by Janet Jones
He mouthed her neck again, and an achy urgency burned inside her. The pulsation between her legs hit a teasing little crescendo. “Ohhhhh, I don't think I can take this every time your stomach growls."
He grinned, canines gleaming. Deeper than the keening in his soul, Talisen sensed his elation, his desire to please her. That was the thing that finally pushed her over the edge. Her own mindless need, the preternatural bond that molded them together, finished off her resistance.
She shoved aside his jacket and pulled the neckline of his tee shirt down to taste as much of him as she could reach. Her pleasure mounted. His hunger spiked. She wanted his hands on her. His gaze. His mouth. His body. She wanted to unleash the tidal wave inside of him, ride it, hold it ... in the palm of her hand....
"Evening, all."
A vibration in the air followed Meical's bland salutation, and, embarrassed, Talisen darted out of Ellory's arms.
Grabian materialized in a burst of silver confetti about six paces away and grinned at her. “My pardon, madam."
Ellory tossed him the keys to the Harley. “Take care, Meical. The Alchemist is back. Call me if you have need."
"If you'd been paying attention, my man, you'd have noted the heavy guard we have tonight, compliments of Her Majesty.” Grabian headed toward the fire. “Run along, you craven nit. And do try not to make the old bat angry at us all, won't you?"
Ellory picked Talisen up and backed into the shadow of a stand of spruces. “Close your eyes and say something magical."
"Uhm ... abracadabra?"
She never felt a thing. Quiet and warmth took the place of wild sea sounds and the chill of night. The familiar fragrance of her bath soap reached her, and she opened her eyes. She blinked in the soft light of the bathroom across from her room.
The tub was already full. Her robe hung on the hook on the back of the door, and a clean towel and washcloth lay on the side of the tub. He'd even remembered to add a hair clip so she could put her hair up. Her feet wobbled like rubber when he put her down, and she stared at him with a shiver of awe.
"How did you do this?"
He picked up her soap and sniffed it with his eyes closed. “You're the one who said abracadabra."
"Too bad I didn't think of something more original. I might've had bubbles."
When she glanced around at the tub again, there were bubbles. Mountains of them. She laughed. “Okay, hand over my soap, or your rubber ducky gets it."
He smiled and handed it to her. “I'll be in your room trying not to salivate over the fact that you're wet and naked and less than twenty feet away from me."
When he left her, Talisen undressed and eased into the warm bath. After a few minutes, the silence made her feel like Ellory had dropped off the planet. She had to reach for him. So tell me, is your queen pretty?
Gorgeous. But the fact that she can turn someone into charcoal takes the enjoyment out of looking at her.
Why don't any of you vampires ever turn out ugly?
The better to entice our prey, m'dear. Mean irony, isn't it? His voice sharpened a little. Almost done?
At the sound of the hunger in his tone, her arousal woke again. She tugged the plug out of the drain and stood up. No will of her own. That was what was wrong with her. Had he won? I'm on my way.
He sighed inside her mind. It was a sigh of nearly painful relief. Talisen could actually feel him weakening. She dried herself off and, grabbing her robe, wrapped it around her on the way to her room.
Even in the dim light, she could see the difference in him. He looked like he'd dropped ten pounds while she'd been bathing. The deathly pallor of his skin made his drugging, red eyes look enormous.
She touched his face. “Ellory, you're burning up."
He caught her hand with a catlike reflex that made her jump and ran his tongue between each of her fingers. “Well, at least you won't catch a chill after your bath."
He was in terrible pain, yet he was making jokes. She told herself she shouldn't let it matter to her, but she couldn't fight the tide of feelings that rose inside her. “You look awful."
"You look beautiful."
He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her up on top of him, shoving her loose robe away from her so that she felt him against her bare skin. Her legs dangled away on either side of him, shaky and weak. The bulge in his jeans took her breath away. A slow smile softened the hard planes of his face, and he moved beneath her as though his body were one long, sleek, involuntary muscle.
"I thought you were hungry,” she gasped in his face.
