by Eve Langlais
He spun her under the spray until they were both washed clean then lifted her in his arms. She squeaked, but his steps were unfaltering even on the slippery floor. He carried her, still dripping, to the bedroom.
“The lights…” Her eyelashes fluttered down shyly.
“Let them shine.” He laid her on the lotus bed and stared down. “I want to see you, every part of you.”
Half closed, her green eyes gleamed at him. She curved her body into lush arcs of temptation, as opulent as the satin bed pillows. “Wondering where to bite me next?”
“Every part of you,” he repeated.
She shuddered, her eyes brightening even more. “Leave enough for my heart.”
“I’ll take only what you’re willing to give me.” He slid over her, his wet skin against hers like a full–body, open–mouth kiss. She let out a low, needy whine that echoed in his own hollow places, soothing the emptiness at the same time it sharpened the ache of his need.
She skimmed her hands lightly over his body, as if she was conjuring his shape out of thin air. Every nerve illuminated like the myriad lights of the city as her touch passed by.
He might not be dead, but only now, with her, was he truly alive.
Chapter Nine
Maybe it was the scotch. Maybe it was all a dream.
Maybe she really was crazy after all.
But Avery knew she wanted this as she’d never wanted anything in her life. The Vegas lights through the bedroom window struck multi–colored spangles off the water on their skin. She angled beneath Hugo, opening her legs to take him in the crux of her body. His cock nestled against her core, a hot, throbbing brand. Under her palms, his damp flanks rippled with tension as he held himself back.
“I won’t hurt you,” he said. His voice was barely more than a growl. “I am not the monster that mythology claims. Nor will I ever be. I would sooner destroy myself.”
She skimmed her hands up to brush the dripping, ragged locks away from his eyes. If she’d been inclined to scream, seeing the glittering obsidian depths might have been the time. But she thought her screaming was pretty much used up for the night. “I’ve seen a monster tonight,” she reminded him. “And it wasn’t you.”
He lowered himself to kiss her, his biceps flexing on either side of her in a blatant show of power. She closed her eyes as the sharp tips of his fangs pressed against her lips, too softly to pierce, but so close…
When he raised his head, she reluctantly dragged her lashes up to meet his solemn gaze.
“Being ravpyrii means I don’t carry or spread infection,” he said. “It also prevents conception. Those miniscule lives are destroyed by the unburning curse.”
She cupped his tight jaw. Despite the lateness of the hour, no stubble grazed her palm. “So I guess you’ve got the safe sex thing nailed.”
“Safe? I don’t know.” His voice petered out.
“I know you’d tell me if there was a danger.”
“There is,” he said instantly.
She lifted her head to kiss him and nicked her lip on his incisor. “That’s a different kind of thrill. The kind I think I could get addicted to.”
His nostrils flared, and a violent light lit his black eyes from within. “You are too brave,” he growled. “Going after Barrows. Attacking the imp.” His lip curled, not so much a smile as a flash of fang. “Teasing me.”
She reached down to weigh his cock in her palm. The thatch of hair around his sac was spare, as were the light curls on his chest. Just enough for texture, as if he’d been made to delight her fingertips and her tingling nipples. “You have no idea how dangerous I am,” she informed him.
“So scare me.” This time, his voice was almost a purr.
She stroked him instead and had to restrain a gasp as his flesh thickened another notch in her hand. A smidgen of uncertainty made her heart skip; his fingers inside her had been so good, but his rampant erection was another story.
“I won’t hurt you,” he murmured again. “I can’t, not without hurting myself. This close, your feelings become mine.”
“Feelings?” She could barely concentrate on his words, her feelings as he rubbed against her were so intense.
“That is what the ravpyrii curse steals from us, and the overflow of human energy is what keeps us alive.”
“Not blood?”
“Only because your blood runs with your passions, as do breath and tears.” He feathered one finger over her lip where she’d cut herself on him and then slipped his finger into her mouth.
She tasted the metallic blood as she swirled her tongue over his fingertip.
He narrowed his eyes. “Dangerous, indeed.”
He popped his finger free and slicked her own spit over her begging clit. She gasped at his touch, gentle but unyielding.
“Will you give yourself to me, Avery Hill? All of you?”
“Yes,” she moaned.
The blunt head of his cock pressed into her, and she tilted her hips to let him ease into her taut flesh. He hissed out a ragged breath and paused while she panted in time with him, letting her body adjust to the private invasion.
Their bodies came together like sunrise over the desert, slow, inexorable… and hotter with every passing moment. He drew out of her almost all the way and lowered his head to suck her breast. She whimpered at the scrape of his teeth over her distended nipple, and he lightly pinched the other taut bud, tormenting her with flashes of bright pleasure.
She clutched at his arms, her fingers sinking into the thick pad of muscle. No wonder he’d been able to carry her out of the shower like she was a ninety–pound chorus girl. The powerful glide of his cock in her pussy lifted her higher yet, each thrust stoking her excitement higher, until the tremors of her inner muscles spread out to every extremity. She clamped her heels behind his ass, urging him faster, even as she splayed her arms to both sides, holding herself to the earth with her hands fisted around the gorgeous pillows.
