Blood of Angels (11 page)

“So you tie me up like an animal?” she snarled, baring her fangs. “In case I bite your puny white throat?”

“Not like an animal,” he said and lowered himself onto her body once more. His naked cock slid between her inner thighs, velvety and burning hot against her cool skin. He arched his back so that his mouth reached her breasts. He kissed one nipple softly. She wanted to yell at him because it was over too fast. “It’s just that I finally figured out
why
you want me.”

He returned to her breast in a longer, stronger kiss, sucking the nipple into his mouth and rolling it between his lips. It felt so good she had to swallow back the moan rising in her throat. And his own throat was tantalizingly out of her reach.

“Why?” she whispered in anguish, as much to herself as to him. “
Why
do I want you?”

He spoke between kisses and flicks of his tongue, and long, streaming sucks that had her bucking beneath him. “Because although you’re physically stronger than me, than any human man and even most vampires, for almost five minutes I defeated you. Because, with thought and guile, I
can
be stronger than you. And that’s what you crave. Maximilian, Zoltán, Saloman, the strongest vampires of their times, and you chose all of them.”

He turned his attention to her other breast. “Only, Maximilian left you for exile. Zoltán probably wasn’t stronger for very long, and in any case, he was so brute-like that it can’t have been a very rewarding relationship. And Saloman, of course, the strongest who ever was, but since Elizabeth awakened him, I suspect he’s never done more than taste other women.”

“Most women like power,” she managed. She hated to appear shallow, and yet it was better than the truth right now.

He smiled around her nipple and lifted his head a little to look into her eyes. “Not the way you do. You’re bored being stronger than everyone else. You want to be cherished and dominated. You want to surrender. That’s why you want me.”

She stared at him. He had the body of a Greek god and eyes that could melt ice. Through the agony of being read so clearly, it became vital to convince him he was wrong. And yet his self-deprecation bothered her even more. “Do you never look in a mirror, István?”

He shrugged. “I grow on people. I don’t do quick hits.” He moved, searching for position, his cock probing for her entrance, where he paused, as if relishing the obvious wetness of her arousal. “Except with you, the most desirable being of all. I thought you were pretending, but you weren’t, not completely. You really did want me. You still do.”

He eased into her, then reared up so that he knelt between her legs. She threw her cheek into the pillow, trying to hide the extraordinary pleasure of his heat within her. God, she’d forgotten the sheer, glorious warmth of humans.

He slid his hands under her bottom, raising her hips so that he reached farther and farther inside her. The bindings allowed enough movement for that. Her desperate, grasping fingers found the spars of the headboard and gripped, and then she couldn’t contain it anymore. As he filled her, she moaned, long and clear, because he felt so wonderful and it had been so long.

For the sake of pride, she pulled again at the bindings, but each tug only pushed her farther onto him, and the pleasure was so intense that she clenched and squeezed him with her powerful internal muscles. He groaned in clear, aching bliss.

“So now,” he said raggedly, “I’m going to fuck you, because we both want it.”

He drew back and pushed into her again, long and slowly. He moved, twisted, and ground within her until she whimpered, because he’d found
that
place, so deep inside her that she couldn’t get to it on her own. He smiled and stroked her there some more, slowly at first, then faster and faster, his breath coming in short, almost groaning gasps. The storm of sensation whirled and gathered, burning with fire and ice. She couldn’t contain the growing, blatant sounds of her excitement. She no longer tried. She wanted only
this
, only him.

She’d kill him later. Much later.

For now, she moved with him, straining at her bonds, thrusting, squeezing, and caressing the only part of him she could hold, the part hammering such exquisite delight into her body.

He grasped her hips, pounding her, pleasuring her captive body, and she couldn’t have stopped him if she’d tried.

The knowledge sent her over the edge of bliss, violent, wonderful orgasm shrieking through her like a tornado, on and on, because, like a vampire, he kept thrusting into her and she kept coming. She couldn’t ever remember it being this good, even at the beginning with Maximilian, even with Saloman on their one sexual encounter.

But István was human, and he exploded inside her, his hot seed searing right into her womb. She cried out again, absorbing the seed like blood in her trembling, convulsing body. While the power of it raged through her, his body, his limbs shuddered. He threw his head back and shouted, eyes closed in rapture, and she smiled through her own ecstasy because she’d given him his.

