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

by V M Black

  I didn’t even know what I wanted to ask for. I didn’t have words for it. The energy crackled off me, from my body to his and back, until it almost hurt.

  And then without warning, he slid one finger deep inside as his thumb found my clitoris.

  I bucked forward against the seatbelt and I cut off a gasp, closing my eyes against the wall of sensation that surged out from his touch. I felt my entire body clench around him, concentrated around his touch inside me, warring with the irritating gusts of heated air and the scraping of my clothes’ seams and the against my skin. Everything but him was unbearable. And the only relief was him.

  He slid in a second finger beside the first and began to move them. I looked down to see my skirt, tumbled up into my lap, and his wrist emerging from under its edge. From between my thighs. My brain almost could not take it in, the sight of him under my skirt and the feel of him inside me. I felt his darkness then, the seething power of it, sliding out from him to touch my raw brain—oh, God, not to change me but to do something so that, for a moment, I was a part of the darkness, too.

  I wanted to come. I wanted to come so hard that I would scream my throat hoarse. I reached for the climax, clawed for it. I didn’t care about the driver in the car anymore. At that moment, I wouldn’t have cared if I were in front of an audience of thousands. But Dorian matched me perfectly, and every time I got close, he tore my satisfaction away, stilling or speeding or shifting his hands until my fingernails dug deep, angry marks into his skin.

  The car stopped, and all at once, Dorian pulled away, and I was left, gasping, desperate, and bereft.

  “We’re here,” he said softly.

  The words hardly registered. My gaze rose to his face, trying to wring some sense from them, and then I looked beyond him, out his window to see a forest of masts against the sky. A marina. We were in the heart of the District, just steps away from the edge of the Potomac, and we were also at a marina.

  Dorian opened his door, and the sudden blast of daylight shook some semblance of reason back into my head. Flustered, I slid on my sunglasses and fumbled with my buckle and coat. The chauffeur was at my door by the time I got my coat buttoned, and I stepped on wobbling legs out into the brilliant afternoon light.

  “This way,” Dorian said, offering me his arm as if nothing had passed between us—except for the tension in his body, striking a harmonic that made mine hum in sympathy.

  Why? I wanted to ask. What was this new thing between us; what was he trying to do to me, and why? Was he punishing me? If he’d wanted that, surely he would have done it the night before. Was he punishing himself? Or was he nothing more than a vessel for the buzzing, saw-edged energy?

  Not knowing what else to do, I took his arm, aching and frustrated as he led me down a sidewalk toward the boat slips, every step chafing the swollen sensation between my legs.

  Even in my befuddled state, I knew immediately which boat must be his. It was at the end of a dock and was easily twice the size of any of the others—a huge white yacht that towered over the gray marina.

  “You really don’t do many things by halves, do you?” I said as we began walking between the neat white lines of sailboats and day cruisers toward the monstrosity at the end.

  I spoke more acerbically than I’d meant to. But he’d teased me into a pitch of arousal that I couldn’t even articulate.

  “That’s not something we agnates are known for,” Dorian returned, an edge in his voice that matched what I felt.

  To go all the way, to the heights that only he could propel me from where I was now...I could hardly imagine it even as I wanted nothing more.

  The gangway was already down, and we were greeted at the top by a young man—well, I corrected, thinking of my conversation with Jane earlier that day, a young-looking man—in a white uniform who offered us flutes of champagne. Dorian plucked one up, but I passed. I would rather face a group of strange agnates stone-cold sober, I decided.

  “Your guests are in the salon, Mr. Thorne, Ms. Shaw,” the man said.

  “Thank you,” Dorian said.

  “Are we late?” I whispered as we walked along the deck. I looked back to see the gangway being pulled up behind us.

  “Not at all,” Dorian said. “They knew when we would be arriving. We’ll meet them in a moment. But first—”

  He opened a door and pulled me in with him, hitting the light as the door shut behind us. It was a small utility closet, a mop and bucket leaning against the wall.

  “What—?” I started.

