Tales of the Darkworld 2: Hot Water

by Lex Valentine

  “Holy shit. How do you survive when all of you are Alpha?”

  Colin laughed. “I only have one brother.”

  “Does that mean your sister isn’t Alpha?” she asked.

  “No, she is, but for vampires, being Alpha comes into play more with mates than siblings. The Alpha always has to be the one in power, the leader, the one who has the urge within him to force submission from others. For Acerbians – vampires – that instinctive drive is strongest with regard to our mates. We do show our Alpha in other venues, in business particularly. My brother is quite ruthless. My sister is cutthroat. I don’t take any shit from people. All three of us are natural leaders. We don’t fight each other in the office because each of us has our own area of expertise. Besides, vampires can be just as clannish as dragons. Family ties are important so we just don’t posture and play the Alpha card on that level. However, we are very aggressive and possessive when it comes to mates. ” He stroked his hand over her back and her inner dragon preened, loving his touch. “If my brother hit on you, then he would see my Alpha.”

  The harsh tone in Colin’s voice should have sent up red flags. She should be pushing him away at this point. After all, she couldn’t afford to get involved with someone. Instead, she closed her eyes and let him hold her. Lying in the luxurious warmth of the water with the hard muscles of his body beneath hers, his cock still partially within her, all combined to make her feel incredibly comfortable. It wasn’t very often that she got the opportunity to just be a woman…

  “Hey! You’re not falling asleep on me, are you?”

  Eden blinked, her eyes opening sleepily. Shit! She hadn’t fallen asleep but she was so comfortable that it had been a near thing. She flexed her inner muscles and felt the head of his cock still lodged inside her. Yeah, he was still slightly hard so only seconds had gone by. She’d never had a man’s voice soothe her as Colin’s did.

  He sucked in a breath when she squeezed him. “You know, I could totally fuck you again, but I’m feeling a little like a prune. Can we get out now?”

  She raised her head and found him smiling at her. “Sure.” She lifted herself off of him, his cock slipping free. As she stood up, she grabbed a hotel robe from the stack lying on the edge of the tub. She stepped out and wrapped it around herself, reaching for a towel to dry her hair. Colin came up behind her and pushed her hair aside so he could kiss the side of her neck.

  “Are you gonna kick me out now?” he asked.

  “Don’t you biters have to be home before the sun?”

  He shrugged. “Not really. It just gives me a sunburn. And that’s the midday sun not the morning sun.”

  She turned in his arms, her eyes searching his midnight blue ones. “If I send you away now, will you come back tomorrow?”

  “If you tell me why you’re suddenly sending me away,” he replied cautiously.

  Eden bit her lip. She wanted him to stay. She didn’t want him to go. However, she needed time to think. Her whole perspective on sex and men and relationships had shifted on its axis and her emotions seemed off balance from it.

  “I need to think,” she said honestly. “When I picked you up tonight, I was angry and determined to prove my brother wrong.” She paused, biting her lip for a moment. “I let his words make me question myself, my motivations, my sexuality. You’ve made me realize that I never should have questioned that. Instead, I should have questioned other things.”

  “What other things?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing to do with you. Things about my family. About why my brother would feel the need to say such a thing to me.”

  Colin’s expression became sympathetic. “That’s certainly what I would be questioning.” He paused then went on in a carefully neutral voice. “You know, you don’t have to invite me back tomorrow. It’s okay if you want this to end here.”

  Her eyes widened. “You don’t have to say that, Colin. You can be the Alpha with me. I rather like him, you know.”

  His eyes flashed and he pulled her into his arms, kissing her. The embrace was hard and rough, but she enjoyed it. When he lifted his head, she grinned at him and he growled. “If you don’t call me, I’ll be back here at five pounding on your door.”

  She opened her robe, swiped the first two fingers of her hand across her clan mark then pressed them to his lips. “I promise. Dragon swear.”

  Colin’s lips quirked up at the corners. “Dragon swear? Just what exactly does that mean?”

  She wrinkled her nose at him. “It’s like pinky swear or cross my heart… only it’s a promise on my clan mark. You already know that clan marks are different for every dragon, the mark intrinsic to each. Dragon swear is a child’s phrase, but its roots are deep in each dragon’s personal honor.”

