by Jory Strong
He shifted his hands so one was freed while the other kept her wrists pinned to the door. Her heart thundered against his chest. But the shiver of erotic fear he felt in her negated any protest she might voice.
Her heated, sultry scent swamped him, burning away all rational thought. And with a harsh moan he invaded her mouth, cupping her jaw and applying pressure, forcing the barrier of her teeth to lift so his tongue could push its way through firmed lips.
If he thought she’d yield, he was mistaken. She fought him, but the battle was waged on a sensual field.
Hours had passed since they’d lain together next to the fire, since he’d fed her in a primitive display of male dominance and female submissiveness. His hand left her jaw, his fingers ruthless as they unbuttoned her shirt and shoved her bra upward to free her breasts.
She cried out, her back arching; her nipples hard, tight points; her body betraying her. He took a dark areola between his fingers and swallowed her moans as she responded to his touch.
His penis throbbed against the front of his pants. His cock screamed, not only for freedom, but for the feel of her mouth on it.
I need you, she’d whispered in the alleyway near the dock where the boat was moored, and he’d wanted her then and there.
Tir released her nipple. He brushed his knuckles over her flat belly on the way to her waistband.
As he undid the thin leather belt she wore, he imagined using it on her. He’d get the truth from her then.
The image of punishing her nearly sent Tir to his knees. Had he always had such fantasies, or had his time in human captivity darkened his hungers to match those of his captors?
Her hips bucked when he opened the front of her pants and slid his hand into her panties. “Yes,” she whispered, widening her stance, moaning as he cupped her smooth mound.
Tir pressed his fingers into her slick channel and fought the siren call to touch his lips to her lower ones, to thrust his tongue into her sheath. “Please,” she said, pushing into his touch, rubbing her swollen folds and hardened clit against his palm, driving his fingers deeper.
His mind was a confusion of conflicting desires, but one dominated, the need to free his cock from its painful confinement. She cried out in protest when his hand left her wet, heated flesh. He swallowed the sound, loved the way it slid down his throat, filling his chest before sending molten lust to his penis and testicles.
He jerked her pants downward and then opened his own, nearly coming when his cock head touched her bare flesh. His fingers went automatically to his shaft, and for an instant he was tempted to grant himself relief, to coat her skin with his seed.
His penis hadn’t stirred at the brothel. It hadn’t filled in the centuries when he’d been presented with women, both willing and unwilling alike, but with Araña…
He wanted her. When he was with her, he could barely think of anything else but taking her.
Tir’s lips left hers in order to trail kisses along her jaw and up to her ear. He fucked his tongue into the sensitive canal, his fingers tightening on his cock, sliding from base to tip in time with the wet probing.
“Let me touch you,” she whispered, the muscles at her wrists flexing as she tried to escape his grip. “Let me take you in my mouth.”
In a heartbeat, everything left his mind but one need, one purpose—to fuck through her sultry lips and press his cock head to the back of her throat, to feel her tightening on him, sucking him, swallowing him.
He released her pinned wrists. “Do it,” he commanded, resting his forearm against the back of the door, nearly whimpering himself when her hand chased his away from the hard length of his erection.
He quivered as the feminine hand he’d seen wield a knife closed around him in a firm grip. He jerked when the pad of her thumb gathered his escaping arousal and rubbed it into the smooth head of his cock.
She went to her knees gracefully and nuzzled her cheek against his length. The spider was there as well, blending seamlessly into her skin.
A moan escaped when she turned her head and brushed her lips to his trembling, eager flesh. “Araña,” he said. Her name curse and pledge. Demand and plea. And she smiled against him and let him feel the hint of her tongue—the torment of pleasure denied.
“Take me in your mouth.”
Her soft laugh made lust boil lava-hot in his veins. On a snarl, his hand fisted in her hair. “Do it.”
