'Twas the Darkest Night

by Sophie Avett

  “I don’t keep count.” He dropped his chin against his chest. I would…never.

  Snap! Snap! The searing clap deepened into a hum and he lost himself, his mind going silent. Flatlining. Only one thought remained—look at me. Look at me, Elsa. Please. She did not. Her only attentions were the shadows raining blows on him. Surely, she meant to kill him. How fitting. To be whipped to death by his own brand of darkness. And yet, he clung to it, to the pain, to the punishment. Somewhere in the depths of his mind, he knew he could die now. He could simply let go of the ebony tendrils biting his palms and fall off the face of the earth.

  Don’t look at me. It was a silent prayer. Quiet and cracked. He uncurled his fingers from the binds. One by one. Don’t look at me. He let out a broken little violin note with little care who would hear it and slumped forward, sure she would just let him die where he fell. Bless her.

  But the shadows held him abreast. This one time, they did not let him fall. How could they? Elsa held them in her sure grip. And she would not falter. Never her. Damn her.

  It was a while before he realized she was no longer whipping him. Everything had stopped. The pain in his shoulders and back was an aching reminder of manacles that no longer bound him, they were cuffed around his wrists and ankles like supple leather rings as he hung like a rag over the partition fashioned from the shade.

  Cool air kissed across his sweaty, bloody frame and his skin sizzled as shredded cells knitting together. She’d left him on his knees and her cool shadow towered over him. Apricots and cinnamon. Spice. He hissed softly between his fangs and braced himself against the pain sure to come. Would she rake her nails down his back and leave a signature on her handiwork?

  Her familiar calloused fingertips trailed a sure line across his right shoulder. “I have wanted you for a very long time, vampire.”

  Out of everything she could’ve said—nothing would’ve shocked him more. Nothing would’ve disarmed him so quickly. Damn this witch. He stiffened beneath her touch. “What would possess you to say something like that?”

  She sank to her haunches before him. The tunic pooled and hid her lush thighs despite the slits on either side of the dress, and his gut wrenched with a hunger pang.

  “You asked me how much I wanted you. The first time I saw you, the first time you stood in my shop. I couldn’t…” She cleared her throat as if it was painful for her to reveal such things. “I wanted. I wanted so badly.” Her mouth was closer now. Next to his ear. Dripping and thick like honey. “Every. Single. Day.”

  “You’re lying,” he whispered. He didn’t know where the words were torn from. Marshall was not a self-conscious creature by nature. He was an incubus and a vampire, for fuck’s sake—he knew very well he was mortal sin. And yet, the words rose, strong and true and if he could’ve taken them back, he would’ve. “You’re lying.”

  She cradled his chin and crushed his frown in a kiss. It was deep, sweet. So very sweet, and it nearly undid him. Suddenly, the binds at his wrists were eating at him, his fingers curled, itching with the urge to bury his fingers in her hair. Elsa. His cock thickened and he flexed his hips the fraction the bond would allow.

  “Pretty, pebble.” She pressed her cheek against his and dragged her chin across the jut of his jaw, down the side of his neck, nuzzling him like a cat. “So very beautiful.”

  Suddenly, he was awash in damp tendrils and apricots. Cinnamon stuck to his lips as he rubbed his mouth in her curls. She drew his earlobe between her teeth and suckled. Warm, gentle. His cock twitched and his eyes drifted shut as the pull of her mouth tortured him with images of making her choke on it.

  “Elsa,” he whispered, his abs tensing as he pulled against his binds. “Release me.”

  “You will be released at my say-so, vampire.”

  Shadows shifted and extended. He was drawn up and smooth darkness hardened beneath his backside. Pain boiled across his skin and radiated down his fingertips as the tendrils bound him vertically to a supple St. Andrew’s cross.

  Long, damp chestnut locks curtained his face as he hung his head. She was watching him—studying him like a spider caught beneath a tumbler. He gnashed his fangs. “Haven’t you finished?”

  “No.”

  “Do remember our deal, witch. I get sex. You get punishment. Or was your plan to go back on our deal all along? Do you plan on taking me, Elsa? Is that was this is really all about?” A harsh, guttural chuckle. “Revenge?”

