You're So Vein

by Christine Warren

  Her hand remained on his cheek, cradling him to her, but the other slid up and around his shoulders. She pressed down, drawing him to her, and her body ached with relief when he sank down beside her. When he aligned their bodies so that they both lay on their sides, pressed together from mouth to toe, Ava felt some tension drain out of him and felt that something inside her relax as well. Its purring grew louder.

  She didn’t stop to think or analyze; at the moment, analysis was the last thing she wanted. The first, she knew, was to be touched by Dima, skin to skin, on every inch of her body. In pursuit of that goal, she reached for the buttons that ran down the front of his dark shirt and began to pop them free.

  He pulled back for just a moment to look at her. She met his gaze but didn’t bother to still her hands. Dima smiled and pressed a kiss to her forehead. Then he set out to help her.

  Within the space of a minute, he was naked. Ava made an encouraging noise and reached for the hem of her T-shirt and seconds later, she followed. They lay atop the downy coverlet on the bed, face-to-face, and each looked their fill of the other. No one’s eyes drifted over plane or curve, smooth skin or scarred; everything they were interested in seeing could be found in a dark or light gaze.

  Ava shifted and tangled her legs with his. She adored the contrast of his hard muscle and masculine hair against her own smooth skin. She opened her mouth to speak, then hesitated. The room lay still and silent around them, no sounds filtering in from the club outside the suite—testament to Graham’s family’s dedication to quality … and soundproofing—and it seemed a shame somehow to disturb the fragile peace.

  She laid a hand on Dima’s chest over his heart and concentrated as hard as she could. If I talk to you like this, she thought at him, can you hear me?

  He smiled and raised her fingers to his lips, brushing his mouth over them. Even if you don’t shout at the top of your mind, lyubushka.

  She flushed and pulled back a little. Sorry.

  Do not be. It is a skill, and a new one for you. You will get better with practice.

  She sighed and pressed her forehead against his shoulder. It might have been a good idea to practice some more before tomorrow, huh?

  He dropped a kiss onto her shining hair. It will be fine. You will not be alone, and whatever you cannot speak to me, I will pick up from your mind. All you have to do is behave naturally and keep your eyes and ears open. I will take care of the rest.

  I’ll try, she promised. It’s not going to be easy, you know, having you hang out inside my head without me booting you out just by reflex.

  I’m tenacious. It will be fine.

  Ava lay quietly for a few more minutes. She wanted to make love with Dima, but something about just lying here with him in the dark, skin to skin, felt so profoundly right that she was in no hurry to move things along. There were plenty of things the two of them needed to talk about, but to bring them up now would have felt like an intrusion into a sacred space.

  His touch could never be classified as an intrusion. It skimmed across her cheek, down her arm, tracing the curve of the underside of one breast before his thumb stretched out to rub across her nipple, bringing the rosy little nub to a peak.

  “You’re pink,” he observed, shifting so that he could press a kiss on the crest. “You fed decently tonight.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “You know, blood drinking is not generally considered a good topic for pillow talk.”

  He shot her an amused look. “You haven’t been a vampire for long. How much did you drink?”

  “I think Regina said about three bags. It made me feel better, like I had more energy,” she admitted with a sigh, “but I still can’t say I like the taste. Especially of the bagged stuff. It tastes bland. Like rice cakes with nothing on them.”

  “Exactly. You’ll become a connoisseur yet.”

  “I somehow doubt that. I had to close my eyes while the bags were in my mouth; otherwise I thought I was going to hurl.”

  Dima laughed softly. “All right, so it might take a few months.”

  “Try millennia.”

  “But it strengthened you, and that is what is important. You will learn, perhaps not to like the act itself, but to appreciate what it can do for you.”

  “Make me able to leap tall buildings in a single bound?”

  “Perhaps moderately sized private homes.”

  Dima pressed a kiss to her other nipple, as if he didn’t want to play favorites. Then he began to dot a string of nibbling caresses across her sternum, pausing briefly to probe into the cup of her navel.

