by A. J. Aalto
Harry worked at a noisy lock.
“Are you sure you're ready for this surge forward in our Bond, pussycat?” he challenged, his elegant British voice ending in a very male growl.
I swallowed hard, nodded boldly. “Been ready for years.” Or I thought I was. “You're the one who always said no.”
Harry removed a heavy set of iron shackles from a chest under his bed; they rattled and clinked as he attached one end to the bedpost.
Will I never learn to shut up?
“Such uncertainty.” He suddenly appeared inches from my mouth, radiating that demure sensuality that drove me nuts. I started, trilling a little yip of surprise. He whisked it off my breath with another soft kiss. I sank helplessly into it, an addict to her hit, my head spinning. This time his tongue made a darting, too-brief exploration before he withdrew.
He looked over his shoulder to the shackles then back at me. The smile that spread over his lips finally reached his eyes and they danced. “Shall I quiet your mind?”
My heart drummed urgently, reminding me of its crisis. “Are you hiding a patchwork monster under the bed who might need electroshock later?”
“Do be serious, love,” he admonished.
“I am! Those chains aren't for me, are they Dr. Frankenstein?”
“Just a precaution.” His full grin flashed glistening fang this time. “I would hate for you to get out of hand, my pet.”
Gulp. He didn't wait for a reply. His forceful arms were roped with rigid muscle but he used them with surprising gentleness to lift me. It took him a mere heartbeat to lay me down on a wide expanse of silk sheets the deep golden brown-red of good cognac, sliding to prop himself on one elbow in one smooth, dynamic motion.
When his cool hand lighted at the curve of my breast, I was surprised my bra hadn't magically disappeared like my shirt and pants. His thumb grazed over the thin cloth, lightly at first, then with a far more purposeful sweep. He fingered down the smooth fabric and exposed me, that masterful thumb lingering midair atop my stiffening nipple. When it finally landed, a brush of ice, I was struck plain stupid by a cold tingling shot from chest to groin, making my breath catch hard in my throat. I reached out for him, fingers itching to pull his face to my throat. Feed, feed, my strung-out brain thrummed.
Harry was all smooth skin and hard muscle as I played my hands along his taut stomach and over the broad expanse of his shoulders to the back of his neck. He didn't resist as I urged his face to my chin. A delicate sweep of lashes cast shadows across his cheeks and then brushed the delicate, sensitive skin of my neck.
Harry linked his powerful fingers into mine and I felt small and fragile. I wondered where my gloves had gone. The commanding press of his palms on mine swept me under the tidal wave of his Talent, and a psi-bridge snapped into place with an audible whip crack. My arms pulled upward, but just as I wondered why, Harry's fangs sank into my jugular. His deep thrust penetrated, pinning me in place, surprising a small cry out of me. I only vaguely heard the shackles jostle, and the cold push of iron on my wrists only made me notice how incredibly hot the rest of me had become.
Harry's hunger tugged at my vein, and when his heart first hammered into action, his hips writhed and ground against my side and he let out a low moan. He shifted, his hasty one-handed undressing shaking the bed. The sound of silk coming off his skin made my core slick.
He covered me with his naked weight. God, he was hard, hot from his feed, so hot, I marveled, so beautifully thick, throbbing against my hip bone. My body eagerly arched under him, my skin finally, finally delighting in the feel of his. Had anyone ever been this thrilled in the history of womankind? I tried to reach for him and found my arms trapped above my head, dragging from me a whimper of need.
“Try again,” Harry demanded, his reply ragged, gruff. He tongued my throat as I struggled. Apparently my lovesick brain was too dense to get that my little arms can't break iron clasps.
“More,” he compelled, rasping hungrily. I obliged, wrestling in the irons to get free so I could touch him, wanting so badly to clutch the smooth, stiff erection teasing me. He sank fang again, this time at the side of my right breast.
I gasped, “Please? Please, Harry.”
His hand slid between my thighs and eased them apart as a growl trapped deep in the back of his throat escaped. He pressed just the tip against my moist lips, rendering me speechless with anticipation. I wriggled while my heart jack-hammered insanely. Lust gnawed low in my belly. Yet he hovered, teasing me with it, his mind licking through the psi-bridge to feel the need bucking through my body, suffocating my sanity.
