“Eleazar?”
“Yes, Larissa?”
“Where else do you enjoy kisses?”
His mouth was suddenly very dry. He swallowed once. Twice. When he spoke his voice was nothing more than a dry rasp. “Wherever you wish.”
“Do males enjoy kisses…down there? Like the way you kissed me?”
“Yes,” he croaked.
“I have never kissed a man before. As a matter of fact, I don’t think I have ever been properly kissed by a male before today.”
“We do not have to worry about that today. We have time.”
“But you will let me kiss you the way you kissed me?”
He swallowed and nodded. She smiled up at him, pleased with his answer and returned her head to his shoulder. Her fingers had somehow found their way to his torso where they were presently swirling through the hair below his navel. After several long, but pleasant moments of silence, she said, “Eleazar?”
“Yes.”
“I think I am ready to bond.”
He was glad one of them was. Eleazar suddenly felt as nervous as a young boy in a brothel. He took a deep breath and let it out slow. Her fingertips slipped just below the waistband of his pants and they both stilled. He did not blink or breathe or utter a sound. He simply waited to see how she would get herself out of such a predicament.
As if realizing she may have bitten off more than she could chew, she carefully retracted her fingers and returned to where she had been caressing his stomach. They both seemed to relax. For a female who was more modest than a virgin bride only hours ago, Larissa was proving to be an incredibly apt learner where sensuality was concerned.
His cock was incredibly hard, so hard he feared even the slightest contact to her flesh would burn right through him. Somewhere in the midst of touching him, she had draped her thigh over his. The scent of her arousal hit him like a locomotive. He could take no more.
He gripped her wrist and she froze. “Be very sure, Larissa, because once we start this, I doubt I will be able to stop.”
His grip loosened and she audaciously lowered her palm to the sizable bulge between his legs. He growled and suddenly flipped off of his back and on top of her. He slammed his mouth to hers and plunged his tongue between her lips.
Her knees drew up and he settled between her thighs, grinding away some of his tension. Her hands fisted in his hair and he returned the sentiment. He needed more of her. As she fiercely kissed him back, he scooped her onto his lap and held her tightly to him. Eleazar gripped her thick hair at the back of her head and pressed his palm into her lower back.
“Wrap your legs around me.”
She did exactly as he asked and he felt her moisture seep through his pants and anoint the tip of his cock. He dragged his mouth from hers and gently bit at her shoulder. The sound of her feminine growl had his beast purring. He sprung off the bed, never releasing his hold of her, and sat her atop the narrow dresser against the wall. She gripped his neck and he pressed her back as he rooted for her nipple and sucked it deep into his mouth. He pinched the other one tightly between his fingers.
Pulling away quickly, he placed a sharp kiss on her bared slit and licked up her belly. She watched him through cat eyes and smiled slow, showing him her sharp, little fangs. Suddenly he was propelled onto his back, her thin carpet bunching beneath him as he skidded across the floor. She held him down with incredible strength and licked a trail up his stomach, identical to the one he had just licked on her. He grinned at her, his own vision transforming as he felt his eyes dilate and fangs fully extended.
In a flash he had her flipped to her back and below him. Taking her hands in his he forced them over her head as he pressed his rock-hard cock into the apex of her thighs. She purred and arched into him. Before he could grind himself into her again, he found himself being thrown off of her once more.
His back slammed into the cold floor and she began kissing him with all that she had. Together, they were like a tornado crashing into a hurricane. Never had he expected such chemistry, such sensuality from his mate. He was immensely enjoying himself. It was as if some part of her had been liberated and now was ready to embrace her baser desires and animal instincts. He smiled and she nipped at his lip with one sharp fang then proceeded to make a display of licking the drop of his blood away.
A low purr hummed from inside of her and he snapped at her teasing tongue. She pulled back and giggled when he missed her. The little vixen was getting cocky. He could not have that.
