“Just kill me,” she whispered, her lips shaping the words with fascinating little movements. The feel of her slenderness under him was so entirely enticing he almost missed the meaning of the phrase. Why would she— “Just do it, please, for God’s sake, I don’t want to live like this anymore.”
He thought she had somehow managed to stab him, despite both her arms being trapped and a fledgling’s strength literally incapable of damaging one so much older. A thin, pointed spear pierced his chest; after a moment he identified the feeling asheartbreak, painfully glorious after centuries of numb, grinding insanity. “Nah.” His voice, rough from screaming and lack ofuse, was a harsh bark after the music of hers. “It’ll done be better, I swear. I’ll make it so.”
But first… All thought foundered, the thrall rising to swallow him whole. Cloth tore, and the first real brush of her skin against his sent a jolt all through, crown to soles. His new garb tore free in ribbons, hers just as easily dealt with, and the curve of her belly was a downy delight. Such velvet, once all the irritating obstacle-veils were ripped away, and her thighs parted almost easily. He let go of her wrists, and she attempted to strike and claw him again—he accepted the blows, each a brushing enticement.
Coffin-narrow, the space precluded much movement, be he was still able to hook his fingers in the soft hot hollow under one of her knees, pressing it aside into the foot-space under the table. Sliding forward, the hungry yearning tip of his phallus finding a scorching velvet at the very core of her body?—
She burst into fresh frenzied motion, or tried to. Whatever she meant to say was lost as his mouth found hers, his true teeth suppressed though her fangs were well in evidence, and she sought to bite him even as he sealed his lips to hers, drinking any cry, scream, plea. He was a well, every surface eager to echo her, and he tried to slow down, to take some measure of her arousal.
Fear was twined with the survival instincts, both braided through the mating urge. Hot slickness eased his way, her scent darker now, even more intoxicating. She moved, he responded, and the first thrust was sheer paradise. The second was even better, if that were possible, and he was lost in a welter of sensation. Her hips rose, an involuntary, betraying twitch, and his body eagerly answered, driving deep.
Time stopped, meaningless in scorching, velvet eternity. Trapped, she writhed beneath him; the secondary prong of a male sanguinant’s mating form questing for the most sensitivebundle of nerves either mortal or his own kind possessed; he found her rhythm and pressed advantage unmercifully.
No quarter, no mercy, nothing but the blind urge totake. Nothing mattered but the throaty, mellifluous cries of her release, the rhythmic, strangling pulse as she finally reached the summit, wracked by the little-death of pure pleasure.
The imprinting roared through him, a crimson roar like the long-ago fire robbing him of both sanity and coherence. It was not the honeyed spasm of his own physical release, yet the sensation was strangely akin. How had he lived for so long without this sheer, stunning, divine relief?
His leman shuddered into quiescence, though her true teeth were still out and the terrible burning note of malnutrition in her scent could not be borne. He freed his mouth, lifting his chin to expose his throat, and as he pressed still deeper into her hot, throbbing core she took the invitation and struck, sanguinant instinct fighting for blind survival.
And he let her sweet, sharp fangs pierce his skin.
His leman gulped greedily, clutching his shoulders, drawing starving-hard against his veins. Each burst of suction tore through him, tightening every muscle and nerve in an ancient, preternaturally strong body; he only regretted that he had not fed more deeply before returning, in order to grant her a greater measure. As it was, he gave enough to skirt the edge of actual weakening before denying her fangs, though it pained him to force his skin closed and hear the tiny, mewling, dissatisfied noise made deep in her throat.
“Enough, darlin’,” he crooned, rubbing his chin against her cheek, an absent caress. “More later, an’ t’ spare.” Each word was a dry rasp, but he cared not a whit.
It was done. His leman was claimed. He was conscious of her arms loosening, her hands falling from his shoulders, and her lapse into stillness. Ragged breathing, her eyes half-closed, perhaps languid with desire’s aftermath.
He hoped it had been adequately pleasant. And that it had elided every trace of her former protector—dead, she said, and that was good.
Verygood. The thought of any other sanguinant touching this miracle was enough to rouse a killing rage deep enough to eclipse anything he had ever felt before, since the fire or before—though he could remember only scattered scenes of that dim, vast, rustling archive.
For now, he was content. And, as soon as she was ready to speak, perhaps he would learn her name.
CHAPTER 7
Simone had expected brutal dismemberment,maybe her throat torn out, a brief burst of agony before she went dry-poof just like the bounties, a whirl of glittering dust and so long, that’s all she wrote.
Not… notthis, whatever it was. She hadn’t come so hard since well before her marriage, and never with anyone else. Maybe her post-infection dry spell had been saving up for a big blowout, or maybe the clitoral stimulation had done the trick? And all on the floor of an RV she’d bought for cash in a lemon lot just outside Lorraine, Kansas, for God’s sake.
At least she’d cleaned every inch of the interior more than once, usually while thinking about how to go about another bounty. It was a relief, a luxury, having nobody’s dirt but her own to deal with.
Horribly vulnerable, to be sprawled under someone like this. Terrible to think that he’d gotten what he wanted and next he’d kill her, she’d have to go to hell knowing that her last hour on earth had been spent… like this.
She might even be laying on his stupid hat, which was deeply, mortifyingly funny in the way only life-threatening bullshitcould be. And oh, hadn’t she learned the value of screaming dark hilarity, of laughing when it became too much to take?
Any woman surviving long enough in this hateful world knew that particular exchange rate.
Silence, except for her own breathing and a deep, slow thudding. A leisurely two-tone thump, long pause, another thump, all falling into dead air. She still couldn’t hear the wind, and that should have clued her in—but how onearthcould she have guessed at a vampire just blinking into existence with no warning? Her senses were acute, and she’d clocked every other bloodsucker she’d come across with no trouble at all.
Or had she?Thatwas a fucking terrifying question. If one could fly under her radar, others could too.
And she’d been doing so well.
Come on. Think.Simone stayed very still, hoping against hope the old vampire would somehow forget about her. Or maybe fall asleep, like her attacker had after the initial assault? That floppy-haired bloodsucker had done terrible things to her, but not like this. For one thing, during the first attack she’d been bleeding from several shallow cuts, which had seemed to drive the bastard even deeper into violent, drunken psychosis.
Her breathing evened out. That strange thumping was like a heartbeat—his? Why hadn’t she heard it before he resolved out of thin air? Did he have what he wanted? Was this some kind of vampire handshake, the etiquette when meeting a really old bloodsucker?
The last five years had been weird as shit, but this had to win some kind of prize.
