I’m glad I could help, she told him.
Inside, he hovered at a crossroads. On the one side, sanity and caution, along with the ghost of the old, cold anger and pain, urged him to withdraw and erect all his barriers again.
On the other side lay the memory of warmth and laughter, and dancing in the kitchen to the rich smell of chocolate cake baking, and Melly saying to him with such transparent, inescapable sincerity, I had so much damn fun with you.
How much weight do you give all of that? How did that compare to the weight of one old, tired lie and a betrayal that was two decades in the past?
How much lighter would he feel if he – the meanest, most unforgiving bastard he knew – chose to forgive her and let it all go? How much warmer?
He had taken enough blood. Easing out of the bite, he rested his mouth against her skin, and in that moment, he truly didn’t know which direction he might choose.
Then she made a sound. It was barely audible even to his sharp hearing, little more than a husky catch at the back of her throat.
That was when he realized he wasn’t standing at a crossroads, but at a precipice, and with that tiny sigh of disappointment, she pushed him over the edge.
Ten
H
e went up in flames and everything inside of him spiraled out of control. His decades-long hunger and his need for her. Lifting his head, he drove his mouth down onto hers and slanted his lips. He felt the shock of it jolt through her body. Then she kissed him back with same kind of ravenous hunger as he kissed her.
She had never minded any of the earthier aspects of their time together¸ not the taste of his semen, or how her private, liquid arousal had tasted on his lips after he had licked her to climax, or the slight salty hint of blood. Mindlessly, he plunged his tongue into her, over and over, while she gasped and arched into him.
Driven by a hectic rush of need, he pulled back, reached for the bundle of bedding that lay nearby, and with a single yank, he untied the strip holding it all together and shook out the mattress. Even that brief moment away from her kiss felt insupportable.
He slid one arm underneath her hips. Lifting her, he twisted to lay her on the mattress and came over her prone body. Then, kneeling over her, he gazed down at her figure.
He loved her body with a greedy carnality that shocked even him. With round breasts and hips and long, muscled limbs, she was intensely feminine and graceful, strong yet welcoming. Her long, curly hair tumbled renegade over the mattress and spilled onto the rough cavern floor.
Even with her dirty clothes, smudged face and tangled hair, she looked burnished and vivid against the dinginess of the bleak cell, shining like a beacon of light. She watched him with a large gaze darkened by some unnamed emotion.
He hesitated. A part of him never forgot the slave pits he had fought his way out of, but she came from a finer, gentler life.
“Tell me no, Melly,” he growled. “Just say the word, and I’ll never approach you again.”
As he paused to give her a chance to respond, he felt a pulse of unbearable suspense. If he had learned nothing else in his long, wicked life, he had learned one thing. “Never” is a heartbreaking amount of time.
Please don’t tell me no.
She wasn’t gentle with her reply. Reaching for the waistband of his jeans, she yanked the fastening open. “Like you said, we’ll have plenty of warning – if she shows up, she’ll blow the whistle. Come here.”
Some kind of fierce, unnamed emotion roared through him. He replaced her hands with his own and yanked the fastening of his jeans open. While he did so, she lifted her hips to tear off her trousers and lacy underwear, and tossed them aside.
After twenty years of starvation, the drive to be inside of her was overwhelming. As he reached for her, she hooked one arm around his neck and lifted her mouth for his kiss.
He hadn’t thought it was possible to be on fire for her any more than he already was, but her eagerness torched through him with the sudden intensity of a flash fire. His need turned aggressive, and he plunged into her mouth with his tongue, but that penetration only fed his hunger. Urging her back on the mat, he knelt between her legs, while he stroked at her soft, private petals of flesh.
She felt so good, so good, silken and so slick with moisture, he had to swallow a groan. As he stroked her, he lifted his head to watch her face. A shudder of pleasure rippled through her body, and he thought with fierce possessiveness, I am doing this to her. She wants me right now, no one else.
As he caressed her, she stroked her hands down his chest and abdomen, and reached greedily for the opening of his jeans. Underneath, he wore black boxers, and she yanked the thin material down so that his stiff penis jutted free.
When she closed her fingers around his cock, the pleasure of her touch was almost unbearable. He jerked in her grasp, hissing, and nearly spilled himself all over her inner thigh. Grabbing her by the wrist, he pulled her hand away.
“I can’t take it,” he muttered. “Right now I’ve got to get inside you.”
He’d had so long to acquire finesse, literally centuries to discover how lovemaking can become a slow and sensual art. But she had reduced him to the most basic, and primal, of urges – the need to cover, protect and penetrate. To rut.
She lifted her head to hiss at him, “Get inside me now.”
He had to pause for a moment to stare at her. Melly was not just photogenic. She was simply pretty, and her feminine looks were enhanced by a normally even temperament and easygoing nature.
Right now, her features were clenched and sharp. She looked as driven as he felt.
She reached again for his cock and urged him down to her. Bracing himself on one forearm, he drove his mouth over hers again, plunging his tongue deep to fuck her mouth while she rubbed the head of his penis against her velvety-soft, fluted opening.