Just when she thought she had outmaneuvered him, he turned the tables on her and sprung from the floor, driving her into the wall. Whatever had been sitting on the edge of her dresser fell to the floor and shattered. She bit at his shoulder and raised herself up, grinding her wet sex across his flat stomach. He could take no more.
Eleazar clawed at his pants until they fell to the floor. His erection sprung against his stomach, already weeping to claim her. As Larissa slid her slick body over his, his cock nudged at her opening. She stilled.
Staring at him with those sharp, diamond eyes, she began to purr, louder and surer than before. She was ready for him. He leaned in and softly kissed her one last time, leaving her breathless and slightly dazed. They were both purring and ready to claim their mate.
He carried her to the bed and gently laid her in the center. Her arms extended over her head where her black hair spiraled across the crisp, white sheets. She looked like a pagan sacrifice. His pagan.
He tugged her knees and her bottom slid closer to the edge of the bed. Her limbs naturally took hold of his hips. He reached for his cock and squeezed it tightly, causing a drop of fluid to seep from the tip. He guided his shaft to her opening and dragged it slowly up and down, anointing his flesh with her arousal. She arched and rolled her neck temptingly.
“Look at me, Larissa.”
He held himself at the mouth of her sex and waited for her to obey his command. She turned to him and waited. Her breasts heaved with anticipation as she watched him. There had never been a more beautiful sight.
“You are mine. For eawichkeit, all of eternity. I will never let you go.”
At her nod he plunged into her. Her heat gripped him like liquid fire. She burned him. His inner beast growled and he felt the last of his control slip. He plowed into her and she met him every bit of the way.
The ferocity in which he took her should have been a crime, yet she took him equally as rough. In an unstoppable collision of flesh and lust, they rolled over one another, clawing for a position on top. They seemed to touch every surface of the room in their explosive mating. It had not occurred to Eleazar that while he was a vampyre being called to his female, she, too, was vampyre and being equally called.
They battled to possess one another. As they tumbled back to the bed, he felt his seed rising within him. He wanted to fill her womb and watch her belly grow thick and full with his child. The idea had his hips pounding harder against her flesh.
He watched as she prepared to open her wrist. He supposed she assumed she would control their bonding. While Eleazar was in support of an intellectually equal mate, he was still somewhat old-fashioned. He pushed her wrist away from her mouth and she frowned at him.
“I will be claiming you, Larissa. Not the other way around.”
He waited for her to object, but she only said, “Claim me then, Eleazar. I am yours.”
With a feral growl he withdrew from her sex and flipped her to her belly. He reached for her hips and hoisted her to her hands and knees. Her bottom swayed before him beautifully. He nudged her thighs farther apart and rested his tip at her opening. “Mine!” he declared and plunged into her.
Reaching over her shoulder, he grabbed hold of her breast and pulled her to him. Her back pressed firmly to his front from nape to thigh. He opened his palm over her womb and held her to him as he rooted himself as deep inside of her as possible. With one final thrust he presented her his wrist and licked at her neck.
“Eawichkeit, Lari
ssa.”
“Eawichkeit, Eleazar.”
They pierced each other’s skin at exactly the same time. She pulled from his wrist as he drank his fill from the vein at her neck. Thick, warm, life-giving blood transferred from one body to the other. He felt her body contract around him and they began to rock and undulate together as one. She released his wrist on a cry as her climax took over.
Her sex gripped him and began milking his seed, pulling every bit of his essence into her, all of which he was proud to give. As his body shuddered in completion, he released her vein. His spine arched and his head fell back as he hissed in complete euphoric bliss.
They fell to the bed, eyes closed, yet fangs still extended, each showing traces of the other’s blood as they panted. Their bodies seemed stuck together, but neither seemed to care. When he opened his eyes, Larissa’s diamond slits were staring back at him. He kissed her softly. They breathed, holding one another, and eventually fell asleep.
