by Erin Hayes
He buried his face into my hairline. The pointed ends of his canines dragged across my skin, raising the hair on my neck. "I just want to be inside you.
"You've teased me enough," he said, and even as he strode to the bed, his cock was seeking entrance. He lifted me deftly just enough that he would position my sex perfectly over his shaft. He was plunging inside even as we met the mattress. I was lowered backward, my shoulders digging into the blankets as he drove deep inside me. A gasp escaped from my throat and he grinned.
"You've awoken the monster, Jade, and like it or not you'll take every inch of me." He pushed deeper, grinding into my tender core. ""You will take each thrust as hard as I want to give it."
"Yes," I moaned. "More. Fuck me."
"Say it again," he said.
"Fuck me."
"Again." He withdrew, teasing my labia with the head of his cock. My clitoris begged to be mauled and mashed against his hips, ground into a quivering nub. "I need to hear it again; I'll never tire of hearing it."
"Fuck me."
He lost himself then, driving home again and again, forcing the climax to build within me at speeds I'd never enjoyed before. Each time he withdrew and ground back in, he did so with command. No release was simple. Every thrust came with the grinding massage that plundered my insides. His fingers crept to spread my ass cheeks and probe the bud between them whenever his shaft struck my core. I felt as though I was being kneaded into his psyche that I would be nothing when it is over except a trembling ball of dough. As the orgasm built, I urged him to take all he wanted of me. I was past caring. All I could breathe for was the release he could give me.
I think I called out.
"Not without me," he said, locking his gaze onto my mine. His canines were fully extended, his corneas flushed with blood. Even the cords in his neck were taut with restraint. When he relinquished my gaze, it was only to steal a glance at my throat.
"Now," I said, barely able to speak around the explosion of pleasure rippling through my body. I convulsed, every muscle straining toward him. I found myself offering him my throat, feeling as though the only way I would survive the dizziness of height was to bind myself to him top to bottom.
He fell upon my skin in seconds and the piercing pain immediately sent a jolt straight to my sex. I bucked upwards, crying out in a most exquisite pain.
With each pull of my veins, he thrust deeper into my core. We were a well-oiled machine, recycling fluids and creating energy from nothing. I think I soared above us both and came crashing down so hard I must have blacked out.
He was hovering over me, his face wearing worry the way a matron wears frumpy clothes. He was biting his wrist when I realized I actually was aware.
"What are you doing?"
"Making you," he said, spreading his blood over his lips. "Kiss me." The urgency in his voice prodded me more fully awake, and I recoiled.
"Jade, if I don't make you, I might kill you next time. You saw how it was."
I tingled at the thought of a next time. "I offered myself." I protested.
"And I took you. Just like Gio did."
"Not like that," I said. "I trust you." I wiped the blood from his mouth and planted my lips on his. He tasted coppery and musky. My blood, I realized, yet I didn't care.
"Is that all?" He stretched out next to me on his side, his face a carefully guarded vault. "Trust?"
"Isn't trust enough?" I nibbled his whiskery chin, calling up a similar expression. "I mean, it's a pretty big thing at this point, considering what you are and all."
"It'll do for now." He bent his head to my breasts, sucking one nipple into his mouth, letting his teeth graze the tip. "But it won't do forever."
"Says the guy who has a back stage pass," I said, remembering how close I'd come to feeling time ceasing altogether.
He gathered me close, and I felt the heat of my blood moving through him.
"Don't think of him," he said. "He can't hurt you anymore. At least it will take a good number of weeks before he's able."
"What did you do to him?"
"I nearly took his head off with my broadsword."
"You should have totally taken it off."
He shrugged. "He is older. The original. It would've been very difficult to take his entire head. As is, he's probably regenerating. No doubt will be for some weeks."
I thought of his comment about being willing to kill for me, and I squirmed, trying to put the image of a nearly decapitated nosferatu to the back of my mind. It made me uncomfortable in more ways than I cared to admit.
He trailed a finger over my belly. "I don't blame him, really; not now. You're a fairly consuming drug."
