by V M Black
Dorian pulled back, and I clung to him harder. His blue eyes were shadowed with his need as he looked down at me.
“Too long,” he said softly, as if to himself.
“Dorian—” I stopped, helpless. I didn’t even know what I wanted to say.
He gave a short laugh. It had a hard, ugly sound, but his next kiss was tender, even gentle, setting my head to spinning with heady abandon and sending a liquid response deep into my core.
Dorian loosened his hold on me long enough to shed his jacket, tossing it aside. He pulled me through the doorway into the bedroom, his hands on my shoulders pushing my back against the wall next to the door. My coat dropped to the ground between our feet.
“You want this,” he said. It wasn’t a question. “You want me.”
“Because you want me to,” I protested, but it didn’t make it any less true.
“Because of the bond,” he corrected.
“I wanted you before that.”
“I know. If you hadn’t, you wouldn’t have passed the blood test,” he said.
I shook my head. It was too hard to think with him holding me like that. The need was growing in me, minute by minute. I knew what I wanted was reckless, insane, even. It wasn’t the kind of thing I’d done—it wasn’t something I’d ever done before, with anyone. But that didn’t make me want it any less.
“Shut up,” I said, as much to myself as to him. “Just shut up and kiss me again.”
And he did, his mouth hard on mine, sending a wave of reaction shuddering through me and down into my groin. His thigh was between mine, so close to the aching need there. Whimpering, I pushed my hips into his leg, and he lifted his knee so that I could grind against him.
But there was no relief there, only more need. My skin was burning with him, the touch of clothing on my flesh unbearable. All I wanted was him, his body against mine.
Inside of mine.
His mouth worked down, across the line of my jaw to the sensitive place just under my ear. I arched my neck into his mouth.
He broke away for a second, dropping his hands to my hips, and I made a strangled noise of protest.
“Your shirt,” he said.
I didn’t know whether it was an observation or an order, but without hesitation, I yanked my turtleneck off in one rough motion.
It was only when I looked up to see his gaze fixed on my body that a tremor of self-consciousness came over me. I knew too well how I looked—sick and wasted, hollowed out by cancer. But Dorian’s expression betrayed only raw desire. And a hunger I didn’t dare to name.
This is a mistake, I thought, but I couldn’t voice the words. He eats people, for godssake, Cora!
He’d eaten from me, and it had nearly killed me. He would have killed me, if it weren’t for variables beyond his control—he knew it, and he’d lured me in anyway. Knowing that I really had no choice. Knowing that I couldn’t resist.
Now here I was, half-naked with him. And I still couldn’t say no. His hold over me was so complete that I didn’t think I could refuse him even if I knew that this time I would die.
Some of my fear must have been betrayed in my expression because Dorian shook his head.
“No blood, Cora. Not today.”
No blood. Only him. Only...sex. I put a name to it for the first time. It wasn’t that I was afraid of the act. I was afraid of him and what sex with him would do to me. I was afraid that I would never be the same.
I was afraid that I would never again want anything so much.
Dorian hooked one arm behind me to pull me against him, and I could feel his hardness beneath the fabric that separated us. He skimmed his other hand up the side of my body and cupped my breast though my bra. I moaned slightly at the pressure of his palm through the knit fabric, my nipple going hard against it. I knew he could feel it, what he did to me, and that only made my body twist tighter in need.
He dipped his mouth even with my ear, and my skin prickled at his breath. “Tell me you want this,” he whispered. “Tell me it is your own free will.”
Was he asking for my benefit or to reassure himself?
“I do,” I breathed, unable to say anything else. “It is.”
But how could it be? With him, I could be made to want anything....
Dorian made a noise that might have been a laugh, then pulled back my hair and kissed me just below my ear, sending a startled jolt of sensation straight into my groin. He moved along my neck and down to my collarbone. His lips were soft and hard at once, kissing, sucking, nipping my skin until it was hot and flushed and I swayed with every caress.
