by Sarah Piper
His eyes darkened with a desire that bordered on pure, primal hunger, but he was no longer cold. No longer distant.
“I miss you,” I said, emotion breaking my voice. It had only been days since we’d held each other in that cabin in the Shadowrealm, but even that had been too long, especially after nearly losing him.
“I’m right here, love.” His gaze swept down my face, lowering to the pulse point on my neck. Beneath me, his cock stiffened under the thin sweat pants, already teasing me, making me wet.
I clenched my thighs to stave off the ache, and another low moan escaped his lips, his eyes fluttering closed.
“I’m yours,” I whispered, rocking forward against his hard length. “Always.”
Darius brought his mouth to my neck, his hands sliding up the back of my shirt. His touch set me on fire, every movement agonizingly slow, devastatingly perfect.
He kissed a line down my neck, across my collarbone, the points of his fangs grazing my flesh, but never breaking it. With each kiss, his tongue swirled over my skin, making me desperate for more.
In a move so fast I didn’t even see it happen, he reached up and whipped off my T-shirt, tossing it to the floor. My bare breasts brushed against his chest, and he cupped them both, running his nose along the top curves, inhaling the scent of my skin.
I let out a whimper of pleasure, rolling my head back, arching closer.
Teasing my nipple between his thumb and forefinger, Darius captured the other in his mouth, flicking it with his tongue. The scrape of his fangs sent a jolt of white-hot pleasure to my core, and I gasped, losing myself in the warmth of his mouth.
He continued to tease me with his tongue, expertly swirling and sucking as I rocked against him, the friction building between my thighs.
“Mmm. Are you hungry, little brawler,” he teased between kisses, sliding his hands inside the bottom of my shorts and underwear to cup my ass. His fingers dipped between my thighs, seeking my wet heat, teasing my entrance.
Warmth gathered, my core pulsing with a deep ache that could only be soothed by one thing.
“Starving,” I whispered, reaching down the front of his sweatpants and fisting his cock. It was hot and velvet-smooth and as hard as steel, growing even harder at my touch.
“Fuck,” he breathed, rolling his hips as I stroked him, teasing the head with my thumb. “That’s…”
“Mine.” Something came over me then, a fierce possessiveness driving me wild with need. I needed him to kiss me. I needed him inside me. I needed to make him come.
I kissed him again, nipping at his lower lip.
Darius nipped me back, sucking my lip into his mouth, drawing blood.
He ran his tongue along the edge, growling at the taste of my blood, and in a blur of movement and strength, we were off the couch. He held me against his chest with one arm, my legs winding around his hips as slammed my back against the wall.
Shoving a hand between us, he slid his fingers down the front of my shorts, pushing inside me, stroking me as I’d stroked him—hot and fast and hard and oh my fucking God I’d never felt anything so hot.
My thighs trembled, my body tightening around his slick fingers…
“Is this what you want?” he growled, bringing me closer to the edge with every thrust. The question sounded like a threat. A promise. Danger and devastation wrapped in a silk scarf, and I nodded mutely, my eyes silently begging him for it.
And you will beg me for it…
His old words echoed in my memory.
“Say it,” he demanded.
“This is what I want.”
“Beg me, little brawler.”
I was so turned on I could barely make words, but somehow, I forced them out.
“Please, Darius,” I moaned against his lips. “I want you inside me. Fucking me.” I grabbed the back of his head, fisting his hair and tugging hard. “Make me feel it.”
A surge of wild, unrestrained need flooded his eyes, and without another word, he yanked the bottom edge of my shorts and underwear to the side and slid his cock inside me, thrusting deep. Hard. Banging me against the butter-yellow basement wall as I urged him to keep going, harder, faster, deeper, more, raking my nails along his back, biting down on his shoulder until we both came, hard and fast and shuddering, and I tasted the rich, coppery silk of his blood in my mouth.
