by V M Black
Geoff sputtered and kicked for an instant, then grew frighteningly slack in Dorian’s arms. Disdainfully, the vampire dropped the boy and stepped back.
Geoff lay curled against the floor for a long moment.
Was he—? But just then he stirred, pushing to his hands and knees as he shook his head as if to clear it.
He looked up, first at Dorian, then at me.
“Holy shit. It’s true.” All the color ran out of Geoff’s face, and he stumbled to his feet. “Oh, shit,” he repeated. “Shit.”
He jerked up his pants, and I saw in his broken face what Cosimo had done to him—what I’d indirectly caused Cosimo to do. If I’d still been capable of feeling anything for him, I would have wept.
“Get. Out.” Dorian’s words lashed out again, and Geoff, under his control now, jerked like a puppet on strings and fled past me. I would have recoiled if my muscles had been under my control. He was gone in an instant, the door swinging shut behind him.
And all of a sudden, my body went limp, and my brain went blank with relief.
Chapter Nine
Dorian was instantly at my side, dropping next to me and saying something low and urgent. My half-stunned mind caught up and processed what it was.
My name. Over and over again, like it was being torn from his very soul, Dorian was saying my name.
I started to push up off the floor, but he grabbed my wrists. I hadn’t noticed the blood flowing down them from the slices on my palm, dripping onto the floor. With a hiss, he plucked the fragments of glass from my palms and lifted my hands to his mouth, kissing them over and over again. His face was stricken, lines of the deepest grief carved into the marble of his beauty, and the darkness roiled and pulsed around him.
I only realized then how complete his power was over me. I’d known it, but I hadn’t felt it before that moment in which my mind surrendered before his like a moth to a blowtorch. With a word, he had frozen my body. With another, he could freeze my heart.
But he had stopped. When I had called out to him to spare Geoff, he had stopped, even in the heat of a fury so intense that the force of it had filled the room.
He pulled my hands from his mouth and looked down at them. Where he touched me with his mouth, the skin had healed instantly, leaving only a faint tracery beneath the blood.
Dorian clasped my hands in his and closed his eyes and swayed, his breath rasping loudly in his throat.
And then I understood.
“I’m still a cognate,” I said numbly. “I’m still yours.”
And my heart sang.
I’m his, still his, forever and ever and ever his....
A shard of glass dropped from my knee to the floor. My other wounds were healing, too, though slower without Dorian’s touch.
Of course I was his. I knew what had happened—and what hadn’t. And I didn’t know what a broken bond would feel like, but what pulsed between us now was whole and true and good. But for just an instant, utterly irrationally, I had almost thought the worst.
He opened his eyes then and fixed them on my face, searching it as if he were memorizing every line. “I’d feared—” He broke off, and a shudder went through his frame.
And yet he’d drunk my blood. Drunk it anyway, even though if I had been changed back, he would have died.
Because without me, he didn’t want to live.
I looked into those cold blue eyes, so terrible and so haunted. “You let him live. Why? I thought you’d kill him for sure.”
He pressed my bloodied hands against his chest. I could feel his heart beating there, too fast and too hard, the heart that he had given me. “You told me not to. And you were right. He was a pawn. He didn’t deserve to die.”
All the wrath I’d seen, the indescribable fury, had been constrained at my word. The thought shook me, that I had such power over him. It was a power he chose to give me—but perhaps, in its way, it was almost as much power as he held over me.
Dorian scooped me up and carried me into the bedroom as bits of glass fell from my feet. I buried my face against his chest, the first shudders of shock going through me. I breathed him, his scent, as if I would never smell it again, and his arms felt like the only home in the world.
“I felt you,” he said. His face was a mask now, but his voice trembled, almost imperceptibly. “I felt your distress, and at first, I thought you were still upset about the proposal. I didn’t realize there was something wrong until it was nearly too late. I almost didn’t come in time. My God, Cora—” His voice broke. “I almost lost you.”
