“You bastard,” I ground out, drawing my feet under me so I could stand in the middle of the bed. “That wasn’t your choice to make.”
He rose to his knees and ran his hands up the outside of my stockinged thighs. “The thought of you disappearing or being in danger while I had no ability to track you was driving me to insanity. I cannot apologise for it.”
You don’t apologise for anything.
Lifting the right hem of my knitted dress above my hip, he gently bit the hollow between the bone and stomach. My knees shook, and Kyros seized the advantage, guiding me back down to the bed.
We knelt facing each other, both of us panting. My eyes huge. His molten.
“Those glasses should be illegal.” He growled, darting forward to nip at my bottom lip. “So fucking sexy.”
I sucked in air. “Kyros—”
“I don’t know who you’re trying to fool with this outfit,” he whispered in my ear. “But you missed the mark on cute. It just makes me want to tie you to this bed.”
Gasping, I writhed on the spot. The ache between my thighs was agony. His smell or emotions or his nearness overrode all logic.
I lifted my other hand to his chest.
“I can’t,” I told him. There were so many reasons. Reasons that felt so small and insignificant. But weren’t.
I was certain they weren’t small.
Our gazes met and sealed. The space between us evaporated, sucked away in one fell swoop. I traced up his corded neck with shaking fingers, splaying them wide over his jaw before circling his lips with a fingertip.
He groaned low, pulling my hips against his.
My head fell back, and Kyros cupped the base, forcing it upright again. His gaze was hazy, half-filled with the dream-like quality I felt spreading through my body, but a question filled the rest.
He wouldn’t close the gap this time.
Obeying my body, I pressed my lips against his.
Had I ever made the first move before?
I couldn’t recall.
I don’t care.
Kyros sank onto his haunches so I didn’t have to strain upward, but otherwise didn’t move. I felt his borderline-painful approval of my touch. He roared inside. For me.
My simple touch was bliss.
I lifted high on my knees, forcing him to angle his head as I parted his lips with my tongue.
We broke apart, and he panted, “I want to touch you, Basilia.”
“Do it,” I replied without a speck of hesitation.
He moved then.
Fire erupted over my skin as his hands ran up my thighs, pushing my dress to my waist. My breath quickened, loud and harsh. He worked my tights and panties to my knees, and I leaned down to get rid of them entirely.
Kyros lifted on his knees again and my hands latched onto the bottom of his waistcoat. His hands threaded through my hair as I undid the buttons frantically, shoving the garment off his shoulders before attacking the buttons on his shirt.
His hot mouth worked down my neck, and I moaned. Bliss.
“Hold on tight,” he growled in my ear.
Mmm?
I yelped as Kyros picked me up, forearms under my thighs as he lifted me overhead.
Then his mouth was between my legs. I choked on a cry as his hot tongue roamed with abandon, my legs shaking with the inability to do anything but not upset the balance of our position. My hands gripped his hair tight, despite knowing he wouldn’t let me fall.
I had no control.
And fuck. It was undoing me at the seams.
“Kyros,” I pleaded as he moved faster and faster. “It’s too much.”
Yet my hips gyrated against his face, using his mouth. My hands left his hair to creep up my own body, kneading, and palming the parts left unattended.
Suspended, my lower body held motionless, I had no option but to follow the fire as it catapulted me higher and higher.
“More,” I demanded hoarsely. My body jerked. Desperation filled me. Anticipation.
He sucked my clit into his mouth, circled hard and fast, pressing.
Too much. Not enough. Pain.
Utter ecstasy.
I pressed my hands against my mouth, screaming against them as heat obliterated me, rocking outward from my core to consume me.
I fell, tipped over the edge, undone, and my legs slackened as my mind blanked to numbing bliss.
I floated.
Floated with no intention of ever coming down.
Kyros sat back on his haunches and lowered me to straddle his lap. My legs curled around his back and tremors wracked me as I clung to him, breath catching.
“Beautiful,” Kyros said into my hair, kissing my temple. “Passionate.”
It wasn’t often that I let loose in that way. And never with such a result. But I always felt halfway to the ultimate orgasm around Kyros. The blood bond between us was constant foreplay, even if I refused to heed it the majority of the time.
At least, I hadn’t thus far.
“That was new,” I said uncertainly, not sure I wanted to leave my position crushed against his chest. I was half-naked, and he’d just given me the most intense orgasm of my life. With his mouth. Holding me up as though I was a fucking feather.
I needed a second.
“I certainly hope so,” he purred in my ear.
Growing a vagina, I peeked up.
His fangs were out, eyes blazing to the point of frenzy.
“Can I reciprocate?” I asked. Heat pulsed through me anew at the thought. Or were humans really bad at foreplay and sex compared to Vissimo?
Kyros inhaled sharply and turning my head, I latched onto his thumb, sucking hard on it. I smirked as his erection went from rock hard to bursting. He was under my spell.
I had nothing to fear.
“Not tonight,” Kyros said as though the words were physically dragged from him. His eyes traced my neck. “Not unless you want to enter the fourth thrall right now.”
The admission pulled me up short. “You want to bite me?”
