Wild Nights

by Sharon Page

And if he told her, she wouldn’t love him.

  “All that matters is our future,” he said. His future of just over twenty-four hours.

  “No. I can’t do that. I have to know.” She moved her pelvis in a milking motion, skimming her nether lips along his thigh. “Don’t you trust me?”

  “Yes,” Michael said, even as he knew she would never accept what he’d been.

  “What is a Varkyre?”

  “Not exactly a vampire.”

  “Not a vampire?” Erin rose and slid forward, continuing her seductive rocking motion until she was astride his crotch, but her glistening pussy barely skimmed his bulging cock. “You do a pretty good imitation of one, Fang Boy.”

  “Fang Boy!” But he laughed. Settling his hands on her hips, he tried to press her against him. Erin scurried back.

  “If you want more, you have to tell me.”

  Strangely he wanted to confide in Erin. Wanted her to judge him knowing everything about him. His every sin.

  And if she loved him then …

  Unconditional love.

  Now he understood.

  Michael searched for the words to explain, and he apparently took too long. Erin scooted farther back.

  Delicious blackmail.

  “I surrender.” He grinned. “Now come sit on my cock.”

  She waited, innocently batting her lashes.

  “Okay. Varkyres are very similar to vampires. We drink blood and hunt at night, but we have to take human prey. We’re more predatory than most vampires, and we can’t choose to just drink blood from a bag or use other means to avoid biting human necks.”

  “Why?” Erin teased him by rubbing against his thigh, not his aching, insistent cock. Her pussy was wet fire against his leg, even through leather.

  “The folklore is that it is because we all stem from men who tried to gain immortality but who were cursed by druid priestesses in the name of the trio of Celtic goddesses—Morrigan, Epona, and Brigit. Punishment for enforcing the patriarchal society brought by the Romans. The men became demons and drank the blood of the invaders, but eventually discovered they could change people into demons like themselves. The priestesses conscripted warriors to destroy the demons, but some escaped.”

  Or so Cymon—the two-thousand-year-old Celt warrior and arrogant vampire elder assigned to babysit him up to his destruction—had explained.

  “So you were made into a vam—a Varkyre by one of those men?” Taunting him, Erin lowered her bare breasts until her erect nipples stroked his shirt. His throaty plea for mercy only made her smile. “Tell me more first. I want to know everything.”

  “I was made by a woman who was created by one of those men, but because she was a woman she carried the curse within her—in a dormant state, the way some humans are carriers of disease but are never affected. She had the power to make those she turned either Varkyre or vampire.”

  “But it sounds like there’s really no difference.”

  Michael groaned as she swayed her breasts back and forth, a seductive pendulum over his chest. “True, there’s really no difference. Varkyres don’t have all the same powers. We can’t read thoughts, for example….”

  And Varkyres were not immortal.

  “What else?”

  It was as though Erin could read his mind.

  She bent over. His heart lurched; his hips bucked as she licked his leather pants up the fly, tracing his hard-on.

  At the waistband, she gripped the zipper with her teeth. “Tell me more and I undo your pants,” she promised.

  “With your teeth?”

  She nodded.

  His chest rose with his deep, quick breath. “That is something I’d like to see.”

  She dragged the zipper down an inch. “Then talk.”

  For that, he would give her anything. “The reason Varkyres are called cursed is that we are not immortal.”

  Opening his pants one more inch, she asked between her clenched teeth, “What about the two centuries?”

  “Our existences are limited, lasting only to the night of the full moon two hundred years after we are turned.”

  She dropped his zipper. “But you said you’re two hundred and—”

  “I was turned two hundred years ago.”

  Understanding dawned in her huge green eyes. “And the next full moon is—?”

  “Tomorrow night.”

  “You’re supposed to die tomorrow night?” Erin jerked upright, gaping down at Michael’s shadowy face. “How could you not tell me this?”

  He looked apologetic all right, but how could he have kept this from her?