His hand behind me slid up my back, and with one swift twist, my bra hung free from my shoulders. The hand on my breast slid up under the wire, his bare palm a shock against my nipple that shot straight into my center and lower, between my legs.
As if he could sense my reaction, he moved the arm behind me again, sliding downward to slip his hand into the rear waistband of my pants so it rested against my buttocks and urged me harder against his thigh. The hand on my breast shifted, his fingers splaying to capture my hard nipple between them.
I was panting already, rocking my hips into his leg with every movement of his mouth on my body, and a small whimper escaped as he slowly tightened his grip, pincering my nipple between his fingers. He slid his hand down, dragging at the hard knot until it reached his fingertips. Then he began to roll it, tease it, slowly, sending small jolts of pleasure straight down into my swollen clitoris.
My breath was coming in short, hissing gasps now, but he wasn’t satisfied. He dropped my bra on the floor and shifted me higher on his leg, so that my feet dangled, and then it was his mouth against my breast as his hand moved to tease the other nipple. He circled the areola slowly, provokingly, teasing at me with his lips and teeth until my head pounded from the need for fulfillment, my hands tightening into fists in his hair.
Then, without warning, he took it into his mouth, enveloping it, stroking my nipple with his tongue, and the heat in my center flared up into fire. He rocked his thigh against my clitoris though my pants, and I arched my neck, pushing hard against the wall as I ground my hips into him.
And I came. A teasing orgasm that rippled heat through me, not nearly enough, leaving my senses burning in its wake and promising more to come.
Dorian pulled me away from the wall, lifting me easily in his arms. One shoe fell off, and I kicked the other free. He was taking me to the bed—my bed, his bed. I knew it, and I welcomed it even as I knew what was coming next could never be taken back.
He was a monster. And in that moment, he was all I wanted.
Dorian set me on the edge of the bed, my legs on either side of his hips. He pulled his tie off in two tugs and began to work the buttons of his shirt from the collar down.
My breath catching in my throat at my audacity, I started at the bottom, my hands trembling as I tugged the buttons loose. He caught my hands when we met in the middle, capturing them in one hand and lifting them to his lips for a brief kiss as he pulled the last button free.
He pulled his shirt off, dropping it as his hand came up and caught the back of my neck. He leaned down over me, taking my mouth in a long, deep kiss.
Then he was on me, over me, pressing me back into the blankets, his mouth and body filling my world. The smooth touch of his skin against my bare flesh, against my damp breast, sent a jolt straight through me. And when his mouth came and claimed the other one, I arched hard into him, dampness blooming between my legs. I could feel the weight of his erection against my leg, and I longed for it to fill the emptiness inside me.
Then his hand was at the button of my pants, and in two deft movements, they were loose. He shifted to lift up my hips, then hooked his thumbs down to slide against my skin and pull pants and panties off in one deft motion.
I was naked before him now, sunlight flooding through the windows over my body. There was no place to hide. I’d never been naked in front of any man.
But Dorian wa
sn’t a man.
I shivered, whether from fear or need I didn’t know. Dorian cradled my neck in one hand, and the other slid down, over the concave of my belly and the mound below until he found the slit of my opening.
My thighs clenched automatically, but his leg was between them, keeping them opened. I whimpered, my fingernails digging into his back. I wanted him there so badly, like he had been the night he had changed me, and yet a kind of terror was mixed up with it, too, a memory of the madness of that night and the need that overcame everything.
Dipping his finger between the folds to catch the slick wetness, he traced my opening up to my clitoris and began to stroke, rolling it against the soft mound. My fingers dug in harder. I could feel him pushing me, pushing me harder toward that edge, and I wanted it and feared it at the same time. And all the time he was watching me, his expression hooded and inscrutable, and I couldn’t look away.
