Craved: A Vampire Syndicate Paranormal Romance (The Vampire Syndicate Book 2)

by Rebecca Rivard

  His whole body tightened. “Nothing.” He kneed my legs apart in a dominant move that made me cream with arousal, and crouched over me. “I don’t want you to say anything but Please, Rafe and Make me scream.”

  I snorted. “You’re so…”

  “Cocky?” He hooked his hands around my thighs and hovered his mouth over my sex. “You love it and we both know it.”

  He gave me a slow lick. My hips bucked.

  Oh yeah, I loved it.

  “More?” He licked me again.

  “Yes,” I said in a voice low and raspy with desire.

  “Rafe,” he prompted.

  I shook my head, confused.

  “Say, ‘More, Rafe.’ Tell me what you want, Zoe—and I’ll give it to you.”

  My mouth dried. I moistened my lips. What could be hotter than this strong, beautiful man between my thighs, promising me any sexual pleasure I wanted?

  “More,” I said huskily. “Rafe.”

  He licked me again, and then closed his lips on my clit and sucked gently.

  “Yes…” I dug my fingers into the mattress. He kept his mouth on me, licking and sucking.

  dhampirs have higher metabolisms than vampires. His lips were so hot. So perfect. The sensation increased until I was on fire.

  “Too…much.” I writhed beneath him, unused to anyone but myself controlling my orgasms, but he was relentless.

  “You can take it.” He worked a finger into my slick passage. His tongue played. His teeth nipped.

  Everything in me clenched and then I came apart in a flash of heat and light.

  When I opened my eyes, he was rolling on protection. I came up on my knees and helped him finish. If this was my only night with Rafe, I was going to touch and taste my fill.

  Just my fingers on his cock made his eyes slit with pleasure, even through the condom. I squeezed the base, then went lower to massage his balls.

  We were on our knees facing each other. I ran my hands up the hard ridges of his abdomen, teased his flat dark nipples with my nails.

  He reached out and snagged me by the nape, dragging me up against him. My breasts were pressed to his chest, his erection hard against my belly.

  “You’re so damn sexy,” he said against my mouth. Below, he did something magical with his fingers that had me clenching my thighs together. He bit my lower lip. “Open to me.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  His gaze shot to mine. I’d meant it ironically, but somehow it had come out breathy, needy.

  And he liked it, I could tell.

  He did that magical thing again, and this time, my nerves sparked and exploded. I gasped and arched with the hot, bright pleasure of it.

  The world spun and I was on my back, Rafe above me. A powerful thigh moved my legs further apart, and he settled in the space he’d made for himself.

  Espresso eyes smoldered at me. “Tell me you’re ready.”

  “Yes.” I opened my arms, gathered him close. So, so ready.

  He propped himself on his forearms and set his cheek against mine.

  I’d wondered what my first time would be like. Awkward? Painful? Maybe even embarrassing?

  But it was the most natural thing in the world. He reached down and guided himself into me. I moaned as my body stretched to accommodate him. There was an erotic burn, followed by amped-up pleasure.

  He stilled, his back muscles rock-hard. “You all right?” he asked in a strained voice.

  “Mm-hm.” I kissed his jaw. The stubble was rough beneath my lips. “It feels good.”

  “It does. So good.” He pulled slowly back and thrust again, a little harder. “So. Damn. Good.”

  The next time he did it, I tightened around him. That felt even better.

  I moaned his name.

  Rafe lifted up enough to take my hands. He set them on the mattress above my head so I was stretched out beneath him. Below, his hips kept up a slow, steady rhythm.

  He’d never retracted his fangs. He looked fierce, animal-like. I felt like I was being taken, conquered, and I loved it.

  My own fangs slid out.

  The world narrowed to just us.

  Rafe.

  Me.

  The hot slide of flesh against flesh. The mingling of our scents. His lean, hard-muscled body between my thighs.

  I hadn’t known I could want this bad. Need this bad.

  He lowered his head to kiss me. His tongue stroked into my mouth. I sucked it deeper, and he groaned and thrust harder.

