Chapter 36
When the blur from Ian’s teleporting stopped, we were in a new home. The white-framed windows revealed a wooden boardwalk, a beach and night-darkened waves outside. This room had a stone fireplace, exposed beams in the high ceiling, hardwood floors and comfy-looking suede couches.
“Mencheres’s cottage in the Hamptons,” Ian said by way of explanation, tossing the bags onto one of the couches. “He won’t mind, and this area’s almost deserted in the winter, so we won’t have to fret about any nosy neighbors.”
Aside from the protection of being inside a private residence, the continuous salt spray also acted as a natural demon repellant, plus that same sea offered me an endless supply of water-fueled energy. Ian clearly wasn’t taking any chances.
“It’s great,” I said, setting Silver down. He immediately flew onto the couch and snuggled into the soft-looking cushions. Within moments, his eyes were shut. I must not be the only one who’d had enough of this day.
Ian came over and began to smooth my hair from my face, but he couldn’t get far since it immediately tangled around his fingers. Teleporting was hell on a hairstyle. My hair would look less disheveled if I’d been repeatedly electrocuted.
“None of this is great, Veritas.”
His hand stayed in my hair, while his gaze filled with an empathy I couldn’t stand to acknowledge. I tried to swallow away the new tightness in my throat. I didn’t deserve what was in his eyes. Not when I’d failed so badly by letting Ereshki fool me again. I’d put both of us in more danger than before, and that had already been in the you’re-probably-going-to-die category.
“I should start on a new protection spell,” I said, turning away to stride into the next room. It was a conservatory, and in another mood, I would have loved its windows-for-walls and bright white trim. Now, I hated it because the windows bounced my reflection back at me everywhere I looked. Still, it was better than Ian giving me none of the anger I deserved—and needed—to shield myself from the enormity of what I’d done.
Before I took my next step, Ian was in front of me.
“Veritas,” he began.
I grabbed him and yanked his head down to mine. Then I jumped up to wrap my legs around his waist. If I couldn’t avoid Ian, I could at least be sure he wasn’t in a talking mood.
He caught me, holding my hips while his mouth opened to give me a blisteringly sensual kiss. I sucked on his tongue, then dug my fangs in until I tasted the coppery-flavored wine of his blood. He rolled his hips, sending a sweet ache into my loins. Now I was thoroughly distracted, too.
“I’m going to bite you everywhere,” I breathed, dragging my fangs across his lower lip to suck the ruby drops that welled.
“Are you?” he growled as he untangled my legs from his waist, then dropped to his knees while holding my hips. He pressed his mouth between my legs and exhaled until his hot breath penetrated my clothes with its own touch.
An exquisite clenching had me gripping his head to hold him closer. He chuckled, and it went right through me as well, teasing flesh that throbbed to feel more of him. I tried to unzip my pants to give him better access, but he stopped me, chuckling again as he held me more firmly while releasing another deep, tantalizing exhale.
A cry left me when he ended that exhale with a lingering bite. My pants kept his fangs from piercing skin, but their skillful application of pressure sent ripples of ecstasy through me. His response to my cry was a deep lave that was somehow as erotic as if it had seared bare flesh. My hands trembled as they fisted in his hair. Now, I wanted him with a ferocity that made me feel as if I’d turned feral, and he hadn’t even gotten my pants off yet.
He wouldn’t anytime soon, either. I could see it in the sensually taunting glint in his eyes right before he lowered his mouth again. Another deep, molten exhale combined with more tantalizing friction had me shuddering against him. No, he’d tease me until I was mindless from desire, and as glorious as that usually was, I couldn’t wait for it. I had to have him now.
I closed my eyes, focusing on the part of him I needed deep inside me. Then I wrapped my power around that long, thick member and very gently pulled.
His surprised hiss felt like it went all through me.
“What are you doing?” he asked in a strangled voice.
