by Aja James
A vein throbbed in Ryu’s temple.
He wouldn’t be able to survive watching her die.
“Are you related to Evergreen or Genesis? Do you have rapid healing genes too?”
Ryu supposed that was as good a start as any to the deluge of questions he knew she’d flood him with.
“I don’t know if I’m related to the subjects who provided those samples,” he said. “But I do have genes unlike that of humans. There are two races that I know of that can heal as I do. The Dark Ones and the Pure Ones. I am the former. There might be a hundred thousand of us around the world. I doubt we are all related.”
“What’s the difference between the two races?” she asked in rapid fire succession.
“We have different limitations. Dark Ones need to consume human blood to survive,” and sometimes souls, he didn’t add, “and feel compelled to rest during the day. You call us vampire in your mythologies.”
“And Pure Ones?” She seemed completely unperturbed that he identified himself as a vampire.
“I don’t know that much about them, except that a Cardinal Rule built into their DNA prevents them from having intercourse with anyone except their Destined Mate.”
“A natural breeding program and population control,” Ava mused.
Ryu paused. He’d never thought of it that way. He supposed that if their races lived indefinitely as long as they stayed whole, it would make sense to have built-in mechanisms to prevent overpopulation. Otherwise, there would not be enough natural resources and food source to sustain them.
She scrutinized his chest, taking in the faded markings where severe puncture wounds and deep, open gashes used to be.
“My blood did that for you?”
An echo of the pain from his wounds was still there, throbbing beneath his skin, burning in his tissues, but Ryu had healed enough to be out of danger. If he fed from her again as thoroughly as he had thirty-six hours ago, he would be almost good as new within another day or two.
“Yes.”
“How often do you need blood?”
“Every few weeks or so.”
“Are all vampires like you?”
“No.” Most vampires had a lot less self-control and fed as often as possible.
“How often do you take blood?”
“Usually when I need it.” Never when he wanted it, for he had never wanted to take another’s blood until now.
Until Ava.
“Who do you take it from?”
Ryu exhaled. “What are you really asking?”
Her eyes pierced into his. “Does everyone you… feed… from feel this way?” she whispered. “This… overwhelming need inside?”
He thought about lying to her. Yes. Every female I’ve fed from feels the emotions and physical desires you feel. What we have between us isn’t unique at all.
Except he couldn’t bring himself to say it when she stared at him like that, so open and trusting, her heart laid bare.
“No,” he said simply, irrevocably, as if pounding a stake into the ground.
She took a deep breath as if she’d been holding it.
“Just so you know, I feel this way about you all the time, not just… you know…” she gestured in the direction of his closed lips, behind which rested two fully-extended fangs, “since the first moment I smelled you.”
Ryu’s lips quirked.
“Really?” He didn’t say it like a question.
She nodded quite emphatically.
“You know how animals are attracted to their mates by pheromones? And usually the strongest attract the strongest and they mate and have stronger offspring? I don’t have proof of course, but I’d bet one of my degrees that your scent is designed specifically to turn me into putty.”
“Putty,” he echoed. “Is that a scientific term?” His eyes crinkled to match the humor twitching in his lips.
“And then the sight of your cheek bones melted me into a gelatinous, quivering mass,” she went on, standing up.
He touched his cheek self-consciously, warily eyeing her approach as she slowly moved toward him.
“But it was your voice that slayed me,” she whispered when she stood between his spread thighs, eye-level with him in the chair. “So unexpectedly… raw… coming from such a pretty face.”
He didn’t think to defend his masculinity at her use of “pretty.” He was torn between wry amusement at her words and edgy anticipation for what she would do next.
“I didn’t know what desire was until you,” she said, her hands coming up to rest on his shoulders, then knitting together behind his neck.
“You’re made just for me, Ryu Takamura. I want to claim you for my very own.”
He had no words. He felt too much. Too many emotions he’d never felt before. His discipline was crumbling under her gentle assault.
He felt that if he didn’t hold absolutely still, he would shatter into a million pieces that could never be put back together again.
She didn’t seem to require a response, bending close to kiss him briefly on the mouth. It was a caress of pure affection, with a bit of playfulness and a dash of mischief.
“Can vampires have children?” she asked against his lips.
So her interrogation wasn’t over yet.
He hesitated. He’d heard of True Bloods who were Dark Ones born, rather than made. The ex-Chosen Inanna was one of the rare breed.
“Yes.”
“Do you want to have children?”
Dark Goddess above… her innocent question sliced through him like a samurai’s sword. He’d never thought… never dreamed…
“A little girl who looks just like you,” she continued with delight, “an Asian Snow White with—”
Abruptly, he set her away from him and sprang up from his chair, taking himself to the opposite corner of the room, folding his arms as if he were impatient and annoyed, when in truth, he was in so much pain he was desperately trying to hold himself together.
“I was made a vampire,” he said flatly, his gaze on the floor. “I have never heard of Dark Ones made being able to reproduce. Probably related back to your theory of population control.”
