“Hey!” Val straightened, but before she could scoot away, he slid the fruit into her tight channel. He groaned at the feeling of her around his fingers. She was incredibly wet and tight.
“That’s cold!” she protested, grabbing his wrist as if to fend him off.
“Actually, I was thinking it’s hot.” He slipped the berry a little deeper. “And very, very tempting.” He buried his face against her sex and began to nibble at the fruit.
Val grabbed his head with both hands and arched into the pillow, squirming as he took tiny, delicate bites of the berry, pausing frequently to tease her wet flesh. “I didn’t think --” she stopped to gasp -- “vampires could eat.”
“Oh, we can eat.” He pulled the last bite of the fruit from her cunt. “We can also lick, suck, and bite.”
She moaned. “Oh, yeah. And you’re really, really good at it… Cade! Ohhhhhhhh, God!”
With a low growl, he buried his face against her sex and sucked the hard nubbin of her clit into his mouth. In seconds, he brought her to a voluptuous, shuddering climax. As she collapsed into the pillows, limp, he rose to his feet and began unbuttoning his shirt with quick, impatient hands.
He wanted in her. The Hunger was howling now, brought to full intensity by the sight and smell of Val’s arousal. This time he’d give in to it and take her. The thought of penetrating her with his fangs and cock made him as hard as an I-beam inside his jeans. Cade peeled off the shirt and threw it across the room, then reached for his fly.
Val opened her eyes to watch him strip in dazed anticipation. Yeah, I’d give up tanning beds for this. As he shoved the jeans down his thighs, she said, “Turn me, Cade.”
He froze in the act of kicking out of his pants. There was a wicked temptation in that thought. To have her, keep her. Forever.
But it wouldn’t be fair to Val. She was hot now, entranced by sex and need, not thinking about everything she’d be giving up. And she could end up getting killed in the fight between him and Ridgemont. “We’ll talk about this later.”
“But we’d be together,” she protested. “And I hate the idea of you being helpless against him again.”
The minute the words were out of her mouth, Val winced -- and winced again when Cade stiffened. Damn it, Val.
Cade’s gaze narrowed and sharpened on her face. “My sister has been showing her psychic home movies again, I gather,” he said in a low, hard voice.
Oh yeah, you’ve stepped in it now, she thought. Dumbass.
“What nasty little incident did she unfold before your wondering eyes?” His dark gaze was distinctly hostile now. She swallowed. Cade swore viciously. “Caroline.”
“He almost killed you,” Val said miserably. “And she just left you there.”
“He almost killed me a lot of times.” That sensuous mouth twisted into a chilling smile. “So is this pity sex?”
“No! I just think we should… do it. Change me.”
“So you decided to seduce me into it, is that right?” His voice sounded low and silken, but something about it made her eyes widen in alarm. “Oh, I get it. That’s why you had those fingers buried in your tight little body when I walked in. You figured you’d overwhelm my hapless male mind with the smell of wet pussy.”
“No, I…”
Suddenly strong hands clamped around her waist. She yelped in shock as he jerked her off the bed like a man snatching up an errant toddler. He straightened, holding her easily in the air with her feet dangling. Wide-eyed, she scanned his hard, angry face, acutely aware of the sheer muscled width of his chest.
“So you think you’re going to save helpless little me from Ridgemont by nobly sacrificing yourself. Well, maybe you’d better rethink that, sweetheart. Because from where I’m standing, the only one who’s helpless here is you.”
She swallowed. “You’re being a jerk, Cade.”
“And what are you going to do about it?” He tilted her against his chest and shifted his grip to her thighs. Despite her instinctive resistance, he spread her legs easily and dragged her body against his. The firm, velvet crown of his cock brushed her sex. He smiled slowly into her eyes, taunting and nasty. “Like I said, you’re helpless.”
She gritted her teeth. “You’ve made your point. Ridgemont can eat your face with my blessings. Put me down!”
Cade smirked, reaching to support her bottom as he cupped her breast. “But I don’t want to.” Delicately, he stroked his thumb over her nipple. Despite her outrage, she felt a curl of heat. He lifted her easily until he could nuzzle under her chin, licking the soft, thin flesh just above her pulse. “I’m… hungry.” He lowered her slightly until the head of his massive length pressed against her folds. She squirmed in reluctant arousal. “And you’d make a delicious feast.”
