Amelia pulled back swallowing tightly to watch his eyes and mouth light into a grin. “I think this means you’re overdressed,” he teased, snapping the band of the little string of her bikinis apart.
“I guess it does,” she agreed archly allowing him to break the other side of her panties as well. When the panties fell they were both naked and in Kristoff’s bathroom speckled in blood and trying to get their bearings before the hurricane they’d become swallowed them up.
It was Amelia who surprised them both by speaking sanely. “Um,” she paused. “Clean. I’d rather be clean if we’re going to do this. I mean I may be a hunter born witch - but sex covered in the blood of my enemies seems a little…over the top ….even for that…”
“Right.” Kristoff promptly backed them into a huge shower of layered and tiled glass, mosaicked like a small blue and white church window. He reached behind him and the shower poured out on them with a quick flick of his wrist. Amelia moaned at the sensation of the deluge of warmth pulsing over her sore muscles and slicking their skin between them. It suddenly seemed they would be glued permanently by the humid wet seal created because Kristoff was making no move to release her. Instead, his mouth seemed to be drinking the droplets from the skin of her arching neck as his tongue followed its rise.
“Soap! SOAP!” gasped out Amelia giggling, realizing almost too late that her struggle for dominance in this was getting washed away by Kristoff’s force of nature attack. “This can’t be sanitary…” She added in feigned frustration.
“So demanding,” Kristoff grumbled, sounding almost - actually - put out, as he detached them to reach around to an inset granite shelf. Amelia used the moment to catch her breath and push her wet hair back.
“Then give me the soap…I’ll make it worth your while…”
Kristoff smirked back. “I think we can share,” he responded running the bar quickly through his hands to create a thick lather. Amelia reached for the bar but he shook his head and reached for her.
Amelia laughed and side stepped him, “I said to give me the soap,” she purred in playful demand, and he faked a growl and suddenly darted over once more, pinning her against a wall. Only to allow his lather slick digits fall and stroke her down her side until he reached her clit. “Hey. That area is clean, I wanted to see to the rest of us…”
“Well, it’s wet, but that doesn’t mean it’s clean,” he taunted darkly, his other hand with the soap rising to caress and pet her around her breasts and over her stomach.
“This really isn’t efficient,” Amelia groaned out, writhing beneath the slick touches overwhelming her and still clinging tight to Kristoff belying her protest. “You’re not getting clean.” She whined, “and it will take too long doing this one handed…”
But Kristoff seemed intent, one hand staying buried between her legs the other sliding soap along her skin in long strokes. Finally, he pulled back as if having considered her point, leaving Amelia collapsed in a quivering mess against the wall of the shower, burning between her legs from an incomplete climax.
“Now you change your mind?!?” She yelled. “I’m pretty much clean…EVERYWHERE thanks to you and I’m… I’m…” Finally Amelia snarled and snapped her teeth threateningly.
“You’re entirely correct, lyublyu.” Kristoff replied as if the conversation were normal. “I can’t possibly leave you like that. But, I still need to get clean… Since you insisted so eloquently about the unsanitary conditions.” Amelia narrowed her eyes in mock hatred, and then an impish look crossed her face.
“OK. I’ll help,” She smirked dirtily, considering how miserable she planned to make him in return. She could clean wet places just as well…
Kristoff pulled sharply out of reach and gave a toothy grin. “I don’t think so,” he replied quickly and soaped himself down just beyond reach. But instead of rinsing the soap off as she had expected, he shot a hand out and pulled her forward and against him.
Their skins slid against each other as if oiled and his thigh slid between hers to rock against her already sensitive sex. “Now you can help…” His breathed out, the exhale hot on her ear. Kristoff’s arms slicked down her back so he could clasp her ass, and push her more firmly into him. Amelia responded by rocking her hips against his already hardened body reaching up to bite his lips. “You make an excellent washcloth,” he gasped.
Despite herself, Amelia began to snicker, only to lose it in a gasp as he shoved her back into the wall to ride his thigh tighter - and increase the friction on his cock rubbing between them.
