by I. T. Lucas
“Delicious,” he murmured again. “Close your eyes, Marisol.”
She didn’t want to, but to disobey would have blown her cover, so she did as she was told.
His hand, the one that had so gently brushed her hair aside, drifted up, his long fingers closing over her scalp and tilting her head sideways to elongate her neck as he kissed and licked it.
She was getting seriously aroused, but then his other hand gripped her chin, and the fingers of the other one dug into her scalp.
Was he going to freaking bite her?
Forcing her eyes to remain closed, Eleanor held her breath and waited for him to make his move.
And then he did.
There was no loud hiss, no warning, before his fangs bit into her neck, but it felt nothing like Greggory’s bite. The rush of intense arousal and euphoria was there, but through the orgasmic haze, she could feel him sucking.
Her eyes popping open, Eleanor wanted to scream at him to stop, but nothing came out. Was it the shock? Or were the drugs in her drink more potent than she’d suspected?
Thankfully, her arms still functioned.
Lifting her hands, she grabbed onto Emmett’s wrists and tried to pry his hands off her, but he was freakishly strong, stronger even than Greggory.
Perhaps she was weak because of his bite and the euphoria it had induced?
Was that the big secret?
Emmett was an immortal after all?
Why hadn’t Leon and Peter sensed it?
But then the euphoria swept away the last shreds of coherent thoughts, and Eleanor ceased her ineffective struggles, surrendering to the sensations and soaring into nothingness.
32
Anastasia
Ana wasn’t sure that she liked Leon’s engine analogy, but what he had said resonated with her. His dominance games were pushing all of her buttons and bringing fantasies to life that she’d never expected to experience anywhere other than in her imagination.
“Are we okay?” he asked.
She nodded. “Game on.”
“Good girl.” He kissed the top of her head. “I’ll take a shower in the loft, and when I come back, I want you naked in bed, with the scarf tied around your eyes.”
“How am I supposed to give you a massage without seeing what I’m doing?”
“You’ll see me with your hands.”
“I guess I can do that.”
After Leon left, Ana grabbed a quick shower, moisturized everything that needed moisturizing, and then brought the lotion to the bedroom. An aromatic candle would have been nice, and some background music. She didn’t have a candle, but she could put music on. Clicking the television on, she scrolled through the music selection and chose an instrumental compilation.
Now all that remained was to tie the scarf around her eyes and wait for Leon naked in bed.
He had been right about how excited she was by these games. Imagining the way she looked, kneeling naked on the bed with a blindfold on, had her engine purring with anticipation. Now that he had planted that analogy in her head, she couldn’t think about her growing arousal in any other terms.
As she heard the water stop running upstairs, Ana straightened her back and pushed her breasts out. Just thinking about the image she painted, moisture gathered in her core.
This was the stuff of fantasies, and she was lucky enough to have a man who was as eager to play as she was. Still, a small voice in the back of her head made her wonder whether his insistence on the blindfold had anything to do with his strange love-bites, the ones that hurt as if he was striking her with twin blades but left no marks.
For some reason though, she was afraid to ask him about it. Well, the reason was quite obvious. Perhaps the phantom bites originated in the same place as the phantom voices she heard in her head.
Except, those had been silent since she’d arrived at the cabin, probably because she hadn’t gotten to fall asleep peacefully yet. After orgasming a bazillion times, she had blacked out each time.
Not that Ana was complaining. She would take orgasms over phantom voices any time.
As the door opened, Leon let out a hiss. “Fates, you are the stuff of wet dreams.”
“Funny that you should say that. I was just thinking that about you.”
She heard him come closer, then the bed sank as he sat on it, and then his hands and his mouth were all over her. Kissing, sucking, kneading.
For long moments, she was too lost to the sensations to think coherently, reduced to a puddle of need and want, but then she remembered that the plan was for her to pleasure him first.
“You were supposed to lie down and let me massage you,” she managed to murmur between kisses.
“I will in a moment. I need to get a little taste first.”
She shook her head. “Please. You promised.”
He let out a sigh. “I did.”
She mourned the loss of his hands and his mouth the moment they left her body.
“How do you want me?” Leon asked. “On my back or on my front?”
“On your front. I want to massage your back first.” If she started the other way around, she would never get to his back.
The bed dipped again as he lay down. “I’m at your service.”
Carefully, Ana reached for the lotion she’d left on the nightstand and squirted a generous dollop into her hands. His body radiated so much heat that she didn’t need to see to know where to put them.
Placing her hands on his back, she started a slow journey of exploration. He’d claimed not to have any scars, but if he had lied about it, she would find them with her fingers.
Except, all she could feel were his muscles, and the skin stretched taut over them was smooth. Leon didn’t have any hair on his back or shoulders either, and she wondered if he had any on his buttocks.
Only one way to find out.
Trailing her hands down, she massaged his muscular cheeks, covering every inch, but there was hardly any hair on them either. The guy’s backside was smooth and taut.
