breath caught in my throat, and already I was shaking my head, completely refusing the very thought. How could that happen? A full breech? That just couldn’t happen.
“We started calling you right away, and when we couldn’t get ahold of you, we either thought you’d been rounded up like everyone else even though we couldn’t see you, or you were with Christian.” He took a deep breath, then yelled out, “She’s with Christian. They’re both safe.” A split second later, his voice was earnest again. “You are both safe, aren’t you?”
Christian ran a hand through his hair. It was spikey and disheveled from sleep. “Yes. We’re at the house. Are you in contact with Samuel? How do you know everyone’s been rounded up?”
“Hold on. Dad’s talking to me.” Muffled words filtered through the speaker and then Nic was back on the phone again. “Get to the meeting room. We’ll open up a video conference with you guys so we can figure out what to do. Right now, you guys are the closest, the quickest to act if something needs to be done.”
Christian ended the call, grabbed my hand, and led me into a room in the back of the house. It was outfitted with a large conference table, fancy leather chairs, and a pull-down screen in front attached to a projector and a computer. While Christian powered everything on, I sat in the closest seat to the door, my mind whirring. Were Shannon, Liv, and Evan okay? Damn Samuel and his stupid reaction. Why wouldn’t he want to tell the guards what was going on? Now look at the predicament we were in.
Strong hands pulled my chair around and a pair of gray-blue eyes stepped in front of me. “This is not your fault.”
“We should’ve told them. If they’d known, they would’ve been better prepared. Dammit Christian, we left them there like sitting ducks,” I said, mimicking T.J.’s words as they finally hit home on what he meant.
“None of the information we gathered led to the inevitability of them actually breeching The Fort. It doesn’t make any sense. No one knew this would happen.”
I clasped my fingers around his forearms. “But did your intel tell you it wouldn’t happen?” He didn’t have an answer to that so I just shook my head. “The wrong decision was made, and now there are a bunch of guards at The Fort that were taken unawares.”
The computer beeped next to us. Christian’s gaze raised, and then he pulled his hands away to smooth my hair down. When he turned around to work on the computer again, I ran my hands through the tangles, trying to make it look as if we hadn’t just woken up.
Christian sat next to me and logged into a site on the internet. He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “This kind of thing doesn’t happen in our world. Usually.”
“Except for lately.” His jaw ticked, and I knew I’d hit a nerve with him. I wasn’t trying to tell him his father and The Council weren’t doing a good job, just that they could’ve done an even better job. “I think guards should start making decisions based on vampire safety and security. What harm would it do to put someone like Lex in charge of coordination? She’s lived and breathed guardianship for years. It’s not about taking the role away from The Council, it’s about putting the best person for the job in charge. Isn’t that what being a good leader is about? Not having your hands in every little thing, but knowing when someone else could do it better?”
His fingers bit into the skin around his elbows as we waited for the group on the other end of the line to pick up. “Samuel wanted lead on this from the beginning. I understood why he made the decisions he did. It was about protecting the trainees from any undue harm. Obviously that is a mission close to my heart.”
Which didn’t work out, I wanted to add. I couldn’t really fault Samuel. He knew how to train guards to fight, but did he really know about coordinating large groups for attacks? Or to prevent attacks? Did any of us if we’d never had to do it before? “I guess there’s no sense in dwelling on this right now. Let’s just get these people free.”
“There you are,” a hard, baritone voice said from the speaker of the computer. Christian and I both looked up to find Gregor in the middle of a table flanked by Nicolai, Stephan, and Connor.
Christian didn’t waste any time getting us up-to-date on what had occurred at The Fort while I’d been with him. There’d been a breech sometime past midnight. First, they rounded up the guards and corralled them in the cafeteria. The condition of the Rajyviks was unknown. Although, since they couldn’t get in contact with the main house, they surmised that they were being held captive as well except we didn’t have access to their security cameras like we did at The Fort. Connor pressed a few buttons on the laptop in front of him and a video feed came up of the inside of the guard building.
I gasped when I saw the disarray being broadcasted as if I were in a theater watching a horror movie. It was dark, and the screen had a greenish light leading me to believe that some sort of night vision sensors were being used so we could actually see what was going on, meaning that the guards were most likely in pitch black darkness, unable to see what was happening right in front of them. Up front, a body was tied to a chair and being beaten by a tall, slender figure. Off to the right, another perfect form was leaning over a body sprawled out on the floor. As I watched, she lifted her head and wiped her hand across her lips.
