by Larissa Ione
Ecstasy built again, and oh, how easily he did this to her. She struggled to breathe through the waves that came hotter and faster with his increasingly frenzied thrusts. He churned above her, teeth bared, tendons straining. Flames of pure bliss licked through her veins and gathered at her core until she couldn’t stand it anymore, and she locked her legs around his back so hard he grunted.
She lifted her hips to take him so deep he was forced to adjust his position and grind against her in massive, undulating surges.
“Yes!” she cried. “Oh . . . yes!”
She convulsed in a rush of exhilaration and pleasure that expanded outward from her center and coalesced in a mind-blowing release. The joy of the moment was more than physical; it was emotional on a level she’d never experienced before. Nothing had ever felt so right. So perfect.
Her body clenched around Riker, bucking and writhing. It was only as she came down, her panting breaths filling the room, that she realized he wasn’t moving. He’d gone still, his thick arms trembling on either side of her, his gaze dark with pain.
RIKER COULDN’T BELIEVE this. How the hell could he be in bed with a beautiful female and not be able to get his body to cross the line of ultimate pleasure? He was hard as a rock, his balls tight, his cock throbbing with the need to come, and yet he couldn’t quite get there.
“Riker?” Nicole breathed. “What is it? What’s wrong?” She shifted, squeezing her hot, silky core around him, and he hissed.
“I can’t. Fuck, I can’t.” Shoving his fists into the mattress, he pushed himself off her on trembling arms. When she sat up and reached out, he lurched to his feet.
“What is it? I mean, it’s, um, obvious you can.”
He stood there like a pathetic dolt, his chest heaving, his skin coated in a glistening sheen of sweat. Between his legs, his sex stood erect, shiny with her desire and swollen with his.
“I can’t,” he repeated, this time with a frustrated, angry edge.
“Come here.” She reached for him again, but he spun away, swiping his wadded jeans off the floor.
“It’s not happening.”
The mattress creaked. “I thought that when a mate dies, the imprint is destroyed.”
He swung around. “What do you know about imprinting?”
“I know it happens to male vampires but not females. I know a male vampire can only imprint on vampires, not humans. And I know imprinting doesn’t happen by choice, but we don’t know what makes a particular female imprintable for a particular male.”
“Imprintable?”
She sniffed. “It’s a valid word in this case.” She tucked her hair behind her ear, but if she was trying to tame it, she’d failed. She had the most gorgeous, sexy bed head ever. “The bond also means you can only have sex with the female you imprinted on, but I thought that link broke when the female died.”
“It’s not a bond,” he muttered. “A bond implies that two parties are involved.”
She rolled her eyes. “But it’s supposed to dissolve when the female dies, right?”
“Let it go, Nicole.” He tugged on his pants. “And males can have sex with females other than the one they imprinted on. They just don’t usually want to. The link is so powerful that if a male imprints on a female he hates, he’ll usually fall for her in time.” He gripped the zipper tab and cursed when the zipper stuck. “Guess they don’t teach you everything in your vampire anatomy classes, huh?” It was a low blow, but she didn’t seem fazed.
“I just want to understand.”
“You don’t need to.”
She threw up her hands in disgust. “So that’s it? You break into my room like a madman, convince me that you want me, and then get me off while you hold on to your precious control? Is this a joke? A way to humiliate me?” She snatched up her own jeans and shoved her feet into them.
He stared. Stared more when she bent over to pick up her bra. “Why would I want to humiliate you?”
“Maybe because I’m a lowly human? Maybe because you hate me? I have no idea. But what else am I supposed to think? If your imprint will still allow you to have sex with me, why did you stop?”
If anything, the fact that he’d wanted her despite the fact that she was human was a rebuttal to her argument. “I’m not imprinted.”
“So it does break with the death of a mate.” He turned away, but she grabbed his arm and forced him back to her. “Right?”
“Yes.”
“But?”
