by Amy Lane
“All of that lovely blood, and not a drop to drink,” he apologized smoothly, but he looked haggard and gaunt, and I realized that if he couldn’t even bring himself to touch one of us because of the temptation, then the others would be in far worse shape. Goddess.
“How old are your vampires?” I asked suddenly, thinking about what he’d said. He blinked in surprise and even took a breath, which he didn’t have to do. “Are they old enough that a few swallows would do them—keep them off our backs until I can smash through the wall?”
Andres tried not to laugh. “A few swallows might very well ‘do them,’ as you say—but, providing that you could actually do what you promise and smash through that magic barricade, I’m not sure I could guarantee that we’d stop at a few swallows.” He looked away and his throat worked, and he took a few steps back. “You cannot starve a wolf, my dear, and expect it to behave like a lap dog.”
“They don’t have to drink from us—” I began, but he interrupted.
“You cannot expect us to drink it cold!” And I could have laughed, because it was a connoisseur’s horror.
“It doesn’t have to be cold if it dances across the room,” I said quickly, looking at Bracken, who nodded grimly.
“What then, Cory?” he asked levelly. I wanted to touch him, I realized. His face was so close to mine in the dark that I could feel his breath stirring the fine hairs around my eyes. “After I’ve fed them our blood, what next? You’re weak. Everything you had, you spent healing me.”
“Well go ahead and tell the hungry vampire that!” I snapped, irritated because he was right and because I was trying to hide it. “I spent my anger, but that’s not the only way to rev my battery, Brack. You know that. It’s not even the most powerful way.”
Bracken’s expression was furious and incredulous at once. “So first you’re pissed at me, and now you want to fuck me?”
“I’m always pissed at you,” I shot back, although it was hardly true. But I did want to make love to him, and maybe the irritation would help keep me awake when I was dead on my feet. “You’re arrogant, you’re overbearing, and you don’t see what’s in front of your face. But you’re also tender, protective, and as hurt inside as I am. All I ever wanted from you was a little time, asshole, but now we don’t have any—and I don’t know about you, but I’d like to live to see where we might go.”
“So Nicky and I make love to you and you blow up the wall?” Yeah. It sounded really stupid when he said it.
“Not Nicky,” I said quickly, remembering what Green had told me about Avians. I looked over my shoulder at Nicky, who nodded, stricken. “He mates for life, Brack. He comes once, and he’s in my bed forever. He needs to touch my hand, that’s all. As soon as we blow the wall, the vampires leave and we get up and go.”
“That’s it?” And his voice cracked oddly. “I feel you up—‘charge your battery,’ as you put it—we get up and go?”
“Children,” Andres pointed out gently, “it sounds like a plan—one I look forward to seeing put into action—and since I just saw one of my own twitch a little, I think maybe we should be quick about it.”
But not so quick that I shattered a beloved’s heart. Mindful that even Grace was showing signs of life, I put my hands on Bracken’s face, touched my forehead to his, spoke gently for the first time since I’d entered that cavernous trap, furious and frightened. “Have I ever, from the time I first kicked you in the balls, been able to just get up and walk away from you?” I asked.
“I will never let you go,” he whispered, his brackish, shadow-colored eyes smoldering and intense. “If I touch you, I will keep a part of you that Green will never have.”
I swallowed. “Then we’re even, the three of us,” I said roughly, and he nodded as though we’d struck a bargain, and his intensity changed.
I knew it was coming—we were standing well, chest to torso, nose touching nose, and we had just pretty much announced our intentions to get very friendly in the immediate future—but… but his mouth, which had been so sweet the night before, was harder now, more possessive, and so much sweeter. Bracken surrounded me. His hands, long-fingered, were large enough to span my midriff and almost touch across my back, and his arms were almost crushing me against him. But even crushed, I felt enfolded and so, so safe. This man would hurt me, I thought in the corner of my mind that could still think, this man would fight with me and challenge me and make me angry, but he would never leave me as long as breath was in his body or will was in his heart.
