The Vampire and the Demon Prince

by Mina Carter

  Then it was all too much. A ragged moan escaped her lips as her body clenched tight and her hips shuddered in an erratic rhythm against his hand as her climax hit her hard, washing her away in a tidal wave of hot pleasure.

  Breathy moans and soft cries filled the room; noises Cass belatedly realized were from her own throat as he kept up the pressure, the rabbit's ears still tickling her hypersensitive clit. She whimpered and tried to shift away. “Too much…” she muttered and sighed in relief as he pulled away from her.

  Her relief was short-lived. “You feel fantastic.” His voice was hoarse and filled with need as he slid his fingers into her pussy again, a pussy slick from her climax. Even though she'd just come, the pressure of his fingers as they curled back to seek her G-spot made her catch her breath again, a frisson of excitement arcing through her like a bolt of lightning.

  Cass's eyes opened wide. She couldn't be ready again already, surely? Normally using that setting wiped her out, but here she was needing more. Something she had no problems with vocalizing. “More,” she demanded, moving against him insistently.

  "You want more? Then you're going to have to beg,” he whispered by her ear, and turned her again in the chains. This time, when his cock pressed against her ass, Cass moaned out loud and thrust back, wriggling her hips in temptation.

  His chuckle filled the small room and he kicked her feet further apart. “Tease, that's not begging.” His large hand smoothed up under her skirt and over her ass, cupping and massaging the cheek. His fingers dipped down to stroke her needy flesh again. “Perhaps I should leave you to think about it then…"

  "No! You can't!” Her voice held all her panic and frustration. “You bastard, don't you dare leave me here like this! Do something!"

  Tiny's lips quirked at her imperious demand, and he was glad she couldn't see him. It was hard to act the badass when he was grinning broad enough to split his face. “Beg."

  He held his response ruthlessly in check, circling her clit again to savor the helpless little sounds she made. Sounds that made him want to drop his pants, free his cock and thrust hard into her willing body. He knew she would be hot, wet and tight. A ride guaranteed to take a man to heaven and back.

  He wasn't going to, though; not until she begged him, not until she gave him the surrender he craved. A shiver raked his body as she thrust her ass back and wriggled against him in blatant invitation.

  "I want to hear the words. I want to hear you beg, sweetness.” He nipped her ear, his tone hard and uncompromising. Inside, though, he was begging. Christ, she had to give in sooner or later, or he was going to lose it. “Beg and I'll give you what we both need."

  She moaned, the sound tortured, and Tiny knew he had her. “Yes! Yes, please!"

  "Please what?"

  "Oh, for heaven's sake—fuck me! I want you to fuck me!"

  His groan mingled with hers as he yanked the zipper of his pants down. Within seconds he was free, and he kicked her feet even wider. Dipping his knees, he pressed the broad head of his erection against her slick entrance.

  Their groans mingled in the small room as he gradually and insistently entered her body. It was like sliding into warm silk. “Gods, you feel good.” His voice was hoarse and strained as he fought to keep control when all his body wanted to do was drive into the ambrosia offered to it and revel in excess. Slow and sure was the order of the day though and he wanted this to be as good for her as for him, even if it killed him. She was tight and wet, as he'd known she would be. The combination nearly blew him away as he slid in her as far as he could go and stilled.

  Oh. My. God.

  Cass's nostrils flared as he paused, his cock stretching her pussy almost to the point of pain. She was glad he'd stopped. It gave her body time to adjust, to get used to him. It was time she desperately needed. She'd had many lovers over the years and some as big…well, almost. None had treated her with the quiet care of the demon behind her.

  His hands soothed her, one sliding down her arm. The other slid south over the slight mound of her stomach to seek her clit again. He played with it, soft strokes followed by teasing circles until her initial discomfort had worn off.

  An insistent restlessness filled her, centered in her groin. She needed to move. The need kept growing until she couldn't resist. Twisting the chain around her wrists, she used it to anchor herself and then rolled her hips. Sensation exploded within her, the nerves along her feminine sheath going off like a fireworks display at the friction as he slid almost all the way out of her.

