Day Reaper

by Melody Johnson

  I’d fallen for Dominic despite his physical form, which more often than not was either a cold and malnourished creature in need of blood or a malformed monster with back-hinged legs, elongated talons, pointed fangs, and primordial facial features. In their own strange and mysterious ways, those forms were beautiful, too, like the way an anaconda is beautiful in its element and environment: a wild predator to be accorded respect and admiration from a distance. I’d lain beside all three—the creature, the monster, and the man—and was living proof that a person couldn’t embrace a predator without being bitten. Lying before me as he was now, even as a man, with every sense focused solely on me, I should have felt trapped in his crosshairs, but I wasn’t prey anymore. I wasn’t even his equal anymore. I was a wild predator, too, and as much respect and admiration I had for this man, I didn’t want any distance between us.

  More dangerous than even his body, his eyes—dear God, the unscalable depths of his otherworldly eyes—blazed with a fire more devastating than the one I’d just saved him from, a fire from which I’d never willingly escape.

  I cleared my throat. “How do you feel?” I asked.

  Dominic wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me down on top of him on the bed.

  “Ravenous,” he whispered and slanted his lips over mine.

  Dominic’s kiss was a blade’s edge: sharp, honed by time and craftsmanship, and deadly when wielded with skill. He had many skills he’d perfected throughout the centuries of his existence, and kissing was certainly one of them.

  He rolled me beneath him and caged me with his elbows on either side of my head. His legs surrounded my hips, and his chest pressed against my chest, crushing me into the bed. We didn’t have time for this; as Dominic had already inconveniently pointed out, Bex and Walker were likely killing each other if the Damned hadn’t already. Saving Dominic was a legitimate excuse for leaving them behind, but this was—

  Dominic rolled my nipple between his strong, capable fingers, and my thoughts shorted out. His hand on my breast stole my reason. His mouth stole my breath. His tongue stole my protests until all that was left in the whole world was him on top of me, his lips against my lips, his body hard on my body and nothing, not even air, between us.

  His hand drifted up my arm to my wrist. He pulled first my right and then my left hand from where I’d been gouging my nails down his back and held them immobile over my head in one of his large hands.

  “Let me touch you,” I protested.

  He’d explored every inch of my body with his hands and tongue the first time we’d made love, and although I’d reveled in his touch, I hadn’t had the strength at the time to fight back, to demand control over the things I’d wanted to do to him. I’d taken everything he’d had to give and seen heaven, but it was past time he saw heaven, too.

  “Make me,” he growled, the challenge in both his eyes and his smirk unmistakable. Irresistible. Undeniable.

  I bucked my hips against his, rubbing the long length of his delicious body against mine. His erection was proud and unyielding between us. The skin at the curve of his neck was salty and soft as I nibbled under his ear.

  I licked his lobe and whispered everything I wanted to do to his cock and everything I wanted to do it with.

  Despite his power, despite his strength and hands binding my wrists, his eyes rolled into the back of his head, and he shuddered.

  Taking advantage of his distraction, I alligator-rolled us and straddled him. His eyes widened, but there was something more than just surprise in his gaze as he regarded me. His speed and strength had always been inhuman and miraculous. And now, to both our astonishments and what looked to me like his pride, so was mine.

  He broke his hold on my wrists in the attempt to regain control of my body, but I reversed our hold and grabbed his wrists. I needed both hands; my fingers could just barely circle his wrists.

  I ground my hips to his, slanted my lips over his mouth, and swallowed his groan. He sat up, attempting to wrestle me back beneath him, but I pushed him down with the sheer force of my strength. His back hit the bed, the mattress rocked, and suddenly we were airborne. Dominic flipped upright and slammed me back on the bed, exactly where he’d wanted me, but that’s not where I wanted him. I used our momentum to keep flipping. We bounded completely off the bed, and I slammed him into the wall. My moves had less flair than I would have preferred, but as Bex would have pointed out, they were effective.