He pulled away slowly, gently lowering me back to my feet. His eyes were wild, his hair knotted, his skin slick with sweat.
He pulled his sweatpants back up and tucked himself inside, and I did my best to clean up and straighten out my shorts. I was pretty sure the underwear were a lost cause—I’d heard them tear at one point, and now I felt the coolness of the air where the fabric should’ve been.
I was definitely going to wake up sore. I could already feel it starting—the ache in my thighs, the swollen mouth, the burns.
Darius flashed me a devious smile, and a fresh pulse of desire surged through my blood.
“Better be careful, little brawler,” he teased. “Bite me one more time and you might turn into a vampire.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’d have to bite you a lot more than once to turn into a vampire.”
“That could be arranged.” He held my gaze, his lush lips swollen, his smile light and content.
A flood of gratitude surged inside me. “I knew you’d come back,” I whispered, pressing my palm to his cheek.
He watched me a moment longer, confusion drawing his brows together, and I waited for the gentleness to return to his eyes. The warmth.
The sex had been rough and wild and searingly hot—I was all for doing that again sometime. But suddenly I longed for a glimpse of the tenderness he’d shown me in the cabin in the Shadowrealm the first time we’d been together.
“Darius?” I asked.
“Hmm?” He cocked his head, still watching me with those honey-gold eyes, but where once there was friendship and familiarity and love, now there was only a mild amusement. The coldness had slid back into his gaze, a chill that went straight to the softest part of my heart and froze it.
“Vampire or not,” he said with a low chuckle, “any man would come back for that, love.”
I felt the blood leak instantly from my heart, pierced by the sharp arrow of that one word. Love. Where before it’d given me hope, somehow he’d managed to twist and mangle it into something cheap.
“Same time tomorrow, then?” he said. “Perhaps I’ll let you tie me back up. But not before I’ve had a chance to feed on something other than the shite they serve here.”
I couldn’t answer.
I felt dizzy. Lost. Darius and I were bound, yet even the taste of my blood hadn’t been enough to bring him back to me. To heal him.
I grabbed my shirt from the floor and slow dressed, the once-pleasurable burn of my muscles cooling into a stiff, bitter pain.
I wouldn’t let him see it. Wouldn’t let him know he’d broken me.
And I wouldn’t let him out of this room.
I picked up Ronan’s sweatshirt, holding it close as I approached Darius again.
“Whatever you want, bloodsucker.” Pasting on a mischievous smile, I stretched up on my toes, capturing him in a deeply sensual kiss. He moaned softly, drinking me in.
It seemed Darius wasn’t the only actor in the room.
Certain my devious mouth had captured his full attention, I pulled out the hawthorn stake I’d stashed in Ronan’s sweatshirt and jammed into the tender flesh beneath his ribcage, hating that Ronan and Emilio had been right.
Hating that I’d doubted Darius enough to bring the stake with me in the first place.
Twenty-Two
Darius
Intoxicating.
It was the closest word I could think of to capture her effect on me, yet it still felt woefully inadequate. The demon had told me she was a witch, and now I knew it must be true, for I was thoroughly bespelled.
I let her guide me back to the couch, where I promptly collapsed into my forme
r position, my muscles turning numb from the effects of the hawthorn. Unlike the watered down intravenous version, the stake was undiluted, its potency unmatched.
She’d chosen a big one, too.
“You wound me.” I managed a weak smile, my words slurring. “And here I thought we had a real connection.”
“We do,” she whispered. “You just don’t remember it.”
“I could have killed you, love.”
Her eyes shone with tears—tears I didn’t deserve. After a deep, shuddering breath, she turned away from me, saying nothing more, disappearing up the stairs the way she’d come down.
Though she hadn’t said the words, I felt them lingering in the wake of her exit.
You already have.
I realized then, with a sickening twist in my stomach, that she’d thought I’d remembered her. That she’d given herself so freely, so intensely, so… erotically, because she’d trusted me. Trusted the connection we were supposed to have had.
