by Sharon Page
Lukos sucked at her clit and she exploded. Before her climax ended, she was laid gently down on her outspread cloak. She couldn’t remember either of them removing it. Zayan laid on it, and lifted her, so she sprawled over him. His hard cock pressed to her sopping cunny.
She joined him in a heated kiss. They devoured each other’s mouths; he shifted his hips, and his cock filled her.
Lukos’s thumb pressed to her already pleasured anus. Yes. Yes, she did want this. A caress of his finger, and she felt wet and slick back there. As he held his cock to her, he stroked and teased, until she was panting.
Pressure. A twinge of pain. The amazing sensation of opening for him. Pleasure claiming her from both front and back. Then he was in her, in a few precious inches, and she was amazingly full.
Braced on his powerful arms, Lukos stayed in her, without moving. Zayan shifted his hips, pressing his cock deeper, so deep, and she gasped. She gripped his biceps. Lose your control, she begged. I am ready.
She had never expected to release such passion. Lukos drove deeply into her, too, drawing out to the sensitive rim of her anus, then filling her again. She rocked between them both—
Oh!
The climax took her quickly. And the men kept thrusting, taking her to another. And another. “God, my angel, you are precious.” Lukos managed to rasp those words aloud; then he bucked into her, filling her snug rear passage with his hot come.
“Beyond precious,” Zayan shouted, and he surrendered to his climax too. He reached down between their bodies, tweaked her clit, and made her explode once again.
Oh, she cried. I adore you both.
They collapsed together on the velvet cloak. She should be chilled, to be covered in perspiration in the cool night air, but the men cuddled close to her.
We adore you, Lukos said, gruffly.
“But you seem to hate each other.”
“If you want me to forgive Zayan for what he did to Ara. If you expect me to kiss and make up, I will not do it.”
“It’s not the truth, damn it, Lukos. And the price for your blasted stubborn stupidity could be Miranda’s life.”
Miranda levered on her arm and faced Lukos. The truth had to be gotten at. “Why do you think Zayan did it? How do you know?”
“Lucifer revealed it to me. Why would he incriminate Zayan if the blackguard was innocent?”
Zayan leapt to his feet. “Because of this. Lucifer has demons with the power of prognostication. He could have looked into the future and seen that we would join together with a woman of incredible power.”
A woman of incredible power. Miranda sat up, and Lukos draped his conjured cloak around her shoulders. She twisted to face him. “It does make sense.”
Lukos frowned. “There was already a prophesy written about me. It claimed my mate was Serena Lark, a half-vampire woman.”
Miranda stilled. “Lucifer might have seen something different.”
“The truth is I never served Satan,” Zayan said. “I was the red power’s slave. I was never an apprentice to the devil, as you were. And your sister was imprisoned only because you went willingly to the Underworld to gain the devil’s magic—”
“I damn well did it to save my people.”
Zayan bowed his head. “Your sister was hurt to punish and torment you. I understand how that feels—”
“He does,” Miranda cried. “Don’t you both see that you should sympathize with each other? You could help each other with the pain and the grief of your pasts. If only you would stop believing lies and would put your pride behind you.”
The men stood, silhouetted by fingers of moonlight against the night sky. “She is right,” Zayan groaned.
Lukos simply growled. Rising onto her knees, she knew she had to try to break through to him…
She realized she was between them, her mouth at the level of their crotches. She could smell the blend of her aromas and theirs. Sensual desire heated in her again. Althea and Serena had told her that passion could break through reluctance, that pleasure could allow the men to push aside anger and mistrust.
She had to try.
Miranda grasped both shafts and drew her men to her mouth.
Zayan looked up to Lukos. “A truce to pleasure her?”
“All right.” They both waved their hands and created two long, slim wands of green light—the wands were about the size of the men’s cocks. She trembled with nerves and anticipation. But she was so wet from so many climaxes, the lights easily went inside her. The columns of magic thrust slowly in and out of her quim and derriere, as the men’s erections had done. Both magical cocks surged in at once, and the sensation was so intense, she found herself squeezing the two cocks hard. Too hard. The heads both turned a dark purple.
“Heavens, I’m sorry.” She relaxed her grip, slid her hands up and down.
Both men protested she had nothing to be sorry for, but she knew how to acquire their forgiveness. She opened her mouth and took Lukos’s rigid cock inside. His velvety skin slid along her tongue, her lips lightly bunching it. She really had no idea how to please him, but she liked the earthy taste of him. It was naughty, exciting, to hold him in her mouth. Each pleasurable thrust below made her moan around him, and he moaned in response.
“I love that, angel.”
Even Zayan groaned his approval, though she’d forgotten to stroke him while plying her tongue around the intriguing ridges and vein lines of Lukos’s cock. She glanced up. Both men looked in agony, their mouths tense, their lashes shielding their eyes.
Zayan rocked his hips so his cock slid slickly against her palm. Lukos was thrusting harder into her mouth, but she felt his restraint. He was fighting for control.
Take him beyond control. Instinctively, she sensed she had to do that, if she wanted to release magic. But how did an untutored woman do that?
Playfully, Lukos urged into her head.
