by Aja James
“I want to see how you are,” he said quietly. “I want… to see you.”
“And now that you have?” Ava whispered, almost afraid that if she spoke too loudly, he’d disappear.
His bright obsidian eyes raked her slowly from head to toe, meticulous in their journey.
Ava wondered what he saw. She wondered whether she imagined the raw hunger in his eyes.
“You look…”
“Yes?” she took a step closer to him, the better to hear his low words.
“Healthy.”
That was right up there with “round and furry.” Ava tried not to show her disappointment.
“Well, now you’ve seen me, you can leave and protect me from afar, invisibly, like before.” Her expression was sullen in the descending night, and she hoped he couldn’t see it well.
“Your mother invited me to dinner,” he pointed out.
Ava wanted to stomp her feet.
“Then stay and eat and then leave,” she said uncharitably and walked past him toward the kitchen door.
“Ava.”
She paused in front of the door with her hand on the knob but didn’t turn around to face him.
Silence again.
She waited. The hair on the back of her neck prickled with awareness.
“How are you feeling?”
She turned around. She could hear the concern for her wellbeing in his voice, and she didn’t want to worry him.
“I feel great,” she said. “I feel better than when I was a spritely twenty year-old. I haven’t had any negative symptoms at all.”
His dark eyes pierced into her.
“I couldn’t protect you… I should have protected you…”
She took a step toward him, and he looked as if he wanted to take a step back to maintain the few feet of distance between them, almost as if he was afraid of her. Or afraid of being near her.
“You did protect me,” she argued firmly. “You’ve always protected me. And look, no harm done. If anything, I’ve just won the lottery in terms of youth and longevity. To anyone, it would be an unimaginable gift.”
He looked away from her, his jaw clenching.
She watched him take a series of deep breaths that made his chest move hypnotically up and down. Hypnotic to her at least. She was envisioning the smooth expanse of honeyed skin beneath the soft fabric of his Henley.
He turned back and said, “I owe you my life. I have nothing to give you in return.”
She frowned, pulling her mind back from the gutter.
“How can you say that?”
She wanted to continue to say, you’re everything I’ve ever wanted, but he interjected before she could.
“Don’t you understand that there is something wrong with me? Something evil and broken?” he whispered, his eyes showing bleakness and pain.
For a moment she saw him completely vulnerable, and she knew how much it cost to let her inside of him.
She covered the remaining distance between them until she was standing right in front of him, her eyes shining with the love she felt.
“You’re beautiful, Ryu,” she said, looking into his doubt-filled eyes. “You’re beautiful and whole. The mistakes of your mother are not yours to inherit. It had nothing to do with you, and everything to do with her.”
“I’m a killer,” he told her, his voice bitter, his eyes bleak, “You were right about that. I killed my own comrade when I was turned into a vampire, the only one who’d never done harm to me.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know what happened, but I can only imagine you didn’t mean to. You couldn’t help it. I know you. You’re a good man, Ryu.”
“I’m not a man—”
“Actually, you kind of are,” Ava cut in. “And you weren’t turned into a vampire. You were born.”
Chapter Nineteen
Ryu’s head went back in shock.
She nodded vigorously.
“The shinobi, the one you fought with the long dark hair, he told me. You were born of a vampire father and a human mother. You—”
“Ava,” her mother called out from inside the house, “your food is getting cold. Come back in with Ryu so we can have a nice family dinner.”
Ava gave him a long look, reached out and took his hand, and led him back to the kitchen.
Ryu went through the motions of eating and conversing with relative aplomb, but Ava knew that he was shell-shocked, trying to digest what she’d told him.
“Ryu’s going to take me to Boston tomorrow,” Ava told her parents. “We’re leaving bright and early first thing in the morning. I’m going to go ahead and stay over at his place tonight. I don’t want to wake you in the morning.”
“Sure thing, honey,” her mother said, nodding approvingly. “Call me tomorrow night.”
This was new to Ava. Ana Lucia had never approved overtly of Ava staying with a man outside of marriage vows, even though she knew that her daughter lived with a couple of her boyfriends. She’d always given Ava a hard time about it.
That went double for Gavin Monroe, who always gave her boyfriends the hostile treatment whenever she brought one home to meet him. From the way her father was now piling barbacoa and generously buttered slices of bread on Ryu’s plate, Ava felt it was safe to say Ryu had won his stamp of approval.
When they finally said their goodbyes, Ana Lucia reached up and gave Ryu a tight, mama-bear hug.
“I am so glad you’re taking care of my baby girl,” she said, and smacked an affectionate kiss on his cheek while he stood there stunned and endearingly uncomfortable.
“We are so happy to meet you, Ryu. Come back often, you hear?”
“Yes, Mrs. Monroe,” he answered meekly, still recovering from the hug.
“Ma,” she corrected him.
He smiled at her.
“You better put a ring on her finger, son,” were Gavin Monroe’s departing words. “She’s a treasure, is my Ava.”
