Then his tongue spread my lips to caress my clit. I locked both hands in his hair as he tasted me. I watched each movement in the mirror as he continued to finger-fuck me, his free hand grasping my ass, burrowing his fingers into my cheek. The low light in the room highlighted the tight masculine jawline flexing up and down with each torturous swipe.
When I came, I almost fell backward into the tub. He caught me and laid me down in the water. He shucked his jeans, revealing a body carved and hollowed with the long lean muscles of a dancer or long-distance runner. The thin line of a happy trail ended at the base of an impressive cock that sprang from a nest of blond curls.
Saliva pooled in my mouth when I imagined tasting all the muscles hidden by his all-over tan skin.
I licked my lower lip. I wanted to run my tongue over the thick head bobbing inches from my mouth. The taste I’d had earlier in the day wasn’t enough.
“We flirt with disaster. This cannot end well.”
I looked up at his face, and the emotions he warred with played over his features.
“All we have is right now. Stephan will come for me. Adrian too. It doesn’t matter what we do here and now.” Reaching out, I grasped him at the base and stroked my palm over his shaft, dipping my thumb into the slit. He moved forward until his legs knocked into the side of the surround.
I levered myself up on my elbow and licked the tip. I rolled my eyes up to see his face as I lowered my mouth over him, taking every inch I could inside. His expression was rapt, fixated on my lips wrapped around his flesh.
I changed position so I could fondle his balls as I sucked my way back up, following my mouth with my free hand. The mirror to my right reflected the beauty of the act in profile, and I watched how he came to the balls of his feet when I moved up, the muscles in his taut ass flexing.
Daniel tilted his head back, his hips forward, moving the tiniest bit as I pumped him with my hand and mouth. He buried one fist in my hair and twined the wet strands around his fingers.
“Stop.”
I ignored the command and sucked him harder, my cheeks hollowing out.
“Cease.” He tugged on my hair until I nipped the head of his cock and let it slide out of my mouth. “I wish to come inside you. Feel you around me, on me. Stand.”
He supported my elbow and helped me to my feet, then turned me until I faced the rear wall. The water sloshed up around my legs when he entered the tub.
“Place your foot here.” He guided my calf over until my sole rested on the far ledge. The silken steel of his body molded to my back, and he bent his knees until his cock brushed my damp lips. I put my hands on the mirror’s cold surface and studied his reflection as he leaned forward and bit my uninjured shoulder. He rubbed both palms over my abdomen to my breasts and pinched my nipples, then circled the areolas with his thumbs.
He guided the head of his cock to my entrance and poised there outside my channel. “Miranda.”
I tore my stare from the reflection of his shaft and my pussy in the mirror and met his gaze. The power of his magic had dulled from white-hot to cerulean blue. When he knew he had my attention he thrust forward, fingers burrowed into my hips to hold me steady.
“Oh, yes…more…again…”
“Oh yes…more Daniel…” I ignored the mirroring voice in my head, concentrating only on the length of hot, stretching cock being buried deep inside my pussy. He crept forward, controlling the movement with a slow crawling stroke.
“Oh, cara…so right…so hot and wet…”
When he stopped we both looked down the mirror to where our bodies joined. I shuddered at the rightness of it, the sense of absolute completion it gave me. He dragged his shaft back, a towering presence of muscle and strength and heat behind me. The bulges of his shoulders and upper arms showed above my own, the long strips of his thighs flexed and stood out next to mine.
He was beautiful.
When he didn’t move to bury himself inside me once more, I wiggled and used my arms to try and shove into him.
“Hold still.”
I groaned. I needed more. He slid forward until the base of his cock touched me from behind.
“Patience.” He reached around my belly and played with my clit until I whimpered and a mini orgasm clenched my walls around him. His lips touched my ear when he whispered, “I love the way it feels when you come.”
I trapped his hand when he tried to move it back to my hip, and he chuckled. “Move damn it.”
The force of his thrust nearly banged my head into the mirror. “Like that?”
“Yes. Like that.” I braced my forearms on the glass surface. Water droplets spattered my legs. I alternated watching the reflection of his cock pounding into me and staring down my torso at the back of his hand as he worked my swollen nub.
My breasts bounced forward and back as he took me from behind. A new orgasm coiled in my belly and when it ripped through me, a scream tore from my throat. He withdrew, spun me around, and picked me up. My back rested on the wall, and my legs latched onto his waist.
He plunged into me, kissing me with an intensity that made it hard to breathe. The sound of flesh colliding filled the room. The tight sack of his testicles slapped into my ass.
“Yes…hard and fast…take me…your cock feels incredible.”
Biting arcs of his magic crackled over my body, encased me, stroking and fondling the stiff peaks of my breasts, nape of my neck, backs of my thighs, my clit.
I was going to die or explode—or both.
“Mmm…our mate…so good…so virile…so strong…”
One last time he threw me over the edge of orgasm, the muscles of my channel rippling so hard it hurt. He finally came, holding still while his cum jetted into me with hard jerks of his cock. The Hunger ghosted forth and fed on him for a moment only before retreating once more. The sensation this time was more like a lick or tasting than a true feeding.
