Vampire's Companion

by Jory Strong

  They parked in front of the apartment they’d visited earlier. A light was on inside.

  “Looks like luck is with us,” he said.

  Cia got out.

  Heat and hunger surged through him, so intense his hips jerked upward and he vise-gripped his cock to keep from coming.

  Terach.

  The slightest mental touch gave and took information on timing and location.

  Cia leaned down to determine what was keeping him, blushed at seeing the savage grip on his cock, though her lips parted.

  “With you in a minute,” he gasped, finding amusement in the situation once he was able to peel his hand from his dick.

  She was at the door when he caught up to her.

  “What can I say? I’m a guy.”

  Her laugh was quickly stifled. So soft he might not have heard it except for the blood connection they shared.

  He smiled. Enough time in his company and he bet he could make her forget she was a cop for days at a time, not just minutes or hours.

  The door was opened by a brunette in her mid to late twenties, not the barely legal shack-up Sonya had implied.

  “Mindy?” Cia asked.

  When the woman confirmed it, Cia introduced them and explained the reason for the visit, asking if Chloe or her father was there.

  “No, neither of them is here.”

  “Do you have a minute?” Cia asked.

  Mindy shifted from one foot to the other. “I don’t have anything to offer. Really. I’ve been out of town for the last week. Robert told me the police had contacted him about Kadence running away. I’m sure he told them everything he knows.”

  “Does Chloe have a bedroom here?”

  “Yes.” She stepped fully into the doorway, anticipating what Cia would ask next. “I don’t feel comfortable letting you search it, not unless you have a warrant. I’m sorry but… Things are a little tricky, with Chloe, and between Chloe and Robert because of his leaving Sonya.”

  Mindy’s right hand moved up and down on the doorjamb. She glanced over her shoulder as though conscience warred with guilt.

  “Can you give us anything?” Cia asked. “Anything at all? Kids Kadence’s age think they’re invincible. They think they have all the answers. But I’m a homicide cop, and before that a street cop. I’ve seen what happens to runaways.”

  Mindy’s hand dropped from the doorframe then returned as if she didn’t know what do with it. “It might be nothing…”

  You don’t believe that. But he remained silent, letting Cia work it.

  “Let us decide if it’s useful or not.”

  Her use of us had warmth sliding through his chest.

  Mindy rubbed the doorframe, harder this time. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t let on that I told you this.”

  Cia nodded rather than give a verbal promise.

  Mindy sighed, hand dropping to her side again. “Chloe is…difficult. Neither of her parents wants to be the heavy, and it’s not my place to be. I mean, I’m just the girlfriend.”

  Her voice trailed off. Cia said, “And kids that age can be hard to deal with anyway.”

  “Exactly. I know I was. If Chloe is asked to do a chore, she’ll either ignore the request or argue about it. But…”

  “Please, let us decide if what you’ve noticed is useful or not.”

  Mindy’s exhale sounded shaky. “Okay. Okay. For the last few months Chloe has been volunteering to get the mail. She and Kadence will show up together. They’ll hang out, then say they’re going to the game room or to check out the pool and would I like for them to stop by the box.”

  “She doesn’t have her own key?”

  “No. She’s asked, but Robert hasn’t gone to the rental office and arranged for her to have one.” Mindy shrugged. “So I let her use mine. There’s no reason to say no.”

  “And when they come back to the apartment?”

  “They’ve just got our mail. I’ve watched them get into Chloe’s car with boxes and packing envelopes before coming inside. It might be nothing. I mean, Robert and Sonya don’t say no when Chloe wants something. They’re her personal ATMs.”

  Cia probed for several minutes without gaining anything new. In the car he said, “Definitely something to pursue. Tomorrow.”

  He moved in as close as possible, an arm going around her headrest, his body turned toward her. She stiffened, the prickly cop returned.

  Did he dare poke at her the way a camper might a porcupine? He grinned. Why not? That was but one glorious aspect of his returned freedom.

