I can taste the flavor of the venom as it trickles out, clear-tinged-pink, stained with her blood. With a snarl, I give her everything she wants then, everything this body can deliver, until she’s mewling against my shoulder with every punishing thrust. Muscles strain, pumping and releasing, my body working over hers, reaching toward fulfillment. Her hips buck against mine, our skin slapping loudly in the austere space around us. Lore makes perfect noises. Not porn star screams or fake moans, no, but gasps. Little cries. Throaty pleas and filthy, filthy whispers.
I close my lips over the holes in her neck again, drawing upon them, sucking hard until I can feel the blood pulling to the surface beneath my lips. I need to taste her again, because I’m hoping against hope that she’ll taste different. But under the fire-and-ice, under the burn, there’s not a single trace of me, not one little tongue-tingling hint of the mark I tried to make.
Poison.
That’s all I am, no better than Benicio, in some ways, so she’s rejecting me, even as the flavor of her makes me stronger, so much stronger—
I could keep going… deeper, and deeper, and deeper…
And never hit the bottom.
A perfect sanguine drop slips out, streaking down her neck before I have the chance to close my lips over the wound. I lose it then, feeding myself to her inch-by-inch, thrusting and withdrawing, giving and taking, fucking and sucking all at once. My hands curl beneath her, palms pressed flat against her back. I can feel the outline of her ribs beneath the fragile skin, and under that is the steady thrum of her heart.
“Again, Xaine.” The words are a panted demand, harsh and raw, but I don’t know what she wants. There’s nothing more I can give her. “What you did before… do it again…”
What you did before…
I clamp down tighter with my teeth, embracing the burn at the back of my throat, the tingling rush of the venom as I force it past her so-soft skin and into her pliant flesh. She tenses instantly, her entire body drawing up like a coiled spring. Then everything tightens, clenches, arches, and bucks as Lore comes with a strangled cry, holding onto me so tight that there’s not a single particle of air between us.
“Yes!” Her scream echoes off every surface in the room and in the empty space inside me. “Fuck yes, so good… Xaine…”
Pulling my fangs from her neck, I mutter “oh santo cielo” against her shoulder as my cock spasms, pumping her full of me. I’m clenching, clutching at her and planting my toes on the tile two steps down so that I can push until I’m as deep as I can be. Until I’m bottomed out at the end.
Holy fucking shit.
There’s a full minute when the only noise in the entire world is the sound of our mingled breathing. It’s harsh and sweet, like the music, like her heartbeat pounding away in her chest. There are pauses, fleeting moments of silence containing nothing at all. It’s in one of those pauses that I pick up the sound of a throat clearing.
I freeze. Lore goes so still that I wonder if her heart’s seized up.
“When you’re quite done, Xaine,” comes Roman’s wry voice from a not-too-considerable distance, “I’ll be in the library. And not to rush you, but Lumen and I are a bit pressed for time.”
Two sets of retreating footfalls, one of them decidedly more light and feminine than the other.
Fuck.
Lore would be reaching for her clothes and her dignity if I didn’t still have her sandwiched against the stairs. As it is, her head’s on a swivel, trying to see past me to our uninvited and barely-welcome guests.
“Xaine, get off me. Who was that?”
My head hits her shoulder as I listen to receding footsteps, and all I can think is it’s my vampire dad and my human sort-of-stepsister, which isn’t exactly the most mature description on the planet. Lore smacks me hard on the ass, trying to unseat me, but I’m not moving until I’m absolutely certain that Lumen’s not going to catch any more of the Lore Show than she already has. For all she knows, Lore is a piece of tail here for my general amusement, and until I get some answers from Roman, I’m not certain I want him knowing more than that, either.
The moment I hear the library door close behind them, I ease myself from inside Lore, regretfully slipping free of her silken warmth and peeling myself from her arms. She immediately goes for the nearest piece of discarded clothing, which happens to be my jeans. Clutching them to her chest seems to make her feel better. For a second, she’s the perfect picture of afterglow, all tousled hair and sprawled limbs. The tiny trail of blood glistens at the curve of her shoulder, only serving to enhance the mental picture I’ll carry with me into whatever’s left of my eternity. Then the arousal that paints her skin pink deepens to a hot flush of mortification. It’s actually adorable, the way she ducks her head behind the golden fall of her hair and scrambles around for a shirt like my family might come back at any second.
