by L. A. Banks
She reached out and cupped his cheek with her hand. He turned into it and pressed a deep kiss in the center of her palm.
“You are the only one who accepts all of me—the good and the bad, the strong and the weak. You’d take me with a halo or with fangs,” she said quietly, smiling sadly and moving in closer to him. “To be with you doesn’t require that I play some role, or be something special, and when I fall, you don’t even care about that. You were that way with me before and after your turn . . . strength of character, Carlos—you’ve got it. So, if fate has it that I die with you, isn’t that an honorable way to go out?”
Her words were shredding him, and he tried to remember that he was indeed talking to a female master, as her gaze held his defiantly. Life was ironic, death was even more perverse, because here he was backing away from a gorgeous, naked, wet, ripe, seductive vampire.
“Damali, I actually prayed that you’d get a second chance to live,” he said, pushing a stray lock over her shoulder. “In this condition, you could conceive, and we wouldn’t know whether what you were carrying was good or something . . .”
She pressed her index finger to his lips to stop his awkward tumble of words. “Nobody knows what will come out of this next generation. Life is a gamble, just like death is a gamble. The way I see it, we’ve got a fifty-fifty shot.”
Water beat on the tiles, just like her words beat on his conscience, both standing so still neither was breathing. Then she made the fatal mistake of moving a millimeter closer, her breasts brushing his chest when she lifted herself on tiptoes to take his mouth.
Prayer was forgotten, his conscience was banished. Her hair filled his hands, and his mouth captured hers. The steam carried her scent. As his reason melted, so did his clothes. The hard rake of her nails down his back dragged his hands the length of hers. There was one single objective: enter this woman, or lose his mind.
Her short pants were now the pace of his pulse. Her back hit the wall, knocking the wind from her lungs. He caught the hard exhale in his throat and thrust his tongue into her mouth.
Tearing his lips from hers, his jaw collided with her cheek, forcing her head to the side so his incisors could drag a hot trail from the edge of her shoulder to find the sweet spot midpoint on her neck. She held his shoulders tight, pulling him against her as though trying to fuse with his skin. His hands flattened at the small of her back then moved over her supple behind, lifting her off her feet.
Writhing under his hold, her eyes shut tight, anticipation in every breath, waiting for the double entry. A swift strike came with the deep thrust, her voice rising with the steam, creating so feral a sensation that she let go of his shoulders and flattened both palms on the tiles.
From some remote place of awareness, he knew he had to pull out of the siphon. Her body was going limp; the punishment too intense. Yet need created by the scent of ripe Neteru was beyond even council-level control. He should have fed, first . . . but how in the hell . . . when she shuddered like she did, her moan deep and guttural, her legs now clamped around his waist, and every returned thrust sending intense pleasure through his groin.
He could feel his incisors about to sever the vein, hit muscle, cartilage, and penetrate her esophagus. A long, hard shiver sent shock waves down his spine as he tore his head back, kissed the wound to close it, and rested his forehead against the tiles, sucking in air.
“Don’t stop,” she whispered hard against his ear, still moving under him, cradling his head, running her fingers through his hair.
“I have to feed,” he said, breaths staccato, words running together. “I’ll kill you.”
“You can’t, not this way now that I’m already turned . . .”
“Not permanently.”
Her head was tilted back, her neck arched, breathing irregular through her mouth. The words, the timber of the plea, the invitation, were a double-edged blade—slicing reason, while snapping it back into focus, if only for a moment. He pulled out hard, causing her gasp to stab him. She turned away and pressed her cheek against the cold tiles.
“You right, you’re right . . . okay,” she said between her teeth after a moment.
But the sight of how the water played over her shoulder blades, the definition of her spine flexing drew his fingers to each vertebrae, lingering to kiss them with his touch, making him take one step back to admire the form of her wet ass.
His hands slid over the high, glistening cheeks with the water, and he entered her, hard from the rear.