  “At the moment, I think I’m content with continuing to breathe and refraining from attacking my friends. I’m pretty low maintenance that way.”

  He laughed against her skin. “You cannot fool one who has survived for longer than most royal dynasties, diva. You are a princess, but I do not mind treating you as such.”

  Ava made a face and lifted her head to look down at him. “You’re almost eight hundred, right?” She watched him nod. “You said something about Turks before, to Misha, but you’ve never told me how you were changed.”

  She felt his breath whisper against her skin as he spoke. “It is far from a glamorous tale, not the stuff films are made of. I was raised a warrior in a time of warfare. My father and his people constantly had to fight to defend our lands and properties, against both Turkish invaders and the Chernigovs. Each could be called a formidable opponent, but after Misha’s supposed death, they forged an alliance against us.”

  Silently she lifted a hand to his head, stroked her fingers through the light silk of his hair.

  “We fought many battles,” he continued. “Endless battles. Our people were brave, but they whittled away at our numbers like a knife on wood. Eventually, enough of my men had fallen that one of the Chernigovs was able to strike me down. Unfortunately, that was not enough for our enemy. Yelizaveta’s brother was just as ruthless as she. He knew of my mother’s piety and thought it would cause her more pain to see me cursed in the eyes of her God than to lose me in honorable battle. It caused me more pain as well.”

  Ava’s fingers tightened in his hair. “It sounds as if you didn’t have a much easier time than I did.”

  “It was not something I wanted,” Dima said, his lips brushing the curve of her waist. “But it was different for me. In the world I lived in, physical strength equaled power. Having the abilities of a vampire gave me an advantage I quickly came to appreciate.”

  “I guess so.”

  He raised his head and locked that pale, knowing gaze onto her face. “You will need to learn to harness your strength, as well, diva,” he said. “Not only for your own sake, but so you do not misjudge and injure another unintentionally.”

  She sighed. “I have to do a lot of things these days to keep from unintentionally hurting people, don’t I?”

  “Would you change back if you could? Go back to being human?”

  “That’s a trick question if I ever heard one. If I hadn’t become a vampire, I’d be dead now, wouldn’t I? I’m very happy about not being dead.”

  “But you would rather be human?”

  “It would be easier.” When he would have spoken again, she silenced him by pressing a kiss to his mouth. “I don’t want to play what if. The only thing I want to concentrate on is what is, right here and right now.”

  She could see that he wanted to say more, but in the end, for all of his strength, his age, and his powers, Dima Rurikovich was just a man, and men could be easily distracted. She accomplished this task by lifting her top leg and draping it over his hip, opening her body to his so that when she arched and pressed her hips forward, she formed an inviting cradle that pressed intimately against his erection.

  That was all it took.

  With a groan, his arms tightened around her and he shifted his own hips, bringing them into alignment with hers. As he pressed forward, parting the lips of her sex with the broad head of his cock, he leaned forward until his forehead touched
hers and all either one of them could see were the unfocused eyes of the other.

  I know what you’re doing, he said, his voice gruff and thick even in her mind. You can’t keep being distracted forever, lyubushka. Eventually, you will need to decide.

  She rolled her hips forward, her entire body clenching at the feeling of him sinking deeper inside her. Her eyelids drifted shut, too heavy for her to hold up, and she struggled to fill her lungs with heated, passion-scented air.

  Decide whether to live or die? I’ve already made that decision. I’m here, aren’t I?

  His hands shifted, gripping her hips and urging her closer—as if they could get any closer—until she had to pull her top leg even higher, her knees now resting on his rib cage and her instep braced against his hip. He flexed his hips and sank a fraction deeper, nudging her womb with the head of his shaft. Ava gasped out a cry, overwhelmed, and trembled uncontrollably in his arms. She couldn’t believe she was this aroused, balanced on the knife-edge of climax without one thrust. All Dima had done was sink slowly inside her, merge their bodies as if reuniting two halves of a whole, and then rest there, and she felt as ready to shatter as if he’d been riding her for hours, teasing and taunting and daring her to come.