I don’t have the heart to tell her that whatever Roman didn’t see he sure as hell smelled. Girls really don’t appreciate information like that. Sometimes ignorance really is bliss, and this is one of those times.
“It’s my sire.” There, that sounds better than the first draft. “And his ward. She grew up in his house. At least, until he packed her off overseas.” For her protection, a maneuver I’m growing increasingly familiar with.
Jerking the T-shirt down over those magnificent tits of hers, Lore pops her head out of the neckhole and gives me a narrow look. “Why are they here right now?”
“No clue.” It’s my turn to slap her on the ass, encouragement to head up the stairs. She doesn’t budge, despite the fact that I know she’s got a souvenir trickling down her inner thigh. “There’s FeedFade in the medicine cabinet. And you might want to snag that shower before storming in to meet him. You smell like spunk.”
That gets her moving, except it’s to pull back and throw my jeans full in my face. Then she twists around and makes a run for it, the pale-and-perfect globes of her ass bouncing a little with every stair she takes at a full-tilt retreat. There’s nothing I want more than to give chase, to tackle her to the carpet, to pin her against the bedding, to plow myself into her again—
Except answers. I want her, but I need answers. We both do. As sulky as any thwarted and horny teenager, I jerk on my pants. Lore’s scent is all over me, from the kisses she planted on my mouth to her honey all over my half-hard dick. I could use a shower, too, but it’s not ever a good idea to keep Roman waiting. Lore took my shirt, and I can’t currently locate the one she was wearing. Combining that with all the fucks I don’t give, I head down the hall bare-chested, barefoot, and scowling.
I do wipe off that expression before rounding the last corner. This might be my territory, but Roman isn’t just my sire; he’s my guest, and he tends to take etiquette matters seriously. I move forward, gaze forthright, meeting his eyes without flinching. It’s one of a hundred occasions when I’m glad I don’t have a guilty conscience bothering me, because he’d root it out in a second. Then I clasp him, hand to forearm, right over the family sigil that he had branded into my skin before my turn.
“Apologies for interrupting.” Roman would never be so gauche as to flare his nostrils at me, but I know he’s taking in Lore’s perfume as surely as he’s running down the visible catalog of nail-gouges and semicircular human bite marks she left on me. I start to let go, but he doesn’t release me. Not yet. That extra second is enough for him to pick up something else. “She must mean something to you, Xaine.” His smile is unexpected; rare to see all of Roman Scipio’s teeth at once. “You marked her.”
“I tried.” Reaching out, I snag the door and close it, affording us a modicum of privacy. My gaze flickers to Lumen, who’s ignoring me in favor of tracking her hands all over my illuminated manuscripts. She’s bundled up again in a long skirt and one of those stupid sweaters she favors, with sleeves down to her knuckles, deep pockets, softly rounded collar that still hugs her neck up to her chin. Maybe it’s not a bad choice, given how many vamps she must run into on a daily basis. “I�
��d apologize for the eyeful you just got, but it’s nothing you haven’t seen before.”
She pulls out one of the ledgers and cracks it open, reading a few lines before returning it to the shelf. “Your technique hasn’t varied since the last time I walked in on you.” Another book open, shut, put back the shelf. She’s not even looking at me when she asks, “What do you mean you tried to mark her?”
“I mean I tried, but it didn’t take.” The only thing worse than discussing sex with Lumen would be my utter inability to get my venom into my shiny new human girlfriend, but somehow we’ve managed both in less than two minutes. Lumen and Roman exchange a very long, very meaningful sort of look, and given than I didn’t want to discuss this in the first place, I’m more than pissed when I tack on, “Any idea what that’s about, bookworm?”
Then, hand to god, she gives me the same perfectly blank expression that Roman employs. The one that tells me I’m banging my head into a solid brick wall of “not going to happen.”