  But he had already turned me to face him, plucking off my sunglasses and setting them on a shelf with his and the champagne flute before pinning me against the door and lifting my skirt to yank my panties down, his hand sliding between my legs again as his mouth came down over mine. My purse dropped nervelessly from my fingers.

  I knew what was coming, I craved it, but the feeling of his fingers plunging deep inside me was still shocking. It ripped a whimper from my throat, and I gave it to him, gladly, gave my surrender to his mouth that covered mine. It had to end, this torture that rasped across my nerves. I was so swollen with need that when he slid a third finger in, next to the other two, I felt like I would break from the fullness. Still he pushed me to the edge, to the edge and not over. And I didn’t know whether I was going to die or kill him.

  Knocking off his hat, I grabbed his hair and pulled his mouth down harder against mine, giving myself to him utterly even as I demanded every bit of him in return. And he obliged, his lips against mine, his tongue deep in my mouth, his fingers inside me, moving, stroking.

  And then he let me come, and the force of it almost took me away, my mind bobbing in its riptide. My brain went, my knees went, my body seemed to fly apart even inside its skin. And he pulled back even as I was still shattered, and I cried out again as his fingers slid out of me, leaving a swollen emptiness, a hollow fullness in their wake. He caught my wrists together in his hand that was wet from me, pinning them above my head against the door as I struggled to make my legs and feet and knees work together as they should to support me.

  “As you said, I’m not much for half measures,” he said, laughter in his voice as he loosened his belt and fly. It was a sharp, ragged laughter, a cutting one, and it made me shudder again.

  He jerked my panties off, tearing them, and I couldn’t even think a protest as I finally managed to make my legs support me again. But only for the moment, because he lifted me up against the door, his hands boosting me up under my thighs so my legs wrapped around his waist, opening me to him completely.

  But I was the one who reached down, who guided his cock to my most vulnerable parts, who welcomed the thick length of him into me until our pelvises met.

  “Kiss me,” I begged. “Kiss me again.”

  Dorian did as I throbbed around him, wild with the feel of him inside me, needing his mouth, his lips, his tongue, which stroked me until I wished I would die from it.

  Then he began to move, thrusting into me, pushing me mercilessly against the door. And all I wanted was more, closer to the place where pleasure edged into pain, until that buzzing irritation was obliterated in the sheer physicality of his body driving into mine.

  There was no finesse to it. It was fast and hard and dirty, and my center twisted and tightened until it tore and dropped me into the hot embrace of the climax that rippled down through my aching clitoris into my center and pounded up into my head. He held me then, pushing me deeper into the heat of it, until I thought I would come apart.

  Until all I wanted was to come apart.

  Just as the last echoes left me, his frame gave a great shudder, and he came, too, deep inside of me as I panted against his shoulder. Slowly, he lowered me to the floor, then took a cloth handkerchief from his pocket and kissed me again, gently, as he used it between my legs to remove what he had left there.

  “Cora, if you had any idea—” The words came out in a fast, rasping whisper, almost tumbling over one another until he bit off th
e last one. They were still rough, hard, despite the tenderness of his touch.

  I just sagged against his shoulder, my mind blank, my body still throbbing with his contact. He’d branded me, just like I’d been afraid of all along. Branded my sex. Branded my soul.

  What had just happened? How had it happened? I was standing there in the mop closet with a vampire, still Cora Shaw, but somehow not the same. Not ever the same.

  Dorian straightened and folded up the handkerchief before making it disappear back into his pocket. He stooped and retrieved my panties and handed them to me. But they were now torn, useless.

  “You’re rough on lingerie,” I observed, managing to find my voice. It was still my voice, saying the sorts of things I would say. “Really, on all kinds of clothes.”

  He took the panties back and dropped them into the mop bucket. “I can get you more.”

  “Yes, but right now, I don’t have any,” I pointed out.

  He flashed that smile again, that peculiar, edged one that was almost manic. “A bonus.”

