Planting his elbows on either side of her, he said, “You smell like raspberries and wine, did I tell you that?”
She shook her head. “Yes and your scent is wonderful as well, like something wild that grows on a mountainside; earthy, grassy, tangy. Your sweat was like that, when you flew me here.”
“You didn’t mind? You said I tasted like war.”
“Uh-huh, like a man who’d just fought and saved hundreds of lives.”
His chest rose and fell, his gaze sliding around to land once more on hers. “And you were part of that.”
“I was. But it seemed like such a small service, to offer up a vein.”
He shifted to stare down at her neck. “I need more and I can feel you’re ripe again.”
“I am.”
He ran his thumb down her throat then licked the skin in a long line straight up to her ear.
“I can smell your blood, an erotic elixir now, because you’ve known pleasure.” He trembled. “I want to be inside you when I drink.”
“Yes.” Her voice was breathy, hardly there. Her hips rolled, seeking.
He lowered himself onto her, using a hand to position himself at her entrance. “You’re wet.”
“I want you, Ethan. All of you, every inch. Now.” Where had all this boldness come from?
“You’ve got me.”
*** *** ***
Ethan pushed, slowly at first. She was tight, but then he was big and not every woman could handle what he had to give. But her groans, and the way she caught his ass and pulled him into her, encouraged him to push harder.
A hoarse moan helped him to know he was good. With his gaze fixed on the pulse in her throat, his chest tightened and his mouth watered. Her wrist had been one thing, but this would be better, much better.
Slowly his hips moved, driving farther each time, deeper.
Using his fingers, he pushed the long strands of her black hair away from her pale neck. She had a fae’s complexion, very light and creamy.
Samantha was beautiful.
He leaned down and kissed the line of her jaw then her lips as he progressed inside her.
She pulled on him, her hands gripping his shoulders. “You feel so good, Ethan. So good.” Her neck arched and her head slid up into the pillow, then back, a pure reflection of how his movements kept her body undulating slowly.
Her fingers squeezed his biceps, which caused his muscles to flex then relax. His vibration pulsed heavily now, swarming through her and touching her faeness. The sensation tightened his stomach and his ass.
Ethan. Her voice sounded soft inside his mind.
He met her gaze and thumbed her cheek. I’m here.
She smiled. This is beautiful. Whatever our lives become, this moment is beautiful. I love being connected to you like this and your vibration has me worked up. It’s amazing.
Her words in his mind swelled his heart and ignited his personal frequency further so that new waves poured from him.
Oh, my God. What are you doing to me?
I’m not sure. He kissed her again. Waves pulsed from his chest and reached inside. Focus on your faeness, your fae frequency and let it flow toward me. I think we can do something here, the two of us.
She nodded.
Did the bed just tremble?
She closed her eyes, her lips parting wide as though caught in supreme ecstasy. Then he felt it as his frequency returned to him, but this time joined to hers. Pleasure, like he’d never known, spread fire through his chest, his stomach, and into his groin.
His hips moved faster, gliding easily within her because she rained on him now.
I need to drink.
Yes, drink. Ethan, please. I want you to. I need you to. She arched her neck, exposing a vein that rose from him.
He placed an arm over her left shoulder to keep her pinned. At the same time, by long practice, his hips moved so that he plunged in and out.
Turning his head and angling, he made a sharp jab with his fangs and surrounded the wounds with his lips. The first draw of raspberry-and-wine nectar exploded on his tongue. He groaned against her throat. He sucked hard and plunged faster and faster.
The sensation of their shared frequencies kept his chest on fire and his groin wicked with sensation and drive.
Her moans filled his ears.
So, close. I’m close again. The vibrations, my God. Ethan, my God.
Let it go.
She cried out and her well tugged on him as he worked her with his cock, as he drank from her, as he sent his frequency vibrating through her body, as he felt hers return and stroke him.
Her cries repeated, as though the orgasm rolled on and on and maybe it did. He was so hard, so ready.
I need to come.
Ethan, come. Yes, come, while you’re drinking me down.
Those words did him in. His back tensed, his buttocks flexed and his balls released. He pumped faster while still sucking at her neck. Pleasure rode his cock and because she cried out, her hips meeting his with answering grinds, he knew another orgasm carried her along, which intensified what he felt, the nerve endings singing and shouting ecstasy.
But he wasn’t done and their shared frequency rose to intensify every sensation.
He kept rocking into her.
Her voice was in his head once more. I’ll come again if you keep doing that.
And you’ll bring me again.
Yes, please. Do that, only can you look at me this time?
He left her neck, his body now full of her life-blood, his veins whirring in response, their joined frequencies firing him up.
He planted his hands on either side of her, lifting up so he could see her and focused on driving into her. She touched his face, his cheeks, his lips. She breathed in quick gasps, her body undulating beneath his.
“Our frequencies, as though my body is trembling head-to-foot--”
“I know.”
He went faster, his vampire ability surpassing what a human could do. Her mouth remained open as though she struggled for air. She became very still beneath him, just feeling him. Her light blue eyes shone in the dark room.