Ryu didn’t respond, but he and Ava’s father seemed to exchange some silent communication with their eyes, and Gavin had shut the front door apparently satisfied.
“How many motorcycles do you have?” Ava asked when she got on the back of the seat and secured the helmet he handed her. He’d brought two. Had he anticipated that she’d ride with him?
“Many,” was Ryu’s typical, one-word answer.
He strapped her small roller bag in the back, got on in front of her, and gunned the engine to life. Before long, they were blazing through the streets of New York City.
He hadn’t argued with her self-invitation to wherever it was that he lived. Ava hoped this was a good sign.
Or maybe he just wanted to finish their conversation in private without interruptions.
They arrived at a high-rise apartment on Upper Eastside, a luxurious loft that must have cost a fortune. As Ava walked in the door and took in the stunning view of the interior, she was reminded of when they first met on the plane, when she thought he was the wealthy and powerful heir to an Asian conglomerate.
“Are you rich?” she asked baldly.
“Yes.”
“Huh.”
He stood in the center of the twelve hundred square-foot loft and looked at her, somewhat ill at ease.
“Does that bother you?”
“What? Being rich?” Ava shrugged. “I guess it makes sense, what with you having had hundreds of years to amass a fortune.”
“Do you want anything to drink? Eat?” he offered after a stilted silence.
Ava tipped her head to the side and regarded him. “Am I by any chance your first visitor here?”
Another silence.
“Yes.”
Her lips curled involuntarily into a smile.
“Another first,” she said, and immediately thought of the other firsts they’d had together.
She went to him slowly, carefully, as if she were approaching a cornered beast who was about to bolt at any second.
“Ryu, why did you come to see me?”
He seemed to be debating whether to stay or flee, and he wouldn’t meet her eyes as she came closer.
“I already told you,” he hedged.
“That’s right,” she said, “you wanted to see whether I’m healthy or not. You wanted to know how I’m feeling. Anything else?”
She was immediately in front of him, only a few inches separating their bodies. She didn’t reach out to touch him, and neither did he reach out to her. But her closeness made him feel as if she’d touched him all over.
He was already unbearably aroused. He had been since he first heard her voice as she came in the door from her errand. It had been a few of the toughest and longest hours of his life as he attempted to will his sex into flaccidity. The presence of her parents had helped to dampen his libido, but now that they were alone…
A growl vibrated in the back of his throat. He wanted to attack her like a savage animal.
“I wanted to make sure you were safe,” he said in his low, husky voice, deeper than usual.
“I’m always safe when I’m with you,” Ava said. “Am I going to be with you from now on, Ryu? Or just until you and your comrades have dealt with your enemies?”
His breathing was coming in and out more rapidly, as if her closeness agitated him. Well, his closeness certainly agitated her.
In the most glorious ways.
“What do you want from me, Ava?”
He’d asked her this before. She remembered her answer then. She gave the same answer now.
“Everything.”
He exhaled deeply and clenched his jaw, his fists by his sides.
“And you can’t tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about, because I do,” she said, still not touching him. “I’ve tasted you, been inside of you, and held you inside of me. I know where you come from, your past, your story. But even if I didn’t, I’d still know you, Ryu. And I want everything of you. The question is whether you want me too.”
He finally looked at her, let her see for herself the naked answer in his eyes. The aching, the longing.
His dark desires.
I’d give my life for you, she heard his voice in her head, in her blood, as he continued to hold her gaze. I have never known love before you. Never loved in return. And I never shall love any woman but you.
Ava’s smile bloomed slowly as she savored his words, still echoing loud and clear inside of her. Then she grinned big and bright, with her whole heart in her eyes. She reached up and put her hands on his pecs, which jumped in reaction to her soft touch.
“Am I your first?” she asked, rather self-satisfied.
A corner of his mouth tipped in an answering half-smile. The vulnerability still lurked in his eyes, but he knew her well enough to understand that she’d never use his weakness—his desperate love for her—against him.
“Yes.”
“Tell me,” she ordered.
“My first and my last,” he obliged. “My only love.”
She paused to let her heart dance gleefully for a bit on that one. A male of few words, was her fantasy dark-chocolate-fudge-Arabian-stallion lover. But boy, he sure packed a punch whenever he got around to using them.
“Took you long enough to figure it out,” she accused half-heartedly.
“I’ve always known it,” he said, “I just didn’t know what to do about it.”
“You’ll never leave me again?” she pressed, giving him a hard glare.
“You left me while I was still recovering,” it was his turn to accuse.
“You were supposed to come after me as soon as you got better,” she returned, “What took you so long?”
“I didn’t know if…” he looked down again, away from her. “I didn’t know if you still felt the same. I thought…”
“Stop thinking,” Ava commanded, seeing where his head was wandering to.
Flickers of pain chased across his face as he was reminded of all his self-doubt and self-derision. He still didn’t understand how good he was. How worthy and deserving.
How precious and beautiful, from the inside out.
“Kiss me,” she said, effectively distracting him. She wound her arms up around his neck, bringing his lips closer to hers.