His smile widened. “I am."
"Well, we should watch our time, shouldn't we? Hadn't you better ... you know?"
But he rolled her over and continued moving, smoothing her damp hair away from her face. “I thought you said you weren't to be mistaken for a human milk cow."
She moaned when he drew her knees up around him to improve their contact. If he felt this good to her with his clothes on, what would he feel like naked? She shuddered with need and felt his appetite snarl inside of him in response. “Yeah, and I also ... I also said I ... I'm not going to let this sort of thing happen anymore, and I'm serious."
His head fell forward, and he groaned against her breast. His mouth closed on her nipple, and she jackknifed under him. “Yes, I can tell how serious you are."
Torture. Her senses exploded to encompass everything in the dark—and everything was Ellory. He was in the air that touched her skin, the softness of the bedcovers she clenched in her fingers, the warmth of the fire, the chill of her excitement.
He lifted his head and smiled at her as though he had a secret. Slowly, meticulously, he reached for the pillows, tucking first one underneath her shoulders, then the other. Her blood rushed to her temples when he sat back and let his gaze wander over her. She closed her eyes, heart pounding, while his hunger raged inside them both.
A warm, wet rush of air touched her stomach. His breath? She opened her eyes to find him crouched between her knees. “Ellory, if you're hungry, you're a little south of where you're supposed to be. Aren't you?"
"I have time for an appetizer, if I don't dawdle.” He blew lightly across her abdomen. “Look at me, love."
Utterly lost, she stared into his eyes while he eased her shaking legs apart until she was completely open to him. She reached for something to hold onto. Her fingers closed over his thick, soft hair.
His voice was hushed, yet it reverberated around the room and went right through her. Never had she been so aware of his otherworldly nature.
"I call myself a composer, but in truth, nothing can equal the perfect orchestration of a woman's body. Like coordinated cannon fire off the portside of a war brig. Just beautiful."
He feathered kisses from her navel down to her ebony curls, nipping with his lips, and eased his hands under her bottom to lift her. The stroke of his tongue inside of her wrung a long, low moan from her. It was too intense. She fell into a red-hot sea of pleasure. In his eyes. In his touch.
I'm so thirsty for you, Talisen. Quench my thirst.
Pleas poured out of her. Don't let me go ... please....
His gaze held hers, as devouring as his mouth. The word flooded her mind with pure white light. Never.
He hardened his grip on her backside and moved her against his mouth. She couldn't look away, could hardly hold on. Her breath hung in her throat, and she held it, waiting, suspended at the height of the inevitable plunge. It loomed closer. A breath away. She threw her head back.
No, look at me, Talisen. His voice was deep and husky inside her mind. I want you to watch it happen. I want you to help me make it happen. Reach for it, love. You're so close. Just reach out and take it. This is a part of you. It belongs to you. As do I.
She met his gaze again, halfway between heaven and hell. The devotion in his eyes rocked her to her soul. How could he look at her like that if he were really and truly a danger to her? How could the bond they shared feel so right and be harmful to her?
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He had said it. She couldn't live with one foot in her world and one foot in his, and that was true. She'd tried to run, she'd tried so hard. But she couldn't. Her heart and soul longed for him. It was her pride and fear that kept her from accepting him. She had to let it go. She just had to. This was her Captain who held her, the man she'd longed for all her life, the one whose touch she'd dreamed of in her most private fantasies. He was real. He was alive. And he cared for her.
The last of Talisen's resistance—all her elaborate schemes of escape, her hard-fought battle to ignore her response to him—washed away in the rush of her need. Flesh and muscles rippled between her thighs, up her legs, running ahead of the tidal wave. Her pleasure gushed out of her, and she rocked beneath the torment of his lapping tongue.
For a moment, as she spiraled back to earth, the only sound in her world was the beat of their hearts. They pulsed together, then in counterpoint, then together again, twirling, dancing, entwining, on and on. They sounded so strong and steady together, so indomitable. Endless.