Shame and self-loathing made his skin tighten. “But I never imprinted on Terese,” he snapped. “It was just one more way in which I failed her.”
Nicole blinked. “So this is about Terese? How have you managed to have sex with anyone else, then?”
He shook his head, feeling abruptly deflated. “I haven’t been with anyone in a long time.”
“How long?”
He really wished she’d stop with these probing questions. “Long enough.”
“Long enough that what? You forgot how to do it?” She tugged on the flannel shirt that nearly swallowed her but somehow looked good on her. Maybe because it brought to mind images of her wearing one of his shirts . . . with nothing on underneath. “Because I have to say, you handled yourself pretty well a few minutes ago.”
He smiled, his ego getting a nice stroke. His cock jumped as if feeling left out of the stroking. “Trust me, I remember how.”
“Then what’s going on?”
His face heated. “I haven’t touched another female, except to feed, since Terese died.”
Her sharp inhale humiliated him even more. “That’s . . . wow. Twenty years.”
“Thanks for doing the math.”
There was a long pause. Finally, she said quietly, “You really loved her, didn’t you?”
Tilting his head back, he squeezed his eyes shut and searched his brain for an answer to that. But the dark recesses of his mind offered only silence.
“Yeah.” But he hadn’t loved her enough to keep her safe or keep her alive.
“I’m sorry.” She sank down on the edge of the mattress. “How long were you mated before . . .”
“Before she killed herself,” he finished bitterly. “Five years. But it wasn’t a love match.”
“How did you meet?”
“Jesus, is this an interview for Vampire Times, or what?” When Nicole crossed her arms over her chest and gave him an expectant stare, he sighed. “It wasn’t a meet as much as it was a battle.” He threw on his shirt. “She was from DreamDevour, a clan in California. They were taking her to mate with ShadowSpawn’s leader. We ran into them on the edge of our territory, and a fight broke out. At the time, ShadowSpawn had far fewer numbers, and we were at war with them. They’d just killed the mate of one of our warriors, and Hunter figured what better revenge than to take one of theirs, especially a high-ranking female who was supposed to go to their leader.”
“And you stepped up to the plate?”
“It was my idea. We’d captured her during the battle with DreamDevour, and Hunter wanted to hold her indefinitely, force both clans to bargain for the best deal. My idea was to mate her to someone in the clan and make an ally out of DreamDevour while sticking it to ShadowSpawn. Hunter figured that since it was my idea, I got to take the bullet for the team.”
“And Terese was willing to mate with you?”
He snorted. “She had no desire to be mated to anyone from ShadowSpawn, let alone the male she was promised to.” The bastard was a sadistic, brutal son of a bitch who reportedly whipped one of his daughters nearly to death. “But I terrified her, too. At first, anyway.”
He’d never forgive himself for that. He’d been angry at the turn of events that had given him a mate he didn’t want, and while he never took it out on her, he hadn’t given her any reason not to be afraid.
“Obviously, she came around.”
“We both did.” He paced the length of the room, wishing he were outside, where he could open up and run for miles before the po
stfeed cramping started up. “She was really timid, like a fawn that lost its mother. I had to learn to tone it down around her. I think that between her trying to please me and me trying to keep her calm and safe, we grew close.” Close, but like friends, not lovers. He turned to Nicole. “You said you loved her. You must have spent a lot of time with her.”
“I did.” Nicole smiled fondly. “If it’s any consolation, she was treated well.”
Treated so well that she killed herself. He resisted the urge to point that out again. Nicole had a child’s view of Terese’s life, and Riker had done enough to destroy her world already.
“Riker . . .” Nicole rubbed her thighs, and he wondered if she’d be folding origami birds if there were more paper nearby. “I still don’t understand why this happened between us. And then didn’t happen.”
He didn’t really understand, either. But for the last twenty years, he’d been unable to bring himself to sleep with any female. Terese’s death had left him empty inside. Cold. There was far more to it than grief, but he’d never been able to dig deep enough into himself to figure it out, mainly because it had never mattered to him before.
