Nightshade's Bite (Blood Wars)
Page 19
She looked away quickly and then back. “This isn’t a good idea. We had our moment.”
“The odds weren’t in our favor last time, and we lived. I need to feel it once more, and so do you.” He nuzzled her neck down to her shoulder. Fingers pushed her robe and nightshirt aside to expose skin, running a sharp canine across the tender area. “Tell me you need this, too.”
On a hiss of exhaled air, her head fell back. She grabbed onto his forearm for balance.
“I need to hear it, Kiera.” He released her hair from its elastic tie. The dark waves fell down her back to just below her shoulders. He ran his lips over her jawline and then hovered a millimeter from her mouth. “You’re not answering the question.”
She was panting as hard as he was. And holy crap, did she want him, her breasts aching for his hands. Fantasies of that mouth of his tormented her.
Screw it. With a sigh of surrender, she said, “I want you.”
…
Warmth blasted Michael as he entered the cottage, the heat both welcome and instantly sweat inducing. He followed her to a bedroom off the east side of the house and locked the door behind him as he entered. The act was more symbolic than a security measure.
They came together, him pressing his mouth to hers, her tangling her hands in his hair and pulling him to her. She broke away and kissed along his neck, licking down his jugular and pausing every few millimeters as if fighting the urge to bite, which was erotic as hell. It should repulse him, but at this point, he’d jumped off the cliff. He was all in with anything she wanted to do to him.
Except she couldn’t bite. Not because he didn’t want to experience it—bizarrely, he did—nor did the thought of her teeth embedded deep in his neck scare him. It would kill her. One small sip of his blood, one accidental drop into an open wound, and she’d die.
He might have moments of insanity, but he’d never risk her life on a whim.
“There’s nothing you can do to dissuade me from attending the gala,” she whispered. Every touch of her fingertips on his skin wove a spell of need and pleasure.
He peeled off her robe. “I’m going to try.”
“I look forward to your best shot.” Her low, sexy laugh sent shivers straight to his dick. Her fingers traced the contours of his back while he kissed her neck.
“You’re important. If they catch you…”
“Important to who? You?” Her perfect nipples shadowed beneath the top of her nightshirt.
She burrowed her hands in his hair then drew her fingers down to the stubble on his face. “I won’t lie about this or how I feel. I want you so much, it hurts. I’m ready to give you all that I can. I’ve never experienced anything like this before. But as I said before, it can only be for right now. There aren’t any tomorrows for us.”
“We got a tomorrow. Right now,” he whispered.
Her eyes softened. “We did.”
“You’re right, though. No expectation for more. No complications. I want right now,” he replied hoarsely, fixated on her breasts. “I have to taste you.”
She held up her finger, jumped away to sort through her top drawer. Object found. She removed a scarf, which she tied around her face.
He said, “I don’t want—”
“It’s the way it’s going to be. It reminds me not to do it.” Kiera pulled off her top and shimmied out of her silky pants to be as naked as he. She offered him exactly what he wanted by arching her back. He covered the tip of her breast with his mouth, sucking, licking. Her fingers dug into his hair and urged him on. The scent of her arousal made him dizzy.
Yet he held back.
Impatient and starved for her even though it’d been a scant forty-eight hours since he’d last tasted her, he held himself in check. If he lost control to her, she’d distract him from his reason for being here, which was exactly what she accused. He’d do anything to keep her from going, even using sex as diversion.
Her hands caressed his hips and the muscles of his ass. Even though he wanted inside her, he took his time, lifting her onto the bed and using his mouth to get her more and more aroused until her breaths came in urgent pants and her hips undulated in frustration.
She rested her nose on the side of his neck. “I want a taste so much. To taste your blood with you inside me…”
He pulled away from her mouth and froze.
“Mask is still on. I may be delirious because you’re going too slow, but I wouldn’t do that to you. Or me.”
Only then did he return to her mouth and sweep his hand down toward her heat.
“Yes,” she breathed out in relief.
He worked her with a steady rhythm until she was on the edge of detonation, something he now recognized by the rapidness of her breaths and the sexy hitch that came from the back of her throat.
“I want you in me,” she demanded.
Her hand found the long length of him and caressed.
“Do I need to worry about birth control? We forgot before, but it’d make things complicated if there was a mistake.”
“I can’t.” Grief laced her tone. “That whole severed-in-half incident meant organs were destroyed.”
He wished he could ease her sadness.
As if reading his thoughts, she touched his face. “It’s not a problem that can be fixed. It’s a casualty of the past. Each of us has traumas we must live with. Our only option is to learn how to survive and live with the scars.”
“You are more than I can put into words.” He kissed her again.
“Then how about let’s stop talking.” She rocked her hips against him.
She didn’t need to ask twice. He found home as she parted her thighs to make room for him. And then he retracted his hips, angled himself.
“Oh, Christ,” he groaned as he entered her.