I heard a sound, a startled yelp and a stretch, and then Grace’s voice in front of us. “Jesus Christ on crutches, do you think there could possibly be another time to do that, you two?”
“Not really,” Nicky answered for us. He had come up behind us, close enough to touch me if I needed him but not close enough to intrude. Of course, the way my body seemed to be swelling up inside my skin, he would have needed to climb inside my capillaries to intrude. “We’re going to feed the vampires, and then Cory’s going to blow a hole through the magic wall and let them out.”
“Are you sure that’s what she’s going to blow?” Grace asked dubiously, as Bracken thrust his tongue practically down my throat. I gasped, fighting my need to thrust my hands inside his shirt, and pulled back for a moment, trying to clear my head. If Grace was awake, that would mean….
“Ohhhhhhh……,” I heard a voice from across the room groan ecstatically. “Finally, room service.”
“You have no idea,” I gasped. Bracken, beating me to the punch, had found his way under my sweatshirt. Since my T-shirt was tied around his now healed shoulder, the contrast between his chill, rough skin and my heat-warmed fleece sweatshirt was enough to make me shudder. “But if you want to eat and get out of here, you’ll give us a minute.”
“Fuck that,” said another voice roughly. “I’m too hungry to get off watching you two. Get out of my way, Andres—this could be the only food we get.”
“How very shortsighted of you, Robert,” Andres said mildly. “These people are trying to help us.”
“I’d rather help myself to them, thank you very much,” said Robert. He was getting impatient, I could tell, and Bracken’s clever, clever hands found my breasts, doing their best to drive away fear.
“We’ll feed you!” I panted, and then to Bracken, “Do you mind—I’m trying to save our lives, here!”
“And I’m trying to live,” he hissed wolfishly, and I found myself smiling back at him with stupid eyes.
“I’m starving,” one of Andres’s vampires cried. I could hear it, that ever-present hunger in his voice, and thought of Adrian’s own drive to feed. Things would get desperate in here awfully damn fast, and I wasn’t sure if Andres could control them.
“Andres!” I called, gasping again as Bracken’s long and nimble fingers found my pointed nipples and rubbed. “Andres…,” I moaned, and I heard him chuckling in appreciation, because it sounded as though I were calling to him in passion. “Lord Vampire,” I said as formally as I could, seeing that I was being ravished in public view, “Lord Vampire, do I have permission to kill?”
“Indeed yes,” he replied. “If you feed me and set me free, you have permission to kill anyone who tries to stop you.”
“Thank you, sir,” I said, and Bracken moved his kisses to the corner of my mouth, to my ears, to my throat. “Grace!” I gasped, and she looked behind her enough to grin at me. “Grace, you need to open our wrists,” I said, hating the thought. Bracken’s hands, his mouth, were making my heart pound and my blood course through my veins—but even as my fingers tightened convulsively in his hair, I knew that I was weak not with passion, but with exhaustion. Making love could make you strong—but at a price later.
I heard Nicky behind me, wincing. Then Grace pulled my hand reluctantly from Bracken’s shorn hair and there was a gentle pain in my wrist. Bracken pulled his own hand from my waist, running his thumb under the waistband as he did so, and I almost sobbed in reaction. His other arm wrapp
ed around me for support as Grace bit him, and then the three of us held out our wrists and Bracken leaned his head against my collarbone and began humming under his breath.
My own breath caught in wonder as my blood began to spurt, pulling in little balls from my wrist. From the flesh of the three of us, our blood began to dance—small mouthfuls of it catapulting rhythmically from our coursing veins and arcing across the dim interior of the warehouse to the wide-open mouths of the ravenous kiss of vampires. The dark was so complete that Bracken’s magic glowed from the globules like diamond sugar sparkles on red licorice, and the little sounds the forty or so vampires made when each swallow of wonder hit their open mouths was childlike in its glee. I could hear them gulp from where I stood, clinging to Bracken in arousal and weariness, and prayed that it would be enough. I wavered against him, light-headed, as the dancing blood stopped its flight. The wounds on our wrists closed as Bracken called our blood back to our bodies. He could do this now, I thought, because we gave each other strength. As the vampires sighed at that tiny taste, his mouth found mine, as ravenous for my taste as the vampires had been for my blood. I grabbed Nicky’s hand with my own, a little static zip rippling through me as the circuit of power that was me closed, and my lust for Bracken and attraction for Nicky began to build power in my blood.