  “The Lady knows, I want you,” he said against my lips. “Too damn much.” He rolled his hips in an unexpected move that had me sucking oxygen.

  “You like that?” He did it again.

  “Yes, yes …” I was so close. I pushed against him, desperate for more.

  “Do you want to come for me?”

  Yes.

  I didn’t say it aloud, but he seemed to hear me anyway. He stroked into me, hard and deep, and at the same time, nipped my lower lip.

  Too much sensation.

  “That’s it. Take it, baby.”

  My climax exploded through me like a firebomb. I gasped his name and bucked beneath him, my sex clenching around his.

  “Gods. I—” He pumped into me. Firm, fast thrusts. Then he stilled, and with a groan, pressed in so deep he touched my womb, and came.

  I wrapped myself around him, trying to imprint everything about this on my brain. The earthy smell of sex. His lightly furred chest against my breasts. The slamming of his heart. His forehead touching mine as he hung over me, taking ragged breaths.

  A minute passed, maybe longer, before he lifted off me. I wanted to tighten my arms and legs around him, to keep him where he was, but I forced myself to relax my hold and let him go.

  He lay on his back beside me. Our hands touched, and he interlaced his fingers in mine.

  I stared at the ceiling, my insides still humming. Gradually, my awareness centered on our intertwined hands. A simple, casual touch that Rafe had probably done without thinking about it.

  But I couldn’t recall the last time anyone had held my hand. I couldn’t even remember the last time someone had touched me with affection.

  Étan didn’t count. When he touched me, it was to control me. And Victorine’s caresses seemed calculated, a reminder that I was her subordinate.

  Sadness scraped my throat.

  Don’t start. This can’t go anywhere, and you know it.

  I swallowed the sorrow and turned my head to smile at Rafe. “I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.”

  16

  RAFE

  Paris after dark is a vampire’s paradise, a chic metropolis that’s always awake, always on.

  We took a taxi to the Left Bank, where I’d booked us into a different hotel. The summer night was hot and humid and crowded with humans. They dined at sidewalk cafés or strolled along the Seine River, its black water shimmering in the moonlight. Amber lights glowed along the tree-lined boulevards, and steamy music spilled from cramped little bars.

  Our new hotel was on a narrow street in the Fifth Arrondissement.

  “Breakfast is served from seven to ten a.m.” The clerk handed me a key card to a room on the fourth floor and directed us to a coffin-sized elevator.

  I pressed the button. The elevator descended slowly, groaning and grumbling the entire way, before heaving to a stop with a rattle and a thump.

  Zoe and I glanced at each other. “Let’s take the stairs,” we said in unison.

  Our room was barely big enough to hold a queen bed, a table and one chair. But the bed had fresh white linens and the tiny bathroom smelled like lavender. The sole window opened onto a courtyard where four floors below, teenagers played soccer beneath the streetlights, laughing and trash-talking each other.

  I shoved our luggage into the closet and gave Zoe an apologetic shrug. “Sorry. It’s not what you’re used to.”

  “No.” She’d changed into a white T-shirt and tight black jeans, and twisted her hair into a mes
sy bun. She looked sexy and sophisticated and very French. “But that’s the point, right? No one will look for us here.”

  She sat on the bed and took off her boots. Setting her hands on the mattress, she crossed her legs at the ankles and looked up at me from beneath thick dark lashes.

  I swallowed something both sweet and bitter. Those yard-long legs had been wrapped around me a few short hours ago, and already, I wanted more.

  I had the sinking sensation I’d always want more, that I’d never get enough of Zoe—her taste, her scent, the feel of that glorious feline body against mine. She was the one woman for me, the woman I’d hungered for ever since she’d strode into the Tremblay boardroom wearing an icy smile, a prim black suit and blood-red heels.

  I shook my head. “You don’t belong here.”

  “Rafe.” Her pretty mouth turned down. “I want to be here. Stop treating me like some helpless, overindulged princess. I can survive a couple of nights in a two-star hotel.”

  Hell, now I’d insulted her. I knelt down and took her hands.

