Blood Solace (Blood Grace Book 2)

by Vela Roth

  His teeth pressed harder into the soft flesh of her breast. He drew her nipple deeper into his mouth. She arched her back, pressing up against his hold on her wrist and his body against her belly. His weight on her was an anchor as pleasure mounted inside her, unbound.

  Beyond control. His front teeth grazed her nipple, and she bit her lip to keep from crying out. Would he do that again, if she asked him to?

  She didn’t have to ask. As much as he suckled, he nipped and grazed, each time a little harder. If he just bit down a little more, his fangs… Would he drink from her there? Could they do that?

  He was off of her so fast the room spun over her, and the bed didn’t feel solid anymore. She could only lay there, too surprised to move, and catch her breath.

  The truth hit her a moment late, like an injury that left one numb at first, until pain awoke and brought home the real extent of the damage. He was going to stop.

  She sat up, searching the light and shadows around her for where he had gone. He stood in the farthest corner of the room, where the beacon’s light didn’t quite reach. She could only make out that he had his back to her, his shoulders hunched.

  “Lio, what’s wrong?” She was already off the bed and on her feet.

  “Cassia.” The agony in his voice stunned her. Her name might have been forced out of him under magefire. Before she could take another step toward him, he barked, “Stay where you are. Please.”

  “Lio, is it something about me that’s hurting you? If the heart hunters somehow poisoned me after all—”

  “No! Hespera’s Mercy, nothing like that.”

  “Lio, please tell me what’s the matter. Tell me I can do something to help you.”

  “You are the only one who can.”

  “I’ll do anything for you.”

  “I know.” He let out a sound, half sigh, half groan. “But I don’t want this for you.”

  Cassia stood still in the moonlight, giving him the length of the room between them as he had asked. She listened to the silence that meant he was not breathing. How ill he had looked all night. How carefully and desperately he had touched her.

  He wanted her. He needed her. So much he could barely control it, barely endure it.

  “Lio, you’re starving.”

  At last he turned to face her and the light. Cassia gasped, and it took all her effort not to run to him.

  He wasn’t thinner, he was skin and bones, and he was shaking from head to toe. His eyes were wide and bloodshot, the blue in them a mere wire around his pupils. His dilated eyes shone at her through the darkness with a frenzied gleam she had never seen there.

  Fierce, wild hunger. His fangs gleamed in the moonlight, burgeoning from his lips.

  “Lio, what’s happened to you? I’ve never seen you like this. Even earlier tonight, you didn’t look this ill.”

  He started and put a hand to his mouth, as if to feel or perhaps hide his fangs. He gasped and stared at his hands. “My veil is gone?”

  “You cast an illusion on yourself to hide your hunger? From me?”

  He sucked in a breath. “If you can…just be patient with me…I will master myself.”

  “You need to feast. That’s easily remedied.”

  “Easy? Not for you.”

  “It has always been a delight to me.”

  “Cassia, I might hurt you.”

  She tried to step nearer again. He flinched.

  She halted in her tracks. “You would never hurt me.”

  “I’m not sure. I just—I need to wait until I’m sure.”

  “Why are you afraid of your hunger?”

  He whispered as if he did not wish his own goddess to hear. “Because I’m not sure if I lost control last night. Hundreds of men died. How can I not know if I am the one who killed them?”

  Cassia fell silent. She had felt the blood magic sweep over her and through her mind while its wielder held her. She had heard the heart hunters fall at her feet. Now she knew they had died in that moment.

  She said gently, “The whole army of heart hunters fell with the ones who attacked me, didn’t they?”

  “Cassia, ‘the boss’ is a mind mage. He was controlling the heart hunters. I was trying to find out who he was. But then…their minds simply stopped telling their hearts to keep beating.”

  “You had to feel all of that. Worse than the Blood Union. You were in their thoughts when it happened.”

  “You must wonder why I agonize over their deaths. It must be hard to fathom how I could ever regret killing the men who did that to you.”