“Sorcerer…,” one of the vampires said in wonder. “Elf…,” another moaned. “I haven’t had elf in heavens know how long….” And then Robert’s impatient voice—“Goddammit, all I got was shape-changer… and not enough. I want some fucking food….”
“Well, Robert,” another voice said drolly, as Bracken’s hand slid underneath the waistband of my jeans and cupped my bottom, “it looks like you’re about to get your wish.”
Nicky’s hand squeezed mine in fear, and I knew without looking that Robert’s face was undergoing that scary thing that happened when vampires were super hungry and super aroused, where their foreheads bulged and their teeth extended from their hollow-cheeked jaws. Adrian had been wearing that face when he’d flown to my rescue and died. I hated that face—and right now I was pretty sure Nicky wasn’t too fond of it either.
“Stand back, Robert,” I gasped, trying hard to stay standing, to stay clutching Nicky’s hand, to stay sane. I was charging; the combination of fear and pure animal desire was working, and I could feel it, the thrumming through my loins, my breasts, and up into my throat. I needed more control than that, I thought, and blessed Green for teaching me that handy little power-in-the-hand trick the night before. Bracken’s fingers traced the line of my bottom, and I made a little groaning, gasping sound in my throat as I closed my eyes and mouth and forced the rising static in my body into my free hand, which was no longer clenched in my lover’s hair. Not a minute too soon. As I opened my hand to the glowing ball that was my love and life force, I heard a collective gasp from the gathered kiss of vampires and the shrill scream that meant Robert’s slender thread of self-control had snapped.
I heard cries of “Robert, no!” “She can kill you, man!” and “Dammit, Robbie—look at her hand!” before I felt the big whoosh as he hurtled into the air and rushed us from above. I felt him more than saw him, but it was enough for me to open my hand and launch. Pure sunshine, brilliant, angry, aroused and in love, burst from my hand, and Robert was caught midair. I even saw the agonized surprise on his face before he burst into flames and drifted down on the upturned faces of his kiss in a mist of ash.
I felt like shit. He’d been hungry and trapped, and he was loved. I hated what I’d done, and the ball of light in my hand flickered.
“Don’t,” Bracken said against my throat. “There’s no sin in wanting to live. There’s no sin in wanting to save our lives.” His head dipped lower, his mouth cupping around my breast through my sweatshirt, suckling through the thick fabric, making it wet and weakening the quivering muscles in my thighs. I whimpered a little, felt in my body all of the reasons I wanted to live, and knew by the strength in my arms and the brightness behind my eyes that my pulsing ball of glow was stronger.
“Every vampire I kill will make the wait to get out of here longer,” I said between my teeth. “Give me a little time….” Dammit—time. Time with Adrian. Time to get over him. Time to love Bracken. No wonder immortals were so afraid of grief. The one thing longevity had taught them is that there is never enough time.
“Co… Cory?” Nicky’s voice was quavering, with fear, with desire, and I realized I had to cut him loose or his heart and body would be lost, but not to me—just lost.
“One more minute, Nicky—think of sports scores or something,” I panted.
“I hate sports,” he said tersely, and his hand tightened on mine again, but this time in desire. He was molded to my back now, and I felt his erection through my jeans.
“Back away…,” I hissed. “Back away, but keep hold of my ha—aand….” Because Bracken had moved from my breast to my midriff, which was bared by his hands, and his tongue dipped into my belly button and began a slow line down the open zipper of my jeans. Busy boy, Brack—I hadn’t even known my jeans were undone.
“You know I was half in love with you before this,” Nicky groaned. I squeezed his hand back and, Goddess help me, leaned against him some more as he leaned on the pallet of tarps.
