by Mary Hughes
As he licked, he thrust a hand into my waistband. His fingers found my clit, stroked. Like the blown side of a mountain, I orgasmed.
His low rumble started, a dark purring not even vaguely human. I barely noticed. With a final lick, he came to hands and knees over me, grabbed my jeans and pulled them off.
I lifted my hips with a languid roll but neither of us cared. Comfortably sated, my legs fell open. The scent of my satisfaction was so strong even I could smell it.
His gaze riveted on my sex, pupils flaming bright red. His fangs shot out like swords and his cock was so hard it stood straight up.
I slid my hands down my belly to my thighs, framing my vulva. “What are you waiting for?” My seductive whisper barely rose above the crickets’ chirps.
The soft spring air caressed my body. Watching him, I ran a finger over the wet silk of my sex. Overhead, slivers of starry sky shone through the willow’s leafy fall.
Nature at its seductive best. And the prince of nature’s fertile magic knelt between my thighs, staring at me with red, red eyes.
“Come on.” I wiggled in the snug nest of his clothes, trailed one finger along where I wanted that throbbing cock. He still didn’t move a muscle, so I slid the tip of my forefinger in.
He growled, grabbed my thighs. Spread them roughly. Dropped his head and began to feast.
The instant his tongue branded my slit, I arched with intense pleasure. It jerked me against his hold, but he was so inhumanly strong, it was like jerking against the weight of the earth. His fingers bit into my thighs, his mouth opened wide…my vision went red as his fangs sank into my swollen labia.
I screamed a climax so big and shockingly fast it was a whoosh of wildfire. I gasped, panted, then keened when he started sucking on my pussy while it still flexed. Heaven help me, his mouth, all hot, wet suction, sent me even higher. I grabbed hunks of hair and felt the world buck beneath me. He sucked and tongued, impaled me on fangs until I was wound so tight and coming so hard it was pain. Not dull aching or rasping hunger but blistering, screaming, fuck-me-oh-please, open, ravenous wounds.
In the midst of my screaming, Glynn pulled away and fell to one fist over me, chest pumped. The other fist held his fat, sheathed erection. He guided it toward my spasming pussy and I thought thank you, but he only touched his fist to my vulva, thumb positioned over my clitoris.
I writhed under him, trying to impale myself on him, but his hand was in the way. His fist pressed to my open sex and he started feeding cock through it, slow as a glacier. I was an out-of-control wildfire, and he was feeding me heaven inch by screaming inch.
The head popped through first, stretching me. An inch of shaft. Two. I grabbed his shoulders, my clutching fingers barely denting ironwood muscles. I writhed to leverage my hips onto him, thrashing to jam heaven home. He froze me simply by pressing his thumb against my clitoral sheath, bearing down with heavy, dark pleasure. I sucked in a breath.
The thumb wiggled. Jagged bolts cut through me like branched lightning. He grunted and fed in another inch of thick shaft. At this rate, I’d burn to ashes long before he got all the way in.
He did a one-arm pushup. Biceps bulging, his head lowered to my throat, his thumb still assaulting my clit, up and down now, like thumbing a lighter. I cried out, not caring if the world heard me. His breath brushed hot against the sensitive skin of my neck. I wrenched my head back, exposing my throat. His teeth nipped flesh, his incisors sharp, the fangs lying smooth alongside.
Another inch of cock. Two.
I was beyond frantic. I grabbed his head, his hips, and shoved. Urged him to bite me, screw me. But he only nipped and nibbled and teased and oh-so-slowly drove me insane.
Another inch sank in, finally kissed cervix. He was completely filling me, eight or nine inches of shaft and glans—and he still hadn’t removed his fist.
I was out of my head with need for him and he hadn’t removed his fist. Like his kiss, he was restraining himself, hanging back, focused totally on my pleasure—and ignoring his.
Fuck that.
I grabbed his ears with both hands, tried to shake him. Like shaking a cliff. “Damn you, Glynn. Take me. Let go. Find your own pleasure, dammit.”