Val bit her lip. “Cade…”
“Maybe I will Turn you after all,” he growled, releasing her breast to reach under her body. She felt his cock dig harder against her as he aimed it, seeking the tight opening of her sex. “What man wouldn’t want his own personal love slave? Want to be at my mercy, Valerie?”
He found her channel and gave a shallow half-thrust, just barely entering. Saliva flooded her mouth at the wicked pleasure of the sensation. She closed her eyes. “You’re getting deep into jerk territory, Cade.”
“I’m about to get deep into your territory, Val.” He lowered her, slowly impaling her on the big shaft. He groaned in pleasure as she shivered, her slick, gloving flesh yielding to his width. “There’s a lot to be said for being your sire,” he said hoarsely. “I could make you do anything I want, any time I want it.”
“You wouldn’t --” Val caught her breath as he penetrated another inch. “You wouldn’t hurt me.”
“Hell, no,” he said roughly, abandoning the pretense of threatening seducer. “That’s the last thing on my mind.” Groaning, he shifted her in his arms. “I’ve got to get a better angle. Hold on, sweetheart.”
Val curled both legs around his waist, keeping him seated as he lowered her back onto the bed. Immediately, he began thrusting in long, heavy lunges that tore a strangled scream from her throat. She squeezed her eyes closed as the massive shaft advanced and retreated, each plunge setting off a burst of light behind her eyes. “God, Cade, doesn’t that thing get in the way when you walk?”
He chuckled in her ear. “No, darlin’, I can honestly say that has never been a problem.”
As he gazed down at her, head spinning from the brutal glory of her creamy heat, she threw back her head and arched her spine. The movement threw the stems of her hard nipples and the sweet curve of her throat into relief. “I’m… Oh, God… I’m…!”
The Hunger drowned him in fire. “Let me drink from you.”
She bit down on her lower lip, the delicate lines of her face so sensual in her pleasure he wanted to weep, wanted to roar, wanted to come. “Yes… Yes… Do it…!”
With a moan, Cade lowered his head and sank his fangs deep into the delicate satin skin of her throat. She cried out in pleasure as her blood poured into his mouth, tasting of life and distilled sex. Her orgasm exploded in his skull as her Kith mental shields dropped. He groaned as he drank, savoring each intoxicating mouthful. And came in long, fiery jerks of his cock. Still drinking.
Despite all the women he’d had over a century and more as a vampire, it had never been so utterly hot. He knew without doubt it was because he loved her.
He only wished he knew what the hell to do now.
Chapter Thirteen
“Cade!” Abigail’s psychic shout stabbed into his brain as he lay on his side, spooning Val’s sleeping warmth. “You’ve got company!”
He rolled out of bed before he was even fully awake, lunging for the sword and shield he’d left propped beside the bed. After Hirsch’s attack at the motel, he’d made sure his weapons were always close at hand.
Throwing his mind out in a quick scan, he frowned. Ridgemont was nowhere around. “Who is it?” he demanded, putting down his weapons to grab a pair of jeans and shove
his legs into them.
Val jolted awake, lifting her head in alarm. “What? What’s happening?”
“Ridgemont’s sent a hit squad.” Abigail flashed them images of men, at least thirty of them, all with AR-15 semiautomatic rifles. They’d broken into teams -- one to disable the security system, one to search the house, another to surround it and block escape. A smaller squad was creeping up the hallway even now.
“Hell, Abigail, it would have been nice to have a little warning before they were in the damn house!” Cade lunged toward the door, where he could hear a gang of men on the other side, about to break it down. There was no time to get the guns out of the closet. He’d have to make do with his sword.
“I was Beyond! I didn’t sense them until now.”
“Dammit. Where’s Hirsch?”
“Not here.”
Judging from the sunlight pouring through the stained-glass windows, it was afternoon. Probably didn’t want a tan. “Get behind the bed and hit the floor,” he instructed Val. “There’s going to be gunfire.”