  “Damn it, that’s not what I meant. I want to give you beautiful things, wrap you in softness. Feed you chocolate and paint your body in wine. Instead, your first time was in a lumpy bed in a cheap hotel.”

  Zoe smiled. A slow, frankly sensual smile. If I hadn’t already been on my knees, that smile would’ve brought me down.

  “And it was amazing.”

  “Yeah?” I felt a flush of masculine pride.

  And damn the woman for turning me into this needy version of myself, but it was important to me that it had been good for her.

  She was important to me.

  She slid off the bed so we were both kneeling. “It was perfect.” She framed my face in her hands. “You were perfect. I don’t remember the bed. I remember you.”

  My arms wrapped around her. Want slammed through me, a vicious blow harder than anything her mother’s enforcers had hit me with.

  Want, and hope.

  I concealed both emotions behind a you-ain’t-seen-nothing-yet grin. It was too soon to let her see how I felt—we were both still wary of each other.

  Better to take things slow, see how they developed.

  “Next time,” I said, “will be even better.”

  “Is that a promise?” Her smile was wicked.

  “You know it is.” I ran my fingers down her silky ponytail. “But you need to feed. We both do. Let’s contact Philippe and Victorine, then go out to that club you told me about.”

  “Le Sang Bleu?” She ran a fingertip over my lower lip. “If that’s what you want...”

  No, it’s not what I want. I want to lock the door, tie you to the bed and never let you go.

  But I rose to my feet and reached for my laptop.

  Zoe texted Philippe as Victorine, then sat cross-legged on the bed, watching intently as I used my laptop to route the message to her mother through Japan and on to Montreal. I’d bet good money that next time, she’d be able to do it herself.

  I shut the laptop. “That should buy us a few days.”

  “That’s all we need,” she said.

  We took the Metro north to Montmartre. The white domes of Sacré-Coeur Basilica perched above us, its wide steps crammed with tourists enjoying the view of Paris and the informal, never-ending party: a fire-eater swallowing a blazing torch, hawkers selling statuettes of the Eiffel Tower. A busker played a mournful blues on a shiny saxophone.

  According to Zoe, Le Sang Bleu was a seedy club for unaffiliated vampires in nearby Pigalle, tolerated by the Paris Syndicate but not under their protection. We had similar clubs in Kral territory for vampires who weren’t affiliated with a syndicate. My father couldn’t allow them to roam the streets, feeding off nonconsenting humans, but he didn’t allow just anyone into our private speakeasies, either.

  Zoe’s phone buzzed, Philippe responding to her text. She showed me the message, telling her to come by any time after two a.m. “We still have time to feed,” she said. “It’s not even midnight.”

  We were in. My pulse sped up.

  “I’m going with you.”

  Her sooty black brows snapped down. “You can’t.”

  I thought uneasily of Tomas’s directive not to do anything before hearing from my dad. But Father had raised us to think for ourselves, and this might be my only chance to spring Zaq.

  “Not as myself,” I said. “But you’ve seen my glamours. Philippe will never know it’s me.”

  “He won’t let me bring in a stranger.”

  “Then I’ll go as someone from your syndicate.”

  “He’ll know it’s you the minute you open your mouth.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry, but you’ll have to let me do this alone.”

  “Mm,” I said, my mind working overtime. Zoe was right…unless I changed my appearance to someone Philippe wouldn’t expect to speak.

  “Mm?” She slanted me a suspicious look. “What does that mean?”

  I gave her a lopsided smile. “It means I’m thinking. I’ll let you know what I come up with.”

  “You’re not coming in,” she said in that cool, you-must-obey-me voice.

  But I wasn’t one of her underlings, and frankly, that tone just made me hot.

  I curved a hand around her nape and pulled her close for a slow, tongue-tangling kiss. “We’ll see.”

  Her eyes were dark and beautifully hazy from the kiss, but she still managed to roll them. “Are you always this obstinate?”

  I grinned. “Yeah.”

  Pigalle was a hipper, seedier version of Montmartre, with strip clubs and smoky bars squeezed into cramped buildings next to small, family-owned taverns.