Chapter 19
It stared back at Dane, fangs dripping, shoulders heaving, its claws digging into his Mom’s gray, lifeless flesh. He could not look away from her eyes, eyes that had looked at him every day since the day he was born, only now they were empty, as if he were staring into two dark wells, devoid of any life. It growled and he jerked his gaze away from his mother’s dead face and locked gazes with two eyes that were not human.
Yellow orbs with flecks of crimson watched him. There were no whites in those eyes. No, they were the eyes of an animal, filled to the lid with dark irises and pupils that showed as two black slits. They glowed in the darkness.
Dane reached for Cybil. When his hand grabbed nothing but air, he turned. She was not there. He looked back at the hideous creature before him. Only this time it was not holding his mother’s lifeless body, but Cybil’s.
“No!” Wakened by his own scream, Dane jolted upright in bed. His brain first became aware that he had been dreaming when the smell of his grandmother’s home intruded in his nose, sweet powder, the kind that older women seemed to bathe in, that and the scent of dried paint.
He rubbed his eyes and saw the boxes crowding the room that was now his. Boxes. Boxes of baseball cards, boxes of old clothes and video games. Boxes of his mother’s knickknacks. Boxes of crap he no longer held interest in.
He pushed the heavy blankets off of his body and realized he had once again fallen asleep in his jeans.
“Cybil.” When his sister made no sound, not that she would, but when he heard no movement, he looked to her bed. Empty. Sliding his feet the floor, he stretched and stood. Dane looked to the dog pillow on the floor between the old oak twin beds and saw that that, too, was empty.
As he stood and gazed out the window, he noticed it was late in the morning by the way the sun was already far above the house. He could feel the coldness from outside coming off the glass of each windowpane as if it were a living, breathing thing trying to break in.
He ran a hand through his sleep-matted hair and went to put on his sneakers. As he walked through the house, he sidestepped more boxes and saw that his grandmother had already painted a portrait that day. The woman never slept, well, never slept like a normal person.
She woke up before dawn and would begin painting as if she were possessed, called to do so, before the coffee was even perked. Sometimes Dane would wake up to find her exhausted and painting with hands that shook so badly it was a wonder she could even hold a brush.
He went to the kitchen and grabbed a Gatorade from the fridge and chugged it in one long, continuous chain of gulps. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the coffeemaker, filled with a fresh pot, forgotten and gone cold. His grandmother must have been up extremely early again.
Tossing the Gatorade bottle in the recycling, he turned and called for his sister again. “Cybil?”
When she didn’t answer he felt a familiar irritation settle in the pit of his stomach. He moved through the house and found his grandmother napping on the couch. She looked smaller than she had the day before when he found her napping there. He covered her with the ugly, tattered afghan she kept over the back of the sofa and went to the front porch.
The screen door opened with a whisper, its tight springs whining as it pulled shut behind him with a snap. He moved past the plethora of stacked clay pots along the wood-planked porch and leaned over the spindled railing, looking, first left and then right, for his sister. The railing was badly in need of a fresh coat of paint.
Releasing a frustrated sigh, he cupped his hands around his mouth and bellowed, “Cybil!” He heard Shimmers bark from somewhere in the distance. Dane stepped off the porch and began heading in that direction. He had only taken about twenty steps before he began to regret not grabbing a sweatshirt. He shoved his fists into his jean pockets and began walking quickly. “Cybil! Shimmers!”
The dog barked again and it wasn’t long before he saw its mangy face and mismatched brindle hide waiting on a hill in the distance. His sister’s small form sat silently beside the dog. Dane shook his head. She knew better than to go this far out alone.
As he jogged up the hill, he started in on the same old lecture. “Cybil, how many times do I have to tell you? If you want to come this far out, get me and I’ll come with you.” She didn’t move or even acknowledge his presence, but Dane knew she heard him.