But despite her desperate grip, despite his luscious weight pinning her to the sheets, she was going to fall, she was going to…
At his next thrust, she bowed off the sheets, guiding him all the way to her core.
“Now,” she cried. “Take me now.”
With every nerve ending singing, she felt his teeth at her throat, the gold chain drawing tight. Like last time, the bite was no more than a pinprick, but a vibrant thrill spread through her chest and down to her belly as if she had swallowed a slot machine that had just hit the jackpot, chasing it down with a brimming decanter of scotch in one mouthful. And the thrill went deeper, into the spasms of her cunt, triggering another orgasmic burst that raced outward through every vein.
She arched her neck into his mouth, wanting more, more, more. He sucked hard.
And then she felt him. He was there, with her. He was coming, hard and violent, and she felt it. She orgasmed again, along with him, her body clutching his throbbing flesh, and she felt herself closing around him–no, her… no, him.
And it turned out, she did have one last scream within her after all, ringing with a shattering pleasure.
But somehow he swallowed it, right out of her throat, and when he threw his head back with a choked roar, she heard an echo of her voice in his mouth.
Then she blacked out.
She was aware only of the tingling that suffused her and the quite shush of her breath matched to his.
Wait, if she was aware, she wasn’t unconscious.
She realized it was just his black hair veiling her eyes. Rather than crushing her with his collapsed weight, he held himself poised above her, his forearms braced on either side of her, trembling.
She puffed once and the silky black strands wavered, letting in a shaft of shifting light. “Hugh,” she murmured. “You still with me?”
She felt her lips form the sounds, and she heard his name with her own ears, and yet she also heard it a second time, not as an echo–the overlap was simultaneous–but with a special depth. The way she fel
t when a lover whispered her own name.
She was hearing what he heard.
When he lifted his head to look down at her, she had a dizzying glimpse of herself through his eyes.
And she was… glorious.
But it was a lie; it had to be. No way was her skin that luminous or her hair so vivid. The curves and swells of her body couldn’t be that enticing, not even to a man who apparently hadn’t had sex in seven hundred years.
“You doubt me,” he said softly. “You bare your neck to me without a moment’s qualm, yet you can’t believe what I see with my own eyes.”
Embarrassment–along with a touch of shameless satisfaction–swept through her. “Well, I happen to know you also believe in vampires.”
He leaned down to nuzzle her throat. “Don’t you by now?”
A redoubled twinge of pleasure zinged from his lips outward, and she shivered. “Maybe you should try to convince me again.”
He laughed, a balmy breeze across her sensitized skin.
“How long does it last?” she asked. “This awareness.”
He rolled to his side, bringing her with him, her thigh drawn up to his hip, their bodies still profoundly connected. “Not long.” He studied her. “It bothers you.”
“No.” But knowing he could sense her prevarication, she amended, “It’s just strange.”
“So much is.”
She curled her lips wryly. “True.”
“The link fades along with the mélange I took from you through your blood and sweat and–” he traced one fingertip in a shallow spiral across her body, from the point of her shoulder down her ribs back to the wet joining of his cock buried in her pussy “–and other juices.”
She tightened on him involuntarily, and he responded with a flex deep inside her. They both gasped, and her head swirled as if there wasn’t enough air between them.
She could definitely get addicted to this.
“Just ask,” he whispered. “And I’ll give it to you.”
The thought was both exhilarating and terrifying. No lover had ever revealed himself to her so willingly.
“How did this happen to you?” She laid her head on the hard curl of his bicep, watching him. “What made you into a ravpyr?”
He closed his eyes, and inside her, his cock withered. Oh yikes, she should have guessed this wasn’t pillow talk, no matter how exotic and serene the pillows were.
“Hugo.” She touched his cheek. “Hugh.” She waited for his ridiculously long lashes to lift, his black eyes wary. “I’m sorry. That was rude. It’s your turn to lie, if you want.”
“No. I knew I’d have to tell you eventually. That’s why I’m here, after all: to reveal myself to the world.” He let out a ragged breath. “The phae king and his wereling mate chose me because my history in the human world could help me prove what I say. I know secrets historians haven’t yet unearthed.”
Her hand fisted with the urge to grab a pen and write it all down. “Seven hundred years. The Middle Ages. That’s when you were… cursed.”
He nodded, his clenched jaw rubbing her knuckles. “My betrothed, Sibilla, was a witch.”
“Your…” Betrothed? She wanted to kick herself at the dejected twang in her chest. Of course he’d had a woman in his life. He was sexy, strong, and steadfast; that never went out of style. She modified the question: “A witch. For real?”
“In those days, no one questioned that witches existed.”
Despite everything that had happened tonight, Avery shook her head at the thought of inquisitions and witch hunts. Then she considered her mother’s years in the institution and decided she’d better withhold judgment. “And Sibilla made you a vampire?”
“A mistake. A terrible mistake.” He shuddered, and she reached behind him to grab the satin comforter, pulling it over them both in a damp, sex–scented cocoon. “Our village was on contested lands between warring lords. Our fields had burned too many times to bother counting, and we’d all lost kin to starvation and disease. When I was just a boy, I was taken by one side to scout and spy, and though I escaped, later I was conscripted by the other army. Many boys suffered the same fate and died fighting each other. Sibilla lost two brothers in skirmishes, and she just wanted the fighting to stop, for us to be left alone.