  “The truth? I never found the right time.”

  What a guy answer, she fumed. “We could have met earlier. Gotten to know each other. Fallen in love. Why didn’t you try to meet me weeks ago? Months ago?”

  “It would not have made any difference. Would you have loved me out of pity? Out of the desire to save me? Would you happily have met me if you’d known I was a vampire destined to die? I wanted you to know and love the man first, Erin, by getting to know me through e-mail.”

  His voice soothed over her through the shadows. A beam of moonlight slanted in to dance across his face. The silver stream hit his reflective eyes, dazzling her. And she knew the truth: if he’d tried to coerce her to meet, she would have refused. He hadn’t had a choice.

  “Are you only here because you are going to die?”

  He frowned. “There are two ways to break the curse. One is to find my soul mate. Find the woman I love, pledge my heart and soul to her, and declare my love for her before my destruction. If my soul mate declares her love in return, and her love is true, I regain my soul. I become mortal again.” He stroked along her arms, found her hands braced against his chest. “If you love me, you can free me, Erin. But I came to you because I love you. Because if I had only a few more days to live, I wanted to meet you before I lost you forever.”

  “What is the other way to break the curse?”

  Michael shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. It’s not something I plan to do.”

  “Tell me.”

  “The woman who made me offered long ago to take me over and make me a vampire. But I turned her down.”

  “Why? And why didn’t she make you into a vampire in the first place, if she could?”

  His wry look hid a lot of pain, she could tell. She desperately wanted to know. She bent, heart hammering, and opened his pants. Heard his deep, needful moan as she released his erect cock.

  It looked harder, bigger, thicker than she’d ever seen it. She pressed her lips to the taut head, slid her tongue over the silkiness of it, then stopped. “Please, Michael. Stop hiding things from me.”

  “You’re going to hate the answer.”

  Erin gave a long lick to the sensitive rim where the head of his cock joined the staff.

  His hips bucked up. “For more of that, I’d tell you anything.”

  She flicked her tongue again, then drew back. Waiting.

  “She condemned me to die because I betrayed her love for me.”

  “Did you do that for any particular reason?”

  But he couldn’t answer for moaning as she stuck her tongue in the little eye where his juices leaked out. Erin backed off again to give him a chance to explain.

  He was right, though. Learning he had betrayed another woman didn’t exactly thrill her. But she and Michael couldn’t have a future anyway.

  Could they?

  Do you love him?

  Michael lifted his hips, obviously in hope.

  She shook her head. “No, babe, you have to pay to play.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He growled. Teasingly. “I was young, angry, wild—impossible to tame. She was a beautiful woman—voluptuous, skilled, elegant. She had lived for a thousand years and possessed experience I couldn’t begin to understand.”

  “So you loved her?” Erin asked softly.

  “No. I didn’t love anyone, didn’t care about anyone. Not even myself. I was all
piss-and-vinegar arrogant, willing to die, and I screwed every woman who offered herself to me for desire or money—I didn’t care. This was England, just before the Regency, and I lived like a dissolute god, spending my days gaming, drinking, fucking, and fighting. I didn’t understand that Mrs. White—I never called her by any other name, had no idea what her real name was—was waiting patiently to turn me.”

  “So she could have you for two hundred years?”

  “No, she wanted me as her boy toy for eternity. She promised me immortality; she lusted for me, but I learned after she turned me that she didn’t love me enough to forgive my sins. She punished me in a way she knew would torment me. I had wanted to live like a gentleman; she made me into an animal.”

  Erin grimaced at the stab of hot jealousy. It hurt to know he’d been with so many women. But at least he was being honest with her. Brutally honest.

  She gently eased his cock into her mouth, swirling her tongue against his rigid silkiness. Needing to hear more, she gave him a series of quick, encouraging sucks.

  How she loved his taste.

  She felt Michael’s shudder of pleasure tear through his entire body.