“I think.” Amelia panted out. “I think. If you keep that up, I will come without you…”
One of Kristoff’s hands slid around her hips to grab and knead her ass. “This should bother me because?” He replied calmly, as if the words hadn't had to be gritted through his teeth. But with the stimulation of her clit, and the pressure of his body against her, Amelia was too busy doing as she’d said. Crying out into and against his shoulder and trying to ride his thigh harder to string the orgasm out.
Amelia bit down between his shoulder and the arc of his neck, trying to contain the cacophony of sensation rioting inside her.
It turned out, however, that it did actually bother him that she was coming without him. Enough that he spun Amelia around and bent her forward towards the wall, kicking her legs apart and quickly slamming into her.
Amelia cried out again from the shock of the unprepared invasion and felt the swift new grind of his body inside her send her past orgasm spiraling back up through her. Kristoff clasped her hips hard to keep her buckling form still for his thrusts, nails carving small half moons into the delicate skin along the front. He pulled her hard against him, one hand rising to clasp a breast possessively, forcing her back flush to his chest. Kristoff curled around her form tightly, gasping just as hard as he could feel Amelia’s chest straining.
Amelia braced her hands on the wall as stiffly as she could with Kristoff caging her and driving her so hard from the back. But even then her body was slowly giving way to the tight pleasure his reckless pace forced on her. She felt muscles tightening in preparation for the next release. And she was sure it would kill her this time if it was the same as the last.
As if sensing this, Kristoff moved in more punctuated, erratic thrusts and dug his grasp deeper into her as if knowing she was close and wanted to follow. So, of course, Amelia fell into herself crying out after only moments of this intensity. As soon as the two found their breaking point, and the tension hit a tensile strength, Kristoff bit down on her neck and it’s match-point flare of sharp pain only punctuated and amplified the consuming pleasure between them, forcing Kristoff to finally let go and cry out in return.
Chapter 25
As the euphoria wore off, the water still beating down roused Amelia from her post orgasm daze. Kristoff in response drew her closer into his body and straightened slightly, and Amelia couldn’t help but relax into his stronger and more steady embrace.
“You bit me,” Amelia huffed lightly, running her fingers over the area at the curve of her neck, half expecting to see blood. “Biting is a strange habit for a vampire hunter to have.”
Kristoff replied by kissing the spot from where he cocooned her from behind.
“You bit me first.” He replied.
“I may have done that…”
“Did you like it?”
“Obviously.” Amelia murmured, and Kristoff spun her around to face him kissing her with no less passion as before but perhaps a bit less madness.
“Then why are you complaining?”
“Vampire hunters shouldn’t like being bitten - or biting - during sex…That has to be maladaptive or something…” Kristoff then bent kissed her forehead, nipped her lip and pulled away to shut off the water.
“You know, normal people bite each other during sex too.”
“Yeah, but,” Amelia blushed darker, and Kristoff surrounded her with a big white towel. (What was with the white? It showed blood more easily?
!) Amelia pondered this momentarily as she snuggled in. “They only do it to imitate vampires.” She finished.
At this Kristoff started laughing out loud, he continued as he walked back to the shower door and covered himself in a towel. “Let me guess. Your mother told your sister that. And then she told you, and now I get to hear about what my lover’s mom doesn't like in bed.” He continued to laugh. “That’s just not right you know.”
At this point, Amelia had realized that Kristoff had just called her his lover - and that she had just quoted her mother’s sex ideas at him. One elated and frightened her, the other just made her feel kind of naive. She wondered how much she really knew about real, everyday life.
Noticing Amelia’s awkward silence as she contemplated this new set of thoughts, Kristoff came over to her and brushed her wet hair out of her face in concern.
“Would you prefer I not find your mother’s sex life uninteresting, lyublyu? Or should I have not called you lover?” he finished the last almost vulnerably. A feeling Amelia wouldn’t have attributed to him in anything but some alternate reality. She looked up into his eyes and smiled.
