Rites of Blood: Cora's Choice Bunble 4-6

by V M Black

“Only if you want me to,” he said. He pulled into a space and put the car in park. Unbuckling, he turned to face me.

  The impossibility of my situation came over me again. How could I let him have all of me?

  How could I possibly refuse?

  “What’s your end game, Dorian?” I asked abruptly.

  For once, I seemed to surprise him, and his eyebrows rose. “What do you mean?”

  “What’s your goal? What’s your plan for me?” I asked.

  “I don’t make plans for you, Cora.” Dorian touched me lightly, just his fingertips brushing against the back of my hand, and my entire body thrilled with it.

  I pulled away. “No, you just have huge parties where I’m the main attraction. You’re weaving your webs, you monsters with a conscience versus those without, and I’m a symbol for you in it. I know you can’t afford to have this go wrong. So what will you sacrifice to make sure that it doesn’t?”

  “It won’t,” he said simply.

  I scrubbed my face in frustration. “How could you know that? I could be a terrible person. You could have bonded with anyone, and you’d gamble everything on that person being just right for you?”

  His hooded eyes never left my face. “I bonded with you, Cora, not just anyone. And I know what you are, perhaps better than you know it yourself. What we have—it will work. It must work.”

  “But what if I don’t want it to? I want to finish my degree, go to grad school, get a job.”

  Dorian shook his head. “I won’t stop you from doing any of that.”

  “Even if I want to go to Chicago? You’ll change me,” I said hopelessly. “You do change me.”

  “I’ve given my word that I won’t...mess with your head, as you call it, not unless the alternative is unthinkable.”

  How could I make him understand? If I left him—when I left him—he needed to understand why I had to do it. Maybe then I would hurt him less, or at least the wounds would heal a little faster.

  I said, “You mess with my head all the time. You might not be deliberately rearranging my thoughts, but you still do it. Every time I’m near you, I can feel your will and your desires, wrapping around me. I’m helpless in them.”

  “I may be the stronger, Cora, but I feel yours, too,” he said softly.

  “It’s not the same.”

  “Perhaps not.” He reached out, placing his palm flat above my left breast. “But I can feel how your heart is torn. I can feel you yearning for me but afraid. I can feel what you desire most, Cora, and I want to do everything in my power to fulfill those dreams.”

  My heart thudded against his hand. “But you’ll still change me. You can’t help it.”

  He look old suddenly, as old as mountains. “All meaningful relationships are transformative.”

  “More than any human relationship,” I insisted.

  He shook his head. “And that I can’t help. But just because it is a change doesn’t mean that it’s bad.”

  I had to make him understand, somehow, why I couldn’t live with that. “I want a normal life, Dorian. You can’t give me that.”

  “Do you, Cora?” he asked softly. “Do you really?” His gaze grew intense, and I couldn’t answer him.

  Because I didn’t know.

  Chapter Seven

  Dorian’s hand slid up to cradle my cheek. Despite everything, or maybe because of it, I turned my face into it, kissing his palm. It smelled of him, the scent that had covered my body a few days before. I thought of all he had already done to me—with me. It was overwhelming, even the memory of it almost too much to bear.

  And I wanted more. More of his touch but also his presence. His smiles. His solemnity and the ineffable sadness that came of regrets I didn’t understand. I wanted to lay those haunting memories to rest.

  I wanted his body, his kisses, his sex. And as foolish as it was, I wanted his love.

  With a low sound, he pulled me toward him, meeting me across the high console that separated the seats. His mouth was impatient, hungry against mine. The dull heat in my abdomen roared to sudden fire, my groin aching with every touch of his lips and stroke of his tongue.

  “Cora—” he said roughly as he broke off, a warning in his voice.

  “I want it, too,” I assured him.

  But he shook his head. “You don’t understand. It’s been almost two weeks, Cora.”

  Two weeks? My mind went back. Oh. Two weeks since I had first given him my blood.

  “I thought you could go for months,” I said faintly, my heart accelerating.

