No, of course she didn’t. Though sharing blood with him had been a powerfully erotic experience, it had also been terrifying. With her tainted blood, the consequences were too dire.
As if sensing her fear—and how could he have missed it? Her whole body had tensed up like a line about to break—he said, “I have other plans for my mouth that do not include biting you.”
“I’m sorry, I’m just being stupid. I—” Her apology was cut off by a gasp as his cold mouth descended on the bend of her knee, and a flood of wetness rushed to her core. When was the last time anyone had ever made her feel like this?
Never, she realized as his mouth moved up her thigh, closer and closer to the lacy edge of her panties. None of the men she’d dated in college, none of the clients she’d serviced through the club. They’d wanted her to be overcome with passion, to scream their names and rake her nails down their backs. They hadn’t cared if she’d truly felt anything, just that their egos were stroked by their encounter. A tear slid from the corner of her eye, wetting the hair at her temple.
Immediately, Viktor lifted his head and came to lie beside her. “Have I done something to upset you?”
“No.” She swiped at her eyes, hating her stupid emotions for ruining everything. They’d never interfered like this before. “No, it’s just me. I’m screwed up.”
He didn’t respond right away, and that made her feel more vulnerable and exposed than when his head had been between her legs. She crossed her arms over her bare breasts and moved to sit up.
“No, please.” Viktor urged her to stay with a hand resting lightly on the tight skin of her stomach. “Tell me, what has upset you?”
“It’s just…” Why was she talking? She’d been with enough men to know that talking didn’t solve anything. “I haven’t been with anyone. I mean, when it wasn’t a part of my job. You didn’t do anything wrong, you just…surprised me.”
He leaned down and touched his lips to hers. Not a full kiss, just the lightest brush of his mouth against hers. “Allow me to continue to surprise you.”
She nodded and held her breath while he moved to kneel between her legs again. One finger slipped beneath the lace at her hip, dragging the scrap of fabric down. She exhaled shakily, lifting her hips so he could pull the panties off the rest of the way. He stroked the length of one leg, the lace trapped under his hand, and she was completely bare before him.
Reverently, he placed his hands at the junctures of her inner thigh and mound and traced the sculpted line of hair there. All her earlier tension left her, replaced by a completely different kind. She let her legs fall wider apart and watched, teeth sunken into her bottom lip, as he leaned forward and parted her folds with his fingers. The first shock of his cold tongue on her hot flesh bucked her hips and pulled an audible gasp from her lungs. She plunged her fingers into his pale hair, holding him there, wanting to pull him away, too weak to decide on either course of action and content to let him continue. No, desperate for him to. His tongue pulled in lazy circles around her clit, up and over and then down to taste the wetness at her entrance.
The sensations coursed through her body like electricity, jolting her every nerve with alternating currents of “too much” and “not enough”. She rolled her hips beneath his mouth, trying to bring him closer to where she desperately needed him to be, and he complied readily, fastening his lips to her clit with gentle suction as his tongue flicked over the hard nub.
Cassandra exploded, her hips bucking, a long, strangled sigh of disbelief pulling from her throat like a razor blade. She fell back and only then was she aware she’d arched up, straining toward his mouth, so hard she could feel the stretch of it in her muscles.
In a moment he was on her, covering her with his body while her cunt still spasmed from her release. The wide tip of his cock rubbed against her opening, and her hands flew to his shoulders to stop him. “Look, I know I’m not some delicate virgin, but…”
“But you’re asking me to be gentle?” He laughed, soft and low. “I will be.”
She couldn’t think of a good reason not to trust him, or to stop him. For the first time in years, she wanted someone and trusted him enough to let him into her body, not for money, but because she wanted to.
He pressed forward, her juices and the wetness left from his mouth aiding his entry. She gratefully accepted his weight atop her, and at that moment it felt like she’d been missing it her entire life. He parted her folds with his fingers and the head of his cock slid into her aching cunt, stretching her and filling her with delicious pressure. He pushed in farther and she moaned, bringing her knees up to bracket his waist. More and more he filled her, every cold inch of him warming from the heat of her body as he sank deeper and deeper.
“Oh God,” she whimpered as his pelvis came flush to hers, his massive cock buried inside her tight channel. “Don’t stop.”
When he moved, she cried out, the muscles in her calves trembling. She clutched at him with her hands and her cunt as he withdrew, the length of him slipping from her at what seemed like never-ending increments. He pulled free and plunged forward again, filling her, torturing her with his slowness. She whimpered and rocked her hips, begging him silently to end her frustration.
He gave just what she asked, pistoning inside of her with growing speed until she scored his back with her nails, sobbing aloud with the building pressure. Her greedy channel clung to him, and she arched her back beneath him. He panted, pumping his hips harder and harder against her, wringing every last sensation of exquisite torture from the movement. Her cunt had never felt so hot and wet and open, her body had never been strung so incredibly tightly with building pleasure. She wanted to scream and thrash, to push him off and to pull him closer, and finally she did scream, loud and long, her legs crushing him to her as she spasmed around his cock.