“The women in her family had always been midwives, herbalists and brewers. Not unusual for the time, but Sibilla was all of those… and something more. There were whispers about how well her potions worked. But she was kind and generous–though I first fell in love with the way she swam naked in the millpond on moonlit nights; forgive me, I was young–so the whispers never reached the priests.
“Until she swore to end the dying.”
Avery shifted her elbow to slide it under his head, and he pressed his cheek against the soft skin of her upper arm where the pulse beat. “She must have been a force of nature.”
He nodded. “And she made that part of her spell. She called on old magics that had lain untouched since the phae abandoned the sunlit realm. The spell was a thing made of fear and pain and death, a weapon to wield against the armies that marched over us.
“It was too much to keep secret. Both lords caught wind, and the priests too, and they came with blood on their minds. I raced home to warn her, but the magic had been summoned. She refused to leave with me, saying the spell would keep us alive, no matter what.”
When he bent his head to her breast, Avery kissed the ragged toss of his hair. “Her spell backfired on you?”
“I don’t remember much, but the soldiers descended on our clearing as a mist boiled up from her cauldron. An archer fired, and I pushed her aside. The crossbow arrow went right through me–” he brushed his fingers over his belly “–just as the magic broke loose. I fell into the fire.”
Avery sucked in a breath and put her hand over his.
“I woke in the cold coals,” he continued, “and the crossbow bolt was buried between Sibilla’s eyes. She saved me. She forfeited the magic to save me. And the way she stared at me through the ashes…” He shuddered again, despite the closeness of Avery’s embrace.
“She loved you,” Avery reminded him, her heart tight and sore with his anguish. “Of course she wanted you to live. She couldn’t have stopped that impulse any more than you could have stopped the arrow with your bare hands.”
“But the spell was meant for the entire village, not me alone. I staggered back there. For once, the armies had worked together, and they left no stone standing. Only a handful of villagers survived, and they took the shattered remnants of our homes and stoned me to death.”
“Oh God, Hugo…” She had no idea what more she could say.
He shrugged. “Or what they thought was death. Maybe they regretted their fury, or maybe they knew what I’d become and dreaded the revenge of my spirit, because they stayed long enough to bury me in a shallow grave in the crossroad between the two lords. I dug my way out and buried Sibilla in the hole they’d made for me. But deeper, so much deeper. There are artifacts in that grave that would make modern scholars rewrite the history they think they know. And I’ll give you the location to prove my claim.”
“No.” She put her hand under his chin and lifted his face. “Hugo, no. That isn’t… We’ll find another way.”
He shook his head, jerking out of her grasp. “Sibilla would want to see the magic of the phae and the mystery of the werelings return to the world. If she was willing to sacrifice her life to end a war, she would certainly give up the peace of her forgotten grave.”
In the silence that fell between them, Avery let out an unsteady breath.
After a long moment, he asked, “Do you think that story will sell?”
She closed her eyes. She could justify fake reports she filed for Ho’s Conspiracy Quarterly. At least she could tell herself only idiots bought into those tales, but this… These were real lives, and deaths, and lives again, an ancient history that still breathed. And still ached at the memories.
“I can’
t believe you’ve been able to stand it this long,” she whispered.
“Time passes differently in the phae court and at times I could forget, just drift, but now…” His dark eyes were flat and bleak. “I can’t stand it anymore. I can’t.”
She wanted to reach for him again, but he’d already pulled away from her once. She could only offer him what he’d come for. “I’ll tell your story, and Sibilla’s,” she promised. “We won’t let it come to war again.”
She knew he had to sense her sincerity, her determination, but he rolled out of the bed to his feet and padded to the bathroom. After the splash of the sink and a grim silence, he returned wearing a plush casino robe, a matching robe in his fist which he laid at her feet.
“I want to see if Dyer has sent us the plans for tomorrow night.”
Without awaiting her answer, he went to the other room.
Feeling a little raw–and not just vaginally–she used the bathroom herself. She washed up and paused, studying herself in the mirror. A dim afterimage, quickly gone, told her he’d done the same thing.
What had he seen? She looked the same, but she’d been told long ago that what she thought she saw wasn’t always true. For once, she thought those well–meaning naysayers were right.
She joined Hugo on the couch in the living room, curling up not too near him, not wanting to impose. He didn’t try to close the space between them. He’d already managed to find the message screen she’d called up earlier, and this time there were multiple listings. She opened the files for him, shuffling them across the big TV screen, and showed him how to toggle and search. She tried to look at the schematics he was studying–after all, there was a good chance they’d be overrun by evil phae before Santa came down the chimney–but her gaze kept returning to the man beside her.
He caught on easily, but she’d already known he would. He was a male with a clicker in his hand, after all.
And maybe he was still using what he’d absorbed from her.
The thought made her sink deeper into the poofy terrycloth, as if it could swallow her. What had he seen when he looked at himself through her eyes? How much of her longing had come through?