He cried out as her stomach hit the wall. He slid his hand between the tiles and her wondrously smooth belly, pulling her into him, against him, to keep her from being slammed into the wall. Using an outstretched arm with his elbow locked to brace the impact, shelter her skull, his breaths became a chant. He needed to feed.
With his head thrown back, his eyes shut tight, he tried to reason with her, slow his motions, his pulse, the inevitable. “Downstairs in the lair, on tap,” he said between pants. “But you have to stop moving.”
“I can’t.” Her voice broke, and she reached back, holding his hips, refusing to allow him to break the seal of their bodies. “Not yet.”
“It’s now or never,” he told her honestly, gathering her in his arms, his hands sliding up her slick torso to mold her breasts. “Let me feed, so we can both live to do this again tomorrow night.”
Grudgingly, she moved, disengaging their bodies and allowing him to turn her, shuddering when the connection was lost. He embraced her and nuzzled her hair. With a thought, they were downstairs, dripping water on the black marble kitchen floor.
She backed up to the sink, baiting him with her eyes. “Turn on the tap,” she ordered. Her voice was low, and husky. Lethal.
He nodded and it ran blood.
Without his looking at the cabinets, they slammed open—and a crystal goblet materialized in his hand. She inched over and let him fill it, watching him with burning intensity as he downed two glassfuls quickly.
“Can I taste?” She smiled, her fangs glistening in the darkness, her eyes flickering gold.
“It’s got a kick to it . . . not like feeding from me, or the packs.”
She nodded, her hot body sliding beneath him. She dipped her finger in his glass, put it in her mouth, and closed her eyes, pulling her finger out slow and wet. “Yeah . . . it does.”
He let her take the glass. She took a deep swig, dropped the glass, and let it shatter. With feline agility, she pushed herself up on the counter and leaned back and her eyes said it all—no mind lock necessary.
More stable now, he took his time, his lips finding her eyelids, the bridge of her nose, but denying her ready mouth his kiss. It was about finesse. A sad knowing overcame him as he honored her body—she was too far gone, the purge hadn’t worked, and she’d turned. Instinctively he knew that while female vampires could not reproduce the scent of ripe Neteru, a master could reproduce any illusion that he had intimate knowledge of. In this case, he’d made a female master with Neteru DNA. He wanted to weep.
“I’m so sorry, baby,” he whispered, swallowing away his tears.
“If I had to be bitten and turned,” she whispered, stroking his hair, “I’m glad you were the one who did it.”
Carlos nuzzled her neck. He’d never forgive himself, but vowed to spend eternity making it up to her.
Breath warm and coating teased her throat, a nip, a flicker of tongue, making her squirm in frustration as she waited for his bite and entry. Deep, long kisses sucked her collarbone. A gentle caress lifted her breasts, causing a shiver. Gooseflesh from anticipation made her arch to make contact with his mouth, the tips hardened, ready, but ignored, then suddenly captured. The sensation almost blinding, then gone.
Moistened thumbs traced a lazy circle around edges of her nipples in a burning tease. A light kiss on her breastbone made her belly quiver. A long, sweeping lick down her abdomen—impossible to hold her head up and watch. A tongue circling her navel, then penetrating it, causing a slow mo
an . . . a series of advancing kisses, nips, that forced her to lift her head with hope . . . then he looked up at her and smiled.
Her thighs opened wider on their own accord. But the place that she most needed to feel him, he ignored. The tender insides of her thighs were on fire. Every swipe of his tongue, every deep French kiss against them, made her lift her hips and contract, not knowing when the kiss there would come.
When his hands slid down her sides and over her thighs, water came to her eyes, blurring her vision. His caress was so lazy, almost hypnotic, were it not for the white-hot burn it created.
“You always smell so damned good,” he murmured into the soft down as he kissed it.
His words vibrated against the tender place, sending a hard contraction up the core of her. Her face felt hot, and she licked the tiny beads of sweat that had formed just above her lip. But when he separated her with his tongue an electric current straightened her spine.