  You will have to decide what you want.

  She heard his words, felt him suck in a deep breath, and her eyelids fluttered open to find him watching her, his eyes blazing with pale blue fire.

  Will you go back to the life you knew before and make a few adjustments for your new needs?

  He held himself still inside her and the need for movement suddenly and sharply overwhelmed her. She tried to thrust her hips against him, but he held completely still and his fingers flexed on her hips, pinning them in place.

  Dima, she thought frantically.

  Or will you embrace your new life and the new possibilities it offers? He leaned forward and captured her lips with his even as his voice sounded inside her head. There was something frighteningly, crazily intimate about that, about feeling him inside her head and inside her body and tasting him on her lips all at the same time. She could not describe the sensation, but it made her ache for something she couldn’t name.

  Will you seize what is offered to you, lyubushka, or will you turn it away because it is too much, too hard, requires too much work?

  She had no idea what he meant. At that point, she barely had an idea of her own name. She had been reduced to a giant bundle of nerve endings, every single one of which burned and throbbed and strained hungrily toward release.

  Dima. Somewhere in the back of her head, a detached and sane part of herself heard the pleading in her tone, the helpless need, and wondered if what she was asking—what he was asking—would cost her more than she was willing to pay. But in the moment, need easily triumphed over logic, and Ava resorted to the only weapon left to her.

  Slowly, deliberately, she tightened her body around him and watched the flame in his eyes leap higher. She did it again, and heard a rough sound rumble in his chest. A third time, and she felt the rumble, like an earthquake, vibrate through him and into her.

  “Kralya,” he ground out, and she knew he praised her beauty. But the stubborn man still didn’t move.

  She tightened again, and shivered as the clenching of her own body around him threatened to send her over the edge without him.

  Dima, she thought, and his name was a caress.

  He groaned, his eyes snapped shut, and she could feel the dam burst inside him. Roughly, one hand closed around her leg, pulling it even higher and tighter against him, while the other reached between her legs from behind, finding the point where their bodies joined and pressing against the tightly stretched skin of her opening. The sensation made her entire body seize like a giant fist, and when the tension eased, she felt herself dissolving into a million tiny little pieces, a climax at once violent and yet painfully tender.

  She felt his body jump inside her, felt the same kind of tension seize him, and then he was coming apart in her arms. He shook violently, like branches in a storm, and his breath strained between his lips in uneven bellows as he spent himself endlessly inside her.

  Ava lay dazed and broken beside him, thinking with the few brain cells left to her that her life had just changed more profoundly in this man’s arms than it had in the alley a few nights before. If she hadn’t been so bonelessly, mindlessly exhausted, she would have panicked.

  Instead, she fell deeply, dreamlessly, silently into sleep, her arms still wrapped around the man who held her as if he never intended to let her go. She knew that something in that thought should concern her, should add to her panic, but she couldn’t think what it was. She couldn’t think. So, instead, she snuggled closer, and slept.

  Chapter Twenty

  Dima had been walking around in a truly foul mood since the crack of dusk, and since he’d spent all of that time glued to Ava like a bad toupee, it was beginning to tick her off as well. A lot.

  Part of her irritation with him stemmed from the simple reality that no one liked to be around someone who had a glower permanently tattooed on his face and who could barely keep a civil tongue in his head; but a considerable part of it lay in the fact that when a woman let a man see the most vulnerable parts of her soul and then had profound, emotional, consciousness-changing sex with him, she did not expect to wake up to find him pissed off and grumpy. It could seriously give her a complex.

  Ava wanted to ask him what the hell his problem was, but since the ensuing discussion would likely involve strong language, graphic violence, and adult content, she thought it might be wise to save it until they weren’t on a schedule for trapping an evil vampiress and half the people they knew weren’t clustered around them trying to pass themselves off as useful. So instead, she ignored him with verve.