He jerked open the bedroom door and lunged. His sword speared through body armor into the chest of the man who was about to force his way in. The merc howled in agony as Cade picked him up on his blade like a cocktail sausage and thrust him into his mates, who instinctively grabbed him with startled shouts.
This bunch had come into his house to kidnap his woman. Their lives were bought and paid for.
Pivoting, he slammed his shield into the face of the nearest mercenary as the man took aim. Blood sprayed. The gunman toppled, dead before he hit the floor. Cade jumped between the three remaining invaders, snarling into their terrified faces with bared fangs.
In this situation, the mercs’ numbers worked against them. They couldn’t shoot those high-powered weapons without risking the bullets would punch right through Cade and into their own allies.
So for thirty crucial seconds, they held their fire. The closest lashed out with a rifle butt, but Cade was quicker. His fist shattered the mercenary’s skull. Blood and gore splattered his face as the weapon hit the wall and fell to the floor with a clatter. It went off, firing a volley of bullets as mercenaries dove aside.
“Fuck!” somebody screamed. Cade’s shield jolted and rang in his hand as one of the three surviving mercs panicked and fired his AR-15 into it. The shield had been designed for vampire combat, and its space-age alloy surface didn’t even dent. But the merc adjusted his aim and fired again, and this time the bullet grazed Cade’s thigh. He snarled in rage, swinging his sword as he whirled. The blade bit deep and the invader screamed and toppled.
But before Cade could finish off the last two men, the rest of the team thundered into the hallway from the opposite direction. “Shit!” one of them gasped as they took in the carnage.
Cade brought up his shield and bared his teeth at them from behind it. Doing a silent count, he felt his heart sink. There was at least eight of them. There was no way he could take them all before they blasted him to hell and gone. And if they put enough bullets in his chest to destroy his heart…
Immortal or not, he was dead.
* * *
Cringing at the sound of screams and gunfire from the hallway, Val crawled on her hands and knees toward the closet. She was damned if she was going to cower under the bed while Cade fought for their lives.
As she hoped, she found Cade’s athletic bag sitting in the floor next to his tall leather boots. She thought she’d spotted a sawed-off shotgun in the bag the last time he’d opened it.
When she unzipped it, Val sighed in relief. There was the shotgun, short, black, and deadly in its nest of money. She grabbed it. Spotting a nine-millimeter half-buried in the cash, she scooped that out too, made sure the safety was on, and stuffed it down the front of her jeans. Shotgun aimed and leading the way, she scuttled toward the door, bent double to avoid any random bullets from the hall.
As her heart pounded in hard, sickening lunges, Val peered around the doorframe, praying none of the mercs would shoot her by mistake before she shot them on purpose.
Bare-chested and blood-splattered, Cade fought a mob of black-clad men, pivoting and lunging as he chopped his sword into the invaders like Conan the Barbarian in a really bad mood. Several bodies lay at his feet, none of them moving. Arcs of blood flew in the air with each slash, splashing the white walls. Huge, spreading pools of crimson soaked the cream carpet.
We’re going to have a hell of a time cleaning that up, Val thought, with the illogic of shock.
“Fall back!” somebody bellowed. “We need some fucking room!”
She ducked behind the doorframe and flattened her back against the bedroom wall, her shaking hands clenched around the shotgun. If she opened fire, she could hit Cade. But if she didn’t… Cautiously, she peered around the corner.
The men around Cade tried to back off, three going one way, two the other. He pounced on the pair, bringing his sword across in a hard, diagonal slash that took both men down.
Behind him, one of the retreating trio spun and lifted his rifle.
The three mercs were standing so close together, she thought their bodies would protect Cade if she fired. Without allowing herself to think about what she was doing, Val leaped into the hallway. She met the startled gaze of one of the squad less than a foot away and fired.
The pellets punched into him. A sickening rain of blood arced across Val’s face as he screamed, half blinding her, but she was already blasting the second attacker. One to g…
An AR-15 fired twice in a thunderous, rolling boom. With an agonized yell of her own, Val scrubbed a hand desperately across her eyes, trying to wipe away the sticky blood. The smell made her stomach heave. Blinking hard, she managed to clear her vision just enough to see the two she’d shot were down.