  "Oh gods, yeah, baby, that feels so good.” His voice was guttural and harsh. Cass could hear his need and desire. He thrust back into her. “So, so good."

  Cass couldn't stop. Like the floodgates had been opened, she had to keep moving, pulling away from him and waiting as he held her hips still and slid back into her. A whimper sounded in the room, and it took her a moment to realize it had come from her. His slides became thrusts, then slams, and her whimper became moans as their hips met in a frenzied dance.

  All semblance of civility lost, he took her in a hard and fast rhythm, encouraged every step of the way by her gasps, moans and half-articulated demands for more. His fingers danced against her clit in time with the movement of his hips. She stilled, her back arched and her body stiffened. The tension wound in her reached breaking point.

  For one glorious moment she stood on the edge, gazing down into the abyss, and it was filled with a million shimmering lights. His hips continued to move, his cock ramming home again, and she cried out, shattering apart and falling into the light.

  Chapter 4

  It had been the best sex he'd had in years. No, probably the best sex he'd had in his life, even if he counted the hot redheaded succubus at his eighteenth birthday party. And she hadn't just been hot, she'd been scorching.

  "Well, don't you have a face like a wet weekend? Careful, if the wind changes, you'll stick like that.” A feminine voice broke through his daydream. Tiny jerked to attention to find Misty smiling at him and holding out a mug of coffee.

  He took it with a wary look in his eye. Misty made coffee thick enough to double as industrial degreaser, and the stuff dissolved spoons on a regular basis. The caffeine content was so high, it was more liquid “no way are you sleeping for, oh, a week” than a hot beverage.

  He took the mug anyway, and frowned as her words filtered through the sluggish mass of his brain. “Where do you come up with these sayings?” He took a sip and grimaced as the bitterness attacked his taste buds. “Christ, Misty! Would it kill you to put some sugar in here?"

  "You're sweet enough. Besides, don't want your ass getting any bigger. Move over, you great lummox,” she ordered, sitting down on the cold stone step next to him and wrapping her hands around her mug. Both of them had stopped smoking a year ago, but they still came out at their allocated breaks to get some fresh air. Or, in Tiny's case, to try and clear his head.

  "Charming. Trash my ego, why don't you?” He shoved his nose in his mug again. This time the foul stuff didn't taste quite as bad, probably because it had stripped most of the skin off his tongue with the first sip.

  "So where did you disappear to last night?"

  Tiny did everything right. He didn't freeze, didn't go silent, just sipped casually from his mug and slid a glance sideways at her. She wasn't looking at him, looked out over the empty street instead, but he knew she was onto him. “Had a little run-in with a patron; had to do a search and packed her off with a warning,” he said, his tone noncommittal and bored.

  "That some kind of demon-speak for you two did the nasty?"

  Tiny sighed. It was going to be a long morning. “You should wash your mouth out with soap, young lady,” he admonished, knowing full well Misty was older than him. Although she appeared to be in her mid-twenties, there was something old about her eyes…like the vamp chick last night. No, not the “vamp chick.” Cassia Leyland, it said on the ID card nestled in his pocket.

  "You did!” Misty crowed as she pun
ched the air. “You screwed some chick in the office. I knew it!” Her gaze cut sideways to him, her expression shrewd. “You must have been going some to track down and get rid of the vampire and pick up a bit…of…"

  She stopped, a strange expression crossing her face for a second, a combination of shock warring with surprise and disgust, then, almost hidden, a reluctant interest. “Tiny, tell me you didn't screw the vamp in the security office?"

  "Okay, I won't."

  "Fucking hell, you did! You fucked the vamp. Are you stupid, or did your momma drop you on your head as a baby? Do you know what the bosses would've done if they'd caught you?"

  A scowl settled on the demon's face as he contemplated what it would take to throttle a Valkyrie. “Yeah, well, they didn't,” he grunted, his tone defensive. He'd known it was a bad idea, but damn, it had felt good at the time. Trouble was, he wanted more, a lot more, and soon.