She gasped.
Are you coming.
Yes.
How he loved telepathy in moments like this and she was powerful enough to make it easy.
A second orgasm shot through him. He arched away from her roaring this time because the sensation, doubling over the earlier one, felt like pleasurable fire through his cock as he released into her. She gripped his arms, crying out again and again. Ecstasy streamed a conversation between them, of pleasuring rising to the heights repeatedly.
Sex had never been like this before, not in his long-lived life, not ever. She cried out over and over, whimpering, and grasping him from within.
Finally, the sensations slid down the other side of the hill and her hips settled into the bed. He rested on top of her, still holding himself up. He was breathing hard, so was she.
She thumbed his lips. “You have my blood.”
He nodded as a kind of lethargy overtook him. He wanted to roll over and lie on his back, maybe just fall asleep. But at the same time, he didn’t want to leave her body.
Instinctively, he knew that the moment he did, everything would change as it always did after sex, sometimes better, sometimes worse. But mostly, he didn’t want to sever the connection he felt to her.
Then he realized that his frequency was still communing with hers.
“What is it?” she asked.
“We’re still connected? Can you feel the vibration?”
“Yes, but I thought it was a kind of afterglow.”
He smiled. “Maybe it is, but we’re still joined, my mating frequency to your fae vibration.”
She grabbed both ass-cheeks and pushed against him. “And we’re joined here, as well.”
He chuckled. She made him laugh. He tried to remember the last time a woman had done that for him.
She tilted her head. “I want to explore the vibration
connection. Is that okay?”
He dipped his chin. “Anything you want.”
She closed her eyes and he felt her focus on their shared frequency. It feels really solid, that ‘joined’ is the right word.
I agree.
Can it come apart? I mean how? You’ve done this before, right?
No, I haven’t.
At that, her eyes popped wide. “Somehow, I had the impression this was the way things were done.”
“Every couple is different and some of that difference comes with specie; my vampire to your fae and to your humanness.”
“I see, sort of. Would you mind if I tried to disconnect? I don’t want to, but I’m so intrigued.”
He didn’t want it either, but he liked the sparkle in her eye a lot. “Go for it.”
She closed her eyes once more and took deep breaths. Slowly she released his frequency and it felt like fingers unclasping and pulling away, like they’d been holding hands but had to let go.
His first impulse was to stop her. He didn’t want her to go and yet she couldn’t remain attached like this. He tried something similar, just a focused release and the same thing happened, a kind of unfurling of his frequency and a slow, peaceful, almost satisfied, separation.
It seemed appropriate to withdraw from her body at the same time.
Of course, this left a different kind of issue to resolve and he left the bed to get a washcloth and bring it back to her.
“Do it for me,” she said, smiling, her eyes sleepy.
He opened up the cloth and pressed it between her legs. He leaned down and because he was grateful for so much of what had transpired between them, he kissed her mound.
She petted his head, still damp from the shower.
He crawled beneath the covers, then slid to lie down beside her, covering her at the same time.
“Thank you, that feels good. I got chilled so fast once you weren’t near me.”
“I could sense you were cold.”
“You could?”
“Yeah.” He settled his elbow on the pillow and planted his head in his hand so he could look down at her. He liked the view. “I can sense your satisfaction right now. Must be a frequency thing, your faeness, maybe.”
“You satisfied me.” She held up her left hand, splaying her fingers slightly. He met her hand, with his own, joining his fingers with hers.
Glancing at their hands, she wrinkled up her nose. “This is what our frequencies felt like to me.”
“Me, too, exactly, entwined. This is a strong way to hold another person’s hand.”
She chuckled softly, then met his gaze once more. “For a moment there, I wasn’t sure we’d be able to separate.”
The statement caught him up short and made him think of his world, his realm, his duties as Mastyr of Bergisson. He had to admit that what he’d just experienced with Samantha existed outside of anything he’d ever known before. He feared exactly what she’d just stated, an implication that if they continued making love like this, if he kept drinking from her, feeling so possessive about her, would he only make the inevitable parting an impossibility later down the road?
“I can almost hear your thoughts.” She pulled her hand away and his fingers relaxed, letting her slide from his grasp. “We can’t really go on like this. It’s too much.”
“I know.”
She heaved a sigh as she turned away from him to lie on her side.
But he put his hand on her shoulder, sliding down her arm, then moved in to spoon her. “I know. You’re absolutely right.”
She covered his forearm with her hand and sighed once more.
*** *** ***
Samantha had mixed feelings. On the one hand, she’d turned away from him knowing that she needed to keep things light between them. But maybe she’d done it too quickly, because it felt like a door shutting too fast, not quite a slam, but near enough.
Though Ethan now spooned her, she could tell he’d shut down as well. But this kind of intense coupling reminded her of the descriptions her girlfriends would give of honeymoon experiences, but she barely knew Ethan and he was a different species, neither human nor fae.
And she was just getting used to being something that she’d never known about in her twenty-eight years of living on the planet.
He cleared his throat. “Hey, I loved what we just did.”
