Anna felt the scrape of the tips of his long, sharp teeth where they returned to the side of her neck, pricking dangerously. Her breath caught, refusing to keep up with her racing heart, because she knew what was coming. The place he threatened with those teeth was different this second time, a slight distance from where he’d made his first heart’s mark. He wouldn’t have so carefully placed them if he wasn’t going to –
“Are you ready, Annaleia?” he asked.
Does it matter? she had the fortitude to reply.
But when he asked her, he waited, his lips hesitating above her pulse point. She was trembling madly, held aloft no doubt by his strength alone. Yet he did not move those teeth again until Annaleia finally closed her eyes and drew her surrender from air-stilled lungs and pushed it from her parched and gasping throat.
“Yes.”
Ares’ grip on her tightened as he pierced the skin and sank his fangs in deep. Anna made a helpless sound, her knees giving out completely beneath her. But Ares was holding her up easily. He’d obviously known this would happen.
As he began to drink, very gently pulling her blood into his mouth in contrast to his general impatience, Annaleia realized he hadn’t pressed his teeth quite all the way in this time, and there had also been no pain. He was going easier on her, and yet his power curled around her, ebbing and receding and throbbing, mirroring what she knew was his own driving need. He drank – and drank, and she basked in the sensations. Until the sensations grew stronger, and she found she was becoming less docile. She moaned low, her back arching, the “v” of her legs searching for release of their own.
What is it you need, little one?
She growled through gritted teeth. He knew damn well what she needed.
Laughter, dark and wicked rolled through her mind.
Antares…. She needed what he’d denied her since they’d arrived at his damn den! She needed what she’d been missing for fifty years!
But again he laughed, this time aloud, and his laughter rolled across her throat from where he gripped her between his teeth, causing her to shiver.
And then she gasped and moaned loudly when he released his hold on her hair to slide his hand down her body, roving across her ribs until his calloused palm was pressing none-too-gently over the milky white rise of her breast, the roughness of him scratching her nipple with delicious pinpricks of pain.
Anna bit her lip and jerked in his grip when his fingers pinched next, rolled and squeezed the nipple. Another moan escaped her.
Fuck, little girl… you feel so good.
She was moving again. She couldn’t stay still. But then Ares trailed his hand further down her body to her waist, hip and then her leg. Anna sank away from him reflexively, knowing where he was headed and both yearning for it and fearing it at once. She was already mad with need, and she was well aware of what his fingers could do to her.
But Ares simply moved with her, until those fingers settled in on the treasure between her legs, where she was aching to the point of fever. There, there, he spoke soothingly in her mind, even while he kept his teeth firmly planted where he wanted them and continued drinking her life’s blood. Let me in, baby girl, I’ll take care of you.
It was the promise of the devil. Anna felt the very real magic lacing his softly-spoken command, and rather than knee-jerk react to his obvious move for control, she surrendered to it. She really had no choice any longer; she was as much his in that moment as she had ever been.
So she gave in and opened her legs for him again, spreading her knees further apart on the bed’s silk-sheeted mattress. “Please,” she gasped, a single word that always managed to speak volumes. She was at once rewarded with his touch moving inward to glide along the slick cleft between her lips. “Good girl,” he softly praised her, and damn if he didn’t sound genuinely grateful that she’d obeyed him.
Antares pulled her away from the headboard, allowing her to release it at last as he sat back on his heels on the bed and eased her into his lap. Her hands fell to his thighs, her nails digging into the dark denim that hugged the rock-hard cords of muscle in his legs. Holy gods, she thought deliriously. His legs were sculpted perfection. He was perfection. This was her Ares, the most beautiful man in the world.
The reality of that washed over her, increasing her pleasure in a way she would have thought impossible. In the position he’d pulled her into she lay more horizontal atop him, and consequently more open. She knew he could see every part of her where he knelt behind her now. It was more forbidden, delicious knowledge.
She rested her head against his broad shoulder and closed her eyes when his fingers began working rewarding magic between her legs, circling and dipping, but never quite sinking into her. In the background of her consciousness, she noticed that there was something different about his broad shoulder now… no jacket, she thought absently… but she was too lost in what he was doing to her to pay it any further heed.
You’re so hot, so wet, little one. His voice in her head was lust-laced and hungry, low and animalistic.
When he began running hard, expert circles around her clitoris, Anna turned her head to the other side; she was close to thrashing again. Ares removed his hand from her stomach, where he had been holding her fast to him. She felt him do something behind her back and thought she heard material tearing.
And then Ares took her inner thighs in his strong hands, gripping hard enough to bruise as he pressed the remaining length of his long, sharp teeth into her throat, finally sinking them to the hilt. Anna felt the beginnings of an orgasm stir, the first few pulses of her abandonment to her lover’s control as at the same time, he used this bruising hold on her thighs to pull Annaleia back into his body. Anna screamed in sharp, cutting bliss as his now freed member pressed hard and hot as a steel brand against her slick opening, then drove in merciless and deep.