  He shoved his nose back in the mug again, hoping beyond hope to avoid more questions. But this was Misty, and like most women of his acquaintance, once she'd gotten her teeth into something, she didn't let go.

  "So, you seeing her again?"

  His shoulder moved in a shrug. “Dunno. Not exactly healthy, is it? Demon and the vampire. Gods know how many people would get bat-shit about it."

  "Yeah, I never understood that. What is it with you guys, anyway?” Misty shifted on the stone step to try and get more comfortable. “I mean, to me there's not much difference between your aura and a vampire's apart from theirs are blood-red most of the time."

  Tiny arched an eyebrow. “And mine?"

  She turned to look at him, her eyes distant. Tiny knew without asking she was looking beyond the physical and into his soul. “Black. With…gold veins."

  "Gold flecks? Yeah, right, next you'll be telling me I'm the lost prince of the demon court,” he chuckled, his broad grin hiding his unease. Hide in plain sight, nowhere better.

  "Oh yeah, they haven't found him yet, have they? What was his name? Sevren, or something?"

  Seren. Seren Di Lakai Telosa. Son of Lakai, Prince of the Night and Shadows, Lord of the Seventh Gates. Tiny knew the name and titles by heart, because they were his names, and they'd been hammered into him from birth. “Yeah, something like that. Anyway, break's over. You coming?"

  The day was a long one, too long for Tiny's liking. The small ID card he'd lifted from Cassia the night before was burning a hole in his pocket.

  For the seventh time in the last hour he pulled the card free. She wasn't smiling at the camera, but her lips had a mysterious half smile some women did well, sort of like the Mona Lisa but way sexier. Tiny wasn't an art lover. He preferred his women live and lusty rather than rhapsodizing over some dead chick immortalized on canvas, but sometimes only a classical reference would do.

  Cassia. A pretty name but was it real? Questions about her whirled about his brain, questions he hadn't gotten to ask last night. Once they'd finished, she'd demanded to be released and as soon as he had, she'd grabbed her stuff and disappeared out the door as though all the hounds of hell were after her.

  The card stayed in his jacket pocket for the next couple of days. Days in which, try as he might, Tiny couldn't get the sexy vamp out of his thoughts. His dreams were haunted by images of her, and he woke up hard and aching, dreaming of plunging into her soft body only to realize he was dry humping his own damn sheets.

  "Fuck it!” he gasped, dropping one of the drinks menu holders as he helped the bar staff set up for the evening.

  "Hey, you all right, man?” the waiter asked in concern. Tiny kept his expression blank as he tried to remember the guy's name. Mark… Matt…something beginning with M anyway.

  "Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. Laid funny on my arm last night, and my hand keeps going dead. It'll wear off in a minute.” He shook his hand for emphasis, the skin across the palm stinging like mad, as the waiter picked up the menu and holder to place them on the table.

  Tiny opened his hand to check. He must have been bitten. Either that or he'd touched something dodgy during clean-up this morning. There was always some joker leaving something lying around, and one man's pleasure was another man's poison.

  No rash greeted his eyes as he opened his palm, but a series of pseudo-tribal marks decorated the skin. What the fuck? His breath left his lungs in a rush as he stared blankly. Closing his hand quickly he looked around, but no one was watching him.

  Matt… Malcolm moved away along the line of tables without another glance in his direction. Like a lot of the staff he was human, so Tiny didn't have to worry much about being snuck up on. Carefully, he opened his palm again, hoping the marks would be gone.

  No such luck. They were still there, as plain as if a tattooist had taken a needle to his skin. Not tattoos, he decided, pulling the skin this way and that. They didn't move like tattoos on the skin. Tiny had enough of those, although his demonic blood broke them down after a few weeks, and he kept having to go have them redone. So he knew how a tattoo reacted on the skin. No, these marks were under the skin somehow…

  He sighed and closed his palm. He knew what they were. Vampire marks. Somehow Cassia had marked him. Tiny's expression set, his lips compressing into a thin, hard line. The question was…why?

