He couldn't speak for a long time, and when he did, he had to see her face. Releasing her so she could sit up, he said, "No more walls, no more distance." He wanted to shake her for keeping this from him for so long, for protecting him at the cost of the life they could've had together. "And never any apologies. Not between us."
His fierce, beautiful, wild storm of a lover cupped his face in her hands, her own face strong and proud and so damn vibrant it was impossible to imagine her fading into a nightmare twilight. "No walls, no distance." Raw power in every word. "You're in my soul, Janvier."
He wanted to say the same in return but his throat was too thick, too filled with the anger inside him.
Ash wouldn't let him look away, wouldn't let him hide his fury. "I want a promise, too."
"Anything." He'd split his veins for her, if that was what she wanted.
"If we're going to do this, we do it full throttle." The darkness of her eyes caught him, held him. "We live for today, not in mourning for the tomorrow that hasn't yet arrived, and we don't allow the rage to drown us."
Jawbones grinding, he defied her to look out over the water, but if the Hudson held an answer for him, it was mired in the silky dark.
"Janvier." Fingers weaving through his hair, his Ashblade's arms around his neck. "I want to play with you as we've always played. No rules, no holding back. Don't treat me as broken. Don't do that."
How could he deny her? He'd never been able to deny her anything. "Full throttle," he promised, and it was the hardest promise he'd ever had to make, the anger inside him wanting to take over his skin. "I'll show you things that'll make you laugh in delight, scream in passion, cry for the sheer joy of it."
Ash smiled in startled happiness at the words he'd first spoken to her on the train platform where they'd shared their first kiss and it was a beam of light piercing the oppressive dark. At that instant, he realized something else critical: his Ash would never permit herself to be imprisoned inside her own mind. She was a hunter, a woman who danced with danger on every job. When she felt the shadows begin to overwhelm her, she'd go out on a hunt one day and she wouldn't come home, leaving him with memories of a beautiful lover who'd died doing what she loved.
No anguish like what she and her brother suffered as they watched Tanu deteriorate.
No lingering, agonizing loss. Just a clean, sharp cut.
What she didn't realize was that he'd go with her, making a clean, sharp cut of his own. He'd lived more than two hundred years already, and the best of them, the best of them, had been the four since she'd entered his life.
The idea of going back to an existence where she wasn't there anymore? He couldn't do it. He'd never wanted to be a vampire to live forever. He'd done it for what he'd once believed was love, though he'd come to understand it for a false promise. This, this was love. The kind that forever changed a man.
If he survived Ash, he would no longer be the Janvier she knew--he'd be a man without a heart, his buried with her. In time, he'd become like the immortals he so despised, the ones for whom life held no meaning, and who'd attempt any cruelty in an effort to feel again.
No, whatever Ashwini's life span, it would be his, too.
*
Ashwini knew that despite the promise he'd demanded from her, Janvier didn't expect to come up to her apartment that night. He had too much honor to take advantage of her emotional state--but she needed him, wanted to greedily live every instant they had together now that she could go to him open and honest and without secrets.
"I'll walk you up," he said after parking his car in the illegal spot out in front of her building.
Taking his keys once they were through the doors, she threw them to the doorman, then dug out a generous tip. "Can you sneak the car into one of the underground parking spaces someone's not using?" Not having a car of her own, she didn't pay to keep a space.
"No problem." Nic winked. "Mrs. Beachum's in the Hamptons."
"Thanks, Nic." Not looking at Janvier, she walked to the elevators.
"Ash--"
"I don't want to waste any more time." She looked into the raw intensity of his eyes, allowed him to see her: skittering nerves, hot skin, muscles taut, she was a knot of want and need and ignorance. "I want to live, to kiss you, play with you, love you."
He closed his eyes, shuddered. "I'm too selfish when it comes to you, cher, to try to convince you otherwise."
Ashwini rose on tiptoe to run her lips down the stubbled edge of his jaw. "Good," she whispered, her body humming at the proximity of his.