She touched her tongue to his length again, stroked, called what blood remained in his body to his cock. His gut tightened in a wave of panic, that he’d come like some untried youth. He growled her name again, his buttocks clenching, fever sweeping through him as he fought to keep from begging, to keep from throwing himself on her mercy.
Araña had never felt so powerful as she did in that moment, kneeling in front of Tir, positioned like a supplicant for him to command.
She reveled in his harsh voice. In his ragged panting as he struggled for breath. She could barely remember what had led to this.
It didn’t matter. All that mattered was touch—what she gave to him and what he returned. She’d been starved for it, had rarely allowed herself even to dream of it.
Now all that mattered was feeling Tir’s skin against hers. A lifetime with him would never be enough.
She cupped his testicles in one hand and weighed them in her palm. Remembered the stallion she’d once seen mount a mare—and fantasized about Tir taking her that way. Sinking his teeth into her flesh as his flanks pistoned and his cock thrust hard and deep.
Her other hand tightened on his throbbing shaft. She licked along his length, savored him.
He smelled like the forbidden. Tasted like sin wrapped in undeniable temptation. And the sound of her name coupled with the harsh rasp of his breathing as he ordered her to take him into her mouth, to suck him, was more beautiful than any choir of angels. It spoke to her soul, filled it, as if she’d somehow bound them together the night she’d touched her thread to his in the heart of the flame.
Araña relented. Not because he commanded it, but because she desired it. Because she wanted to hear his cry as he came and to taste the hot wash of his seed as it pulsed down her throat in molten jets.
She took him in her mouth, looked up at him and memorized the harsh lines of his face as he thrust between her lips.
Their eyes met and held, dark and light blending in a carnal taking, bleeding into each other with primitive intensity.
Shallow thrusts became deeper ones. Pants became moans then grunts as she lashed him with her tongue, threatened him with the feel of her teeth against his cock, dedicated herself to swallowing him whole.
He came like a bolt of lightning. Savage. Uncontrollable. Wild. A force no human would conquer. A force only a few survived.
And she took what he gave, her hands leaving his cock and testicles in favor of holding him to her. Her nails digging into his buttocks in a sharp reminder that she might be on her knees before him, but she wasn’t conquered.
He hardened again almost as soon as he’d spent himself in her mouth. On a growl he pulled from between her lips and lifted her, held her against the door and thrust his cock into her channel with such ferocity she cried out.
“Mine,” he said, covering her mouth with his, pushing his tongue through the seam of her lips and growing more feral when he encountered the taste of himself there.
Araña clung to him as he pounded in and out of her sheath. There was no thought of fight or resistance. There was only the merciless climb. The scream of release. The sweet lassitude that came afterward. And the tenderness she’d come to need as much as she did his dominance.
He nuzzled her, kissing her gently, the door the only thing enabling them to remain upright at the conclusion of their sensual battle.
“I need to leave if I’m going to arrange a safe berth for your boat and then retrieve it.”
“I want to go with you.”
“No.” The denial was delivered with a kiss. “I don’t want to worr
y. Stay here. Stay safe. The night holds nothing I’m afraid of.”
But I’m afraid of losing you. Of what you’ve come to mean to me.
She volunteered neither. “The smaller key is for the boat engine. The other is for the cabin.” He kissed her again before stepping away from her. They straightened their clothing, not taking their eyes off each other. When he opened the door, she said, “Stay safe.” The words she’d always exchanged with.
Matthew and Erik whenever they parted company. “Stay here until I return.” The steel edge of command was back in Tir’s voice. Then he was gone. The door locked behind him. And the waiting began.
Fourteen
TIR slowed as he neared the Victorian. It was the only house on the street where people weren’t gathering at windows, watching the daylight fade from the false safety of clubs with names like Sinners, Greed, and Envy.
The collective emotions of the elegantly clad humans in those clubs reached out, clawing at Tir’s mental shields, the patrons like a single vicious creature hungry for pain and suffering instead of food.