I tightened my arms convulsively around his neck as he carried me toward the bathroom. My naked flesh was smeared with my blood, staining the satin of my strapless bra and the snowy expanse of his tuxedo shirt. “It wasn’t your fault.” The words came from me but as if they were very far away. “I told you to stay away.”
“All that matters is that I nearly failed.” All his seething darkness turned inward in anger and guilt.
Everything felt so unreal. I knew it would hit me any moment, what had happened—and what had almost happened. Right now, though, I felt like I was floating in a kind of waking dream. “No. All that matters is that you succeeded. Cosimo tried to take me away from you, but you stopped him.”
Dorian stopped mid-step. “You know it was him?”
“Yes,” I said. “Geoff—that’s the boy, he’s my friend or was my friend or—” I shook my head. All that was irrelevant now. “He described him to me before, hanging around my apartment, and I’m sure it was Cosimo.”
Dorian started again, passing through the bathroom door.
“He will be dealt with.”
Bending, he laid me in the half-egg of the freestanding tub. My bloodied feet left shocking red smears on the white acrylic as I curled them under me. Dorian set the temperature and turned on the tap, and hot water poured into the tub, sending billows of steam up into the room. It turned faintly pink when it touched my skin, washing the blood away. I was trembling despite the heat of the water. Dorian touched my shoulder with his hand lightly, reassuringly.
“You’re safe now, Cora. I will be right back,” he said. He stepped out of the room, shutting the door behind him.
The water felt like the first real thing that had happened since Dorian burst into the room, tickling at my feet and knees, the heat of it melting my frozen shock. I hunched over, hugging myself, and with the abruptness of the tap turning on, I started to cry.
I cried at what had just happened, what had been done to me and what had been done to Geoff because of me. I cried for everything I had lost—my Gramma, my humanity, my innocence, my youth. And I cried for the future, so dangerous and terrifying, and about the vampire who scared me as badly as anyone ever had but whom I couldn’t live without.
Because I knew that truth now as absolutely as I had ever known anything.
The water rose up around me, lapping at my thighs and then my belly. And all I could do was surrender myself to the sobs.
The thought that I was going to be severed from Dorian forever frightened me worse than the violence of Geoff’s assault, because a rape I might survive. But losing Dorian—that was beyond bearing. After all those weeks and months of being strong, of bearing up, of facing down impossible odds...that was the loss that would have broken me.
I had to choose. There was no in between with Dorian. It was all or nothing.
And while my mind had hesitated, my heart had chosen Dorian. No matter what the cost.
The door opened. I heard it, but I was crying too hard to even look up. Suddenly, Dorian was there, stepping into the tub as the water soaked his tuxedo pants and Italian leather shoes. The water sloshed as he eased down behind me, and then he pulled my almost-naked body against his chest.
My hands fisted around the cloth of his jacket as if I were still afraid he’d disappear, clinging to him, afraid of him but even more afraid of losing him.
The water rose, creeping up our bellies to our chests. I cried and
hiccoughed against the strength of his chest, against the cotton of his shirt stained with my blood and tears and darkened with water that crept up toward the edge of the tub.
His arms encircled me, cradling me against him like a child as he kissed the top of my head, murmuring softly, constantly. Most of the words I didn’t understand, spoken in languages I’d never heard and perhaps no living human knew any longer. But the ones I did understand only made me cry harder.
“Hush, my love. It will be all right. My love, my life, my heart, my soul, you will see, you will see.... ”
I didn’t know how long it was until I stopped, but Dorian had to reach around me and turn off the tap, and the water had turned tepid by the time I washed the last of the snot and the tears from my face, my soul wrung out and emptied.
I looked up at him. I should have been ashamed for him to see me like this, ashamed of anyone witnessing the ugly depths of my self-pity and grief. But I wasn’t. I couldn’t be. Not with him.
My vampire.
I knew what I had to do. What I wanted to do, if only because the alternative was unthinkable.
