Passion Bites: Biting Love, Book 9

by Mary Hughes

  “You won’t hurt me. And I need you.” He kissed me, deep, mouth open, tongue working until I yearned.

  His hand slid down. A pop and zip and that warm, agile hand was inside my pants giving me pressure and heat exactly where I desired the connection most.

  A mini-explosion rocked me. I released a loud, “Uh!”

  “Shh.” He kissed my mouth as if he could drink in my cry. “I disrupted the feed to the cameras, but Luther can still hear through the door.”

  “Sorry. I’ll scream quietly.”

  He chuckled.

  Softly, sweetly, he caressed me until I was naked against him, writhing on the cot, the plastic cool at my back and him blazing hot along my front. My nipples pressed into his rock hard chest as he partially turned us, moving mostly under me to part my thighs and drape them over his hips.

  Snuggling closer, my sex met his straining, full erection. I shifted my hips, rubbing my swollen labia against him, a slow glissando that stroked him even fuller.

  I was so empty. So needy. I lifted my hips, his cock springing eager below me, then settled myself until my sex gave his glans a wet, open-mouthed kiss. He groaned, a soft release of pent-up breath, in anticipation of what I was about to do.

  A long slide took me down his shaft. It was thick and good the whole way down.

  He sighed. I rested my cheek against his chest for a moment. His heart kicked under my ear in pleasure.

  I ground myself into him at the bottom. His fingers found my buttocks, kneading me like a satisfied cat. I flexed my hips, licking back and forth against him.

  With a throttled groan, his fingers bit into my haunches, and he used the leverage to forge up into me. Began surging, over and over. I raised my head and pushed against him as he thrust, breasts and hips and most of all, swollen pussy. Each banging impact sent an explosion of sensation cascading through me, showering sparks like fireworks lighting up my flesh.

  Our soft panting sighs blended as he thrust faster. Deeper. I leaned down again, this time arching my neck near his open mouth. Near his glinting fangs. His breath billowed hot against my throat. “Bite,” I said softly.

  “Can’t,” he hissed. “Too much…”

  “Don’t care.” I grabbed his head and kissed him, kissed everything I could reach. Kissed his fangs.

  On one sharp, sharp tip, I nicked my lip.

  Climax thrilled through me, high and keen. He swiped the cut on my lip shut with one rough lap of his tongue and pounded harder up into me, his fingers gripping so tight they dented flesh.

  Excitement rose again, soaring higher, a tingling flush up my chest, my nipples so tight they sang. “Bite me.” I whispered it fiercely. “Bite.”

  I grabbed his head with both hands and pulled his mouth into my breasts. The large globes flowed around his face like water. He sucked in a shocked breath—but his cock thickened inside me and surged in excitement.

  I shimmied against his face. “Bite me, Luke. Let me feel the sharp edge of your pleasure. Of our pleasure. Bite.”

  “Alexis, no. I want you too much. I can’t—”

  “Well, I can.” Jamming my nipple into his open mouth, I pressed myself up. My flesh embedded on the sharp tip of one fang with a tiny pop. A deep shudder passed through me.

  He went motionless, except for his erection throbbing hard inside me; even his breath stilled against my breast.

  And then he groaned, softly, but from the pit of his being—and bit down.

  Electricity spiked through me, waking every nerve in my body. I choked off a shriek. He surged up into my sex once, twice, the third time thrusting to my very core, and came. Hot climax pumped into me, searing me, triggering me to rise yet again, like lightning streaking through a heavy summer thundercloud. Lust billowed hot and full in my belly.

  He bit again, fangs in flesh, tongue lightly laving my tight nipple. I shredded from tip to toe—and burst.

  Orgasm thundered through me, bolts of pure pleasure tearing from my spasming sex along my primed nervous system to my brain, filling my body in torrential bursts of primal energy.