  His chuckle was ragged as he caressed the line of my jaw. “It is one thing to avoid all temptation and quite another to indulge some desires and ignore others.”

  I could feel his need now. It washed through me, calling up an answer from my own body, one I couldn’t refuse. I could feel my breath come faster, my blood rushing through my veins, and I knew I would give him what he asked. I must. I wanted nothing else.

  “Would it be like the first time?” I asked quietly. “Will I be unconscious for days?”

  “No, of course not.” His frown was a flat rejection. “Conversion only happens once.”

  I swallowed, closing my eyes, feeling the expectation twisting tighter and tighter inside me. I was going to do this thing again, knowing what was coming. I remembered the insanity of that first night, the madness and the pain and the ecstasy, the glory and terror all flowing together until I didn’t know where one stopped and another began.

  It really was going to happen. Again. Tonight.

  “Then show me,” I said, opening my eyes and meeting his gaze. My vampire. There was nothing human about him now. And somehow, it made me want him more.

  Desire flared deep in his eyes.

  “Your arm,” he said, and he held out his hand.

  I unbuckled then and turned in my seat, putting my hand in his. My insides shivered a little at the contact, my skin flushing. He pushed my sleeve up my arm, and I was reminded of our first encounter, when he had drawn my blood.

  “You’re willing?” he asked, looking at me with those haunted eyes.

  “Yes,” I breathed. “You know I am.”

  He lifted my wrist to his mouth. I didn’t realize how tense I was until I felt the first brush against my skin, and a sizzle of reaction jolted through my body.

  It was a kiss—only a kiss, a gentle caress of his lips against my skin. I took a shuddering breath. Holding my gaze, he moved up, toward my elbow, deepening his kisses until I shivered with need, heat from my center running in prickling waves across my skin.

  The pressure increased, and I felt his tongue and teeth working across my arm. My breath came raggedly. And then, just above my wrist, the sudden, sharp pain as he cut into my skin.

  I gasped as the heat roared up, tangling with the pain, consuming and transforming it as it surged up into my brain. His mouth set a rhythm against my arm, sealing the wound, sucking against it, and my body was seized with it, throbbing in time, need mounting higher and higher.

  And his eyes never let me go. I could feel him inside my mind, could feel his need washing into mine as he drank from my veins. Finally, he broke the kiss and lowered my arm. I blinked, breaking away from his eyes, still reeling with unfulfilled desire, as he turned my wrist toward me.

  My skin was whole already, only bright silvery lines showing where he had taken from me with a few faint blood-streaks on the unbroken skin.

  “We’re made for each other now, Cora,” he said, and then he pulled me across the console into his embrace.

  I could still taste the faint, metallic tang of my blood in his mouth. The need was battering me now, driving me to crazy heights. He pushed back his seat as he pulled me into his lap.

  His hands were under my shirt, under my bra, moving hard across my body. I kissed him hard, wanting him, one hand fumbling at the button on my jeans as the other tangled in his hair. I got it free, unzipped my jeans, and kicked off my shoes as he pushed them over my hips, catching my pant
ies and hauling them off, too. I grabbed the pants leg as it slid over my foot and pulled the jeans off as he loosened his belt and fly.

  He leaned the seat back as he pulled me down to his mouth again. My bare legs hung over the console, my rear in his lap. I could feel his erection against my hip, separated only by the thin layer of his underwear.

  He kissed me, hard, took my mouth and then bent to move to my neck. I pulled his suit jacket and waistcoat open, yanking at his shirt buttons, needing his skin against my hands. One of his palms found my breast, and I let go of his shirt and grabbed his head, pulling his mouth up to meet mine again, kissing him with an urgency that I’d never felt before. With his other hand, he pulled my knee across his lap so that I straddled him, my damp thighs opening.

  His hand slid up to my entrance, teasing my clitoris with strokes of his fingers before dipping inside me to stroke the nub there while I rocked and shook against his body, my fingers digging into to his shoulders. He pushed me right up to the edge of a climax, but I felt him holding me back, and I made a sobbing noise of frustration as I reached, reached—

  “Want it?” His voice was harsh in my ear.