  “It is the thought that you killed without intention or necessity that horrifies you.”

  “You understand.”

  “You would never want to hurt anyone by accident. Any failure to control your magic is abhorrent to you. To resort to violence when there is another way is anathema to you.”

  “What they might have done to you—you were so frightened—I have never felt such rage. But I cannot afford to break. Not with power like mine.”

  Cassia narrowed the distance between them by one step. “Stop torturing yourself with such thoughts. You didn’t kill anyone.”

  He met her gaze, his own beseeching. “You believe that.”

  “I know it.” A few more steps toward him. At last, he did not try to stop her. “Your conscience rebels at the notion of trespassing upon a single person’s Will. It is not in you to break the minds of hundreds with a thought. You would never lose control like that, and if you did, you still wouldn’t hurt anyone. I know so, because I’ve held you in my arms when you’ve lost control.”

  She was near enough to reach for him. She took his shaking hands in hers.

  His legs buckled. She scrambled to steady him as he went down on his knees before her.

  He rested his face against her. “Thank you, Cassia.”

  “Please, let me help you.”

  He couldn’t wait. Not a moment longer. He needed blood now. Cradling his head, she put her wrist before him.

  Reunion

  The agony of deprivation was nothing. The beautiful reality of her hurt more. Everything Lio wanted and could not have was real and within reach of his fangs.

  Cassia was the beacon above him, aglow with radiant life force. A slender red aurora emanated from her wrist. The sound of her pulse wrung a hoarse cry from him.

  The moment had come. His worst fear. His control was no longer enough.

  But that was all right. She trusted him. He could trust himself.

  His pulse hammered in his ears. His Gift roared within him. The hunger broke free of rational thought. He took hold of her wrist and closed his mouth over the light. He bit down hard, holding fast to salvation.

  Cassia. She bloomed to life on his tongue and charged through his body. A shudder wracked him, and he groaned a plea.

  A small, strong hand caressed his hair. His instincts took over. His jaw locked, his throat swallowed. She held him close as he glutted himself.

  Warmth filled his gnawing gullet and spread, thawing the icy ache in his veins. The heat gathered in his loins. Her sigh soughed on his hearing.

  The moment when the Blood Union had claimed him had come and gone; he knew only that he breathed in her relief, and her arousal pulsed through his blood with his own.

  She enveloped him and filled him. Heady, hot courage. Rich liquid passion. The bitter spice of defiance. He had never forgotten the taste of her, but still she astonished him.

  With each swallow, still more flavors overtook his senses. She held vast depths he had yet to tap. If he feasted on her for a thousand years, he might never plumb her farthest reaches.

  But he wanted to. He wanted to taste her all.

  Her wrist was not the floodgate he craved. Only the Craving gave him the Will to lift his head from his plate and reach for the banquet. She took his face in both hands, and the blood from her wrist made a warm, wet smear on his cheek.

  Her blood on him, in him. He wanted to bathe and drown in her.

/>   He pulled her down to him. As they landed together on the rug, her gown fell open again, baring her throat and breast. On her pendant of white marble, the bloodstains flared red as if fresh. The relic pulsed, their blood and passion made into a spell that stroked his senses and whispered to him that all was well.

  When his fangs touched her neck, her heart made a sudden leap. Lio flared his nostrils and sucked in a deep breath. The scents of Cassia’s excitement and her blood filled his head as he lay her throat open.

  At last. All he feared he would never know again. Her blood welled and spurted on his tongue. He suckled her hard and flexed his hips. She rubbed against him, chest to chest, belly to belly. Had they ever doubted how this night would end?

  He dragged her skirt up her thighs with both hands. Curse his robe that still separated them. But it fell before her advance in a moment.

  Skin to skin, mouth to vein, mind to mind. Lio gripped her hips, opened his mouth wide, and bit down on her again as he drove inside her.

  She let out a sound he had never heard her utter before. Silent Cassia cried out beneath him, an unmistakable cry of pleasure. His blood pounded. She held him to her throat and clutched him between her legs, one foot hooked around him.