He slid deep, so deep. He repeated over and over, holding back. Beneath him, she was on fire. Finally, impatience won, and she pushed him onto his back and took over, taking him deep. She dug her fingers into his shoulders, scoring them with a biting pain that curled down his spine straight to his balls. Holy hell, he loved being under her mastery.
With an undulation of her body, he barked out a curse. The oncoming release was like a train, gathering speed. Then Michael was thrusting up hard, going even deeper until everything shattered.
Somewhere, the scarf had fallen away from her face. The thought nagged at him, but he didn’t know why. He barely remembered his own name.
He moved inside her, and she snarled, threading a hand through his hair as a moan escaped her. He felt drugged, insatiable. He was desire and nothing else.
She pulled his head back.
Yes.
A flash of fang. A low snarl.
He felt her teeth graze his neck.
Teeth.
With a growl, he rolled out of her arms and shot across the room. She cried out, reaching for him, barely seeming to comprehend the speed with which he’d moved.
His chest heaved. He ached. “Kiera, no.”
She made a strangled sound and seemed to collapse in on herself, hugging her body with her arms as she bowed her head. Her breath came out in ragged gasps that matched his own.
He crept back toward her. “Cariño, no.” He sat down beside her, pulling the sheet around her body as if to erect a barrier between them. He lay down on top of the sheet, careful to keep it between their naked skin and pulled her into his arms, but he made no move to finish what they’d started.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “So sorry.”
“It’s me who lost control and almost…”
“Shh.” He stroked her hair.
His guard had been down. She could’ve died. Even Kiera, strong as she was, couldn’t resist the centuries-old lure of vampire blood lust.
This couldn’t happen again.
…
Michael removed one of the amulets around his neck. He examined it for a few seconds and then pressed it into her hand. “I don’t have much to give you. I’m not rich, and I’m not into owning things, but I want you to have this. It’s been in my family for four generations. A mystic gave it as a protective talisman. Only the wearer can remove it and give it to another.”
The copper chain tickled her palm and slipped free to dangle when she examined the flat bronze disk. Age had darkened areas along the carved images. A stag stood near a symbol for fire, which was next to a circle intuition told her denoted a new moon. Based on recent reading in the old Gaelic text, this combination of images would invoke full moon magic and awareness. The protection he claimed the disk granted, she wasn’t so sure about.
“It’s beautiful, but I can’t accept this. It’s too special to you. The magic is meant for you, not me.” The pendant burned with energy in her palm, not evil but a potent power. She held it out to him. She still ached for him, so much, but he was right. No more. After they got Carol back, they had to part. For good.
It hurt.
He closed her hands around the pendant. “This is a small way I can protect you against everything. We can’t be together, but this might keep you safe from all those hunting you.”
She held it to her ear. “It hums. Do you hear it?”
He shook his head. “Maybe the magic is real.”
“It is.” She draped it around her neck where it dipped low and fell between her breasts. “I’ll wear it for now. The next time I see you, I’ll give it back.”
He touched the pendant. She reached out empathetically to catch his feelings, picking up sorrow suffused with uncertainty. “There won’t be a next time.”
She hid her pain deep inside. “There won’t.”
In the awkward silence that followed the finality of their agreement, she couldn’t bring herself to look his way again. Everything hurt too much.
He rolled onto his back with the crook of his arm across his face.
The day was drawing to an end. Time to shower and shimmy into the outrageously expensive designer dress for the party before the half hour of makeup required to place Elise’s facial prosthetics.
“I’m so tired. When you go to the gala, assume nothing. Trust no one…” His eyelids drifted shut. At barely a whisper, he said, “I’m not hostage to sensuality.”
Although that was her signal to leave, she lingered, memorizing every line of his face and every scar marking his torso.
Hostage to sensuality.
Odd phrase. One she’d heard before.
Ehlena had used it long, long ago in reference to wolves. Kiera had been a little over ten years old when she’d spied on her mother instructing a young vampire on how to handle the werewolves in the household. Kiera had seethed with jealousy. Her mother never instructed her. Instead, she delegated Kiera’s entire education to the wolf servants who, unlike in other households, weren’t chained. Ehlena didn’t avoid her but rarely chose to spend time with her unless required socially. Her mother had been gracious, even kind, to the other vampire she instructed, the one who’d been a decade older than Kiera. How she’d longed for that kindness or any scrap of compassion.
She’d outgrown hating her mother for her crappy upbringing. Long ago, she’d resented Ehlena, but no longer. Ehlena wasn’t perfect like many thought. She most certainly hadn’t been meant for motherhood, but her deepest issue lay in the fact she hadn’t been mentally healthy, something that had taken Kiera a long time to realize. Something hurt her mother before Kiera had been born, something deep and scarring, an incident Kiera might never discover. It kept Ehlena aloof from anything too intimate, like the love of a daughter.
“Apparently, we’re both hostage to sensuality,” she whispered to Michael and kissed his lips, not that he reacted. “Don’t follow me where I must go. I’ll make sure you’re safe here.”