She learned from the best.
And surprisingly, it reassures me in the same way that Roman’s expression does. It means the knowledge is theirs until I actually need it. It tells me, without words, that there’s nothing necessarily wrong with Lore’s body rejecting my venom. So I might as well address the reason they’re in my house. “Fine, then, mini-Sphinx. Want to tell me why you’re petting my stuff?”
“The book I gave you before I left.” Lumen’s eyes get a little bigger, and she seems to shrink into herself. For a second, I’m looking at the sad, tear-streaked face of the eight-year-old who clung to me when Elin died. “Do you still have it?”
The implication that I would have lost it or given it away stings more than a bit. Stalking past her, I head for the far end of the room. There’s an impressive collection of books and curios, all the things I didn’t let the cameras pan over on MTV Cribs. Even before we locked everything down, this room was off-limits to the general public. There’s too much personal history here that I don’t want publicly pissed on. In particular, one portfolio sits on a central pedestal, occupying the exact spot I set it the day I moved into the house. According to the insurance company’s appraiser, it’s Italian, approximately four hundred years old, illuminated, and contains artwork not created by any of the masters of the period.
My sketches weren’t half-bad, I guess. I was decent with oil paints, but utterly hopeless at sculpting. Glancing at the smudged rendering of one of a thousand naked women who’d paraded through the salon, I try to remember if any of them had ever really struck me the way Lore has in the few short days I’ve known her.
With a frown, I step up the wooden ladder that runs on rails around the built-in shelves. The “book” Lumen’s talking about is actually another leather portfolio, one containing a collection of drawings, diagrams, and writings. Pages and pages in Latin, more in a language I can’t even identify. I’d pieced through all of it, filed away tiny snippets, forgotten most of it…
But when Lumen holds out that slim, scholarly paw of hers, I’m reminded of the one poem I could read with very little effort. It had echoed the charming stories Roman told us about fallen archangels siring the first of our kind. An allegory, or so I’d believed at the time. I’d continued to think that, too, until I ran into two sin-eaters and—
Jax Fucking Trace.
Dot, to dot, to motherfucking dot.
I look over Lumen’s shoulder at Roman. “It was all supposed to be bullshit. But that’s what we’re dealing with, isn’t it? Some biblical, Old World vampire cult trying to worm their way into the New World.”
“They call themselves the Legacy of the Fallen,” Roman tells me, then corrects, “The Legacy.”
“Are they the ones that grabbed Lore and tried to turn her? Because they seem to have had about as much success with that as I’ve had with marking her.”
He’s stone-faced, the expression so much like Cas Declan’s default setting that I almost want to punch him in it.
Almost. And with all due respect.
“Look, you’re going to have to clue me in on some of it.” My hand’s still clamped down on the leather-bound book. As I wave it around, I’m peripherally aware of Lumen’s eyes following it, like it’s a cat toy and she can’t help it. “Because I’ve had a lot of weird this week, and I need to know what we’re up against.”
Raising an eyebrow, Roman waits until I pass the portfolio to Lumen. The second she has it in her possession, she heads straight to the desk. He tucks his hands into his pockets before continuing.
“What happened to Lourdes Chase a year ago was not an accident. They would have done the same to Mireille Reece, save for a timely rescue.”
“Yeah, so I heard.” I shoot a sidelong glance at Lumen, who’s sifting through bits of parchment and wearing an epic frown. “I suppose Jess wasn’t a random kidnapping, either?”
“Correct,” Roman says. “The sloppiness of that encounter would indicate they are growing… impatient.”
“They are doing their damndest to get to Cas,” I say. “Reille, Lore, Jess. Dot, dot, dot.”
“You’re certain they didn’t approach you when you were seeing Miss Reece?”
“They didn’t have to. Matty was handing them anything they could have gotten from me or Apocalypse. Nobody tried to recruit me until I shut down the pipeline.” I level a look at Roman. “Cas and Reille left Scion the other night with a vampire goon squad. Didn’t look like a kidnapping to me. Plus he managed to ‘smuggle’ Lore out of their facility. Asher Reece is good, but maybe not that good. Are you certain Cas is still playing for our team?”