“I know. Me, too.” She yawned and patted his arm. “It’s okay. We have a lot to figure out in the next few days, but right now, I think I need some sleep.”
“Good idea.”
Though Samantha felt unsettled by the awkwardness of the moment, the fatigue of the night fell on her and she drifted into a deep sleep.
*** *** ***
The next afternoon, Ethan awoke to an empty bed and his first thought was something close to panic. His concern for Samantha’s safety rode his nerves constantly, from the time Ry had shown up outside her Shreveport house.
He sat up and looked around, listening intently into the depths of the house, but everything sounded normal. He released a deep sigh and slid his legs over the side of the bed.
He knew his household well, that his staff would have already made Samantha, as well as Vojalie and Davido, feel welcome. Because he had a state-of-the-art security system, and all vampires were still indoors at this hour, he let his fears slide away. Even wraiths had a certain sensitivity to sunlight. At least for now, Samantha was safe.
His clothes still lay where he’d dropped them and he smiled. He crossed to his leathers and found his phone. Calling Finn, he got an update on the night’s patrols and found that the battle at the Guildhall had quieted the Invictus, at least for the present, and only two patrols reported skirmishes, each squad dispatching the enemy, no survivors.
“Good. That’s good. I’ll be joining you at full dark, as usual.”
“You could take the night off.”
“No reason to.”
Finn didn’t respond.
The Guardsman’s silence ticked Ethan off, because he could feel his lieutenant frowning his disapproval yet again. Damn Finn. For the past two years he’d been riding Ethan hard about letting his men do more. But how could Ethan relinquish what had been so solemnly given into his care? The one thing Finn would never understand was what it felt like to be a mastyr vampire, what level of responsibility came with that title.
So, he’d just have to suck it up. “See you at nightfall.”
He hung up and set his mind to what items of realm business he needed to attend to. The mayor of Cameron, his realm’s largest city, wanted a conference sometime next week about setting up a federation of sister-cities of the Nine Realms. Ethan might be in charge of border security, but the mayors held the cities and towns together, which still didn’t eliminate the need for Ethan to have his hand in the day-to-day political machinery of realm-life.
Showering, he recalled what he’d done with Samantha just a few hours ago, how she’d lathered him and he’d returned the favor, the intense love-making, the unexpected depth of connection because of shared frequencies.
Sweet Goddess, he’d like to do that again.
But as he toweled off and started blowing the mass of his hair dry, he scowled at his reflection. What the hell was he doing with Samantha, anyway? Yes, her blood had stopped what had been decades of blood-starvation and he would always be grateful, but beyond that, she was a half-human who didn’t want to be here and he had no interest in a long-term anything.
He also knew that if he didn’t take steps to create some kind of tolerable distance from her, things could get messy. She might get attached to him in a way he couldn’t reciprocate.
He had to figure some way to keep her safe and get rid of her at the same time.
It dawned on him that his other fae guest, Vojalie, might hold the key for him and his chest expanded as a full-blown concept came to him that would answer all his problems and be a good thing for Samantha at the same time.
*** *** ***
&nbs
p; Samantha held the fresh, sliced strawberries to her lips, carried there by a fork, and stared at Ethan. “Say, what?” Had she heard him right. She let the strawberries slide into her mouth then chewed, but she’d lost the ability to taste what had begun as a promising bowl of ripe fruit.
“It would only be temporary.” He scowled, then crossed his arms over his chest. He stood next to the table opposite her, having arrived with a clear purpose in mind.
Davido sat beside Samantha, holding baby Bernice over his left shoulder, rubbing her back in slow circles.
Vojalie was at the long table as well. She’d been nursing the baby and was waiting for a burp before continuing. She had a flannel shawl, in a soft shade of lavender, draped over her shoulder to her waist. She was a mother with practice. She glanced slowly from Samantha to Ethan, her large brown eyes wide.
Samantha drew a deep breath and addressed the subject straight out. “Ethan, I don’t know what bug crawled up your butt, but the last thing I’m going to do is leaving Bergisson for Merhaine Realm. Even I, in just the infancy of my powers, know I belong here.”
“You’re going. The Mastyr of Merhaine, Gerrod, is already bonded to his woman, Abigail, so I won’t have to worry about him going after you. Vojalie can teach you from her home as well as any other place. And right now, I need to focus on Ry and his current leadership of the Invictus. We could be attacked at any moment and I need you safe.”
“You need me out of the way.” She set her fork down and leaned back in her chair. She’d finished half her breakfast, but had suddenly lost her appetite for the rest.
She watched Ethan beneath hooded lids, his aggressive stance, the set of his chin, his biceps flexing then releasing.
She’d felt those arms last night, same reflexes, different situation.
When she’d awakened and seen just how deeply he slept, she’d left his bed, returned to her room, and dressed for the day. But the entire time, butterflies had flitted around her stomach as she wondered what Ethan would think of the night they’d spent together, whether he’d in any way felt as altered this morning as she did, and somehow hoping that his first words would be as full of awe as she felt.