by Cat Marsters
His blood was roaring now, deafening him. Completely oblivious to everything but the sensations of Maria’s lips, her fangs, her skin, her cunt, her tight nipples, her soft skin, he hurtled out of control. Overdosing on pleasure, he shuddered like a junkie with every thrust.
When Maria’s hips bucked, her body spasming, her teeth tearing deeper, it sent Ruarc into the stratosphere, coming harder than he ever had before.
* * *
For what seemed like hours, Maria lay there with the faery sprawled over her, surrounded by the tattered remains of their clothes, her head spinning. He was breathing hard and she was surprised to discover she was too. Her heart was hammering.
Had she just had sex with a faery?
Not just any sex. The best sweaty, desperate, incredible sex she’d ever had.
He shifted above her, taking the weight off her body. Sliding his smooth faery skin against hers. Brushing her jaw with his shadow stubble. Everything felt extra-sensitive.
Maria squeezed her eyes shut. Oh hell. And this wasn’t just any faery. This was a faery who knew she’d been imprisoned in a harem for years. Knew she’d been rented out to rich perverts. Had seen her chained, drugged and screaming. Had watched her when she’d been pawed and beaten and fucked.
Suddenly feeling claustrophobic, she shoved him away and lurched upright, hugging her knees, gasping for air she didn’t need. The room was bright, far too bright, every color a blazing fluorescent tone.
“Maria?”
His faery blood sparkled in her veins. Her head spun.
“Are you all right?”
She bit down on her own lip and forced herself to be calm. She was out of the zoo now. Starne was dead. Breslin more so. No one had tied her down or forced her to do anything.
She’d had sex with the faery of her own free will.
Well, mostly. Bloodlust didn’t count.
“I’m fine,” she said, her voice a little husky.
“Are you… uh, feeling better?”
She looked at him uncomprehendingly.
“Your back,” he clarified, and her hand moved over her shoulder absently, feeling for cuts that weren’t there any more. “I, er. You were on your back and I… I didn’t think. It was…” He took a deep breath, and Maria stared, incredulous. Was he actually nervous? “It was thoughtless of me. I’m sorry.”
She blinked. He had just apologized to her. A faery had just apologized to a vampire.
Well, he’d just had mind-blowing sex with her too. It appeared to be a day for firsts.
“Does it hurt?” he asked, wincing, and Maria flexed her back muscles, ran her hands over the unbroken skin in wonder.
“No,” she said. “It doesn’t.” She turned, showed him. “That’s some pretty potent blood you’ve got there.”
Faery blood. No wonder she felt like she was on drugs.
Her wrists still felt sore from the crucifix burns, and as she touched her chest she felt the outline of the cross burned into her flesh. Terrific. Unsteadily, she moved to the edge of the bed and made to stand up, but she wobbled and didn’t make it.
“Whoa!” The faery caught her as she toppled, and pulled her back onto the bed, his body warm against her back. “You’re not all right.”
“I’m fine.” She struggled against him, her head swimming. A single push sent him sprawling on the bed and she gained her feet, eyes closed. Damn, he had terrible taste in décor. Why was everything so damn bright? “It’s your horrible bedroom.”
“My bedroom?” He sounded puzzled. “What’s horrible about it?”
“Did you decorate in the dark or something?”
There was a short silence. Maria risked opening her eyes, and a rainbow of colors assaulted her. Ultramarine walls with black accents; lurid purple hangings on the bed; floorboards painted white and so glossy they reflected every single light. A painting on the far wall that was so bright it would probably glow in the dark. The sheets on the bed were heavy black linen and she could count every thread with her fingers.
“I’m Unseelie,” he replied eventually. “I like the dark.”
“Then why are your walls the color of a paddling pool?”
Another pause. “They’re pale blue,” the faery said.
“No, they’re bright -- I don’t know, turquoise or something.” She closed her eyes again. This place was making her dizzy. “I need to -- where are my clothes?”
“Ah,” the faery said, and she opened her eyes to see him holding a few pieces of fabric that glittered so brightly she flinched. They were spattered with something a vivid bright red.
“What is that?”
“Your dress. I’m sorry. I’ll buy you a --”
“That is not my dress.”
He looked at it, then at her. “Yes, it is. I distinctly remember you wearing it.”
For a second, his eyes blazed and his gaze swept over her in a way that reminded Maria she was totally naked. And that he’d recently been raking more than his eyes over her body.
She lifted her chin, causing the room to tilt and swirl. “My dress is not that color. And what is that red stuff?”
“Er. Blood.”
“Blood is not that color.” She snorted. “It looks like something from a movie. It’s probably ketchup or something.”
He was looking at her very strangely. “It isn’t --”
“Don’t you argue with me about blood. I’m a vampire, remember?”
“Yes, I remember.” He touched the wound on his neck.
A wound, she noticed, that was also a bright, vivid red.
Her heart beat slowly for a few moments as she looked him over. Bright, bright red blood. Skin so white it glowed like the moon. Blue veins beneath. His eyes gleamed an unearthly cerulean. Dark hair, several months past needing a cut, shone blue-black in the pale spotlights. The scar on his cheek was a dark red slash.
