Fiery dust motes rained down upon Micah and me. Someone screamed. Maybe it was me, maybe it was Micah. Hell, maybe it was Julian. The sound rang out. Above the noise I heard the succubus.
She chanted. “Flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood, let the lust of your anger and your passions release you. Release you!”
The dark shadow inside me unraveled from my soul like twine being unbraided. The crouching silhouette rushed to the surface and the last thing I remembered was the sharp pleasure of Micah’s body against mine before the world fell away and everything went black.
Chapter Two
I didn’t drown in the panic immediately. There was a blissful moment, the one you have when you wake from a deep, dreamless sleep. I relaxed into that sea of nothingness and let myself drift. There was no pain, only numbness and solitude.
Solitude.
That wasn’t quite right. I knew without knowing why, or how, that I wasn’t alone.
The first icy tides of fear lapped at my feet, splashed slowly up my body. A heartbeat too distant to be mine thrummed like an army battalion on the march. The sound pulsed louder, stronger, closer, with each passing second.
I woke, eyes snapping open to a void of darkness. The thud-thud of my heart quickened, became erratic. I couldn’t see. I couldn’t breathe. The fear, heavy as water, filled my lungs until I was choking on it. One gulping pant at a time, I struggled to force air inside.
As I shifted, the movement pushed me into a landscape of springs and lumps. I was on an unfamiliar bed. I blinked up at a ceiling, struggling to bring the pebbled surface into focus. There was no stucco in my bedroom. The ache mounting inside wasn’t gentle. The pain didn’t ebb as my vision cleared. The sensation was a throbbing, bubbling stream of molten lava. The quicker my pulse sped, the faster my blood boiled.
Was I hurt? Was I waking from a nightmare? The last time I woke confused and gasping like this, Julian had given me a few pints of his blood and I’d been turned. That time, though, I had woken to silk sheets and an orgy-sized bed soft enough to cradle every contour of the body. For a moment I retreated into the memory of Julian pushing the sweat-matted hair off my forehead. He’d cooed his foreign words along the shell of my ear and eased me against him. I remembered the hard press of his body, the utter stillness of his chest when he guided my mouth to his throat and urged me to bite.
I jerked away from the memory and into a pink nightmare.
Through a gap in the stiff, mauve curtains that adorned the room’s only two windows, light reflected off the drapes and gave everything a nauseating rosy tint. The shiny veneered table under the window held a generic gold lamp with a misshapen maroon shade that cast awful colored light and vomited it against the once-white walls. The only thing not pink was a two-foot by two-foot chunk of yellow-tinged wallpaper curling away from where the ceiling met the wall. Where in the hell was I?
Every breath I struggled to take was laden with a powerful odor. Under the smoldering scent of smoke, mold and sweat was the richness of sex. The unmistakable musk filled each shallow gasp. Despite the pain affecting every inch of my body, I shot upright. Scratchy, pink cotton sheets slid over my bare breasts to pool around my hips. Why was I naked? The simplest answer was usually the correct one. I fought logic.
“No. No. No,” I gasped.
Confusion pounded my head into the first starbursts of a migraine. I refused to think about the intimate places that burned. I refused to identify why my skin was sticky and tight with dried fluids. It was mostly blood. And sweat.
If I dwelled on it I’d cry. Instead I tried to think about how I’d gotten here. Where was here? A mammoth chunk of my memory was missing. I had to think. I had to calm down. I’d start at the beginning. Where had I been? What was the last conscious thought I’d had before the darkness swallowed me? Where had the darkness spit me out?
Shimmering wings brushed through my subconscious. Something slithered under my skin.
The graveyard. Micah. The succubus. Chanting.
Flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood…The Vampire Queen and the Demon Son…
Oh, the demon bitch was going to die.
Someone beside me groaned. Reluctantly, I looked to the source of that sound. I didn’t want to see who was beside me. All of this had to be some cruel joke, it had to be.
The sight of familiar broad shoulders sucked away any air I’d managed to capture. Micah lay on his side, bare feet hanging off the end of the bed. The other half of the sheet I was clutching against myself was intimately intertwined with his body. His naked body. He hugged the sheet closer, cradled it in his arms like his beloved shotgun.