A human woman, she knew, would have been more than satisfied after such a mind-blowing sexual experience. As a vampire, satisfaction mingled with even greater hunger—just because it was so good, she craved more.

But human men slept after sex. Immediately after, in her limited experience. Still, she thought with lazy arousal, she wouldn’t mind István falling asleep on her,
in
her. She’d take a little more pleasure from him while he slept. Even tied like this she could make that happen.

Without warning, he pulled out of her, and she cried out in loss. But he wasn’t leaving her. He slid down her body, kissing her stomach and thighs with slow, sensual attention until with growing excitement, she guessed his intention.

Gathering her buttocks in his hands, he latched his lips to her lower ones and played her with his tongue, teasing, caressing, nibbling with such exquisite talent that the embers of the first fire reignited and flared too fast. Before she could enjoy his skill to the full, she’d orgasmed for his mouth too. And, God, that was sweet, stabbing and powerful, filling her once more with an even greater need.

“Come back,” she muttered. “Come here.” She jerked under him, trying to bring him up to her. She wanted him inside her again; she wanted his blood while he took her.

But he held her hips with his hands, soothing between her legs with gentle breaths, and then he kissed her there again, much more leisurely this time since he’d learned more of her body. He took the time to explore and experiment, to tease and tempt and draw back and give just a little more until, almost screaming with need, she came for the third time. Only then, suddenly and fiercely, did he drag himself up her captive, convulsing body and push into her again, setting off a ferocious cascade of pleasure that spilled over and over while he rode her hard, as if, finally,
he
’d lost control.

The knowledge intoxicated her, and that was the best of all, especially when he fell upon her mouth in his own climax, kissing her wildly, noisily, his throat vibrating with his groans. She could taste herself mingled with his richness. His weight pinned her, and his ropes bound her, and there was only pleasure and surrender and István.

Their bodies and their mouths stilled very gradually. Consciousness swam back into her pleasure-drunk brain.

She detached her lips from his enough to speak. “Aren’t you afraid to be so close to my teeth?”

His lips smiled on hers. “You can’t bite my neck while you’re kissing my mouth.”

“I can still draw blood,” she said, nipping his lip with her fang and lapping it up.

He growled deep in his throat and nipped her back. She didn’t care. She’d tasted his blood, a tiny, minuscule droplet, and bloodlust soared through her. It was so linked to sexual lust that she began to undulate and wriggle beneath him.

“What’s the matter?” she taunted. “Bored with fucking me already?”

He laughed under his breath, stroking the hair away from her forehead and gazing at her with a sated lethargy that only aroused her more. “Oh no. My cock is willing. But my poor old legs need the rest.”

“Then untie me. I can rest your legs.”

“Not yet. I have a plan for that option too.”

“God, you’re annoying!”

He kissed her. “But I am in control. I can kiss you or fuck you…or not.”

She bounced her hips under him, hard, forcing him an inch or two into the air. That felt good inside her, especially when he landed—except he slid out of her immediately. She growled with frustration.

He didn’t seem to mind. Instead, lying close in at her side—resting his legs, apparently—he showed her just how giving his hands were as he played his fingers between her thighs. The rough pad of his thumb stroked her clitoris. He slid one finger inside her, then two, stretching her, combining the two thrills to bring her once more to slow, profound climax.

“Do you know how you beautiful you are when you come?” he whispered.

He was more enchanting with every moment. “Keep talking, hunter,” she purred.

“I’d rather keep fucking.” And to her amazed delight, he rolled back onto her body, settled between her bound legs, and took his weight on his elbows. Without breaking eye contact, he pushed inside her pulsing body and groaned as he began at once to move, grinding and thrusting in a slow, heavy rhythm that built and quickened. Through it all, he held her gaze, and with triumph, she drank in every pleasure he so clearly extracted from her body.

It all added to her own gloriously helpless bliss. She couldn’t help gnashing her teeth, straining up to get at his throat, which he held always just out of her reach. His eyes blazed in response, as if her hunger excited rather than repelled him. He thrust harder, faster. His heart galloped. The heady smell of his elusive, rushing blood, the frustration of being thwarted and his complete control of her body all joined with the furious, physical joy of sex.

She gave in, let him see it all, surrendered utterly to his body’s dominance and drowned in the dark, burning lust in his eyes.