  He nodded. “I understand.”

  In the bedroom, she watched him dress. Then he took out his Blackberry. “Where’s your cell phone?” he asked.

  She got it out and he grunted when he saw they had the same phone. “Put my number in it,” he told her and rattled it off.

  Eden recognized the area code as the same one where her family lived. How odd that Colin lived in the same area, she thought. She gave him her number, watching his brows shoot up when he heard the area code. He punched in the number and pocketed his phone. “You have the same area code as I do,” he remarked.

  She nodded. “I get my mail at my family’s house. I don’t have a permanent place to live. I travel too much.”

  Colin’s eyes glinted, but he didn’t say anything. She walked him to the door of the suite. He bent and kissed her hard, his tongue sweeping into her mouth to tease hers. She moaned. He groaned. Their mouths parted.

  “Call me any time tomorrow,” he told her.

  “I will,” she agreed, and then he left. She closed the door and flopped down on the edge of the bed. It reeked of sex and vanilla.

  Eden breathed deeply of Colin’s scent and her stomach clenched. Definitely something inside her felt drawn to him. Something primal and uncontrollable. The moment she’d smelled him, her whole body had gone into some weird mode. She hadn’t really wanted to talk to him at first. She just wanted to fuck him… to have him fuck her. In the tub, her dragon had fought her, turning the water hotter. The urge to bathe Colin in her dragonfire rose within her, making her ask him about vampire matings.

  She sucked in a shaky breath. Gods. If her brother Sean could see her now, he would be all about the I-told-you-sos. He wanted her mated and settled. He didn’t like the fact that she roamed the world, far from the family, far from his influence and control. He made no bones about the fact that he wanted Eden to be more like her sister.

  Diandra, the eldest of the Antaeus clan, had married a werewolf. Together, they held dominion over a large pack in Scotland. Diandra was everything their parents had ever expected of their daughter. Smart and successful, owning a number of ISPs in the UK, she helped her mate run their corporation as well as the pack.

  Ruan McCallen’s bloodlines could be traced back to the time of the Roman occupation of Britain. His people were proud and fierce. At first, they had been resistant to their Alpha mating a dragon, but when Diandra had easily won a bloodmatch challenge for Ruan, they grew respectful. By the time she’d spit out twin cubs a couple of years after mating, every wolf in the pack loved her.

  Her sister had always been perfect, Eden admitted ruefully. She’d mated and had children. She had a normal job. She was Eden’s opposite in every way.

  Shoulders slumped, Eden wondered why she continually beat herself up over this. She wouldn’t ever fit in, would never be a productive member of the family like Diandra, or any of her siblings for that matter. Declan and Holden were just as mired in the family business as Sean. Only she had ever felt stifled working there.

  She’d tried for years, working in marketing where her artistic and creative forces fit best, but in the end, the corporate world had sucked the life out of her until she became an automaton, going through the motions of living.
That’s when she’d quit the business and thrown off the mantle of her family ties. She’d headed to New York City with little more than a suitcase full of clothes, her cameras and laptop, and a portfolio. The fact that it had taken her less than a year to rise to the top of her profession was a testament to the business acumen she’d learned from her family. She ruthlessly used those business skills when she had to, but always felt a little dirty doing so.

  Stretching out on the bed, Eden hugged a pillow to her chest, her nose filled with Colin’s scent. The man was obviously successful at his job. She knew the brand of his watch, the cut of his jeans and silk shirt. Top names. Expensive names. Usually, she avoided men like him. Men who reminded her of her brothers, unless they were submissives she could flog. Taking a cat o’ nine tails to the muscular back of a man who had untold power in the corporate world held endless satisfaction for her.

  Once upon a time, at an invitation only club above the popular Paris nightclub Wicked Pleasures, the master had told her that she didn’t have the nature of a true dom. He hadn’t turned her away from the club, because she followed the rules and paid well. However, he had held her hand, stroking her palm, and told her that she used the lifestyle to hide from her past and work out the pain and aggression that filled her because the two halves of her life did not sync – her past and her present-future.