He lifted his head. His face was flushed, his eyes heavy-lidded with desire, the red gleam under them the only sign of his preternatural hunger. “Your satisfaction comes first. Your pleasure triggers mine.” His lids drifted shut, then open again, fully. “That’s not right. Your pleasure…it completes mine.”
I was wiggling like a worm on this hook of lust and didn’t see the difference. “I’m satisfied, damn you. Twice. Three times. I don’t know how many.”
He smiled, lazily. “Not enough.” And releasing his cock, he thrust me into the center of the earth.
Ever been pounded into the mattress? Powered into by a male so strong it’s like being bedded by an oil rig, whacking its great thrusting piston into you?
Glynn’s hips rolled and plunged until I was pulverized. Until I shattered in that sweet, dark night. And when I shuddered with release, he didn’t stop. He kept driving straight through my climax, rode me until I lay limp and utterly spent under him.
Then, with a growl, he stabbed his fingers into the soil next to my head.
Energy crackled up his arms, spread through his chest like he was calling up magic. His face glowed, his eyes shone brilliant as the sun. All his muscles expanded, pumped so big and hard the earth itself must have filled them.
It raised the hairs on my arms. My blood pounded in my ears. The short wisps in my braid crackled like a thunderstorm.
All that power, all that weight, slammed into me. I clenched in reaction. Was slammed into again, deep, so deep I whimpered. Was slammed again.
Something inside me awoke. Something dense and heavy and deep, like molten iron at the earth’s core.
Slam.
It shook me. Literally, my breasts and hips shuddering, but that was only the outer manifestation of a deeper, more electrifying jolt. I’d already climaxed several times and was now a yielding receptacle for his pleasure.
And he, by the simple fact that he put me first, was making me come again.
Growling, he pummeled me, riding me with the rhythm of the rising sea. His male magic commanded my body, my blood, my very soul. I rose with him. Dark as the night, powerful as the earth and vast and irresistible as water, he thrust into me. An ocean’s wave of pleasure swept in with him, swelling bigger and bigger with no crest in sight—and rolling directly toward me.
His climax was coming. And if he continued to take me with him, mine.
I shrieked my denial. An orgasm that big would destroy me. I clung to his massive, pumped biceps, pleaded for him to finish before he demolished me.
He rode me harder. His balls slapped my buttocks and his teeth opened over my throat and I’d gotten what I’d wanted, him out of control, but I hadn’t reckoned with the cost. I opened my mouth to scream—just as he sank fangs into my throat.
I imploded. Fractured all the way to my soul, shattering. Seismic waves stripped me of all my pretenses, anything civilized falling and breaking like so much crockery in an earthquake. My body gloried in a pleasure so complete it remade me in its own image. I howled, began pumping my own hips in reaction, flailing desperately and instinctively until I was riding atop the waves, pushing them longer, farther.
I seized him with my legs and beat up, my force that of a woman instead of the earth, but enough for him to roar in counterpoint and churn his pelvis so tight and fast we both burned to cinders. Then he bit me again and the cinders exploded.
Bits of ash floating in the dark were all that was left of me.
Time passed. Rumbles of lazy pleasure stirred the ash. Soft licks here and there recalled a body once real. Warm night brushed bedewed skin, rumpling it into goose bumps. Slits of vision opened to sapphire eyes soft and deep as the night.
Heels slid off muscular buttocks, thumped to spongy ground. Mine, I realized somewhat dazedly
. “What…did we…?”
“No one heard. No one’s near.” He touched a finger to his nose.
“Some sniffer.” I yawned. Stretched. I felt clean, new, like I’d gotten a great night’s sleep.
Until reality crashed into my head. I’d had sex with Glynn, again. Not just sex, but sex so cataclysmic it qualified as more. As physical intimacy. As—gulp—lovemaking.
It’s not the decision itself, I told myself frantically. It’s what I do after.
Great words, and I knew they were true, but it was now way after and I had no idea what the hell I was going to do.