I wished things could’ve been different.
There was something so intensely familiar about her, but try as I might to find her in the dark recesses of memory, I couldn’t recall ever having met her. I don’t know how I’d managed to recall the nickname I’d supposedly given her. And though the brief taste of her blood had stirred something deep within me—something that spoke of a much more intimate history than she’d let on—it hadn’t awakened any dormant memories.
Despite what she and the demon had told me about our relationship—that we’d even had one at all, that my memories of it had been stolen by some sort of shadow creatures in another realm—I looked into her eyes and saw nothing. Knew nothing.
Well, that wasn’t entirely true. I knew she was going to stake me—perhaps even before she’d known it. Despite the pain and immobility it would bring, I’d let her do it anyway, almost welcoming the sharp pierce in my flesh.
It was better this way. She needed to understand I wasn’t the man she’d fallen in love with before. I was a vampire. A hungry one. And being with her like that… I closed my eyes, still scenting her desire in the air. Remembering her now, the soft curve of her mouth, the heat of her breath as she moaned beneath my touch…
She’d nearly undone me.
And I’d wanted so, so badly to devour her. To sink my fangs into her throat and drain every last drop of that sweet, silky blood.
Shame burned inside me, but that was the truth of it.
Though I’d sworn we’d only just become acquainted, something about that final look in her eyes said I’d hurt her. Not physically, but in a way that was so much worse. A way that only someone who cared about you could manage.
An ache opened up in my chest, the bright pulse of it outrunning even the hawthorn working its way through my system.
Nothing the demon had said had affected me like this. Nothing the old witch had whispered as she’d plied me with her brew even came close.
But now, as I recalled the intense blue of Gray’s eyes, the pain in them that I’d caused, I felt it.
For the first time since I’d arrived in this ocean-washed city, I felt the sting of something hot and fresh in my gut, the bitter taste of it coating my tongue like the very salt that coated the streets outside.
Regret.
Twenty-Three
Gray
The wind gusted, whipping the ocean into frothy white peaks and threatening to steal the breath from my lungs. Unperturbed by the cold, Sparkle and Sunshine bounded along the shore, chasing the receding tide and running from the surge like twin puppies.
Personally, I would’ve rather met Deirdre in a cozy little café in town, where we could sip hot mochas by a crackling fire. But it was better this way. Safer. We had a lot of ground to cover, and we couldn’t risk being overheard.
I needed to know about the Silversbane legacy. My blood magic. If my blood was powerful enough to call my ancestors out of their eternal rest, surely it was powerful enough for other magic, too.
Like restoring Darius’s memories.
It sounded crazy. Impossible. But after my disastrous reunion with Darius last night, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. He’d remembered my nickname, and when he bit my lip, the taste of my blood had affected him deeply. Not in any way I could put into words. Just in a way I could feel, right down to my soul.
Darius and I were blood bound. Deeply connected. Mated, for all intents and purposes. And that connection hadn’t broken. How could it? It wasn’t linked to memory, but to blood—something he hadn’t lost at all. I wanted him to remember our bond for my own emotional reasons, but physically, that bond still existed. I’d felt it drawing us close last night. I’d seen it in his eyes, even if it wasn’t there in his mind.
When he’d healed me with his blood in the Shadowrealm, I’d connected to his past, sensing the memories of his former life, seeing them play out before me like a dream. It was as if he’d transferred them to me through the blood bond.
I didn’t know what that meant, or how—if at all—that could help now. But there was something to it. I could feel it.
The memory eater demons had stolen the memories from Darius’s mind. But maybe they weren’t gone. Maybe there was a backup copy.
My blood was the key—I was sure of it. I just couldn’t figure out how. The solution was there though, like a dream you try to chase into the waking hours, losing it at dawn only to get it back in flashes later on.
Right now, I was pinning my hopes on Deirdre. On my so-called super special Silversbane magic.
