Golden Vampire

by Linda Thomas-Sundstrom

  Jesse wasn’t offering herself up due to payment of a debt. He saw the flare of her hunger, exposed. He heard her soul cry out against it, but once in the open, there was no turning back.

  She wanted … him.

  Him, no matter what he was.

  On some level, she’d begun to trust, and dared to believe.

  Fires raged as Lance drew her closer with the snap of his arm, as his senses filled with the perfume of her clothes, her hair and her desire for him. Her blood pounded out a new rhythm against his chest, matched by his own. She was as afraid … as he was.

  It was a dangerous slow dance. Every one of her curves, as well as each angle, molded to him. He ran his hands over her arms, waiting for her to stop him. Maybe even waiting for divine intervention. Instead, her body strained closer. Her splayed hands moved slowly across his back. All the while, as the world faded away behind them, her eyes held his.

  “Is it painful?” she asked, her lips moist, her question demanding.

  “Yes,” he replied.

  “For someone used to pain?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know if you’re damned?”

  “Not knowing which side we’re closer to, be it heaven or hell, is the risk we take, if given the option to take it.”

  She whispered, “What about the flight of your soul? Did you feel it go?”

  “It doesn’t have to go,” Lance said. “I spoke the truth about that.”

  “Then you are still you, only more so?” She tossed his own explanation back at him. “You were a good man?”

  “I tried to be.”

  “Why do you want me, Lance?” she asked, although she already knew the answer. “Blood to blood?” she whispered.

  Those words, torn from her parted lips, burned a channel directly to the male parts of him, remembering all too well what might happen next if she kept looking at him that way, while smelling so good. But he was also aware of something else. Something new was happening inside him—a vague pull he didn’t recognize.

  “We’ll revisit this later, and see if your decision sticks,” he said.

  It was a lie. He knew it. She knew it. His hunger was nearly out of control, and this moment was pivotal, important for reasons neither of them fully understood, except for the part about filling the emptiness, easing the loneliness and being lost in each other’s closeness. Craving that closeness.

  Sweet God, Lance thought as her gaze continued to electrify him, and as the answer to the dilemma slammed into him. The missing part of the equation was … love.

  He loved Jesse with the force of every life he’d lived, all rolled into one. There was no other, would never be another. The feeling washing over him was of having that love brought into focus, into the light, in this place, this minute.

  Love had blasted away the evil of this place. Yet it could so easily be lost with one misstep.

  She had to love him back. That was the signal he awaited so impatiently.

  When her eyes finally withdrew, he mourned the disconnect. When she tilted her head, as he’d envisioned so many times in his daydreams, baring the naked, glistening skin of her neck … he brushed the length of her old wound with his fingertips.

  Is it me you want, Jesse? Or power to hunt the monsters? You must show me which need rules your decision.

  Her life-pulse beat strongly against his fingers. He lowered his head, angled his face toward that pulse. Hesitating a breath away from her, he closed his eyes, and dared to touch that spot with his lips.

  Anxiety shot through her, and a bit of fear. Yet anticipation was the buzz Jesse gave off. Anticipation of meeting him on his own ground. She wanted to be a crusader, yes, but she also wanted him, no matter what he was. He alone, in all the world, could understand her, she was thinking. He alone could touch her depths.

  He heard her whisper his name as the final piece of the puzzle snapped tight. His fangs grazed her neck, and she stood there, open to this, open to him.

  You have to of fer, he sent to her. You have to be willing.

  Just one more chance to change your mind, Jesse.

  He took her soft skin between his teeth, touched his tongue to the old wound and absorbed her shiver. She did not move, or run away.

  He bit down lightly, only a nip, not enough to draw blood. That action, so minor compared to what lay ahead, opened the gates, and brought the words he needed from her.

  “Not alone.” It was the voice of her soul calling to his. “Never alone again. It’s the only way to save us both. Try, Lance. Save me. Love me. Please take me where you are.”