  He pulled his fangs from my breast and licked the pierced skin closed, his purr rumbling madly. Licking my breast, he continued to pump more climax into me, pushing my orgasm, prolonging it, spreading the waves through my body. He lapped through the aftershocks, the amazing flush of endorphins that, with him, felt less like chemicals and more like love.

  I collapsed on his heaving chest.

  We lay like that, connected by more than flesh. I was at peace—happy even. We were one thin door away from a vengeful vampire and a sadistic human. I had no plan.

  But anything seemed possible, as long as Luke was with me.

  Raising my head to say something sweet and mushy and heartfelt, I decided against it—anything I said would be so much less than what we had already said with our bodies—and brushed a kiss against his chiseled cheek instead.

  That was when I felt the tears, coursing down his skin.

  “Luke,” I whispered, mindful of the possibility that Luther or Owun were nearby. But I had to know. “What’s wrong?”

  “That,” he said. “Sex with you. Love with you. It’s perfect.”

  Not what I expected him to say. I gave a little laugh. “Why does ‘perfect’ sound like a bad thing?”

  He was silent for a long moment. Too long. My heart pumped hard waiting, and I counted every beat.

  Finally his chest heaved. “Because I need you—but I can’t protect you.”

  “You don’t have to protect me.”

  He took my face in his hands. “Alexis, I’d love to think we have a future together—but I can’t protect you. I’m too weak. My history with Adelaide…” His words stopped. That one name, and his hands fell and his eyes closed like he’d died.

  “Wait. Just…wait.” I closed my own eyes while I tried to sort it out. He’d said something about a future? And he used “we”, like a real couple, but somehow it was a bad thing. A hurtful thing. Spikes of joy crashed against waves of fear, creating turmoil and wreckage in my breast. One big reason I mistrust emotions—they make no sense.

  It wasn’t like I had oodles of time to tease the sense out. Any second the assault would begin on that door. It would creak against the weight of superhumans, begin to slide open…

  But Luke was hurting and I owed it to him, for his dealing with my worst, to try to understand. So I tried, I really did. I reached for the name that seemed the root of it all. The name I didn’t know. Was afraid of the most.

  Adelaide.

  His wife? Whoever she was, she was important to him. A tiny part of me was jealous, but deep down, I knew if I was ever again to feel this sense of connection with him, I had to know about the name he spoke with such a heartfelt mix of adoration and pain. I opened my eyes and asked.

  “Who’s Adelaide?”

  He went still—that horrible stillness from pain so darkly hurtful, he needed every drop of his immense willpower to keep it from showing. A tiny, terrible tremble hinted at the depth of his misery.

  “Luke, please.” I kissed his cheek. A fresh red tear trickled silently along the plane. I touched lips to his eyelid, scrunched tight, which had squeezed it out. “Please tell me.”

  “No. It does no good. It doesn’t change anything.”

  I’d learned enough from Lizelle to realize he’d never tell me simply to ease his own burden. So I made it about me. “It might help me understand why I feel this way about you. For me?”

  His body under me quieted. Not relaxed, but not the stillness of tightly reined will either. “Maybe…maybe I could, for you.”

  Treacherous hope rose in my chest.

  Then he added, “Some day.”

  Another reason why I mistrusted emotions. I wilted.

  We were silent, both thinking our own thoughts. I missed my back
pack. Neat and orderly, it contained my tools to handle a crisis. More, that kit embodied me as a doctor: cool, calm, rational and worlds apart from a woman whose simple name made a powerful predator’s eyes leak red tears. Everything I required to treat a cut or bruise, even that naloxone for drug overdose poisoning…and a way out of this occurred to me.

  I said, “Luther has men, you know.”

  “Yes. Believe me, I’m considering all options.”

  “Are you? He’s got men, but he’s the leader. The head. We capture him, the rest will do what we want.”

  “Maybe. But first I have to get to him. He’s surrounded by vampire and human minions, and whatever that Owun is. I have techniques that can better the odds, but then what? Frankly, though my training makes me more than a match for him, I’m not so sure of the outcome with me injured and alone and him at full strength with minions and underlings.”