“I want to hold you inside,” she whispered against his mouth. “I want you to take me inside too. I want you long and hard, and I don’t want you to stop until I tell you to.”
Briefly, he hesitated. And then his lips curled in the sweetest, shyest, most heart-meltingly beautiful smile.
“As you wish, bumble bee.”
Her nose wrinkled before his lips covered hers, and she murmured, “You have to find something else to call me. I refuse to be compared to a flying insect. I—”
He silenced her with his tongue in her mouth, mimicking the undulation of his body as if he were already inside of her, hot and hard and long. Just the way she liked him.
“Bumble bee,” he whispered when they came up for breath after a prolonged sexual meeting of mouths, as if the endearment was something reverent and naughty at the same time.
She shivered and clung to him. “Stop it—”
He’d somehow pulled off the clothes from her lower body and opened his jeans in the last few minutes. He held her up in his arms, supporting her weight so that his satiny, pulsing sex was pressed tight against her weeping core, but not quite inside.
“Bzzz,” he said against her throat, so that she felt and heard the vibration against her skin.
“Oh God,” she moaned, her core clenching hard in anticipation of his penetration. “Okay! All right! Stop teasing me! Call me whatever you want, just come inside of me, NOW!”
He pumped into her with one powerful surge. They both gasped at the incredible fullness and pressure. Her sex immediately clenched around him rhythmically, milking him for his seed, begging him to go deeper even though he was already pressed against her womb.
Ava grabbed onto his face with both hands and ate at his mouth voraciously, plunging her tongue inside, sucking greedily at his full lips.
“I want to be inside you too,” she whispered desperately, “I want—”
He broke the seal of their mouths and sank his fully extended fangs into her throat, drawing almost painfully on her vein as he simultaneously ejaculated powerfully within her, flooding her core with his seed.
Ava groaned long and low, her hips pumping, her thighs squeezing, as she crested on her own explosive series of orgasms while he held her upper body still as he fed from her neck.
Without breaking his seal at her throat and the connection of their lower bodies, he lowered her onto a nearby couch and moved on her with exquisite precision, the engorged head of his sex hitting her G-spot with every thrust. At the same time, he continued to drink from her throat, giving her unbelievable pleasure, taking pleasure in return, everywhere around her, within her.
She felt decimated by his loving, revitalized by his love.
After what might have been an hour, maybe two, possibly more, Ava felt deliciously sore where he still massaged her deep inside. They were both naked and entangled on his platform bed by now, having all but wrecked the couch.
She sighed languorously, half-asleep.
“Want me to stop?” his deep voice caressed her eardrums.
“Hmm-um,” she answered with a small shake of her head and wrapped her legs tighter about his hips, her arms tighter around his shoulders.
“You’ll be sore,” he murmured, nuzzling her neck.
“So will you,” she said, and sounded rather satisfied at that.
He huffed on a soft chuckle.
“Glutton.”
“You better believe it,” she returned unabashedly. “Where you’re concerned, Ryu Takamura, there’s no such thing as too much.”
“Promise me you won’t leave again,” she said drowsily, but compellingly.
“You’re the one who—”
“Promise.”
He raised himself on his elbows so that he could look intently into her e
yes while he stroked her deep inside.
“I promise,” he vowed. “You will have me as long as you want me.”
“Which is forever,” she said readily.
He sighed and dropped his forehead to hers, closing his eyes.
“If that’s what you want.”
“It’s what I’ve wanted since I first smelled you,” she reminded him.
She could feel his smile against her lips as he kissed her gently, worshipfully.
“I knew you were trouble, Ava Monroe. You’re my ultimate weakness, my perfect pleasure.”
“Hmm,” she hummed, holding him close. She couldn’t get enough of his little confessions. His words said in that aphrodisiac voice of his were her favorite drug.
“Is Takamura your mother’s name?”
Ryu looked down at her slightly puzzled, but knowing Ava, her non sequitur must have made sense in her own logic.
“No. It’s the name of my second ninja Master, the one I stayed with the longest.”
“Why did you leave the first one?”
She had his full attention now. He tried to pull away, but she held him tight.
“We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” she said. “You promised you wouldn’t stop until I tell you to,” referring to their marathon love-making.
He stayed inside of her, but was still and silent, his head turned toward her on the pillow.
“I just asked because I wondered whether you’d want your children to have Takamura as a last name.”
Truly, her mind worked in strange, disconnected ways, Ryu thought, mentally shaking his head.
“I haven’t thought about it,” he finally said. “Even if what you say is true,” that he was a vampire born, “it doesn’t mean I can have offspring.”
He smoothed a thumb down her cheek, his heart aching.
“Do you want children very much?”
He was terrified that he couldn’t give her what she desired most.
Ava nodded, turning on her side to face him.
“I want this baby desperately,” she whispered, the fingers of one hand playing with his hair.
His heart squeezed painfully. What if—
Wait. Did she just say this baby?
When the truth dawned on his face, Ava met his stupefied look with a beatific grin.