  He waited until close to Tessa’s house, to Terach, heat and hunger intensifying with proximity.

  “Shall we continue the conversation on the beach?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “What about this?”

  He cupped her breast and was rewarded by the stab of her nipple. By a moan that belonged to him alone, by the scent of aroused woman.

  “I’m thinking the answer is yes,” he said, anticipation building.

  They rolled to a stop in front of Tessa’s house and Terach rose from a chair on the porch. Cia’s breath caught. Her heart hammer-beat against his palm.

  “Going to keep hiding from the truth? Going to run from it?” He gave her nipple a sensual twist before releasing it to snag the house keys in the console tray. “Or you could just join us.”

  He got out of the car and jogged to Terach, foregoing the immediate gratification of a kiss in favor of unlocking and opening the door, preventing complication with the necessary invitation. “Come on in.”

  Terach’s smile was match touched to gasoline. Incendiary lust made hotter by Cia’s following him to the house rather than driving away.

  “No greeting for your devoted slave?” he asked, and it had the desired effect.

  Terach jerked him forward, cock to cock, rough hands in his hair. Is this what you want?

  Hard lips claimed. Plundered. Waged a war that ultimately would have only one end, a shout of pleasure and searing rush of semen.

  Oh yeah, this was what he wanted. Or part of it anyway.

  He touched his tongue to Terach’s canines, daring their descent into fangs. He reveled in the jerk of Terach’s hips, the grind of his cock and the pain that followed when Terach’s hands tightened in his hair in preparation for yanking his head backward to feed.

  Need scorched through him. Unrelenting ache magnified by the day spent with Cia and intensified by the feel of her gaze on them.

  He wanted to open his jeans, to open Terach’s.

  In a minute, Terach said.

  A minute is too long.

  Terach’s cock throbbed in reaction to the desperate hunger in Israel’s voice. He struggled to end the kiss, the images in Israel’s mind near compulsion because they echoed his desires so thoroughly.

  Impressions of Cia lying beneath Israel were a velvet fist around his cock. He shuddered, left Israel’s lips on a groan to turn his attention to his companion.

  Her nipples were outlined against the front of her shirt, fueling fantasies and his hunger for her. “He tastes of you. He smells of you. Did you let him love you?”

  She blushed, forcing him to hide a smile.

  “We didn’t go all the way.”

  His laugh was a husky promise. “That’s something I’ll have to set to rights then.”

  Her shoulders squared. “You hypnotized me that night.”

  He admired the way she made the accusation without flinching or dropping her gaze from his. “Only to heal you, Cia. I didn’t make you desire me.”

  He felt that desire through the bond. It lapped against him like a heated tongue, though he needed no coaxing when it came to his cock. If not trapped by the jeans he wore, it would already have pulled away from his body as if to go to her hand, to make its own plea for her lips.

  He felt her confusion, her desire, her lingering resistance despite having been intimate with Israel. What did you tell her?

  Israel sighed, a soft sound rather than a
putout one. In the end, nothing. But she knows what happened. She just refuses to face it fully.

  He glanced at Israel. You’re sure?

  Positive.

  He trusted Israel’s read. He could argue it changed things, and that because she continued to wear his medallion and had allowed Israel to touch her, Gian’s edict to court her no longer applied.

  He could claim that Syndelle’s gift, alone, and the need to ensure the safety of The Masada, took precedence over easing Cia into the world she was now a part of. But he knew too well the rage and pain of having another’s will forced on him, so he did nothing to compel her into facing and accepting the truth.

  He stepped into the house, there to stay unless Cia revoked Israel’s invitation. With the close of the door, his cock banged against his zipper in a demand to get out. The smoldering sensuality in Israel’s eyes, the throbbing awareness that Israel needed to come, begged the question—push Cia and risk her retreat? Or allow her time in their company.

  Israel took the decision from him, dropping to his knees and creating a surge of lust. Terach’s hands went to his belt, need sharpened by the parting of Cia’s lips, the scent of her arousal.