  “That’s not what I’m suggesting.” I took a deep breath and broached the solution I’d come up with. “I worked with my sister on her husband’s…v-problem.” With Luther potentially listening through the door, I couldn’t say “vampire poison”. For the first time I was grateful for the stupid euphemisms my friends and family insisted on. “I think your brother—” I nodded my head toward the door, so he’d know I meant his evil twin, not Logan, “—has a private supply.” A poison was somewhere onsite that took down vampires. And Luther was a vampire.

  “What?” His eyes narrowed as he got it. “No. Out of the question. We have no idea where it is—”

  “Don’t we?” The first room I saw, where Una was, with its locked cabinets and refrigerators, was ideal.

  He actually paused and considered it, a tribute to how highly he regarded me, because, his protests aside, he really was a product of his patriarchal times. “How would it be delivered?”

  I mimed an injection.

  He frowned. “Even if you find the, um, solution, I’d have to get up close to deliver it. We’re right back to the same objections as before.”

  “Yes. For you. But not for me.”

  The old-fashioned male returned. “No! You will not go anywhere near—”

  “It’s the only way,” I said before he spouted who I wasn’t to go near. “Think. I have practice. I can do it smooth and fast.” I mimed jabbing a needle. “And I—” I pressed a fainting heroine hand to my forehead, “—won’t be considered a real—” I mouthed the word threat, “—so it’s more likely I can get close enough to do it. All you have to do is be a distraction to give me a chance.”

  “You’re not risking your life—”

  “You’re not risking yours alone—”

  “I’m the protector here!” he roared.

  “Fine!” I sat up, crossing arms. “But know this. You can’t stop me. You can only help me.”

  “You dare try blackmail?” The snarl in his voice matched the red of his eyes and the length of his fangs.

  Predator. Every hair on my body stood up, but I only said calmly, “Not blackmail. Simply stating a fact. Now. I can try to do it on my own or you can help. If you protect me, I’ll be in no real danger.”

  “No real danger?” His mouth dropped open, fangs disappearing, but his eyes stayed red. “No, no, no. History shows that is a bad, bad idea.”

  “History? You keep talking about the past, but it’s in the past. I’ve seen you in action, Luke. You’re more than capable.”

  “When it doesn’t really matter, maybe. But when it does?” His eyes cooled and filmed with a sheen of wet. “All right, I’ll tell you about Adelaide. You have to see what a bad idea this is.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Adelaide. I stayed very still and listened with everything I had, everything I was.

  “It was just after the turn of the century.” He swallowed hard.

  “2001?”

  He almost smiled. “Eighteenth century. Seventeen…something. I want to say 1711. Logan and I had reached our hundredth anniversary.”

  When he went silent again, I prompted, “Is that a big deal?”

  “It’s when the ability to mist develops. I wasn’t able to mist reliably, but Logan could. That’s why, when we decided to set up a household, he was the master.”

  “You have to be able to mist to be master of a household?”

  “You have to be able to defend your household. Misting is a huge advantage in doing that. The ability is haphazard in the first few years, but we both thought Logan was ready. Besides, my fiancée was insisting.”

  “Adelaide.”

  “Yes. She wanted to settle down, and before blood banks, since we had to drink directly from humans…well, the only way to stay in one place without risking humans discovering what we were, was householding.”

  I’d seen enough of Twyla after she’d moved into Julian’s townhouses to understand that householding was when a vampire master traded blood donations for protection. Kind of like a vampire version of a feudal lord.

  I said, “What about compulsion?”

  “The human mind is tricky. Not everyone hypnotizes, and even those who do might recall something at any time, or put together repeated episodes of dizziness. A household decreases that risk.”

  “Because the donors are in on the secret?”