"Is that your idea of poetry?" I asked. "Because I like it way better than his."
"Not bad for a salivating undead who uses young girls to lure specialty dinners for lazy vampires."
I was mortified. "Oh God, you heard."
"I did. And there's a kernel of truth in it." He scratched at the whiskers on his jaw. "Except you made it very difficult to use you."
"I told you there were troubles."
I explained to him about Ismé and he listened intently, his face only shifting now and then when he heard his own parts in the story. He lay back, his large biceps twitching against the pillow rammed into the headboard. I enjoyed watching every nuance of movement he made.
"So she does have the juju as you call it," he said of Aisha. "It would've worked."
"What would have worked?"
"If I'd got your priestess to call to Gio's lover, Selene. She might have brought her forth."
"And the Governor's office job?" I asked him, remembering that other task I'd been given.
"I thought you needed good health insurance."
"What I need working for you is life insurance."
I played with the hair on his chest until he wrapped his fingers around my hand. The calluses reminded me how delicious his hands felt against my skin. I pushed his fingers lower, and he toyed with my navel, poking his finger in and pulling it out again, distracted.
"Gio was made because of a series of truly unfortunate curses from Artemis and Apollo," he said as I pushed his finger lower. "Do you know of them?"
"How would I?" I said.
It was apparent he determined to maintain the frustrating course of trying to have a conversation. I slipped my hand between his legs and stroked his shaft. He gave a sharp inhale, but merely rolled over to his side, dislodging my hand before he leaned in to lick my lips. My heart flipped when he grinned at me.
"Gio went to the Oracle at Delphi to hear his fortune. He fell in love with Apollo's favorite acolyte."
"Let me guess," I said. "The god didn't want to share." I rubbed against him provocatively.
He scooped me closer so that I was lodged between his powerful legs, unable to tempt him with anything but a few not-so-subtle movements. I felt the excitement of victory when he grew hard against my belly, but the victory flagged when he pinned my hands against his chest.
I sighed, disappointed. It was pretty distressing to think I couldn't appeal enough to a Viking's inherent nature to rape and pillage that I could distract him from a dull conversation.
"Are you sure you were a Viking?" I squinted at him, taking in the grisly jaw and rough-edges. "My money would be on the monk that brought them Christianity."
"Yes, well," he said. "Being a vampire has certainly softened my edges."
He propped himself onto his elbow, looking down at me in all seriousness.
"Gio has but one weakness except the blessings of Artemis and the curses of Apollo. His love for Selene."
"Why are you telling me this?" His demeanor suggested something sinister, and my spine tingled.
"Those humans who invaded my home – they are the reason I'm telling you this."
I thought of him tearing through the men and shuddered. If he'd been fiercer as a Viking than a vampire, I didn't want to imagine it.
"They wanted me dead," I said,
remembering.
"Yes. Because of Gio's interest in you. What the Yakuza is to crime, the cult of Artemis is to the supernatural."
"And the woman? The redhead. Who was she?"
"I have no idea, but only the cult would come to my home in such strength to kill a human. We can't afford for this Ismé to find her way back to the surface and leave you vulnerable."
"We don't have to worry about her. She's gone."
"You're sure of this."
I couldn't answer that. I didn't sense her, but then I hadn't before either until she'd just popped out. He seemed to sense my hesitation.
"I refuse to wait," he said, letting me go and slipping from the bed. He strode naked to the French doors. The night air billowed in between the curtains as he stepped out and extended his hand toward me. I went to him, naked as he was, and overlooked the sprawling back garden so unusual in the city. The lights of apartments winked in the near distance.
"There are still a few hours before dawn. We'll go to your priestess."
"She's probably pretty pissed by now. And it's the middle of the night at any rate."
"Doesn't matter."
"Don't you need to be invited in?"
He grinned, a feral glint overtaking his green eyes. "I told you – an old wives tale."
"Stake in the heart?"
He gave a single shake of his head.
"Cutting off your head? Salt?"