Glynn noticed my dismay and tried to persuade me to talk as we slowly dressed and made for home. His idea of persuasion was soft kisses and gentle bites, and I admit they would have worked if they hadn’t led to more lustful pursuits, three times in quiet, dark corners of the city. The only talking we did then was with our hands and mouths and the occasional groaned name.
So we didn’t talk about it. Just as well. I still had my duty and rainbow dreams, and Glynn still had to leave at the end of the show.
Nothing had changed, just because everything had.
I loved him. I’d thought that before, but this was the kind of love that would throw away duty, forget dreams, simply to stay with him a few moments longer.
Feelings that big should move mountains. It’s absolutely incredible to me that they don’t even ruffle the real world unless action is taken.
Since most emotions don’t last and most actions do, it pays to be very careful to know for sure what’s real. The saying “think before you act” is just good business sense, and I was nothing if not all business. Well, except for the music part.
But my emotions were so overwhelming, thinking was almost impossible. Right now my saying was more, “When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout”. Cap that with city businesses plunging toward financial ruin and Elias’s Armageddon marching one day closer, and maybe panic was a sensible reaction.
I needed simple again. I needed to reduce my life to problems I could solve.
Okay, good. Glynn first. Leaving at the end of the show, traveling to the home he loved. I’d already decided to let him go. Loving him even more didn’t change that.
Vampires? I might be able to make a difference there, as part of Nixie and Elena’s group. I tucked that away for later.
CIC Mutual? Too big for me to knock down.
Camille and her club?
There, as another business owner, I could prove useful. I’d see things the others might miss: ways to get her out of Meiers Corners, means to pull her well-manicured claws out of our citizenry.
Once I could think again, that was.
Thursday morning I discovered the city’s financial crisis was closer than anyone thought.
Before I even unlocked for the day, Rocky Hrbek was knocking frantically on the door. When I opened up, she ran in, breathing fast, locked the door behind her and drew me away from it as if we could be heard. In a low voice, she said, “They did it. I never thought they would. It’s personal, Junior. Almost evil.”
“Calm down. Another stolen garden gnome?”
She gaped at me from behind her huge glasses. “Are you serious? No, this is important. A friend at work called me. They posted yesterday. You’ll get yours today.”
“They’re mailing out stolen garden gnomes?”
“No!” Rocky rarely lost her temper, but that did it. “CIC is demanding full premium payment.”
“Your supervisor is demanding payment?”
“Would you listen?” She glared at me like I was the slowest tricycle on the planet. “The directive came from the president of the company himself. All premiums are due immediately.”
That finally got through. “W…what? But they can’t.”
“They think they can, and they have some nasty, ruthless lawyers who agree.” She lowered her voice even more. “I know Julian’s good, but they’ve got a whole cadre of sharks ready to stab us with lawsuits. Even if we’re in the right, we’d bleed out before we win. And dead is dead.”
An imperious knock at the door spun her. “Crap, it’s Mrs. Blau. You’d better let her in. She’s gotten crabby lately.”
“Everyone’s gotten crabby lately,” I muttered. Camille’s doing. I went to the door, Rocky following.
“Maybe it’s catching,” she said as I unlocked the door. “That would explain why Mr. Nosferatu went all Snidely Whiplash on us.”
“Nosferatu?” Unless there was more than one, that was the vampire who stood against the Iowa Alliance. “How do you know him?”
“He’s president of CIC.”
If she’d whapped me in the face with a bassoon, I couldn’t have been more stunned. Yet it made obvious sense. Nosferatu, the vampire attacking Meiers Corners, was behind CIC, the insurance company attacking Meiers Corners. Nosferatu was the high mucky-muck at CIC Camille was involved with. Why hadn’t I put it together before this?
I had a lot of time to think about it that day. We had customers, but they perused the sausage in stony silence. When they spoke, it was to criticize. Our receipts were way down, and I knew we weren’t the only ones.
Worse, we got our dunning notice in that morning’s mail. The letter carrier looked almost sick delivering it. It wasn’t the first he’d seen either.