She watched him in silence, feeling the seismic shift in his mood.
“This whole research you’re involved in—it’s intended to create vampires on a mass production line, from test tubes, or turn humans into vampires without limit. Think about the ramifications of that.”
Ava frowned. “It’s not to cure patients of degenerative diseases? It’s not—”
“That might be a side effect,” Ryu allowed. “A lot of scientific research is pursued for one purpose but used for another. When scientists in the early 20th century advanced physics with a better understanding of atoms, they were looking for new ways to provide and harness energy. But one of the offshoots of that research was the atom bomb, launched on two cities right here in my homeland, which are still suffering the consequences to this very day.”
Ava swallowed as the realization of what she’d been a part of started to sink in.
“You’re right about population control,” he went on, his voice lowering, his eyes cast downwards, “who wants more bloodsuckers running around? I’m not sure why there are Dark Ones in the first place. I certainly didn’t volunteer to become one.”
“Ryu—”
“Even if I could f-father offspring,” he plowed on, “no female would ever want my seed.”
She opened her mouth again to interrupt.
But his glittering black stare stopped her short as he met her eyes straight on.
That awful quirk of his lips was there again. The expression he wore whenever he wanted to retreat behind a mask. It was a look Ava detested with all her being, especially when it was directed at her.
“You want to know me, Dr. Monroe,” he said silkily, his voice low and hypnotic, “then listen well.”
Ava held her breath.
“I was human once. Born to a prostitute, made into a whore, and trained
to be a killer.”
He spread his lips in a ghastly simile of a smile, baring his fangs.
“Now claim me if you dare.”
Chapter Twelve
Ava flinched but didn’t look away.
“Since turning vampire, I’ve made killing my exclusive profession,” he continued smoothly, almost bored, as if talking about something as mundane as the weather.
“I’m exceedingly good at it. My moniker among my Kind is Assassin. Not very inventive, is it? But fitting nevertheless. I have many weapons at my disposal, fucking included, to get what I want.”
She came to him then, chased him across the length of the room.
Shaking. Her body was shaking with emotion.
He wondered detachedly whether she was going to strike him for his hateful words. He’d purposely demeaned what had just happened between them a short while ago. He wanted her to hate him. It was an emotion he understood well.
“Don’t say such things about yourself,” she whispered, still shaking, her eyes wide and sorrowful.
“It’s all true,” he said carelessly, his expression sardonic. “I have never pretended otherwise.”
Her hands rose, and he almost pulled back. But he made himself stay still.
She was just a human female, he told himself. He was not afraid of her.
Her hands fell again, and he thought she would turn away now, her illusions about him, about what she felt, obliterated by reality.
Instead, she gently, inexorably unfolded his arms and wrapped her own around his waist as she laid her cheek against his chest, right against his heart as it beat almost frantically within its cage.
“I hear you,” she murmured, acknowledging his confession. She rubbed her cheek against his skin and nuzzled her nose in the center of his chest, inhaling deeply, then rested her cheek there again.
For long moments she simply held him, offering her warmth, offering unconditional affection, and he felt protected. He, the Assassin, felt protected by a slip of a human female who made Bambi look tough.
He felt increasing panic at how in such a short period of time, he had come to depend on her. How much he wanted and needed her. The pleasure she represented and gave him made him all the more aware of the pain that he had always carried within.
This was what his Master had warned him of. This weakness and vulnerability brought about by pleasure. By desire.
“I hear you,” she repeated softly against his chest.
Then she looked up into his eyes and caught him in an unguarded moment, her eyes bright and intense with emotion.
“I see you,” she said, and he almost believed she could look directly into his soul.
“I love what I see, Ryu Takamura. I love you.”
He inhaled sharply and was suddenly furious. Why did she keep pushing him? Why didn’t she run away? Couldn’t she tell he was a monster? A killer?
“You will realize one day that you’ve wasted your emotions on me,” he told himself as much as he was telling her. “You will regret this.”
“Maybe,” she conceded, “but emotions are not things one can bring to heel like a good little terrier, at least mine aren’t that way. And I have always been taught to trust my instincts and be honest with myself and the people around me. If I died tomorrow and didn’t tell you how I feel, that’s what I’d regret more.”
She hugged him tighter and rose on tiptoe to brush her lips against his throat.
“May I have you, Ryu? For a little while if not forever?”
She kissed his chin and his jaw.
“I want to be yours too,” she added, in case he was in any doubt. “For as long as you’re willing to have me.”
Despite himself, something in him thawed.
“Are you always this persistent in getting what you want?”
“Oh always,” she agreed readily. “I am extremely single-minded when it comes to getting what I want. But I’ve never had to woo a guy this hard before. How am I doing?”
He shook his head at her, but there was a reluctant smile in his eyes.
She grinned back, then searched his face with an expression of concern.
“I think you look too pale,” she said. “Perhaps you ought to… you know… drink a little more.”
“Do you think so?” he queried while baring the tips of his fangs at her, making her shiver.