It had been years since she’d played. Not since Simon’s drowning—after that, after she’d discovered she had power and no longer understood herself, she’d never felt playful again.
Naughtily, she stroked down Zayan’s shaft and reached for his dangling balls. She wobbled them, stroked them, let them roll around her hand and pour off, tugged them. God, yes, love, you are a wonder when you’re playful.
She pulled on Lukos’s member and gave Zayan’s a kiss. She gripped Lukos’s rump and squeezed, while fondling Zayan’s balls and suckling him. Both men were breathing harshly.
Could she make them come this way?
Angel, you are no longer pleasuring yourself, Lukos chided. We want you to come again first, sweeting.
Two fevered bounces took her there.
Then both the men exploded in ecstasy with shouts that rang up to the sky.
She was still mortal, and dawn did not drag at her and force her to seek sleep. Miranda trudged up the last few yards of the rough, rutted road that led to Blackthorne’s castle. Exhaustion weighed on her, pulling her down, making her take steps with annoying slowness. Last night, with Zayan and Lukos, she had not slept at all…
They had taken her to the closed-up manor house they had been hiding within. Empty of a family, it held only a handful of servants. They had crept through the quiet house to one of the farthest bedrooms. Magic had provided blankets. And they’d savored more pleasures all through the night…
She took a deep breath, kept walking, and tried to force herself to move faster. This was more than just being tired, and more than the draining effect of several hours of intense and acrobatic lovemaking. The air felt as thick as water and she was trying to wade upstream against the current.
What if making love together did not give them the strength to stop the red power?
That fear had haunted her as she had watched Zayan and Lukos succumb to sleep. They had both tried to fight their daysleep, determined to watch over her, but the compulsion was too strong. It must be the price for being able to survive beyond death—their bodies had to fall into that dormant state
.
Once both vampires were slumbering, Miranda had left their bed. She’d slipped from room to room until she found a wardrobe of woman’s clothing. She borrowed a dress and shoes, and put on the cloak Zayan had created for her. To fight the red power, she believed she had to understand. Just as Aunt Eugenia had told her a slayer had to understand a vampire to destroy him—or her.
Perhaps she was mad, but she believed she’d find answers from the vampire slayers. Assuming they did not lock her up for her own good.
“I need to know everything you know about the red power.”
Althea and Serena stared at her, perplexed. “I’ve never heard of such a thing,” Althea said.
Miranda pointed to the window. “You’ve seen the fog that is settled on the village. It seems to be a living being. It can speak if it chooses. And it drains life and magical power. It thinks—like an entity. Zayan says that it was that red mist that made him into a demon.”
“I know nothing of a red mist.” Althea crossed to a trunk that sat in the corner of her bedchamber. In a bassinet beside her bed, her baby slept. Miranda was pleased to see the bond between mother and child was so strong that Althea wanted her daughter with her. The drapes of the room were drawn, blankets had been tacked up over the windows behind them, plunging them into the darkness of night.
The male vampire slayers were sleeping. Women vampires, it seemed, did not need as much sleep, and as long as the room was dark, they could move around in the day. Serena had ruefully rubbed her back and confided that apparently sleep was as hard to achieve for a pregnant vampire as for a mortal.
Althea gathered two leather-bound books—one in burgundy, the other royal blue—from the top of the clothes in the trunk and brought them to Miranda.
“I wrote these,” Althea said, “to gather all the information I could find on the fiercest, most evil vampires we had encountered. I brought the ones I wrote on Zayan and Lukos.”
“The things you told me about Zayan.” She told Althea about Zayan’s enemy, about what Zayan had told her. “It is logical, isn’t it? Gaius and the emperor invented those horrific stories to destroy the man they hated. They wanted to make Zayan appear to be a demon before he ever became one.”
“It makes sense, but—”
“Did you see him kill a child?
“In truth, no.” But sorrow radiated in Althea’s gaze. The words hung, unsaid but understood. Zayan had been a vampire for two millennia. Miranda could not wave her hand and turn him from predator to hero, no matter how much she wished to.
Miranda lifted the journal on top and put it to the side. She drew the one marked “Lukos” to her. It was like Pandora’s box—once opened she could not put things back. She would never forget what she would see. As with Zayan, whether she believed it or not, it would change forever how she felt about him. Once she knew the evil he was supposed to have committed, she would be always trying to disbelieve it—but it would never leave her.
Holding her breath, she opened the cover. But before she could read beyond the first few words, the room trembled. She jerked her head up—
Red light swirled in the center of the room.
Ready to attack, Miranda got to her feet.
“You have been asking about Pravus Semper,” called out a female voice. “You called it the red power.”
Miranda stared at the woman who had materialized in the room. She wore a gown of green silk, it clung to her perfect form; it was unfashionably tight at her waist and followed the generous curve of her hips. Her bosom was full and plump, barely restrained by the neckline. The woman settled herself in a seat. “Well, child, do not gape at me so foolishly. Sit.”
Serena frowned. “Mother? What do you know of this?”
They had wanted her to wait, but she knew she couldn’t. And Miranda did not think vampire slayers would want to help Lukos and Zayan.