The knowledge that they hid their true natures within beautiful bodies and cunning minds reinforced centuries of his hatred and disdain for them. They were less than the most simple of beasts. They were unworthy of his attention—except what might be required to rid the earth of them.
He turned his thoughts to the club in front of him. Temptation.
The sign identifying it was elegant, an engraved invitation to sin that contained both warning and promise. Curtains instead of people fluttered at the still-open windows, the sound beckoning like an insidious whisper, one whose breath held sighs of pleasure and the sweet scent of opium.
Like the other clubs, bouncers stood on either side of the door. But unlike the others, these were dressed in expensive suits, as was fitting for ushers to a party, or a funeral.
Tir climbed the steps and stopped in front of them. “I’m here to see Rimmon.”
“You’ve got Lord Rimmon’s marker?” the bouncer to the left said. “Or someone else’s?”
“No.”
Interest flared in cold eyes. “Then the only way you’ll get in is if you’re willing to risk a cage fight and pay your way by entertaining Lord Rimmon’s guests.”
Tir shrugged. “As long as the fight doesn’t delay me unnecessarily. I have other business to attend to tonight.”
The second bouncer’s smile was as cold as his companion’s eyes. He opened the door to reveal a woman standing there. “Take him to Lord Rimmon. No detours.”
The woman nodded and turned, exposing a dress cut away to reveal her back, its skirt slit so each step afforded a shadowy glimpse of her woman’s folds. Temptation, Tir thought, but his cock didn’t stir at the sight of her cunt.
Other women waited along a curved staircase, their dresses equally revealing, their bodies adorned with jewelry. One of them stepped forward to take the hostess’s place as he was led away from the foyer.
Period pieces graced the rooms they passed. Men and women sprawled on couches and chairs, some of them engaging in sexual acts while others watched or conversed with fluted glasses in their hands.
The woman turned toward Tir, her white gloves extending to her elbows, her dress plunging to reveal deep cleavage and the coy hint of pale pink nipples.
She reached for him, as though she intended to loop her arm through his and press her breasts against him, but faltered at his expression. “I’m happy to attend you,” she murmured. “But if another escort would better please you, it can be arranged, assuming of course that Lord Rimmon allows you to remain as his guest.”
Tir didn’t respond, other than to force his mind to remain on the task at hand rather than straying to thoughts of Araña and what they’d done together before he left. Her body was the only one his craved, her human life the only one he cared about.
The sweet smell of opium slunk into the hallway, mixing with that of hashish. Wallpapered rooms gave way to hazy, dim ones where gaunt men and women hovered over specialized pipes, smoking substances that had claimed human souls for centuries.
Conversation gave way to mumbling and then, as Tir moved deeper into the club, to shouts as dice were thrown and a roulette wheel spun. Smoke-filled rooms became dark paneled ones. Tapestries yielded to exotic silk and then to red velvet and the smell of cigars.
Men gathered around gaming tables, calling out numbers and calling for cards, praying to Lady Luck and cursing her, ice clinking in their glasses, the noise they made blending into that of the next room, a hybrid mix of gentleman’s club from the long ago past and sports bar from the days before The Last War.
Flesh pounded against flesh, the sound of violence instead of lovemaking. Large-screen television sets were positioned so those at the bar and in front of it could watch as two boxers fought in another part of the country.
An empty cage dominated another section of the room, a circular arena meant for fighting. Tir took it in at a glance before he found Rimmon.
The vice lord sat on a raised dais in a shadowy corner, the rest of the room fanning out in front of him as though he were a king sitting on a throne. His face was made nightmarish by the flicker of candles set in sconces on the wall on either side of him.
Rimmon spoke to the woman sitting on a cushion at his feet, her arms wrapped around his elegantly trousered legs, her head cushioned on his lap where his hand stroked over honey gold hair as if she were a pet. She was dressed similarly to the hostess Tir followed.
When Tir reached the edge of the dais, she rose to her feet and walked away with the female who’d accompanied him. The vice lord’s attention remained on them, his single emerald-colored eye alight with appreciation. “They’re magnificent creations, aren’t they?”