His thickness surged into me all at once, a powerful thrust that rocked the bed. My hips curled up to meet each long thrust that followed. I thought he'd lose complete control but he stroked with agonizing slowness as though he had all night to do so, gaining momentum with aching delicacy.
“My own.” His voice was a tremulous gasp as he struggled to hold back. “Not yet, my soft, sweet love. Not yet.”
He paused then and did something I didn't expect: he brought his hand up and pressed it to my ribcage, just above my diaphragm, and said softly, “This my gateway, this guarded by the unseen and trod upon by the unclean, this immortal causeway I do forever share with you, in accordance with our everlasting Bond.”
My back rocked up off the mattress, filled with an inescapable shower of heat, like a castle's portcullis thrust open but instead of pouring out an army of horsemen it blasted me with infernal heat. I filled with a fat tongue of lava. I wasn't breathing; I could swear my heart stopped in my chest. Then just as suddenly as it began, it ended, and I fell back into the sweat-dampened sheets, mussed and dizzy, shackles clanking.
And something had changed, had definitely changed. Every nerve in my body jitterbugged with potential. A doorway that could never be closed had flung open wide, offering Hell's tempting promise, the snake's apple for Eve. The weight of the Great Adversary briefly noticed us and moved away, lumbering into the void and leaving us both affected by full-body quakes. My belly knotted with sickness.
“Here is your test, my angel,” Harry said, barely a whisper. “I need to hear you say it.”
I had heard the heavy footsteps of the devil. Not just the Overlord, though the demon king Asmodeus was bad enough. No, the awareness of the Great Adversary Himself had swept my paltry mind, I a momentary blip on His radar. I had felt Him, could feel Him still. I could sense, just below the average every-day psi I usually pulled forth, a hotter, more powerful version offered up; Groper 2.0. Drunk with the possibilities, I had to mentally back-peddle fast, back from the precipice of temptation.
“Harry?” I felt blind with terror, needing the comfortable familiarity of his voice more than ever.
“Say it, my love. You must.”
All of the revenant's DaySitters must have given him exactly the same promise, so how could my words, no different than theirs, offer him any sort of reassurance? Maybe it was the price he'd put on it. Maybe that's how he knew I was serious. Or maybe our Groping, each to each, allowed him to see the sincerity and determination I really did feel.
“I'll never call on Him, Harry.” I turned my temple to his chest and let out a long sigh. “I swear on Mark Batten's life.”
My appetite flared anew, and he knew it. He laid an indulgent hand between my thighs again and stroked softly while my body went helplessly weak under his touch and I felt that sweet pressure humming down low, an onslaught of delicious tension. Strung out, I heard myself begging, and when I called him by name, he drove faster, so I said it over and over. He brought me to the brink, held me there until my cries overwhelmed him. I rocked forward in my restraints with a frustrated plea.
And that was when his iron-clad control snapped, disintegrated in one spectacular shiver. I knew this feeling; his whole body was shaking with the need to take me and I was more than ready for it. He rode me hard, hips driving me into the sweaty sheets until I gasped and cried out, hands balled in fists, railing agai
nst the chains. Twisting and arching, wishing I could sink my fingernails into his gorgeous ass, I felt him shudder with his release. He threw his head back, exposing his fair throat.
I couldn't help myself; I lunged up and bit him.
FORTY-NINE
By the time I'd caught my breath and settled the thunderous applause of my pulse, I realized I may have hurt him. I snuck a peek sideways.
Harry lay on his side, his body a mountain between me and the door. His lids were heavy with contentment. The hollow of his neck was a familiar, fragrant shelter marked by an ugly welt in the shape of my teeth. I pressed my open mouth there, kissing his skin, running my tongue along the new-filled vein pumping there.
“Harry?” I said drowsily. “What if I'm addicted to you now?”
He laughed happily, one hand's fine fingers playing through the sad, shorn remnants of my hair. I would have done the same, but I was stuck in the revenant's restraints, my sweaty skin smelling faintly of iron.
