Doing It To Death

by Kaia Bennett

  She stared into my eyes and hers bled black with desire.

  I don’t want to need this.

  She rocked the slick heat of her pussy against the underside of my shaft, and tugged me closer.

  But you do. You want this as badly as I do. You need me, Evie.

  I kissed her with a brutality bordering on hatred. I didn’t want to want this either, but I didn’t just want her. I wanted her to need me. Like I needed her.

  Take what you need, baby. Take every last inch of it, every last breath.

  When the mist wriggled between our stomachs, Evie gripped my cock and worked me inside her. The shock of her invitation seared away the chill and made me gasp. She groaned, but didn’t pull away from my mouth. We couldn’t break the kiss, not if we wanted to stay afloat.

  This felt as natural as breathing, but with every inhale and exhale, with every pump of our hips, we see-sawed toward some unknown crescendo. Something inside me began to thaw like ice. Fear of this strong force that made me crave shit I didn’t want led me to try and pull away, but Evie held fast, sucking life out of me. Her life. Her essence. I sucked in return, scraping my being away from her insides. The pieces of me I’d painted her with chipped away from the walls of her soul, leaving a vibrant, bloody mess in my mind.

  Pain flushed under my skin. I held her tight and she latched onto me, each trying to soothe away our ache. Slick with dew and sweat, we writhed, building up heat and speed. The fire I recalled from the faraway day we spent at the farmhouse spread as we rode the air—and each other. Flying. Twisting. Swaying. We fucked our spirits into separate vessels once more, untwining the wispy knot seated deep within us.

  Unraveling our blood in the first rite had hurt, but the past had been set in stone long before us. We couldn’t change our history, our bloodlines, or the sins of our kind. The events that brought us into being had been out of our control.

  But, breath was the present. Breath was life, here and now, crackling inside of us like an inferno of our own design. Our breath stoked the flames, and the flames seared deep, branding me down to my soul. I wanted nothing more than for the fire to cool, to let me return to my easy frozen existence. Every breath she sucked free of me, every breath I sucked from her, forced me to face hidden, vicious fears I didn’t want to see.

  Evie’s tongue twined with mine. I tasted her horror at her need for blood. I tasted her need for me, so potent and—along with her hatred of this forced embrace—spiced by her more intense hatred of the way she’d called to me against her will.

  Anguish coated my tongue. The blood from a red-haired girl’s throat splashed my face. Several cocks pistoned inside me, using me like a train, speeding toward ecstasy. A young girl screamed at the foot of a waterfall for the boy she loved, and I released the crushing hold of the female’s fingers to plug my ears as death came for her. I screamed for mercy as I drowned. I cried as I saw my mother, father, and brother waiting for me when I woke. The first pangs of hunger when the bloodlust settled and the change shredded my insides. With tears in my eyes and blood pouring from my hands, I begged my mother to help me.

  I knew ruin then. Evie thought she’d been ruined by me. My beautiful mate thought I’d made her something ugly, when all I could see was grace.

  I sobbed, clutched her tighter, and unspooled like thread at her feet, howling inside the words I’d only said aloud once in my life. Not even when I laid Liam to rest did I feel such torment, but I did now. I’d thought her influence had invaded me, but now remorse returned home.

  I’m sorry, baby.

  She drank her memories in, sucking them from my mind, only to exhale my greatest fears. I trembled at the knowledge she’d plucked my worst pain, my tears, my weaknesses from my mind as easily as she’d pick grapes. Her fingers trailed though my hair like a ghost’s, like the last memory I had of a woman I’d never know, a mother I’d made up. My mind reeled from the vividness of kneeling beside her somewhere in Texas. I felt her slip her hand inside mine again, when the reality was, this had happened days ago, the night Liam died.

  She’d cried for me, for him, men she believed ruined her, but turned around and offered me the strength I’d feared had abandoned me forever. Her eyes grew wide as I used my mind to force the taste of the blood that flowed from between her thighs into her mouth. I felt her marvel in the present, as I revealed how, after her sweet offering, I’d felt whole for the first time in my life.