Everything about him was as vividly colored as the bedroom décor. Which figured, Maria told herself, since he was fae, and therefore couldn’t be expected to look normal.
But the blood…
Maybe fae blood was usually bright red. But her own? The smears on her own body?
The colors of the room swooped and swirled around her and she felt the soft sheets against her skin before she realized she’d fallen.
“What did you do to me?” she breathed, her arm over her eyes. The colors still swirled, flashing in the darkness behind her eyelids.
“I didn’t do anything.”
“You drugged me. This is like… like one of those psychedelic drugs. Everything is too bright, everything is moving…”
Cool hands touched her, moved her into the center of the bed, covered her with sheets. Gentle hands. Even the faery’s voice was cool as he said, “It’s probably my blood. You probably took too much. Supernatural blood is apparently very potent for vampires.”
“Really?” Maria tried to inject more sarcasm into her voice, but failed.
“Look, just lie still a while, maybe it’ll wear off.”
He was being strangely helpful, she thought as she heard him move away. Why did he care how she felt? She was a vampire. Faeries hated vampires. This much had been made painfully clear to her.
But he’d also fought on her side, slain her attacker and fed her his blood.
Maria buried her head in the pillow, her blood pumping hard and fast, and tried to get some sleep.
Chapter Four
Winter sunshine bathed Ruarc’s apartment in cool light as he stared out at the city below, hands braced on the double-height window that ran the full length of his living room.
He didn’t know why he hadn’t gone into work this morning. Well, he knew why: it was because Maria was still lying in his bed, sleeping off the drugging effects of his blood.
But he didn’t know why that meant he had to stay. She was a big girl, and he could leave her. Or he could take her back to her place.
Yeah, right, he thought, remembering the seedy bar she’d been singing in. Sh
e’ll be living in a really nice place.
Again, why did he care?
Anyway, now the sun was fully up he couldn’t take her anywhere. She was stuck here. And… and… and he didn’t want to leave a strange woman, especially a vampire, alone in his apartment.
That must be it.
He’d called in and told Chloe he was exhausted after his meeting with the Queen, so he’d be working from home. It wasn’t a lie: he was exhausted, and in truth his head was pounding… but neither fact had anything to do with the Queen.
Then he’d sat and stared at his computer, which was still in its box, for twenty minutes before giving up and grabbing a notepad and telephone instead.
Truth be told, he still wasn’t comfortable with the whole phone thing either. Anything more complex than a bottle-opener was more technology than he liked. Chloe called him a technophobe. The London office called him a Luddite. Ruarc considered himself to be fairly technologically advanced for a species that could fly, teleport, and on occasion mind-read. What the hell was the point of a fax machine when you could move a piece of paper with your mind?
He sighed and pushed himself away from the glass. Enough procrastination. The light was making his headache worse. Grabbing the phone, he dialed the London office.
“Sundown, Inc. How can I help?” purred a sexy female voice with a strong Caribbean accent.
“Is Magda there, please?”
“No, she’s taking her kids to the vet.”
He blinked. “Vet?”
“That’s what I said.”
Werewolves.
“Right. Okay, well -- who is this?”
“That depends,” she said, “on who this is.”
Ruarc rolled his eyes. Honestly, you could hardly conjure anything by a name. “I’d like to speak to Con Marks, please.”
There was an intake of breath. “Con Marks? We don’t have a Con Marks.”
“He goes by another name.” But Ruarc couldn’t use it.
“And what name would that be?”
His fist clenched. He couldn’t say it, because giving something the wrong name was a kind of lying. And he couldn’t lie.
And she knew this.
“Look,” he said, “just tell Con I called, and --”
“Okay, and what’s your name?”
“Ruarc.”
“Ruarc what?”
He closed his eyes a second. Sighed. “Ruarc of the Unseelie.”
“Ha!” said the woman at the other end. “I knew you were! Renk faery bakra!”
Ruarc held the phone away from his ear as she spat at him some more in a language he only half understood, and eventually hung up on him.
Evidently she’d heard about Con and his Unseelie problems.
Dammit.
Uttering his tenth sigh of the morning, he dialed Alexius’s number and lay back on the sofa, eyes closed. The sun was making his head pound.
“Yeah.”
Ruarc mentally added Get Alexius to answer the phone professionally to his list of crap to be sorted out, and rubbed at his temples. “Alexius. You used to work out of London, right?”
“Right.”
“Can you call them for me?”
A slight pause. “Why can’t you?”
“I tried. Who do they have answering phones there, girl with a Caribbean accent?”
“Ah. That would by Lily, the pirate queen.”
“Pirate queen?” His headache was getting worse. Lily’s name was familiar but he had no idea why.
“Yep. Let me guess, she was less than civil to you?”
“As soon as she heard my name. She have something against faeries?”
“One of them imprisoned her in a fishing float for three hundred years.”
Eibhlis. “Oh. That Lily.”
“And she’s engaged to Con Devlin… who, as he tells it, was once the Unseelie butt-monkey. His words.”