The slow suckle of the oversensitive bud that he’d found made her hips move to the pulse of his tongue. And as his mouth explored the tender folds around it, she arched to try to return him to where he’d just been. But he wasn’t having it. He’d found a deeper region, and he circled it before plundering it, her cries nearly shattering glass.
His mouth wandered, leaving her aching, another site abandoned, his fingers adding delicious, torturous penetration, but a poor substitute. He chuckled, reading her mind, knowing, finding the place she needed him to kiss most, and he allowed his tongue to salsa it until she grabbed his hair with both hands.
Hovering on the edge of certain madness, she could not understand her body. It wouldn’t yield, wouldn’t obey her and just plunge over the edge of the near orgasm. Instead, it teetered, going close, then stepping back, ignoring her will. Her moan became a whimper, then a plea of despair.
“I know,” he murmured against her thigh, hot and thick. “Now do you understand?”
Her voice caught in her throat. She nodded with her eyes closed, but knew he was watching her face, triumphant.
His kisses trailed up her middle, his hands leaving a burn as they stroked her. “I was right there, just like that . . . on the brink for months.”
She wanted him so badly, she nearly wept when he covered her. She struggled beneath his hold, trying to offer him entry, but he just lay refusing to come in.
“For us,” he murmured into her hair, winding it through his fingers, “release is impossible without the bite.” If she’d turned, he had to teach her. She was his woman, his wife, and had to know all there was to thrive in his dark world that had become hers.
He was in full control, and she knew it. She could feel his fangs tease her skin, his hips lowering slowly, calmly.
“Please . . . ” Her hands scrabbled at his shoulder blades, but he shook his head no and chuckled low in his throat.
“Uh-uh. Not yet.” She had to learn patience, how to seduce prey, how to co-opt would-be aggressors. She had to learn how to function within the sixth realm.
Only a millimeter in, he withdrew from the bite, as he entered her agonizingly slow, kissing the nick at her neck. Then he kissed her hard, pulled back to look into her eyes. She ran her tongue over her fangs and she tried to catch her breath. He smiled and closed his eyes.
“Yeah, baby, now you’re ready.”
She felt herself falling, his arms tight around her as her back met red satin sheets. Crimson rose petals stuck to her legs, the aroma making her heady, his touch now bold and firm. His eyes flickered in the dancing torchlight as he looked down at her. She could feel perspiration dampen his back, and she arched into him, hoping he would take her quickly.
The strike was so sudden, so hard, it made colors dance behind her lids. Her body convulsed as he penetrated her once again. He was in so deep that she could taste her own blood in her mouth. He’d found that elusive spot and stroked it over and over again. She dug her nails into the smooth, hard globes of his ass.
Every muscle in his back worked in harmony with her breath-chants, his thighs pushing them up the bed, dangerously near a marble post. He reached out, not breaking stride, and slid them away from it.
She sobbed his name in refrain and he pulled out of the bite, threw his head back, tears streaming down his face. Now she understood.
Offering her his throat, even while he continued to lunge against her, she knew what he needed. His anticipation of her bite made his breaths become ragged. The moment her mouth neared his neck, she could feel him begin to shudder. She leaned up and licked the sensitive surface of his neck and he moaned. The sound of his voice convulsed her womb. They struck at the same moment. Blinding pleasure almost made it impossible to siphon. Every convulsion that ripped through him entered her, recycling itself back to him with her heat contained within it.
She could barely breathe and had to pull up. Her heart felt like a tight fist was crushing it—the waves of ecstasy were so intense. But his tortured plea not to stop now brought her mouth to his throat again.
A prolonged wail traveled up his torso, entered her veins though his bite, made him seek air, refuge from the sensory overload. Carlos’s fingers raked the sheets, shredding them in the wake, while she tightened her legs and arms around him and tried to hold on.
Carlos dropped his head to her shoulder, his face burning, hair soaked, breathing erratic. All she could do was pet away the shudders until his body stopped jerking.