So was Cade.
Throwing aside the now-useless shotgun, she jumped over the bodies of the dead men and ducked around the third assassin, who’d shot her lover. The merc pointed his weapon at her, but held his fire. Val couldn’t have cared less.
Cade lay sprawled across one of the fallen mercenaries. He must have rolled or bounced, because the bastard had shot him in the back. The wound in his abdomen looked the size of her fist, bloody, revealing cracked ribs. Something bubbled.
“God, Cade…” she moaned.
The muzzle of a gun nudged her back. She froze.
“Okay, bitch,” said the merc who’d shot Cade, “hands up before I --”
Cade spat blood and gasped. “You. Freeze.”
Licking her lips, Val dared a glance over her shoulder. For a moment all she could see was the muzzle of the AR-15 yawning like the pit of hell, but she managed to drag her gaze to the mercenary who held it. He was staring down at them with wide, panicked eyes, still holding the gun. She jerked away from the muzzle, but he didn’t move. With a sigh of relief, Val realized Cade must have used his power to lock every muscle in the merc’s body.
Staring into the man’s beefy face, she felt her lips peel back from her teeth. This bastard had shot Cade in the back. Her hand went to the grip of the pistol in her waistband and jerked it free. She leveled it right between his wide hazel eyes.
“Better not, bitch.”
At the strange male voice, Val whipped around. “Oh, hell,” she whispered. A fresh crowd of mercenaries stood in the hallway. Reinforcements.
One of them aimed his gun at Cade. “Put it down or we’ll see if the vampire can heal a missing head.”
Acid invading her mouth, Val threw down her gun and raised her hands. The mercenaries advanced cautiously, wary eyes on Cade, guns leveled and ready. Their leader grabbed her wrist and hauled her roughly to her feet. She gasped as a shaft of pain stabbed up her arm from his grip.
A low growl rumbled. Despite the bloody hole in his belly, Cade snarled up at the mercenary, fangs bared. The big man stepped quickly back, dragging Val with him.
“Look, buddy, don’t push it,” the merc told him, aiming his weapon between those blazing
brown eyes. The guy was damn near as big as Hirsch, with iron gray hair that stood up in untidy, sweaty spikes. Despite his size, his beady blue eyes were nervous on Cade’s savage face. “Mr. Hirsch wants to do you personal, but if you try me, we’ll put so many bullets in you you’ll clank when you walk.”
She wondered why Cade didn’t compel him to let them both go, then realized that even if the leader had tried to give that order, the others wouldn’t have obeyed. Especially if they’d been warned about vampire abilities.
When Cade only lay there and panted, his black eyes feral, the merc commander nodded in satisfaction. “Smart choice, vamp. Now, you just stay there and bleed.” Hauling her with him, he backed down the hall, waving to his men to accompany them.
A growl rumbling in his throat, Cade lifted his head to watch them go. For an instant his eyes met Val’s, and she saw the agony in them. His voice was too hoarse to hear, but she could read the movement of his lips: “I love you.”
Before she could sob a reply, the merc leader stopped in his tracks, jerking her to a halt. He swore. “We’ve got cops on the way. Move it.” Val noticed the spiral cord of an earpiece looping into his collar. He must be wearing a radio.
The whole pack surged down the hall. As they dragged Val with them, she stared over her shoulder at Cade. Bloody and helpless though he was, his hot black eyes shot her a fierce message she could almost hear: I will save you.
“Get a move on.” The merc gave her wrist a jerk that almost pulled her arm out of its socket. “We don’t have time for longing looks.”
“What about the wounded, sir?” a tall Black mercenary asked, hurrying behind them.
“If we hang around here trying to move ‘em all, we’ll be ass-deep in law before we’re finished,” the leader grunted. “Let the cops take care of ‘em. They won’t talk.”
“Jameson isn’t even hurt.” the merc pointed out.
The leader glanced toward the merc Cade had immobilized and shrugged. “We’d still have to carry him. And he’s still an insubordinate piece of shit I’m really sick of. Sirens gettin’ closer, boys. Let’s go.”
Forever Kisses Volume 1 Page 18