The woman who had brought in the tray was crossing the commons in the direction of one of the dormitories. Damon smelled the scent of the blood pulsing beneath her skin and started toward her. Voices called behind him, but he was already running. As he reached her, the woman turned to face him.
Her expression showed no fear, only calm acceptance. Damon skidded to a halt, his boot heels digging furrows in the dirt.
The woman held out her hand. “I can give you what you need,” she said. “You don’t have to take it.”
Damon closed his eyes, feeling a strange sense of weightlessness as his mind began to hold thoughts again. He didn’t have to take it. Not like all the hundreds of times before, when humans serving the Darketan dormitories were sent to him and the others, nameless men and women who were nothing more than cattle. Even to him.
Back then, before he had met Alexia, he had never considered any other way. And now this woman, who had full freedom to choose, was willing to ease his hunger. To trust him, as Alexia did.
“You don’t have to give him anything,” Alexia told the woman, coming up behind Damon. “I’ll take care of him.”
Damon turned his head halfway, afraid to move lest his body overwhelm his mind.
“No,” he said hoarsely.
“You gave me your blood,” she reminded him. “Now I give you mine, freely and gladly.”
Theron, Sergius and Emma arrived a moment later, forming a tense tableau behind Damon, Alexia and the human woman. Alexia pressed her soft, supple body to Damon’s back, her arms wrapping around his waist.
“Come with me now,” she said. “You want me, Damon. And I want you. In every way.”
Chapter 16
At first Alexia wasn’t sure she’d reached him. He didn’t move; every muscle was rigid in a battle for control, and if he could see her he showed no sign.
But he heard her. Slowly he turned, forgetting the petite, dark-haired woman who had been so willing to share the very essence of life with a man she didn’t know.
But she had no right. Damon had hidden the extent of his need from Alexia, and in spite of—no, because of—Lysander’s remark about Damon’s hunger, Alexia had pretended she didn’t recognize the signs.
Now they were unmistakable. She was responsible for his condition, because she had been afraid. Afraid of her own need for him, both physical and emotional. Afraid of letting herself become a mere source of nourishment, no different from the human convicts in Erebus. Afraid of forging the final link in the chain that bound her and Damon together.
She had hated what Damon had done to her when they’d arrived at the colony, even though she had agreed to the necessity of becoming his serf. He had almost managed to convince her that it was not merely a ruse, that all her doubts since their last conversation in camp were justified and that somehow she had missed a crucial element of Damon’s character. For a few terrifying minutes, she had believed the life she had always known was over.
But even if the colony had been what she and Damon had both believed, a place where Opiri might be free but humans were still cattle, she would not have denied him now.
“He must have fresh blood from a vein if he is to take full benefit,” Theron had said.
Even if the blood in the glass had given him the energy to move again, it could not sustain him long.
“Come,” she said again, offering her hand.
When he finally reacted, it was not to take her hand but to sweep her up in his arms and carry her off to the nearest building, one much like Theron’s and no more than a dozen meters away. She wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her face into the hollow of his shoulder, where she could hear and feel his blood moving sluggishly through his veins.
I’m not afraid, she told herself with wonder. I’m not afraid.
Without pausing to see if anyone was in the house, Damon kicked the door open and strode inside. Sergius had brought a lantern into Theron’s house to provide light for human eyes, but this single room was dark. It smelled of Sergius.
If Damon was aware of the scent, he ignored it. A low cot similar to Theron’s stood against the wall in the far corner of the room. Damon carried Alexia to it and laid her down with a gentleness she hadn’t expected. He gazed into her eyes, and once again she saw a war within him: savage instinct against concern and something akin to shame.
She reached up to touch his face. “It’s all right, Damon,” she whispered. “This is what I want.”
Her words seemed to release the terrible tension in Damon’s body. He put one knee on the edge of the cot and his arms to each side of her head, opened his mouth and bit her.
The instructors at Aegis had tried to explain what being bitten would feel like, intending to prepare operatives for the experience and help them avoid the natural panic they would feel if they ever faced such a situation. But classroom theory had never been put into practice, for no Opiri were allowed in the Enclave, and dhampires were taught to loathe the idea of taking blood.
Now Alexia knew how inadequate that theory had been. She gasped and closed her eyes, her senses exploding with pleasure that radiated out from the point where Damon’s teeth pierced her skin. In a distant part of her mind she asked herself if this was what all humans experienced, but she already knew the answer. For if they did...oh, if they did...
Her thoughts disintegrated as Damon’s tongue stroked the curve of her neck, his warm mouth moving over her skin in a way every bit as erotic as his lips on her nipples or between her thighs. She arched against him, urging him to drink deeper still. He moaned inside his throat, and she could feel the pressure of his erection against her thigh as he straddled her. He slid his hand down along her belly to the drawstring waistband of her pants and beneath, reaching the nest of curls. Alexia gasped as he found her clitoris with his thumb and began to stroke it in time to the rhythmic motions of his lips and tongue.