  At the time, she’d scoffed at the zen in his words. Tonight, she sighed over how prophetic they had been. Being with Colin had not only showed her how wrong Sean was, but that she had been too. The master had been right. She wasn’t a true dom. The lifestyle wasn’t for her. What she had shared with Colin had been fantastic. Sex at its purist. Gods, her pussy still ached from the pounding his huge cock had given her. She knew she would call him. Every atom in her body wanted her to.

  Briefly, she wondered what it would be like to have a relationship, to have someone to come home to. An ache bloomed behind her breastbone. Maybe she should look into alternatives to her lifestyle. A long time ago, when she’d worked for Antaeus International, she’d lived with someone, a dragon who worked for the company too. When Eden left the company to go to New York and become a fashion photographer, she’d left Vahid behind as well. He was a great guy, just not for her in the long term. She hoped he’d found someone else to be with.

  The scent of vanilla permeated the air. She wondered why Colin affected her so strongly. His scent, his touch, everything about him fired her senses intensely. He roused her dragon as no one ever had before. In fact, her dragon waited calmly at the moment, serene in the notion that she would be seeing Colin again very soon.

  With a sigh, Eden curled up on her side and closed her eyes. Her dragon was right. She would call him tomorrow. What had happened between them was so fantastic she would be an idiot not to see if it could be duplicated. As she began to drift to sleep, she wondered fleetingly what it would be like if what she and Colin had shared could be duplicated every night of their lives from this point forward. As soon as she thought it, sadness filled her. Trying to make something like that work would be next to impossible and she didn’t know if she even had it in her to try…

  Chapter Four

  Blah, blah, blah.

  Colin slapped a politely interested expression on his face, while giving his thoughts free rein. Three days of listening to PR bullshit by every top company in New York City had left him irritated and bored. To give them their due, they had been invited to pitch their best at him. It wasn’t their fault that their ideas had fallen on deaf ears because he hadn’t liked the way Marius had strong-armed him into this trip. His brother thought their company image needed sprucing up. Colin thought that paying Madison Avenue to spruce up the image of a cemetery as old and reputable as theirs was a waste of money.

  Still, here he sat listening to the patter that sounded almost identical to every pitch he’d heard since he arrived. People had such ridiculous ideas about cemeteries. No one had come up with anything creative, which didn’t surprise him.

  When he realized that the young marketing whiz with the presentation materials wasn’t going to hit him with something amazing, Colin let his mind drift to the one thing that did hold his attention… Eden. Just thinking her name meant he had to fight his body in order to keep his cock from embarrassing him in a room full of men. His sleep had been restless and his dreams filled with her presence. He couldn’t remember ever having a woman affect him so strongly.

  He’d been with dragon women before. They were lusty creatures and Colin liked to fuck. Consequently, he’d been with a lot of dragon women. But Eden differed from all the rest. Beneath that air of confidence she wore like a second skin lay a vulnerability that roused his protective instincts. Something to do with her family…

  Colin knew that not every family worked like a well-oiled machine as his family did. He’d seen some evidence of squeaky wheels in his sister’s new family. His brother-in-law’s youngest sister apparently hung out with celebrity do nothing, party-going jetsetters. Colin didn’t have time for non-productive members of society. He’d heard that Declan’s spoiled sister wouldn’t forgo a weekend of parties even for his wedding. Colin never understood that lack of familial caring and support.

  On the other hand – his eyes followed the PR guy as he pointed to a pie chart – sometimes family could be a bit overbearing. The gods knew that Colin’s older brother Marius ruled the Granville clan, small as it was, with an iron fist in a velvet glove. Marius liked playing Machiavelli. Over the last century, he’d tried controlling Colin with little things, devious things, but Colin always detected Marius’ machinations. On the rare occasion that they had differing opinions, Colin would put his foot down. He disliked the unpleasantness of arguing with Marius, but he did it when he had to. He hadn’t had strong enough reasons to get out of this PR thing and besides, the trip to the Big Apple had turned into a lot of fun… a lot of sexual fun…

  With his mind right back on Eden, Colin checked his watch. Only a couple more hours and he could call her. He’d really hoped she’d take the initiative and call him, but so far, that hadn’t happened. In his head, he had a sudden vision of himself doing exactly what he’d told her he would do… kick down her door at 5 pm. She drew him like a magnet and he couldn’t just walk away and forget about her.

