by Aja James
She tilted her head a bit. “But vampires don’t get sick, do they? Well, insert injuries in the place of sickness then. You lot seem to get injured plenty.”
She straightened again and continued, “I vow here and now that there will only be you to sustain my life, nourish my soul, keep safe my heart. And I want to be that person for you too. So please be my Blooded Mate. I will have no other but you.”
Inanna mouthed good job when Grace ended her little speech, filled with lisps that required concentration to interpret.
And that was when Devlin noticed.
“You have fangs.”
Grace prodded the sharp edge of one with her finger.
“Neat, aren’t they? I haven’t figured out how to speak normally with them in my mouth yet. I asked Inanna to turn me into a vampire so that I could marry—I mean—mate with you. Now you have to say yes.”
“For Goddess sake, Devlin,” Inanna chided, “don’t keep us in suspense.”
But Devlin was still stuck on the part where Grace asked his ex-comrade to turn her into a vampire.
“You Turned her?” he asked her, stupefied. “You… you would do that?”
“I did do that,” Inanna confirmed. “Your Grace is very convincing with her logic. She planned it all out meticulously. I don’t know how she found me, but she just showed up on my doorstep the other day at our temporary lodgings. She explained who she was and why she was there and what she wanted from me in particular.”
“Only a True Blood can turn a human into a vampire. A Mated True Blood could do so with diminished risk to their immortal soul since their Mate would replenish the part they’d have to inject into the human they Turn. Over time, their soul is whole again.”
“I figured it out based on what Ramses told me on the plane ride back to New York,” Grace chimed in.
“The list of names we got from Zenn had Inanna’s name on it too. I noticed that a few names were italicized and figured out that those are True Bloods, Inanna and Ramses among them. The names with asterisks, I still don’t know what they represent, but we can sort that out later.”
“I then hacked into the Cove’s archives and retrieved information on Inanna, discovered that she was recently Mated, and then I formally asked Queen Jade’s permission, because it’s illegal to Turn humans, right? I explained that I was doing it so I could Mate you; I had a whole monologue prepared. She said since Inanna is no longer part of her Hive, and only half vampire, there’s no need to ask her permission and… well, here we are.”
“Guh,” was all Devlin managed to eek out.
“You are mating me, aren’t you?” Grace asked, a little less certain. “I don’t think I’d enjoy being a vampire if I had to hunt humans every few days for blood. And even souls.”
She gave a full-bodied shudder at the prospect.
“With my lack of charm, I’ll probably never get their Consent. And then I’d either starve to death or break the Dark laws and have you hunt me down and put me out of my misery.”
“Yes, I’ll marry—I mean—mate with you,” he finally blurted, roughly pulling her into his embrace, all but crushing her to him in his desperation to hold her, to make sense of what was happening, to, please, God! not wake up from this incredible, glorious dream.
“Well, walk this way children,” Inanna said, for the first time inviting herself into Devlin’s private quarters, not that he seemed to notice or care.
“Since you’re both relatively newly made vampires, I doubt you know the technicalities of performing the rite that will form the Blooded Bond between you. This is where I come in. But be forewarned.”
She shut the door and locked it, looking from one to the other.
“It’s going to hurt. A lot.”
Chapter Nineteen
It did hurt.
A lot.
Grace would rather not ever have to do that again.
Apparently, a similar procedure would be required to forcibly break the Blooded Bond in the event that one or both parties changed their minds about the whole mating thing. Though breaking the Bond did not necessarily result in freedom from the other half. Death or madness typically occurred.
Vampires were apparently not made for divorce.
But the pain was so worth it (except she really wished she’d asked for general anesthesia before it began). Because for the past twenty-four hours, Grace had been gorging on the blood, body and sex of her Mate.
She’d used him so well, he could barely move. His body was covered in blue and black bruises where she’d sank her sharp new fangs into thick, sweet veins and drank and licked and kissed and sucked to her little vampire heart’s delight.
This was awesome!
She’d never felt so alive before. If she was a sensualist before, now she was a…hedonist. And her sole purpose in life was to make Devlin come inside her again and again and again.
Despite his wasted state, he seemed ridiculously happy and contented. In the first few hours, he’d murmured words of encouragement to take more of him, to drink her fill and milk him dry. Now he had no words. She feared he even struggled to breathe.
But his long-fingered hand still cradled her head gently as she moved down his torso to nuzzle his steel-ridged belly, dip her tongue into his shallow navel and inhale deeply the muskiest, heavenliest part of him.
“I love having fangs,” she said through a slighter lisp. “My pleasure combinations just increased exponentially and the permutations we have together require a super computer to process, the number is so large.”
His fingers lightly massaged her scalp in response.
“I’ve always wanted to do this,” she whispered, staring cross-eyed at his glistening cock, so enthralled was she by the most gorgeous, masculine part of him.
Taking his aching, swollen staff in hand, she snuck an impish look at Devlin to gage how he was holding up.
He regarded her through slitted eyes, his lips peeled back to reveal his fangs. He might not have the strength for words, but that slumberous, heated look was enough.