Reckless with excitement, Alexia pushed her arm between her chest and his, feeling for the fly of his pants. But he trapped her hand with his free one and, withdrawing his other hand from within her pants, lifted himself on his arms and moved his mouth from her neck.
She groaned in protest, but he silenced her with his lips on hers. They still tasted of her blood. He kissed her, touching her tongue with his, as if he would devour her completely. He pushed her arms above her head and began to lift the hem of her shirt.
Alexia helped him, seething with impatience to feel his mouth on her breasts and something more substantial than his fingers between her thighs.
The shirt came off, and Damon tossed it aside. A second later he was at her throat again, this time biting the other side of her neck, carrying her to that indescribable, euphoric state she hadn’t believed could possibly exist.
It didn’t last. It couldn’t. But when Damon licked the blood from her skin, sealing the wound and trailing his mouth down to her breasts, she remembered that there were a thousand other ways of pleasure she could give and receive without any blood at all.
As Damon’s lips closed on her taut nipple, Alexia laced her fingers in his hair and whispered encouragement he obviously didn’t need. He suckled her breast with the same hunger with which he had taken her blood. He reached down again, finding his way to her waistband, and dragged the pants down to her hips. She wriggled under him, freeing herself to the knees, gasping as he moved to her other breast.
Somehow, between them, they managed to get her pants off. Damon sent them to the floor with a nudge of his knee and rolled his tongue in tight circles around her nipples, first one and then the other. His palm curled under her waist, lifting, positioning her so that her thighs spread wide without any help from her.
Once again he found the almost painful ache beneath her damp curls, but this time he slid his finger past her clitoris and between the hot, wet lips. He stroked his finger slowly from front to back, dipped it inside her and slowly pushed until his finger was all the way in. Alexia strained against him. He began to move his finger
in and out as his thumb found her clitoris again. Just when she was certain she was going to come, he withdrew his finger and began kissing his way down from her breasts to her belly.
Even though she knew what was coming, she wasn’t prepared when his lips and tongue replaced his finger. He licked along the same path his finger had taken, sliding between her swollen lips, teasing her clitoris and finally reaching the molten center of her need. He stiffened his tongue and pushed it inside. Alexia thrashed on the cot, lifting her legs higher, knowing she couldn’t stand much more. She had to have him inside her, all of him. Now.
He didn’t make her wait much longer. Suddenly his shirt and pants were gone, too, and his hot, naked flesh was pressed to her body. She reveled in the feel of firm muscle flexing as he positioned himself between her legs.
Before, when he’d entered her, he had moved with urgency and impatience. Now he took his time, teasing her lips with the head of his cock, stroking her the same way he had with his fingers and tongue. He managed to keep it up for a good five minutes before he drove himself to the point where he couldn’t stand it any more than she could.
Still he didn’t enter her. Instead, he lifted her with one arm—obviously no longer troubled by the damage to his wrist—and turned her over onto her hands and knees. Her excitement intensified as he knelt behind her, grasping her hips with his hands. Suddenly he thrust into her, driving deeper than ever before, and she gasped again as she felt his big cock fill her more completely than she had ever been filled before.
As he moved inside her, he leaned over her bottom and bit the back of her neck, his incisors piercing the skin just beneath her ear. He hardly had time to enjoy the sensation before her body released in a flood of hot wetness and throbbing pleasure.
She felt Damon begin to move away and made a sharp sound of protest. He stopped, and she rolled over to face him, holding out her arms. He fell into them, and once again she guided him inside her. Then she bit his neck just to the side of his Adam’s apple, sucking the blood that trickled over her tongue.
He reached his own completion not long after, pumping so fast and furiously that she came again. He rolled over and pulled her close to his side, murmuring senseless words of endearment into her hair.
Sometime later, as she lay there in blissful contentment, Damon gave way to exhausted sleep. Alexia draped her arm across his chest and listened to the night sounds outside the cabin. She couldn’t hear anyone moving about, not even the nearly silent Nightsiders, and she was pretty sure every last human had long since gone to bed.
That didn’t mean they were necessarily asleep.
She sighed and nestled her face into the hollow of Damon’s shoulder. She had thought she’d known what sex was like before she’d first made love with Damon, that day when she had thought her time on earth was almost over. But she’d had barely a taste then, and now she knew what it really meant to give herself to another person in every way, and take everything she was offered. Not as an operative doing a job, or a serf, or one dependent on another for survival. Not even for friendship, or “caring.” This was what she had fought against every moment since she recognized the depth of her attraction to her enemy.
It wasn’t just sex. It wasn’t need or hunger or even comfort.
It was love.
Her throat suddenly tight, Alexia disentangled herself from Damon’s body, rolled off the cot and picked up the tunic that lay on the floor beside the bed. She brushed it off and pulled it over her head, smoothing the soft fabric over her body from chest to upper thighs. Every nerve felt raw, exposed, vulnerable to the slightest sensation from the brush of the almost imperceptible draft coming from under the door to the feel of wood on the soles of her feet.
“Alexia?”
She turned to find Damon propped up on one elbow, the sheets draped over his hips in a way that made her wonder if he was actually trying to be modest. He smiled, his sapphire gaze wandering over her body with undisguised admiration.