Ruarc winced. “Nothing to do with me.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Would I lie? Alexius, I need a favor. Can you call her for me, please, and see if London can lend us anyone, just until we can hire some more staff? We need someone to deal with vampire and werewolf clients, and a witch or wizard wouldn’t go amiss, either.”
There was a pause. Ruarc knew Alexius was running through a mental list of the London office’s staff.
“Unlikely,” he said finally. “Rome might be a better bet.”
“Can you call them for me? I really feel like hell.”
“Rough night?” Alexius’s voice held a smile.
“You wouldn’t believe it.”
He signed off and lay back on the sofa. Probably he ought to get up and pull the drapes across the window. Being Unseelie meant that the sun wasn’t his friend when he was feeling low -- and right now, he felt like shit run over twice.
Had he really fought off a goblin attack last night? Had he really let a vampire bite him? Had he really had sex with her? What the hell had he been thinking? She was a vampire. She hated faeries. Well, actually she appeared to hate everyone -- but she was sort of genetically programmed to hate him especially.
And he’d had sex with her. The most incredible, heart-pounding --
Right then, a thump came from the upstairs door leading to his bedroom, and he groaned.
“Maricón!” came the bellow of the woman whose breasts he’d been licking a few hours before. “You better not be out there, faery!”
So, she was feeling better.
“Because if I find you’re out there and you’ve locked me in here, I am going to drain every drop of sparkly blood from your body,” she yelled.
He rolled his eyes and sat up. “Maria?”
Another thump. “You are so dead, maricón!”
“Sleep well?” he called.
A stream of Spanish, mostly obscene, was his reply. Ruarc stood up, his head throbbing, and made his way to the window to close the curtains.
“You better let me out, faery!”
“Why, so you can drain my blood? That’s not much of an incentive.” He closed the first of four huge curtains. The comparative darkness was blissful.
“How dare you lock me in!” she screamed.
Ruarc grabbed the second curtain. “Because it’s daylight, and you’re a vampire, and I have a wall of windows.”
There was a short silence.
“You didn’t need to lock the door,” she said eventually.
Ruarc drew the third curtain across the window. “If I hadn’t, and you’d just opened it, then you’d be toast.” He considered this. “Maybe I should have left it unlocked,” he added.
More Spanish.
He took the fourth curtain and tugged it across the window. The fabric was thick, dark velvet, lined with blackout material. Daylight was all very well and good, but sometimes an Unseelie just needed the darkness.
Feeling better already, he padded up the steps to the mezzanine level where his bedroom was. He could feel her on the other side of the door, a dark moody presence, angry and buzzing with energy.
“Maria?”
She growled.
“Why are you calling me maricón? You know I’m not gay.”
“But you are a faery,” she sneered. “And I know you like other men. I saw you in the -- I saw you!”
Yeah, okay, she’d seen him in Starne’s zoo. Seen him happily fucking his faery cellmates -- male and female. So what? Most faeries did.
“What color are the walls in there?”
Silence. Ruarc pressed his hand against the door, feeling her there. She was leaning against the wood, separated from him by an inch or two. He felt her anger, pulsing like a living heart. Felt her fear. Felt her… vulnerability.
“Maria?”
“Pale blue,” she muttered. “You have stupid blood, you know?”
“It’s always worked fine for me.”
He turned the key, and she darted away, diving under the covers just as he opened the door. He caught a glimpse of dark honey skin
before she disappeared totally, and shook himself. Now was not the time to remember how that dark honey skin had tasted. Had felt, sliding against him. Had smelled, a delicious scent filling his senses like --
“Hey! You said it was sunlight out there!”
Ruarc shook himself again. “It was,” he said. “I closed the drapes.”
She peeked out at him from under the covers, her thick dark hair mussed, her big eyes gleaming in the darkness. Her skin glowed -- with, he realized, the after-effects of his blood.
She licked her lips, and his cock hardened. Inexplicably. Okay, she was kind of attractive, for a vampire. But he’d seen more beautiful women. Had bedded hundreds of them. Had been raised surrounded by them.
By beautiful fae women…
His eyes narrowed. “How long have you been singing at that club?”
Confusion hit her first. He felt her emotions like he’d been plugged into her. Then confusion turned to suspicion. “Why do you want to know that?”
Ruarc pinched the bridge of his nose. He wasn’t entirely sure, but… “Last night. The Seelie who attacked you said you were his reward --”
Those luminous eyes of hers narrowed. Her fangs gleamed.
“ -- for distracting me,” Ruarc finished. “How did they know I was going to be there, at that club?”
She shrugged. “You don’t go there often?”
“I don’t go to Brooklyn often. I’m not a fan of jazz clubs.”
“Then what were you doing there last night?”
He leaned in the doorway. Knowing she was naked under there wasn’t helping him think. “I felt something… something off.”
She raised one eyebrow, sitting up and pulling the sheets over herself. Her breasts moved in interesting ways beneath the fine linen.
“Something dangerous. And I also smelled a Seelie.”
“A what? That slimy thing with the arms?”
“That was a goblin. The guy who…went after you, he was Seelie.”
She gave an impatient shrug. Her breasts moved interestingly again.