The envelope rattled in my shaking hand. This was intolerable. I had to do something. We needed money, but even business guru Kai Elias’s cash was tied up helping the truly penniless. And besides, no self-respecting MC businessperson would accept a handout.
So what we really needed were tourists.
But Camille had grabbed those tourists somehow. She’d hooked them as surely as she’d grabbed our own people. And I had no idea how.
I opened the envelope. It was as Rocky said, twelve thousand dollars due by the end of the month. We could find other insurance, but it’d be hard to bind a new policy in time to stay open. Yet to pay this, we’d have to sacrifice the cooler fund, our savings and my instruments.
I felt cornered and out of options. Business Truth #7 said I should just wait, that the solution would become obvious. An obvious solution to citywide meltdown, and two ruthless vampires?
I didn’t have a lot of hope.
The theater that night was nearly empty. A dozen people sat in the audience, mostly parents.
Takashi’s beats were listless. Director Dumbass’s sparkling swish was gone. Even Mishela’s voice wavered as she wished upon that star.
What’s more shattered than heartbroken?
We didn’t bother playing the bows. I trudged back to the prop room, sluggishly disassembled and swabbed instruments.
Glynn appeared in the doorway. “Walk you home?”
“I’m not good company.”
“I thought perhaps…” He stared at his feet. “Maybe you could come to my room. I have a real bed.” He raised his eyes. Deepest blue, they were filled with such longing that it stole my breath.
“Bed?” The bower had been awesome, but the thought of Glynn’s huge mattress…a door to muffle anything louder than gasps and moans… My hormones revved directly into desperation. I stuffed instruments in cases, grabbed his arm and hustled us out the door.
Our hands found each other’s skin on the way, sliding under clothes and exploring so fast we were practically undressed by the time we hit Glynn’s door. He turned the knob with a hand borrowed from my breast, immediately diving back under while he kicked open the door. He scooped me off my feet and twirled me across the threshold—and ground to a stop.
His nostrils were flared, his fangs full length and his eyes burned bright red and not in the good lusty way. I followed his stare to see—
The small table was bare.
Glynn rushed to it and frantically patted it like a blind man, like maybe his tchotchkes were still there, just invisible. He hadn’t put me down, had simply baled me into one arm like a sack of groceries. I wasn’t insulted at being treated like ca
t litter; I was amazed. He’d held on to me.
In the midst of a nightmare, he’d only clutched me tighter.
“Oh, Duw, where are they?” He whispered it like a prayer, as though he were actually asking God. He dropped to his knees, twitched aside the heavy brocade tablecloth, but I knew he wouldn’t find his tchotchkes there. If they were anywhere in the room, his preternatural nose would have at least detected the pipe, the unglazed ceramic holding its cavendish essence.
He rose and circled the room in search anyway. Round and round, checking the same places two or three times. His directionless search screamed his loss.
“Glynn.” I caressed his hair. “Glynn, stop. Sit down. We need to think.”
It took five minutes of petting and gentle words before he finally collapsed on the foot of the bed.
“Why?” His voice broke. My heart broke with it. “Why would someone do this? Who would do it?”
He was incredibly vulnerable right now. Of course, his very vulnerability made him deadly dangerous. Not to me, but I didn’t want to touch off that powder and have it explode on someone else. So I spoke slowly, carefully. “Who knew what those items meant?”
“Nobody. I never talk about them.” He took a deep breath, making a visible attempt to calm himself. “You know. Elias knows, I suppose. Nobody else.”
“Not what they symbolized. Who knows how important they are to you?”
His eyes focused, for the first time since seeing the empty table, on me. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of that. Many people. Emersons, Mishela, some of the Alliance vampires. And—” His eyes abruptly unfocused, like he’d been shot. “Oh, bollocks. I can’t believe…it can’t be.”
“Can’t be what?” Or rather, who?
The pain contorting his face confirmed a “who”, someone close. Betrayal by a friend.
But there was anger in his face too. A friend, but not a heart’s friend. I was incredibly relieved—until he said her name.
“Camille.”
I shuddered.
He shook his head. “How could it be her? Wouldn’t I smell her?”