She knew so much more, she realized, as she rushed down the road away from the castle. She knew of the prophesy of Lukos, and she knew that he had believed Serena, Lady Sommersby, who had been Serena Lark before her marriage, had been his intended mate. She knew it had been Lukos’s plan to sire an army of demons and control the world. And she had read the last part of the prophesy, sent to Serena by Lord Denby of the Royal Society. She could remember the words: If he does not find his mate by the first spring equinox after he has risen, he will be consumed by his own power and burned to ash. And the one whom he loves most will also perish. She will die in a prison of Satan…
She knew that Zayan had imprisoned Sebastien de Wynter, who could have destroyed him. She knew that Althea and Serena did not believe.
“They are tricking you,” Althea had said firmly. “There must be something they want from you.”
In her heart, as much as she wanted to deny it, she knew what it was. Both vampires had both lost people they had cared about to death. Zayan had lost his children; Lukos had lost his sister. Zayan had told her that the power—the Pravus Semper—had promised to give him his children in return for her magic.
Could Lukos also have wanted to gain control of her magic? Was that why he had proposed sexual games in the carriage? To capture her—or her heart?
“Miss Bond.”
The masculine voice brought her to a stop. Foolishly, she had been thinking and watching the red-colored clouds amassing again over the village.
Two men had stepped out into the road, at the sharp turn ahead of her. They must have been behind the trees that crowded the road. One, with gray hair and a cane, bowed before her. “Miss Bond. I am afraid you cannot be allowed to return to the vampires. It is obviously too dangerous for you.”
She seethed in exasperation. “And who are you?” She glanced to the second man to include him in her demand—he was a tall pale man with dark hair and cheekbones so prominent the shadows beneath them were black. He looked like a cadaver.
“I am Lord Denby,” the first man said. “Of the Royal Society.”
Miranda took a step backward, but she knew she could not escape. The cadaver put his hand in his coat and withdrew a pistol.
But Denby looked astonished as the man leveled the weapon at her, and she froze, waiting for the explosion of powder, and the pain that would be searing and brutal.
“Rothswell, what is the meaning of this?” Denby was waving his cane in anger.
“You are blind to what she is, my lord. How dangerous this demon is. We cannot continue to allow her to exist.”
“She is not a demon, Rothswell.”
“She is not human!” Sweat broke out on the cadaver’s high, lined forehead. “Gone are the days where we can indulge ourselves with study and speculation. It is our task to rid the world of evil—”
“If that’s our role, then we should likely start in the Houses of Parliament or of the Lords. Probably much evil there.” Denby reached out with the cane to lower the pistol. “Our duty is to try to understand what we as yet cannot. Violence is no solution. Miss Bond gives life.”
Rothswell swung the pistol around to Lord Denby and the elderly man lowered his cane. “A travesty of God,” Rothswell spat. Then he looked down the road and became infinitely more at ease. Miranda twisted to see what he had spotted.
James Ryder had stepped out from the forest to the road.
Rothswell hailed him at once. “Mr. Ryder, we must work quickly—” The man’s voice died away in shock as Ryder lifted his arm. Miranda saw a black shape in his hand and she took a step forward. She wished she could throw magic as Zayan could. But Ryder’s arm arced and the black bar slammed down against Rothswell’s head.
He cried out, then fell hard to the ground.
Ryder laughed at Denby, who lifted his cane in a threatening arc. “I could snap your neck with my fingers,” the slayer laughed.
“Do not do this,” Denby begged. “You were one of us.”
“Shut it. You considered me to be nothing more than a lowly thug.” He pointed at Rothswell’s limp body. “He was a member of your precious
Society also, and he wanted her dead more than I do. I’m doing this for the blunt—he and the others are doing it because you are a weak man, Denby. A weak man with a pitifully soft heart.”
Miranda vowed not to be taken easily. As Ryder approached, she spun and tried to run. He grabbed her around the waist. “I’m not waiting around to take the chance of your werewolf coming to your rescue now, love.”
“Where are you taking me?” To the Royal Society’s men, she guessed. Where they would swiftly kill her because they were afraid of what she was.
He grinned. “No, not to them. To my new master, angel.”
16
Battle
He parted her thighs and she moaned her welcome. Golden, twinkling in sunlight, her hair fanned around her. Laying on the grass, Miranda giggled, then gasped in need as he bent to her cunny—wet, glistening, ready for him.
He tasted her, and at that—just one lick of her while being bathed in warm sunshine—he lost control and climaxed. Scalding hot, his come shot out to his thigh. His body jerked with it—almost as intensely as when he shifted shape.
She had done this to him. Miranda had brought him to his knees.
But she had done more than that—she’d opened his heart to light…
Zayan jerked out of his deep vampiric sleep. It had claimed him at dawn against his will, and he blinked slowly. It took a few moments for all his senses to become alert, but he knew, instinctively, that Miranda was gone, even before his eyes could see the empty room in the house they had found.
He remembered her whispering that the rooms, with the furniture draped in covers, looked to be filled with ghosts.
His heart was filled with ghosts, she had told him that too. He’d felt the pain in her heart when she’d told him she wished she could bring his children back for him. But he did not think even her power could do that.