She found the pressure unbearable, the full sensation too tight, too much; and when he pressed his palm into the swollen nub of her clit and her orgasm finished ripping through her, parts of her vision began to fade as if clouds of black were moving in on a strong wind.
Stay with me, little dragon.
She barely heard his words as they reached into the void after her and attempted to draw her back from that little death. But his magic dove in after them and wrapped around her, pulling her free-falling senses back into the moment.
She moaned long and low, nearly sobbing beneath the magnificent sin that was the whole of all she could feel in that moment. Her core pulsed and squeezed over and over again, her orgasm seeming to go on forever.
That’s it, he told her as he rocked inside her, his rhythm slow and deep and punishing in all the right ways. We’re far from done yet.
Chapter Fifty-one – the Nomad’s study, location unknown
“Thank you for this,” said Victoria nervously. “I honestly can’t tell you what it means to me. And,” she laughed just as nervously, “I realize that when I first came to you, I wasn’t exactly… dressed to impress.” Her eyes darted to the shadows in the room as if expecting someone or something to step out of them any second now. Very, very softly, she added, “Even under normal circumstances, I don’t make the best first impressions.”
Katrielle regarded her warmly; she was frankly filled with both awe and deep compassion for the woman. After all she’d been through, it was a wonder she was functioning at all, much less at the capacity she exhibited. Many in her situation would have considered ending it. A long time ago. But Victoria was every bit deserving of her name. Some of that had to do with the Sirius warden leader who had helped her fifty years ago. But most of it was simply a very rare inherent strength.
“I never judge a woman based on a first impression,” Kat said softly.
Victoria looked up, her intelligent eyes filled with sharp interest.
Kat shrugged. “A man, yes. Men are simple, straightforward. There are exceptions. But for the most part, what you see is what you get.” Kat blew out the match she
’d been using to light the candles on the table where the complicated spell had been prepared. “However with women…” She sighed and smiled.
She sat down on the stool beside the table and crossed her legs. Then she laced her fingers together and placed them on her knee, regarding Victoria. “There are eight billion people on the planet that mortals call home, and roughly half of them are women. Yet to be a woman is a lonely venture. One might say the loneliest.”
She looked at her very special guest and knew that Victoria understood this to a painful degree. Half a century ago, on a night that had become infamous in supernatural circles, the woman had lost everything in the world that mattered to her. She had been well and truly alone ever since.
Her story had been told time and again by generations of wardens, words of warning passed down from leaders to trainees so that history would not repeat itself. However, the story was told wrong, and this too was the Sirius leader’s doing. It had been necessary to fudge the truth. It had not been an ordinary Apex the wardens faced that disastrous night. It had been a different predator, one more bent on its prey than almost any other. It was a goldblood Apex, and not only a goldblood Apex, but half Aurum and half Dire werewolf.
No one would have accepted that a single woman could have defeated such a beast when twenty wardens had failed and paid with their lives. Yet, this was what the new Sirius clan leader had done. Hence, to forestall any suspicious questions, the story had to be changed. The Dire Aurum Apex, otherwise known as a Dire Aurum, became a simple Apex.
Still on the subject of women and first impressions, Kat said, “Out of sheer necessity, a woman takes on the personas expected of her by those around her – over and over again,” Kat continued, weaving magic into her words in the same way that she infused the items on the table as she worked with them. “As time passes, she drapes these personas carefully over herself until she becomes a many-layered thing, complex and by default, hidden. What you take from a first impression of her is the outer layer of a swathed and shrouded cocoon. And as anyone knows,” she said with a sharp glance at her beautiful companion, “the cocoon is not the butterfly.”
Victoria smiled, but Kat saw the weariness in it.
“You have to get to know a woman very well before you make it past those layers to the person underneath. And that’s the beauty of it really. Because by then no matter what you find, it makes little difference. You’ve already come to appreciate her. There’s a reason they say, ‘to know her is to love her.’”
Kat recognized that Victoria’s smile was no longer sad, per se. It was simply far too wise. She could sense that the woman’s more profound mourning had faded years ago, to be replaced with the dogged struggle of survival. It was a type of “going through the motions” that was much more intensive for her exceptionally rare breed than for others suffering the trauma of loss. Kat couldn’t help but wonder if in that single thing, she’d been blessed. Having to run and hide had given Victoria something else to focus on, something she had no choice but to focus on, if she wanted to survive.
“I’m told you were the one who found the young woman’s body in Philadelphia and notified the police of her whereabouts.”
Victoria nodded. Her face became shadowed.
“You did this despite the fact that your spell had nearly worn off completely.” She’d taken a tremendous risk. Not that golddusts weren’t defenseless. They were simply as good as defenseless against Aurum vampires.
Victoria nodded again, averting her gaze. She was probably embarrassed for taking such measures, thinking them foolish. But Katrielle thought them brave.
“You should know that the victims have all been removed from the morgues and placed in stasis so that they might be resurrected at a future date. Their families and the authorities involved have of course been... fixed.” She smiled a helpless smile. There was no other way to describe what mages, mostly warlocks, had to do in order to make someone forget about someone else, especially a murder victim. It was tricky disposing of evidence and planting new memories – such as memories of bodies having already been cremated.