  “Don’t stop,” she begged. “Please, Lio. I can’t bear it if you stop.”

  He flexed his mouth open, then closed, and drove inside her again, gliding through her slippery arousal and lodging in the snug grip of her krana. She was too tight. So tight. So good. It had been too long.

  She shuddered under him as he bit and thrust. She ran her hands over his straining jaw, through his hair, down his back, as if she were hungry for him and could feast by touching.

  “Don’t stop,” she moaned, her voice thick from the pressure at her throat. “Don’t stop.”

  She never made a sound when he loved her. Their promise to speak had broken the silence that ruled her life, but not her pleasure. Until tonight.

  This was how much she needed him. She told him in rough cries and low moans and the sound of his name. “Lio. Don’t stop. Lio.”

  They needed this, and it was theirs for the taking at last. Her warmth poured out and filled him as his rhabdos filled her, and he knew they would survive.

  Lio let out a growl of triumph and feasted upon his Grace. His Grace. He was inside her. He was drinking her blood. It was she who arched under him, her fingers that dug into his back and scored his shoulders. It was she who stoked his hunger with the sounds she made in the back of her throat. She who moved under him, around him, who drove away all thought. But no need to think. Not even of control.

  He didn’t know when his mind had sought hers and she had thrown hers open to him, only that there were no more barriers between them. His magic was already inside her. He lay deep within their Union, and her pleasure drowned him, sinking under his skin. She had never seen him like this. Neither had he. But it was all right.

  He fed her more of his power. He had no end of it to give her. Her aura pulsed with pleasure, with him, taking his magic into her. He flexed his magic still deeper, feasting on her thoughts, worshiping her within.

  “Don’t stop,” she begged him once more.

  He surrendered his magic to her mind. Her pleasure came upon her, upon him, clutching around his rhabdos and making her damp hips buck and slide against him.

  Release gripped in his back and thrust him into her. One spasm after another wracked him, half a year of need, and with wordless groans, he spilled inside her. Pleasure met in their Union and coursed together into joy, his and hers. Her blood filled with the taste of it, and he gorged on their climax.

  Her cries quieted to gasps, and her heartbeat eased into a tantalizing percussion that promised to arouse him again. Another vein, another feast awaited them.

  He unsheathed himself from her, only to mouth his way to the other side of her neck and take her in his teeth again. She let out another moan, raw and sensual. He wanted to hear her make those sounds again, to taste them again in her blood.

  The blood sang in his veins, filling every part of him with vitality. He had never felt so strong or so exultant. He no longer felt his Gift inside him; the Gift was him, and he was the Gift. Power had become his heartbeat, and he shared it with her, letting it pulse in her mind. She rocked under him, her legs splayed, pleasuring herself against him.

  Her blood hardened his rhabdos anew. Lust had never felt so good, and he had never felt so confident in his ability to satisfy her. He fitted himself to her and sank inside her slowly this time. Long and slow. She breathed another sound of invitation and tilted her hips to make way for him.

  He thrust as deep into her as he could and stayed there, enveloped in her body and mind. He flexed his hips and his power, reveling in the sensation of being buried inside her. It only got better each time. Her feet trailed up his thighs, and at last she wrapped both her legs around him and held him. This was as it should be.

  He drank her until she was crying out again, shuddering on his rhabdos once more. He held her to him, both hands wrapped around her buttocks, feeling the tremors of her release move through her.

  With her feet locked behind him, she lifted herself off the carpet, and he realized he was levitating. He let out a laugh against her neck. He pressed them back down to the floor and began to thrust again. He let himself move, let himself take pleasure in her. Let himself lose control again.

  At last their passion eased into contentment. Lio lay on her and breathed her scent and listened to her heartbeat grow slow and quiet. He might never move again. He hadn’t felt this relaxed since he could remember.

  The ferocious power in his blood had calmed to a deep, steady strength. He felt as if this one feast would sustain him forever. But it would not be the only one. She had come home to him.

