by Anya Nowlan
“Ruby,” he mumbled against her mouth. “Do you know what you’re doing?”
Pulling away, she blinked at him. He looked healthy again, with even a slight flush to his cheeks, and his eyes were more intense than ever, twin emeralds burning right into her.
“I know I want you,” she replied, surprised at the words tumbling out of her mouth.
Harlan groaned softly at that, brushing his thumb over her jaw.
“Don’t say that unless you mean it, little gemstone,” he said softly. “Because if I kiss you again, I won’t be able to stop.”
A thrill went through Ruby as everything the two of them had just been through melted away. They were both alive, despite valiant efforts by Grant to put them both in the ground. And she didn’t want to waste a second of her life on trying to talk herself out of what she craved.
Harlan was sexy, confident and powerful. And even though he liked to act like he was just some carefree party boy, there was a lot more to him. He had a strong sense of right and wrong, and he kept putting his life on the line for her even when he didn’t have to.
She didn’t want to feel the way she did about him, but trying to deny the crazy attraction she felt toward him wasn’t working either. And why couldn’t she just go for what she wanted, for once? Wallowing in all she’d lost and pondering her uncertain future definitely wasn’t making her feel better.
But being around Harlan sure does.
“Then don’t stop,” she whispered, her hands sliding down to his chest.
He was still covered in blood, but the skin beneath her hands was now smooth, no sign of his injuries remaining. It seemed her blood had really done the trick. She smiled when Harlan’s mouth came crashing down on hers, devouring her until she was breathless and needy, shamelessly grinding on his lap.
The feeling of having Harlan want her as much as she wanted him was heady and powerful. Her hands roamed across his body, over his hard, sculpted chest, powerful shoulders and thick, muscular arms. She couldn’t get enough of him.
His hard cock was now pressing into her slit as she rocked back and forth on his lap. Her insides were already throbbing with need, her nipples hard against her bra. Harlan’s hands tangled in her hair, pulling lightly and making her scalp tingle.
The rush of all these different sensations was overwhelming and intoxicating, and to think, it all started with a bite… The way Harlan had drunk from her couldn’t have been more different than when Grant ripped into her.
But she didn’t want to think about Grant. All Ruby wanted was Harlan to make her his, to melt away in his arms and enjoy this reprieve from reality. His hands trailed fire down her body as he moved to cup her ass.
The next moment was a blur, as Ruby suddenly found herself on the backseat, with Harlan on top of her. He held himself up with one hand, the length of his body softly rubbing against hers as he kissed her deeply, drinking her in.
Ruby sighed as his free hand outlined her body, taking special care to linger near her breasts and hips. Arching her back to get closer to him, she moaned into his mouth. The sound of her clothes ripping filled the car, and she was momentarily grateful she’d parked it in a secluded alley.
Harlan broke the kiss to stare down at her, now clad in only her underwear, grabbing at every part of him she could reach.
“You’re beautiful, Ruby Danvers,” he said, as he used his knee to part her thighs. “I can’t wait to hear you call out my name.”
Already soaking wet, Ruby could only whimper as Harlan’s knee pressed against her throbbing clit, applying just the right amount of pressure to keep her on edge and have her body screaming for more.
“Then what are you waiting for,” she whispered, squirming against him. “I’m ready.”
13
Harlan
“You’re not ready until I say you’re ready,” Harlan chuckled, taking in the sight of Ruby’s luscious body.
There was blood on her hands from where she’d touched his chest, and he could really see the extent of her scars now. They trailed down the side of her neck to her shoulder, ending in a small dent in her skin, where it looked like Grant had taken a chunk of her with him when he’d left her bleeding in that alley.
Suppressing the anger building inside him at that thought, Harlan chose to focus on Ruby. Her dark hair was spread out all around her, with small bits of plaster from her apartment walls still stuck to it. She looked like a warrior, a survivor, a beautiful woman who had been put through hell.
And she had decided to come out the other side even stronger than she had been before.
The car was filled with her scent, from her blood to her skin to the smell of her arousal, and he took a deep breath to appreciate it all. Pulling off his pants so he could feel more of her skin on his, he crouched down on the edge of the backseat, with Ruby splayed out in front of him.
She trembled as he started kissing up her legs, letting his teeth graze her soft, smooth skin. Her breathing became more uneven when he reached her inner thighs, nuzzling and kissing the sensitive skin there.
“Oh, god…” he heard her mutter, and it made him smile.
“Just me, I’m afraid,” he grinned, earning a half-hearted groan from her.
“So arrogant,” she said, but her words turned to moans when his mouth moved to her pussy.
Kissing around her wet slit, through the thin fabric of her cotton panties, his hands slid to hold on to her waist and keep her steady as he teased her. His cock twitched, pressed against her thigh, as the urge to taste her became overwhelming.
Pushing her panties to the side, he spread her open with one slow lick, enjoying the tremble it drew from her. Her juices coated his tongue, even sweeter than her blood, as he started to tease her with his mouth, drawing back whenever he could feel her getting too close to the edge.