  Erin sucked him in, carefully opening her throat to give him the sensation of being taken deep inside. His silver-purple eyes widened as she swallowed him up to his curls and his balls. Unfortunately she then gagged and had to let him right back out. She tried again and again until tears rolled down her cheeks.

  He brushed them away. “You’re unbelievable, love.”

  She loved hearing that.

  Slowly she released his cock. “But why were you so angry? Why were you willing to die?” She bent and nuzzled his balls, drawing in his earthy, erotic scent.

  There was definitely something more—something worse—Michael was not telling her.

  With exquisite care Erin drew his delicate balls into her mouth. Her tongue toyed with his large sac. She gave a light suckling that drew a groan of hunger from him.

  “Come up and sit on me, angel. Please.”

  She dropped him out of her mouth. “I asked you a question, didn’t I?”

  “My mother was a prostitute.”

  A bastard, then. Which wasn’t his fault. But his hands were tightly clenched into fists at his side, and his jaw was tense. She knew that he was angry remembering his past. He deserved to be given what he wanted.

  She rose over him, and he held his cock upright. Slowly she settled on him, drawing him into her welcoming body down to his fist. To her surprise, he didn’t move his hand, and she sank lower, letting her soaking lips envelope his hand as far as she could.

  The sensation left her gasping. He released his shaft and slid his hand to stroke her clit, and she swallowed his cock way up inside. It shoved apart her snug, sensitive walls. Struggling to find her voice, she asked, “How did you end up with Mrs…. Mrs. White?”

  “She bought me. From my mother.”

  So, in essence, he’d been sold into sexual slavery. “How old were you?”

  “An infant.”

  She stopped moving on him. Her shock registered plainly, and his uniquely beautiful eyes narrowed. Even though his reflected eyes appeared so guarded, so secretive, she could read the pain in them.

  Michael’s hands gripped her hips, and he tenderly moved her up and down on his cock.

  “My mother decided she didn’t want me. She was only thirteen—though I didn’t know that until years later. Caring for me was impossible for her. Most times she was starving or fucking brutal men who abused her. I don’t know exactly how old I was—not much more than a few days—when she took me to the Thames. She planned to drown me.”

  Oh, god.

  “It happened. Often.” He shrugged even as he thrust into her. “I probably would have died soon anyway of hunger, neglect, or disease. Mrs. White stopped my mother a moment before she tossed me into the river, discovered I was a boy child, and purchased me on the spot for a guinea.”

  “But she didn’t want you as a son, she wanted you as a—”

  “Shhh,” he broke in. “Just make love to me, Erin.”

  She wanted to do him until he hollered. Wanted to wipe out his pain and make him forget the future with the wildest fuck he’d ever had, but she stopped on her next thrust. She ached to go crazy on the huge cock filling her but realized what he was doing.

  He was trying to distract her. He didn’t want to talk about his past, and while he had every right not to want to go there, she wanted him to open his heart to her. She wanted this connection with him. She felt a tightening in her own soul, a depth of feeling she’d never known before.

  This might be the way to keep from losing him forever.

  She might be falling in love with him.

  She leaned over, and he parted his lips in anticipation. Reaching between her legs, Erin wet her finger with their mingling juices and traced the shape of his lips with her sticky fingertip. “I’ll give you the ride of your life if you tell me what you did that angered Mrs. White so much.”

  Michael licked his lips, grinned. “We taste delicious, don’t we?”

  “That’s all you’re going to get unless you talk.” She playfully teased him by clenching her muscles around him.

  “Okay. Story time first.”

  But he rocked his hips with a maddeningly sensual slow motion that made her cry out in pleasure.

  He was taking control—giving her what she wanted but making her pay now.

  “I met a woman—an opera dancer. She was exquisitely beautiful and selected her lovers from the most powerful men in England. I didn’t love her, but I felt like a king when I made her beg for me in bed. Her protector, a marquess, called me out. Pistols at dawn. When I got to the field, I was still drunk from the night before and confident I wouldn’t miss. Next thing I knew I was on the ground, watching the sky turn pink and gold, and my blood was gushing into the earth.”