  Right. I straightened my clothing as best as I could, exquisitely aware of the fabric of the skirt against my naked rear. I replaced my sunglasses and tried to check the position of my hat by feel, but as Dorian opened the door onto the deck, I had the sinking sensation that the evidence of what we had done would still be written on our faces.

  I cast a glance at Dorian, who was sipping his champagne as if nothing had happened.

  Well, at least my face, then.

  Damn him.

  Chapter Four

  Dorian opened another door, and I discovered that the salon was a large living area decorated in pale sand colors along severe modern lines, the perimeter surrounded by tinted windows that looked out over the Potomac on three sides.

  There was a small group gathered there, agnatic power palpable among them, and I froze in the doorway as the men in the room stood up. Smoothly, Dorian took my arm and led me inside, and I took a deep breath and squared my shoulders next to him.

  No more cowering. No more quaking. Whatever happened, I was done with that.

  A woman in a steward’s white uniform stepped forward to take our outerwear, and I surrendered my coat, hat, sunglasses, and purse.

  “Ladies, gentlemen,” Dorian said, ushering me forward, “Allow me to present Cora Shaw. You all met at least briefly at her Lesser Introduction, but I doubt that many lasting impressions were made at the time.”

  Ten. There were ten guests in the room, five men and five women, and at a swift assessment, I decided that they were divided evenly between agnates and cognates.

  Dorian was, I realized, making an effort to introduce me to other couples. His friends, I supposed. The first vampire party I’d attended had been a big society affair, to which every agnate in the region had to be invited or risk a mortal insult. Dorian had warned me then explicitly that not all the agnates would be like him—and how right he had been. I’d seen things that night that still frightened me.

  This handpicked group must be the kinds of relationships between agnate and cognate that he wanted me to see. And they seemed, from the carefully open smiles that a few of them wore, to be determined to make a good impression.

  I recognized only two of the guests: Jean and his cognate Hattie. Hattie worked for Dorian in his research lab, and she’d been the doctor in attendance when Dorian had bitten me and caused my conversion and bond. I’d met her again at the first party I’d attended, along with Jean, who’d seemed to treat her with indulgent condescension.

  Dorian made quick introductions. Will and Elizabeth, Dalton and Marie, Raymond and Francisca, Jean and Hattie, Oleg and Svetlana. I nodded to each and tried very hard to match names to faces, but I was pretty sure I had all but Jean and Hattie mixed up almost immediately.

  “Pleased to meet you,” I said stiffly, feeling that something was expected of me.

  “Oh, likewise,” said a red-haired agnatic woman with a smile that was probably meant to put me at my ease.

  “Good to see you again, Cora,” Hattie added warmly.

  “Indeed,” said Jean, sounding bored.

  Dorian guided me toward a sleek fawn loveseat, and I tugged at the edge of my sweater before perching on the edge, my legs clamped together self-consciously.

  Hi, everyone. Nice to meet you. I’m not wearing any underwear, I thought.

  As soon as I sat, all the men in the room took their own seats, agnate and cognate alike. Dorian settled next to me, taking my hand between his own.

  I realized then that I had an answer to a question I’d wondered about some time before: Dorian’s old-fashioned manners were that of a gentleman to a lady, not an agnate to a cognate.

  I filed away that piece of information for later, when I could decipher what it meant or even if it mattered.

  A tiny cognate with olive skin and waist-length jet black hair exchanged a meaningful look with her agnate before turning to me with a bright smile.

  “You are a student, I heard? At the University of Maryland?”

  I glanced at Dorian, but his expression was unreadable.

  Then I chided myself. I didn’t need his permission or reassurance to speak.

  “Yes,” I said, lifting my chin. Then, in hopes that I didn’t appear curt, I volunteered, “I’m studying economics.”

  “Oh, yes!” the long-haired cognate said. “What a fascinating field it is. So many changes! New ideas, new models, but it does seem that economists never can agree on anything.”

  “As they say, when you put two economists together, you get three opinions,” I joked weakly.

