by Claire Cray
"How do you feel?" Merrick asked softly, after a length of silence.
"Drunk?" I guessed, and felt the stupid grin creeping across my face. The whole room seemed clearer and brighter now, and Merrick, Merrick seemed like a God.
"To think I feared you would take me for a savage," he murmured, studying me in wonder. "William, your capacity for adaptation thrills me beyond measure."
"You and sentences," I said. "Impressive. Those words you make."
"Perhaps I let you have too much." Merrick returned from the sofa to crouch before me.
"Oh, no," I said firmly, swinging my head from side to side.
Merrick laughed my favorite laugh, sudden and clear and pure. "We're going to go out the back now," he said. "The other one is waiting. Once I have him, I want you to bite his wrist." He lifted my hand and turned it over, tracing the veins there. I shivered with delight. "Can you do that?"
Oh, I could do it, all right. As it turned out, I could do it with ease.
Merrick had only to take a few steps into the cluttered back lot and loiter for a moment before the thief McClean stepped up behind him. This time I saw the speed of Merrick's attack, the way he pivoted behind the man and took his throat even before locking his arms about him. Of course that would be the ideal order of attack: as soon as Merrick's teeth penetrated his skin, the man surrendered wantonly. And I saw that Merrick did not merely chomp down on the man's throat, but slid his teeth along it first, which explained the gash. And then he simply held his lips there tightly, his face concealed in the shadow of his dark hair.
Remembering my cue, I stepped foreword and took the thief's hand, pushing back his loose cuff to expose his wrist. Lord, at last, to bite! The pleasure that shot through my body as I sank my teeth into that tender skin was incomparable. Was there no upper limit to the ecstasies I would partake in tonight? I found my knees going weak as I drank this new liqueur, and I was thrilled to realize that the taste, while equally incandescent as the one before, was entirely unique from it. Still the sense of treasures recovered, still the brilliant evanescent quality, but all wrapped up now in a different mind, life, and soul, in an entirely new incarnation of the sweetest and most easeful death. As my thirst grew quenched, I felt the drunkenness clear away to be replaced by a satisfaction that was silky and serene. Satiated beyond my wildest un-dreamed dreams, I sat back on my heels—had I sunk to the ground, then?—and let my head fall forward with a blissful sigh.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Merrick offered his hand and drew me to my feet. I leaned over, feeling loose and languorous, and brushed the dirt from my knees. I wasn't even bothered. Straightening up, I saw the second thief on the ground behind Merrick, insentient as a pile of firewood.
"William?"
I looked at Merrick. God, he was aglow. My eyes moved down the length of his shapely body and back up again to drink in the coppery brilliance of his eyes. "Yes?" I asked softly, my fingers twitching at my sides, longing to grab him.
"You are all right?"
"Oh, I am quite all right," I said firmly. "I assure you."
Surprise smoothed Merrick's features for a moment, and then he let out a breath of laughter. "Very well," he said, disarmed. "Let us be gone, then."
The pleasure in his eyes was like a dollop of whipped cream atop my already considerable satisfaction. I wanted to step forward and embrace him, but feared it would be too unbearable to let him go. We were so close to the house. I could save it for then, so long as we hurried.
"Let us be gone," I agreed, staring at him as hungrily as I must have stared at Mr. John Aimes.
Merrick nodded and beckoned me to the rickety fence at the back of the lot, where he offered me his cradled hands. "A leg up."
Scaling fences with Merrick. I was beside myself with delight. I placed my boot in his hands and let him spring me to the top of the fence, then braced my hands on the edge and vaulted over. I turned to see Merrick's hands appear atop the planks and watched him spring over the top as neatly as a deer, landing on his toes with nary a sound. This gentleman. I shook my head. This splendid gentleman.
What a fine choice I had made, by God. This time I really had, really, truly had done it. And for once, I meant that in a good way.
Merrick did not take my arm, perhaps sensing it would not be detachable. Quite astute. We strode side by side through the narrow alleyway, leaving the shells of our feast behind to be absorbed by the past. Well, by the ground of the potter's field, likely, but it made no difference.