CHAPTER NINE
THE GLARE of harsh hospital lamps made him squint as he came to. Berkfield immediately tried to sit up, but realized instantly that his hands and feet were strapped to a cold metal table. He tried to cry out, but his vocal cords were frozen. White-masked men in green surgeon’s gowns peered down at him.
“Is the key ready?” an eerily distant, accented voice asked.
One of the masked men around the table nodded and held up a huge needle containing a silvery red fluid. Terror seized Berkfield as he stared at the epidural-sized syringe. He shook his head no, wildly resisting in vain. That only produced strange, out-of-body laughter from an unknown source within the sterile lab.
“Inject him,” the voice said. “Then bring him to my chambers for the ritual.”
Seated comfortably in the rec room around the poker table, seven guardians sat in a circle, hands joined, eyes closed. Four members of the Covenant stood watch, each positioned in the four earth directions, north, south, east, and west. The men at the Guardians’ backs kept vigil to prevent evil from attacking from all directions, murmuring prayers in different languages. Marlene’s mouth moved, her silent meditation calling down the Light to watch over them, requesting discernment to open their eyes, to sharpen their gifts, and to locate their baby girl.
“I can’t see her and I can’t feel her,” Marlene said quietly, her voice tight with frustration, “and I’ve been trying for nearly an hour.”
Beads of sweat dotted her brow, and she dabbed at the offending moisture with the back of her forearm, not breaking the human circle.
“They’re obviously blinding both the seers in the group to their whereabouts,” Father Patrick said. “But they can’t block all of us.”
Marlene nodded. “We’ll have to track them through a back door. If one of the other members at the table can pick up a sensitivity, then we might have a chance. One of us will eventually feel their vibrations, or hear them, perhaps pick up a scent.”
“Up to now, Marlene, you’ve been trying to get an immediate sightline on them. Let’s see if we can redirect that energy to the olfactory sensors, or the tacticals. Maybe Mike can hear something that will clue us in?”
“It’s worth a shot, Mar,” Rider said. “If Jose and I can pick up some kinda tracer, then Father Pat’s crew can trail it. We’ll talk them through on walkie-talkie while keeping the circle connection going.”
“All right, people,” Marlene said on a weary sigh. “Let’s clear our thoughts, stretch our minds. We know she mentioned a lair in Beverly Hills, so envision the enviro
nment, the surroundings, the streets, feel the trees, and see the colors, close your eyes, open up your minds, hear the traffic, smell the freshly cut lawns, let your gifts guide you and send those impressions to each other then to me.”
Only the sound of deep, steady inhales could be heard. Air-conditioner compressors around the compound hummed in the distance. A wall clock ticked ever so slightly. Water from a faucet in the next room dripped.
Then Jose breathed in deeply and tilted his head at the same moment Father Lopez did.
“Talk to us, Jose,” Marlene said, her voice low, melodic, calm. “Impression . . . scent?”
Jose took a deeper breath and squeezed Rider’s hand harder. “Smells so good,” he murmured.
“Rider,” Marlene said, keeping the group steady, “you picking up?”
“No, Mar. The young buck got this one. I’m not picking up anything.”
When Jose shuddered, everyone opened their eyes and stared at him.
“Stay focused everybody, keep hands joined, stay relaxed. Jose, where are you?”
A palpable tension could be felt in the room. The squat white candle in the center of the ring of hands sputtered and flickered as an energy charged the atmosphere around it.
“I don’t know, but shit.”
“Are you hurt?” Marlene asked quickly, but her voice was still low and controlled.
“No,” Jose murmured.
“Are you by yourself?”
He shook his head no. His breathing deepened as his T-shirt became damp from sweat.
“The scent, is it vampire?”
“No,” Jose said on a heavy exhale. “Female, straight up.”
“Mar,” Rider said. “He found Damali. Think he’s got a lock with our girl.”
“Yeah, bro,” Jose said, slowly. “Roses . . . blood . . . oh, baby.”
Marlene stiffened. “Roses . . . are they outside?”