“The answer is yes,” I said, my voice ragged, shaking from my tears.
His eyes widened, and I realized that, for once, I had shocked the unflappable Dorian Thorne.
“Yes,” I repeated, my heart beating so hard that it thundered in my ears. “Dorian Thorne, I will marry you.”
Speechless for the first time since I had met him, he tilted my chin up with a finger hooked beneath my chin, and he kissed me.
Reaction roared through every nerve at his touch, fierce and triumphant, and I met his gentle kiss with all the desperation of my fear. I kissed him hard, my hands in his hair, dragging his mouth down to mine. I tasted him, drank him, as if I could take his essence into myself.
If I was his, then I would make him mine.
I twisted so that I could kiss his cheeks, his jaw, his strong throat, moving fast, my kisses rough with urgency. I wanted him with me, in me, taking me forever, so I didn’t even have to think of losing him again.
I reached under the water and found the edge of his cummerbund where it met his pants. I could feel the hard bulge through the fabric. Slipping my hands under it, I found the button of his fly and pulled it loose, my hands fumbling with hurry. I needed him more than I had ever needed anything. I pulled the zipper down and slid my hand in, finding the slit in his underwear and the hard flesh beneath.
He made a low sound in his throat as my hand encircled him, and he caught my wrist, holding my hand in place as I worked my mouth against his neck.
“Cora, you don’t have to—”
I broke off from kissing him to interrupt. “Yes, I do. Right now. I almost—” I cut myself off. I’d almost lost him. Lost this. “Let me do this, Dorian.”
And he closed his eyes, his face pinched with a flood of emotion I could almost taste. But all he said was my name: “Cora.”
Taking it for permission, I turned in his lap, hooking my legs over his to straddle him. He opened his eyes, and there was an intensity there that was a reflection of my need. He found the back of my bra and unfastened it with a twist, dropping it to float free. Pushing me up with his knees under my rear as the water sloshed around us, he dipped his head and flattened his palm, holding me against his mouth as it moved down to capture one of my nipples.
It went hard instantly as he took it into his mouth, and I arched back as my body’s response jolted up my spine and down between my legs. Wet from the bath, it sealed to his mouth, aching and swelling under the suction as his tongue rasped against it.
I whimpered as he released it, only to take the other one, claiming it as thoroughly, as if he were marking me as his. I stroked his cock to the rhythm of his mouth, and it throbbed in my grasp. My other hand twisted the lapel of his jacket as the need burned through my nerves, up into my skull, where it set up a pounding beat.
He raised his head and I pulled myself toward him, along his legs until my knees met the bottom of the tub and the juncture of my thighs pressed up against my hand that still encircled him. He made a strangled noise between his teeth as my folds came up against his shaft. Desperate to be filled, I lifted up, guiding him inside me as he shifted his grasp to my hips.
I slid down over him, his thickness stretching me and sending a throbbing heat down into me, where he belonged. I grabbed his shoulders and kissed him again, long and hungrily, and his tongue stroked me, invaded my mouth, sending tremors straight down into the place that he filled until I couldn’t bear it anymore and I began to move, sliding my body up his length and driving it down again, the water lapping at the edge of the tub with my motions. I rode him, and it was his turn to arch back against the hard rim of the tub, the expression on his beautiful face so intense it almost broke my heart.
The water pushed back, slowing my motions, fighting our bodies until I found a harmony with it. Inside me, pleasure twisted tighter until everything seemed to run together, my body and his and the water around us. Then he reached between us and found my clitoris, and the world broke apart, and I rode the wave until he came in me, under me, in the depths of my orgasm.
I slumped forward against the heat of his chest under his wet shirt, lying there as the waves we’d started in the water bumped against each other and our bodies until the water gradually grew still. He held me to him, and I didn’t move even as he grew soft inside me because I never wanted to let him go.
Mine. He belonged to me, heart and dark and tortured soul, every bit as much as I belonged to him.