*
Stepping into Ash's apartment after the too-fast elevator ride that hadn't given his spinning head and thundering pulse any time to settle, Janvier took his time in removing his jacket and dropping it on the back of one of her sofas. She did the same thing before leaning down to unzip and pull off her ankle boots. He hunkered down to take off his own boots, then watched as she walked to the glass wall that looked out at the city.
His heart felt bruised tonight, but he'd rather be nowhere else than here, with her, with his lover. Be doing nothing else than loving her, living a lifetime in a heartbeat. When his phone buzzed, he almost didn't look at the message, but Ash turned and in her face he saw the reminder that, no matter what, the victim had a prior claim on their attention.
"Khalil," he told her after scanning the details, "appears to have settled in for a night of public debauchery at Masque. Emaya and Mateo couldn't get in, but a Tower vampire named Trace was already inside when Khalil went in, and he reports that while Khalil is currently indulging his appetites on the glass platform, he's booked out a more intimate 'playroom' for the night."
"Does Masque have security protocols to protect guests in the playrooms?"
"Adele's security monitors all the rooms via a live feed." He met her gaze. "This monster appears locked up for the night, and we've heard nothing back from the computer teams tracking the victim's identity. I think, cher, the night is ours."
She held out a hand.
Beyond her, the falling snow blurred the hard edges of New York, made the Tower in the distance a smudged beam of light and the other buildings luminous shadows. It was the perfect background to silhouette her beauty, her resilient strength in the face of impossible odds. When he reached her, she led him into the privacy of the bedroom, the world beyond locked out the instant she closed the curtains over the balcony doors.
He'd dreamed of this moment for an eon, and now that it was here, he felt like an untried boy with his first woman. "Are you sure?" He couldn't bear for her to regret this.
Her eyes pierced him, owned him. "Oh, yes." One hand moving to caress his nape. "Touch me."
It hit him then. She was so self-assured, handling his flirtation with ease and giving back as good as she got that he'd never before thought about what her ability demanded from her sexually. "Cher." His fingers trembled as he cupped her face.
Lips quirking, she closed her own hands over his wrists. "Don't worry, sugar." A tease in her voice, though her pupils had expanded to turn her eyes into pools of darkness into which he could fall forever. "I might never have been able to stand to touch anyone enough to get naked with them, but that doesn't mean I'm an innocent."
"I don't know what to do," he said, lost and shaken and enslaved.
"If you try to convince me you're a virgin"--narrowed eyes--"I'm going to get out my crossbow."
26
Stroking his thumbs over her cheekbones, he shook his head. "It's you."
Her hands tightened on his wrists, and then she slid one hand back around to cup his nape and draw down his head. His own hands fell to her waist. She was the one who kissed him, explored him, coaxed him.
He'd been seduced many times in his long lifetime. In every instance, he'd known exactly what was happening, had allowed the seduction as part of a game in which both parties had been well satisfied. This . . . he had no control of it, was her instrument to do with as she pleased. Trembling, he sank into the kiss, in
to the feel of her hand stroking over his nape, her mouth playing with his.
Lips parting from his on a soft, wet sound, she met his gaze, smiled a wicked little smile, and kissed him again, his long and lean and beautiful lover. He tugged her so close there wasn't a breath between them, the feel of her body pressing against his turning the kiss molten. Ash gasped at the hard evidence of his hunger, her free hand sliding under the edge of his T-shirt to touch the skin of his waist.
He groaned, wanted to beg for more.
"I could get used to having you do exactly what I want." Her lashes lifted, her lips moving against his, the air between them scalding.
He found his footing in her gentle tease. "Have pity, cher. I am only a man and you are . . . you." A nauseating thought hit him out of nowhere, almost cut him off at the knees. "Am I the only one? Is that why--"
"I've met others I can't read," she said before he could complete the question. "A small percentage of the population." Each word punctuated by a kiss, as if she liked the taste of him.
He liked being tasted, being enjoyed, seduced in a way he hadn't known he could be seduced.
"I even kissed some of them--out of curiosity and because everyone needs to be touched. Even me." Another kiss, a nibble of his lower lip. "But when you grow up conscious of every touch, it's difficult to treat sex as a simple physical release."