He caught his breath and quickly petted the ugly fur-covered face nudging his hip. Cybil sat, still in her pajama pants and thermal, but with the addition of her jacket and sneakers, sans socks. Her knees were drawn up to her chest where she held them with her arms wrapped tightly about her shins. She stared out over what could have been a once beautiful view, but was now just the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
The highway weaved in and out of deep valleys cut far into the mountains. Cars whizzed by in the distance. He felt almost like a giant being up so far from the rest of the world. Loud tractor trailers passed like little matchbox cars with only a mumbled hum as they downshifted around the bend and newer cars moved as if behind a sheet of soundproof glass. It almost sounded like the ocean, but rather than the soft, rhythmic wash of waves breaking over the banks of the shore, it was automobiles sending waves of smog and toxins over the hills.
He sat down beside Cybil and scooted close, trying to steal some of her body warmth. She never took her eyes off the highway. A strand of her long, blonde hair blew into his face and he batted it away. Her hair still held that baby-soft quality girls his age no longer had.
“You can’t keep doing this, Cybil. You can’t keep running off like this.” She didn’t answer. Dane was beginning to forget what her voice sounded like. It had been so long since he heard her say a word. Sometimes she would sneeze or cough and he would try to pick up parts of her voice in that bodily function, but it was no replacement for her laughter or conversation. Sometimes he could make her smile, but if she did laugh it was nothing but a silent chuckle that soon was replaced with a shameful expression as if she felt guilty for still being able to experience joy when their parents could not.
A high-pitched, almost-silent whistle filled his mind and he had the brief impression of their dog. He knew Cybil was thinking she didn’t need his company because she had Shimmers. “Shimmers is not the same as having a person with you.”
He had a vision of Shimmers growling fiercely. “No, Cybil. You need a grown-up out here with you or at least me.” That was when he saw it, him, from his sister’s memory, her perspective. The vision was of him standing before the animal in the woods, holding his mother and being completely useless.
Dane knew Cybil wasn’t sharing this memory to be mean. She couldn’t filter her thoughts and he had no idea how to block the ones he didn’t want to see. She was right anyway. He proved himself to be worthless when they had been in real danger.
He had always been able to see her thoughts since she was a baby. He could pick up on others’ thoughts in school since he was young, but back then he just thought he was intuitive. It wasn’t until about second grade that he
realized he was more than intuitive. He could see his classmates’ answers on tests, see where they were daydreaming of being when school got boring, and see what they were afraid of. But it was always visions, never words or sounds. The only sound that came with the gift was the sharp whistle that sometimes filled his head.
He had told his mom and dad about his gift, but they thought he was only pretending to be some sort of superhero. When he pressed the subject, they grew frustrated. Eventually they would challenge him to tell them what they were thinking at that very moment, but he never could. He could only see into younger minds, the minds of his peers. He didn’t know if it was an age thing or a purity-of-thought thing. One kid at his school who had a really rough home life was impossible to see through. It made Dane wonder if once a person’s mind became over cluttered with the ugly thoughts of life, it somehow grew too dark to see.
He pushed the vision of him standing useless before his mother away and turned to Cybil. “Come on, let’s go back. I’m freezing.”
He saw the distant trees in her mind. First the vision was of the woods on the opposite side of the highway, then closer, a few trees, then her vision zoomed in to a single tree and that was when he caught it. A hand wrapped loosely around the bark of the trunk.
He turned and looked to the woods across the highway. He searched for the exact place his sister had just showed him. He thought he found it, but wasn’t sure. All the trees looked the same. His eyes scanned for any movement, but it was hard to see any details from this far away.
His mind whistled, and there was another vision. This time there was a bright-yellow tree amongst the other brown and red ones. His eyes scanned the woods and he found that tree. He sucked in a breath when he realized it was on their side of the highway, on their grandmother’s property line. He stood and grabbed Cybil’s shoulder. “Come on.”
She shook him off and continued to watch the trees. Dane watched, too. Someone was out there. A collection of images flooded his mind. It was a man. Cybil had seen part of his profile. He was tall, olive skin, dark hair almost past his ears. He was wearing black pants and a white shirt.
Calling for a Miracle [The Order of Vampyres 2] (Siren Publishing Classic) Page 21