When her whimpers started getting more and more frustrated, he pulled away, letting his tongue drag up toward her stomach. Hands caressing her sides as his mouth kissed around her navel and up to her breasts, he looked up to see the most gorgeous flush on Ruby’s cheeks.
Her eyes were closed, goosebumps spreading all over her as he took his time. Harlan didn’t want to rush anything with Ruby. He wanted them both to enjoy every second. It felt like he could taste her skin forever and never get sick of it.
But the way she was writhing around told him she was ready for more.
“How do you do this to me?” she whispered, as he dragged his body upward.
“I just listen,” he replied, peppering the swell of her breasts with kisses. “To every sigh and heartbeat, to every little sound that tells me what you want.”
Pulling off her bra, Harlan cupped her breasts in his palms, letting his thumbs brush over Ruby’s nipples until they were hard little nubs in front of him. Her hips were pressed against him now, her pussy grinding against his cock in a way that coaxed him toward losing control.
But he wasn’t done teasing her just yet.
Moving his hips to meet hers in a slow, tormenting dance, he sucked one of her pink nipples into his mouth, carefully worrying it with his teeth. A choked sound escaped Ruby’s lips, and he smiled to himself, pleased.
He continued lavishing attention to her breasts, massaging, licking and sucking, all the while rubbing her clit with her cock, careful not to make her come. Ruby’s muscles tensed, her body now driven to a point where she was taken over by lust.
With her breasts still in his hands, he carefully trailed up her neck with his mouth, ever so softly kissing her scars.
“You shouldn’t be ashamed of these,” he murmured, thinking of her turtleneck, the one that was now in shreds on the car floor. “They only show your strength, make you more beautiful.”
He could feel his own self-control fraying when he buried her in a demanding kiss, his cock slick with her wetness. When Ruby wrapped her legs around his waist and let her nails rake across his back, he couldn’t wait any longer.
With a low moan, he angled his hi
ps until the head of his cock rested against her warm pussy. Pushing his way inside, he felt himself be enveloped by her as he slowly spread her open. Ruby bit her lip when he sank all the way inside her, her head falling back as she cursed under her breath.
With measured strokes, Harlan started moving in and out, feeling her spread and adjust around him.
“Fuck, you’re so big,” Ruby muttered, sweat breaking out all over her body.
“Do you want me to slow down?” he asked, stilling for a moment.
“No,” she moaned, grinding on his cock. “Don’t stop.”
Burying his face in the crook of her neck, he started to move again, his thrusts careful at first, but building momentum. Ruby’s nails were now digging into his skin as her moans became louder and louder.
“Harlan…” she called out, just like he knew she would.
His strokes became less careful as he pounded into her, feeling her pussy constrict around him. The white-hot desire rippling through him drove him wild as his hunger for her threatened to boil over.
Finally, she was all his. This was the moment he’d been secretly fantasizing about ever since he’d walked into her apartment and seen her there. Brave and uncompromising, with a fire inside her that could even warm his undead heart, it had taken Ruby no time at all to get thoroughly under his skin.
“Yes,” she mewled, as Harlan impaled her on his cock, his hips slamming against hers.
Clinging on to him, Ruby let her head fall back, a scream tearing out of her. Her pussy clenching around his cock, her body shook and jerked beneath him as a powerful orgasm ripped through her.
Seeing her unravel, it didn’t take long for Harlan to follow, tumbling over that edge of ecstasy he had been teetering on. The release was almost overwhelming, sending shockwaves through his body as Ruby’s pussy kept milking him.
Looking down at her, lost in her pleasure, a smile curving those perfect lips, Harlan’s chest swelled under a wave of emotion.
This thing between them was not meaningless or just a bit of harmless fun between adults, like Harlan was used. Their connection was real and powerful, and unlike anything else he’d felt before.
Wrapping his arms around Ruby, he couldn’t help but wonder…
Am I ready for something like this?
14
Ruby
“Well, our clothes are ruined,” Harlan commented, pulling on what was left of his pants. “Damn goons,” he shook his fist, and Ruby had to laugh.
“Those bullets only ruined your shirt. The rest of this carnage is all on you,” she said, throwing a meaningful look at the ripped piece of red cloth that used to be her turtleneck.
“I regret nothing,” Harlan shrugged.
“Well, you might get away with running around shirtless, but I’m going to need some clothes. And I can’t exactly go back to my apartment to get some,” she replied, putting her bra back on and noticing the dried blood on her hands. “I could do with a shower, too.”
“I rented a house when I got here. We could go there,” Harlan said lightly.
Ruby could feel her eyes widen.
“Wait, hold up. You rented a house here? You couldn’t mention that when you insisted we both stay at my tiny apartment?”
Harlan remained unfazed at the shrill tone that crept into her voice.
“I didn’t think you’d be up for moving in with me,” he raised a brow at her. “Remaining on your turf seemed like the better play. I didn’t want to scare you off entirely, and have to explain how I was betrothed to a woman who didn’t want anything to do with me,” he replied.
“Now you’re going to have to explain this whole claiming me thing better than you have. Is this like some kind of green card marriage where the vampire government gets mad if you try to trick the system?” Ruby asked, her hair whipping around her face when Harlan suddenly disappeared from her side and reappeared behind the wheel.