Yummy.
That changed when she reached the backs of his thighs.
There was a slight smattering of hair there, and it became denser as she went down to his calves.
He flinched as she took hold of his foot.
“Ticklish?”
“Yeah.”
Ana smiled and kept applying pressure to the arch. “How does it feel?”
“Heavenly, but I think it’s time you took care of my front.”
As Leon turned onto his back, the mattress shifted under her, and as she put her hands on his chest, the tip of his shaft brushed against her belly. It had sprung up like a tent pole, waiting for her to discover it.
“Oh, my. What do we have here?” Ana pushed back to her knees and took it in her hand, stroking it lovingly. “It feels so smooth and velvety.” She dipped her head and gave him a tentative lick. “I’m not great at this.”
That was an understatement. She’d done it several times for her ex-boyfriend, but he hadn’t been too thrilled with her performance, and neither had she. Why the hell had she thought she would do better with Leon?
Because everything else was better with him, and in her imagination, she saw herself giving him a blow job worthy of a porn star. In reality, she was barely able to fit her mouth over the tip.
Groaning, he cupped her cheek. “You’re doing great.”
Encouraged, she took it a little deeper, then retracted and licked the head all around. There was no way she could take even one third of his length into her mouth, but she was determined to go as far as she could. He’d been so selfless in pleasuring her with his marvelous tongue, and he deserved her best.
Except, with him lying on his back and her kneeling beside him, it was difficult to get the right angle, and that only added to her sense of inadequacy.
“What’s the matter?” He brushed her hair aside with his fingers. “Suddenly, you seem unsure.”
Ana chuckled nervously. “I think you will need to guide me through t
his. At least for the first time. I want to learn to do this right for you.”
“Stay exactly as you are.” Leon moved, and a moment later, the bed shifted as he got out.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m right here. Give me your hand.”
As she extended her arm in the direction of his voice, he took her hand and guided it to his shaft. “Get a little closer.”
Her hand still holding on to his erection, she knee-walked toward the bed’s edge.
“That’s perfect.” He combed his fingers through her hair, fisting it as he gently pushed it down. “Now give it a nice good lick, from tip to bottom and then up again as if it’s an ice cream cone.”
Ana chuckled nervously. “I’ve never had an ice cream cone that big.”
As she did as he instructed, his shaft twitched in her hand, which she took to mean that he enjoyed what she was doing.
Then his hand closed over hers, and he guided it up and down, sliding over the slickness created by her saliva.
“Part your lips,” he commanded.
As she obeyed, he brushed the tip over them, and then his hand left hers to cup her under her jaw. “Take me into your mouth.”
The new angle was much more accommodating to her anatomy, and as she went as deep as she could, Leon’s hand on her scalp tightened, and he uttered a guttural groan.
One hand holding her hair and the other cupping her jaw, he began thrusting. Shallow and gentle at first, and then a little deeper and harder, but never so much as to cause her more than mild discomfort.
He was in charge, taking what he wanted from her, but he was gentle, and she felt powerful nonetheless.
The only thing that could have made this better would have been seeing the ecstasy on his face.
33
Eleanor
As awareness tried to push through the fantastic dreamscape Eleanor had been floating through, she tried to push it down and keep on dreaming. Except, a sense of foreboding managed to filter through the euphoria, and as her eyes fluttered open, everything that had happened came rushing in.
Emmett was a freaking immortal, and he had bitten her.
Except, they hadn’t had sex before the bite. Did he rape her while she was out? Was that his perversion?
She was still dressed in the same clothes she had on when she blacked out, including the boots, but he could have dressed her after having his way with her. She didn’t feel any soreness either, but that could have been healed while she’d slept. Her immortal body recuperated quickly from minor aches and pains.
Sliding a hand inside her pants, Eleanor cupped her center. It was slick with her own juices, and her panties were wet, but as she withdrew her hand and smelled it, she detected no foreign scent.
It was all her. The damn bite had triggered several orgasms.
What was Emmett’s story? Was he a defective immortal who couldn’t get it up? What kind of immortal male bit a female but didn’t have sex with her before or after?
Whatever his problem was, Eleanor was grateful for it. It had saved her from getting raped. The guy was extremely strong, and there was no way she could have fought him off if he wanted to violate her.
Letting out a relieved breath, she flung off the blanket he’d covered her with and got out of bed.
At the moment, a bathroom visit was a pressing need, but finding out whether the door was locked took priority even over that. Hopefully, there was a bathroom attached to the damn bedroom, or she would have to pee into the fake potted plant in the corner.
As Eleanor had expected, the door was locked, and a strong sense of déjà vu swept over her. She’d been in a similar situation when she’d woken up after Greggory’s first bite, finding herself locked in a bedroom in Kalugal’s underground bunker.
Freaking immortals and their basements.
Emmett having one under his cottage should have been a huge clue, and she would have paid more attention to it if not for Peter and Leon’s insistence that he couldn’t be an immortal because their built-in alarm hadn’t gone off in his presence.