I smiled without opening my eyes, pulling on that power gently again. Why had it never occurred to me to do this before? Erections were only possible when the member filled with blood. I could call that blood closer to the surface, until Ian was awash in sensitivity, making the barest brush of fabric from his pants feel the same as my mouth sliding up to engulf his cock.
Or my fangs sliding into its tip, if I focused that power more selectively while pulling on it a little harder . . .
He let out a hoarse shout, his grip on me tightening until I heard a rip and felt the give of fabric around my hips.
I stopped. “Too much?” He liked pain, but I was new to this, so I might have pulled too hard . . .
He rent my pants open and buried his mouth between my legs. Fireworks went off inside me, so consuming and continuous, everything else melted away. When the last orgasm faded enough for me to think again, I was on my back with my clothes in tatters and Ian was rising from my open thighs. He’d also removed his clothes and the horn, allowing the moonlight streaming in from the windows to cling to his body as if it was making love to him, too. His skin was almost as pale as those ethereal beams, making my thighs a far darker contrast as I lifted them to grip his hips when he slid forward to cover my body with his.
A strong arch of his hips tore a gasp from me as he filled me in one stroke. The pleasure was so intense, I dug my nails into his back, while my eyes closed from bliss.
“Don’t,” he said in a throaty voice. “Open your eyes.”
I did, seeing his tightly sculpted muscles bunch before another deep stroke cascaded more bliss into me. Then I looked at his face. Pleasure parted his lips, which were fuller from bringing me to multiple orgasms only moments before. His dark brows framed glowing emerald eyes and his auburn hair swung to brush his cheekbones with every nerve-sizzling stroke. If beauty could be poured into skin, it would look exactly like this.
“I’m going to come just from watching you,” I breathed.
His low laugh was filled with everything that made Ian addictive. “Not yet, but soon. You didn’t think I’d let you off without repaying you for making me cream my trousers with the naughty side of your powers?”
A smile teased my mouth. “So you did like that.”
Another twist of his hips briefly cleared my mind of thought. “. . . loved it,” I vaguely caught him saying. “Just like you’re going to love this.”
His hand left me as he raised it, fingers working a complex yet rapid spell. When he stopped, his outline blurred for a moment, then a second Ian pulled away from his body while the real Ian grinned at me.
“What?” I said with disbelief.
A grin lit Ian’s face before it was mirrored on the second, slightly shimmering Ian who now slid behind me.
“Temporary duplication spell,” Ian said, picking me up and settling me across his lap. That bared my back to the second Ian, who began to caress it. “He’s controlled by my desires, so everything I want to do, he does.”
He proved that by kissing me while his double’s hands wandered over the parts of my body Ian’s weren’t already caressing. Soon, his double’s mouth did, too, heightening pleasure already skyrocketing from those ceaseless thrusts.
If one Ian was insatiable, two were relentlessly, gloriously overwhelming. Nothing else existed because nothing else could get through the barrage of pleasure. When I finally sagged against him, too sated to move, he let out an amused grunt and gave a complicated snap of his fingers.
His duplicate vanished. I used the last of my strength to lie back and pull him fully on top of me. His gaze was almost a blindingly bright shade of green, but his expression was worth the effort to keep my eyes open.
If I could freeze any moment in time to live in forever, it would be this one. Not because of the rapture that had completely exhausted me from this unexpected astral threesome, but because of what I saw in Ian’s eyes now. Seeing it, a surge went through me that had nothing to do with the way he gripped me tighter and increased his pace.
Before Ian, I’d never wanted anyone to look at me this way. I had too many secrets, and being loved meant being pursued to degrees that would endanger me. But staring into Ian’s eyes, I wanted what I thought I saw in them more than anything I’d wanted before it.
At the same time, I was terrified that it might only be the reflection of what I felt for him, and not what he felt for me.
Another thrust brought a distracting clench of ecstasy. I gave myself to it, letting it chase away my fears. Right now, Ian was mine and I was his. Tomorrow was uncertain for many reasons, so right now, this was enough.