The possessiveness at the heart of his nature heard the declaration hidden in her words, grabbed at it with avaricious hands. But then she was kissing him again, and his thoughts splintered. Shifting his hold to wrap one hand around the back of her neck, his other hand across her lower back, he gave in to the passion that had always been red-hot embers between them.
Her breathing was choppy, his heartbeat ragged by the time she kissed her way along his jaw and down his throat. He fisted his hand in her hair as she licked out at him, made a small noise in the back of her throat, and did it again. His body jerked, his hips wanting to grind his rigid cock against her. Squeezing his nape, she repeated her action, then blew on the spot. Tremors rocked his frame. He tugged up her head, their mouths meeting in a nakedness of need that locked its talons around his heart and pulled.
"Let's go slow," Ash whispered when they came up for air. "I want to do every naughty, dirty thing I've never done." The wicked little smile was back. "Somehow, I think you know a few sins you can teach me."
His cock felt as if it would shatter, but he was used to frustration. Being with any other woman after meeting her would've been a betrayal, no matter that they'd been adversaries at the time. A man knew when he'd found his woman. "I've been waiting years to play teacher with you."
Husky feminine laughter, her fingers possessive on him.
He gave her the kiss she demanded, stroking his hand down to cup her ass at the same time. Moaning into the kiss, she rubbed up against him. Not being stupid, he kept his grip where it was, squeezing and shaping the taut flesh he wanted to bite. He also wanted to bite down on the vein in her neck, in the crook of her elbow, on her wrist, on her thigh, for a far different reason: he hungered to drink from his lover as she sighed in orgasm.
Not every vampire could give pleasure with his bite, but Janvier had been able to do so since the day he first woke as a near-immortal. "I want to make you come," he said against her wet, kiss-swollen mouth. "I want to thrust my fingers inside you"--chest heaving, mouths tangling--"pump hard and deep, your musk decadent in the air and your breasts bared so I can grip and mold them like I'm doing your ass."
"God"--she bit down on his lower lip--"I love the way you talk."
Trading her kiss for kiss, he lost his words, shivered when she ran her teeth over his neck. An instant later, he took a chance and, dipping his head, scraped his own down her skin. Her hand clenched on his nape. "Janvier."
"Naked and sweaty, sugar. Remember?" That was when he'd told her he'd feed from her, and the reminder was as much for him as for her. His fangs ached, his cock was stone, every cell in his body starving for a taste of the woman in his arms. Feeding from a human donor had never automatically been a sexual thing for him--with her, it could be nothing else.
Eyes slumberous, Ash ran her nails over the skin of his lower back. "I give you permission."
He froze, the bloodthirsty creature inside him caught between lunging at the chance and fear it had imagined her words. "It's not nice to play with a desperate man."
A sinful, intimate laugh. "Just a taste," she whispered, lips curved and body hot against his own as she rose on her toes to fit herself against his straining erection. "Just enough to drive you crazy."
"It'll be torture," he accused, battling not to shove her to the floor or the wall and drive his cock into the tight, wet clasp of her body. "I fucking can't wait."
Dipping his head to her intoxicating smile, his pulse pounding so hard it was a roar in his ears, he licked over the point where her own pulse raced beneath her skin. He wouldn't rush this, wouldn't devour. He had to sip her like the rare vintage that she was, a vintage that was his own private reserve.
One hand splayed on her ass, the other tangled in her hair, he held her to him and sucked on the spot in her neck that made his fangs prick into his lower lip, the craving near unbearable. Ash made a very feminine sound and undulated against him. His mouth watered, his brain threatening to short-circuit.
Nipping at her, but not enough to break the skin, he asked again to make certain she was with him. "Yes?" It came out a growl, the hunger pounding in his veins.
"Yes."
He sank his fangs into her flesh, felt her jerk against him, but there was no hiss of pain, nothing but her pulse rocketing out of control. Even vampires who couldn't give pleasure with their bite had the ability to dull the pain of entry. Some, of course, liked to make it hurt, and some donors enjoyed the sharp edge of pain. Janvier wasn't about to hurt his Ashblade; he'd pumped in the pleasure-giving drug his body naturally produced before he fed.
Not much, just a touch. He wanted her addicted to him, not to his bite.
