Lissianna let go of her hold on his erection and wrapped her arms around his shoulders even as her legs wrapped around his waist, then he was easing her down onto him and she moaned as he filled her.
Greg hesitated, then took a step forward and set most of her weight on the dresser beside the bed.
Lissianna moaned as he adjusted her position to allow him to drive into her as deeply as possible. He pulled her bottom forward to the edge of the dresser surface and leaned his upper body into her so that she was half-reclining and clinging to his shoulders, her face pressed against one shoulder blade as he drove into her again and again.
When he caught her under the backs of her legs and lifted them slightly, Lissianna moaned at this new angle and turned her face into his neck, her teeth scraping along his skin. She felt Greg shiver at the touch, then he breathed, “Go ahead. Do it.”
“No,” Lissianna moaned, trying to resist, but she was full of wanting and need, and her hunger for blood was getting confused with her desire for him and both were urging her to sink her teeth into his neck.
“Lissi, God, just please do it,” Greg groaned by her ear,
and, without stopping to think, Lissianna turned her head and sank her teeth into his throat.
Greg threw his head back and cried out, his body bucking against her as their minds merged and their pleasure mingled and echoed back and forth between them. It grew stronger with each pass, until Lissianna was dizzy with it. She held on tight, her arms and legs wrapped around him as they rode the pleasure. The orgasm seemed to go on forever, throbbing through them both, a low repetitive hum that pulsed through both their bodies from the tips of their toes to the top of their heads.
Lissianna felt his fingers clutch at her desperately, even as her own nails scored his back. She was just beginning to think that this almost unbearable pleasure might also be unending. Then Greg staggered weakly against her, and she realized she still had her teeth in his neck, and was still drinking from him.
Lissianna released him at once, and heard Greg’s mumbled protest. She sensed his keen disappointment when the combining of their thoughts began to fade, then it ended altogether…and with it, the prolonged orgasm finally faded away as well.
They sagged against each other, breathing heavily, then Greg whispered, “I’ve never felt as close to anyone as I did just now when our thoughts merged. It was like we both stood before each other, hearts and souls naked. I felt like I knew all there is to know about you. It’s the same for you, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Lissianna admitted against his neck, then asked, “Are you all right? You’re swaying.”
Nodding, he stepped back, his now flaccid member sliding from her body.
Seeing his pallor, Lissianna immediately slid off the
dresser, tugged the blankets aside on the bed, then urged him to lie down. When she started to straighten, he pulled her down beside him, apparently unwilling to give up their closeness just yet. Lissianna pulled the blankets up to cover them both, then allowed him to pull her into his chest and wrap his arms around her. She cuddled into his embrace, thinking that she could be very happy just to be held by him like this forever.
They lay like that for several minutes before Greg peered down at her, and said, “Lissianna, what’s a true life mate?”
She stiffened against him, startled by the question. “Where did you hear about that?”
“Thomas said I should ask you, but I forgot at the time.”
Lissianna was silent for a minute, then cleared her throat. “My mother has always said that each person has his or her own true life mate. It is supposed to be that mate meant for you.”
“Your mother sounds like a romantic to me,” he said with gentle amusement.
“Perhaps,” Lissianna agreed.
Another silence closed in, then he asked, “Tell me about your uncle.”
She blinked in surprise at the request, then leaned up to peer at his face, and ask, “Why?”
“Because you and every one of your cousins seem scared of him, and I want to know why.”
Regretting the return to reality, Lissianna sighed and laid her head back down. She thought for a minute, then said, “He’s old and cold, as Thomas puts it.”
“Old and cold,” Greg echoed dryly.
She nodded. “It’s not that he’s cruel or anything, it’s just—” She struggled briefly, then said. “He’s been alive a long time, Greg. Several millennia. He was a warrior in
Rome, a warrior in medieval England…” She shrugged. “He’s a warrior. He’s seen countless people born and die, and probably killed a good many in battle, too, over time. Now, he’s on the council and does what has to be done to keep his people safe.”
Greg was silent for a minute, then said, “I don’t want to be a Renfield.”