I stared at the exposed curve of his muscular thigh, his hip. I stopped at the crimson tattoo branding his flesh. When the hell had he gotten a tattoo? The design etched into his skin was intricate, almost tribal. Thick lines crossed over his hip and curled down his abdomen to disappear under the sheet like a lover’s caressing hand. The sight was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen. Lust whipped through me and stole all rational thought. With a slow and consuming gaze, I traced my way up the length of his lean body. Despite his demon hunting, bar brawling and active lifestyle, he wasn’t bulky. He was slender and tightly defined. The combination was delicious.
In the dimness of the room his muscles looked different, more seductive. I shook my head and tried to focus. As the sun emerged outside, the rosy glow inside the room intensified. The light caught Micah’s skin and made it glisten. Was he covered in blood or was it the damned pink tint? I sniffed. Recoiled. He was covered in blood. My blood? His blood?
My fingers trembled against the fangs pressed into my lower lip. This time my nausea had nothing to do with pink.
Micah rolled onto his back and let out a sharp, pained sound for his efforts. The sheet covering him slipped away one inch at a time to expose the rest of his tattoo and his hardening penis. Oh. My. God. His breathing shifted and his heartbeat responded as mine had. He was awake, confused and knew he wasn’t alone. Without opening an eye, his hand patted across the slender gap of bloodstained sheets between us.
I wanted nothing more than to disappear. I couldn’t move, not even when the heat of his hand found my calf. I tensed, stopped breathing, but didn’t move away. His hand was rough, the pads just a little bit scratchy from calluses. I got flashes of repressed sensation. Arousal tightened my body and clenched things low in my stomach. Slowly, Micah slid his caress over my knee, tickled it up the inside of my thigh like a familiar lover. Fire chased his touch and I was too stunned to do anything but sit there and stare at his closed eyelids.
It wasn’t until he squeezed my thigh, possessive and claiming, that I jumped and let out an embarrassed squeak.
My yelp opened his eyes. I forced mine shut. I couldn’t look at him. I didn’t want to see his rumpled, adorable hair, which was stiff in some spots and sticking up in others. Adorable? God help me. No, the only thing I could do was clasp the cheap, threadbare sheets tighter to my breasts.
I willed myself not to cry even as the hot tears rolled down my cheeks.
“No. No. No,” I repeated and started to rock back and forth.
“Ella?” Micah’s voice had the whisper-rough quality of someone who’d been screaming.
His hand on my thigh was heavy and overwhelming. I became hyperaware of it. His skin burned with the temperature of him. Was he always this hot or did he have a fever? The warmth made me think of other, hotter things. His mouth had been there, on my thigh. Color blazed my cheeks. If I could have shut my eyes tighter, I would have. If I could have phazed, I would have. I would have sold my tarnished soul to escape.
“What the hell happened?” My voice was just shy of hysterical.
The mattress creaked. I pictured the cotton sheets moving over the soft, dark hair on Micah’s legs as he sat up and covered himself. As I waited for him to say something, the echo of our frenzied heartbeats filled the room. I heard nothing but the rapid thud-thud. No cars. No crickets. No rustling of trees. Ou
r hearts, I realized, were beating in tandem. Mine sped. His mimicked. Not a good sign.
“I have no idea. The last thing I remember is fog, snakes.” Micah visibly shuddered. “I hate succubi.”
His voice made me crack one eye open and peek at him. With the tattered sheet he dabbed at the crimson lines on his hip and stomach. He looked at the thing as if he’d never seen the mark before. His finger moved higher, to a deep, angry red welt above his belly button. My nails had done that. The wound wasn’t bleeding, not anymore. My panic notched to a new level. I haven’t had many bouts of insight, but I was having one now. I’d had more than my share of cuts, scratches, bruises and bites. As a hunter it came with the territory. The scratches and other bite marks covering him were all in various states of healing. Some were fresh, hours old. Some were already scabbing. Some were healed as if we’d been here a while.
I sat up against the headboard and brought my knees to my chest. The movement sent a flash of pain between my legs. If I’d had any doubts about what Micah and I had been doing, I had no delusions now. Wrapping my arms around myself tighter, I buried my face against my knees and fought tears. Demons and vampires I could fight. Emotional mortification, not so much.