“Hang in there, Nicky,” I whispered. My world was rapidly narrowing—from the cavernous warehouse, to the kiss of vampires, to the people I was trying to protect—and now it was down to Bracken and his clever, clever hands and diabolical tongue, and the opalescent glow of fire in my hand.
“Ahhhh… ahhh….” Oh, Goddess, his lips brushed my pubic mound, not even the swollen button of flesh still covered by denim, but just the fur, and the skin, and….
“Now, Nicky, now!” I commanded and hurled my force like a freakish tennis ball into the west-facing wall. At the same moment, I jerked Nicky away from me and released his hand to clench my fingers convulsively in Bracken’s hair. Keening, breathless, pleading sounds were coming from my throat, and still, in the back of my mind, I knew that even when we were alone there was something I must not do.
A gaping rift the size of an RV opened up in the side of the warehouse, followed by a swarming kiss of starving vampires, followed by what would have looked like a poor little kestrel falcon except he had an Avian erection that could be seen even as he flew. As soon as they cleared the wall, they ceased to exist for me.
I fell back abruptly against the pallet onto the soiled bed of tarps, and then I was centered on Bracken, consumed by him, caught in the conflagration that was and always would be the two of us making love. His hands caught roughly at my hips and pulled my jeans down to my knees, and he was burrowing between my thighs. I cried out, washed again by a building climax, and another, and the power that was the two of us crashed over me like a climbing tide, and again, and again, building inside of me to a peak that felt like it would crack the world. The teeny-tiny pea-sized part of my brain that was still sane was afraid. There was a reason, I thought, that I couldn’t allow that to happen, but I couldn’t remember what it was. I clenched against the sexual incursion, determined not to let the madness inside of me erupt. It was hard—Goddess, it was hard—because his tongue was clever, and my body was swollen and begging for his touch and for his sex, and I wanted him inside of me so badly it was like pain. It was pain….
“Nooo…,” I gasped, digging my hands into the grimy tarps that were our bed, and the same teeny-tiny part of my brain spared a neuron to wish that we were someplace glorious for our first time, and then Bracken moved up to cover me with his bare body. He wedged a knee between my thighs, and I spread them willingly. I would have held my knees to my ears if it would have eased this terrible, awful ache of wanting in my sex. He poised his body above mine, touching my swollen, slick sex with his own, and I almost sobbed with the effort not to impale myself on him. “I don’t… I don’t remember…. Something bad will happen….” Goddess, I needed him.
“It’s okay…,” Brac
ken whispered, his shoulders shaking with the effort not to sheathe himself inside of me. “Green’s here. He’ll catch you. Let go.”
And only then could I feel Green outside, surrounding the warehouse with his power, readying himself to catch whatever burst from me in aftermath.
I cried out and arched my hips, taking Bracken inside of me in one thrust. And then he was moving, and he was engorged and awesome, and pounding so deeply I thought I could taste him in the back of my throat, and I craved him. And still he drove me, higher, higher, until I thought I could see the heavens, and I had one last breath to wish again that we were doing this somewhere, anywhere but here in this dank warehouse, and then there was no room for anything but Bracken and my body exploding around him, surrounding us with power that spilled around us, washing against Green and flowing back. Something awesome and huge gave way inside of me, and Green caught that too. Then it was only Bracken and me clutching each other, crying out, and his trembling arms clenching as he spilled himself into me, and for one perfect moment we were everything.
GREEN
Unexpected Edifice
THE AIR around the warehouse was like being inside a storm cloud before the first charge of lightning. It was thick and expectant and static, and even though Green had a pretty good idea what was going on inside, his chest wanted to explode with the agony of waiting.
Renny came up beside him and leaned, catlike, into his circle of warmth. “What do you suppose is happening in there?” she asked quietly, her breath pluming in the cold winter wind from the Bay. The fog had blown away at sunset and it was so clear that Oakland looked close enough to leap to, and the Bay Bridge looked unreal overhead. But the wind, Goddess, the wind was cold enough to fog the mind when there was no fog to speak of. Renny had been running around in bicycle shorts and a T-shirt all day—if she hadn’t been a werecreature with a lightning-speed metabolism, she would have been too cold to speak.