by L. E. Wilson
All teasing was chased from his mind when her soft lips met his and her tongue slid between them, exploring his mouth as she took control and deepened the kiss.
He let her play for a few seconds, but when she touched the tip of one of his fangs, he pulled away with a hiss. Her eyes flew open in confusion, but before she could move away or say anything, he growled deep in his throat and pulled her in again. Taking over the kiss, he buried his hands in her hair and ravaged her mouth until she was whimpering and scooting forward on the couch to get even closer to him.
Sliding one arm around her back and the other under her ass, he lifted her with him as he stood and strode into the bedroom. Setting her on her feet next to the bed, he yanked her shirt up and off. He wanted to strip her bare, but the need to feel her warm, supple skin against his was too strong. Pulling her tight against him, he kissed her again as she wrapped her arms around his neck and hung on tight. His cock kicked against her belly, his entire body shaking with the effort it was taking him to not spin her around, pull her shorts and panties aside, and plunge into her from behind.
“I need to be inside of you,” he managed to grit out. He was barely hanging on to his self-control. His vampire instincts were taking over and he was becoming mindless with need for her. For her body, and her blood.
MINE.
She moaned and rocked her hips against him. He took that for a yes.
Her bra was on the floor less than a second later, his hands replacing the material that had covered her full breasts. Her stiff nipples tickled the middle of his palms, and he broke off their kiss to nip and kiss his way down her chest and pull one into his mouth. He teased her with his tongue and fangs until her back was arching and her fingers were digging into his biceps. Then he did the same on the other side.
She let out an anguished moan. “Christian,” she breathed. “Please…”
The lady didn’t have to ask twice.
Chapter 35
Ryan’s entire body yearned for him. Every touch of his tongue on her skin sent pulses of desire straight to the damp flesh between her legs. She longed to feel him touch her there, and felt another surge of wetness just thinking about it.
With an animalistic growl, he lifted her onto the bed and joined her there.
He nipped at her sensitive nipple, harder this time, and by the sounds of his moans she knew he’d drawn blood. But it didn’t frighten her. Instead, she arched her body towards his warm mouth, encouraging him to take more. Her legs moved restlessly as he sucked harder, trying to ease the ache there. When that didn’t work, she parted her legs and slid her hand between the fleshy folds, but he reached down and captured her wrist.
“That’s mine,” he told her.
Ryan squirmed beneath him until finally, he left her breast to work his way down her stomach. His hands and mouth were everywhere at once. The sounds he was making as he devoured her body only increasing her response to him, but still, she needed more.
“Christian…please,” she begged.
Rearing up, he slid his hands into the waistband of her shorts and ripped them in half, pulling them from her body along with her panties. His briefs soon followed. Sliding one arm under her leg, he paused just a moment as he stared down at her womanhood. His other hand reached out to touch her, separating the fleshy folds and running his thumb up and down the crease.
Ryan cried out as the pressure in her groin spun out of control, leaving her teetering on the edge.
His upper lip pulled up in a snarl as he bared his fangs, and for a moment she thought he was going to bite her there, but he didn’t. Eyes glowing like twin orbs, features harsh and strained, he lined himself up with her opening and impaled her with one strong thrust.
A tearing pain ripped through her, and Ryan cried out, this time in alarm and shock as he froze above her. She’d known it would hurt the first time, but he was so large, and the intensity of him inside of her along with the pain had caught her off guard.
His eyes went wide with shock and his mouth slackened as a look akin to horror came over his face. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he demanded.
“Would you have believed me?” she scoffed as she fought back tears.
“Yes,” he said simply. “Yes, I would have.”
She felt the tears overflow as she looked up at him. “I don’t want you to stop,” she whispered.
Though his features were strained and his big body was shaking with the effort to hold himself still above her, he managed to give her a tight smile. She noticed his breathing was as harsh as hers was. “That’s good. Because I don’t think I could even if you asked me to.” He suddenly got serious. “I’ll make it good for you, love. I will. Just…bare with me.”
He started to move inside of her, slowly at first, and then a little faster, watching her reaction the entire time. His forehead fell to her chest and she found herself responding to his thrusts as that heavy feeling came back. Pressing her head back into the mattress and closing her eyes, she moaned aloud. His mouth found her nipple again, and he teased it with his tongue and his teeth, nipping her and then soothing the bite with his tongue until she was once again writhing beneath him. When her nails were digging into his back, he lifted his upper body off her and sat back on his heels. Gripping her hips, he thrust up into her fast and hard.
Ryan’s back was arched over his legs. In this position, he rubbed her in all the right places and she felt the waves of desire in her belly turn into a steady tightening. Everything else fell away as her entire being focused on that feeling. Christian watched her the entire time, the raw hunger on his face turning her on even more. Harder and harder he pumped, and then one hand left her hip and his thumb found that sweet spot between her legs. As soon as he touched her, she shattered around him with a cry.