He rested his forehead on my shoulder, and I pressed a kiss to the side of his head just above his ear. “Hold on.”
I tightened my arms around his neck, and he peeled me from the mirror. He stepped out of the tub and headed for the door, still buried inside me. Only when we got to the bed did he withdraw to lay me under the comforter and clamber up behind me.
He’d admitted he had feelings for me. But he would hold me at arm’s length because of some sanction he let himself be slave to. Wouldn’t it blow his doors off when he realized I wasn’t going to anyone else, anywhere else, not without him? I hadn’t been raised to believe I had to be with someone chosen for me. I’d take what I wanted and damned be the consequences.
The pillow and bed covers smelled like him. Crisp and clean, cold seawater and the open sky. I inhaled and held my breath as long as I could. The heavy weight of his arm anchored me to the bed, and I fell asleep, a sense of belonging and protection enveloping me.
* * *
This time when I realized I was in that strange altered version of reality with its cold cobbled streets and dark windowed houses, I took off at a quick clip down the middle of the road or sidewalk, depending on where the light penetrated the gloom.
My breath puffed out in icy gasps, and I arrived at the street corner where I’d last seen my father. It was empty, everything was empty. No scrabble of claws on the road, no voice called my name. I stood in the cone of light cast by the street lamp and spun in a slow circle. Standing around like the perfect target wasn’t a good idea. I appeared to be alone for the time being, so I headed down the road in the direction I’d seen my father go when he’d walked away.
Small hunched houses and overgrown trees crowded the sides of the street. No lights on, no smoke coming from chimneys, no signs of life at all. Ink black shadows moved as I passed by, and a constant mumbling whisper filtered through the trees. The urge to run twitched my leg muscles, but I ignored it and kept a steady walking pace from one island of light to the next.
I passed several blocks that intersected before I saw it. I swallowed a
gasp. The slug-like creature, waiting for me at a corner, hunched in the pool of light. The big white eyes found me unerringly. It stood up on its legs like a hominid instead of scrabbling around like some kind of grotesque crab creature.
One white, long-fingered hand gestured to me in what could only be a “come here,” and I continued forward as though I was the most confident, unconcerned person on the planet. Running in the other direction like a sissy girl held more appeal than confronting the thing, but it would only follow. I had to face it.
As the distance between us closed, the more notable the changes became. Defined curves at the waist and hips shaped its body now, and small breasts budded on the chest. A shadow of fuzzy growth colored the scalp. My toes reached the edge of the light and I stopped, staring. The face had changed too, become more formed, more sculpted. Eyebrows and lashes sprouted, and full, light pink lips parted the sea of white.
It extended one hand to me and waited, the appendage hovering in the air between us. I swallowed disgust and put my hands behind my back. I should never have gotten within touching distance. I should have turned tail and run. But the terrible starvation I’d felt rolling off the creature before was no longer there. Something had changed the scales, and I didn’t know how to react.
I looked around, fighting panic, hoping my father would somehow come walking down the street. But the creature and I were alone. I knew it in my bones, in that place in the gut that serves as the center for fight or flight. The survival instinct told me there was no one here but me and it. And that was all it told me. No overwhelming urge to run, no adrenaline response. My own disgust and revulsion made me want to flee, but that was all. There was no aggression offered here.
We stared at each other for several seconds, me with my hands hidden, it still with one extended. Neither of us moved. I thought back to the first night, the first time I’d run through the streets here in a blind panic. It occurred to me that perhaps this creature would have been able to catch me then if it had been so inclined. It had simply followed me, maintaining distance, but never attempting to actually touch me, to harm me.
What had my father said to me when I finally reached him?
“Still running from yourself?”
I had dismissed those words, figuring they were more cryptic bullshit I didn’t need. But now I wondered if he had meant this thing—this strange construct, half-formed and staring at me with intelligence burning in white pupilless eyes. I chanced a step forward. It didn’t move, cocking its head to the side with the hand held out. I raised my right hand palm out and held it up where the creature could reach it. I didn’t want to, afraid that if it attained a grip it would yank me into its arms and devour me. But a touch, palm to palm, may tell me enough. I stepped forward again, and it adjusted its hand up so an inch or so of air was cushioned between us.
Sparking energy ballooned in the space, and it flared over my palm and down my arm with warmth and tingles. It felt like the heat of a shared bed, the languid melting my muscles experienced after orgasm, and sexual arousal. I gasped and then chuckled in delight. The creature imitated my smile, its eyes flashing with a flare of power when I punched my hand through the energy to touch its palm.
A blast of white light burst through me, whipped my hair back on a wind that held the smell of sex and vanilla, jasmine and honey. I shielded my eyes with my left hand. Colors and streamers swam behind my eyelids. When I was brave enough to open my eyes, I nearly fell on my ass.
The creature was no longer a slug-like, waxen thing that looked as though the gods had thrown it to the floor like a forgotten toy before they finished sculpting it. I stared into a mirror image of myself…if I was the physical representation of a sex goddess, that is.