We were back on the main street in moments, and then the house was within our sights. I was strung high and tight with anticipation, and soothed myself by thinking of what I would do once we reached the privacy of the house. I wondered if I ought to try and resist grabbing him as soon as the door was closed behind us, if perhaps I should endeavor to make it to the bed. That was, if I could wait one second longer before I sprang upon the fastenings of his clothes. Oh, there was no shyness left in me now. No longer was I the baffled victim of an unfamiliar passion. Tonight desire had risen above all other forces that ruled me. I was a flame! I would consume!
Merrick opened the door and bid me to enter before him. I turned as I crossed the threshold, keeping him in my sights as I walked backward into the hall. He shut the door, turned the key, and crossed the distance between us to take my face in his hands and kiss me.
"You've charmed me, William," he whispered, once he'd stolen my breath. "You've painted the world a different color."
I groaned, making fists where I gripped his jacket. "The things you say." As if he himself had not changed my palette to midnight silvers and blues. Loosening my grip on his lapels, I spread the garment open and pushed it off of his shoulders.
"Upstairs," he murmured, catching the jacket in his hand and placing a firm hand at the small of my back. "Away from the street."
Very well, then, I would consume upstairs. By some unexpected grace I was able to ascend the steps at a dignified pace. But my determination faltered a little once we crossed the threshold of the bedroom, for when I saw the dark mahogany bed I realized I actually had no idea how, exactly, this was best begun.
Before I could form a plan, Merrick stepped up against my back and ran his hands from my forearms to my shoulders I turned my head to find his lips and let my body follow, sliding my arms about his shoulders and molding myself against him like hot wax. He opened my waistcoat with one hand and pulled my shirt free of my trousers, until at last his smooth palms slipped beneath the linen and he spread his fingers over my naked ribs.
An obscenity burst from my lips, one of a class I had never uttered before him. I stammered an apology out of some confused sense of habit, which Merrick rejected by laughing and pulling me harder against him.
"You mustn't fear offending me." Beneath his amusement, desire rolled through his voice. "I ask for no pretense." He grasped the hem of my shirt to pull it over my head.
"Thank God," I mumbled, distracted both by the fresh air on my back, by his hands spreading over my chest, and by the task of unbuttoning his waistcoat. Damned clothes. I betrayed my impatience when I yanked the last button free, and Merrick came to my assistance in shrugging off the thing and getting rid of his shirt.
I had seen men like Merrick in the paintings of Classical sculptures, those carvings of god-like youths and Olympian men whose muscular perfection and masculine charisma provoked a peculiarly intense feeling of admiration. Or was I the only one who found those spectacular figures so difficult to look away from? There was a thought. But who had time for thoughts? I was absorbing the ridges of his abdomen with my hands, running my palms over the solid planes of his chest. And then, as he was presently finishing the job of unbuttoning my trousers, I reached for the front of his. But he caught my hands and began to walk me backward toward the bed.
"Blast it, you don't mean to stop me, do you?" I demanded breathlessly, stopping when my thighs ran into the mattress.
"I would let nothing stop you." Merrick
let go of my hands and I called his bluff, finishing the breeches just in time before he pressed me down to sit and knelt to remove my boots.
Damned, cursed clothes. Why could we not dress as those Ancient Greeks had dressed? Our togas would have long since fallen aside and we would be entwined already. I set my mind to ridding us of shoes and stockings until we could fell into the bed and let our pants slide away. Bracing himself above me on one hand, ran the other down the bare length of my body and claimed my lips with a searing kiss
Merrick and I had never been in this state together. Not once. I had only seen him fully nude when we bathed, and there I was able to experience a few passionate interludes skin to skin. But in the darkness of the bedroom Merrick always kept strict barriers between us. Though his hands and mouth had been over and around nearly every inch of my body by now, it was only rarely that he allowed my hands to roam below his waist. My sweetest torment had been to feel the hard evidence of his arousal through his breeches or his nightshirt or his robe, hot and demanding, and yet forbidden. Not now.