  “Cassia,” he murmured. “Thank you.”

  She said nothing in reply. He lifted his head to look at her. As he moved on her, she did not stir.

  “Cassia?”

  Her head lolled to one side. She lay utterly still under him. Only then did he understand the languid sound of her pulse. It was only that sound that kept his panic from transforming into terror.

  In the space of one heartbeat, he was off of her. In the space of her next, he gathered her limp form in his arms.

  “Cassia!”

  His shame was powerful enough to render him frozen. He could only remember that night in Solorum Fortress when she had come to him, battered and desperate, and he had so carelessly made love to her in the stupor of the Dawn Slumber. But now, as then, he focused on what she needed.

  Here, he had a soft bed on which to lay her and blankets to keep her warm after he relieved her of her tangled gown and worked a cleaning spell. And tonight, she had no bruises. He drew a measure of relief from his examination of her, which revealed no evidence of any injury incurred during their loving. Not so much as a carpet burn on her buttocks.

  Despite the vigor of their reunion, he’d had his mouth to her throat the entire time. The healing properties of his saliva, not to mention other bodily fluids, should have erased any mark as soon as he left it on her.

  It was physically impossible for a Hesperine to drink a human dry. Or so he had always been instructed. But here was Cassia in a faint.

  Taking a seat on the bed with her, he supported her against his chest and put his mouth to hers again. Perhaps a kiss would be enough to wake her. But another dose of his healing Gift did not rouse her.

  He had taken too much.

  His heart was pounding hard in his chest. Tuning out the sound, he concentrated on her heartbeat and made himself think. Was the situation so grave she needed a healer?

  The rush of her blood sounded strong and healthy. A vibrant flush still adorned her skin from breasts to forehead.

  He put his wrist to her brow. No fever-heat, only the warmth and dampness normal for a mortal woman’s skin after a night of pleasure.

  Her eyes moved beneath their lids, and her lashes flutte
red open. As she gasped, Lio sucked in a breath for a deep sigh of relief.

  “Lio? What…?” she slurred. She moved her chin, as if peeling her tongue off the roof of her mouth, then licked her lips. “Ohh. I fainted.”

  She giggled.

  Lio stared down at her. Yet another sound he had never heard her make, nor expected to. She had most definitely not come to her senses yet.

  He brushed her hair back from her face, cradling her against him. Any words of apology he might say seemed insufficient.

  She blinked up at him a few times, then beamed.

  How could she smile? Didn’t she realize what he’d done to her? “Cassia, I’m mortified. I cannot begin to tell you how sorry I am.”

  “You’re apologizing? For that?”

  “I should never have taken so much. I—I drank you into a faint.” His throat tightened on the words, and he uttered them in a hushed voice. “I didn’t stop.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “I didn’t ask you to stop, did I?”

  “Cassia—”

  “I’m not a deer,” she reminded him.

  “You most certainly are not. You are—” My Grace. “—infinitely more precious, and I have not treated you so tonight.”

  “Lio.” She met his gaze, her own warm. “It wasn’t the blood loss that made me faint.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve fainted from blood loss before, and that is not what it feels like.”

  “When did you faint from blood loss before?” he demanded.

  “I was fourteen. Worst fever I ever had. The healers bled me silly. I thought they were trying to kill me to spare the fever the trouble. I wasn’t really well for the rest of the year. Uh, never mind.”

  Lio made a conscious effort to loosen his hold her.

  “In any case,” she said, “fainting from bleeding feels dreadful. But this, tonight, was…” She gave him her secret smile.

  Lio cleared his throat. “Thinking back on my education in anatomy, I suppose it’s possible the healing properties of my bodily fluids, after a sustained period, might overstimulate your body and cause you to replenish your own blood flow so fast you lose consciousness. This effect would be exacerbated if you had recently suffered deprivation or injury, in which case an infusion of Hesperine regenerative magic could accelerate your restoration to health to an overwhelming degree.”