“Finally.” It smiled with lips pinker and a smidge fuller than mine. Perfect teeth flashed, white, even, the small chip I’d had for years in my left incisor gone. I let my gaze wander down the body in front of me, envy burning. All the flaws I had were gone. Her breasts were symmetrical, the nipples perky and perfectly in line with each other, even her thighs thinner and firmer. My belly had never been Hollywood flat, but hers was.
Man, I hated this version of myself already. I bet she’d never even have a bad hair day.
“I have waited so long for you here. I was beginning to think you would never come and then you did only to run from me. But you’re back now. We can be as we are meant to be.”
“What do you mean?” I took a step back and tugged on the hand she gripped until she released it.
“You have been running from me for years. You put me here, and I have been starving, until I was reduced to that thing you saw the first time you came. When you fed, I was so relieved, because I knew that meant you must be beginning to accept your gift and would complete our bond.” She stepped toward me. I imagined her voice was what mine sounded like in the midst of sex—throaty, full, delivered with the full weight of my diaphragm behind it. “And now you have returned and given me form.”
“I don’t understand this. Any of this. My father said this was a place of forgetting. And now you say I put you here and let you starve.” A fine tremble worked its way up my body, and I felt like a damned bobble head with my neck letting my head flail around of its own accord.
She nodded and held her hands at her waist, clasped together with interlocking fingers. I’d never stood that way in my life.
“I have lived inside you since before you took root in your mother’s womb. The night we lost control and that child died, you excised me as much as you could and trapped me here with your fear and recrimination.”
“Tommy?” I paced to the left and back again.
“Yes. You call me the Hunger to others, but in your heart you call me other things. Parasite. Demon. Curse. I have heard them all and can deny none. I can only be that which you shape me to be. By locking me here, I had to resort to trickery and subterfuge to feed and then it was only scraps.”
Anger colored the words and her posture as she advanced toward me, hands on her hips, until her nose nearly touched mine. Now, that gesture was familiar.
“What do you mean by subterfuge? Is it because of you all those vamps have been hunting me down? I thought I was feeding them—”
“Yes, it was I that called to them. I was desperate. You left me with little choice. If the ceremony had gone as planned…well, it did not.” She flipped her hair over her shoulder. “And you did feed them; your blood is strong and can be addictive if taken by a weaker being. But it also allowed me to feed, even if it was only sips at the edge of the ocean. I took only the smallest of amounts and released the rest to them so you would not know what was going on and hurt me again.”
“Did my father know this would happen?” He must have known about this, he was an Incubi himself. Anger rose from the pit of my abdomen and heat flooded my cheeks. An irrational part of me wondered if he and this thing—what was she exactly anyway? A magical power given form, a demon, a parasitic growth inside me I was somehow confronting here in this vision place?—had planned everything from the beginning, from the terrible night I’d accidently killed the boy I’d lost my virginity to.
But it didn’t add up, didn’t make sense. She said she had only been here since that night, not before it.
“He is Incubi, like you. He has within himself a shadow of what I am.” She shrugged.
“What? Are you special? Different from all the other little Incubi par—powers?” That would have been a nasty little slip. The look on her face told me she’d caught it and wasn’t happy, but she ignored me.
“Yes, we are special, Miranda. Most of the vampires now living were turned, not born. There was a time that all were born, but no longer. So when you were born it was a cause for great celebration. When your father refused to have you take your place at court as you were meant to, he sacrificed much.”
I shook my head. “How do you know these things? How can you know more than I do?”
“I may have been inside you, but I w
as free to leave as I wished, when it suited me. Think of me as magic with sentience.”
“Uh-huh. Maybe it would be better if you could continue to do that. You know, roam around whenever you want, and not being stuck with boring old me all the time. In fact, perhaps you could just go away altogether.”
Anger flashed in her eyes, and she flushed magenta. Only on her, it looked magnificent. I looked like an overgrown eggplant when I got mad. I added it to my list of Reasons to Hate My Parasite.
“We are meant to be one. The gods themselves ordained it so. I am sorry if my presence is of a conflicting nature to your desires for life. I haven’t exactly been enjoying the last seven years myself.” She turned her back and paced to the far side of the circle of light, muttering under her breath.
I didn’t catch any of it, busy stamping my feet against the cold stones and warming my hands under my armpits. After standing still for a few minutes, the cold seeped into my bones.
“So, we’re stuck with each other, is that what you’re saying? How do we maintain our own selves, our own identities?”
She turned to face me. “I am you, you fool. Just as you are me. I am a part of your soul given physical form and shape in this place. It is not normal, not at all, although I don’t think anything about you—us—has ever been normal.” Her eyes narrowed. “Don’t even think about trying to get out of the ceremony again. I know you’re thinking it.”
People liked to claim that Sybil lied about her personalities. I felt her pain.
“If I do it, what happens to you? I just absorb you like a sponge or something? Suck you up—slurp—until you’re all assimilated? And then what? You disappear inside me? I don’t think you’re really going to like that all that much. I don’t think I’ll like it all that much either.”
Hunger Embraced (The Hunger Series) Page 19