  She remained in place, held prisoner by the same desire he felt. The button gave, then the zipper. His cock burst free of its confinement, only to be captured by Israel’s hand, imprisoned in a firm grip.

  Pleasure lanced through him. His buttocks clenched and arousal escaped to bead on his cock head, invitation enough for Israel’s lips and tongue.

  A moan was wrenched from him at first contact. A second came with a heated swirl over his crown, the dart and delve and lapping away of precum.

  Cia’s scent deepened. Her heart raced in pounded temptation.

  He fought the descent of fangs. His gaze dropped to Israel and possessiveness gripped him.

  Israel’s fisted hand drew more blood downward, heightening the hunger to feed.

  Ecstasy shuddered through Terach with the tight clasp of lips around his cock head. Slow sucks and heated licks had him gripping Israel’s hair, fingers buried in it to hide the sharp threat of talons capable of tearing an enemy’s heart out—or opening a vein for a lover’s lips.

  He let nails elongate in sexual threat, the prick of them against Israel’s scalp both warning and demand.

  It gained him inches. And those inches buried in Israel’s mouth became a demand for more.

  He thrust, attempting to drive his cock deeper, to the back of Israel’s throat. But Israel was too well versed in how to pleasure another man to let him rush to release.

  Hands and tongue, the tightening of lips and the warning of teeth, Israel countered with a demand for total surrender, and that surrender was inevitable.

  Control deserted Terach, his thrusts becoming savage, wild. His pleasure escalating with Cia’s quickening breath and the rise and fall of hard-capped breasts.

  He wanted to fuck her. He wanted to fuck Israel. He wanted to sink his fangs into each of them.

  The hunger for both burned in his veins, driving him into a frenzied pistoning of hips and slamming him into ecstasy with the arch of his back and a scorching rush of semen.

  He pulled from Israel’s mouth, Cia’s soft whimper of need reaching him. Her desire stretched across the distance between them. Her will.

  She wanted to be overwhelmed, taken, her caution and reason obliterated by passion.

  For a shimmering instant his need for the same nearly overwhelmed him. But he didn’t yield to his companion.

  He didn’t want a repeat of having passionate lover become cool, controlled cop. He didn’t want the accusation that he’d hypnotized her to leave her lips again.

  He tugged Israel upward. Grasped a nipple bar so Israel’s head went back on a moan.

  A twist, a second moan and he slid his hand over Israel’s taut abdomen to settle on cloth-covered cock. His smile was tease and challenge as he turned her words back on her, “You didn’t go all the way with him, but I intend to. Join us, Cia?”

  He didn’t wait for her to answer, but turned away, guiding Israel toward an open doorway, and the bed visible through it.

  Cia stood frozen in place. Nothing short of a gunshot could have made her look away.

  They stripped out of their clothing, beautifully masculine men who could have stepped off the cover of a romance book with their sculpted features and bodies unmarred by tan lines. They were perfection—and together, mesmerizing in their eroticism.

  A step made by either one and their cocks would touch and rub like sensuous, dueling swords. Terach was hard again.

  It should be physically impossible. She had enough experience with lovers to know that, but he’d been the same way that night at Fangs, taking her repeatedly.

  She remembered the feel of him on her, in her. Just as she could easily remember the imprint of Israel’s body, the weight of it pressing her into the sand.

  Terach’s hand captured Israel’s cock, thumb rubbing over the tip.

  Her channel clenched. She pressed her legs together but that only made her more aware of the burn between them, the empty ache and panties so wet that arousal now coated her inner thighs.

  Terach drew Israel forward. A moan escaped when they kissed. Hers, theirs, she could no longer distinguish.

  She caught herself rubbing her nipples. Felt the hard press of her clit against her panties.

  Her womb fluttered. The need to push her hand beneath the waistband of her panties and capture her clit was overwhelming.

  Join them.

  Instead she wrenched herself away from the sight and fled to the kitchen, stopping in front of the sink to stare blindly out the window.