  Another glimpse of his watch told him that PR boy was due to wind up. He tuned back in to the young man’s words. Sure enough, the pitch ended and the PR guys looked at Colin expectantly. Clearing his throat and straightening his tie, Colin smiled at them coolly. He stood up and picked up the packet of presentation materials they’d provided him.

  “Thank you for your time, gentlemen,” he said smoothly. “I will share this information with my brother Marius, the CEO. Once we’ve made a decision, we’ll let you know. I appreciate the work you’ve put into this proposal.”

  They gave him more blah blah blah business chitchat as they walked him to the elevator. As soon as the doors closed, Colin growled and yanked his tie loose. He was done with this crap. Every meeting Marius set up had been the same. He took out his phone and hit the speed dial for his assistant Corey.

  “Bossman! How’s the Big Apple?” An engaging young man, Corey was beyond efficient if a little irreverent in his demeanor.

  “These meetings suck, Corey. They’re all the same. Get me out of the rest of them,” Colin growled.

  Corey chortled with amusement. “You met someone. You just wanna spend the next three days fucking!”

  Colin rolled his eyes. “Corey, what man doesn’t wanna spend his days and nights fucking?”

  “I don’t,” Corey said loftily.

  “That’s because you don’t have a boyfriend right now,” Colin laughed.

  “Just because I’m unattached doesn’t mean I couldn’t fuck for three days and nights if I wanted to. I’m just not a slutty boy,” his assistant sniffed.

  Colin grinned. Corey might be gay, but his masculinity never came into question. He liked to amuse others by putting on
an over the top, gay man act, and he did it really well. “Fine. Your moral self needs to pick up the phone and cancel the rest of the appointments Marius made for me. I’m off to be a slutty boy,” he said cheerfully.

  “Who did you meet?’ Corey’s voice lowered to a conspiratorial tone. “I won’t tell the Big Fang that you’re spending the rest of your time in New York fucking some woman. It is a woman, isn’t it?”

  Colin shook his head, stifling his laughter as the elevator door opened and he stepped out. “Corey, when have you ever known me to fuck a man?”

  His assistant’s laugh was rich with amusement. “Never. But there’s always a first time!”

  “No first times for me. It’s a woman. A beautiful strong willed black dragon woman,” he confided as he headed for the taxi stand.

  “Ooooh!” Colin could just see Corey’s eyes opening wide. “What is it with you Granvilles lately? First your sister goes all googly eyed for a dragon and now you.”

  Colin got in a waiting cab and gave the driver the name of his hotel. “I’m not googly eyed, Corey. I’m just horny.”

  “You say to-may-toe and I say to-mah-toe.”

  Colin grinned at his assistant’s cheekiness. “We’ll see. So far, she hasn’t called me back and that is not a good sign.”

  “She’ll call,” Corey said confidently.

  “You sound like you’re ready to take bets on this.”

  Corey made a rude sound that Colin took for a raspberry. “Bossman, you have a big dick. All the girlies want to call you back. And all the slutty boys wish you’d call.”

  As Colin burst out laughing, Corey told him, “You just have a good time burning your candle at both ends. Corey will relieve you of the boring meetings. See you in three days, Bossman!”

  The call ended and Colin stared at his phone. Ring, damn you! As if prompted by his thoughts, the phone dinged. His eyebrows flicked up at the text message notice. He clicked on it.

  I’m wet. How fast can you get here?

  Colin sucked in his breath sharply. He tapped on the divider between him and the driver and gave him the name of Eden’s hotel. As the cab sped him toward Park Avenue, Colin’s groin tightened. Already he could mentally smell the scent of her blood. His muscles twitched. His cock protested being confined within his boxer briefs, behind the zipper of his suit pants. He had the primal urge to rip his clothes off and take his woman and he hadn’t even arrived yet!