He rocked back onto his knees, pulling her with him. Her body boneless and heavy, she clung to him as he ground his cock deep inside her, slipping his hand between them to stroke her. She moaned his name, shivering under the sweat that bathed her body. How could he feel so cold when she was so hot? The contrast set her every nerve ending on fire. His fingers made her clit pulse with another orgasm and then another, until she couldn’t hang on to him anymore and he needed his hands to support her. He laid her back and grasped her hips, pumping into her furiously while he pulled her against him, impaling her on his hard length. He came inside her with a feral growl that might have frightened her if she’d had more energy to be frightened. As it was, she could only lie back and gasp for breath, her lungs aching with the effort.
Viktor collapsed beside her, though he didn’t appear to be half as worn out as she felt. Cassie swallowed, her throat raw from exertion and excessive vocalization. Nothing she’d ever done on the job could have prepared her for what it would feel like when she finally slept with a guy and had it mean something. The physical side had been good—no, phenomenally good—but she’d never given another person such complete control over her. Never left herself vulnerable the way she had with him. He was probably a thousand times more dangerous than any client she’d ever been with, but she’d given herself over so completely to the sensations he’d aroused in her.
With a shock, she realized she trusted him. Worse, she’d never realized before now she hadn’t been trusting anyone for a long time.
“Say something,” Viktor begged quietly.
He thought she was upset with him. Maybe he was afraid she regretted having sex with him. “Something.”
He chuckled. “I will assume from your literal interpretation of my question that you are not angry with me.”
“Why would I be angry?” She struggled to push herself up onto her elbow so she could see his face. “You fucked me like you just got out of prison this morning. That was unbelievable.”
“Crude,” he admonished, but he grinned with caveman pride.
She settled into the crook of his arm and laid her head on his shoulder. “So, even vampires like
to have their egos stroked.”
“Among other things.”
She smiled. “At the end of the day, you’re not all that different from human men.”
“Oh? You’ve been with human men who’ve been ‘unbelievable’?”
She snorted at that. “No, definitely not. In fact…”
“I see,” he said, saving her from finishing the sentence. A silence fell between them that was not comfortable, but something very close, until he said, “You deserve so much more than the life you’ve been given, Cassandra.”
She closed her eyes, relishing the unfamiliar feeling of snuggling beside someone. Even if it were just for a night, she would enjoy the false safe feeling. “I’m sorry I accused you of spying on me. And of being an adulterer.”
He groaned. “Oh, Anthony. How I look forward to the end of his mortal life.”
“So, what does he actually do? He said he would kill you if you turned into a Minion.” She shivered despite the warmth of the blankets tucked around her. “Unless you pay him for that service, but I don’t see why you would.”
“You saw those creatures. I assure you, I do not pay him to babysit me. There is an entire organization, the Conclave, that has pledged itself to destroying Minions.” He seemed uncomfortable as he acknowledged, “Anthony belongs to that organization, and he is stationed with me for the service that he will eventually do for them.”
She sat up, holding the sheets to her chest. “You mean, when you eventually lose your humanity and become a Minion, then Anthony will kill you?”
Idly stroking her back, he answered in an almost bored tone of voice. “That’s the plan.”
Turning toward him, she shrugged off his hand. “How can you live like that? Being polite to a guy who’s going to kill you?”
“How else should I treat him? He’s a free assistant, the Conclave pays his salary. Do you know how much I would have to pay someone to do his job?” Viktor shuddered dramatically. “It’s worth it just to let him kill me.”
“This isn’t funny.” Cassie took a deep breath. “He tried to blackmail me. He had newspaper clippings about the accident and warned me…he thought I was trying to trick you into feeding off of me.”
“He shouldn’t have done,” Viktor said, and though his tone was soft, his expression was frighteningly hard.
So frightening that she couldn’t help but ask, “You’re not going to…”
“No, of course not!” Made suddenly aware of his reaction, he tried to disguise it from her. “I’ll talk to him, and reiterate that you are not Conclave business.”
“Thank you.” She settled beside him again, her mind racing. Had she overstepped her bounds? Had she made a mistake? To have a powerful man like Viktor champion her cause against an employee… Surely she would owe him something in return.
So much for thinking she’d finally begun to trust someone.
Chapter Seven
Cassandra woke in the dark, alone. A second’s confusion was alleviated when she saw the soft light in the hallway. She slid from the bed and picked up the shirt Viktor had discarded, pulling it on and buttoning a few buttons. Keeping her eyes peeled in case Anthony lurked in the hallway, she tiptoed from the master bedroom to the open door to Viktor’s office.
She raised her hand to knock, but halted. Viktor sat behind his desk, eyes trained on the computer in front of him as he worked. Shirtless, the overhead lights made his pale skin almost glow and accentuated the deep lines carved around the thick slabs of muscle in his back and arms. Arms she had clung to hours before, a back she had raked her nails down as she’d arched under him, mindless with passion.
“I didn’t think office stuff could be sexy,” she said in lieu of knocking.
He jumped. She’d actually startled him.
“Aren’t vampires supposed to have super reflexes or something?” she asked in response to the shocked look on his face.
He quickly composed himself. “We are supposed to. Apparently mine do not work when you’re around.”