  “Do you have everything you need?” Regina asked her for the ninety-seventh time in the last ten minutes.

  “Yes, Mother.” Ava rolled her eyes and patted the side of her reclaimed and repurposed handbag. “I triple-checked everything myself—invitation, cell phone, pepper spray, stun gun. And Missy did a fabulous job sewing up the lining so that you can’t even tell there’s a bug in there.”

  “Well, I should hope so. I doubt there’s a vampire on earth who would take kindly to finding out they’ve been secretly recorded by a fledgling they invited into their home.”

  Ava gave her friend a look. “Honey, there isn’t a person on earth who would take that kindly. It would make me a little cranky myself.”

  “But since it’s for your own safety, you’re going to make sure you keep it with you, aren’t you?” Misha demanded in that tone he shared with his brother, the one that asked a question while simultaneously feeding you the only acceptable answer.

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. Anything else, sir?”

  He ignored her sarcasm and looked at his wife. “You know, I think these changes have had a positive effect on your friend, dushka. I find her new attitude delightfully refreshing.”

  “Blow me, suck boy.”

  “Graham and I will be monitoring the wire,” Missy said, stepping in before they escalated into violence. It was really what she did best. “If we hear anything that makes us think you’re in danger, we’re going to signal to the others to get inside and get you out. That won’t be pretty, so you’re going to keep your promise and do what any of them says will keep you safe, right?”

  “I swear to the Virgin Mary and all the martyrs, you two missed your calling as kindergarten teachers.”

  Missy blinked at her. “I was a kindergarten teacher.”

  Ava rolled her eyes. “We’ve been over the plan nine billion times. I go in, present myself to Elvira—”

  “Yelizaveta,” Misha corrected.

  “—Queen of the Night,” she continued without pause, “and kiss some royal butt. Then I pump her for information, ask to be taken in like an orphaned kitten, and scope out her digs. Before dawn, I make my way out the back of the house where the entire Secr
et Service will be waiting to whisk me into protective custody lest I do something really dangerous like break a nail.”

  “Before one,” Dima growled, layers of suppressed violence in his voice. “Before one, pava, or I swear by all that’s holy, I will come inside for you and when I take you out, you will not let your ass touch furniture for a month.”

  She threw him a glare. “Charmer. I bet that attitude just kills the ladies, doesn’t it?”

  “Ava—” Misha began.

  “Stuff it, Dracula. You and your brother can both kiss my ass instead of threatening to beat it. I’ll do what you want and do it well. Contrary to what seems to be becoming popular belief, I am neither stupid, helpless, nor suicidal. I can handle this.”

  “We’re just worried,” Missy said, reaching out to squeeze her hand.

  “I’m sure some of you are, but you can stop. Because I’m a big girl, and I have no intention of trying to prove how stupid I am by playing the hero or anything. I can think of better ways to kill myself than this.”

  “Fine,” Dima growled, and pivoted toward the door. “Let’s go then.”

  “Let us get this over with,” Misha agreed.

  “From your lips to God’s ears,” Ava muttered, and joined the procession out of Vircolac’s back door.

  Ava really did feel like she had the presidential Secret Service detail on her case. She rode to Wadsworth House in the back of a Town Car with Dima and Misha, pinned between them on the backseat like a sardine in a can. Neither one of them spoke to her, both of them wore grim expressions, and she fully believed that if anyone around her threatened her life, one of them would jump on top of her and pin her to the ground while the other one used excessive force to deal with the threat.

  Ahead of them by a couple of blocks, so as not to cause suspicion, a plain white delivery van with no windows and the name of a local deli painted on the side was preparing to park somewhere close to the mansion so that they could pick up every word that registered with the high-tech and highly dangerous wire buried in Ava’s purse. Behind the Town Car, a large black SUV with local plates and tinted windows cruised patiently, looking for all the world like it carried a bunch of regular travelers instead of a team of the Silverback Clan’s most experienced and efficient werewolf soldiers.