There was new strain in Micah’s voice I’d never heard before when he spoke. “There is a lot of blood. Is it mine, or yours? Did I…hurt you?”
I lifted my head and forced myself to look at him. Did he hurt me? I should be asking him that question. My gaze trailed over the dried maroon rivulets that ran down his chest. I followed them up to his throat and froze. Mottles of purple and blue bruises outlined the two punctures on his neck. The wound had been sucked, prodded and re-opened several times. The skin around the edges was torn. Apparently, I hadn’t been gentle when I’d bitten him. Not that I had any practice in biting anyone.
Seeing where my gaze fixated, Micah lifted his fingers to the spot. I was amazed at how steady his hand was. Our eyes met. The air moved, stirred to life with a rush of power and energy that set my nerves dancing. Every inch of me longed to touch him, to feel him against me. Without thinking I inched closer to him.
Shit. I stopped moving and instead concentrated on the shade of his eyes, the circles under them. The scruff along his jaw had passed the I’m-too-lazy-to-shave phase and graduated to a beard. The hair was golden, lighter than I’d expected it to be. The beard made him look older than twenty-eight.
I waited for the lash of Micah’s anger. I’d bitten him. I’d broken my oath to the Agency. Damn. I’d bitten the son of the Agency’s leader. Micah’s eyes were full of emotion. I saw self-loathing, disgust, regret, hate and lust… The combination was such a muddled mess.
“Your eyes,” he murmured in a voice not much over a whisper.
I shook my head. Lord only knew what emotions he saw when looking into my eyes. I’d bitten him. I’d had sex and who knew what else with him. I didn’t want his analysis. He reached out to me. I sprang away so fast my feet were on the ground before the sheet could fall to the bed. I stumbled. The back of my knees hit another bed behind me.
“Don’t touch me,” I hissed.
I regretted the words as soon as I spoke them, but I wouldn’t take them back. Micah cringed, curled inside himself like I’d slapped him across the face. The self-loathing won the raging battle in his eyes. The orbs looked very green and when they started to glow, I knew it was a trick of the damned pink light. It took everything I had not to look away.
If I’d thought it out better, I might have taken the sheet with me when I jumped away from him. I stood completely naked. Not just no-clothes naked, but bare-to-the-very-inside naked. Micah might be accustomed to waking up nude with someone but I wasn’t. Julian had been my one and only lover.
The fury inside Micah manifested and it was a familiar weight pressing into me. Heavier than lead. More potent than fire. His anger warmed me. He looked away from my eyes and very deliberately drank me in from my tangled hair to my chipped, black-polished toenails. I fought not to squirm. Similar to the design radiating from his hip, delicate crimson lines curled around the slender muscle of my right bicep and shoulder. The design flowed over my collarbone and spread down over my right breast. His-and-hers tattoos. Just fucking wonderful.
“What did we do?” His voice was strangled.
I shook my head, shifted from one foot to the other. Micah narrowed his eyes. Something other than the marks on my arm and breast caught his attention and caused him to go still. My heart skipped the same beat his did. I didn’t seem to have a choice in the matter. Micah crawled across the bed to me. What the hell? Damned if I could move away from him.
He stared at my thigh. I looked down and focused on the bite there. A few inches from my sex was a perfect purple imprint of teeth. Micah’s teeth. The blood-filled mark was startling against my pale skin. Just as startling as the deep-red branding lines on our bodies.
Now that I saw the wound, it hurt. His gaze, the instant hunger in his eyes, made it throb. He brought life to it.
Voices from outside of our room broke me from my fog. A door slammed shut nearby and the windows lining the front of our room rattled. My heart skipped a beat. The noise, the way the windows vibrated struck something deep inside my mind.
I looked up and met Micah’s gaze as everything hit me.
Micah slammed the rickety hotel door closed the second we crossed the threshold in a tangle of limbs and mouths. I barely heard the rattling of the cheaply fitted windows over our thundering hearts. He spun us and pressed me against the wall.