  She saw her last moments through my eyes. She felt my uneven gait as I’d stumbled down a steep decline, shivering with fear and trying to figure out a way to save her.

  I didn’t want to let the breath go. I didn’t want to inhale the breath she pushed into me. The truth passing between us terrified me. There was no way to untie our knots. Too much was revealed, but she breathed in, dragging my secrets into her lungs. She knew now, the night when I bit her, I’d been as panicked as she’d been. Her lips twisted in triumph when she saw that I’d fallen into a trance as the venom took hold. But, still, this puzzling creature I held ached to wipe the tears that streaked my face.

  Every torturous breath she didn’t want to take flooded her lungs like a battering ram. Now, she felt my trembling legs, and knew I’d nearly collapsed in the water. Knew I almost pulled her out. Worse, she knew I feared Cai, though she had only a dim idea of who my father’s minion was. I’d let her drown because hope made me believe I could bring her to life. Something twisted as these threads within us had made me think I loved her.

  Love. Like the fingers of a woman I didn’t remember sliding through my hair. Like the perfect hunt with my brothers. Like coming hard into a body twisting with pain and pleasure beneath me.

  I loved her, selfishly, cruelly.

  I loved her the way a killer loves the kill.

  Twisting inside each other’s past, we’d grown careless. Air rushed between our bodies now, but the mist transformed into smoke, and beneath the heavy pall, heat licked a painful trail across my belly. Dry and sharp now, the last of our breaths and truths shoved home, into their rightful places. I felt my true appetite returning. Our bond had been gnarled and twisted, and now the bones of us were broken and reset, growing straight and honest, somewhere in our separate chests.

  I didn’t want to love her. She wanted to hate me.

  But, the need to feel her remained. I pumped my hips as she tipped her chin high in ecstasy. Finally, I could breathe without being glued to her. Finally, the mists had cleared, and only our conjoined bodies remained.

  Steam rolled off our bodies as we settled like feathers onto the soft earth. Pungent smoke swirled around us. Fuck me, nothing in this world or the next would ever feel as exquisite as the way I drove my body into hers when I could no longer fill her with my soul. As soon as I retrieved my memories, inexplicably, I wanted her inside my mind again.

  I wanted her inside me again.

  Light glowed around us. Heat seared my skin as I took her breast into my mouth and bit down.

  “Jesse!” She wrapped her legs around my waist and bucked her hips as I rode her to freedom. The smell of charred wood and panicked screams whispered in the distance, but I paid no heed to anything but the woman writhing in my arms, setting me on fire again and again with each thunderous climax.

  Where we touched now, sparks flew, dragging across our skin like fiery scratches. Every shudder hit the air like the crackle of a lightning strike.

  Evie opened her eyes to peer, upside down, at the world beyond our union. We saw fire lick the forest with an indulgent tongue. Cinders rained down around us, but didn’t burn our skin.

  Why would they? We were the flame, the spark.

  The fire raged. When I pulled out of Evie’s grasping body and her nails left my bleeding back, the fire consuming the forest rose in protest. All around us, the coven rushed to Masilda’s aid. Men and women, singed with burns and covered in soot, sucked air into their lungs, drawing energy away from the fire like a reverse bellows. They coughed and sputtered, heaving out smoke b
y the lungful, only to return to fighting the firestorm that Evie and I had caused.

  I stood and pulled her to her feet. If I hadn’t held her, Evie would’ve run out of the circle to help Masilda. She’d almost convinced me to follow her, her urgency spiking through me, when I’d have otherwise stayed put.

  The high priestess cried, “Stay in the circle! The fire will die as long as you stay where you are!”

  Coven elders and adult witches arched their spines, drew deep breaths. The fire winked like a lascivious eye, growing weaker with each inhale. Wolves howled inside the tree line, then cried out with human voices as the witches drew on their beasts for power.

  Finally, the energy we’d loosed began to die. The forest, still scorched and smoking, glowed like embers instead of swaying like a torch in the dark.