Chapter 37
Mencheres’s house had four bedrooms. We didn’t use any of them, though Ian did take the bedding from the nearest one to wrap us up where we lay. We’d gone back to the room with the beachfront view. The stone fireplace was gas, but despite its slightly acrid scent, it gave off a pleasant amount of heat.
Silver slept on the couch above us. Poor thing had barely bothered to pick up his head when we came back in. I’d rummage in the kitchen for vegetables for him later, but right now, I wanted a few more minutes curled up with Ian.
He’d brought pillows, but my head rested on his arm while his free hand traced the curve of my shoulder. I reached out to brush the spot on his arm that the horn normally wrapped itself around. At some point during our first encounter in the conservatory, he’d taken it off. I hadn’t even noticed.
“Glad the horn didn’t violently react to me touching it,” I mused. “Or I would’ve left brain bits all over the conservatory’s pretty driftwood floors.”
Ian snorted. “I had it on in the bathroom with you at Yonah’s the other night, or was that only yesterday?”
“With all the teleporting, time-zone changes, and everything else, I can’t remember,” I replied.
“Neither can I, but the horn either likes you or it knows you’re not trying to steal it from me. That must be why it doesn’t harm you when you touch it.”
“Probably the latter,” I said, adding dryly, “it’s obviously a possessive little relic, to blow the head off anyone who tries to take it from its current owner.”
Another chuckle, this time with a touch of grimness. “I’ll never forget the headache that gave me, and that’s when the horn decided it fancied me enough to keep me.”
I didn’t remind Ian that “fancying” him hadn’t been part of the horn’s decision. Only raw power and the potential for more drew it, Ashael had said. If so, I understood why it had been drawn to Ian. As a vampire, he’d already been far more powerful than normal, as his beating me in our first fight attested. As a vampire highly skilled in tactile magic and imbued with additional power after what Ian had consumed from Dagon? I had no idea the heights Ian could attain.
Lofty ones, the relic choosing him seemed to indicate.
“Wasn’t trying to eavesdrop earlier.” Ian’s tone turned serious, which warned me that I wouldn’t like what was coming. “But you were screaming, so it was hard to miss hearing why you believe Tenoch turned Vlad into a vampire right before he died.”
I stiffened, pulling away from him without realizing I’d moved until I felt cool air where his body had been. I would rather pull out all my teeth than talk about this. No—I would rather pull out all my teeth, swallow them, then fish them out of my stomach with a sharp hook than talk about this.
But Cat had nearly brought me to a full meltdown by merely mentioning it earlier. How much of that had Ereshki overheard? If she’d caught any of it, she’d share it with Dagon, and I couldn’t afford to give the demon such a powerful weapon against me. That meant I had to talk about this. Sometimes, the only way to clear the infection out of a wound was with a sharp knife.
“I don’t know what you’ve heard about Tenoch.” My voice was abrupt. If I was doing this, I had to be as cold as possible. “Many people talk about his powers, but more than anything, Tenoch was a good man deeply burdened by his concern for others. It’s partly what drove him into his grave. You can’t care like that without it taking a toll.”
“Mencheres always believed that Tenoch’s death was caused by more than an ambush by marauding ghouls.” Ian’s voice was neutral, as if he knew I couldn’t handle anything more.
I gave a brisk nod. “Mencheres was right. The ghouls who killed Tenoch were happy to believe they’d overwhelmed him by their greater numbers, but I knew, as Mencheres did, that Tenoch still could’ve escaped. Incredible strength aside, Tenoch was telekinetic and pyrokinetic. He could have alternated between ripping their heads off or exploding them off, if he wanted to . . .”
Ian finished what I couldn’t bring myself to say. “Instead, Tenoch let those ghouls kill him.”
“A mere two weeks after turning the fiercest human in the world into a vampire.” I let out a laugh that sounded as broken as the memories made me feel. “For the first several decades, I was too grief-stricken to wonder why turning Vlad was the last thing Tenoch did. Then Vlad began exhibiting powers he could have only if Tenoch had poured the remainder of Cain’s legacy into Vlad when he turned him. That’s when I knew that Tenoch had designated Vlad as my new murderer, if the need arose.”