Alexia blushed and mocked herself for her self-consciousness. There wasn’t any part of her Damon hadn’t seen, and that included a good chunk of her heart and soul.
“Good morning, I think,” she said, returning his smile.
He tilted his head. “Two a.m.,” he said huskily, “if I’m not mistaken.” He stretched, long muscles shifting under night-pale skin, and lifted the blanket. “Come back to bed.”
There was no doubt that he was ready to resume their sexual gymnastics, but Alexia couldn’t stop her mind from working over everything that had occurred in the past few days and what was likely to happen in the very near future.
First there was the question of the patch, which she and Damon had speculated might be in the settlement. She hadn’t been foolish enough to ask about it outright; if the colonists did have it, they would have responded quite differently when they had first seen her. It would be pretty difficult for all the people she’d met to hide the reaction she would expect.
Assuming her judgment was correct, she and Damon still had to share what they’d learned with Theron and find out what he planned to do. And now that Damon had no orders or direct line of communication to his own masters, he still had a few very important decisions to make.
Alexia didn’t know how much he and Theron had discussed before she had arrived at the Bloodmaster’s cabin, but Emma had told her that the colony had accepted some clandestine support from the Expansionists at the very beginning. Theron had never been under any illusion as to how the Expansionists would react once he broke off their
“alliance.” What Alexia had seen since her arrival made clear why the Expansionists would want to eradicate the settlement.
Not what we believed, the Independent double agent had told her. If that information had reached the Council, there was no telling what they would do about it.
And Aegis? Wouldn’t this colony’s mere existence force them to change their assumptions about Opiri and their approach to Erebus? If there was even a chance the settlement could be a basis for a new kind of civilization...
For the first time since she’d arrived, Alexia was struck by the full recognition of what Eleutheria could become. A symbol, not only of equality and friendship, but of the hope of peace founded not on mere truce but true understanding. Understanding that could end the deportation of convicts from the Enclave. That could bring people— people, not Nightsiders and humans—together as she and Damon had come together.
“Are you all right?” Damon asked with a worried frown.
Belatedly Alexia realized that they hadn’t talked since he had taken her blood. She could imagine the thoughts racing through his mind: he had taken advantage of her, he had behaved like a savage, he had hurt her. She could feel those fears as if they were her own.
She went back to the cot and perched on the edge, hands braced on the frame and gaze fixed on the floor. “I’ve been thinking,” she said slowly.
“About what?” Damon asked, hesitantly reaching out to tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear. “Did I do something wrong? Did I...” His fingers stopped, and she heard his teeth clench. “Did I hurt you?”
She turned to catch his hand and pressed his palm to her mouth. “No, Damon. If you had, I wouldn’t be sitting here, wishing we could start all over again.”
His expression relaxed all at once. He took her hand between his and brought it to his chest. His heart was beating strongly, and his dark eyes were warm with relief.
“I didn’t know what I was doing last night,” he said.
“Oh, yes, you did.” She spread her fingers across his chest. “You knew exactly what you were doing, and you were extremely good at it.”
He ran his thumb gently across the places where he had bitten her. “No discomfort?”
he asked.
“No. Should there be?” She smiled. “There was never any pain, Damon. Only the most indescribable—” She broke off, knowing she could never explain. Knowing if she did, she’d only want it again and again
, like an addict who had no idea when to quit.
Damon’s lips brushed her neck. “It was indescribable for me, as well,” he murmured.
His voice had a little growl in it, provocation and promise, but Alexia didn’t fall into his trap. “Does it always happen that way?” she asked, leaning back. “Between Nightsiders and their vassals and humans?”
He sat up cross-legged on the cot, the blanket still draped across his lap. “I know only what I have been told,” he said, his voice roughening. “With vassals, it is said to be mutually pleasurable, but there is always an imbalance of power. With serfs...” He worked his fists into the sheets. “Whether or not they receive pleasure is of no interest to the Opir who owns them.”
“Except in this place,” she said. “If it was unpleasant, I can’t imagine the humans in Eleutheria would be so ready to provide blood at the drop of a hat. Like that woman last night.”
Damon shifted. “I apologize,” he said, a little stiffly. “When I find the woman, I will ask her forgiveness.”
“Oh, I don’t think you need to look for her yourself,” Alexia said hastily, wishing she hadn’t raised the subject. “Emma planned to introduce me to some of the other colonists once we finished our business with Theron. I’m sure I can pass on your apology.”
Damon looked up. “You have no reason to be jealous, Alexia.”
“Jealous? Because you were going to take her blood without asking me if I was willing?”
“I was incapable of discussing it at the time.”
“You could damned well have told me what was happening before it got so bad,” she shot back. “If you were so out of control, you could have hurt that woman. I know you would never have hurt me, no matter how far gone you were.”
“She knew how to react without fear or provocation,” Damon said, utterly serious. “I don’t know what I would have done if—”
“Nothing happened, Damon,” she said, resting her hand on his knee. “Everything is all right now.”
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