  Husky, masculine sounds of pleasure followed her into the room. She shook with the effort of denying herself.

  Accept this and she’d end up accepting the rest of it. She’d one day view the scene at Fangs as normal.

  Rico did.

  Does.

  A twinge went through her chest. There was no mistaking the happiness he’d found by allowing himself to love Skye and accept Gian, to risk it all, including his career, by following his heart.

  I could have the same.

  Romantic suspense wasn’t the only thing she read. She longed to be the same kind of woman as those between the covers of her favorite erotic stories, women who owned their sexuality, who weren’t ashamed or embarrassed by it.

  Her mother had countered the occult years of her own childhood with religious devotion—the byproduct of which was an inhibition Cia found hard to consciously shake.

  Here’s my chance to. She trembled, the rhythmic compress and release of the mattress filling her mind with the imagined flex and clench of masculine buttocks.

  She clung to the sink. In the bedroom movement quickened, then quickened again, ending with Israel’s shouted release.

  Coward.

  The epitaph lingered until the shower went on, then off.

  She turned from the empty scene framed by the window.

  No. Not a coward tonight.

  Israel had thought Terach’s arrival was a good enough way to end the day, until Cia walked into the bedroom. He hid his smile at seeing the slightest tilt upward of her chin, as if she were going into battle.

  Well, maybe she was, but it would be one waged by sensual caresses, by the thrust of cocks.

  He went to her, half afraid she’d change her mind and flee. Trapping her back to his chest, he said, “All day long you’ve had too many clothes on.”

  His lips traveled the length of her neck and zeroed in on her ear.

  A flick of his tongue and she shivered. The capture of her lobe and she moaned. Then moaned again and that sound was swallowed by Terach.

  Israel ground his cock into Cia’s cloth-covered ass. Would she let them take her there?

  Need roared through him at imagining the tight clasp, the feel of Terach’s cock along his, separated by only a thin barrier, both of them inside her at the same time.

&nb
sp; He opened her shirt, making bare skin accessible. She burned against his hand, tiny tremors telling him she wanted this as desperately as they did. He’d touched her intimately at the beach, would gladly have thrust inside her then, but Terach’s presence heightened the pleasure of this surrender.

  Tugging at the loosened fabric of her shirt, he pulled it downward, forcing her arms behind her.

  Her fingers brushed his cock. It spasmed and he was the one to moan.

  He freed her of the shirt. Captured her hand and wrapped it around his shaft, holding it there and pumping through feminine fingers.

  “Oh yeah,” he said, ecstasy racing up his spine.

  Her hand tightened in reaction, sending another pulse of pleasure through his dick so precum leaked from the tip and wet her fingers.

  He exhaled on a pant. “If you’d done this at the beach I’d have been a goner.”

  “I would have arrested you as a perv.”

  He nipped her earlobe, let her hand go in favor of unclasping her bra. He rubbed his palms against turgid nipples then captured them. Pressed his lips to her neck, eyes closing with the pleasure of fucking through her fist, the need for release building until he was the one to stop the torment rather than coat her back with semen.

  He stepped away but distance didn’t cool his skin or his desire. He removed her bra, pressed his chest to her back and challenged his control by opening the front of her pants, by sliding his hand beneath the waistband of her panties.

  Wet. She was so wet.

  A tug downward on clothing and nothing separated her ass from his cock.

  Molten fire swelled his balls and surged up his dick. He ground himself against satiny buttocks, his fingers grasping her engorged clit, pumping it, rubbing his fingers over the smooth head.

  She cried out, bucked, drenched his hand with arousal.

  Finish it! Terach commanded, and he was only too happy to obey.

  He fucked his fingers into her the way he’d wanted to do for hours, pressed and rubbed his palm to her clit.

  His mouth sought her ear, tongue mimicking his fingers with thrusts and licks and the suck of her lobe.

  She came, body going rigid. Heat flashing where she was plastered to him, her cunt clenching and unclenching on his fingers, her clit pulsing against his palm.