Fire consumed me and my skin burned with desire. My breasts felt swollen and heavy. The hot, slick flesh between my legs throbbed. Micah grabbed my ass, and as he lifted, the tight nubs of my nipples scraped against his hard chest through our layers of clothing. Pleasure shot straight to my clit. I wrapped my legs around his waist and rubbed my aching pussy against the bulge in his Levi’s.
“You’re so fucking hot.” Hands buried in my hair, he trailed his lips up my throat, nipped my chin and found my mouth.
Our lips fused. Tongues tangled. Clumsy and eager, we pushed at each other’s clothing in a desperate rush to get undressed as quickly as possible. My jacket hit the ground. His followed. I peeled his shirt over his head and threw it.
Jesus, he was perfect. I ran my hands over the hard curve of his shoulder, down to the tight muscles on his arms. His skin was smooth, warm and I wanted more. He cupped the back of my head and deepened our kiss. In every caress, I felt the urgency of his need. He rotated his hips and ground his thick shaft against my center. Yes. This was what I needed. What I’d craved since the moment we met.
“Tell me you want this,” Micah said.
I dug my fingers into his back and reveled in his hiss. Scratching up, I drew my nails along his neck and threaded my fingers through his hair. I tugged. His low moan was second only to the rich scent of his blood wafting into the air. I met his gaze and pulled him to me for a kiss.
He nipped my bottom lip but held our mouths a hair’s breadth away from touching. “Tell me, Ella.”
I traced my tongue across his lower lip. “I want you. I want,” I slid my hand between us and cupped him, “your cock inside me.”
He held me close and backed away from the wall. Turning with me in his arms, he set me on the closest surface. A small, round table. I lifted my arms as he pulled both my shirt and sports bra over my head.
Micah stepped away and I had to clutch the edge of the table to keep from pulling him to me. He ran his gaze over my breasts and licked his lips. Using his knuckles, he drew a path between my cleavage that had me arching my back in anticipation.
“Fucking beautiful.”
He flattened his hand and slid his palm around the back of my rib cage, just barely grazing the underside of my breast. The distance between us vanished. He tugged and flesh met flesh. With a hand on either side of my face, he cupped my cheeks and slanted his mouth over mine.
Breaking our kiss, he thumbed my wet lip before pus
hing me until I lay on the table. “I’m going to taste your pussy before I fuck you. You’re mine, Ella. Anything I want, you’ll give it to me. I want your mouth, I’ll take it. I want to slide my cock between your sweet tits, I’ll do it. When I want to fuck your ass and come on your back, you’re going to let me. You know why?”
My heart sped and my womb clenched. He tugged off first one boot, then the other. Each heavy thud to the ground wound something tighter inside me.
I licked my suddenly dry lips. “Why?”
The rough material of my pants slid down my thighs, calves, fell to the ground. He stepped between my legs and shoved them open.
“Because you’re mine.”
He looked down at my lacy black thong before flicking his gaze up to my face. Lust darkened his eyes. A sinful smirk curled his lips. “Naughty girl.”
My thighs quivered. He snuck his finger under the thin elastic ribbon on the side of my panties. Back and forth, he toyed with the sensitive skin. He traced the edge of lace down, down, down to the barely there crotch.
He yanked. Fabric ripped. My breath caught in my lungs and instinct had me trying to close my legs. Rough hands spread me open and Micah leaned over me, his jeans abrasive against my bared skin. He pinned me to the table and the hot, wet trail of his tongue moved from my neck to the tip of each nipple. His teeth closed around first one peak and then the other. He sucked, licked, bit. Little nips of pain and pleasure brought me close to the edge and I wondered if I’d come like this.
He moved down my body, licking, kissing and biting. Claiming. The soft strands of his hair tickled my thighs when he knelt and positioned himself at my core. He looked up at me. His eyes were full of feral hunger. He oh so slowly brought his mouth to my center and I felt the growing heat of his skin over me followed by the moist wash of his breath. I sucked in air as the sharp prick of his beard stubble chafed my skin just milliseconds before his tongue. I was so hot, so ready for him. At the first rough, wet touch of his mouth against my clit, I climaxed with a shuddering scream. I clutched the edge of the table and arched closer to the pleasure spiraling between my thighs.
Dark Cravings Page 3