That earns me another frown. “I’m certain, Xaine. And what’s more, I need the two of you to settle your differences. This family will only survive the coming days if we work together.”
“Well, great. As soon as Cas gets back from wherever he went, we’ll all have a nice sit-down dinner. Me. Lore, the end of Cas’s bloodline. My ex-girlfriend, whom Cas is currently off fucking and was fucking while she was living here with me. Trick and his whores-du-jour. Matty and Margot, glaring at everyone because they’re broke again. Food for the humans, blood dolls for the vamps, and maybe a nice family gangbang for dessert.” I shoot another glance at Lumen, who is hunched over, lips moving as she reads silently. “I vote we lock the little one in her room for the evening.”
“I am not ‘the little one,’” is her only response.
Roman sighs. “Four hundred years, Xaine, and you still take everything to the extreme.”
“That’s sort of my thing.”
His answering smile is faint. “I know. Perhaps a bit exhausting for everyone around you, though. You might keep that in mind, especially when dealing with the young lady upstairs.”
“Lore?” The snort that escapes me is equal parts denial and disbelief. “She’s the be-all and end-all of patience.”
The look Roman gives me then is contemplative. “You know, you might be more right than you realize.” His gaze shifts to Lumen. “Did you find what you need?”
She nods, somehow managing to look both relieved and anxious as she gathers everything up and fastens the leather ties. Without another word, the two of them head out of the library. I hasten to catch up and keep pace as they move down the hall and toward the foyer like the place is on fire. Reaching out a hand, I slam it against the front door to hold them up a second longer, because I’ve still got more questions than answers.
“Is Jackson Trace what I think he is?”
A pause, in which everything seems to hang in the balance, and then Roman nods. “Yes.”
“Is Caspian involved?”
“You all have parts to play.”
Not what I wanted to hear. “Is Lore in danger?”
“Oh, most certainly, now more than ever, but she’s in good hands.” Reaching out, Roman claps me on the shoulder. It’s meant to reassure me, I suppose, but I feel the transfer of responsibility as keenly as I would a sword handed into my keeping. “I’ll look int
o the Legacy situation,” he adds with a look that urges me to step aside.
So I do the only thing I can: I get out of his way. “Speak with Asher Reece at Phantom Firearms about that. If he can let go of his dick long enough to pick up the phone, he could be useful.”
“I will,” my sire says, opening the door.
Lumen’s got that stupid portfolio clutched against her chest like it’s precious cargo, so god only knows what I’ve been inadvertently safeguarding all these years. In passing, she leans in close to brush a soft kiss to my right cheek, then another to my left. “Please be careful, Xaine. There are things—”
Roman clears his throat in admonition, and she swallows whatever else she was going to say. As she scuttles to the car, I piece together a very clear mental picture of Benicio. Of the look on his face as I rammed that knife into his skull, inch by inch.
One less “thing” at work to worry about.
There’s the soft beep as Roman deactivates the alarm and opens the passenger door, tucks Lumen inside, then circles around. A few seconds later, his taillights disappear out of the gate, which swings shut with a clang!
When I re-enter the house, I glance up to see Lore sitting silently at the top of the stairway. She’s dwarfed by this house, curled into a ball and peering down at me between the balusters. When she sees me, she stands but doesn’t approach, choosing instead to teeter between two steps. Her hair’s been washed and left damp, but she took the time to twist it up into some sort of churched-up ponytail that all girls know how to do. The shirt she’s wearing is one of mine, but it’s a dress shirt and it hangs nearly to her knees. I don’t recognize it, but that only means it’s new, expensive, and a little less me than I’m used to seeing on her.
Slowly, so slowly, I make my way up the stairs, climbing until I’m standing on the step two trots beneath Lore. She peers down into my face, looking concerned, and before I even have the chance to speak, I can see the flush start to creep into her cheeks.
Still embarrassed, apparently.
The moments pass in silence. Lore fidgets, but right as I open my mouth to speak, she tilts her head up and sniffs the air, her next words stealing my thunder.
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