  Before Dominic could recover, I ripped his pants from his body—literally, they split at the seams into four, dangling rags—and fell to my knees in front of him.

  “You’ve always been hell on my shirts, but even for you, this—”

  I took the entire length of his erection into my mouth and sucked. Hard.

  His fists pounded twin holes into the drywall on either side of my head, and he growled. The sound was more animal than man, but it didn’t matter anymore. I couldn’t deny his animal any more than I could deny mine, and that feral, animal instinct inside me urged me to claim him. To mark him as mine in a way that not only let him know, but everyone who dared look at him know, that he was undeniably mine.

  “Mind your fangs,” he gasped between pants.

  My heart thrilled. I made the man who didn’t need to breathe breathless. I rocked his eternally cool, collected composure. The feeling might have gone to my head except for the fact that I’d long ago lost my mind when it came to this man.

  “These fangs?” Glancing up, I deliberately elongated them and ran my tongue along their length.

  Dominic bent forward in a move so fast he might have only appeared a blur with my human eyes. Now, I could see every minutia of movement—his contracting muscles, his tensed stance, the wicked intent blazing from his eyes. Yet having seen behind Oz’s curtain hadn’t disenchanted me. If anything, discovering the reality of Dominic’s existence heightened it. I could move like him, see like him, hear, smell, and hunger like him. My brain synapses fired with lightning-strike velocity, like him, and with the playing ground finally leveled, I could appreciate his restraint and patience. Months of pursuing me, attempting to convince me to trust him, first as allies and then as lovers. Months of smelling my cinnamon-spice scent and resisting my blood. Numerous kisses and embraces and physical interaction where one wrong twitch of his talons, one too enthusiastic squeeze of his powerful arms, one misplaced lethal fang could slice, snap, and break my too-easily broken body.

  Now, my body was nearly unbreakable, just like his, and if I wasn’t mistaken by the gleam in his eyes, he intended to push it to its limits.

  He wrapped his arms around my waist and swung me into the air, upside down. Minding my fangs like he’d reminded me, no matter my teasing, I released him, but he didn’t release me. He kissed me between my legs.

  I gasped and then smiled with this acceptable compromise; my mouth was still at the perfect height to give him as much pleasure as I was getting. I wrapped my legs around his neck, braced my arms on his hips, and licked him from base to tip before enveloping the entire length of his cock in my mouth.

  His tongue swiped against my clit, and a coiled spring of heat exploded inside me. I wriggled against his mouth, the sensations so intense they robbed me of all my many heightened senses until the world honed to nothing but this moment and this man. Not wanting to be outdone, I lavished attention on him. I sucked harder, twirled my tongue over his tip faster, pounded the length of him into the back of my throat and pulled back from him in long strokes, followed by a burst of short, hard yanks, over and over again, until he was sucking and licking and worshiping me with the same frantic frenzy he’d stoked in me.

  I pulled away first, desperate and gasping. “Now,” I panted. “I want you inside me now!”

  “Thank God,” he growled, and with my mouth dislodged from his cock and my fangs a safe distance away, he threw me away from him and onto the bed.

&nbs
p; He lunged to join me, but I rolled aside and pinned him to the bed when he hit the sheets. His muscles tensed, about to pull the same alligator roll I’d played on him, but I angled my hips and ground him home.

  We both stilled.

  We’d only just had sex for the first time eight days ago, but so much had happened in the interim, it may as well have been eight years. I was impossibly tight, he was impossibly large, and everything about this man and my feelings for him had been so far outside the realm of possibility when we’d first met that coming together in longing and love now, even having just been here a week ago, was still a dream. My enhanced vampire senses didn’t help anchor me in reality either. I could smell sound and taste a touch. They were as confusing as they were enlightening, but in this moment with Dominic, they were transcendent.