“The scent of your arousal is intoxicating.” His voice, purring against the side of my neck, sent a hot wet jolt between my legs, awakening me again, making me want more.
“Jeez, you're gonna make me blow my cork again if ya keep talking like that.”
“Such a fuss you make,” he observed, slightly smug, one of his hands trailing lazily down my belly. “If this room weren't soundproofed, your agents might think I were killing you down here.”
“Are you bragging?” I murmured, smiling into the curve of his shoulder. “Cuz it sure sounds like you're bragging.”
“I have of course been complimented before on my performance, but never with such raucous enthusiasm. It was quite encouraging.”
“Well, I encourage you to please cum again,” I invited, to which he playfully ask-asked. Far from shocked, his eyes gleamed with answering heat. “Can I get out of these now?” I rattled the chains on the headboard. His answer was a wicked little smirk. “Guess that's a no.”
“Sleep now, my naughty little muffin.”
With our sex hot and vivid in my memory, I was sure I'd never sleep. But Harry turned my body away from him so that he could spoon behind me, and the minute his heart fell in audible rhythm with mine, surging like a pump in his chest, my eyelids dropped closed. One last waking breath from the deepest recesses of my lungs and I was gone.
* * *
I stirred sometime later with the feeling that something was different. Naked, pressed up against someone else's flesh, I came to with a start, and my wrists jerk-stopped with a loud metallic clatter, forcing me to remain pretty much where I lay. I craned around to find Harry smiling down at me in the near-dark around full fangs.
Most of the candles had burned down low. I let my head fall back into the silk pillows, rocked it to the side to stare up at him.
“I dreamt about you,” I confessed. “We had smoking-hot sex and then you gloated about how awesome you were.”
“That does not sound chivalrous, and you should know I am always a gentleman,” he said with a knowing smile.
“Ha!” was my brilliant reply. Words couldn't express how not like a gentleman I saw him. Now, when I tried to think how to say it, my brain scrambled like eggs on a hot, buttered pan.
For some reason, he felt it necessary to point out, “I am not your ham-handed FBI agent.”
“No. You're not,” I agreed, but let it drop. I wasn't about to bad mouth one lover to make another feel good. Harry knew exactly how fantastic he was; he didn't need to hear it. He brushed a stray hair away from my forehead.
I felt woozy, like I'd gorged myself on pleasure, an orgasm OD. Could a girl die from that? Deadly delirium? Was this the doing of Harry's infernal Overlord, the Prince of Lust? Were his demon fingerprints all over this bedroom? I was willing to risk it. I wondered if this was a one-time thing with Harry, an enjoy-it-while-you-got-it deal. Just in case, I allowed my tongue permission to roam, stroking the soft trail of hair along the hard flat plain of his chest, pushed my cheek there, felt the thud of his well-fed heart pumping like magic where it was normally still.
“I need to hear it one more time,” Harry said softly, with a vulnerability I'd never heard from him before.
“I promise, Harry. I will not call on him.”
Harry produced a big ornate key and without another word, unlocked my shackles.
FIFTY
I'd tucked Wes away; after enduring my brother's miserable, flashing-angry glares. I'd shoved him in Harry's casket and told him to shut up and go to sleep. I understood the problem. Wes was hearing every thought in the house, and this had been a rotten night for it. Chapel and Batten fighting, both of them thinking their obscene thoughts, both Feds wondering where Harry and I had disappeared to, while Wes was painfully aware of the answer.
The last thing Wes said to me before he closed the casket lid was, “Batten's gonna ask where you went. He knows, or he thinks he knows.” His fingers, curled under the lid as he lowered it over himself slowly, were pale against the ebony wood, which made me cringe. “He's falling to pieces, but he has to hear it.”
Falling to pieces? That didn't sound like the minor territorial jealous reaction of an ex-lover. Maybe Wes was being overdramatic in interpreting; he was a new telepath after all, he couldn't begin to grasp the fine-tuning of psi. On my long walk up the stairs with my head hung low, I had images of walking the plank, or striding up to the guillotine. That can't be a good sign. I needed to distract Batten from the fact that I'd spent all evening in Harry's room. It was going to be hard to avoid the subject, since I smelled like sex and sweaty iron, not to mention Harry's cologne had rubbed off all over me. I pulled the front of my t-shirt out and stuck my nose down to sniff. My Cold Company smelled yummy, and the scent made me want to turn right back around and go back for seconds. I shouldn't have to feel guilty about that, but I did.