And then there was the state in which Emmett’s sex partners left his bed. Except, that could have been the effect of the drugs he gave the women. The well-being induced by the venom was counteracted by the drugs.
Eleanor felt no traces of it, but she wasn’t human, and her body had its own healing abilities on top of whatever Emmett’s venom could do.
Was it venom, though?
Sitting on the toilet, she tried to remember what it had felt like when Emmett bit her. Before everything had become hazy, she remembered feeling suction. Had he been sucking on her skin? Or had he been sucking her blood?
Talk about a perverted immortal. What did he think he was, a damn vampire?
Maybe it was part of the smokescreen he created to hide what he really was. Even if his sex partners somehow remembered the biting, no one would believe them if they started talking about Emmett being a vampire.
Not that blood-suckers were any more or less believable than the immortal descendants of gods.
And yet, even though Eleanor was super suspicious by nature, she’d believed Greggory that he had been experimented on, and that his human genes had been spliced with that of a venomous toad.
Perhaps her history with the government had made her more open to accept the unbelievable.
Eleanor knew a lot of secret projects that the government was running, and some of them seemed more like science fiction than science. That’s why Greggory’s story hadn’t seemed too far-fetched to her. He could have even told her that his human genes had been spliced with that of bats, turning him into a vampire, and she might have believed him.
But she was the exception rather than the rule.
Someone who didn’t know about the crazy experiments the government was conducting wouldn’t have believed Greggory’s story.
The thing was, Emmett didn’t use thralling to make his victims forget what he had done to them. He only used compulsion, which might have prevented them from talking about it but couldn’t have made them forget, and that’s why he drugged them instead.
If the nurse remembered Emmett’s bite, she would have appeared troubled or scared when Eleanor and Peter had asked her about her experience. Instead, she’d had that dreamy expression on her face, remembering only the orgasms.
Was Emmett a Dormant that had been accidentally turned and didn’t know what he was?
That would explain why he couldn’t thrall. From personal experience, Eleanor knew that learning to do that as an adult was extremely difficult.
The ability had to be learned at a young age.
Except, accidentally inducing a male Dormant’s transition was even more unlikely than inducing a female’s. The only plausible scenario she could conceive of was that he had fought an immortal male, had gotten bitten, and then had turned.
Heck, that might be why Emmett thought that he was a vampire. According to the lore, getting bitten by a vampire could turn a human into one.
34
Peter
Peter woke up with a start.
Damn, he’d fallen asleep.
What time was it?
Snatching his watch off the nightstand, he looked at the display. It was eight minutes after six in the morning, and Eleanor hadn’t come back yet.
Groaning, he swung his legs over the side and walked to the bathroom.
He’d stayed awake most of the night waiting for her, checking her room several times to make sure she hadn’t just forgotten to stop by his room to tell him that she was okay.
But that had been wishful thinking.
He’d planned on not sleeping at all until she was back safely, but he must have dozed off in the early hours of the morning.
Perhaps she’d decided to sleep with the guy after all?
It wasn’t likely, but it was better to believe that than the alternative. What if Emmett had discovered that she was an immortal?
What if he was one too?
/>
Peter’s natural alarm hadn’t gone off in the guy’s presence, and neither had Leon’s, but maybe Emmett was an anomaly?
It was rare, but some immortal males didn’t trigger the alarm. The two Peter knew of were entirely nonaggressive and probably didn’t produce the thing that set the alarm off. If that was the case, then Emmett shouldn’t pose a danger to Eleanor.
Besides, the woman could take care of herself even against immortal males, provided that they were civilians with no combat training. If Emmett was an immortal, he couldn’t work out in the community’s gym without people noticing his superior strength, and he was also on his own with no one to train with.
Eleanor should be able to take him.
Still, none of the self-talk made the unease churning in his stomach go away.
Rushing through his bathroom routine, Peter didn’t bother to change out of the clothes he had slept in, and only pushed his feet into his boots as he hurried to check Eleanor’s room once more.
He knocked, and when there was no answer, he opened the door and peeked in.
She wasn’t in bed, but she must have been there because the few items she had left on the dresser were gone.
Peter let out a relieved breath.
Perhaps she was in the bathroom?
Walking into the room, he closed the door behind him and listened, but no sounds came from the bathroom. Just in case, he knocked, and when there was no answer, he opened the door.
Cold sweat covered Peter’s back.
All of Eleanor’s things were gone. There was no toothbrush on the counter, no hairbrush, no makeup bag, and the place looked like it had been scrubbed clean in preparation for a new guest.
Still hoping that he was panicking for nothing, Peter rushed back into the room and opened the closet.
It was empty, and so was the dresser. There was no trace of Eleanor ever staying in that room.
Fucking hell.
He was going to murder Emmett.
It took every iota of self-restraint he had not to rush to the guy’s cottage like an idiot and try to break the door down.