I’ll never get used to that.
“That’s actually a pretty good analogy,” he nodded, starting the car and pulling out of the alley. “Now this might sound a little like some mystical mumbo-jumbo,” he warned glancing at her in the rearview mirror.
“I’ve had to come to terms with vampires existing among us, living off our blood,” Ruby quirked a brow at him. “I think I can handle it.”
“Alright,” Harlan grinned at her. “As I said, claiming humans goes back a long time. It is kind of like a marriage, but the end goal for the human in this deal is to be turned by the one that claimed them, so they can be together forever. It’s our version of courtship, I guess. And once a human has been claimed, others can sense it.
“There’s a rule among us, one of our most sacred ones, actually, that another vampire’s betrothed is off-limits. Now, don’t ask me how vampires know if a human has been claimed or not,” he said, catching the way she was frowning to herself. “I don’t have an answer for that.”
“Does being betrothed to a vampire always end in being turned into a vampire?” Ruby asked.
“It is expected. Marriage is about spending the rest of your life with someone, and there’s a pretty big discrepancy between human and vampire lifespans. It’s tough watching someone you care about grow old and die while you remain the same,” Harlan explained, and it wasn’t hard to hear the emotion in his voice.
“Do you speak from experience?” she carefully asked, studying his face.
“I do,” he admitted, keeping his eyes on the road for once. “And it’s not something I want to go through again.”
Ruby had never given much thought to how hard being a vampire could actually be. The world kept chugging along, changing and evolving, all the people you once knew dying around you. It had to become lonely after a while.
And if Lucinda was any indication of how bitchy vampires can be, then that’s a tough bunch to get along with.
She had a feeling she shouldn’t keep prodding, but she couldn’t help herself.
“Whoever this person was you cared about, they didn’t want to be turned by you?” she asked.
“No. And I would never turn someone who didn’t want it,” he replied, and there was a coldness to his tone Ruby found significant.
Something Harlan had once said popped back into her head, the way he’d phrased something suddenly becoming relevant.
“You said Julius decided to keep you around when you had been dying,” she said quietly, unsure if she should even be bringing it up.
“I didn’t know he was a vampire when I met him. We became friends, despite being in the middle of a war. He used to say he saw something in me… Anyway, I was part of the French army, and he was advisor to some general,” Harlan said, sounding far away.
“Which war?” she asked, hoping her question didn’t pull him out of the story.
“The Franco-Syrian War of 1920,” he said, and Ruby realized how different she and Harlan really were.
This was a man who had seen things she couldn’t even imagine, with many lifetimes of experience. That made her see him in a whole other light. From things he’d said, and from Lucinda’s remarks, it seemed he had focused on the fun side of life lately, with alcohol and women.
With his confident demeanor and undeniably good looks, she had thought that maybe that’s just who he was – someone trying to fill his days with simple pleasures. Now, it started to look more like he was using this carefree lifestyle to mask his pain and disappointment.
She couldn’t help but stare at Harlan, hanging off his every word as he continued on, all the while speeding down the streets of New York.
“I fell on the battlefield one day. They got me to a nearby village but I was beyond help, especially with the level of medicine at that time. Julius asked me if I was ready to die, and I said no, not knowing what he was really asking. How was I supposed to know?
“I awoke as a vampire the next day, confused and hungry, with no one but Julius to show me the way in this new undead life. He is part of what we call the Royal Family,
a group of very old and very powerful vampires that enforce our rules – only use vampire bars to feed, don’t harm humans unless you have to, keep the secret of our existence, that sort of thing.
“Julius is part of an elite few that hunt down vampires who break these rules, and for a time, I was his protégé, so to speak. I was too new to everything to strike out on my own, so I followed him. Probably longer than I should have,” he said, as he sat eerily still, only his hands moving when the turned the wheel.
“And then you had your falling out,” Ruby muttered under her breath, recalling Lucinda’s words.
A betrayal, she’d called it.
“You could say that,” Harlan chuckled, his voice sounding hollow. “One thing about Julius, he’s a stickler for the rules. Loves to follow orders, that one. But one day, the vampire we were supposed to bring in for drinking dry some bar maiden happened to be an old friend of Julius’. A man named Samuel.
“I guess Julius thought he owed Samuel for something or another, he wouldn’t tell me what had happened between them exactly. And Samuel claimed draining that woman was an accident. I didn’t buy it. We actually don’t need a lot of blood to survive, and there’s no way he couldn’t tell the woman he was feeding on was dying in his arms.
“Julius insisted we let Samuel go. Since he is my Maker, after all, I was inclined to let it slide, distasteful as I found it. But looking into things, I quickly learned that bar maiden was not the first suspicious death around those parts.
“It became evident killing his donors had become somewhat of a habit for Samuel. So I ended his undead life, right then and there. Julius thought I had too little proof and that I acted rashly. I thought he was blinded by his friendship, and that he was a hypocrite. The rules were sacred, unless they came to his friends?” Harlan scoffed.
“We couldn’t trust each other after that, so we went our separate ways. The story spread, that’s why Lucinda knew all about it. I wasn’t the most popular vampire in a lot of circles after that.”