I was about to hit the top step when I had a light bulb moment. Ok, it wasn't a bright light bulb, maybe a 40 watt, but compared to my other ideas, it was fucking brilliant. Instead of joining Chapel and Batten's heated resumption of their argument in the office, I spun on my heel and went down into the cellar again.
Rummaging through the basement storage closet for possible supplies yielded Carrie's small octagon fish tank with coils of old aquarium hose, a circular BBQ grill, an empty gas tank, some chicken wire. (Why the hell did Carrie have chicken wire next to crumbling mildewed boxes of dried tulip and hyacinth bulbs?) Bags of peat and manure and black earth to amend the tricky soil in the Denver area, and a rusty shovel. I gathered some choice goods and started piling them near the stairs.
Next step: get Batten and Harry out of the cabin. They'd never approve. Wes wasn't awake to care; he hadn't adjusted to nocturnal living and still wanted to sleep after dark. Chapel wouldn't approve either, but now that I had him by the short and curlies (feeding a revenant, mister Supervisory Special Agent? Ask ask) I was pretty sure I could handle his objections.
Getting Batten, however, to go anywhere with a revenant was going to take some finesse: not my strong suit. I found Harry's keys in his top drawer with two dozen pairs of argyle and angora socks and no underwear; my immortal Commando. I slipped Harry's car key off a giant key ring that looked like it should belong to a dungeon master, and put it in my back pocket.
When I found my Cold Company, he was with Batten in the living room, in his wingback chair, one long leg slung over the arm in his usual reading position, holding a big floppy trade paperback. The cover said: Fire Fighter Prep.
I yanked it from his hands with a “Nope,” opened the door to the woodstove and tossed it in.
Harry stared at me, unblinking. “They have a night shift. I'd be in fire resistant apparel, my pet.”
I ignored that; it was beyond ridiculous. Instead, I addressed a very grumpy FBI agent on the couch who looked like he was about to snap.
“Good evening, Mark. I need you to do me a favor.”
“I've been known to do favors.”
“Great. Driv
e into Ten Springs to the all-night grocer to get me some female stuff.” I smiled winningly, complete with fluttering lashes. “Harry knows which ones, he can go with.”
Batten's eyebrows pinched together. “Why can't you go?”
“PMS makes me a danger to the general public.”
“That's not the only thing,” he pointed out. “Let Harry go get your stuff.”
“Harry makes the night cashiers nervous. They end up ringing the silent alarm and trouble ensues. Just go.”
Batten asked Harry, “Why do I get the feeling she's trying to get us out of here?”
“Fine.” I gave an exasperated sigh. “Want the truth?” I dug deep. “I'm in love with Gary Chapel and want to be alone with him. That's right, I said it.”
Batten's stunned blink was followed by a disbelieving smirk that he fought unsuccessfully. “Since when?”
“Well, lately I've noticed that…” I planted my hands on my waist, cocked my hips to the side. “Nerds are sexy.” I mentally scrounged for more believable justification. “The way he stares at me over the rim of his glasses really turns me on.”
Harry groaned, swinging his leg down from the arm of the chair. “I do not think I shall take pleasure in watching this farce much longer.”
“She's gotta be the worst liar ever,” Batten agreed, pained. “What do you figure she's up to?”
“Quite certainly it will be something neither one of us will enjoy. Do be honest, my pet. If it is privacy you need—”
“Yes, that's it,” I said, surprised I didn't think of it right off the bat. “It's Masturbation Monday and you guys are throwing off my routine.”
Mark rubbed his forehead creases as though they caused him pain. “Don't think that bird's gonna fly either.”
“My darling,” Harry admonished. “If this is the case, should we not take Agent Chapel away from the house?”
“I might need him!” I blurted.
Harry nearly coughed up a mouthful of o-neg from his goblet.