Or maybe because he didn’t want to face the ugly truth.
He hadn’t loved Terese the way he should have, and she’d paid the price for his neglect.
“Let’s just forget about it, Nicole.”
“Really?” she said softly. “Are you really going to forget about it? Because the way I see it, we just did something that brought a whole lot of crap to the surface, and unless you deal with it—”
“Don’t pull some psych shit on me.” He shot a deliberate glance at her throat. “How much did therapy help you?”
She swallowed.
“Exactly.”
“Don’t be an ass.” She tucked her legs under her on the bed. “You know what helped? Crazily enough, being here has helped me more than twenty years of therapy.”
“Glad we could be of assistance,” he said dryly.
“What did I say about not being an ass?” She huffed. “At some point during these last few days, I opened myself up to learning about vampires from your point of view. I let you in, Riker.”
“I’m sure you’ll regret that eventually.” Clearly, he wasn’t listening to her complaints about being an ass.
“I’ll never regret it,” she snapped. “Because somehow I feel like I’ve finally healed.”
“What are you saying? That if I open myself up, climb into bed with you, I’ll magically get better? I’ll forget how your family destroyed someone I cared about, someone I was charged with protecting?”
“Yes,” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “That’s exactly what I’m saying. In fact, let’s try sex again.” She leaped to her feet and tore open her jeans. “Maybe my magic vagina will cure you of all the traumatic acts my family has inflicted on you.”
“Dammit.” He snared her wrists to stop her from stripping. “Nothing you do will ever make me forget that.”
Fury blazed in her eyes, so full of green fire he expected to find scorch marks on his skin. “You know, I’ve learned that not all vampires are the same. So why can’t you open your eyes and see that not all humans are the same, either? Oh, wait—you can, you just don’t want to. You’d rather hold on to your hatred and make everyone around you put up with your bitterness and guilt.”
“You know nothing about me or the people around me,” he bit out. “You’ve known me a few days, and you’re an expert on my life?”
“Am I wrong?” she shot back. “Or do you wield your venom like a weapon, poisoning everything around you?”
Her swipe at him hit so close to home that it was almost a physical blow. His temper swelled, fed by his own self-hatred, which had been encapsulated by hardened layers of denial. Now the capsule had cracked, leaking toxic anger that Nicole didn’t deserve but was going to feel the brunt of anyway.
“You have a death wish, don’t you, human?” He surged closer to her once more, tempted to take her by the shoulders and shake some sense into her. The kind of sense that would teach her to never taunt a vampire. To never tempt a vampire.
She lifted her chin stubbornly. “You said you wouldn’t kill me.”
“And you believed me?” He bared his fangs for emphasis. “Me, a vampire?”
She cringed, almost imperceptibly, but he also caught a whiff of anxiety, so yeah, she wasn’t 100 percent sure she was safe, and he felt like a fucking heel.
He’d come here to satisfy a primal urge for a female who had captivated him from the moment he touched her, but even as those raging hormones rushed through his body, he’d calmed in her presence. She’d admitted to being frightened and confused, lost in both her world and his, and all he’d wanted to do was to comfort her. Now he’d made her feel trapped again, like nothing more than a sheep awaiting slaughter in a pen.
He drew in a breath, hoping oxygen would clear his head and magically give him the right words for this situation.
Apparently, neither magic air nor magic vaginas existed.
There was a pounding on the door, followed by Hunter slamming it open and crossing to the bedroom in a matter of a heartbeat. He stood in the doorway, his gaze sweeping from the messy bed to their disheveled clothing, and Riker knew he was in for a first-class dress-down later.
Awesome. Because it wasn’t enough to have Myne up his ass about his involvement with Nicole.
“There’s something you need to see,” Hunter said grimly.
Riker shifted his weight, crunching a shard of broken glass beneath his foot. “Give me a few.”