She stirred slightly when she felt him turn his head to nuzzle the inside of her left thigh. The gentle probe of his fingers inside of her brought her wide awake again. He found the slick, swollen pallet of flesh that waited, began a rhythmic massage, and her body began again.
Seconds before her pleasure swallowed her, she felt an icy-hot pleasure-pain tunnel up her leg and into her core. She arched against Ellory's hand, and he eased her back down into the bedcovers even as she cried.
He didn't stop, didn't release her, until she surrendered to a third climax that left her sated and drifting off to sleep.
* * * *
Ellory set Talisen on her feet in the packed parking lot of Sartori's and held her until she stopped shaking. Teleporting was something she'd have to get used to.
While waiting for her to rub the spots out of her eyes and catch her breath, he scanned their surroundings. Two figures in white robes guarded the dimly lit, two-story brick nightclub. He curled his lip. More of Freya's subhuman minions.
He waved a hand around at their surroundings. “Welcome to the armpit of Camden, love."
Talisen glanced around at the packed parking lot. “Sartori's sure draws a crowd."
He smiled at her in the darkness. She didn't realize, of course, that no human walked through those doors of their own volition. They'd all been drawn here by the vampires who waited within—waited to feast on them.
He steered her away from the front entrance and led her around to the shadowy side yard. “This side-stair leads up to Sartori's office. That's where Freya is. Meinrad, too."
Talisen caught his hand. “Yes, I can feel Meinrad's presence, but it's kind of fuzzy."
"You may have difficulty sensing others at a distance through barriers. He seems to have closed himself in the office bathroom and won't come out. Something about the way Freya wants him to dress. And so it begins. Who knows? Maybe she'll give him back to me. Hopefully in one piece."
"You can feel Freya's presence like you feel Meinrad's?"
"Not quite, because I have no blood bond with Freya.” He shrugged. “Without blood bonds, we detect others by fragrance and vibration. Each of us has a signature vibration and a signature scent. Our souls make a cosmic snapshot of our surroundings in the moment we're taken, and the memory manifests itself in a supernatural scent that's unique to each individual. Freya's is jasmine, because she was turned in the upstairs storeroom of a medieval fragrance shop. That's all anyone knows about her beginnings."
"And you smell like the sea and sand and coastal trees because you were turned on the beach."
He nodded and caught her close for a kiss. “Humans are usually incapable of scenting us out. You can smell me because I allow it. That's because I am yours and you are mine."
"Where exactly on the beach were you turned, Ellory?"
"About 150 feet from the spot where I met you."
Talisen pushed her bangs out of her eyes and stared at him. “You didn't tell me that."
He shrugged. “It seems irrelevant."
"No. It's not. Not at all. See, I...."
He watched her run her hands up and down her arms. “Why the goosebumps? What is it?"
She turned toward the stairway. “I've never been able to stay away from that stretch of the beach."
"Really?"
"Yeah."
"I like that, Talisen."
She reminded him of a nimble-footed sprite picking her way through a field of amethysts instead of broken liquor bottles glinting beneath the purple beam of light.
She was warming to him, little by little, learning to accept him. Did she have any idea how grateful he was for her? He would convince her, if it took the rest of her life. But he must go slowly and let the bond do its work.
"What do you do,” she asked, “if you get turned into a vampire in a really stinky place?"
He followed her with a chuckle. “In fact, that's what happened to Dylan. I don't know what Aloisia was thinking. It was cruel, even by her standards. She took him right out of a drunken stupor. I think he'd passed out in a rubbish heap behind the village slaughterhouse. It's a fortuitous thing for him that his prey can't smell him coming. He could gag a maggot off a gut-wagon."
At the foot of the side-stair, Talisen halted, turned and frowned at him. “Hold on. This feels like we're sneaking in."
He sighed, trying to decide how to explain without giving her the sordid details. “This is a feeding ground. There are things going on inside there that I don't want you to see."
She cocked her head to one side. “What are you afraid of?"