As soon as he felt that he was slick enough with her arousal so that he wouldn’t cause her discomfort, he pushed into her. She made an incoherent noise of pleasure and need. Panting, she kissed him back jerkily.
Melly knew how to finesse too. She knew how to make languid love, focusing on each pleasure point for its own sake, until the act of sex became like a voluptuous banquet. The knowledge of that, along with her urgency and lack of control, made him crazy.
Crazy.
Without fully intending to, he plunged all the way into her, and oh my God, she was so slick and welcoming. He felt as massive as an oak tree, and when she clenched on him, her inner muscles were tight as a fist.
He groaned, “Goddamn, you’re so hot.”
“I know,” she whimpered as she moved restlessly under his weight. “I’m burning up.”
At that, he had to lift his head and grin down at her. Her gaze was glazed with passion as she blinked up at him. “No, baby,” he said gently, rocking his hips to begin moving in her. “That wasn’t what I meant. I meant, you’re so hot.”
Her eyebrows quirked, and dimples appeared in her cheeks as she suppressed a grin. “Yeah, I knew that.”
He grinned back briefly, then they both lost their smiles.
They were dirty. The cell was abysmal, and the thin mattress from the cot was terrible. They hadn’t even gotten fully undressed, but what drove them to couple overrode all of that.
She gripped him at the back of his head. He pinned her down, flexing to get deeper into her, moving faster and harder until he was pistoning into her. The pleasure was exquisite, the buildup of pressure intolerable.
She cried out something breathlessly as she dug her fingers into his bicep.
He needed to take all of her. Covering her mouth with his again, he mimicked the penetration of his penis with his tongue, thrusting into her with the same rhythm he used with his hips. She lifted up for each thrust, flexing as he flexed, matching his rhythm.
As he did so, belatedly, his mind caught up with what she had said.
That bitch better not blow her goddamn whistle.
A sharp convulsive w
ave of laughter shook through him again and was lost in a storm of sensation. His awareness splintered into fragments, each piece impossibly vivid and compelling.
The lean line of her thighs hugging his hips. The grit of dirt underneath the heel of his hand as he propped himself on one arm to stare down at her. The moisture glistening on her full lower lip. She was wet from his kisses, her mouth swollen.
The way she tightened on his cock as he slid back and forth in her passage. Holy shit, it was magnificent. She was his full partner in every way.
In a classic feline move, she clawed his back and ground against him. For a moment he held utterly still as he remembered another deeply intimate detail of their lovemaking from before.
Most of her climaxes came from her clitoris. They had laughed about it together whenever Julian went “deep sea diving” in the hopes of trying to coax her into a vaginal orgasm, or even more rare, an orgasm that blended both.
The memory jolted him out of his preoccupation with his own needs. Sliding one hand between their joined bodies, he located her stiff, delicate little bud and massaged it with the ball of his thumb.
“Come on, baby,” he whispered, watching her face as he rocked into her.
Moving restlessly underneath him, she shook her head and gasped, “I – I don’t know if I can. I need to, but…” She made a quick, frustrated gesture.
“Of course you can,” he told her.
He was never above doing whatever it took to achieve his objective, including breaking his own rules.
As her wandering hand came back to grip his shoulder, he brought down his fangs to bite her neck again – not to drink any more of her blood, but to let her feel the pleasure that came from his bite.
They both stilled. Her heartbeat pulsed against his mouth. He had never felt so close to anyone before. Then a shaking moan escaped her lips on a puff of air that tickled his ear. Like a sexy ghost, the needy little sound shivered over his skin.
Oh my God, I love to fuck you, he said in her head.
That was her tipping point. Arching her back, her knees clamped on his hips. He could feel the ripples of her pleasure when they began. He never wanted to leave them. Rocking gently against her, he drew them out as long as he could. When he was sure she had finished, he withdrew his fangs and lifted his head again to look at her.
She looked dazed, broken wide open. It was the most honest expression he could ever remember seeing, from anyone.
Staring down at her shimmering gaze, he pumped hard into her, once, twice. His own climax, when it came, punched him like a sledgehammer, rolling up from the base of his spine. Swearing under his breath, his body arched from the savage strength of it.
She took his chin in slender fingers and turned his face down to her.
“That’s my climax,” she breathed. “I want to see every moment of it.”
Even in the midst of the waves of convulsive pleasure that pulsed out of him, he found room to be surprised. Twenty years ago, she would never have done such a thing. She had grown. Meeting her gaze, he gave her everything he had.
When his climax finally began to ease, he stroked her hair off her face and pressed his lips to her forehead as he thought, It doesn’t matter if I try to hold on to my old anger or not. I’ll never be able to fully leave her.
As his lips pressed against her skin, Melly closed her eyes and thought, I’ll never understand him. Never in a million years.
He has been so bitter and cold to me for so long. How can he show me such warmth and gentleness now? What happened to change his attitude – and when might it change back again?
When I open my eyes again, who will I be looking at – the bastard Julian, or the nice Julian?
But she already knew the answer to that. She could not look at one without the other, because they were both the same man. It was just that the bastard Julian was so much easier to live with when he wasn’t so furious with her.