  Fisting her skirt, she hiked up the fabric and revealed the generous curves of her thighs. Her expression remained neutral, though she tilted her head. “Is that what you really think, little vampire?”

  Her question surprised him and he struggled to find an answer. As if sensing his inability, she lowered her eyes dismissively and trailed a finger down the middle ridge of his abdominal muscles. He sucked in his stomach and pressed back. Trying to disappear into the cross. Away from her.

  “Vampire.” She flattened her palm across the slope of his pelvis, dragged her uneven nails across it, and his hips jumped and his cock stabbed the air. “You look…”

  Hunger reared at the base of his being, his entire existence fighting against the desire to allow his world to be narrowed down to just his cock and her sweet little cunt. Regardless of what he wanted, desire would always find a way to thread its sticky sweet fingertips through his veins. That was the nature of his hunger. His bloodlust. And he hated it. More so now than ever.

  Elsa fisted his cock, tugging once, twice. Electrifying him with every harsh, raw stroke. His jaw clenched as pleasure jetted through his veins and swelled him even thicker in her palm. His response was unwarranted and unwanted—and yet, as the last of the pain in his back faded to a subtle ache, there was nothing else to separate his mind from the pleasure. Nothing but the writhing indignation of being bound and beaten in his own shadows. That miserable little… She released her hold on his length, and his eyes flew open and narrowed. “Fetch the chains, witch. You’re going to need them.”

  “I don’t need chains to hold you, tiny creature.” She splayed her legs and reached beneath the purple fabric.

  He bared his fangs. “And if I am Fenris and I cannot be held, witch?”

  “If you are indeed Fenris, and I fail, then so be it. But if you are wrong, praise All-Father and let his miserable little people sing ballads of my glory for I will have conquered a god.” She snapped her fingers and the shadows melted and left him…free.

  He was trapped.

  She knew that now. She could feel it in every thrust. She could feel his desperation. She could feel his need to touch someone. Anyone who would dull the ache of isolation. He ran his fingers through her hair and kissed her like a man parched from thirst. It was an urgent prayer. Tonight, she would feel exactly as he felt. Believe what he believed. Endure as he endured. Look, taste, touch—tonight she would understand. Tonight, he would not be alone. She would be with him in everything.

  The first time was savage.

  He’d flown to her like a bat out of hell, her vampire. Crimson mist, phantom darkness, and shadow lent merit to the Dracula legend. One minute, he was standing in a puddle of light. Baptized in blood. Naked as a savage. Waist length locks spilling down his shoulders and waving around the sharp planes of his gaunt face as he peered at her through bright black eyes. And then, he was there—right there. Against her. Trapping her. Sealing his arms around her like an early grave.

  She lifted her hand like a drowning woman fighting for a break in the water’s surface, and he caught her wrist and trapped it against his chest.

  No escape. Shade and shadow. Vampire and man. Anger. Passion. Pain. She could taste all of it, she was awash in him. Surrounded by him. Eclipsed by him. He devoured her mouth and his nails dug into her arms as if holding an apparition to heart would keep it from fading.

  No mercy.

  He was starved, her vampire. And it felt like he wanted to touch, taste, and thrust into all of her at once.

  It was drugging.
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  The sheer force of his passion, of his desire, of his need would become an addiction if she let it. She would never let it though. Marshall would end her if she did. And as she grappled weakly at his chest, opening herself to him, she closed off the part of her mind that maintained the books of her store. That part of her was watching her now, tapping its foot to the melody of her broken heart’s wounded beat.

  Marshall let out one of those sounds—one that was torn from somewhere deep inside him, somewhere where light was useless because the depths were just too dark. It was a moan of pleasure, but it was like no sound she’d ever heard fall from any living creature’s lips. It sounded like yearning. Broken. Musical. Half-man, half-instrument—a violin note.