  His eyes changed from purple to pure silver as he spoke. Erin arched forward and kissed his cheek. He seemed to be reliving the moment, for his expression showed astonishment, then wonderment, then resignation.

  “Mrs. White came and sent everyone away,” he continued. “They all thought I was done for, so they obeyed. I’d been hit point-blank in the chest. Luckiest shot my opponent ever had. When I was ice cold and about to black out, she plunged her teeth into her own wrist and held it to my lips, spraying her blood into my mouth. I could barely gulp it down fast enough. But she cursed me as I drank.”

  “But if she was willing to save you, why condemn you to die now?” Erin whispered.

  “She thought she could claim my loyalty still. I admit, I was an unfaithful, selfish bastard, and I’d put her through hell for years. She told me she could change me from Varkyre to vampire if she wished, as long as I would commit my heart to her.”

  He thrust upward so violently, Erin found herself lifted right off the couch. She had to grab his shoulders to hang on.

  “She made me into an animal, and I hated her for it.”

  His eyes had turned to dark, swirling pools. Unfathomable. Frightening.

  Clinging to his body with her hands and legs, Erin panicked. What had she unleashed?

  “After I was turned, I was angrier, wilder than ever before.” He fucked her so wildly, Erin could barely focus on his words. He rammed into her brutally, yet she’d never felt so joined with him, so much a part of him.

  “I discovered what I was after I ripped apart a groom in Mrs. White’s stables the first night. A rabid animal. It was the worst at first. She had to chain me up to keep me from running rampant across London.” Michael’s eyes glowed with triumph at the wild animal sounds she was making. “I want to take you beyond your control, babe.”

  Pleasure arced through her; she was on the brink of something spectacular. She struggled to speak. “Why … why didn’t you let her turn you?”

  Oh, he stopped moving, leaving her suspended seconds away from climax.

  He reached up to cup her breasts
and strummed his thumbs over her nipples. “I was bitter and angry. Once I had enough control that she could release me, I left her. And she let me go. It was from someone else—a vampire elder—that I learned there is another way to break the Varkyre curse.”

  Her breath caught as he grasped her hips and launched his cock into her over and over.

  “If you love me, you can free me. Now come, love. Come all over my cock.”

  Screaming, shattering, surrendering to his will, she did.

  He’d revealed his heart to her because she’d asked for it. Gone into the past he hated just for her.

  “Erin!” He cried her name, drove his fingers hard into her hips, and impaled her on him as he shot up into her.

  Heart pounding, she wrapped her hands around his wrists, holding him as he mercilessly ground into her and yelled with ecstasy. As it ebbed away, as he relaxed, she collapsed, melting over his chest.

  He wrapped his powerful arms around her back and whispered against her ear, “You are the only woman I’ve ever known I loved.”

  Erin’s head was spinning, her throat dry, her heart racing out of control.

  It was so early—so much had happened, and she was still wrapping her head around the fact that Michael was for real and that he wasn’t at all the man she had thought he was.

  Tilting her head up, she caught her breath at the tenderness in his expression, exposed in a slant of moonlight.

  “Thank you, Michael,” she whispered.

  “For the orgasm?” he teased.

  “For trusting your heart to me.” She nibbled on her lip, thinking. “Mrs. White is still … alive, isn’t she?” Alive was not the right word, but she thought Michael would understand.

  “She’s immortal.”

  “And after wanting you and turning you, she would just let you die?” She sat up and put her hands against his chest, gazing down at his shadowed face. Would Mrs. White pursue him? Want to claim him now?

  “I would imagine, after two hundred years, she no longer gives a shit about me.”

  His stark tone startled her. One interpretation of his cold bitterness stared her in the face. Her body was shadowing him, and she shifted to try to throw light on his features. “Did you love her, Michael? Did you hate her only for what she did to you, but you loved her before that?”