He didn’t stop touching her, dragging out her orgasm until she was senseless and calling out his name. Falling on top of her, he gathered her tightly underneath him and slammed into her over and over with long, hard thrusts until with a hoarse cry, his entire body shuddered and jerked and Ryan felt him emptying inside of her.
Long seconds later, he collapsed as his arms seemed to give out, then almost immediately rolled to the side and pulled her into his arms. “Are you okay?” he asked anxiously.
She took stock of her body and had to say, “Yeah. Yeah, I’m really good.” And she was, other than a bit of soreness between her legs.
He let out a relieved breath, and hugged her to him. “I’ve been dreaming of doing that for so long.”
Propping her head on her hand to look at him, she was taken aback for a moment by how…normal he looked. The harsh lines of his face were gone, his eyes lacked that glowing light, and his fangs had receded. He seemed truly at peace for the first time since she’d met him. “De-virginizing a stripper? Was it everything you dreamed of and more?” she teased.
“No.”
She recoiled at his blunt answer and her face got hot with embarrassment, but then he said, “It was so much better than anything I’d ever imagined.” Reaching up, he gently ran his fingers down her cheek. “How can one such as you still be innocent?”
She could understand how he felt. No one was more shocked than she was that her virginity was still intact after all this time, and all that she’d done.
“I wouldn’t exactly say I was innocent. Just a virgin.”
Rolling over on top of her again, he kissed her tenderly. “I’m glad. I’m glad I was your first. And I’m sincerely sorry that I didn’t know. You should have said something.”
Pushing those unpleasant thoughts of her past aside, she looked up at the male that had finally broken the barrier and gotten close to her, in more ways than one.
Chapter 36
Christian stared down at the woman he’d just unintentionally deflowered. If he had known, he never would have brought her here.
Then he scoffed at himself. Who was he kidding? Yes, he would have. He’d wanted her. Badly. He still wanted her, even though he’d
just fucked her. But if he’d known she was a virgin, he would have made sure she was more prepared for him. “Are you sure I didn’t hurt you? You’re feeling okay?”
Her blue eyes twinkled up at him. “I’m good, really. More than good. If I’d known what I was missing, I would’ve done this with someone a long time ago.”
A sudden desire to shred open the torso of some unknown male tore through him at the mere thought of her being intimate like this with some nameless human. The urge was so intense he saw spots, so it took him a moment to notice that her mood had suddenly changed. “Ryan? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I’m fine.”
He cocked an eyebrow at her. Any male that had spent any time at all around the opposite sex knew that “fine” did not mean fine. The fact that she’d even said it meant she was not fine. As did the way she refused to look at him and the fine lines of stress that kept appearing and disappearing around her eyes and mouth as she tried not to let him see her wincing.
He rolled off of her to give her some space, pushing himself up on one arm to see her more clearly. A thin sheen of perspiration covered her skin and she was looking a tad bit green. “Is it withdrawals or the voices?” he asked quietly.
Her eyes flew to his mouth as he spoke, and he could tell she was trying to read his lips. “A little of both,” she whispered. “Well, a little bit withdrawals and a lot of the voices.” She winced again and raised her fingers to her temples. “They’re screaming at me.” Her voice broke at the end and a single tear slid down her cheek. “They’d been so quiet, but now they’re screaming…”
He drew the sheet up over her waist so she wouldn’t feel so exposed and ran his hand down her arm to get her attention. “What are they saying, she’ashil?”
“What?” Her voice was subdued, like she didn’t want to add to the noise.
“What are the voices saying?”
Fingers still on her temples, she shook her head back and forth. “I don’t know.”
“Try to listen to them. What are they saying?”
“I don’t know!” she said, louder now. “They all talk at once and talk over each other and I can’t understand them.” She struggled to sit up without using her arms. He reached out to help her but she brushed him off. Crossing her legs in front of her, she rocked herself back and forth. “I don’t know if I can do this, Christian. I can’t live like this,” she sobbed. Her long, bright hair fell over her shoulders and hid her face.
He crossed his long legs, imitating her pose, and sat facing her. With one hand he brushed her long hair back away from her face so he could see her. “You can,” he told her with more conviction than he actually felt. He’d never dealt with anything like this before, but he’d heard of people like her. “You’re stronger than you think. You can do this.” He rubbed her leg, and the fact that he always felt the need to be touching her didn’t escape him, but he pushed the thought aside. He had other things to worry about right now. “Try to pick out one voice. Talk back to them if you need to.”
She gave him a look, and he could tell she was worried about what he would think of her. “It’s okay. I don’t think you’re crazy. Just try it.” He kept his eyes steady on her face, trying to encourage her without breaking her concentration.
Taking a deep breath, she removed her hands from her head. She was listening to them. Really listening to them. Maybe for the first time. Patiently, he waited. Patience was something he was very good at, when he wasn’t getting racked by his own withdrawal symptoms.
Ryan was shaking her head. “I can’t. I can’t understand them.”
“So tell them that. They’ll listen. Just like you told them to shut the fuck up at the hotel, remember? They listened to you.”
