Playing Easy to Get

by Sherrilyn Kenyon

  "Ohhh," the bright one said, blowing a bubble. "You mean he hasn't, uh, you know, released, the first time since his blooding?" Then with a quick glance at his crotch, she said, "And he stays like that without you, right?" She chuckled. "I'm cool with the plan."

  The archer wasn't convinced. "Don't get me wrong, I enjoy condemning vampires to unending sexual torture as much as the next fabulously talented huntress..." When Wroth heard a guard charging in, she leisurely shot an arrow in that direction, tilted her head at the result, then sighed to Myst, "But Vampire Bride just sounds so B-movie. He just dragged you down to B-moviedom."

  The bright one made her voice overly dramatic, saying, "For that alone...he must die. Seriously, Myst. Your 'husband' has irrevocably damaged your street cred unless you kill him like the others."

  They were all mad.

  And still he was hard, aching for her body, for the blood she'd given him just to torture him. "You evil, teasing bitch. Kill me then."

  For just the merest second he imagined he saw compassion in her eyes, but when she shrugged, his hazy mind finally grasped that she was going to leave him here with nothing but a body knotted with lust for her and a taste of blood that he would go to his knees for. "You're the most malicious bitch I've ever known."

  "Flatterer," she chirped.

  Across the corridor, she easily leapt to the window forty feet above, opening the shutters to draw the unfortified bars from the space as though she might pluck back a curtain. She held a hand down for the others.

  "I will find you," he bit out. "I will find you and make you pay for this a thousand times."

  The bright one leapt up and caught Myst's forefinger with her own. "Sounds like he's setting up a date," she said as she dangled.

  "Oooom," Myst purred, her gaze flickering over him. "Dress casual."

  Chapter Four

  Present Day

  N ever-ending sexual desire that could never be slaked.

  She'd knowingly--delightedly--surrendered him to this torment. His Bride had blooded him, giving him his first need as a vampire, then stoked it to a fever pitch--and only his Bride could work his body free to release the first time. If she had only stayed long enough for him to take her just once, or to merely touch her skin as he'd taken his own ease, she could've spared him this. But then she'd clearly said that that was the plan.

  And for the last five years, Wroth had been cursed with more than that. He was cursed with her memories as well.

  The minuscule drop of blood taken directly from her body did more than make any other blood taste like tar to him--it did just what the Forbearers feared. With her living blood came dreams where her memories unfolded, so realistic they were as if he was there to experience scents she'd smelled and textures she'd felt. Sometimes he could even feel her hands clench in anger. But he'd told no one, keeping his secrets because he didn't want to lose his power within their army--or be killed.

  Each sunset he rose and checked his eyes for the telltale red, and every day if he could manage to sleep, he was subjected to the same series of memories that subtly grew in detail each time.

  The first found her atop a hill, sun bright, with snow still on the ground. "I've cursed you to your hell," Myst hissed at the site of a rough gravestone. She was roiling with so much hostility that Wroth knew she must have killed whatever being lay there. She spoke an ancient language that Wroth shouldn't understand, but he did. He felt the sensations she'd felt, the constant sway of her chain around her waist, the smell of the ocean just below her, brine on a cold day.

  Another familiar dream. A drunken Roman senator kneeling at her feet. "At long last, I'm about to have Myst the Coveted. And you'll no longer be coveted, you'll be possessed." He laughed. "You'll make me twist on your little hook no longer."

  Wroth had discovered the full name of his tormenter. Myst the Coveted.

  With disgust, Wroth saw the Roman take Myst's dainty foot in his mouth, sucking greedily, stroking himself, as she slowly lifted her skirt up her silken thighs for him. As ever, Wroth fought not to see this, fought to wake. His violent revulsion never diminished over time.

  The first time he'd had that dream, he'd been relieved when another scene unfolded before that one came to some kind of sick conclusion. But never again...

  Myst was running past a Viking raiding party on the coast of some northern land. Purposely. She wanted them to hunt her. To catch her and throw her to the ground in the hard snow. What kind of twisted need did she have? She was excited, her blood pumping. Her skin felt like it was sizzling with electricity, and lightning was generated from her excitement. She stifled a smile, when with bellows and cheers, the men gave chase....