  As we turned up a narrow, winding street, a skinny female in a short skirt latched onto my bicep. “Lap dances for twenty euros.” She urged me in the direction of a sketchy-looking club. “Very good. Professional.”

  “No, thanks.” I shook her off and kept going.

  She came at me again, this time clamping onto my arm with both hands. “You are so handsome, m’sieur. It will be a pleasure.”

  I expelled a breath. That’s what I got for using a glamour—the humans thought I was one of them.

  Beside me, Zoe had her lips pressed together, trying not to laugh.

  “No,” I said firmly.

  “You will like. Very much.” The would-be lap dancer tried to pull me through the club’s door.

  “Enough.” I dropped my glamour long enough to bare my fangs. “I said no.”

  “Pardon. Pardon.” She scurried back into the safety of the bar.

  Zoe’s mouth twitched. “Stop scaring the locals.”

  “She’s just looking for a sucker to scam. That lap dance would’ve cost me three hundred euros. Not that I wanted it anyway.” I scowled. “You could’ve helped, you know.”

  “I figured you could handle a hundred-pound human.”

  She slid an arm around my waist and laughed up at me.

  My heart lurched. No one would recognize the Ice Princess right now, and not because she’d dimmed her supernatural allure.

  I dropped an arm over her shoulders and pulled her closer.

  It wasn’t just her relaxed, happy smile or that she’d touched me without thinking, just because she wanted to.

  It was that she felt safe enough to show me the real woman.

  Mine.

  Right there and then, I made up my mind. The hell with taking things slow.

  This wasn’t going to end after we left Paris. Somehow, we’d work it out. I was damned if I’d let a two-hundred-year-old feud keep us apart.

  “Here we are.” Zoe nodded at a cobblestone alley.

  My nape prickled. I brushed my mouth over her ear. “Someone’s watching us,” I said in subvocal tones and palmed a switchblade.

  “Mm-hm.” She bent and pretended to brush something off her boot. When she straightened, she had a long silver knife secreted in her hand.

  We turned casually around and scanned the main street. Three women chatt
ing animatedly in French passed by, followed by a pair of men who were clearly more interested in the women than us.

  “Maybe someone’s watching from the shadows,” Zoe murmured.

  Which meant either a vampire or a dhampir.

  “Yeah,” I said grimly. The itchy feeling increased.

  No one but Tomas and Philippe—and possibly my father—knew we were in Paris, and none of them knew where in the city we were. Plus, we were still camouflaged, me with a glamour, Zoe dimming her skin and her hair tucked under a Baltimore Orioles cap I’d given her.

  So why the fuck were we being followed?

  “Le Sang Bleu is right there.” Zoe tipped her head at the next building. “I vote we go inside. As long as we close the door behind us, whoever it is won’t be able to follow without leaving the shadows.”

  I glanced at the dark red door. It was unmarked because we supernaturals knew how to find the club, and the only humans allowed inside were thralls hired by the management.

  “All right. You go first. I’ll block the way and then close the door.”

  “Princess Zoe?” A silver-haired woman in cropped black pants and pink high tops tripped across the street. “Is that you?”

  I swore and grabbed her. Her scent was human, but slayers come in all shapes and sizes.

  She squeaked. I shoved her further down the alley and slammed her up against a wall, my hand around her throat. Beneath my fingers, her pulse fluttered like a trapped parakeet.

  I bared my fangs. “What do you want with the princess?”

  “Rafe, no.” Zoe laid a hand on my back. “I know her.”

  The woman grabbed my wrist and nodded vigorously. “I’m her…sty—”

  “Shut up.” I tightened my grip on her throat.

  The woman’s heavily mascaraed eyes bulged. Despite the silver hair, she was young, still in her twenties. She nodded without speaking.

  “Who is she?” I asked Zoe without taking my gaze from her.

  “Lainey Q. My stylist for the ball.”

  I glanced at Zoe. “So what’s she doing in Paris?”

  “I don’t know.” Zoe turned a glacial look on the stylist. “Spying on us?”