  “And because they have a vested interest in it. Logan and I thought it all out very carefully, rationally. The folly of youth. We weren’t even smart enough to know how much we didn’t know.” He sighed. “So dangerously ignorant.”

  My body chilled. “What happened?”

  He rubbed a comforting palm on my back. With his other hand he tucked my head back into his shoulder. “We bought the house—our cover up until then was as merchants, and we’d become quite rich—and recruited the dozen humans. Adelaide and I married in time to move in as man and wife. We were blissfully happy. But while a household decreases the risk for the vampires, if the master is as young and foolish as we were, well, it increases the risk for the humans.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they expected us to keep them completely safe.”

  “From everything?”

  “Well, yes.” He seemed surprised that I’d even ask the question. “Especially Adelaide.”

  “But no one can do that. Even a parent can’t keep a child completely safe—otherwise kids wouldn’t need ERs.”

  “Try to understand. We brought those humans together. Made them trust vampires. We made targets of them.”

  I did try, but the attitude made no sense to me. So I only asked, “Rogues attacked?”

  “Yes. Five of them. Logan and I were strong, young…” He gave a regretful laugh. “So young we didn’t even know our youth was a bad thing. Two of the attackers were also fledglings. We beat them easily, beheading them—so damned proud we knew to do that. We’d gone it alone, you see. Held ourselves away from the rabble of common vampires, holding ourselves to a higher standard. That was good, because we never killed a human. But it was very bad because we never benefited from the wisdom of an older maker.”

  He heaved a breath and looked away; I could tell he was coming to the crux.

  “I was fighting the third rogue and Logan the fourth, stronger but still no match for my brother. He grabbed him in a headlock. We’d nearly won. I dispatched mine and Logan was almost done with his. Only one more after that.

  “But while Logan was slowly twisting the vampire’s neck, the fifth rogue slashed his ribs—then misted into the house. Logan tried to mist after him…but…”

  I held him and let him find the words.

  “We thought for centuries his ability had failed him under stress. We found out later the slash was a weapon with static electricity. Electricity interferes with the ability to mist. At the time…well, when I saw Logan fail, I didn’t even think to try misting.”

  His tone was hard; he blamed himself.
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  “Luke, you’re not a superman.”

  “I’m a damned vampire,” he snarled. “I should be.”

  “Uh…” Even I knew the worst thing a person could do was hold himself up to impossible standards—it’s an automatic fail. That’s what the word impossible means. “Actually, I’m more of a Batman gal, myself.”

  A moment, and then he chuffed a soft laugh and the tension in his big body eased. “You’re right, the deck was stacked against us, though we didn’t know it then. We ran like the wind after the vampire, slamming in through the front door. But mist…mist is almost instantaneous.” He paused.

  I raised my head. He stared off into the distance, and I knew he was seeing that day.

  “Luke, you don’t have to say any more.”

  He managed a dry swallow. “There’s not much left. We were too late. The rogue had opened my wife’s carotid. What he didn’t drink bled out. And now that I know Luther had her targeted because of me…”

  I petted a hand along his head, my silent sympathy and support.

  He heaved a breath. “The rest of the household cowered together in the corner of the room—men, women and children. We’d taught them that, when rogues attack, come to the dining room and stay together, so we could protect them. So smart. So fucking young.

  “Logan engaged the rogue, but the vampire was old. Much stronger and faster than any we’d ever met. And he used mist to fight. Disappeared, reappeared behind my brother. Slashed him open before misting out again. I joined in the fight but we’d already lost and I knew it. We were dead, and from the despair on our humans’ faces, they knew it too.”

  “Oh no…” A dozen adults, who knew how many children. My heart went out to them. “That’s terrible.”

  “It would have been, but an ancient heard the fighting and came to our rescue. The instant he misted in, the rogue misted out. I…I rushed over to try to revive my wife…but I didn’t know about blood healing then, and besides, it was already too late. I thought maybe she might make the change…the rogue had bitten her, and Logan and I shared our blood with her…but she didn’t.”