She almost waved him away—there was enough crazy in her life as it was. Then she heard Elijah’s roar, felt it vibrate through walls and rattle the bloodstained glasses on the tables. The fierceness of the desire that shot through her made her sway on her feet, as if she was hardwired to answer that dominant call. She didn’t have time to be discerning. She needed blood to manage her desire for Elijah and she needed it
now
.
Knowing she had maybe five minutes at most before the lycan worked his way through the crush of bodies on the stairs to get to the third floor, Vash shoved the vamp into a chair and circled him, grabbing his jaw from behind and yanking it out of the way to expose his neck. She’d prefer his wrist, to keep it impersonal, but she needed to be quick and nothing beat an arterial gush for speed.
Her fangs descended, her gaze riveted to the thick pumping vein at his throat. As her stomach gnawed in hunger and dizziness swept through her from the need to feed, the lounge door was ripped off its hinges and thrown over the balcony into the teeming mass of vampires below. Elijah filled the threshold, his body big, hard, and virile. His irises glowed in the shadows cast by the muted wall sconces.
“Mine.”
Just the one word, spoken low and terrifyingly deep, as if ripped from the beast inside him instead of from his human throat.
Something warm and slightly twisted slid sinuously
inside her, some alien feeling of…pleasure that such a magnificently masculine creature should be so powerfully possessive of her.
His gaze dropped to the minion seated in front of her. “Go, before I kill you.”
“I need to eat, damn you!” she shouted, weary of fighting herself over him and desperately clinging to the hope that a replenishment of nutrients would free her from her inexplicable fascination.
But she knew he wouldn’t let her drink from anyone else, not now. The act of feeding was too innately sexual, even when the only contact was fangs to vein and lips to skin. He was too territorial to allow that connection, however impersonal. Yet she couldn’t afford to drink from him…
wouldn’t
drink from him, because she knew, instinctively, that she would have the same reaction to the taste of him as he’d had to the taste of her—the hunger wouldn’t be appeased; it would grow. She would crave more. More of his potent lycan blood. More of
him
.
She would have to restrain him long enough to get a meal in edgewise.
Taking command of the situation, Vash closed the distance between them and caught him with a fist in his shirt. “Come with me.”
She pulled him, but succeeded only in ripping the shirt off his back. Elijah didn’t move at all, was too powerful for even her vampire strength. Her sex clenched with greed for this male who was more than a match for her.
Flushed and breathless, she skirted him and exited
to the hall, trying to get herself under control before he realized how close to the edge she was. If she wasn’t careful, he’d have her begging for his cock. The thought of that weakness terrified her as nothing else could. She had to be strong, for herself and for Char, and for all the vampires who needed her to keep them alive and thriving.
Elijah followed so closely she could feel his heavy exhalations on her nape. Stalking her again. And she couldn’t deny that some recessed part of her wanted him to. Because it ratcheted up her desire, made her hot and wet.
Vash saw the small green light lit above a door and went to it quickly. There were more doors and more lights. Most were red, which signaled locked and occupied. Some were yellow, which signaled vacant but in need of housekeeping. Only a few were green and she chose the nearest one, opening the door and cursing as Elijah crowded her into the small playroom. He caught her around the waist and tossed her onto the massive bed, barely giving her the time to scoot up before he pounced.
“Elijah,” she gasped, as he landed neatly on all fours, caging her to the bed with his hands pressed to the mattress at her shoulders and his knees hugging the sides of her thighs. Fear paralyzed her, not of him but of the raging desire that was quickly consuming her. The need to arch upward and offer herself to him was a driving force. It pounded her heart against her ribs and squeezed the air from her lungs.
Her eyes adjusted to the dimness of the room, the
only illumination provided by recessed lighting in the baseboards. His eyes glowed with preternatural green fire and his head lowered, his chest expanding on a deep inhale as he breathed her in.
“Should’ve brought us here when we arrived,” he said gruffly. “You’d be coming now.”
He took her mouth before she could reply, his lips sealing over hers and stealing her breath. His tongue swept inside her on a groan, his hand moving to her zipper to slide it down to where it ended at her pubic bone. She’d barely swallowed her first rich, dark taste of him when he pushed his hand beneath the edge of her suit and claimed her breast in one big, hot hand.