  "No, no, no. You've gotta be kidding me,” Cassia wailed as she studied the palm of her hand and the symbols etched across the skin for all the world to see. Symbols which would tell another vampire she'd bonded with a mate.

  She looked up and into her bathroom mirror, haunted brown eyes staring back at her. This wasn't happening, it couldn't be happening. She didn't need or want a mate. Especially not when…

  "No!” The blood drained out of her reflection's face. There was only one way a vampire bonded with his or her mate—the combination of sex and blood. The only guy she'd had sex with recently had been the sexy as hell demon at Moonlight & Magic.

  "Crap. This is not good.” She couldn't be bonded to a demon. She shouldn't even have given him the bloody time of day, let alone gotten down and dirty with him.

  Cass stared at the marks again, hoping they'd have already faded, or better yet, been a figment of her imagination. No such luck. They were still there, clear dark symbols against her pale flesh.

  Her brow furrowed. How had she managed to bond to him? She'd made sure there hadn't been a blood exchange. Because, whilst there were a few things she could think of more unpleasant than being addicted to demon blood, they were the sort of things she never intended to try out—like getting her arms and legs ripped off by a were-dragon, or heading on into the dark plains to find a Medusa to irritate.

  Somehow, though, even without the blood exchange, she had bonding marks all over her palm. How the hell… Was it even possible to bond with a demon? More importantly, how was she going to keep quiet about the fact she had?

  Realizing she was still staring at herself in the mirror Cass dropped her gaze to the offending marks again. Perhaps she could just cut her hand off and have done with it? No, that would hurt like hell.

  She'd once had to regrow the tip of a finger after an accident with a Keres demon and an industrial steel press. That had been bad enough. She could only imagine what regrowing the whole damn hand would feel like.

  As soon as the idea occurred to her, though, it wouldn't let go. She had to get rid of these marks somehow, but cutting her hand off wasn't the only solution. Padding barefoot back into her bedroom she sat on the bed and pulled the lamp over so she could get a better look at the marks.

  Ignoring the small quiver in the region of her heart, she studied her palm. Bonded mates were rare. Every vampire girl dreamed someday—if she was lucky—she would meet Mr. Perfect and wake one evening with these marks on her hand. Cass hadn't been born a vamp, but even she'd bought into the romantic dream of a bond-mate.

  Using her fingertips she manipulated the skin of her palm under the light. The mark wasn't on the skin, more under the skin, like something had been inserted there. Her full lips compressed into a thin l
ine.

  Turning, she grabbed her purse from the other side of the bed and rifled through it. In the chaos that reigned supreme in the bottom, she located her knife. Pulling it free from the bag, she released the blade with a practiced flick of her finger and considered her palm again.

  This was going to hurt…

  There was blood on the air. Tiny might not have been a vampire, but his senses were still acute enough to pick up the scent of new blood. Not surprising since vampires were a form of demon, just not one from this world.

  Tiny didn't know the full story as to how they'd ended up in this world, and he didn't much care. It was a secret both races kept religiously. It was also the reason demons and vampires didn't get along; they were too alike.

  Tiny checked the card in his hand again and looked up at the apartment building. It had taken him a while to track her down, but there weren't many people who could remain hidden from a demon of Tiny's power for long. What did surprise him was the fairly “normal” looking building. Didn't vampires need to sleep in their graves? Or was that another myth interfering with the facts?

  The scent of blood got stronger, a sweet, almost tantalizing scent. Tiny's nose twitched. It smelt good, good enough to eat. His stomach rebelled at the same time his mind rejected the idea. He wasn't a bloodsucker, no way, no how. So no blood should smell that good.

  He climbed out of the car, his tall frame unfolding from the seat and stretching as he eased muscles cramped from the long drive. Never having driven for so many hours straight, he was in agony, but driving had been the quickest way here, and he'd needed speed. He'd only managed twenty-four hours off work. It was the most he could swing at late notice without telling Jaren what he needed time off for. An explanation he couldn't give. Tiny couldn't see the vampire-hating incubus being understanding about his need to track down a vampire he couldn't get out of his head.