She felt exposed, euphoric. She felt disturbed at how easily she had given in to her desire for him, when just a short while ago, she had been so determined to never let him near her again.
And circumstances and surroundings be damned. She wanted to wrap her arms around his neck, pull him down to her and make love to him all over again. She wanted to tear off the rest of her clothes just to feel his calloused hands running over her bare skin.
When he lifted his mouth from her forehead, she said, “We shouldn’t take any more time. We need to go.”
A softer, more modern man might have frowned at her for being so abrupt, but Julian had spent his formative years owning nothing but his wits and his ability to kill, and he had lived too many centuries as a fighter.
“You’re right,” he said. Pulling away, he rolled off her and came to his feet. Matter-of-factly tucking himself inside of his boxers, he held out a broad, scarred hand to her.
She put her hand in his, and he lifted her effortlessly to her feet. While she found another rag from his shredded T-shirt and cleaned her inner thighs, he buttoned and zipped his jeans and collected her trousers and underwear.
She watched as he frowned down at the wadded-up feminine clothing in his hands, puzzling how to turn it right side out again for her. The slanted light from the heavy flashlight made flecks of silver in his salt-and-pepper hair shine.
He had an undeniably Roman profile with a nose that had been broken more than once, blunt, high cheekbones, and a strong jaw that more often than not revealed the determination of the man. Somehow he never managed to look quite civilized when he dressed in formal black tie. Now, standing shirtless in his battered jeans, he was the epitome of raw, lethal masculinity.
If his sire Carling hadn’t seen his potential and turned him, he would have died almost two thousand years ago. Melly was under three hundred years old, and she would never have met him.
If she would have heard anything about him – highly doubtful – anything she might have learned would have been from human history books. And while she was well versed in the history of all the Elder Races, she hadn’t studied much human history.
Chances are, she would have known nothing about his existence, nothing about his struggles or triumphs.
Or how he would have died.
Finding the thought deeply disturbing, she took her clothes from his outstretched hand without meeting his gaze. Quickly she pulled on her underwear and trousers, and slipped her feet into her ballet shoes.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she muttered. His gaze was too penetrating at the best of times. The last thing she wanted was for him to dissect her right now.
Somehow he managed to make his answering grunt sound entirely skeptical, but he didn’t push it.
She finished off another bottle of water and ate the second banana, which meant there were two less things they needed to carry. Working together, they gathered everything up within a matter of moments.
He hesitated only once, when he rolled up the cot mattress and blanket again and tied the bedding with the strip, then slung it onto his shoulder. She didn’t have to ask why. Hopefully they wouldn’t need the bedding and they would find their way out quickly enough.
As she tucked the revolver into the grocery bag along with the last two bottles of water and remaining food, Julian arched an eyebrow at her.
“Why hold on to the gun now?” he said. “We’re out of bullets.”
She lifted her chin. “I’m not letting go of a single potential resource until I know for sure it’s no longer of any use to me. Maybe Anthony has a car outside the tunnels, and maybe he has a box of extra bullets in the car.”
A quick smile creased his face. “Good point. Damn, I never thought of that. Are you ready?”
She cast a final glance around. Not that long ago, she had thought for certain she was going to die down here. “Oh, hell yeah.”
“Come on.” He tucked his stakes at the back of his waistband, took the large flashlight and led the way down to the gate. She carried
the smaller flashlight, the grocery bag with the food and water, the gun, and her own stake in one hand.
After hearing so many ferals in the background for so long, the area seemed eerily empty. Looking quickly down both directions of the intersecting tunnel, he unlocked the gate, then paused to look at her.
“What?” she said.
Taking her chin in his hard fingers, he kissed her swiftly. “What happened back there – it wasn’t a fluke, Melly. We didn’t have sex because of the danger or because we got carried away by my bite. When we get out of here, we’re going to do it again. And again.”
Anger kindled at his words, and she jerked her chin out of his grasp. “You know what? You don’t get to screw me when you want, if you want. I’ll tell you if we’re going to have sex again or not – and with that highhanded, primitive caveman attitude of yours, it’s not looking very likely.”
She meant every damn word. He shouldn’t have smiled at that, but he did. As his lips slowly widened, his eyelids lowered and he gave her a look that was knowledgeable and full of intent.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that,” she snapped.
“Like what?” he asked, sounding almost lazy.
“Mister I’ll-come-after-you-and-you’ll-like-it. Fuck you.”
His smile turned into an outright grin.
Gah, he looked so sexy. He made her crazy, and she still had a right hook with his name on it.
Then he snapped his head around and lost his smile, and at his hard, predatory expression, her stomach clenched.
She hadn’t heard anything, but she had been preoccupied with being mad at him, and his senses were so much sharper than hers.
She switched to telepathy. What is it?
Someone’s trying to be stealthy.
She strained to hear whatever it was that he heard. Do you think it’s one of the ferals?
Yes. Justine would be more quiet. He wrapped a hand around her forearm.
Pushing the gate open, he stepped out. He kept a strong grip on her so that she nearly tripped on his heels. For once, she didn’t mind his highhandedness. The tunnels seemed extra dark and menacing outside the protection of the locked gate.