But this was what the supernatural community did when one of their kind interfered so horribly with the mortal world. They tried to make amends. The wardens were there to ensure that making amends was necessary as seldom as possible.
Victoria’s eyebrows raised. The stasis spell was brand new, so she was rightfully surprised. “You can keep their bodies from decomposing?”
Kat nodded. “Yes.”
“And reverse the decomposition that has already happened?”
“Yes.”
“And… the wounds? Would they remain?”
Victoria had seen the wounds on the victim she’d found in that bathtub before Hendrix had gotten to it. No doubt, it had brought back bad memories – all those cuts. All that blood.
“No,” said Katrielle. “Those can be reversed as well.” With a great deal of effort, she added mentally.
Victoria exhaled, releasing a breath she probably didn’t even know she’d been holding. “So they can be revived… by someone like Annaleia Faith.”
Kat’s chin lifted in recollection. “Ah yes. You were still in the garage when the Withered performed her resurrection.” Miracle was more like it. And the amount of magic she’d poured into it had literally flooded the bodies of her friends and then continued to flood out of her at such an unstoppable rate, it had reacted with the very air around it. Like lightning, different forms of energy slammed into one another, causing a rippling shockwave that had sent everyone in the garage flying as if a bomb had gone off.
Well, everyone but Annaleia and her friends. And Annaleia’s sentinel. And Cain.
Victoria nodded, absentmindedly fingering the gold locket around her neck. It was quite lovely. And quite sad, if it contained the image Katrielle imagined it did.
Oh! Kat thought suddenly. She doesn’t know that Faith was there fifty years ago and that she was the one who revived two of her children!
When the warden clan Victoria had been a part of was destroyed by the obsessed Apex who was hunting Victoria. It was an inconceivable tragedy. The Apex seemed to know exactly what to do to take down wardens, dealing each of them mortal wounds at least twice so that their sentinels could not rescue them. The term Apex had never been more accurate in describing a predator.
In all her existence, Katrielle had only come across one other such Dire Aurum, an Apex that was half Aurum vampire and half Dire werewolf. Thankfully in this other case, someone else had come across him first, in a way rescuing him by taking him under his wing and into his clan.
The other Aurum she was thinking of was Nathan Connor of the Monsters clan. The day he had been turned into an Apex by means of an unfortunate confrontation, he’d actually been attempting to do something good. Connor had been trying to rescue someone else from a Dire werewolf attack. He wasn’t even a warden yet, and he hadn’t hesitated in coming to the mortal’s defense.
Unfortunately, for various reasons, he also hadn’t fed on goldblood in far too long and the gold fever was upon him. That was what certain circles called the sickness that overcame Aurums when they desperately needed to feed from a golddust, a person with gold-laced blood rather than iron-laced blood. When he entered that fight, Connor was weak and not quite a match for the dire.
Because he was immortal, the dire’s attack didn’t kill him. Instead, it transformed him, making him an Apex. A very special, very rare Apex.
Normally, becoming an Apex would have driven him into an immediate madness of hunger and bloodlust. However, a certain motorcycle club clan leader intervened, and the new Apex was taken under his wing.
Nate Connor was a good man. He’d always been kind, considerate and genteel despite being an Aurum. Cain had no doubt seen these qualities in him, recognizing them for what they were. And as usual, Cain seemed to know exactly where to be and when to be there in order to recruit his next clan member. Connor had maintained control over the Dire Aurum
within himself ever since.
If not for this, he probably would have turned out as much a real monster as the Apex who had destroyed the first Sirius clan – and Victoria’s entire family.
Fifty years ago, when that Apex had finished off Victoria’s clan, she’d exercised the better part of valor and run. But he followed her to her home. Her family was killed and she was taken.
The Aurum kept and fed from her until she was saved by the new Sirius clan leader.
Upon rescue, Victoria was first taken directly to one of the Nomad’s apprentices, who promptly renewed the spell within her to disguise her gold blood and make her appear human. However, Victoria was unique in that unlike her Golddust peers, her overlay disguises were finite. Each time they were replaced, they didn’t last as long as the time before.
She was then told two of her children had been revived. She was taken to her children, and then spent some time with them, staying with the Sirius clan leader during that time. She and the Sirius leader became fast friends – best friends. And in return for switching up the story about the Apex and keeping Victoria’s existence a secret, Victoria in turn protected the Sirius clan leader’s secret… which was far more valuable.
When Victoria’s spell began to wear off once again, she realized her children were safer with the Sirius clan than with her and that it would be best if she disappeared. The Sirius leader more than understood, and Victoria’s children were raised to be wardens. Since then Victoria had been running and hiding non-stop.
Referring to Annaleia Faith, Kat said, “Hopefully, she’ll still be able to perform resurrections after her transformation.” She heaved a great sigh. “But if not for Sterling’s spell, she would have died. So I can’t look a gift horse in the mouth. And if she can no longer revive the dead, then the girls will remain safely in stasis for a later date. And we’ll just keep hope.”
Monsters, Book Two: Hour of the Dragon Page 37