It said: Go ahead. Do what you will with me. I’m yours to take as you please. My body will keep giving as long as you want. Nothing is forbidden within our Bond.
So she licked her lips with anticipation and focused on the thick, long, fabulously hard, pulsing erection in her hands.
Slowly, she licked just around the crown of him, where he was most sensitive and raw. She squeezed the turgid column rhythmically, in time with her lapping tongue, and a thin stream of pre-cum seeped out of its eye, adding to the wetness of her saliva, making her tight grip on him slick and hot, teasing her tongue for a fuller taste of him.
Mindlessly, he moaned, his brilliant blue eyes glittering through his slitted lids, another flush spreading across his chest and up his long, strong throat.
So she took the head of him in her mouth and suckled with perfect pressure, her hands continuing to squeeze up and down the pulsing column, as if his very heart beat here in the core of him.
His hand in her hair clawed into a fist, his hips beginning to grind and lift.
Still, she was in no hurry with her hard-won feast, peppering his sex with small kisses and bites, alternating with deep draws into her mouth and tight strokes with her fists.
“Please,” he begged her, his voice deep and gravelly, filled with tortured pleasure and blissful pain.
Holding his glittering gaze, her own unblinking and victorious, she bared her fangs and slowly, painstakingly, agonizingly sank them into the thickest vein in his cock, making him feel her penetration one millimeter at a time—her absolute, total possession of him.
The flush exploded across his face as his blood and semen simultaneously erupted into her mouth. The flavor combination could only be described to Grace as ambrosia. Now that she’d tasted it, she knew she would be having this cocktail often and inexhaustibly.
Endlessly he came, and endlessly she suckled him, swallowing everything he gave her, milking him for more.
&
nbsp; And then her empty core clamored for him too, so she disengaged her fangs and licked his wounds closed, then crawled up his body to straddle his hips, seating herself down upon his magnificent erection with one unerring undulation.
She laid her body upon his, chest to chest, and held his gaze as she moved slowly, voluptuously upon him, taking them both closer and closer to another climax, yet holding them there at the peak, drawing out their pleasure, making their release infinite and endless.
“I’m making love to you,” she told him sleepily, drugged by the essence, feel and taste of him.
“Yes,” he said, as if he were enslaved by her, as if it was the only answer he could give to any and every question she’d ever ask.
“I am claiming you as my very own,” she stated with more strength in her voice, lest he mistook this act for just another marathon orgy with just another partner.
“Yes,” he answered, his hands moving up to cup her face, his thumb stroking across her swollen lips.
She savagely bit that thumb and sucked it into her mouth, drawing on his blood.
Her hips moved faster and faster, taking him deeper and deeper, harder and harder, and he arched up to move with her, his buttocks clenching, his muscles tensing, his teeth bared as she hurled them over the edge.
She grasped his face in her hands too, as the shockwaves of their release coursed like lightning through their bodies, their blood, the throbbing, aching heat of their sex. She kissed him deeply as they came, greedily swallowing his tortured groan.
In the aftermath, they lay tangled together, still intimately joined.
“You slay me,” he rasped, his beautiful smile at odds with the violence of his words.
“I love you,” she said, staring unblinkingly into his eyes. “This is how I love.”
His breath hitched and his smile spread wider, his sapphire blue eyes incandescent with joy.
“Then slay me again, my darling Grace,” he entreated, nuzzling her throat, scratching the tender skin there with his fangs.
And she did.
Always.
Epilogue
Just when things are looking up—the fight club networks are under control, we’ve gotten a hold of an important list that might give us an edge over our enemies (or at least no longer two steps behind them), old friends pop up where you least expect them (I’m still waiting for Ere to contact me for that trip to Dark Dreams), loved ones are reunited—
Disaster strikes.
We left for the Shield in the pitch of night.
I’m not sure what happened. Someone, probably Inanna, roused me awake, told me to pack only essentials and be ready to leave immediately.
A violent thunderstorm raged outside. Rain was being hurled from the sky like liquid javelins. Lighting streaked in fiery veins and the thunder was so deafening and ominous, even I, who love thunderstorms, felt my heart restart a couple of times.
It was only when I got in their SUV that I saw Tal lying across the backseat, his whole body contorted as if in a seizure, his face etched in agony, his jaw all but breaking from how hard he was clenching his teeth.
The dark, long-sleeved shirt he wore was torn from the neck halfway down his chest, the gaping material showing raw wounds still oozing blood, claw marks, bite marks, as if he’d been attacked by a bear or a tiger.
Everywhere his skin was exposed, his veins stood out like tree roots, black and blue. His throat was tightly bandaged by several layers of gauze, but even so, I could see the dark red of his blood saturating the cloth, still seeping from unclosed puncture wounds.
Dear Goddess! I’ve never seen anyone so savaged before.
I couldn’t help the tears that flowed down my face when I saw him—his pain and anguish were so tangible they were a living thing, shrouding him in darkness, almost as if he weren’t here with us, as if he were trapped in his personal hell.