But time didn’t stop for me, and the water slowly leached its heat into the room until goose bumps rose across the parts of my flesh that were not pressed against him.
He gave me a kiss, sweet and slow, and then shifted me off him, to the side, and reached past me to open the drain. He stood, water sheeting from his ruined clothes, and stepped out of the tub. He caught a bath towel from the nearest hook and held out a hand to me, still wordless.
I took it, stepping reluctantly from the bath and back into the world. He wrapped the towel around my body, then caught my face in his hands and kissed me one more time. Then he stepped back and began stripping the soaked clothes from his body. But I stepped up and pushed his hands away and began working down his shirt studs myself, revealing his glorious skin.
Looking down at me, he said, “I didn’t want to leave you alone in here, but I had to make arrangements—tell the Adelphoi what happened so they could deal with Cosimo and send for bodyguards, in case another attempt is made. We’ll keep you safe.”
I shook my head. “Will you? After the djinn in the parking lot, and now this? Even if you get Cosimo, he’s one of the Kyrioi. They’re in it together, or at least some of them are, and there are others who can come after me. Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”
“You could have gone with him willingly.” He looked at me keenly as he freed the last stud on his shirt. “That boy. He was your friend. More than your friend.”
“Not anymore,” I said through the tightness in my throat. I’d lost Geoff twice in all of this, once through my choice to stay with Dorian and again in what Cosimo and then Dorian had done to him.
“You ran away from me because I frightened you, and yet when he came, you fought him instead of taking what he offered.”
“Freedom.” I whispered the word.
“Cosimo told you that, didn’t he?”
I nodded mutely, pushing his jacket and shirt from his shoulders.
He freed the studs at his wrists and dropped the clothes on the floor with a wet slap. “If you’d gone with him, it would all be over, and you wouldn’t have to be afraid anymore.”
Each word was distinct, as if he had formed it with the utmost care and spoke it with infinite cost.
I closed my eyes, just for a second. It was true. I could have taken what Geoff offered, regardless of the reason, and I’d be free now. Free—and bereft. The price was far too high. I met the pain in Dorian’s eyes
. “I don’t want to be safe if it means I can’t be with you. I love you. I may be crazy, but I do.”
“I know,” he said quietly. “I just wasn’t certain that you did.”
I stood there, rooted to the cold tile. “Never let me go. Promise me that—that you’ll never let anyone take me from you again.”
His step caught me against his naked chest. “Not even you?” he asked.
“Especially not me,” I whispered. “I’m so scared.”
“I know that, too. But you’re far braver than you think.”
I laughed unsteadily. “I hope so. Otherwise, I don’t think I can bear it.”
“I know you can, because I know how I feel for you. And my love would bear me over mountains, across deserts, and through the gates of hell itself. If you feel even the faintest echo of that, you are strong enough for anything.”
I looked into his blue eyes, burning with an icy fire, and I knew that every word he spoke was true. He loved me like no one else would—like no one else could.
To the ends of the earth.
No matter what the cost.
Chapter Ten
I sat on the bed, wrapped in the towel, as Dorian dressed in the pants he’d worn to the yacht party a few hours and a lifetime before. He stepped out of the bedroom, and I stiffened as I heard voices in the next room.
The bodyguards, I realized, relaxing. Just as he’d said. They were here to protect us—to protect me.
He came back in, carrying my duffel bag and a Louis Vuitton train case. He set the train case on one side of the bed and brought the duffel bag to my side.
“You’ll find night clothes and the rest of your toiletries in there,” he said. He stripped off the pants and traded them for a pair of loose pajama bottoms from his suitcase.
Pajamas on a vampire, I managed to think despite everything. That was not something you saw every day.
“We’re staying here tonight?” I rummaged in the duffel bag. Sure enough, my own t-shirt and undies were there. I dropped the towel and pulled them on. “Are you sure it’s safe? The Kyrioi know we’re here.”