  The warmth and comfort of a hearth blazed between us and combined with the aching pleasure-pain of my body accommodating the intrusion of his. Heat pulsed through me from our center, incinerating my stomach and chest and arms until even my face and fingers tingled and my toes curled with the licking flames of our joining. I could smell the wood burning, taste the roast of pine nut and evergreen, and hear the crackling of split logs. Our union was more than just a physical and emotional expression; it felt like a presence all its own.

  “Can you feel that?” I whispered. “The flames and pulse and—”

  He nodded. “Like fireworks.”

  I shook my head. “Like a hearth. Something vital and comforting. Something to welcome you home.”

  Dominic’s knowing gaze bore into mine, and if I hadn’t thought my body could possibly become hotter with him hard inside me, I blushed from the edge of my hairline down to my pinky toes. “Like coming home,” he said, considering. “I like that.”

  “But that’s not how you feel. You just said—”

  Dominic pressed a finger against my lips. “What I feel and how I feel are two very different things. Our senses, although enhanced, are deceptive. Keagan doesn’t have a bird inside his chest that changes its call depending on his mood any more than you have a hearth inside you or I have fireworks inside me. Our senses are useful and telling, but they aren’t reality. You here with me in this moment, in my arms, that is real.”

  I bit my lip. “But—”

  Dominic hushed me again, then stroked my cheek. “Concentrate on me. Feel what I am feeling.”

  I closed my eyes and concentrated, albeit doubtfully. I traversed the tightrope between us, and when I reached his mind, or what should have been his mind, my breath hitched. Dominic’s thoughts and feelings were usually a modeled, kaleidoscope impression of feelings, not the feelings themselves, but this time, the intent in his heart blazed brighter and warmer and more constant than the sun.

  I knew better than most that homes were fleeting. They could burn to the ground and take everything dear and precious along with them. I hadn’t let anyone come near my scarred heart in years—how many wounds could a heart endure and still continue beating?—but Dominic’s heart was as scarred as mine. He’d lived nearly five-hundred years longer than me, had survived five lifetimes worth of pain, heartache, and loss, but somehow, he’d found the courage to offer me the one organ he knew from experience could so easily break.

  I opened my eyes. Dominic was still stroking my cheek, but he was smearing something wet across my face with his thumb now. I blinked and realized that he was wiping away tears.

  “How do you do it?” I whispered. My voice was nothing but a rasp. I cleared my throat and tried again. “How do you live with the pain of love lost and still find the courage to love again?”

  “It has absolutely nothing to do with courage. The loss of my father still pains me; it lives and breathes within me every day. Some days I can remember him fondly without being overwhelmed by grief, but most days, his loss still feels fresh and biting, even after all these years and new losses to mourn. The new losses don’t replace the old ones; they just widen old wounds.” Dominic cupped my face in both his hands. “But the thought of living without you, even knowing all the pain I’d endure with your loss, is a pain all its own.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “‘Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all’?”

  Dominic barked out a harsh laugh. “No, my dear Cassidy DiRocco. Better to have loved and lost than let it slip away from fear of loss. Either way, my heart will bleed, but I will have you in this moment and in as many future moments we can hope to create. And if a time should come that love is lost, we will have the memory of these moments to bandage our wounds, to keep us warm in the lonely cold, and to help us survive.” His grip on me tightened nearly painfully, even for me. “Love me, Cassidy. Let’s burn our pain to the ground and scatter it to the wind along with the ashes of our lost loved ones. Let’s create a new home.”

  The words spilling from his lips vibrated through my body like a tuning fork, ringing loud and true. The pain was still present, but no longer paralyzing; I moved my hips, slowly at first, savoring the friction of him inside me, letting the dual feelings of my hearth and his fireworks envelope me in sensation and need and heat. The ridges of his cock rubbed in all the right places as I withdrew from him, and when the very tip of him caressed the very edge of me, I eased him back inside, his hard length deliciously consuming. We rocked, gently in and out, in and out, and then more urgently in and lingeringly out, in and out, and then slamming home again and again, until his tip touched the very deepest part of me, and I trembled from want, needing him somehow deeper.