  In that splice of a moment in time—she wasn’t Elsa. She wasn’t the shopkeeper, the daughter, and the shrew. She was someone else. She was powerful, mighty, capable of cowing an ocean. She wasn’t ugly and she wasn’t beautiful. She was enough. Worthy. If only to this vampire, who wanted her so badly he’d risked everything to steal her. So, she would give herself to him. This vampire. She would give him haven from his demons and carry his sins for a while. In turn, she would give herself the gift of selfish pleasure and allow him to touch her. Nothing more, nothing less.

  That was her mantra as he racked up her dress. Bunching the fabric over her ass, he sank a cruel hand between her thighs and plunged two fingers into her channel with little reserve or care for gentleness. The invasion was rough, and though she was so slick her cunt barely offered any resistance, her opening smarted from the abuse.

  Gripping her thighs with bruising force, he hoisted her up and forced her to wrap her thighs around him, cursing when he remembered she wasn’t as agile as he, and lowered them to the floor instead. And then, he was inside of her, rough and ruthless. Animalistic. Fucking her tight sheath as if all of Hell and Christendom were nipping at his heels.

  Closing her legs around him, she arched against the wood and their burning mouths fused. Open-mouthed, they moaned incoherent, dark secrets and ugly words against each other’s lips. Sharing in pants, breath. Bliss and curses. Screams and prayers. It was a primal conversation—and it spoke to a need as old as time.

  The second time was worse. Bestial, even. Kisses bled into bites.

  Kneeling between her legs, he pumped his cock in and out of her pussy, holding her ankles while he drove home with each savage thrust. Her throaty moans ringing out against the lewd sound of his balls smacking against her ass. He bit the inside of her calf, dragged his open mouth against the instep of her foot. “Tell me you want me, witch.”

  “Vampire.” She sat up on her elbows, only to be ruthlessly shoved back on the floor. His lithe body covered hers and shadows rose like omens. His hands bit into her wrists as he pushed her arms up over her head and crucified her to the wood beneath them. Legs splayed, she rolled her hips like his little…wanton…whore. “More.”

  Another violin note. He tore his mouth away and hid in her hair. “Fucking Christ.”

  It was too much, and not enough. Elsa wrapped her legs around his narrow waist, the heels of her feet digging into his ass. She was aching—her pussy greedy, coiling tighter and tighter. She lurched off the wood and scrabbled at his hands, furiously trying to lace their hands together.

  Twin fangs prickled her throat. “Tell me, Elsa.”

  “Vampire!”

  “Take it.” He hammered harder, his spine curving into each flex as if he was trying to knock on Heaven’s door, hit her sweet spot, and come home all at once. “Take. It All.”

  Every fiber of her being vibrated with need and Elsa’s eyes flew open as he sank his fangs into her shoulder. Not feeding. Holding. In that moment, he tethered himself to her in a way that would probably never be broken. One deep suck and blood filled his mouth, crimson rivulets washing down the side of her throat as he electrocuted her bloodstream with a sadistic mixture of endorphins and adrenaline.

  She screamed. Her orgasm ripped a brutal line across her senses. Blazing. White. Singing. The gods’ curse on her miserable soul. Her entire body electrocuted by ecstasy as she bucked beneath him.

  The vampire lost himself after that, and Elsa, who screamed for no man, screamed for him. He made very sure of it. He shed his guise and stood before her naked. He was relentless, he was possessed. And he was determined she too would shed her mask and dance naked with him in the moonlight. He covered her in bites and commanded the shadows in to play, holding her legs open as he sank his head between her legs and sealed his mouth over her cunt.

  Fenris. The wolf. Her back bowed against the wood, her legs shaking as he suckled and ran figure eights across her hood. He peeled her lips open and touched and teased her clit with the tip of his tongue until she snapped at him to shove his face in her pussy. He didn’t—not until she screamed.

  For his mouth, his dick, and, finally, mercy.

  Afterwards, he pressed his cheek to her skin and canvassed her shaking body like a blind man trying to see heaven. The jut of his jaw marked the back of her arms, the slope of her back, the curve of her ass. He pressed butterfly kisses to the back of her knees. Only to straddle her head and fuck her throat. Using her mouth in a way Liam never had. She’d never allowed him to, but Marshall didn’t ask. He gagged her with his cock, depriving her of breath, and painted the back of her throat with liquid fire.