He closed his eyes, taking a shuddering breath. “I want to put my cock inside you, bite you, and force my blood down your throat all at the same time. I nearly bit into your femoral artery when you orgasmed though I drank blood ten minutes ago.”
A bolt of heat shot to my centre at the thought of drinking his blood. It had to be the blood bond talking. “Thanks for telling me, I guess. I feel bad that I came and you didn’t.”
His eyes snapped to mine and he drew me closer with a hand against the small of my back.
“Wrong thing to say?” I whispered as he moved up his favourite path, inhaling me from jaw to temple.
He stilled, hands bunching in my dress.
“Wrong thing to say,” Kyros replied, pulling back. “For the record, the memory of you using my face to get off while wearing those glasses and palming your fucking perfect body will haunt me to the end of my days.”
He lowered his voice, lips nearing my ear. “My reward was tasting you.”
I flushed. It wasn’t like I was a virgin. Far from it—I liked to have fun. But dirty talk fell from his mouth without a speck of embarrassment or shame.
Kyros lifted my chin with a finger. “My true mate is perfection.”
I had to woman up.
Steeling myself, I met his gaze. “Your mouth felt like perfection.”
His green eyes flared again, and I untangled myself from around him, bouncing to the edge of the bed.
Apparently I’d thrown my stockings and underwear across the room. Tugging my skirt down over my slick thighs, I plucked the garments off the pinecone ornament, staring at the thing.
“Don’t break it,” he grumbled, buttoning his shirt.
Yeah, yeah. I didn’t feel like breaking it anymore. But it was kind of mortifying. I’d given a decorative pinecone to a one-hundred-and-fifty-year-old vampire prince.
I tugged up my panties—white and lacy with a cheeky cut.
Kyros swore as I tugged my dr
ess back down.
“I need a shower,” he muttered, reaching up to pull his shirt overhead. “A long fucking shower.”
I drank in the sight of him, body clenching in favour of a round two. “A shower, huh? I’ll leave you to that then.”
“No,” he said, glancing at the white clock beside his bed. “We have time for dinner before I start work.”
My brows climbed.
Blasted Vissimo didn’t give me any time to think. We’d gone from strangling each other, to the bed and now to a date? I’d always maintained that Kyros was a one-night-stand kind of guy. Not a long-term partner. Our bodies wanted to force us into a long-term… thing. That didn’t mean I had to agree to the second blood thing, whatever Kyros had already decided.
When he was open and honest like this, sure, I could entertain the idea of more. But he behaved this way 5 percent of the time. What was more, I doubted Kyros was capable of casual sex.
“For me, this was a one-time thing…” I trailed off.
His face darkened, but the shadows were gone in the next instant. “Dinner isn’t marriage, Miss Tetley.”
I frowned at the ugly throbbing beneath the words. Well fuck, at least we both agreed marriage was out of the question.
“I need to eat before work, and I’d like company,” Kyros continued.
I rolled up my stockings. “This wouldn’t be you downplaying that it’s a date so I don’t refuse, would it?”
“It was me trying to save my dignity after you reduced what we shared to a one-time thing, actually.”
His comment startled a laugh from me.
I groaned after, shoved aside my concerns. “I’ll come to dinner. A friendly dinner.”
“Do you fuck all your friends’ faces?”
He ducked as I threw my stockings at his head.
The shower turned on a moment later, and I picked up the remote. Turning on the television, I flicked through the channels, not registering the content of a single one.
Whoa, that orgasm was earth-shattering.
When I first met Kyros, I told him that 25 percent compatibility, physical compatibility, wasn’t enough to tempt me. He’d proved me wrong. I was willing to bet a whole heap of women would sign up to experience that.
The temptation was real. Part of me wanted to believe the brief connection we’d shared before the second exchange meant something—that it would morph to trust and respect in time. Except the urge to give in to such a massive commitment was the blood bond talking, not me. Kyros and I had always shared a certain tension, even before he first compelled me, so I could admit that part was real, but the rest wasn’t.
We were still only 25 percent compatible in my mind.
I grinned as Kyros’s shower extended. Totally wanking. I picked up my water from the bedside table and took a few gulps.
Swallowing, I lowered the bottle and glanced at the fridge.
Look in his fridge.
Laurel knew something I didn’t.
I trusted the Indebted woman far more than I trusted Kyros. And I respected her. Really, we were far more compatible as life partners if either of us were that way inclined.
I gulped back my water and padded to the sink, filling the bottle.
He’d hear if I opened the fridge, but I’d seen inside of it already. There was only blood and water.
I drank more water—loudly. Filling the bottle a third time, I carefully opened the cupboard door beneath the sink. Easing up the lid of the rubbish bin, I reached inside, fingers fumbling for the empty blood bag I’d seen him throw inside.
I straightened, flipping it over.
Basilia Le Spyre
B-Negative
Blood rushed through my ears as I re-read the label.
Kyros knew my real name.
The bathroom door slammed open, Kyros ran out, a white towel fastened around his hips. “What’s—”
His gaze landed on the bag in my shaking hands.
He knows my name.
I needed to pay attention to whatever he was feeling, but all I could do was think back through our encounters.