“No,” she said quietly. “Lover is fine. And it does seem a little icky to be talking about my mother’s sexual mores right after we … um… you know whatever you want to call this…But if this is going to go on, I want to be exclusive.”
Kristoff smiled back and ran his finger through her wet hair again. “Well,” he began with a rather playful smile. Amelia knew something she wasn’t going to like was getting ready to come out of his mouth. “As your stalking probably proved, we’ve been exclusive ever since I met you.” He shrugged, “Couldn’t find anyone as interesting, and then I couldn’t replace you.”
Amelia tried to be annoyed with the whole ‘couldn’t replace,’ but at the heart of it was the fact that he had been interested in her from the start, and just being her had made her irreplaceable to him. Even if he’d obviously tried. Badly. `She smirked.
“Well you definitely gave this replacing me your all, I’m not sure there’s a club in New York - classy or trashy - you haven't tried at this point. And I’ve seen you at them all, without the luxury of either being inside or having a drink in my hand.”
“Well, we’ll have to fix that won’t we,” Kristoff laughed. “I’ll have to take you out and show you off. If nothing else it will make Kolya immensely jealous.” He started walking out toward the room Amelia assumed was his bedroom.
Amelia looked at his retreating back puzzled. “Why?”
“He thought you were rather attractive himself.” Kristoff called over his shoulder. “But why don’t we take him along as a consolation prize.”
Amelia walked to the doorway he had crossed through, looking into what was definitely his room. “I don’t know. He sent me on that crazy mission against Gianni… What was that really about anyway? Did he know Gianni was Mona’s killer all along?”
Kristoff was going through his drawers looking for something when she asked, and he responded again without looking a her. “The Gianni thing was probably just a lucky guess… he probably figured, in his usual mixed-up way, that sending you on a suicide heist would get my attention…But,” he continued harshly. “I feel the need to discuss that with him sooner than later.”
Amelia walked up to Kristoff’s side puzzled. “But it seems so unlike the Kolya I know. He’s so gentle and well-mannered.”
Kristoff barked out a laugh and turned to hand her another of his shirts, this one clean. “Gentle? Hardly.” Kristoff snorted.
“Why are you trying to distract me from my question?”
“Kolya can be those things, but he is others as well. Some of them not so nice. He has to be to run our family’s business.”
“Antiques a rough trade then?”
Kristoff - surprisingly - pulled a pair of flannel sleep pants from his drawer and dropped his towel to put them on. “You couldn’t possibly imagine.” He muttered. Clearing his throat, Kristoff settled the pants on his hips with what seemed to be resignation. “With great amounts of money, and politics, there will always be problems. In some ways, Kolya keeping the business is the best gift he ever gave me. I’m free to move as I want and do as I want. He must be ever careful to act on the family’s best interests and manage a very lucrative business at the same time. It’ all very… medieval. No. More like the renaissance. Think the Borgias.”
“Are you Russian mafia?”
Kristoff cringed and shook his head. “No, no. Just. Old money… Old blood. Things Americans can rarely understand… Families like the ones your own mother must have come from. Only, royalty.”
“Oh. You mean European elitist society snobs. Got it.”
“Sure,” Kristoff agreed quirking his lips. “It’s why I travel as much as possible. If I’m not home, then there’s no one to bother me with things like Duty and Decorum. Besides, as a hunter, I have all sorts of excuses for being ‘less civilized’ than the rest.”
“Less civilized?” Amelia laughed. “Your taste in clothing is GQ and your dedication to hunting is only so-so. Most of the time you club and make art like any other spoiled rich kid in this city.”
“Hey! I’m not some club hopping brat here. And my art is very good.” He grabbed Amelia around the waist and tossed her back on the bed.
Amelia knelt after she bounced a few times on impact. “And so modest too.” .
Kristoff dove for her spot on the bed tackling her into the sheets. “Enough about my brother, and certainly enough about business and family.” He growled theatrically then tickled her sides. Amelia laughed uncontrollably. “Why don’t you stay here tonight.”