“Women?” Tir asked, not trusting the brandy-smooth inflection in Rimmon’s voice.
Rimmon laughed and shifted his attention to Tir. “Humans. I find them simply divine. But then, I always have. They’re my downfall, the temptation I can’t seem to turn away from. After seeing the female you were with earlier…” The burning green eye found the sigil-inscribed collar. “But perhaps I’m mistaken. Perhaps your time spent among humans hasn’t been as pleasurable as I imagined.”
Tir stiffened, sensing a trap wrapped in temptation. The vice lord’s words hinted at hidden knowledge, the possibility of finding out what he’d been before his enemies trapped him in flesh and wrapped his memories in darkness—if he was willing to admit to such a weakness to the being in front of him.
Rimmon was no mortal, despite his appearance.
When Tir didn’t respond, Rimmon waved casually at the cushions scattered on the dais. “Have a seat. Since I extended no invitation for you to visit my club, I assume you’re here as a petitioner? Or better yet, as a penitent?”
“I’ll stand.”
A smile twisted Rimmon’s face into a grotesque mask. “Ah, pride. What would it take to break you of it, I wonder? And make no mistake, I’d take great pleasure in doing so, almost eternal pleasure. But of course, it would come with suffering to match. That’s always the way, isn’t it?”
Rimmon leaned forward onto the armrests of his chair, his hands settling on the lion claws carved into the old wood. “I’m not someone who believes in coincidence. There is a game being played here, of that I am certain. But are you part of it? Or a pawn?” And like light striking a different facet in the same stone, the gleam of amused speculation in Rimmon’s emerald eye hardened into ruthlessness. “What name do you go by?”
“Tir.”
“Tir. It’s a name I’ve heard whispered, but what it might stand for eludes me at the moment.
And somehow I doubt you intend to enlighten me. So rather than waste the night exploring how you came to be at the occult shop at the same time I was there, I ask, what is it you want from me?”
“I want to bring a boat into the waters you control and leave it there, knowing it will be guarded until I reclaim it.”
Rimmon b
linked and leaned back in his chair, not bothering to hide his surprise. “You do prod me into curiosity. And if I choose to grant this favor? What will I gain from it?”
Rather than place his trust in the Were’s rumor about the vice lord’s daughter, Tir said, “What would you ask of me?”
Rimmon laughed. “Do you expect me to ask that I be restored to my former glory? Is that the sweet temptation you bring with you to my club? If so, then you’ve failed. There is something I want more, something that will cost you not just the boat if you manage to bring it safely into the harbor, but the woman I saw you with earlier if you’re unable to deliver on your promise.”
“And the promise you’d have me make?” Tir asked, not bothering to keep the menace from his voice in response to the vice lord’s threat against Araña.
“Heal my mortal daughter. Fail and I will keep your woman in my bed until by some miracle she gives me a child. An eye for an eye. It has a familiar ring to it, doesn’t it?”
Fury surged through Tir at the thought of Araña underneath the vice lord, her legs splayed, her channel filled with another man’s cock. It took all his control not to lunge forward—and had Rimmon been human, he wouldn’t have managed it.
Tir clamped down on his anger, though possessiveness pulsed through him with every heartbeat. There was little risk; in his centuries of captivity, he’d unwillingly cured others of the disease.
“I will heal your daughter.”
Rimmon signaled, and a server appeared with a hand-drawn map spread flat on a tray. The vice lord traced a route winding through wreckage, his finger stopping on a spot deep in the harbor. “If you’re successful in getting the boat to this point, my men will greet you. They’ll stay with you until morning. Then we’ll see if you can do what you say you can.”
ARAÑA paced endlessly, moving from one barred window to another and staring out. The house was larger than the Constellation and yet it confined her in a way the boat never did.
More than once she caught herself rubbing a hand over her heart, as if somehow it would cease beating if something happened to Tir.