Every single one of them.
Right to the start when I’d stumbled out of this tower after my interview with Angelica and happened to nearly be run over by him.
Him waiting on the street to talk to me.
Coincidentally being present when I needed help with the Monocle login.
The blood compulsion.
The exchanges.
I covered my mouth, the trembling of my body strengthening. He knew my grandmother had died.
Kyros knew I’d just inherited billions.
“Right from the start,” I whispered, my voice cracking.
He didn’t move from the bathroom doorway.
“You’ve played me from day one. It was a setup.”
I hadn’t felt right after the interview with Angelica. “Did Angelica compel me to run out onto the street that day?”
His voice was soft. Flat. “She’s the best there is at eye compulsion. You knew something was different after that moment, but you didn’t seem to recall anything you’d told her under compulsion.”
Not true. I’d had nightmares of blurting everything out. I just hadn’t believed that was the real version.
None of what lay between Kyros and me was real.
From day one, he’d strung me along. I gasped, hurt spiking me in the chest so hard, I hunched forward.
We don’t need a tax number.
We pay in cash.
“You followed me,” I rushed to say. “You listened to my conversation with Tommy in the bar after the interview.”
Kyros took a step forward.
“Don’t you dare,” I shot at him, drawing myself up. “You’ve been seducing me for my money and position? Putting on a show to get a hold of my assets—my network.” It was all a joke.
I felt sick. I tossed the blood bag in the rubbish, placing my bottle on the bench.
“What are you doing?”
“Leaving this shithole. The exact thing I would have done long ago if I’d realised you already knew my real name.”
Kyros blocked me. “You’re not leaving this tower.”
“Get out of my way,” I said in a dark voice I barely recognised.
“I can’t let you—”
I screamed, “You made me drink your blood because I’m wealthy? You just—” I blanched, thinking of what we’d just done. My stomach roiled. “Oh my god, I can’t believe I let you touch me like that.”
Use me like that.
My chest seized and a burning slammed into the backs of my eyes like never before. I felt violated. Dirty.
Humiliated.
He blurred before my eyes and I pressed my nails into my shaking palms, swallowing hard. “You did this for Ingenium.”
“I got close to you in the beginning because my father ordered it.”
His father ordered him to. The words echoed in my head.
Voice hoarse, I summoned up every ounce of hatred in my system—a lot as it turned out. “You’re a fucking monster.”
Darkness swelled between us, the connection between us twisting, decaying to shadows and loathing.
“Move.” I would tear down this entire tower if he didn’t.
Kyros stepped aside.
I strode past without looking at him, stopping only to pick up the décor pinecone to hurl it against the far wall.
It shattered, burlap and sequins flying everywhere.
I marched out of his lair down to his office and let the shock, abhorrence, and bitter, bitter regret wash over me. So many weeks feeling that I had to protect my grandmother and the estate. Time with her that I’d never get back.
Alone. Trapped.
I kept even steps down the hall and stepped into the elevator when the doors slid open.
I rode down to the ground floor.
And as Basilia Le Spyre, I walked out of Kyros Sky forever.
6
I saw the wooden stair
a split second before my golf cart slammed into it.
My head whipped forward and the rear of the buggy lifted with impact. The cart bounced back on an angle, teetering on two wheels for a breath before toppling on its side and carrying me with it.
The air whooshed from my lungs. I thudded from the driver’s seat to the wooden floor, landing heavily on my side.
“Ouch,” I wheezed, untangling my legs from the wheel.
I blinked at my left hand and, smiling, lifted the intact tequila bottle in triumph. “Hey-oh!”
Didn’t spill a drop.
Resting my head on the cool ground, I opened my mouth and tried to pour more of the alcohol into my mouth sideways.
The bottle was plucked from my grip. “Miss Le Spyre, are you hurt?”
I squinted up at Fred. “You’re upside-down, Fred. Fuck, no wonder Grandmother hired you.”
His eyes scanned my body for injury. “Driving the golf cart through the halls under the influence again.”
“Sorry.” I sighed, closing my eyes.
There was a clink as he set the bottle down. He gripped me under the arms and slid me free of the upturned cart.
“Where’d we get a golf buggy from?” I mumbled, trying to hook the tequila bottle with my foot.
“You ordered it online three days ago, Miss Le Spyre. Another decision made under the influence.”
Arguably the best decisions were made with tequila.
Fred helped me to my feet, directing me away from the half-empty bottle when I glanced at it.
“Do you play golf?” I asked the butler, wobbling beside him.
“No, Miss Le Spyre. It’s too uneventful for me.”
He probably liked sports where he got to hit people. “I don’t play golf.”
“No, Miss Le Spyre. I’m aware.”
The butler gripped my upper arm as I stumbled up the wide mahogany stairs.
“I’m going to order an elevator online,” I told him as we reached the top. “Why don’t we have one again?”
I burped. My stomach wasn’t feeling so great.
A small smile graced his face. “Your grandmother said stairs built character. And that when she couldn’t walk up and down them, she was ready to be put down.”
Vampire Debt: Supernatural Battle (Vampire Towers Book 2) Page 8