He hated the answer to that question. The scent of blood and arousal would be like a fog inside, ready to draw him in and drench him. The taste of Talisen still lingered in his mouth, predisposing him toward a second helping of her. But to feed on her in that place was madness.
"Sartori's brings out the worst in us. I am not immune."
She touched his cheek. Her satin-soft fingers carried the power of a blessing. “You should try trusting yourself more."
He opened his mouth to respond, but a dizzy tingle between his eyes cut off his words.
Freya's voice filled Ellory's mind. I am impressed with her. She will prove valuable to you, I think.
Ellory squeezed Talisen's hand. “It's Freya ... but I don't know how I can hear her...."
Insolent child. I needn't resort to a blood bond to speak to my own. Stop dallying. Come in through the front door. I want everyone to see you. Your neighbors think you're a snob, and I want you to do something to show them how wrong they are. For the time being, I have enabled you all to speak to one another without blood bonds. Sow the seeds of family solidarity.
Ellory felt Talisen's reaching arms wrap around him but couldn't respond to her. How the devil am I to do that, Freya?
I'll leave that to you. Show Dylan that you are no longer at odds with your neighbors. He used your isolation against you once, Ellory, by currying favor with others and capitalizing on their suspicious nature. Don't let him do it again.
There was wisdom in her words. Perhaps he had kept to his own too much, kept his family apart from the others. He hadn't trusted his fellow creatures any more than they had trusted him. Dylan had used that to his own advantage. Ellory bowed his ringing head, and Freya released him.
"Ellory?” Talisen murmured. “Will you please tell me what's going on?"
He opened his eyes and looked down at her with a half-smile. “Freya wants us to make a social coup with the neighbors, and I have no idea how to do that, since everyone inside would very happily dispatch me and drain you dry."
He expected Talisen to turn tail and run, but she took him by the hand and led him back the way they'd come. “You're an entertainer. So, entertain them."
"Are you serious? Perform for them?"
"They're your people, aren't they? They should understand your music better than anyone. Don't be such a snob."
He flinched. “I
predict you and Freya are going to get along splendidly. I find that terrifying."
The two hooded revenants at the front the door let them in with a nod. A strobe light hung over the dance floor, turning everything to a dizzy, stained-glass swirl. The all-vampire band played softly enough not to jar their own ears, but not nearly loud enough to drown out the moans coming from the shadowy periphery of the room.
The rest of the room was as dark as pitch for the sake of the clientele's sensitive eyes. Just as well. By the time Talisen's eyes adjusted, she'd be able to see the blood-flecked walls and floors where some of them had gotten overeager.
The smell of the feast smacked Ellory in the face and went straight to his gut, and thence, to his groin. His fangs pricked their way out of his gums, and he swallowed.
Suddenly there was silence. No music. No voices. No moans. Everyone stared at him. Burning, hungry, challenging eyes shone like stars around him.
Blazek and his entourage drifted out of the crowd, their gazes full of menace. Ellory swept Talisen behind him and sounded a guttural growl of warning.
It was Blazek's voice that Ellory heard, but the others took up the call in euphoric whispers. If you are truly one of us—brother—join in the feast. Let us see you sate yourself.
Ellory tried to mask his hesitation. Surely this wasn't what Freya had in mind. But she wasn't exactly stepping in to commandeer the situation.
Blazek gave him an ugly smile. He will not feed in our presence. He is not one of us.
They hissed their disapproval. Drink. Do it. Show us.
Ellory turned and looked behind him at Talisen. Just a breath away, the crimson fountain he longed for, the embrace he would die for.
Drink.
Yes, why not? She was his. He would show them it was so.
Drink.
He felt the call of his mark on her soul. It pulsed with her need for him. All for him.
Drink!
Oh, yes. Ellory's fangs filled his mouth. His engorged flesh filled his jeans. Wrapping his arms around Talisen, he dragged her against him.
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Chapter Eleven
Above the chant, a sound pierced Ellory's blood-haze. It was Talisen's thought-voice, like milk and honey. It stroked him from the inside out.