He ticked items off on his fingers. "Silver. Sun. Blood. All curses and blessings delivered to Ambrogio by the twin gods. If there is anything else, I don't know of it." He pulled me close, wrapping his arms around me when he felt me shiver. His thumb flicked over my nipple absent-mindedly. "She has power, this Haitian of yours, if she could call back a loved one."
I thought of Aisha and Ismé together, the passion they shared, the tremor of something else that fed the relationship. Abuse was the word that came to mind, but I pushed it back out. The Haitian wouldn't have reanimated a spirit who would use her. She was too smart, too commanding for that.
"Yes, she has power," I said. "But I doubt you'll coerce her to send Ismé back to hell."
"I don't plan coercion," he said, and I shivered in his arms at his tone.
Chapter Sixteen
THE LAST COURSE
Half an hour later, we stood outside the shop door. He twisted the knob, easily breaking the lock. I followed behind him as he stepped inside, and was instantly assaulted by the smell of spices meant to mask that of musty wood floors and water-damaged walls. I pointed to the narrow door behind the counter that I knew led upstairs to her apartment. I wondered if she'd been peering into her basin again and was prepared for our coming or if she was so pissed at Ismé for abandoning her that she'd already called up some zombie bloodhound to track her down. I strained to see into the corners of the shop.
I had to stuff a fit of nervous giggles into my hand as Magnus glared at me. In the dark, his eyes lit from some energy of their own, making me want to reach out to him for protection, and at the same time feeling as though he was the thing I needed protection from.
He took my hand. "I won't allow anyone to bring you pain." His gaze landed on my throat where he'd sealed the wound that he'd inflicted.
I nodded, mute, because I'd seen him in full rampage. If I wasn't safe with him, I was safe nowhere.
Aisha was passed out on the sofa. The stink of booze and sick permeated the room. Magnus picked up a chicken foot from the basket near the door and rattled it thoughtfully, then placed it back the same way it had lain. I bit down on another burst of the giggles, distracting myself by scanning the apartment for the basin. I twisted the bracelet on my wrist, feeling the restraint of it so acutely in the room that I doubted I could get it off if I tried.
Magnus nodded in Aisha's direction. "Wake her," he said.
I pulled in a deep draft of air and stepped toward the sofa. Aisha's arm was flung over her forehead. I could smell the stink wafting up from her. I clicked on the lamp next to the arm of the couch and light flooded over her face. The mocha skin looked pale and gray. I had to remind myself that this woman had bound me to a bitch of a spirit and made me a slave to her. I yanked on her hair without remorse.
She came up spitting and cracked her head into mine. Stars lit the backs of my eyelids.
"Ismé," she said, relief flooding her voice. "Thank Bacalou."
"I thought you were Bacalou," I grumbled, my fingers rubbing the spot where she'd connected.
"No one is Bacalou," she said. "Bacalou gives himself to someone." She tried to sit up but dropped back in a heap, obviously still drunk.
Magnus bristled closer. "This is your Haitian voodoo Queen?" The disgust dripped off him.
Aisha stiffened at his words as she lay there. Her eyes flew to mine; visible rage and jealousy sent her to her feet so suddenly, she nearly toppled back over onto the sofa.
"You brought him here, Ismé?"
"She isn't Ismé," Magnus said. He laid his arm across me protectively. I felt the determined stirrings of emotion and squashed them just as determinedly back down where they belonged.
Aisha squinted at him, swaying on her feet. "Still in your thrall, is she? So what did you do with Ismé?"
I knew we had less than two hours before the dawn, and sensing an argument that would take us down the path to nowhere, I pushed Magnus's arm away and gripped her by the elbow, urging her to sit.
"Ismé is gone for now." I tried to be gentle about it, but Magnus's imposing frame towered closer.
"And we want her gone for good," he growled. His teeth glinted behind his lips. I tried not to look at them. Aisha seemed unfazed.
"It took the aid of Bacalou to bring Ismé forth," Aisha explained. "I didn't offer my body to him just to send her away again. I don't care how bad you want this skinny pampered yuppie, vampire. She belongs to Bacalou." Aisha flicked her hand at him. "You will just have to share her as I do."