Before I could ask questions, Inanna said that she’d found him this way close to our apartment just as she was returning from an errand at the Cove. She didn’t know any more than I did beyond that.
So the five of us set out for Boston at a furious speed, Gabriel driving without lights in the inky blackness of night. He must be gunning the engine to one hundred and twenty miles per hour on longer stretches of road.
We’ll be back at the Shield very soon.
Perhaps Rain, our most experienced healer, can work some magic, though she no longer has the Gift she used to.
I understand, now, why it was so difficult for her to choose Valerius, her Eternal Mate: she’s had to give up her powers of healing. Powers unique only to her, only one such Pure Healer since the beginning of our race it seems.
In times like these, still having her Gift might mean the difference between life and death for a valued friend, a beloved father, a noble warrior.
Inanna and Gabriel are speaking in low tones in an ancient language I’ve never heard before (and I’d recognize plenty given my field of interest). Benji is blessedly sleeping beside me, hugging his lamby blanket fiercely, his head in my lap.
At first I wanted to sit with Tal, to see if I could do anything for him, anything at all. But Inanna said that nothing could ease him, not in his current state. And he might lash out at me unconsciously through his pain.
I prayed to the Goddess, if she indeed exists, to comfort him, watch over him, at least lessen his torment if…
Well, I will not think of ifs. He will recover. He has to.
But…
Sometimes I wish I didn’t have these natural linguistic skills. Because as I listen more to Inanna and Gabriel conversing, I’m starting to pick up the logic of their words.
I heard “accelerate,” “a couple of days, maybe less,” and the most dreaded word of all for the Pure race:
Decline.
Where a Pure One dies within thirty days for giving him or herself to the wrong person.
Sex, that is. Having sex with someone he loves but who doesn’t love him, or love him enough, in return.
The Decline is irreversible and indescribably agonizing. And if I heard her right, Inanna said that Tal’s condition is accelerated, that he doesn’t even have thirty days, but two or less. Even if Rain were at her full power and still retained her Gift, I doubt she can save him if it’s truly the Decline.
But I know who can.
The person to whom Tal gave himself.
If we could just find her… If she loves him back…
But even I, having only lived nineteen-going-on-twenty years, know that love cannot be pleaded with, nor wished for, nor forced.
Love can only be given of free will.
For Tal-Telal, I fear, the one he loves has given heartless, vengeful pain.
But please Goddess, please, please, please—not death.
I guess we’ll find out within the next two days.
Author’s Note
The history of many of my characters, despite being in a paranormal-fantasy contemporary series, are in fact real.
Part of my inspiration comes from making legendary figures in ancient and more recent history take on new lives and personas. While taking copious liberty with the facts, of course.
Devlin’s history is based partly on the life of a real spy in Wellington’s army during the Peninsula Wars. The Duke of Devonshire is a real duke, and Devonshire House sat right on Piccadilly and was famous for hosting elaborate social events and for being the center of London’s political life. Unfortunately, after the 8th duke’s death in 1908, Devonshire House passed to his nephew, who abandoned his expensive, unnecessary London mansion and consigned it for demolition.
So I moved my fictional Devonshire House into another currently standing grand mansion—the Apsley House, which belonged to the Duke of Wellington, who purchased it in 1817 and took over a decade to renovate it. Apsley House is open for visitors as an English Heritage Museum.
Excerpt from Book #5 Pure Rapture
Chapter One
“You should not have come
here,” she hissed into the darkness of the unlit room.
Tal turned his blind eyes in the direction of that soul-deep familiar voice, now filled not with love and warmth but icy vengeance and blazing fury.
Outside, a deafening crash of thunder harkened the onslaught of a deluge.
The rain came down so hard, like sheets of arrows from the heavens, that he heard it pound the roof, the sides of the building, the streets outside, even from within the thick concrete walls of her private quarters behind their brick façade. It appeared that the skies agreed with her mood.
No, it was not wise to have come here.
It was suicide to appear before her, when he knew, deep inside, that she had no love for him.
Not now. Not anymore.
A sharp, splintering pain seized his heart at this truth. For he had never ceased, not for one moment, to love her with his entire self, body and soul.
It hurt just to breathe the same air as her, sitting on her bed not three feet away from her, when all she pushed back at him with her very aura was hatred, bitterness and fury.
And now that he was here, only two things would happen if he stayed: she’d gorge her fill of his blood—he could sense her desperation and starvation before she even entered the door.
And she’d slake her lust upon his sex.
While he gave all of himself in return.
After all, when a vampire Mistress beckoned through her blood, calling for his, which even now was roiling through his veins to Serve her, feed her, quench her thirst, a Blood Slave had no choice but to obey her command.
A Blood Slave who loved his Mistress.
“Last and final warning,” she growled, deep and guttural.
“There will be no mercy.”
He stared intensely in her direction, willing his sight to return.
There was so much he wanted to say, so much he wished he could communicate. But he knew that she could see none of his feelings, desires and dreams, just as he could see only endless darkness and pain.
A shuddering breath left his chest on a long exhale.