  There. He had his answer.

  He had her trust.

  Her mouth opened when he found it. He kissed the breath out of her, enfolding her in his arms, crushing her close. She answered his ardor with a willingness he had not imagined.

  The kiss was a drowning kiss, deep, endless. She ran her tongue across his fangs, pricked her lip. The taste of her blood, mixed with a single teardrop, fallen from her eye, filled them both.

  She grew hotter, her pulse wilder, but didn’t struggle against it. For seconds more, Lance reveled in the poignant sweetness. Jesse had relinquished the control that had reined her in. For a few minutes, she had sur rendered herself to the union.

  She had given up a lot.

  Now, he had to do the same.

  Reluctantly removing his lips from hers, taking hold of her hand, Lance turned from Jesse’s alley. With his love beside him, he felt the wind of change on his face.

  Jesse was on her back, on her own bed, in her apart ment. How she got there was a blur. Whether or not she was still clothed didn’t cross her mind. Her attention was riveted on the immortal who left her breathless.

  Her world had become one of pure sensation. A touch of his fingertips here … the taunt of a warm exhalation there … on her bare skin.

  The fangs were in evidence—an iridescent gleam in the partially darkened room. He could have used them twice over, and had not. The vampire had torn himself from her in that hole of an alley, and brought her home.

  He braced himself over her, on the bed, his weight on his arms. Patiently holding himself back, he scored several small bites to her right shoulder in an upward sweep of his teeth. Lean thighs, as taut as the rest of him, pressed against hers. The sheer enormity of his hunger for her caused him to shake.

  And he had turned on a light, knowing how much she feared the dark.

  Jesse wanted to see the entire length of Lance Van Baaren. The glorious whiteness of a creature unused to the sun. But she didn’t take her attention from his face.

  Each move he made caused her to curl toward him. Her body vibrated as his silky curtain of hair brushed across her breasts.

  Surrender. The unspoken word floated between them. She knew what it was supposed to mean. If she joined with him willingly, body, mind and soul, offering up herself, her mortality, her life … the union might catapult her into another realm. One where intentions were everything, and time ceased to exist.

  A new existence, free of old fears. A long-overdue love. A new start.

  Did she dare hope for all that?

  Already his ministrations were life-altering, the pleasure he offered extreme. For the first time in her life, something pleasurable, if completely insane and dangerous, had overtaken her past. Golden light extinguished the darkness. This was no lie, no falsehood. The truth she now knew, the one hidden in the darkness she harbored, was that she hungered for this immortal as much as he hungered for her.

  It was useless to deny how much she wanted him.

  And his blood.

  Her thirst lay coiled inside, an integral part of this. Perhaps he had given her too much of himself already? Did he know?

  His eyes came to meet hers, so vividly blue as to be human. She took his face in her hands, and felt the weight of his body shift, until he was stretched out on top of her, with no space between them and no air to be breathed that didn’t involve his breath. The pressure in her chest
was not conceived of darkness this time, nor was it the pain of withheld memories. It was the weightiness of true connection with another being. The very definition of love. This was a mutual merging, equally surprising to them both. No one person desiring this more than the other. In this, they were already one.

  She wrapped her fingers in his hair and tugged, wanting to feel his masculinity, and at the same time mar his incredible beauty with her nails. Wanting him inside her in an altogether new way. Impatiently desiring it all.

  “Some think I am the dark,” he said, withholding that thing she wanted most at the moment, though Jesse felt him hard against her.

  “They would be right,” she said.

  “You no longer fear me, my love.”

  “I’m different.”

  A wicked smile played on his lips. She tugged again on his hair, said, “How long?”

  His pale eyebrows arched in question.

  “How long will my eyes be closed?” she asked, hear ing the rumble in her voice, feeling the tip of his erection slide into the folds of the place no one had ever dared to touch.

  “Seconds. I’ll be here, waiting, calling. Follow my voice.”