Her fangs sharpened in a rush of need, piercing his tongue. His blood flowed into her mouth, the flavor intoxicatingly exotic. He kneaded her breast, plumping it, then focusing his thumb and forefinger on the tip, rolling and tugging on her hardened nipple until her sex spasmed in the same rhythmic tempo.
Out of her mind for him, Vash sucked on his tongue with the same voracious pull with which he’d sucked her nipples earlier, drawing more of his blood over her taste buds. Her eyes rolled back in her head, her ability to reason lost to the addictive deliciousness. He growled into her mouth and sank between her thighs, grinding the rigid length of his cock into her aching sex. Whimpering, she gripped his hips and tugged him into her, rocking her hips upward to stroke her clit against his erection.
Elijah lifted his head and watched her as he rolled his hips, watched her head arch back as an orgasm
hovered just out of reach. “Tell me you want it, Vashti. Tell me you need my cock in you like you need blood to live.”
Her body quaked violently as he gave voice to her greatest apprehension.
I won’t be led around by my dick,
he’d said what seemed like ages ago in the Bryce Canyon caves. But she feared she wasn’t as strong as he was. She’d never been so desperate for sex as she was at that moment, and he was the only man she wanted to have sex with. Her attraction to him wielded too great a power over her, and she feared giving him what he demanded of her—total surrender.
Tossing her leg over his hip, she gained the leverage to flip him to his back. Moving as fast as if her life depended on it, Vash focused on the purpose of bringing him to a playroom to begin with. In a split second, she had him restrained, his wrists and forearms banded with barbed silver-plated steel cable. He roared as the tiny rounded points pierced his flesh, scarcely enough to draw blood but enough to expose the wounded flesh to the one metal that weakened Sentinels, vampires, and lycans alike.
The bed quaked with his fury, his irises burned bright enough to light up the room. “You fucking bitch!”
But she was beyond caring now. She was slick and swollen between her legs, her breasts were tender and heavy, and his flavor permeated her mouth, deterring thoughts of fleeing as she might’ve done if she’d had any sense of self-preservation left.
“Let me loose.” He clawed at the bed with the heels of his boots. “Fucking let me go…
now!
”
Vash fought to be free of her catsuit, struggling out of both it and her boots in a near-mindless frenzy. Once naked, she fell on his twisting body, wrestling his bucking hips to yank open his button fly.
“Vashti!” He arched violently. “Not like this, damn you. Don’t fucking tie me up like an animal.”
As always, Elijah was commando beneath his jeans, ready to shift forms at a moment’s notice. Nothing impeded her mouth from his cock, which she swallowed greedily, her lips and tongue tightening around his raging length.
“Shit,” he hissed, bucking his hips in an attempt to throw her off. “Get your bloodsucking mouth off me!”
She couldn’t. If the entire den poured into the room and found her fellating a lycan, she didn’t think she could stop. Her hunger for the taste of him was too great, her need to bring about his surrender even greater. Pumping the thick root with her fist, she tongued the wide head, her mouth sucking hard and quick as she drove him relentlessly toward orgasm. He fought the whole way, his powerful thighs bunched with strain, his chest rumbling with furious growls, his torso twisting back and forth to dislodge her.
When he climaxed, it was with a wolven howl that brought goose bumps to her skin. The baying sound was high and plaintive, purely animal with none of the human evident in it. Tears stung her eyes even as she drank him down, something ancient and primal within her ravenous for the heady flavor of his savage virility.
“Damn you.” He panted, his chest heaving as she shoved his jeans to his knees. “Damn you to hell, you traitorous— Fuck!”
Her fangs sank into his femoral artery and she lost what tiny bit of humanity she clung to. His blood mingled with the semen in her mouth, creating a blended essence that was the most delicious thing she’d ever tasted. She circled his powerful thigh with both arms, embracing it like a lover, her throat working with each gulping swallow.
“Fucking bitch,” he spat. “You goddamned fucking bitch. You’re stealing my right to give what belongs to me.”