  When I looked down at Evie, she looked up at me. We were still in each other’s arms, gripped tight in wonder and fear at what we’d created, what we’d broken, with just a climax. Her heart beat in time with mine. She bit down hard on her lower lip, hiding the plump red flesh from my roving gaze.

  I wanted to kiss her. She stared at my lips with hunger, wanting to kiss me.

  We didn’t move. A twinge of triumph at knowing she wanted me made me pause. I’d expected to feel severed from her completely. I felt lost, yes, but not so far off the path that I couldn’t find my way back to her. We were still bonded mentally, still humming the same tune at the basest level. Maybe her being an empath meant I could still taste the texture of her emotions and she had free reign to explore mine, even with our bond mostly severed.

  The coven expelled the flames. A new concern rose, communicated by the panicked shouts about the wards that hid the witches’ sanctuary.

  I had a different kind of panic.

  What would the third rite be?

  Why did I feel closer to Evie than ever?

  13

  When the morning came, so did the price of what the second rite had cost us.

  Evie wiped her tear-streaked face, imploring Masilda and her peers in the barn to change their minds. “You can’t do this. You promised to help me. We’re so close!”

  Masilda’s effortless poise held up in the face of Evie’s disappointment, but the light in her blue eyes dimmed.

  “I’ve helped heal many bonds over the years, Evie. Bond witches bound to wolves, mostly. It’s hard for some witches to stay within these walls. Hard for some wolves too, and so… unraveling the knots in a bond becomes necessary. I know how to do this magic, but this situation is different.”

  Masilda sighed and shook her head. “You and Jesse are the first vampire bond I know of in centuries. I might have overestimated my strength or underestimated your bond. Either way, the wards protecting the coven are in disrepair and need to be rebuilt at once. We’ll be in the dead of winter soon, and I’m this coven’s leader. I have to think of the men, women, and children in my care now.”

  I gripped the top of a chair, watching Evie pace and compose herself. “We can’t leave here until this is finished, Masilda. We shouldn’t have to pay because you overestimated your power.”

  “You don’t have a choice, vampire.” The tall, sturdy man at Masilda’s right interjected for the first time since the meeting had been called. He pinned me with piercing amber eyes. The white hair lacing his blond head and beard made me place him at about Masilda’s age. Authority—and the scent of wolf—came off him in waves. His demeanor screamed alpha, and he had the look of Stark about him.

  “I’m charged with the security of this coven. I made a promise to my brother’s mate that no harm would befall her people. A promise my brother couldn’t keep, thanks to parasites like you.”

  The man turned to Masilda, whose eyes shone with unshed tears as she mourned her lost mate. A wolf who’d been Stark’s uncle.

  “The only reason I let you beyond our gates is because my son vouched for you.” I tilted my chin up. The detective was the alpha’s son. Stark, who’d spent most of his time in wolf form as if binging on being with a pack, stood silent in the corner behind the alpha dog. Seemed about right, now that I had a chance to peruse the elder Stark’s features. He had the same strong jaw, the same build.

  “That’s enough, Emil.” Masilda’s quiet voice sounded weary.

  “Is it? They’ll be gone come nightfall and we’ll be left with the hard work of fortifying ourselves against invaders. We’ve lost enough of our own for one lifetime, don’t you think?”

  “Dad, please. It’s not her fault.” Stark took a step forward to defend Evie, but the alpha raised a hand. The detective fell silent.

  “What do you think Pavil would say if he were here? To see you so exposed for the sake of a vampire—”

  “For the sake of the witch, Emil.” A string of admonitions in Polish followed Masilda’s stern tone before she switched to English. “Never forget that however distantly, as a witch, Evie is my cousin. We all carry the same seed within us, from the first witch in Africa, to the last witch who will watch this world burn out. She’s of the blood, and I’m sworn to protect young girls like her. If Pavil were alive, he would understand this. Now please, stand down. There’ll be plenty of time for family squabbles while we’re repairing the wards.”

  She said the last with a long-suffering smile. I guessed security detail and the boss had done this back and forth plenty over the years.

  Masilda turned to Evie once Emil settled against his seat again, the muscle in his jaw ticking away like a metronome.