  “Now,” I demanded. “Do it now.”

  He slid his fingers out of me and reached between us, freeing his erection. He grasped my hips and guided me over it, until the head pressed against me. Then he pulled me down hard, and I cried out as he hit the swollen sensitive place inside of me, pushing me right up to the edge. I tried to hold still, panting, but his hips were moving under me, his hands on my hips demanding that I rise and fall with him. I did, every thrust coming up against that spot and then the other, deeper one, sending hot pleasure around into my clitoris and deep into the center of my body.

  He stole my gasps with his mouth, kissing them away. One of his hands slid from my hip, across my buttocks, to press against the space between my entrance and my anus, finishing the circle of pleasure. I teetered on the brink for a long moment, moving with him in that maddening rhythm, my skin so hot I thought I would be set on fire.

  “Cora.” He ground out my name against my lips and shuddered underneath me, and I shattered.

  The pleasure, as sharp as pain, flared up in my center and tore through my body, taking everything with it, sense, sight, and sanity. He was still pushing me onward, into the climax, and I plunged into it madly, embracing the immolation of self in the surging need.

  Coming to myself again, I sank bonelessly against his bare chest.

  “Oh wow. Just wow.” I realized that was my own voice, and I stopped.

  Dorian was stroking my hair, and I turned my head to catch him looking down at me.

  “That wasn’t planned,” he said.

  “I should hope not,” I retorted. “Anyone could have walked by.” The aftermath of my climax still washed through me, my skin still tender and flushed. I was almost appalled at how much I had wanted that, how much I had enjoyed it. All of it, including his teeth piercing my skin, his mouth moving against it to drink my blood.

  God, he really had turned my brain inside out, hadn’t he?

  I pulled away, wincing as I swung my stiff leg over his thighs. There was no elegant way to slither back across the console, but I tried to retain some semblance of dignity. My bare rear hit the warm leather seat, and I reached quickly for my pants and dragged them on.

  “Cora,” he said, my name something between a question and an apology.

  Pausing in the fumbling with my fly, I closed my eyes for a moment. “I need to go upstairs for a minute. Then—I want you to take me to your home.”

  Chapter Eight

  There was a long silence as I finished straightening my clothes. I didn’t look at Dorian, but I could hear him doing the same.

  “All right,” Dorian said finally. I heard a hint of some emotion in his voice, fiercely repressed. Was it gladness? His face was completely closed, as if he didn’t dare to show anything.

  Was it me that he didn’t trust? Or was it himself?

  Dorian reached into the back to hand me my jacket. He still wore his sports coat. “Shall I come up?”

  “Sure,” I said. I hoped it sounded casual. In truth, I wanted him close to me so badly that it hurt.

  I pulled my coat on as he stepped out of the car. He was at my door by the time I had it on, opening it and offering his hand. I took it self-consciously and stood. He shut the door behind me, and I walked silently toward my apartment block under the weight of his arm. I felt my need for him like an ache, a pain. I was far from satisfied.

  I was afraid that I never would be.

  “What made you change your mind?” he asked. The words were light, too light. My answer mattered too much to him.

  “I don’t know,” I said. I frowned at him. “I really hope that the answer isn’t you.”

  “You can’t keep second-guessing every impulse, Cora,” he said.

  “How can’t I?” I asked. “How can I ever know why I want anything, ever again?”

  “Human couples grow more alike over time,” Dorian said. “If your taste in music changes because your boyfriend keeps putting on a radio station different from what you normally are used to, is that a malevolent influence? If you come to enjoy a new genre of movie or a new kind of food, or if some of your preferences for clothing begin to align more with his over time, is that evidence that you’ve been corrupted?”

  Reaching the door, I scanned my ID, and he opened it so I could pass through first.

  “I suppose not,” I admitted. I hit the button to call the elevator. The doors opened. I stepped inside, Dorian following.

  “If you want to be with someone, perhaps it is simply because you want them,” he said.