"Release her." Magnus's his hand snaked out to wrap around Aisha's throat, cutting off the airway until she looked like an empty sack. "I do not share."
"Stop," I said. "She can't get rid of the bitch if you kill her."
Magnus's eyes were mere slits and his fangs had fully extended. I recognized the feral creature he'd shown me on the balcony when he'd first admitted to me what he was. Aisha was either too drunk to be afraid or too arrogant. My heart was hammering against my rib cage; I could hear the stuttering rhythm of it in my ears.
Without a pause long enough for me to inhale, he descended upon her throat. Aisha cried out just as his teeth broke the surface. I had to pull on his arm to get him to free himself and even as I separated them, blood spurted on his cheeks and sprayed onto my T-shirt.
"She's drunk," I shouted at him, knowing that in her state, her blood would be too thin to clot quickly. "She'll die."
"Let her," he said, throwing Aisha onto the sofa. I could tell he was struggling to manacle the monster inside.
"If she dies I'll never be free of Ismé." The panic in my voice betrayed just how badly I was afraid of Ismé's return.
Aisha's hand pressed against the wound on her throat. The blood streaming between her fingers came out thin and bright. Nevertheless, she struggled to talk.
"She'll never be free anyway. Only Bacalou has the power to undo the tie."
Magnus growled in his throat. "Summon him."
Aisha's skin paled even more. She collapsed against the cushions.
"Summon him."
The Haitian woman gargled on the blood that must have been running down her throat, and I rushed to her side, straddling the space between the sofa and the table. I could feel my freedom disappearing into spurts of cooling blood. I glared at Magnus even as I tried to put extra pressure on the wound.
"She's dying." I choked on the words, panic rising from my belly in waves of nausea.
His shrug was as infuriating as his now-calm demeanor. The fangs retracted. He shoved his hands leisurely into his pockets.
; "Fix it," I shrieked. Aisha began to cough up the blood. "Fix it now."
Magnus's glance wasn't for me. It was for Aisha as she shrank deeper into the cushions of the sofa.
"Summon him, priestess," he said, and there was no resisting the hum of command.
She nodded, a subtle, trembling movement that I felt as I fought to keep my hands from slipping from her neck.
In a blur of movement that surprised me, Magnus had her in his arms, lifting her torso from the sofa and pulling her toward him. He sealed his mouth over the wound. For a moment, I thought he had decided to drain her after all. I beat on his back, trying to force him to pull away.
"Stop it. Stop it."
He lifted his gaze to mine. "Fickle thing, aren't you," he said, then let her drop again to the sofa. I fleeted a glance at her throat. The blood had stopped gushing. The wound was cleaned and mended with a faint scar.
Aisha blinked up at me.
"Is she dying?" I asked.
"That's up to her. I stopped the bleeding. If she wants to live, she will untie you from the bitch."
I glanced at Aisha. Despite eyes that were red with unshed tears, she nodded. I wasn't sure if the relief I felt came from knowing I'd be free of Ismé or if I was so damn glad I hadn't witnessed another death that I was willing to forgive the woman. There had been something disturbing and almost pitiful about her and Ismé.
It didn't matter. We had her agreement. I could literally taste the return of my self-control. I could breathe again. Magnus fairly coiled around me as we waited for Aisha to gather her wits and her juju tools.
The ritual seemed harmless enough. A basin of water, some herbs. I had to dunk my hand in with hers, and stare at the depths, trying to find bottom. Magnus stood brooding at my side, a tense, fully-loaded spring.
Once, I had the feeling she was just whiling away the time, trying to wait out the dawn, but when she swayed against me on the sofa, I knew it was just because she was weak. A finger of dread kneaded the bottom of my spine. I worried Magnus would lose the night and be caught there by his decision to unfetter me from all who would possess me but him. I wasn't entirely sure the shiver that swept over me on the heels of that thought was from anxiety, and I told myself that feeling anything for any man was a luxury I couldn't afford. Then my damn psyche reminded me Magnus was not a man.