Then it became impossible to think. The taste of her went to his head, the feral bloodlust inside him shuddering in a pleasure so intense, it threatened to send him to his knees. He wanted to stretch out naked on top of her in a lush, comfortable bed, to sip over an hour, tasting and kissing his lover as he stroked his cock slowly in and out of her.
He wanted to drink and drink.
Breaking contact before the greed stole his mind, made him a glutton, he licked over the marks, ensuring they'd heal just slowly enough that others would know she was his. Aroused all over again by the thought, he licked once more, his veins hot and heavy, his head buzzing. "You are a drug."
Her buttocks clenched under his hold, her breath a rasp. "Jesus, you're potent."
Realizing he'd brought her to the edge of orgasm, he licked over the marks again. "I should let you suffer as I'll suffer." Despite his threat, he shifted their bodies so that his thigh was in between hers.
Urging her to ride his thigh and cursing their clothing, he sank his fangs into her one more time. He made sure it didn't hurt, but didn't pump in the pleasure-giving compound.
Her back arched at the dual wave of sensation, her cry shattered silver in the air.
Retracting his fangs before he could take more than she'd offered, he licked again and again at the wound as he rocked her against his thigh. Her nails dug into his nape, and it made the feral thing in him bare its teeth in bone-deep pleasure. The bloodthirsty beast was holding on by its claws, but that was all right. It could be patient now that she was in his arms. It could pretend to be rational for a while longer.
Going limp as the last ripples of ecstasy squeezed her dry, Ash turned her head into his neck . . . and kissed his own pulse, her arms tight around him. If he hadn't already given himself to her, he would have at that instant. Holding her close, he drowned in her scent, in her warmth, in her.
*
Ashwini had thought about sex before--it kind of tended to dominate the mind
at times when you weren't having any, especially when a certain sex-on-legs Cajun kept flirting with you. But the one thing she'd never really considered was how it'd feel to be held . . . held with such fierce devotion that she could feel it in her bones.
"Don't let go," she whispered, her voice breaking. "Don't let go."
"I won't." Walking backward and taking her with him in a quiet display of strength, he tumbled them onto the bed. And then he tightened his embrace, thrust one of his thighs between her own, and locked his body around hers.
Tucking her head under his chin, she drew in the scent of him, the warmth of him, and felt things in her snap and break and knew she'd never again be the same. "I don't think I'm so tough after all, Janvier. I don't know if I can go any further." The sex she could've handled, but the way he held her, it destroyed, threatening to make her break the promise she'd asked of him.
Janvier's hand curved over her nape. "I could hold you for eternity."
Closing her eyes on that bittersweet vow, Ashwini just lay wrapped in him, and when sleep came, she went into it warmer and safer than she'd ever been. Yet the darkness lapped at the edges of her mind, showing her things she didn't want to know, didn't want to see. A vampire with skin a shade darker than her own and vivid black eyes, his razored black goatee paired with hair braided tight to his skull, used a whip on the white, white skin of a woman who screamed, welts rising over her breasts and her stomach.
Two strokes broke the skin, drew fat droplets of blood.
Yet when the vampire used the handle of the whip to violate her, the woman's scream was that of orgasm. Heavy lidded in the aftermath, she begged for him to release her from her bonds. He laughed, gave her what she wanted . . . and she crawled to abase herself at his feet, begging to pleasure him.
"Master, please."
Laughing again, he put his booted foot on her shoulder and pushed her to the floor, where he shifted his foot to her throat and held her down while he kissed a golden-skinned girl with ripe young breasts and innocence in her eyes. She couldn't have been more than sixteen and she wore only her skin and a fine gold chain around her hips. Closing his hand around her throat, the black-eyed man began to squeeze.
The girl's face went pink, then red, her eyes bloodshot. When she scrabbled at his arm in a final panic, he smiled and kissed her and continued to squeeze. Too soon, she was limp in his arms and he used his grip on her throat to throw her onto the black-sheeted bed in the center of the room. Taking his foot off the woman on the floor, he made her unzip him, then used her mouth with a vicious lack of care before kicking her in the ribs.