I reached down between us where the thick length of his sex jutted against my hip and found the root of it with my fingertips, drawing circles over the softer skin below. Merrick exhaled and closed his eyes, his brow tightening with desire. No, he was not going to stop me. I took him fully in hand, stroking with a tenderness that belied my passion. I had gone this far before, before he stopped me. Now I reveled in his surrender. My other hand traveled his chest, feeling the hard points of his nipples and the tension in his shoulder muscles. I cupped his face in my hand, watching the pleasure change his features as I touched him, until he opened those fiery eyes and fixed me with a gaze that brimmed with such raging, animal lust that I momentarily forgot my efforts. In the next instant he rocked the length of his body against me and crushed his lips to mine.
Bloody hell, I'd been starved for this. I moaned through our kiss when he shifted his hips, gripping his back as his stiffness rubbed against mine. More, damn it, I wanted more! I wanted it all, whatever all of it was. I moaned again, impatiently this time, plunging my fingers into his hair, and he broke from my lips to look down at me with heavy-lidded eyes.
"Is there something you want, William?" Merrick breathed, drawing his fingertip down the center of my lips, my chin, my neck.
"Yes," I managed to pronounce. "But perhaps you'll have to show me what it is."
Merrick lowered his head for a moment, brushing his lips against the edge of my jaw. "William," he murmured, his finger pausing at the most sensitive point of my chest. "Where to begin."
The dark promise in his tone turned my wits to honey. Though I meant to take full advantage of my new freedoms as his lover, I could hardly resist his taking the lead when I knew he led so very, very well. My hands were urgently claiming whatever they could reach, every perfect line and dent and hollow, from his steely shoulders to the long muscles of his thighs. But when he took my cock in his hand, my body arched and I was lost.
Merrick groaned and started a path of hot kisses down my neck, shifting over me until he could suck one nipple into his mouth. Another epithet escaped my lips and I gripped his hair, throwing my head back.
This was what it was to love as a vampire. No human could have borne such incendiary pleasure. My veins were crackling, my skin buzzing, and deep within me was a hunger so demanding it threatened my sanity. I wrapped my arm around his side and pushed him to his back, straddling his hips and bending down to seize his lips. With a rumbling murmur of approval, Merrick took both our lengths in hand and squeezed. Hot spears of pleasure shot through my body as he stroked us, each one drawing a violent shudder. I dug my fingers into his shoulders, gasping, rocking into his grip. How could I stand it? I was already fit to explode.
"Oh," I moaned, and took a shuddering breath. "God, Merrick. If you knew..."
"Do you?" Merrick carded his fingers through my hair and tilted my head up to look into my eyes. "Do you know how I've wanted you?"
"Maybe." I shivered as he ran his fingertips slowly down my spine, exhaled when their path continued lower. "I nearly died of wanting you."
"Yes." Merrick's eyes burned into mine, liquid amber ringed with fiery copper and shards of ebony. "You nearly did." He pressed me onto my back and covered me again, lavishing my throat with kisses. "Maybe, you say," he whispered against my throat, and began to make his way downward. "I thought my desire was plain."
"It is when you're with me." I shifted as he parted my thighs and pressed his lips to the apex of my ribs.
"I am with you now." Merrick hooked his hand under my thigh and raised it, kissing the inside of my knee. "And I'm going to be with you all night."
"I'll go mad," I breathed, looking down at him. He was cupping my sack in his palm, rolling and squeezing as his fingers probed further behind. As I watched, he dragged his tongue up the length of my cock, and my mouth fell open with a ruined groan.
"You are already mad." Merrick said, and wrapped his lips around me.
"Jesus bloody Christ," I gasped, grabbing his hair as his head sank between my legs. "Merrick, yes!" I'd been sucked into a cloud of heaven. Oh, Satan in Hell, it was good. "God, Merrick, yes." His searching fingers made it clear where we were going, and I had never been more ready for it. To feel my body opened by his firm caress as his mouth moved up and down my stiff length was a thrill I could scarcely process. By the time he lifted his head I was ragged with desire.
"Is this what you want?" Merrick breathed, his touch moving deeper, circling, stretching.
"Everything," I blurted, writhing against those skillful fingers. "More, Merrick, please!"
"Are you certain?"