As she got out of bed, she slipped and grabbed at his limp hand for balance. Her knee whacked the bedframe. His hand caught against the sharp edge of the side table. In the glow from the fire, beads of blood welled on his forefinger.
The scent of his blood activated a craving to suck on his finger. This wasn’t a passing interest in available blood. This mind-numbing urge to bite and drink until she was blood drunk was similar to what she’d felt earlier. It was new. The psychosis could drive a vampire insane with need to drink from the source, which was supposed to be a fellow vampire or human.
She shook her head. It didn’t break her fixation.
Not worth dying over. If she died and Finn found her next to Michael in a pool of her own blood, he’d kill the wolf. Or perhaps die trying.
But the smell…so exquisite. She fisted her hands and forced a step backward.
Her canines elongated as the feral beast within her took over. No more than a small bit of blood had welled up due to his super healing.
The world hazed red and narrowed with single-minded focus on the need to sample the heavenly elixir.
As her head lowered toward the blood a small voice, perhaps conscience or reason or panic, cried out. No!
She jumped away from him, trembling and sweating. Desperation clawed at her stomach and throbbed inside her head as she fixated on the vessel thudding in his throat. Each beat of his heart echoed inside her head.
Thud-thud. Thud-thud.
The steady rhythm of his pulse lured and tempted.
Like avoiding a blinding light, she turned away. Her stagger to the bathroom felt like she fought against gale-force winds. Somehow, she flipped on the light, locked the door, and slid to the floor.
Thud-thud. Thud-thud. Thud-thud.
His heartbeat pushing that divine elixir through his body teased her.
“No.” She clapped her hands over her ears and rocked back and forth, humming a loud melody to some long-ago concerto in an effort to drown out the call of his blood. The cry to taste his blood eventually stopped. Okay, that’s a lie. It diminished enough for her to be able to control herself not to dash back to him and bury her teeth in his neck.
In the shower, the routine of cleansing distracted her.
The craving to return to him, to take a drink, lessened. It didn’t disappear because she envisioned every location on his body she could latch on.
Scrub, scrub, scrub. Rinse.
Not thinking about him or the fact she could still hear his heartbeat.
For once, she wasn’t going to face a threat head on—blood obsession. It was already worse than what had happened to her when they’d been in bed. Now it was more than just lust driving the craving. She was going to run away from him. Hard and fast. And hope to never see him again because this obsession would never go away.
Chapter Nineteen
“Darling, this suit…” Kiera pursed her lips at the black velvet fabric ill-fitted to Viktor’s lanky frame. “Wherever did you find it?”
Viktor chuckled and leaned in to put his nose on the side of her throat for an instant during the waltz. “You make me blush, my love. Ah, you smell heavenly.”
It was an insult, idiot. Playing the part of Elise was far more difficult this evening. Michael had done something to her. She recoiled when any other guy got close, and touching was almost painful. Vampires didn’t experience the in-heat phenomena of wolves when they found their mates, but she wondered if something chemical happened when they found someone compatible regardless of species.
The music ended.
“Viktor, your wife is staring at us. I must go smooth things over with her, if you’d excuse me. Perhaps we can discuss engaging you a proper tailor later.”
“Perhaps, in private?” His tone suggested sh
e could un-tailor him anytime.
“Public event, darling. Your wife over there,” she reminded.
“You and I are not her concern. Come away with me, Elise. Next weekend. We can go to a non-warring country like Russia.”
She ignored the nauseating images of Viktor naked. With forced flirtatiousness, she whispered, “Early winter in Russia will be cold, a lot colder than here. That will require a lot of heating-up time. Indoors.”
He growled, the front of his pants now tented as she walked away.
In her earpiece, Finn said, “Eww.”
She went inside the powder room and checked it was empty before replying. “Status.”
“Leave. Something strange is at play outside. I can’t decide if there’s a wolf attack planned or it’s something else.”
“Status,” she whispered.
“Despite you getting into Viktor’s office and getting Adric online, we don’t have her location. Andrew infiltrated the lower floors of Viktor’s estate and found nothing. I’ll meet you on the outer road in ten minutes.”
“Will do.” Kiera moseyed toward the veranda. Viktor’s wife, who was surrounded by five males, was between her and escape. She was an ally to the Nightshade League who supposedly had important information to pass along.
“Elise, that dress is spectacular,” Anita proclaimed.
“Thank you, darling. You also look radiant in that outfit.”
Anita glanced at the guys around her. “We were discussing Nightshade. Seems there’s danger in the air tonight. Rumor is the League might attack.”
“Here?” She put a hand over her chest. “I didn’t think they did overt assaults.”
“I think we’re safe among these brave guys.” Anita grabbed her free hand, passing a small flash drive into her palm. She smiled at the handsome males around her who preened at her compliment.
“We must be careful. Danger lurks beneath the surface everywhere,” Kiera said cryptically but knew Viktor’s wife would understand her warning. It was an agreed-upon code to indicate her cover had been blown. “If you’d excuse me, I’m going to get some air.”