Amelia paused, was she ready for that kind of seriousness in their relationship? “Amelia.” Kristoff said more seriously. “That wasn’t really a question, we may be having fun now, but we have both pissed off the Italian conclave of vampires tonight. We’re coming up on a serious talk and you can have it either now or tomorrow. I’ll let you off till tomorrow if you stay. But if you insist on leaving - well, it won’t matter because when we’re finished talking you’ll find it’s in your best interest and your family’s that you don’t.”
“What do you mean? I just pissed him off, I didn’t kill anyone. He has no reason to pursue me - yet. But Gianni killed my sister. I’ll be coming for him.”
“No. You did not ‘just piss him off,’ you started a war between the Italian vampire family and yours - and by my helping you - my family as well. You made yourself not only an interesting target, but gave Gianni the opening he needed to declare all out war on the Dagda clan. They’ll be very focused on eliminating the whole branch of your line in the city - using the attack as a justification to everyone else.”
“Justification? Vampires and Hunters don’t need justification to kill each other. We always just…will.”
Kristoff shoved her shoulder with his giving a grunt in a way that expressed he was once more about to explain something he thought made her naive to the hunting trade. “No Amelia, we all keep a relatively comfortable…truce…between us. If vampires and hunters went at it all the time, the streets would run with blood and none of us - but the worst of us - would be alive. Hunters usually go after vampires who step out of line, and vampires try not to target hunters who leave them be.”
“No one told me that we had some formal agreement with vampires about how and when we should hunt.” Amelia glared back.
“You’re family is alive isn’t it?” Grated Kristoff. Amelia shot him a look. “Except your sister.” He held up his hands in surrender. “She was actively hunting, putting herself out there for the vampire conclaves to notice,” he growled. “Your mother may as well have killed her herself with the way she sent your sister out to hunt outside the compacts.”
Amelia jerked away from Kristoff, “How dare you say that!” She started crawling off the bed, but Kristoff grabbed her ankle and yanked her back.
“I’m sorry Amelia, but even in my ‘society snob’ family, as
powerful as we are, we know not to go out seeking trouble. And you have to admit that your mother is a bit of an extremist.”
Amelia opened her mouth to argue, but closed it slowly. He was right of course. The longer she was around him, a functioning and successful hunter, the more her mother seemed a little bit off on her ideas. She sighed. “Yes, well, that’s good and all. But we are on the other side of that coin. We have incited the Italian family, and if - you’re right - they are coming after us. Does this mean other vampire conclaves will be coming too?”
“Luckily,” Kristoff said on an exhale. “No. They’ll just leave you to the Italians as justice and ignore the outcome. Even if your family was to defeat the Italians, the other conclaves would just expand - quite happily I’d imagine - to fill the power vacuum and then move on with their lives.”
“How do you know so much about vampires?” Amelia asked almost suspiciously, she still remembered what her family had insinuated about the European clans - intermarrying with other species. Could he have a vampire somewhere in the family line? But Kristoff rolled his eyes at her, obviously knowing what her question implied.
“My family is very old. We have been around longer than almost any of the other clans, we have watched clans and conclaves come and go. And we have prevailed. We just have experience in how this works you could say.”
Amelia quieted. “I should warn my family.” Kristoff pursed his lips and breathed out as if preparing to deal with something he didn’t want to do - but needed to get done.
“I was going to give them until tomorrow, since I doubt Gianni will run out this very night on a strike. He was worn out when I left and he thinks he has all the time in the world with you. And he will go after you first. You were the one who attacked him. But it is probably best if you go ahead and call them.”
“Call?” Amelia replied with disbelief, “I need to go over there and help them defend the clan!”
“No,” continued Kristoff patiently. “That would just be bringing the fight to them. If you’re there, Gianni will come there first as well. If you’re with me, we have a chance of beating them before they get to your family.”
A Guide to Vampire Hunting: ...and other failures (Alchemy Inc. Book 1) Page 16