She couldn’t help but smile at him. There was something oddly distracting, seeing all that pale skin stretched over his powerful body, oddly incongruous with the spreadsheet he labored over. “If I’m bothering you, I’ll go back to bed. I just woke up and wondered where you were.”
“Comparing quarterly reports,” he said, flicking a key and minimizing the windows on the screen. “I have people who could do it for me, but that’s another secret about our kind: we love statistics. But no, you aren’t bothering me.”
She stepped into the office, her natural curiosity drawing her to the sleek black shelves behind his desk. “So, this is where you keep the books.”
“Nothing interesting. They’re just there to make it look like I can read.” He slid his chair back and patted his lap. “Come on, do you want to see something really interesting?”
She sat obediently, the black silk of the pajama pants he wore tickling her thighs deliciously. He turned them to face the computer screen again and, with a flick of his fingertip on the touch screen of the monitor, a map of New York City, Manhattan and the outer boroughs filled the screen.
“This is where we are,” he said, indicating a rough area on the map. The picture zoomed in to a perfect aerial view of the building they sat in. He zoomed out once more and tapped a key. Thousands of red dots obscured the picture. “And these are Minions.”
Cassie’s stomach dropped. Everywhere she looked, red flowed like a menacing wave over the city. “That’s insane…oh my God, look how many are in the park. That’s right outside your window!”
“If I tried to cross the street, I would be set upon in moments.”
“God, what are my chances?” she whispered, tracing the path of one of the dots with her eyes.
“Better.” He pushed her hair over her shoulder, smoothing it down her back. “Now that we’ve made love, the connection between us should be lessened. They likely would not pay attention to you. Why, do you wish to go home?”
Swallowing thickly, she shook her head. She couldn’t tear her gaze from the screen. The thought of going out there, unprotected, while her nightmare creatures swarmed the city… “Is it always like this?”
“No. This is an unusual number, even for New York.”
“How is it that this isn’t all over the news?” Cassie turned to look at Viktor’s face, but his attention stayed riveted to the screen. “People must be seeing them.”
“No. Minions are adept at hiding their numbers. Even if they killed someone, it would be highly unlikely that their victim would catch a glimpse of them. It was unusual that they showed themselves to you.” He tapped a key and the map closed.
“So, why have I seen them in my dreams?” She’d asked him before, and he hadn’t known the answer. She didn’t think he would have one now, but some silly part of her hoped that if she asked enough, the answer would present itself.
“I don’t know. If I had the answer, I could protect you better than I can now.” He pulled her against him and tucked her head against his shoulder.
“You don’t have to worry about me. I’ve been dreaming about those things since the accident.” She closed her eyes and pressed her cheek against his cool skin. Sleepily, she added, “I know it must be hard for you, because of your wife.”
“How so?” he asked, stroking her hair from her face.
“Because the Minions got her.”
Viktor’s hand stilled and his posture stiffened.
Cassie sat up, immediately afraid she’d said something wrong. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend—”
“Who told you that my wife was killed by Minions?” His wide eyes drilled holes into her.
“You did,” Cassie answered automatically. Then, almost as automatically, “No. You didn’t.”
“I didn’t.” Viktor’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “Perhaps Anthony—”
“No.” Her heart began to do a strange, disordered beat. “Are you sure you didn’t—”
/> “No.” He pushed the chair back, almost dumping her from his lap. When she sprang to her feet, he said, “I’m sorry. This has just…”
“There’s a logical explanation,” Cassie insisted. Even if she couldn’t think of one.
“The dream,” Viktor said, to no one in particular. He stood and paced the room, muttering to himself as though she wasn’t there. “It couldn’t be.”
“I-I just assumed,” she stammered. But she hadn’t. She’d known.
“You just assumed a monster that has been tormenting you in nightmares and that recently attacked you in the waking world killed my wife, who you never heard of before dinner tonight?” He shook his head. “This is not coincidental.”
“What do you mean?” A strange, nervous flutter began at the base of her throat and traveled up with her words. She had heard of past lives, of people having memories of things that had happened years before their births. A part of her wanted him to suggest exactly that, the same reckless part of her that had latched so hopelessly on to Viktor in the first place. But the rest of her knew that this was too crazy, too far-out to be believed.
But you’re in a room with a vampire. You let him drink your blood. You let him fuck you. You didn’t believe he could exist, and he does. Is anything left that’s unbelievable now?
“I think…if nothing else…” He cleared his throat, and his eyes shone with a pink veneer that he blinked away. “I think you know something of her, at least.”
“You don’t think that’s…coincidental? That I would be the girl Julie called to replace her?”
He pointed toward the desk. “Her ring is there. Put it on. Maybe…maybe it will prove something.”
She shrank from the desk, as though it could somehow force her to pick up the ring.
A look of hopelessness settled on Viktor’s face. Did he think he had lost her? She didn’t want to pick up the dead woman’s ring. Maybe nothing would happen, but something might. She didn’t want to take that chance.
She got to her feet and went to him, let him pull her into his arms. He tucked her head beneath his chin and stroked her hair against her back.
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