She heard the anchors in the wall creak in protest as Elijah strained against his bonds, a testament to how strong he was, so strong that the silver that incapacitated most vamps wanting a true submissive experience was barely enough to contain him.
Dizzyingly intoxicated, Vash slid her fangs free and closed the punctures with soothing licks of her tongue.
“I can’t stop,” she whispered, achingly empty and needing him, despite the terrible effort she’d made not to. No lycan could tolerate being caged, and Elijah was no mere lycan. He was an Alpha. As rare as a new angel and in some ways just as fragile.
She crawled over him, putting her back to his enraged face and training her eyes on the door. A door that would see them exiting far differently than they’d come in. His fury was pulsing off him in searing, battering waves. Yet she couldn’t stop herself from gripping his still-hard cock and positioning herself over the massive crown.
“Don’t do this,” he warned in a thick, hoarse voice.
She licked the taste of him off her suddenly dry lips. “I…need you.”
“Not like this, Vashti. Don’t take me like this.”
Their intimate flesh touched. The lips of her sex hugged him, flexing gently around him. Her hand gripping him shook like a junky’s in need of a fix. “This is the only way I can have you.”
Vash sheathed him in a swift plunge of her hips. He roared as she cried out, her body shocked by a penetration it hadn’t experienced for over half a century. The cement wall behind the bed exploded with a deafening sound; dust and debris burst in a cloud around her. She was catapulted forward violently, her body thrust toward the door and down, her torso slammed into the mattress with breathtaking force.
She was mounted before she knew what hit her, Elijah’s rock-hard body nailing her to the bed with a powerful thrust of his rigid cock into her aching sex. The coils of cable that had failed to contain him thudded to the floor, the sound reverberating through her.
Elijah wrapped his forearm with the spilled length of her hair. Fisting the tresses at the root, he pulled her head back and growled in her ear, “You can’t tame me.”
He shifted his hips, pulling free of her clinging depths only to drive into her again. “You can’t chain me.”
Yanking her up by the hips and hair, he brought her to her hands and knees. “And you goddamn can’t rape me.”
His next lunge hit the end of her, driving his
supremacy home with a heavy surge of his hips. She cried out, completely at the mercy of his primal need for her and her own for him. He pounded into her, riding her hard and deep, stroking over and over and over a tender spot inside her that made her shake and moan. She had no leverage, no way to move or participate. Or so she told herself.
It was a lie, of course. He was stronger than she was, but she could fight him off. She could hurt him, make him work for it. They both knew she could. Yet she let him have his way, for reasons she couldn’t grasp.
Something broke free inside her.
Set adrift, she clung to Elijah as the only anchor against the storm that whipped through her. Tears fell. Her chest ached. Her body burned with the feverish pleasure buffeting her from all sides, shattering the walls that had protected her for so long.
He gave her no quarter. Elijah fucked her like the animal he was, rutting into her with unmitigated ferocity. She climaxed in a helpless rush, screaming his name because he didn’t relent, didn’t falter. He kept driving the ecstasy into her, making her take it. All that he was. Everything. Beyond what she could handle, what she’d tried to limit herself to.
He followed her down when she melted into the mattress, her head and shoulders hanging off the edge. “You’ll take me as I am,” he snarled. “You’ll want me as I am. Or you won’t have me at all.”
His knee shoved her legs wider; his big cock sank a fraction deeper. His grip on her hair pulled her head down toward the floor, forcing her into the most
submissive of poses. She felt his teeth sink into the nape of her neck, his canines inhumanly long, his bite firm enough to break the skin but not tear it.
Subdued, mounted, and dominated in every way, Vashti came again and again, sobbing her pleasure, shame, and guilt. Begging him to forgive her. To finish her. To fill her.
Which he did, hours later, pumping his lust and fury into the greedy depths of her body, emptying himself with a serrated groan that sounded like the sweetest agony.
F
rom his vantage point high on a rocky hill, Adrian Mitchell surveyed the blond fledgling vampire attempting to sneak up on three of the most fearsome angels ever created, one of whom was his lieutenant. They stood with their winged backs to her, their focus on the papers spread out on the teakwood patio table in front of them.