Were my splayed and trembling thighs not proof enough of my certainty? I tugged at him impatiently, dragging him up to where I could better communicate my urgency with a desperate kiss. His arousal was a hot iron between us; when I rocked up against it, he groaned into my mouth and reached down to pull my leg farther up at his side. I hooked it around him, pulling him closer, and felt the tip of his sex replacing his fingers, pressing against that hidden cleft with unmistakable intent.
"Yes," I whispered against his lips, gripping the back of his neck. "Yes, yes, yes."
"William," he breathed, reaching up to push my hair back from my face. "Let me see your eyes."
I dragged my lids open with great effort and was rewarded by the urgent tension in his perfect features, a mixture of awe and tenderness and ferocious lust. He held my face up to his, keeping me in that dark golden gaze as he began the slow push of his hips.
A wanton sound welled up deep within my chest and fell broken from my lips. My eyes closed as I felt the first inch of him sliding within me, but then he stopped, stroking my cheekbone with his thumb and bidding me to look at him again. I obeyed, blinking up at him with watery eyes, and let him hold my gaze as he continued his exquisite invasion. His brow tightened as he sank deeper into my body, and he breathed my name again as though shocked. His hips met mine, our foreheads touched; I was undone. Cradled in his arms, I followed the first gentle motions of his hips until we were rocking and thrusting in steady harmony. It was unlike anything I had ever experienced. Each drive of his hips brought a low cry from my throat, pushing me into yet another dimension of excitement. I ran my hands feverishly over his taut, shifting muscles, mesmerized by the way my body had begun to play along of its own accord, my hips winding uncontrollably against him in pursuit of the pleasure he gave.
I lost track of all boundaries. My spirit was bursting out of my skin. I was saturated with the heat and tension of our union, which had risen to unimaginable heights. I forgot my hands, my limbs. All my atoms were twisting and tightening, and I was fit to snap. It was coming on. I could feel it. My head rolled back. "Oh my God Merrick," I gasped.
"My William," he breathed against my ear. "Yes, my love."
Explosions. Bursts of flame. The mattress whipped my back as I writhed against him, sobbing, thrown into a madness of bliss. Lightning. Erupt
ion. Destruction and creation. I became one with the very matter of reality. And just as I recalled the moment I was in again, I found Merrick shuddering in my arms as he gave in to his own release. If I had gone mad with bliss before, now I was sure I'd be slain by it. Absorbing the powerful motion of his climax, I was provoked to my own convulsions again—for a moment I wondered if it would never end. Merrick continued to move against me, slowly now, his fingers threading through my hair, his lips brushing my temple.
At last he gathered me closer by the waist and rolled to his back so that I lay on top of him, and I curled my body to bury my face in his throat without separating our hips. He wrapped his arms around me and held me close. Though the epic waves of sensation had settled, I still felt we were adrift on the same sea of pleasure, only floating now on gentler swells.
"Spectacular," I breathed below his ear. "Extravagant."
"It pleases you, then?"
"I shall never have enough."
Merrick kissed me, slow and languid, and combed my hair back where it had gone wild. "We've hardly begun."
I shivered as he moved beneath me, and shifted more of my weight to my knees so that I could run my hands down his powerfully built torso. "I never knew such pleasure existed."
"Nor did I." Merrick slowly rose upright on the bed, curling his arm around my hips to hold me securely against him. Without thinking I began to shift and grind to get closer, and we both groaned at the sensations my movements brought. I watched him through a haze of hot contentment, my arms encircling his shoulders, yielding completely to the rapture. Merrick's fingers danced across my lips as he gazed at me in wonder. "Now I know happiness," he breathed. "Now it's mine."
At those words I rocked harder against him, sighing against his fingertips. "Now I can keep you with me."
We held each other in an unending embrace, riding the ecstasy for hours. My body bloomed for him again and again, and I learned what it felt like to please him, to watch him come undone beneath my hands. I learned the shape of him, the taste of him, the many ways our bodies could provoke each other. And just before dawn, as I rode my last throes of energy, he offered me his throat. The feeling of my teeth sliding into his firm skin as we melted in each other’s arms was transcendent; his blood was the juice of the gods. And as my lips went slack and fell from his neck, I felt my transformation complete. Merrick laid me gently on my back, whispering tender things as my eyes grew heavier, and I laced my fingers sleepily through his.