Without warning, he lowered his head again, his mouth against my neck, my lips, my collarbone. And all I could do was rock with him, my thighs loosening under his touch, spreading to welcome him. My body surged to the tempo of his fingers and mouth, as if I had been made for his pleasure.
I bent my face into his shoulder, panting and whimpering as I felt the tension build up inside me, twisting tighter and tighter as the blood rushed in my ears. Just as I thought I would break, he pushed a finger inside me to catch a place that exploded at his touch, and I ground my hips into his hand as my climax broke over me.
Waves of hot pleasure rolled out, surging from my clitoris deep into my core and out into my limbs, my center aching with desperate emptiness even as my body tingled and shuddered under his hands.
“Dorian,” I begged.
Dorian reached down, and I felt him pulling at his belt. A moment later, he, too, was naked. I didn’t look. I couldn’t look. The silky hardness of his erection was startling against my leg.
I haven’t shaved in nearly a week, some distant, half-mad part of me thought. He’ll know—
And then that thought was gone as he began to move his hips against me. His hardness was still against my thigh, and his finger found my opening again, stroking me insistently as his thumb circled my clitoris. I clenched against his finger, but it was not enough.
He slid a second finger inside me, and I gasped, and for a moment I thought I would peak again. But the emptiness still throbbed inside me, and this time it had to be satisfied. He changed the movement of his hand, no longer simply sliding smoothly but pushing, stretching against the inside of me. His mouth on my neck was torture, his hands pushing me right to the edge, where I teetered, caught.
And then he withdrew his hand and his hips pushed up between my legs, spreading me to him. Automatically, I tightened my thighs, my brain on fire from the madness of it all.
There was no going back. From the moment I had stepped out of the dressing room into the surgery to face him, this moment had been written. But some part of me still fought it, denying the inevitability, demanding that I keep this part of myself from him, the creature to whom I’d already given far too much.
Faint spots of color had risen in Dorian’s cheeks, and his voice was ragged as he looked down at me with the same need that held me captive.
“Open for me, Cora,” he ordered.
And I rejoiced as I obeyed.
He slipped up my body then, and I felt the smooth head of his erection against my entrance. He was above me now, resting his weight on his elbows on either side of my head. I clung to his back, my nails biting into his flesh, desire and fear warring in me. I was frozen, wanting to arch into him, not daring to move, my breath coming in shallow, ragged gasps.
Dorian met my eyes. “Trust me,” he said.
How could I not? At his word, I would trust him to my doom.
He pushed against me. There was the briefest burning that twisted into pleasure under his influence as it thrilled up my spine, and then it was gone, and he was filling me, stretching me until I could take no more and the weight of his hips rested against my body.
I gasped for air and shook with reaction, barely believing what I had done, what he had just done to me. But he just said, “Open more,” and with one hand, he urged my thighs farther to the side. I could not deny him. He settled into the space, pushing even deeper inside.
“Come with me, Cora,” he said.
I had nowhere else to go.
He began moving slowly, pushing deep into me and pulling out almost to my entrance, over and over again, and I lay still and breathless for an instant, shocked at the intimacy of it.
But my body was still keyed up, still close to the edge, and after the initial startlement wore off, I found myself moving with him, only a little at first, and gradually more, until my hips rocked hard into him every time he came down to meet me. I could feel the strength in him, the need that was tightly leashed even now, and I didn’t dare think what it would mean if he were to ever let go.
I clenched with every thrust. He pushed against me, into me, insistently against the place that, until now, had only twisted in sympathy with the waves that came from my clitoris. My body burned, as if all my nerves were sparking at once, and deep twists of pleasure pushed out from my center to fill me with the rhythm in me.
He began to build up speed, and he drove me with him, each stroke pushing me to a higher pitch. I could hear my breath, broken, ragged and harsh, small noises escaping my lips. He slipped a hand down between us and took my clitoris between two of his fingers, and it plunged me over the edge without warning or control.