Lissianna ran her hand soothingly over his chest and promised, “I won’t let that happen.”
“I know you’ll try to make sure it doesn’t happen,” he said. “But if your uncle did try to wipe my memory at your mother’s house this morning and couldn’t do it as you all suspect, he’ll want to do that ‘council of three’ thing to me, won’t he?”
Lissianna was silent, but she didn’t have to answer. She’d already explained enough to him that he would know it was the case. And she didn’t want it to happen either. The idea of their breaking Greg’s mind was too painful even to contemplate. His mind was one of the things she liked best about him. Although, she acknowledged, his body wasn’t bad either.
“What are my chances of getting away without them turning my brain to mush?”
“Don’t think about it, Greg,” she said. “I won’t let it happen.”
“How can you stop it? This council rules your people, right? They are like the police for your people.”
“Yes,” she acknowledged.
“And I’m guessing, since you avoided answering, that my chances are pretty slim of avoiding the council.” He shifted under her slightly, almost impatiently. “I mean if they can control anyone, they can probably walk into any office or bank and find out what information they need to track me down.”
“Yes.” She sighed.
They were both silent for a moment, then he asked, “What will they do to you for sneaking me out?”
Lissianna shrugged. “There is nothing they can do. Mom can yell at me, but the council can’t punish me since I didn’t speak to my uncle, so didn’t know they—”
“That’s a technicality, and while it might work in a human court of law, I suspect it wouldn’t work with the council. Especially if your uncle can read your mind and find out that you basically
did
know what they would want to do.”
Unable to argue the point, Lissianna remained silent.
“So, if we try to run, they’ll probably find us and make me a Renfield, then do God knows what to you.”
“Maybe,” she acknowledged, and laid her head on his chest again. They were both silent, then Lissianna said, “There may be a way to protect you though.”
“What? A sex change and a move to Timbuktu?” he asked with wry amusement, and moved his hand to her hair to run his fingers lightly through the long, soft tresses.
“I’m afraid that wouldn’t do it,” she said with a twist to her lips. “They’d find you.”
“Then how—?”
“I could turn you,” Lissianna said quickly.
Greg’s hand stilled in her hair. She could hear his heartbeat, the slow inhalation and exhalation of his breath, the tick of the digital clock next to the bed. Finally, his hand began to move again. “Turn me? Make me one of you?”
“If you were one of us, they would never fear your speaking out about us or revealing our presence. Our safety would be yours. They wouldn’t need to try a council of three.”
“You’d make me your life mate to keep me safe?”
The words were soft, querying. Lissianna couldn’t tell if he was pleased at the idea or not, but she didn’t want to put him in the position where he had to choose between living with his mind intact or being her life mate to survive. Licking her lips, she said, “Turning you doesn’t automatically make you my life mate.”
Greg stilled again, then asked, “It doesn’t?”
“No. Of course not. While it’s true that most of us do turn our life mates, it isn’t always the case. Others have turned mortals for other reasons.”
“But then if you did find someone to be your life mate later, you couldn’t turn him,” he pointed out.
Lissianna shrugged. Then stood and slid from the bed.
“Lissi?” Greg said uncertainly, as she walked naked to the door.
Turning back, she found him sitting up in the bed, concern on his face. She smiled gently. “I’m leaving you alone to think about it.”
“I—”
Lissianna held up a hand to silence him. “Greg, I need you to forget about me in this equation. This isn’t about me, it’s about you and your choices. What I do or don’t do doesn’t matter. This decision is something you have to be happy with for yourself.”
She took a deep breath, then said, “This isn’t like getting your ear pierced or joining a club. This is for forever, or as close to forever as humans can get. You need to consider it seriously. Can you give up the freedom of being able to spend endless hours in sunlight and become mostly a creature of the night? Can you consume blood? If there was an emergency, could you feed on another to survive? And could you give up your family?”
He gave a start. “My family?”
“Yes,” she said sadly. “You can’t tell them what you’ve become. The council wouldn’t allow that.”