“Thank you for meeting me,” I said when she finally crested the dune at the edge of the parking lot and joined me on the beach. “I didn’t know who else to call.”
Deirdre pulled her jacket close around her throat, the wind ruffling her short gray hair. Her eyes held the same grandmotherly warmth she’d showed me in Vegas. “I’m glad you called me, Rayanne. There’s still so much I want to tell you. So much you need to know.”
“How did you manage to slip away?” I asked her.
“Oh, I’m not really his prisoner.” She lowered her eyes, her cheeks coloring. “Sebastian and I have an odd arrangement that dates back many years. I belong to him, and can never truly leave, but I’m not chained to him. I come and go, largely as I please.”
“Do you want to leave him?”
She looked taken aback, as though no one had ever asked her the question before. Maybe they hadn’t. I wasn’t even sure what possessed me to ask, other than the fact that I was still trying to get a handle on how Sebastian operated. On whether I’d ever have a chance at truly leaving him after this momentary reprieve was over.
“No,” she finally said, linking our arms and leading me further down the beach, Sparkle and Sunshine trailing behind us. “I made my choices. It’s not always perfect, but this is my life now, and has been for a long time. He is my life.”
“Are you… in love with him?” I did my best to keep the judgment from my tone, but I wasn’t sure I succeeded.
To her credit, Deirdre didn’t flinch.
“No,” she said plainly. “Sebastian believes he’s in love with me, but like many men before him, he confuses love with obsession, and that obsession has driven him to madness. His focus is single-minded, and when he fixates on something…”
She stopped along the shore, gazing out at the foamy sea. Far out on the horizon, the sun was struggling to peek through the clouds, but the clouds were winning that particular battle. Such was life on the Pacific coast.
When she turned to face me again, it looked like she’d aged a decade.
“So what is it you want to know about blood magic?” she asked, dropping the subject of Sebastian altogether. “I thought you didn’t want to summon your ancestors until after you’d dealt with the conflicts facing your people here.”
“I don’t.” I pulled my jacket sleeves down over my hands, blowing into them for warmth as we continued our walk. Elena had picked up a bunch of new clothes for me, but I forgot to ask for gl
oves. “I need to know how blood is linked to memory.”
“To memory?” She narrowed her eyes, scrutinizing my face. “Is this related to the situation with Darius?”
Nodding, I took a deep breath of salty air, trying to put my jumbled thoughts into words.
Doing my best not to sound like a mad scientist, I told Deirdre about what’d happened in the Shadowrealm, and my tissue-paper-thin theory about a possible backup copy of Darius’s memories.
It sounded crazy saying it all out loud. But if there was even a chance that my blood could heal him, could restore even a fraction of Darius’s memories, I wanted to know how to try.
“Your situation with Darius is unique,” she said, stopping to pick up a piece of driftwood and throwing it down the shore for Sparkle. The hound bolted after it, chasing it into the surf, then promptly forgetting about it. “What you’re trying to do… well, to be perfectly honest, I’ve never heard of something like it before. But that doesn’t mean it’s not possible. A vampire blood bond is a deep, deep connection. You and Darius have that link. And yes, that link could store some residual memories.”
Hope warmed my insides, and I let loose a smile—the first one of the day. “Yeah? So you think it’s possible I could somehow transfer them back? Magically?”
“Possible, yes. Anything is possible. The fact that your here instead of locked away in Sebastian’s realm shows you that much. The problem is that it’s too risky, Rayanne. If you attempt a blood spell, you may end up summoning your ancestors after all.”
“But I wouldn’t do a summoning spell. This would be something else.”
“We don’t know what this ‘something else’ would entail. It might be very much like a summoning spell.” She shook her head, dashing my hopes. “I’m sorry. I have to advise against it.”
“So what you’re telling me is the only thing this Silversbane blood is good for is doing Sebastian’s dirty work?”