She nodded solemnly. “And maybe, we could try it while this is inside me.” One of her hands wandered down to grip his erection through his pants.
“Hmm,” he murmured noncommittally.
She slipped both hands into his pants and pushed the loose material past his buttocks. She squeezed his sex with one hand and cupped his ass with the other.
“I wish I had fangs too so I could sink them into you,” she whispered, breathing in his intoxicating scent, which had deepened into a rich musk over the past few seconds.
“Everywhere. I want penetrate you everywhere.”
Enough. Ryu took control of the situation by lifting her up against him and entering her slick, hot tunnel in one long glide.
She gasped and held tightly onto him, her legs wrapped around his waist.
He turned them around so that she was sandwiched between him and the wall, which he used as leverage as he steadily pumped into her.
“Ryu…” she gasped as the first shockwaves of her orgasm ripped through her.
He knew what she wanted and chose that moment, as her climax reached its zenith, to sink his fangs into her throat and take the first deep draw.
Ava moaned long and loud, shuddering all over as her orgasm went on and on, intensifying with the flow of blood from her body into his, as he held his erection deep within her providing that perfect fullness, that exquisite pressure.
She lost track of how long he nursed at her throat. It could have been minutes, it could have been hours. All she knew was that as long as he drank from her, her orgasm continued in unending waves.
The sustained contraction of her core around his swollen sex made a delicious soreness tingle throughout her womb, and between his feeding and her not so “petite” mort, she was starting to feel extremely drowsy and dizzy.
“You…” she murmured sleepily, “…come…I want your seed. I want all of you.”
For a moment he froze. And then he licked the wounds at her neck closed and stared into her half-closed eyes.
As he held her gaze, his hips began to move in a purposeful, controlled rhythm.
“Look down, Ava,” he commanded, and she promptly obeyed.
As she watched avidly, he pulled slowly out of her body to the edge, exposing inch by steely inch, the thick—and yes she thought it—stallion length of his sex, glistening with their fluids, wrapped by thick veins, then entered her just as slowly, so that she felt every inch of that gorgeous power push through the sensitive channel of her vagina, expanding her—
Claiming her—
Until he unerringly hit home and ground the plump head against her G-spot with a subtle roll of his hips.
And did it again.
And again.
Ava’s breath came in increasingly rapid bursts as the pace at which he penetrated her also quickened.
She couldn’t take her eyes away from his sex plunging into hers, her labia growing redder, plumper, her clit quivering with her ongoing orgasm yet still swollen and hard in anticipation of even more, his pubic bone grinding on the voracious little bud every time he surged to the hilt within her, her vagina milking his penis in shuddering, clenching pulses, their fluids dripping down the tumid column of his erection, down his scrotum and his thighs.
She reached down a hand to latch onto the base of his penis as he worked her. She wanted to feel and see and hold that power that he leashed and wielded so precisely, concentrating all of it on her pleasure.
“Come.” It was she who commanded him this time. “Now.”
A raw groan tore from his throat as he obeyed her, and she greedily reveled in the experience—the sound
of his voice, the rumble of it through his chest, the blossoming of his aroma all around them, steaming from his skin, the moment when his sex jerked with the flow of semen, the release of his seed in hot gushes deep within her, the pulse of his glans against her pleasure center, intensifying and triggering another explosive climax of her own.
She never took her eyes away from where they were intimately joined. Didn’t blink despite the desperate need to close her eyes in the throes of her release. She didn’t want to miss a single second of seeing him come. Seeing his claiming of her up close and personal.
When the flow of his seed finally ebbed, she had to forcibly drag her eyes away from his slightly heaving eight-pack abs to travel up his body to his face.
“You’re still hard,” she whispered, half disbelieving, one-hundred-percent impressed, involuntarily clenching around that magnificent organ with a squeeze of her thighs.
“Yes.”
He still had her pegged to the wall like a butterfly. Or maybe a bumble bee.
She licked her lips. “You weren’t kidding when you said you could go on until I tell you to stop, were you?”
“No.”
Ava’s mind boggled. “What if I never want you to stop? Can… can a person die of pleasure?” The look on her face indicated that she might just push that potential risk to its limits.
A deep, full-bodied chuckle vibrated through him and she felt it everywhere.
He shook his head at her. “You’re priceless, Dr. Monroe.”
“I know,” she concurred, “I’m one of a kind.”
Languorously, she stretched, still held against the wall, still an extension of his body, in a luxurious yawn.
“Sleepy,” she murmured and closed her eyes, as if she was perfectly happy to pass out with her legs wrapped around his waist, her weight supported by his hands and the wall.
“I’m not done with you though,” she said, “hmm… taste… want to taste you…”
But she lost the battle with exhaustion and fell fast asleep.
Keeping them joined, Ryu laid her down on the tatami and held her on her side facing him. She instinctively snuggled in as close to him as she could, shifting her hips to take him as deep inside of her as possible and held him there, her leg draped over his hip, her face nuzzled into his chest.