  I turned to look at him, so handsome that it was almost painful.

  “I do,” I heard myself say, my voice suddenly rough. “I want you.”

  He closed the space between us so quickly that I didn’t even have time to take a breath. He pressed me against the wall of the elevator, his arms around me, under my clothes, his mouth over mine. I clung to him and kissed him back, hard.

  The door chimed and opened far too soon. He stepped backward through it, pulling me with him, taking my keys from my unresisting grasp with his other hand. In moments, my door was unlocked and we were through. He closed the door with his foot as he pulled off my coat and dragged my shirt over my head. My hurried fingers fumbled with the buttons of his shirt. One caught, and I yanked, and it came free with a tearing sound.

  “Sorry,” I said, my hands freezing.

  He just chuckled and grabbed the open edges of the shirt, and with a single motion, he tore the remaining buttons free. I heard them clatter as they bounced off the walls and floor.

  “I don’t know how I’ll explain that one to Lisette,” I said breathlessly.

  “Don’t, then,” he said, stripping off his shirt, waistcoat, and jacket in one go. Catching my hair, he tilted my head back so that my mouth turned up to meet his.

  And he tasted so good, like everything I’d ever wanted in my life.

  Dorian twisted my bra free with his other hand, tugging it down over my arms, then he took my hips in his hands and worked his mouth impatiently down across my neck and collarbone.

  His kisses were rough, and I craved every one of them. The bite on my wrist had aroused me to an edge of pain that I suddenly needed again, a need that he seemed to understand without my asking. My breath turned ragged, my hands holding his shoulders so hard that I felt his flesh under my fingernails.

  His breath against my nipple made it harden, sending a ripple of sensation down into my clitoris, and he enveloped it in his mouth. There was nothing tender about it. He took it sharply in his teeth, his tongue rasping across the tip, and I cried out, wanting the edge of the pain in the heat of pleasure. He pulled his head back, his teeth scraping lightly along my nipple, and I gasped, my fingernails digging into his shoulders. Then it was free, damp and tingling in the chilly air.

  Never had I imagined this—n
ever would I have thought I could have wanted it so badly.

  He moved to the other breast, his deep kisses turning to nips that left me shaking, arching my hips to meet a resistance that wasn’t there. His mouth slid across my belly as he knelt at my feet, his hands working at my fly, and he shoved my jeans over my hips and down. Then his tongue was there, at the juncture of my thighs, working rhythmically against my clitoris as his hands slid back to cup my butt and pull me more firmly against his mouth.

  I rocked in his grasp, panting, as his tongue pressed deeper, sliding between my folds. My hands balled into fists around his hair. His grip on me only tightened, pulling my buttocks apart. I knew he could taste me and what he’d spilled into me, and I didn’t know whether I was more aroused or mortified.

  “Dorian,” I managed, not sure what I wanted to say.

  He broke off, stood again, and kissed my mouth, and I could taste it, too—myself, him, mingled together in his demanding mouth.

  Then he scooped me into his arms and carried me the three short strides to the sofa, where he set me down with my hips hanging over the wide arm and pulled my pants the rest of the way off, taking my shoes and socks with them. His followed. I started to wriggle up on the couch, but he grabbed my knee.

  “No,” he said, pulling me back. “I want you here.”

  He hooked one of my legs over his shoulder, sliding his hand down the inside of my thigh until it rested on my entrance, the outer folds pulled open by how he held me. He rolled my clitoris between his fingers, teasing it until my entire body felt suffused. And then he slid two fingers into me, side by side, stretching me as he found that place in front where he pressed, rhythmically, again and again as his thumb stroked above. A finger of his other hand dipped briefly into me, then pulled down, hard, so that he was at both ends of my entrance, relentless, overwhelming.

  I came, clenching around his hand, the heat shooting through my body as I cried out. His lower hand slipped lower still, pushing hard against the space just behind my entrance, and then it was there, at my anus, pressing just inside as I shattered around him. It shook me again, in a way I had never felt, driving me deeper into the throes of my orgasm.