  As ever, Wroth fought to force his mind away before he saw a dozen Vikings rutting on his Bride. To her delight.

  Tonight a new dream. Finally. Snow outside, packed so high it covered half the window. Women, or other creatures like her, met around a great hearth. They were sisters and Wroth saw their faces as though familiar and knew their names and who they were as well as Myst did. He recognized the archer as Lucia, and the bright one he now knew was Regin the Radiant. A vacant-eyed one was called Nix, the oldest of her sisters and believed to be a soothsayer. Their clothing indicated early twentieth century.

  They were meeting over the fate of a baby that their leader, a somber creature named Annika, wished to keep. Myst frowned at the little girl in Annika's arms, confused to feel some stirring of feeling for it.

  "How are we to care for her, Annika?" Lucia murmured.

  Regin snapped, "How can you bring a vampire among us when they slaughtered my people?"

  One named Daniela the Ice Maiden knelt beside Annika, gazing up at her, briefly touching her with a pale hand. Myst shivered to think of the pain Danii had just felt to offer that cold touch. Daniela's mother's people had been the ice fey and she couldn't be touched by anyone but one of them without extreme pain. "She needs to be with her own kind. I know this well."

  Annika shook her head determinedly. "Her ears. Her eyes. She's Valkyrie as much as vampire."

  Valkyrie...? Impossible.

  "She'll grow to be evil," Regin insisted. "She's already snapped at me with her baby fangs. By Freya, she drinks blood!"

  "Trifling," Myst interjected in a casual tone. "We eat electricity."

  The vacant-eyed Nix laughed.

  A vampire child? Eating electricity? His heart was racing....

  Annika said, "I will keep Emmaline from the Horde and guide her to be all that was good and honorable about the Valkyrie before time eroded us." Her words were laced with sadness and triggered a memory that Myst hated.

  Wroth wanted to see it but couldn't.

  Annika rubbed noses with the baby and asked her, "Now where's the best place to hide the most beautiful little vampire in the world?"

  Nix laughed delightedly. "Laissez les bon temps roulez..."

  New Orleans.

  Wroth shot up in bed, body drenched with sweat.

  My Bride's a Valkyrie? he thought with a choking cough. His mind couldn't wrap around the idea of it.

  He hadn't known they even existed. A character from legends told around campfires was linked to him for eternity. From the dreams, he knew she was a millennias-old mystical being born of a fierce Pictish princess--who'd plunged a dagger into her heart rather than be taken alive by an enemy--and of gods.

  She didn't eat because she took electrical energy from the earth and gave it back with her emotions in the form of lightning. She was a killer and had been a Roman senator's whore. She despised men and enjoyed tormenting them, just as she'd done with him.

  He glanced down at his throbbing erection. Even his hatred couldn't battle his relentless need for her. The impulse to take his cock in his fist was there, but he fought it, knowing he could never bring himself to come, knowing it would only increase his pain.

  For five years she'd sentenced him to suffering from this constant, grueling ache. Before he'd learned there was no relief wit
hout her, he would've futilely stroked himself or thrust against the bed, imagining it was Myst clutched beneath him, but he never took release.

  Other females repelled him--because they weren't her. Even if he believed he could find ease with another woman, he would never demean himself with another. He'd felt his Myst's incredible softness, felt her wet with desire for him, her body squeezing around his fingers as she'd climaxed from his touch.

  He shuddered and his cock pulsed hungrily. Linked for eternity. To Myst the Coveted, a mythological being who despised him. The only way he'd keep her for eternity would be to punish her for that long.

  He knew he coveted her as none other had. And now he knew where to find her.

  Chapter Five

  T he fumes of swamp, steamed hot dogs and soured beer wafted up to Myst and her sisters as they perched on a roof above the chaos that was Bourbon Street.

  There were rumors of vampires running about in New Orleans.

  Vampires in Louisiana? Unheard of.