  The sound of the yacht’s motors increased, and out of the windows, I could see the dock slip slowly away.

  The red-haired agnatic woman chuckled. “As long as the twin beauties of diversification and compound interest continue to work, I’m happy enough and don’t care if I never learn more.”

  “That’s because you are a sybarite,” her cognate teased affectionately. “You only care about what directly impacts your own physical comfort.”

  She shrugged, accepting the charge.

  “So, what do all of you do?” I said, for lack of anything else to ask.

  “We are most of us idle rich,” said a blonde agnate in a thick Russian accent. That would be Svetlana, I thought, retrieving the name.

  “Some of us are more idle than others,” an agnatic man said dryly. “Portfolio management can take a fair amount of time. And, of course, there’s the scheming. We spend a great deal of time scheming.”

  “But Hattie works. Doesn’t she?” I asked, casting a look between her and her agnate Jean. “I mean, he lets you work?”

  “Oh, most definitely.” Hattie smiled at him as he lounged against the cushions of their loveseat. “I had my doubts, but Jean insisted, certain that I’d love it. You see, I was studying chemistry when we met, but chemistry was a very different science so long ago, and I didn’t know how much help I could be.”

  “But after just a few years of study, she had become the most indispensable member of our team,” Dorian put in.

  “With all the hours she puts in, sometimes I wonder whose cognate she is, after all.” Even Jean’s grumble was tinged with ennui.

  Hattie rolled her eyes at him. “That’s not something you’re likely to forget any time soon. And Will works with us, too.”

  She nodded to the cognate who had called the red-headed agnate a sybarite, and he shrugged.

  “When Elizabeth chooses to spare me,” he said.

  They were all so comfortable with each other and with their world. I wondered how many years they had known each other. Fifty? One hundred? Longer? They were trying so hard to make me feel welcome that it made me even more self-conscious that I didn’t fit in with them.

  Couples. Every one of them. Unbearably beautiful people, monsters and angels. And Dorian and I....

  I looked around, trying to see us in one of the pairs of guests, not sure whether I was more afraid that I would or would
n’t.

  A parade of white-uniformed stewards appeared then, bearing trays upon which a variety of tantalizing refreshments were laid out. I welcomed the interruption. I wasn’t used to being the focus of the room, much less a room full of vampires and their consorts. I was always the “and”—Lisette and Cora; Geoff and Cora; Hannah, Sarah, and Cora.

  Everyone loaded small plates, and a bartender took orders for cocktails and champagne before retreating to a bar in the corner to prepare them. I watched the guests as they selected their delicacies. Their movements were almost like a dance. I realized suddenly when I’d seen something like it—in a documentary I’d watched once about geishas in Kyoto. They had the same grace. But with the agnates and their cognates, there was nothing that seemed contrived about it. The habits of movement had been ingrained untold years ago.

  I smiled politely as the first steward reached me and picked a few of the most delectable-looking appetizers. Each of my movements seemed clumsy and awkward in comparison to the balletic elegance the others gave even the slightest motion, and in my self-consciousness, I tried to hold as still as possible.

  “Now that you know your research works, you should come away for a while,” Jean was saying to Dorian. “Take a vacation. You haven’t been to the Riviera since it was full of Russian noblemen. Rhodesia, Brazil, Tibet—you used to be so much fun.”

  “It’s Zimbabwe now, not Rhodesia,” Dorian said dryly. “And this is only the beginning of our research. I’m sure Hattie’s been filling your ears with it all.”

  Jean shook his head. “Most likely. But I never listen to her when she talks shop. It’s so dull.”

  Hattie gave him an unsubtle pinch, and he smiled indulgently down at her.

  “I’m saving the world, and he acts like I have an orchid obsession or I’m into stamp collecting,” she complained, but her eyes twinkled with suppressed humor.

  “Jean, you pay attention,” Svetlana chided gently. “Is important.”

  “One-in-one-hundred is significant. It’s the magic number that makes our side far more attractive than that of the Kyrioi,” Dorian said. “But it’s only the beginning.”