  He bruised my backside from the inside, demanding more, being driven wild by the same inexplicable need as me, being somehow glued together even knowing all the ways life could tear us apart. I gripped his hands in mine above his head, arched back in abandon, lost in sensation, and laughed, the tears still wet on my cheeks. I willingly, eagerly, pushed him deeper and harder and more permanently inside myself than I’d thought any man, and especially this man, would ever be capable of penetrating.

  My vampire senses were overwhelming, my newfound strength and speed and longevity was life-changing but new, and as with everything new, even things that change life for the good, being with Dominic was as frightening as it was exciting, if not more so. There would be drawbacks to becoming Dominic’s equal, but in that moment, with his fingers curled in mine, our bodies coming together thrust for thrust until we both shattered and he roared and I shuddered with a pleasure bordering on pain, I felt the deep grave of my past fill with joy.

  Chapter 13

  A frigid hand against my cheek woke me. I opened my eyes and stared into Dominic’s luminous, otherworldly gaze only inches from mine. I could happily drown in his gaze, a sensation that had terrified me only a few short weeks ago. Now, if his lazy grin and the tuning fork vibration of his desire was anything to go by, he could happily drown in mine—but neither of us looked away.

  I grinned back, albeit a little embarrassed. “I practically passed out.”

  Dominic’s grin widened. “I’m not surprised. After fighting the Damned, barely escaping the coven with our lives, and healing me, it’s a miracle you didn’t pass out earlier.”

  Memories of last night, in particular everyone who hadn’t escaped the coven, wiped the grin from my face. I bolted upright. “We never returned for Bex and Walker. We need to—”

  “They’re fine,” Dominic said, placing a firm, staying hand on my shoulder.

  “You don’t know that. They—”

  “They’re here,” Dominic said. “Calm yourself, and expand your senses. You can hear them in the living room.”

  I froze, but it wasn’t their sound that struck me first. I could smell the physical waft of banana nut pancakes and the sriracha bite of someone’s anger in reaction to them: Walker. Then I heard Bex’s breathy drawl, and whatever she said, the heat of Walker’s anger skyrocketed.

  I slumped back into bed beside Dominic in
relief.

  “Bex and Walker managed to pull their shit together enough to escape the Underneath,” I said, mildly stunned.

  “And without us to keep them from killing each other,” he pointed out. “Baby birds will either fly or fall when kicked from the nest.”

  “In that metaphor, Bex and Walker are our children.”

  Dominic’s smile widened enough to expose his fangs.

  I pretended to gag.

  He swiped a thumb across my cheekbone and stared at me in silence.

  I waited, but when it became apparent that he wasn’t in any hurry to continue the conversation, I broke under the pressure of his gaze. “What?”

  “I remember those eyes,” he whispered.

  I raised my eyebrows. “I would hope so.”

  He shook his head and smiled. “I haven’t seen them in over a week, not since your transformation.”

  I frowned.

  “You bathed in sunlight, Cassidy. You’re fully transformed into a Day Reaper, human-eyed, sun-resistant, and all.” He cocked his own eyebrow. “How does it feel?”

  I rolled said human eyes. “I’m the one who should be asking how you feel.” I sighed. “Except if I concentrate, and not even that hard, I can feel exactly how you feel. Should I ask anyway?”

  Dominic grinned a mouthful of fangs. “Better yet, let me show you.”

  He kissed my lips and shifted over me, so the long line of his body enveloped mine. His flexed biceps surrounded me. His weight bore me back into the mattress, his strong legs straddled my waist, and between us pressed the hard, undeniable proof of exactly how he felt.

  He left my lips and nipped a line of kisses down my jaw to the curve of my neck. My eyes fluttered closed, and I shuddered.