  “The Dark Seduction is over. It’s on with the Sur render part? That’s a real thing?” she gasped.

  His finger pressed against her lips to quiet her. Simultaneously, his other hand reached downward to further open her legs.

  As his ravenous mouth returned with a new fervor, Jesse felt the sting of the sharpness of his fangs on her lips, and the warmth of her own blood on her tongue.

  Lance entered her inferno slowly, with his mouth on her mouth, feeding on her heat.

  His love was scintillatingly hot, and tight. He hadn’t realized how cold he’d been all this time, until con fronting her fire. Each inch he gained inside her moist folds was met by a dozen shudders, and startled sounds of delight that stuck in her throat. Her hands tore at his shoulders and back. Her hips raised to meet his, instinctively urging him on.

  It had been so long since he’d been intimate in this way, he didn’t want to hold back much longer. He didn’t want to be gentle or take his time. Jesse was a fierce soul. Her own impatience screamed at him for culmination almost before things had really begun. And in truth, slowness shouldn’t have mattered. There should be endless time in the future for pleasure and exploration. But nothing was a certainty, Lance reminded himself.

  What if this was to be their first and last time together? If his reasons for doing this were too selfish? If the vow he was breaking in her honor—a vow he had never once undermined—would send him, and Jesse with him, to hell? If they were to be damned?

  Just in case, he should prolong this moment, stretch it out, since it might indeed be their last …

  Jesse wasn’t going to let that happen, he realized. She was not to be deterred from satisfying her hunger. Letting loose a throaty sigh, she wrapped herself around him, met him with a scalding wave of moisture that sent him to the edge and held him suspended there.

  Suddenly, he was afraid. Frightened out of his mind. What if this didn’t work? What if the rumors about this kind of union turned out to be myth? What if he hurt her again? Lost her?

  She might not open her eyes.

  She was rubbing against him now, urging him on, tugging him toward ecstasy, needing him as much as he needed her, and trusting him to get her through this.

  He felt the chaos coming. Not just imminent orgasm, but something beyond the physical … circling, fluttering, suspended, with the smell and taste of night, splashed with blood.

  Thirst.

  “God, Jesse …”

  Lance’s insides contracted, sending his hardness deeper into her. A cry slipped from Jesse as she dug into him with her fingers.

  His fangs ached. His body spasmed as thirst began to overtake him. He kissed her again, long and deep, and drew his hips back. Then he thrust into her plushness, spurred on by the flames in her embrace and the sound of her heart revving. She wanted this. He owed her.

  He repeated the action several more times, pressing himself into Jesse, locked to her with his body and his mouth. Jesse accepted it all.

  Their bodies merged fully, meaningfully, bathed in the hazy red light of a nearly extinct, partial blood moon streaming through the open window.

  Sacrifice was the song that moon sang.

  Bite! Jesse’s soul cried.

  His final plunge reached the core of Jesse Stewart. She screamed her pleasure, and the sound echoed off the walls. The bed shook. The apartment shuddered on its foundation. And the thing that had loomed in the periphery careened down through him and into her, as unrighteous as it may have been, wickedly insatiable and hungry. The result of his broken oath.

  And now for your soul, my love.

  Covered in a light sweat, writhing with the burn of a need reaching its zenith, Jesse turned her head on the pillow …

  And Lance sank his teeth into her neck.

  Liquid filled his mouth, dispersing his senses, threatening to overwhelm. But he had to hold it together. He had seconds, if that, to drain her to her heart’s final beat. Seconds, while she burned … pulling from her not too much, nor too little. Taking her blood and her life force into himself. Bringing her to the brink of death, where nothing but sparks existed on a gray, mountainless plane. After which he would give all that blood, mixed with his own, back to her. Along with her soul.

  Hang on, my love.

  He drank, drawing deeply, and watched her life unfold. He saw it all, and ached with the loneliness she had endured. She did not cry out. Her muscles twitched, then convulsed in helpless waves, but she did hang on.