“No,” I said, all the while wondering who the victims were. More than likely I’d raced against them, sparred against them, eaten in the safe cafeteria with them day in and day out. “Why aren’t they fighting back?”
The picture on the screen switched back to Gregor with a tiny box in the upper right that held the current events at The Fort. “We believe they’re restrained.”
“Any idea who the rogue clan is?” Christian asked.
“The only players we’re recording seem to be merely clan members. No sight of any leaders yet,” Nic reported.
“We need to get in there,” I said, hauling myself to my feet and leaning over the table. “We need every available guard we can get here now to help these people.”
Underneath the table, Christian rubbed my calf. “Where is Lex?” he asked.
“Gathering up a group now,” Nic answered. “It’ll take hours before she can get to The Fort though.”
“Hours?” I asked, my voice high and tight. “They’re already hurting guards. We need to get in there now.”
“How are we going to do that?” Gregor asked, his eyebrow arching. “There’s no one to send in there.”
“Me,” I said. “I’ll go in.” My mind started connecting dots and running scenarios the second those words were out of my mouth. I could hear the others still debating the point, but I didn’t care. I knew this was something I had to do. “Listen,” I called out, raising my voice over top of theirs to be heard. “I’m supposed to be there, right? No one will think it’s weird that I just come waltzing into the place. I can bring in weapons, help free others so we can fight back. Where’s T.J.? Have you been able to spot him on the feed?”
Nicolai glared at me before finally answering. “No, we can’t find him. He’s either hiding or at the Rajyvik’s.”
“He’s hiding,” I said, vaguely only recognizing my answer as hope instead of real intelligence. “How did you find out about the breech?”
“One of the emergency alarms was pulled.”
“That was him.” I didn’t know if I truly knew or if it was a hunch, but if we couldn’t find him on the feed, he was too smart to be corralled in with the rest of the trainees. “If I can find him, we can free the others. How many rogue vamps are there?”
No one answered me for a few beats. I finally took the time to really look at the others on the screen in front of us. Connor’s hands were gripping the side of the table, Stephan’s eyes were hard as he stared at me, and Nic, though he looked as if he wasn’t happy with the idea of me speaking out, there was a bit of respect in his dark eyes as if he’d thought I’d do nothing less. Gregor raised his chin when my gaze
fell on him. “So far, we see ten. Four on the outside, six on the inside.”
I bit my lip. Ten against one wasn’t very good odds. If I could just get past the four, I could free some of the trainees on the inside and make it more of an even fight though.
“I’ll go in with her,” Christian said.
“No,” Gregor and I said at the same time, but I wasn’t sure who sounded angrier. It may have been me. “Not a good idea,” I said, not waiting for Gregor to start ranting. I turned toward him and shook my head.
Christian cocked his head at me. “You’re really just going to go in by yourself? That’s your grand plan?”
I lifted my shoulders. “It’s better than waiting hours. If I can’t accomplish anything, what are we losing? I’m not saying don’t amass the other guards and bring them down here, I’m just saying that I can’t sit back and watch what’s happening without doing anything. If I get captured along with the rest of them, what’s the big deal? I should’ve been there, anyway.”
Christian looked back at his father, barely a hint he’d even listened to me. “We need a better plan.”
Anger surged inside me. I reached over and shut the laptop, disconnecting the feed to his family before whirling on him. “Christian, don’t you even. You know this is the best plan we have right now.”
His gaze flickered from the laptop to me. “I’m not willing to risk you for the sake of the others. Did you ever think of that?” He rubbed the back of his neck, eyeing me the entire time. “What could happen you ask? How about maybe you could be the one lying on the floor being fed from? Did you think of that?” His voice rose and rose, switching into an almost panicked state. “You’re not going in there. Even if I have to tie you up to keep you here, you’re not going.”
I switched tactics because fear was practically pulsing out of his eyes. Walking up to him, I reached out for his hand, squeezing my fingers around his, and then placed a soft kiss on his lips. He immediately grabbed me, deepening the kiss. It was brief, but perfect.