  Was this how he was punishing her?

  Brutal possession punctuated by periods of covering every inch of her skin in kisses as if his reverence was water—like a sculptor washing away dust from his David. He was giving her everything and nothing. It was Heaven. It was Hell. And in the moonlight, they became idols, spellbound in the glow and power of the darkest night.

  Chapter Twelve

  Time had become meaningless at some point in the night. Coming to a complete standstill or moving on without them, it didn’t matter. His existence was blissfully shaved down to a single port in the storm, a single tether to this world and why it should ever matter to him, and the need to make her scream. Over and over and over again until his wicked heart was tired of hearing the song.

  The last time he took her like a bitch in submission. Her cheek, chest, and stomach flat against the wood. Forearm braced across her shoulders, he slammed his pelvis against her ass and pistoned his cock in and out of her sheath, her ass rippling with the force of his strokes. Their final cry was a hymn. They rose and fell, his need painting the inside of her body, her cunt milking it from him. Greedy even after he had given her so much. Everything he could spare. Marshall finally collapsed on the floor. Painted in sweat, rug burns and wood chafing, nail and bite marks knitting together. Shaking, sated, and so empty, he wasn’t even carrying his graceless heart anymore.

  For the first time in what seemed like forever, exhaustion plunged him into sleep. He wasn’t even allowed to choose where he fell, lying across her back, clinging to her hair—clinging to fire just so the burn could guide him back from his nightmares when the time came. He wasn’t gone for long. Sleep was never restful for the dead and less so for him because he wasn’t wholly one thing or another.

  Soft, firm warmth was beneath his head. He pressed his cheek into it, his grip tightening around his safety line. She’d moved them somehow, while he was sleeping, without disturbing him. His head was on her lap, he could smell her. Him. Both of them. And it was strong. He turned his nose into the heady aroma of their combined sexual musk and breathed deeply. Memorizing the scent’s signature, welding it into his memory.

  His mind was quiet. Not the humming buzz of nothingness. Just quiet. Still. And yet, he couldn’t help but feel like something had cracked inside of him. Something important. It was irrevocably tethered to the little witch who’d invited such a brutal possession, his blood was still stinging with relief. And then, his eyes snapped open, piercing the darkness like moon beams.

  Plum enamel glittered off her toenails and he found their reflection in the mirrors. Or rather, her reflection. He didn’t usual
ly bother with his, but interest beckoned him to relieve his innate glamour enough to see his human form, sprawled on the floor with his head resting on a sleeping Elsa’s lap.

  With her back propped against the foot of the bed, she sat, her chest rising and falling in the purple tunic she’d replaced at some point. As she slept, she strummed idle fingers across his downy head, her nails brushing the small hairs framing his jawline, stroking his head like a fitful child. Such idle affection, so freely given.

  Intimate. The word sent a bolt of unease cresting through his system and memories of her whipping rolled over him like the black ocean. He tried to find the will to be a proper vampire and kill her in her sleep, but he couldn’t. His body was aching, a deep ache of relief. He was drained. And energized. Balanced. He searched her face in their reflection as if he could find the method for her madness written across the curve of her stern cheek, the slope of her stubborn little chin. Perhaps the answer was sealed somewhere on that lush little mouth. He doubted it. Kissing her was like shaking hands with the Devil.

  He extricated himself from beneath her arm, arranging her hands neatly on her lap, before he rose and dwarfed her sleeping figure. Darkness crept from the shade clinging to the room, creeping toward him like a pitifully repentant minion. It lingered at the edge of his foot, kissing his heels gently, and he clasped his hands behind his back, studying the creature sleeping near his feet with a mixture of wonder and sharp curiosity. The amulet resting heavily between the generous swell of her breasts attracted his grim interest.

  He could still feel her hold on his command of the darkness. He was still bewitched. But it seemed her influence was limited to that. For now. His logical mind dissected how the battlefield had radically changed in the span of a night, and he mapped out his opponent’s next ten moves. Lifting counter measures, rebuilding his defenses. Uncertainty and a whisper of true belief that Elsa meant him no harm were irrelevant to the vampire gathering himself in the blessedly dark night.