White heat ripped through me, coming from deep within me, surging out into my clitoris, my nipples, filling my head with tingling euphoria that blocked out sight, blocked out hearing, blocked out everything except for his merciless movements on top of me, inside of me, pushing me deeper and deeper into the orgasm until I thought I would drown.
Someone cried out, piercingly, and I realized that it was me. Dorian shuddered on top of me, letting out a low sound that was swallowed up in my voice.
Finally, he slowed, slowed and stopped, and the world came back again.
Chapter Eight
Dorian sat up and gathered me into his arms, pulling my body against his and kissing the top of my head softly, over and over. Limply, I stared up at the bed’s canopy above me for a long moment, struggling to catch my breath, to pick up the broken pieces of myself and put them back in some kind of order.
And the order that it showed was painfully clear. What had occurred was a deliberate, planned, devastatingly thorough initiation into sex.
“How did you know?” I asked.
“That you were a virgin?” Dorian asked, an unexpected note of humor in his voice.
Oh, God. I had just popped my cherry with a thousand-year-old, blood-sucking vampire. As far as first time stories went, this must top them all. I nodded mutely, aware that some part of me I could not yet fully feel was shuddering in horror.
What could he have done to you, Cora? What might he have done if he’d lost that iron control, only for a moment?
He chuckled softly into my hair. “I have had a few centuries of practice at reading women and their reactions, Cora. Less changes than you might think.”
Centuries of reading women—centuries in which the women who were with him died.
He turned me slightly so that we faced one another. As the afterglow faded, self-consciousness returned. Stiffening, I crossed my arms over my breasts, curling my legs under me, even as I felt the tug that his presence always had on me.
What had I done?
“There is no reason to be embarrassed,” he said, reaching out to stroke the line of my jaw with one knuckle.
Right. Because him saying so made it true.
It could, though, a part of me whispered. Wouldn’t that make everything so much easier?
I pushed back to the foot of the bed, pulling up a corner of the bedspread and wrapping it across my body. My legs shook slightly, an echo of an ache in my t
highs, gone as soon as I recognized it.
“You held back. I could tell you were trying to be...gentle.” I almost choked on the word. It sounded like some kind of cheap promise from a villain in a bad movie. But he wasn’t a man, treating a less experienced partner with smarmy condescension. He was a vampire, and I had no doubt he could break my body in his hands as easily as he could tear my throat out.
“And was I?” He looked almost impossibly self-satisfied, leaning on one elbow against the bed, his exquisitely sculpted body stretched across the bedspread.
“Sure. This time,” I said, scowling at him. He could have attacked me with all the finesse of a bull in season, and under his thrall, the pain would have been turned to pleasure. A dark thrill went through me at the thought. Fear, I chose to call it.
He laughed again, his voice stirring a small shiver from me. “Don’t be afraid. I’ll never do anything you don’t want me to.”
“But that’s exactly what I’m afraid of,” I said stiffly. There wasn’t much he couldn’t make me want, at least in the heat of the moment.
He slid off the bed. I tried to keep my gaze on his face, but it was dragged downward, across the perfect contours of his chest and belly to the length of his penis, now lying heavy but quiescent in its nest of curls.
I was staring. Oh, crap. My face flamed.
“Get used to it, Cora,” he said, the words still colored with amusement.
I closed my eyes for a moment to break my stare, then managed to meet his gaze again. Did I want to get used to it? I wondered. I wanted him again, right then, but how much of that was the madness that he had infected me with, and how much was real?
“I want to get dressed now,” I said in a small voice.
He nodded, and the flicker of compassion in his face made me even more conflicted. Dammit. I wanted—I needed—to hate him, at least in some part of my brain. Some emotion had to be a counterweight to his thrall over me.
“If you plan on leaving, you’d better go,” he said.
If another man had said that, I would have thought that he was pushing for a one-night stand. As it was, I knew the unspoken conclusion to his sentence: otherwise, he might change my mind for me.