“No, of course not, but—”
“And when you don’t age as they are doing, how could you explain it?” Lissianna answered the question herself, “You couldn’t. And so, you’d have five, maybe ten years if you were lucky, and then you’d have to disappear from their lives. You’d have to fake your death and never see them again.”
Seeing the shock on his face, Lissianna nodded sadly. “You hadn’t thought of that, had you? You only thought of the forever young and forever this and forever that…” She sighed and shook her head. “There is a downside to everything, and you need to be sure that you can accept the downside here, because this is not reversible. Once you are turned, it quite possibly
is
forever.”
Greg stared, his heart sinking at the complications he hadn’t considered.
“I’ll sleep on the couch,” Lissianna said, turning away. “We’ll talk again later, after we’ve both slept on it.”
Greg watched her pull the door closed, then dropped back on the bed with a sigh. Give up his family. It had never occurred to him that he’d have to give up anything to be like them. He’d thought—Well, as she’d said, he’d been thinking only of the plus side; living hundreds, perhaps even thousands of years, never aging, being stronger, faster, maybe even smarter…witnessing history firsthand over the centuries…And—he’d thought at first—doing it all with Lissianna as his life mate, but she seemed to be saying it wasn’t a given.
Was she saying that because she didn’t want him for a life mate, or because she didn’t want him to feel trapped into being her life mate? He wasn’t sure.
Greg did know that he had never met anyone like her; someone he could admire and like as much as he did Lissianna. She was protective of those she loved, kind, intelligent, beautiful, but with a hint of the child still alive inside the woman. She was over two hundred years old and often seemed as mature as those years would suggest, but when Lissianna relaxed, when she forgot to be the good daughter, or the responsible older cousin for the twins, there was a childlike mischievousness about her, a glint she got in her eye. However, it was when she bit him that Greg was sure she was the perfect woman…at least in his eyes. The experience was more than just physical. When they were joined in that way, his mind flooded with her thoughts and it was almost like having a window into her soul. Lissianna had a beautiful soul, soft but strong, generous and nonjudgmental. When they were merged that way, he felt strong and loved. He felt whole.
Greg felt sure he could trade twenty or thirty years with his family who had loved and supported him all his life, for forever with Lissianna. But that didn’t seem to be what she was offering. She’d said that her turning him wouldn’t automatically make him her life mate. If he let her turn him, could he persuade her afterward to have him? Was her offer to save him brought on by nothing more than guilt? Greg didn’t think so, he’d seen into her soul and nothing like that had been reflected there.
Sighing, Greg ran his hands through his hair with agitation. He had a lot to think about.
It was the cold that woke her up. Lissianna murmured a sleepy complaint at the chill in the air, tugged the afghan tighter up around her neck and rolled herself into a fetal position in an effort to get warm, but still the cold per
sisted. Sighing at the realization that she would have to get up and turn up the heat, or at least find another blanket before she would be able to drift back to sleep, Lissianna opened her eyes and rolled onto her back, then froze in shock as she spotted the dark shape looming over her.
For one moment, she froze, her body shooting adrenaline out for her to deal with the matter, but then she realized that it must be Greg come to talk to her, and she relaxed. Lissianna waited for him to speak, only realizing she’d made a mistake when the arm she hadn’t noticed was raised, suddenly plunged downward, and she felt the stake pierce her chest.
It was midnight and Greg was still
awake, agonizing over the choice he had to make. He was lying flat on his back in bed, ankles crossed and hands resting under his head when the sound of breaking glass interrupted his torturous consideration of his future. Eyes popping open, he turned his head toward the bedroom door and listened for a minute, but no other noise followed.
Deciding Lissianna must have dropped something, Greg almost ignored the sound and went back to debating his future, but then he thought better of it. He should at least go see if she had cut herself or needed any help, Greg decided, and sat up on the bed. Pushing the blankets aside, he swung his feet to the floor and stood to cross the room.
The silent darkness that met him as he stepped out of the bedroom made him pause, but it was the faint chill breeze running up the hall to whisper against his naked flesh that set the hair at the back of his neck on end. Something was wrong.