  Her pulse dwindled to three faint beats.

  Two.

  No rise of her chest. No visible breath.

  No more pain.

  Lance brought his head up quickly, spoke clearly. “You must come back to me, Jesse. That’s the deal.”

  Using his fangs, he tore open his wrist, opened Jesse’s mouth gently and dribbled fluid from his open vein onto her pale, lifeless lips. He laid his bloody wrist over her mouth. His other hand pushed against her chest.

  Drink, Jesse. Now. Do this for me. For us. He sent his demand into her via his blood. He willed her to heed, pleaded with her to obey this one last thing.

  Bless her, she heard. Her bloody lips accepted his offering. Her soul, lighter now but still fierce, and so very lovely, slipped back in through her mouth.

  Chapter 22

  Jesse ran.

  Through the dark streets of L.A., her gun drawn and steady in her gloved hand, its chambers loaded with silver bullets. The soft creak of her leather pants masked the sound of her low whistle.

  Above her, on the rooftop to her right, her lover stood with a confident grace, his leanness outlined by the light of a full moon. As always when she saw him, his beauty took her breath away. But breathlessness wasn’t a problem these days. And no vampire trying to get away with biting someone in her territory could outrun her anymore.

  Plus, she had added another secret weapon to her arsenal. A friend.

  On the ground, fairly close, an answering growl rumbled through the night like a charging freight train.

  “Come on, wolf,” she muttered. “Get this monster and I’ll buy you more muffins than you can possibly eat.”

  She caught soft laughter from above and glanced that way. Tonight, Lance looked the part of the knight he’d once been. She’d seen several of his lifetimes in the heat of passion, though she often tasted the presence of secrets he still withheld.

  Lance was formidable up there on the roof, in his dark pants and leather duster—all that leather a precaution against the silver intended for a rogue vampire invading their space.

  She’d promised him a trip home as soon as this pervert was dust. They’d take Stan along. Nadia would like that, even if Carol wouldn’t be so keen on the separation.

  Everyone deserved a vacation now and then from their secrets. Some freedom. The exception bein
g the monsters, who were presently nearly nonexistent in this part of Los Angeles, thanks to no small thing some called the Night of Dark Surrender, and to her own kind of rebirth.

  And thanks to the gorgeous immortal who taught her things, day by day, and who had shared what he held so dear with her, in the name of love. Bad things, and good things. How to come back from death. How to move through shadows, and survive the light. What it took to control the cravings and the ever-present thirst. But then, she was used to issues of control after a lifetime of dealing with it.

  She was still a fighter.

  Her new images? Buzzwords? Death and rebirth, willingly accepted. Sex and intimacy. Timeless, un ending love beyond imagination, and beyond boundaries. Strange new liaisons. Friendship. Purpose. Guardian angels … the new, unspoken platform for her company.

  She and Lance were two souls entwined. Night souls, reborn of darkness, but allowed to live in the light. Massing their strength to help others in need. Keeping the monsters in their places. Understanding that forces of good can overcome evil in the darkest of circumstances, if the heart is pure. And understanding that love can conquer even the most heinous of prejudices, in the end.

  Way too many things to have learned in six short months.

  “Boss?”

  “Hey! You changed back,” Jesse said, cruising to a stop.

  “Cloud cover,” Stan said. “Plus, he took all the fun out of it.”

  Jesse looked up to find the rooftop empty. She grinned, showing, she knew, a gleam of fang.

  “Mind if I ask what he does with the crazy blood suckers he catches?” Stan asked.

  “Do you really want to know?”

  Stan shrugged. “Nope. Sometime you’ll tell me about this, though. What happened, and how you do anything around those.” He pointed to her mouth.

  Jesse nodded. “Sometime.”

  “Well, I suppose I’ll be off, then, since it’s after mid night,” Stan said, his voice lowering to a bass register.

  “Home?”

  Stan’s turn to grin. “Carol and I have new sheets.”