“Perhaps Tenoch emptied his remaining portion of Cain’s legacy into Vlad because he knew that soon, he’d have no need of it?”
I gave Ian a look he didn’t deserve. “Then he could’ve given it to me, but he didn’t. Not then and not thousands of years earlier, either.”
Ian propped himself up on his elbow. “You’re referring to Tenoch giving Mencheres that power, after Tenoch turned Mencheres into a vampire.”
I gave a brisk nod. “Soon after Tenoch turned me into a vampire, there was . . . an incident involving my other abilities. What I did terrified him, but he loved me too much to kill me. So, he made me vow to always keep that part of myself locked away, then bequeathed Cain’s legacy of power to Mencheres.” I gave a humorless laugh. “Mencheres was my intended executioner, if I broke my vow and let the other half of me take over. Mencheres didn’t know it, but I always did.”
Rage blasted across Ian’s features before it vanished. In a carefully controlled tone, he said, “Tenoch told you that?”
A surge of defensiveness made me sit up. “You don’t understand. What you’ve seen of my powers is only a little slice of what I’m actually capable of. Tenoch didn’t make this decision lightly. He was thinking of the greater good—”
“The greater good.” Scorn dripped from Ian’s tone. “I’d have to think long and hard to find three words more widely twisted to excuse the infliction of needless pain and suffering than those.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Tenoch believed it when it came to me, though. I—I thought he’d stopped fearing me because we’d been through so much. Then he died, and Vlad began manifesting powers he couldn’t have on his own.” I tried to laugh, but it came out as a strangled sob. “Tenoch must’ve thought Mencheres wouldn’t be enough to take me down. Mencheres had sunk into a depression after his first wife left him and began plotting against him. So, Tenoch dumped the last of his legacy powers into Vlad, then killed himself with a horde of ghouls two weeks later.”
Leaving me reeling with grief, guilt and a resounding sense of culpability, once I’d put it all together.
“No wonder you refer to your other abilities as a separate person.” Ian’s voice was very soft. “It’s how you compartmentalized the pain when it was too much to bear.”
Once, I would’ve argued. Now, I closed my eyes. “Perhaps.”
“Tenoch was still a bloody fool.”
My eyes snapped open in time to see my vision flash with black. Ian didn’t flinch from the rage he had to see a
s well as scent.
“He might have been well-intentioned, but like millions of parents who reject their children over things they don’t understand, Tenoch was wrong. You are exactly as you should be, and it’s Tenoch’s loss that he never realized that.”
Anguish tightened my muscles until it felt like I was being beaten from the inside. “You didn’t see what I did—”
“As a new vampire dealing with incredibly heightened senses and emotions that doubtless activated the abilities in your other nature?” Ian made a contemptuous noise. “I don’t have to see it to know a slip of supernatural control doesn’t make you a monster that needs to be exterminated. Yes, your power can be dangerous, but the same can be said for your vampire side. Or your human one, when that applied.”
“Tenoch would never have gone to such extremes unless he knew it was the only way!”
I’d repeated that to myself countless times over the centuries. Otherwise, the knowledge that Tenoch had still considered me a threat to be eliminated when he died would break me.
“Fear can make people do terrible things, even to the ones they love,” Ian replied in a softer tone. “You know that. You just can’t bring yourself to admit it when it comes to Tenoch. Makes you feel disloyal, and that’s just the beginning. When you realize it was Tenoch who was wrong, not you, you have to confront the fact that you stuffed half of yourself into a cage merely to appease the fears of a man who should have loved you unconditionally because that is a parent’s bloody job.”
“He did love me! He just knew the other half of me could never be trusted—”
“Bollocks,” Ian said crisply. “He never bothered to find out. He saw your father, shat himself in terror, then made up his mind that something that powerful had to be evil. That’s why he shat himself again when he saw those same powers in you, but whatever you did was no more innately evil than a new vampire losing control from blood cravings. Are all of them evil, too?”
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