A blush stole up her pale cheeks, but she did as he suggested. “Stop talking all at once,” she told them firmly. “I can’t understand you.” Her hands went back up to rub her temples. “No. Stop! Only one. Only one can talk.” She started to shake her head in defeat, but then she stilled and her hands fell from her head to grab his arm in excitement. “It’s working,” she whispered.
“What is it saying?” he whispered back.
Her head tilted to the side and her brow furrowed as she listened intently. “It’s talking too fast, I…no…wait.”
Christian was as still as she as he waited.
“Run,” she said.
He frowned. “Run? From what? From who?” His spine stiffened indignantly. “From me?”
“Shhh,” she scolded, holding up one finger to tell him to wait a minute.
It couldn’t be telling her to run from him, he decided. Those things had thrown him off of her more than once before. If they were worried he was going to hurt her, they wouldn’t hesitate to do so again. He was sure of it.
She let out a heavy sigh. “I don’t know. All I can understand is the word ‘run’, and the rest is just gibberish.”
“What do you think it’s telling you to run from?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “But I don’t think it’s you. They wouldn’t let you near me if they didn’t like you.”
“That’s true. They’ve held me back from you before,” he felt a little bit better.
An expression that was terribly haunted and yet somewhat self-satisfied at the same time passed over her features. It made a chill ran up his spine.
“But they didn’t kill you,” she said. “If they didn’t like you, or if I truly wished it, you wouldn’t be here right now.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Just what I said. I can’t control them.” She studied his face, looking for something. Whatever it was, she must have found it. Her voice was barely more than a whisper when she confessed, “They’ve killed for me before.”
His mind flashed back to the dead woman he’d found in the cell at the club. “The woman at the club…”
“She was beating Josefina.” Her tone was defensive, and this time it was her stiffening up defensively. “Jose is just a child. And she was beating her bloody, for nothing that was her fault! Just because she was angry at her disgusting husband and got her kicks from taking out her anger on young girls.”
“Hey, hey,” he soothed. “You don’t have to defend her to me. I saw that room they kept you in. It was worse than a jail cell. They kept you locked up in there, didn’t they?”
She nodded. “Yes. They only let us out to ‘perform’.” He noticed she was twisting the sheet in her hands. “Sometimes the patron would come in to our cell to get his payment for letting us stay there. His wife didn’t like it, and she’d take it out on the girls.”
Christian’s blood began to seethe in anger and a red haze came down over his vision. He didn’t feel quite so bad now for sucking the bastard dry. “Did he do that to you?” He barely got the words out from between his clenched teeth.
“No.” Her hand covered his where it still lay on her knee, and he immediately felt a bit calmer. “No,” she repeated. “He tried. The voices wouldn’t let him.”
Get a grip, asshole. She was a virgin up until a few minutes ago.
“That’s good.”
“No. It’s not. Because he couldn’t have me, he went after Jose. The only one I cared about in that place. He raped her. Brutally and repeatedly.” She closed her eyes, turning paler at the memory.
“Why didn’t the voices stop him if they knew you cared about her?” he asked.
“He did it when I was with you, and they never leave me. I’d come back from dancing for you to find her beaten black and blue and covered in his…covered in his…” Her voice broke and she didn’t continue.
“He’s dead,” Christian informed her in a voice that was little more than a growl. “I sucked him dry when you ran out into the sun and I couldn’t follow you.”
She sniffed and looked up at him in amazement. “You did?”
“Yeah. As soon as your friends here released me, I tried to follow you outside. When I couldn’t, I found him instead. I was starving.
I practically ripped his throat out trying to feed. I felt bad about it at the time, but not so much anymore.”
She hid behind her hair again. “So, if you’d been able to, you would’ve killed me when I let you out.”
He wanted to tell her that wouldn’t have happened. That there was no way in hell he could ever have hurt her. But he’d be lying. “I don’t know.”
She cleared her throat. “I wondered why you didn’t come after me right away.”
“Oh, I did. I wasn’t going to let an exquisite creature like you get away that easy.”
She gave him a tentative smile, and he smiled back.
“So, where did you come from?” he asked. “How did you end up in that place?”
“Um…Well…My life was nothing exciting. I was born in California to great parents. I have a younger brother. We had a nice house in a nice neighborhood. I went to a nice school, got good grades, had my college career all planned out.” She shrugged. “For the most part, anyway. I was quite the nerd.”
“What were you going to study in school?”
She smiled a bit sardonically. “I wanted to get my Masters in Political Science and study law. I wanted to fight for the immigrants in our country. Make their lives better.”
The irony of where she was when he’d met her didn’t escape him.
“When the voices showed up, I thought I was losing my mind. I told you about that. I ran away so I wouldn’t get locked up. I hit the streets, and soon after discovered the magic of heroin. It made the noise in my head bearable.” She paused, the look in her eyes far away as she remembered. “I had reached a new low point when the matron found me, scraped me up off the sidewalk, and brought me to their club to ‘work’ for them.”
His heart was aching for her, for everything she’d been through, but he knew if he tried to coddle her now she’d shut down on him. “How long were you on the streets?”