“Now,” Hunter countered. “Both of you.”
If there was anything Riker knew how to do, it was take orders, even if he didn’t like them. In sullen silence, he and Nicole followed Hunter to his office, where his television was on, the picture paused. He punched a button on the remote, and a reporter standing in front of Daedalus’s headquarters started speaking.
“Dr. Nicole Martin, billionaire heiress and CEO of Daedalus Corporation, is still missing after being brutally kidnapped by vampires, igniting a cry from some to eradicate vampires once and for all, and counterprotests by the Vampire Humane Society demanding freedom for vampires that Daedalus has played a large role in capturing.”
The camera panned to a woman holding a sign that said VAMPIRES ARE PEOPLE, TOO. “Nicole Martin got what she deserved!” the lady yelled. “You reap what you sow. Free the vampires!”
A man across the street shot the VHS chick the finger and then shouted, “Vampires are abominations! They must be destroyed, or this kind of thing will keep happening.”
The reporter’s too-perfect face came back on, and Riker wondered if the guy had been the recipient of antiaging vampire juice. Riker would love to drain the human juice right out of the man.
“Charles Martin, Dr. Martin’s brother, has sworn to stop at nothing to find her.”
Yeah, right, Riker thought. But next to him, a faint smile trembled on Nicole’s lips, relief that her brother intended to come through for her. But as she’d pointed out before, she wasn’t stupid. She must know, deep down, that her jackass of a brother wasn’t going to lift a finger to help her.
Charles came on the screen, and a dozen microphones were shoved in his face. “The evil creatures that did this to my beloved sister will be caught and executed. We’ve learned that these vampires escaped from one of our South Seattle facilities after being set free by vampire activists. Consider these creatures to be very, very dangerous, which was why they were locked up in the first place.”
Riker frowned. “We didn’t escape from the facility. What the hell is he talking about?”
Charles continued. “As a precaution, and to prevent incidents like this from happening in the future, we will close down the facility, which was a vampire rehabilitation center, and all vampires will be destroyed. We now know that it’s far too dangerous to give these animals the benefit of the doubt.”
“Oh, my God.” N
icole’s voice trembled. “He’s lying to cover up for whatever is going on at the B-lab he mentioned. I’ll bet he knows there’s going to be an attempt to rescue Neriya, and he wants to make sure we don’t even have a chance.”
“Fuck,” Hunter snapped. “How long do you think we have?”
Charles looked directly into the camera, as if he’d heard Hunter. “Effective tomorrow.”
NICOLE STOOD IN the bright, early-morning sunshine outside the Daedalus lab grounds, Riker at her side. The sunglasses on her face were borrowed from Katina, the top borrowed from Benet, whom Nicole felt bad about thinking was a skank. The sneakers were actually new, given to her by a female named Caris, who had shyly handed them over with a quiet whisper of “Good luck.”
Nicole hadn’t the heart to say that it was Neriya and Riker who needed the luck, because truly, they were the ones Nicole was putting in danger with this plan.
“I hope to hell this works.” Riker, dressed in jeans and an olive-drab long-sleeved T-shirt under a matching trench coat that concealed weapons, slid her a sideways glance.
“It will.” She tugged the jacket of Riker’s that she’d failed to return more tightly around her. “It has to.”
Riker studied the building looming before them with detached calculation. They hadn’t spoken about what had happened in her room, and now, she supposed, there was no point. The chances that both of them would come out of this intact were pretty slim. He could be caught and killed, and she could be arrested for any number of offenses. If not for the deaths of the vampires in the lab she was responsible for, then for breaking into the lab in front of her and conspiring with vampires to do it.
Then there was the uncertainty of her fate if, by some miracle, this did all go down without a hitch.
“We won’t kill you,” Riker said, and there went his mind-reading thing he claimed not to have again.
“I know,” she said, and she meant it. Riker wouldn’t let anyone harm her. “But you can’t let me go free, either.”