  If there'd been only one account of leeches, then she and Regin and Nix would still be back at Val Hall, their bayou manor, playing video games. But a demon friend had sworn he'd seen one--and a phantom had whispered that there was not just one faction of vampires, but two.

  Myst's eyes darted over the scene, trying to remain focused and not notice the couples frantically grinding against each other in dark alleys. If Daniela was here she would blow them a kiss and cool them off, freezing hands to asses in mid-grope and making her sisters chortle and roll along the roof. Myst supposed that the Valkyrie were easily amused.

  But focus was proving futile ever since her heart had sped up at the idea of vampires here. If for some reason they had come to the New World--which the Horde historically found vulgar and beneath them--that still didn't mean him.

  Wroth. One of her true regrets in her life.

  Every day, she mused that she shouldn't have left that vampire to suffer--she should have killed him.

  Regin tossed her blade up, caught the point into her claw, then flicked it up once more. "You know, not that I believe there are actual vampires here--cause that's just whacky speak--but if there were, they should know that this is our turf."

  "Should we ask them to rumble? Or maybe mash?" Nix asked as she swiftly braided her waist-length black hair. "I've heard those can be a graveyard smash." Even sporting the old-fashioned hairstyle and an occasionally confused glance--she saw the future more clearly than the present--Nix still looked like a supermodel.

  "I'm serious," Regin said. "New Orleans may have once been the mystical melting pot of the world, but we control this place now."

  "We can always send Mysty the Vampire Layer to battle them," Nix said thoughtfully. "Oh wait, she'd run off with them."

  Regin added, "Or use her famed tongue assault to flail the skin from their bodies as they inexplicably line up to sacrifice themselves."

  "Har-de-har-har," Myst mumbled, half-listening. She'd been razzed about this continually. And she deserved it. She might as well have been caught free-basing with the ghost of Bundy. Of course others had overheard the jokes in the coven and the word spread. Even other factions of the Lore--like the nymphs, those little hookers--whispered about her unsavory predilection toward vampires. But it wasn't vampires plural, it was only one.

  Wroth. She shivered. With his slow, hot fingers...

  In her bed late at night, when she touched herself, she always fantasized about him, remembering his hard chest and harder shaft, imagining his ferocity, his intensity, if he ever found her again.

  Truthfully, she thought he might have found her by now. She'd--accidentally?--given him her blood, possibly giving him her memories, which could lead him straight here. She often pondered that reckless kiss. She'd had no discernible intention of giving him blood, but hadn't she known in the back of her mind that his fangs would be razor sharp with her sisters' arrival? Had she wanted him to find her?

  She shook her head, needing to stay sharp. Annika, Daniela and Lucia were down there somewhere.

  "Lookit," Regin said, pointing down. "Men that big shouldn't get schnockered."

  Myst turned her attention to a tall man who reminded her of Wroth from the back--why couldn't she get that vampire off the brain?--though this one was much rangier in build. The man leaned against another massive male, hanging on to him for balance as they walked. She noticed her claws were curling.

  "Myst, can't you control that?" Regin asked with a fleeting glance at her claws. "It's embarrassing."

  "Listen, I can't help it, I like big males with broad shoulders. And I bet under that trench coat he has an ass that begs to be clutched."

  Nix offered, "And it's not like she can put Band-Aids over them--"

  "Holy shite," Regin exclaimed. "I see a glow. Ghouls, down by Ursilines Avenue."

  "Damn it," Myst muttered. "In public again? They are hard-up recruiting then." Ghouls were maniacal fighters out to increase their numbers by turning humans with their contagious bites and scratches. They had green, gelatinous blood, and the parish of Orleans went gooey every time the coven fought them.

  "Again." Nix sighed. "And there's only so many times we can convince drunken tourists they're extras in a sci-fi flick."

  Regin slid her blade into her forearm sheath. "Stargate part twelve is officially on location." She rose. "We'll go canoodle the ghouls. You keep a watch out for vampires." She made a ghostly wooo-wooo sound. "And try not to lift tail for any of them, 'kay?"

  As Myst rolled her eyes, her sisters linked arms and leapt down, moving so quickly they were like a blur. As usual, no one could see them, and if they did in this Lore-rich city no one registered it.