  “I mean that, Evie. If you decide to stay, you’re welcome here. I can teach you things you need to know to survive. But if you want to continue and finish the last rite, there is a way. A friend who can help.”

  “Passing the buck, lovely.” I mocked her with a broad grin. “Do we get a T-Shirt on the way out, or what?”

  “You got more than you deserve from this coven!” Another witch spoke. Perhaps mid-thirties, with dark hair in a neat braid down her back. She had Masilda’s smile with a bitter slant. “Your bond was created with a destructive force. Hell, your entire species is a destructive force,” she spat. I saw another witch nod in agreement. “I shouldn’t be at this table. I’m still too young to be an elder, but our numbers are low. That’s what happens when you rape and pillage an entire race for sport, vampire. We should’ve had our guardians rip out your spines on sight. How’s that for passing the buck?”

  Masilda reached down the table and covered the witch’s hand with her own. “Halina.” At first, the woman ignored Masilda, but soon, the healing touch dimmed the younger woman’s anger.

  “My mother—our priestess,” Halina corrected, as if she’d only just gotten used to the formality of the setting, “sends you out of this coven, with her blessing, to one of our strongest allies.” Halina’s voice lowered to a quiet rumble, but still held venom. “She does this knowing your bond is tainted and full of raw, devastating power. But she has a good heart. You’ll find that not all of us are so generous. Not all of us have learned the art of forgiveness and we never, ever forget.”

  Grumbles of agreement circled the table, most of the elders nodding and not bothering to hide their anger at the damage Evie and I had done. Some sat quietly, their emotions hidden.

  “I’m sorry,” Evie whispered.

  Startled, I spun to stare at her. “What are you apologizing for?” Not that I had plans to volunteer remorse, but of the two of us, I should’ve been sorry. Not her.

  “For the trouble caused. If I’d known how much damage we would do… I can’t say I wouldn’t have begged you to help us, priestess. But, I would’ve been hesitant. I would’ve thanked you more for your k-kindness. Fuck. Here come the waterworks. Again.”

  Evie laughed, then inhaled deeply, forcing herself somehow, despite the strong emotion I sensed hammering her, to stem her tears. “If I could help repair the damage, I would. But I don’t know how. I wouldn’t even know where to begin and you don’t have time to teach me. So, I just want to say thank you.
Thank you all. For everything.”

  Evie strode toward the house to pack, but Masilda stood and reached for her, pulling her into a hug that broke the young bond witch’s shaky resolve. Evie burst into sobs, wailing, “I’m so sorry. I feel so ashamed.”

  What the fuck are you talking about? I knew the word, but shame as an emotion couldn’t have been more foreign.

  Masilda cradled Evie and cooed for her to let all of her pain out, conjuring images I’d shared of Evie’s own mother soothing aches and bruises that had seemed dire, before I’d entered her life.

  “You did nothing wrong, love. Do we blame the clouds for carrying rain? Do we blame the wind for blowing? All magick is dangerous, but we share blood. If not for you, then for whom else would I risk the danger?” She lifted Evie’s tear streaked face in her hands. “You’re the future, Evelyn Marie Pierce. Only the Goddess knows what’s in store for you, but I see greatness in your eyes. Don’t you ever apologize for the very strength the Goddess has bestowed on you. Don’t you ever, ever feel shame for the power within.”

  She pulled Evie close again, and ran a hand over the curls falling to my mate’s shoulders. “Goddess protect and keep you, daughter.”

  Masilda laid a kiss on Evie’s forehead. The empath calmed, leaned up and placed a kiss on the matriarch’s cheek in return. “Goddess protect and keep you, priestess.”

  I watched Evie stride away. Every face around the table looked burdened by conflicting emotions, grumbling amongst themselves as they watched the young witch walk into an uncertain future.

  All of those feelings dissipated when they looked at me.

  I grinned while the mood in the barn curdled. “I’m not quite as contrite as my mate, you’ll find. I appreciate the help. Hand over the name and address of this coven that’ll complete the final rite and we’ll be out of your hair.”