  Myst surveyed the glow from afar. It wasn't that extensive, so she knew they could handle it. As eldest, Nix was strong and Regin was wily. Besides, Myst had new boots on and she'd be damned if she'd lose another pair to the epic battle between buttery soft Italian leather and goo. Too many casualties already. It was terribly saddening. Really.

  Her attention easily fell once more to the man on the street, and she raised an eyebrow. If his front matched his back, she'd be tempted. It had been ages, literally, since she'd had a little some-some, and she deserved--

  She sucked in a breath, springing back against the dormer. The drunk was no drunk at all she saw when he peered down an alley, giving her his profile. The body she'd been ogling was that of her "estranged husband," as the coven liked to tease her.

  He stumbled not from drink but from weakness, his build different because he'd lost weight. And that was his brother Murdoch helping him--helping Wroth find her.

  Shaking, she crept along the roof, pressing herself around the dormers, hoping to get away before he saw her. He stopped, lifting his head above the milling crowd, then swung around to her direction.

  His gaze fell directly on her, his eyes black, feral and riveted to her with a look of utter possession. When Murdoch's gaze followed Wroth's, he gave her an almost pitying expression, then he slapped Wroth on the back before tracing away.

  The blood left her face. She leapt to the roof of the adjoining building, gaining speed for the next--

  She screamed as Wroth's gaunt visage appeared directly in front of her. Traced. She sprinted in the other direction, but he snatched her around her chest, pinning her to him, making her feel his erection thick against her. She elbowed his throat, dropped from his arms, and dove over the edge of the roof. She tumbled into a high-walled courtyard, landing on hands and feet, then scrambled up to leap out of the darkened space. But her speed was no match for his tracing.

  He snagged her again, and though she fought, he was somehow stronger even in his condition--maybe because of his condition. One of his hands yanked up her short skirt.

  "Wroth! Don't do this!"

  "Five years of hell," he sneered, palming her ass roughly. "You deserve to be fucked till you can't walk."

  She gasped, trembling. "So the warlord claims his prize? It figures that you'd take y
our Bride whether she wants it or not. You'd make me remember being forced?"

  After a pause he bit out, "No. God, no." She heard him freeing himself. "Myst," he groaned, "just feel me." He took her hand and made her cup his heavy sack, then grip his shaft. Never had she felt such hardness. "Rub the head," he rasped in her ear, making her shiver as she felt the moisture. "That's as close as I can get without you. I need to fuck you so bad I'm sick with it."

  "Wroth, don't..."

  With a bitter curse, he lowered his head, forehead against her neck, but he only thrust against her ass. "Can't stop," he grated, and she knew then that he wasn't going to take her body, just touch it, use it. Why would he refrain for her...?

  His fingers strummed her nipple. Lightning. No, she couldn't want this.

  His breath was hot on her and made her body go liquid. She could want it, just as she did every night in her lonely bed. The air was sultry, redolent with the scent of jasmine and even more moist than usual from the pounding fountain in the corner. No one was home. He wouldn't take her, so why not enjoy this for mere moments?

  When she went soft in his grasp, lacing her arms back to lock behind his head, he growled and kicked his feet against hers, making her spread her legs. Shuddering, he ruthlessly shoved against her flesh, then threw back his head and yelled out just before he came. At the last minute he turned from her and began to spill his seed onto the ground.

  She was frozen, unable to see, and for some reason it affected her more to only hear his reactions, the guttural groans erupting from deep in his chest. She felt the violent shaking, the strength in his wracked body as he clenched her through waves of pleasure.

  It went on and on, each second that passed reminding her of how badly he'd needed this. Then he put his lips to her neck, clutched her ass and she knew he was stroking himself directly to ejaculate again. When she thought about how many nights he would have envisioned this, her head fell back against his shoulder.

  The second time was impossibly even more powerful as he desperately kissed and licked her skin, squeezing one breast then the other, reminding her keenly of when he'd brought her to come that night in the dungeon. She wanted to join him--she wanted him to work those fingers on her next.