I’ll have to kill him for this.
The desperate thought slashed through her brain just before orgasm tore her apart, ripping her to ecstatic shreds around him, under him. He slammed into her, his groan rose to a shout, and his whole body vibrated in climax once more. She took it all, soaked up his seed and his pleasure and shouted out with him because it was so bloody wonderful.

He fell on her mouth, seizing it in his before she could reach for his throat. She didn’t care. For the intensity of this orgasm, she’d forego the blood drink. This time.

When the shudders passed, he pulled out of her and rolled off her. Reaching up to her tied wrists, he pressed something on his gadget, and the bindings whipped away as fast and as softly as they’d arrived. Her arms fell limply around his neck, her hands on the hot, smooth skin of his back.

“I knew you’d be good,” she whispered. She just hadn’t known he’d read her secret, perverse need to surrender to a greater strength, or that he’d have found such a way to make it work for her. For them.

She brought one hand around to touch his lips with her fingertips and smiled. “But what a very,
very
surprising hunter you are. I think you liked having me at your mercy.”

“I adored it,” he said.

Something in the simplicity of his words sent the betraying flush of blood into her neck and cheeks. Adore me, she thought suddenly.
Adore
me
…

His hand lay on her waist. He slid it up to her breast, where he idly flicked his thumb across the nipple, but he didn’t speak, just roved his gaze over her face and body as if he’d never get enough of her. Maybe that was better than words.

Maybe we’ll try it the other way around some time.
The words stuck in her throat. For as the silence stretched, he said nothing more.

There wouldn’t be another time.

She’d known that from the beginning. She’d wanted him out of her system, her inconvenient obsession gone, replaced with knowledge of him that would give her power over him, or at least remove
his
power over her. But in her wildest dreams, she hadn’t expected their inevitable encounter to be like this. She no longer saw her way clearly. Just that he’d taken her the only way he safely could, and for him, as for her, it was done.

Chapter Ten

István had no words. Nothing in his life, none of his previous sexual encounters or relationships had prepared him for the enormity of this one. He’d planned it with a cool head and a body on fire for her. Or so he’d imagined. But his cool head had known all along that he could be wrong about her, that her one true desire could be for his hunter blood. That made tonight totally reckless.

But bloody worth it. Because now he knew he’d been right. And yet her responses, the experience of loving her, of plundering that beautiful body and soaking up its amazing passion, left him raw. He’d never had such pleasure in a woman. Perhaps it was her cool blood, mixing ice with the fire of sexual ecstasy. Whatever, it made him want to pour out his heart, except he didn’t know what it was saying. It made him want to know her from the beginning.

“I knew you’d be good,” she’d said. The anxious boy in him wanted to ask,
How good? As good as Saloman?

But she wanted strength, not doubt. He’d stick with Plan A.

Already, behind the lazy pleasure inspired by his light caressing of her breast, he could see distance reforming in her eyes. In an instinctive effort to dispel it, he kissed her lips. “Thank you,” he murmured against them, “for inviting me in.”

She smiled under his mouth, as he meant her to. “Thank you for coming.”

Laughter caught in his throat. “Do you have an inexhaustible supply of innuendo?”

“More or less. You can collect a lot in two centuries. What’s your excuse?”

“A filthy mind and a misspent youth.”

“A clever man like you?” she mocked, although a spark of curiosity lit her dark, sated eyes. “What did you do? Forget the teacher’s apple one day?”

“Generally, I forgot the teacher,” he confessed. “Forgot to go to school. Instead, I stole cars and burgled houses, got into fights and hung around with bad, sexy girls.”

“Like me?”

“God, no, I never even
saw
anyone as sexy as you.”

“Good hunter.” The words seemed almost automatic. She was, he saw with mixed emotions, curious. “So what changed you? What made you a hunter?”

He met her gaze directly. “I burgled the wrong house one day and discovered a group of vampires making a meal of the owner’s son. It changed my priorities.”

Her eyes remained steady. “What did you do?” she asked unexpectedly.

He shrugged. “The vampires were drunk and full. They’d eaten his family too and consumed the contents of their liquor cabinet. I untied K—the son, and dragged him away. When one chased us, I stabbed him with a table leg.”

He paused, remembering again the horror of knowing he was probably killing a man, even a vile, evil man; the sickening crunch of the jagged table leg into flesh with all his weight behind it, because even then, he’d understood he’d only have one chance. Then there’d been that stunned, unreal moment when the body had exploded around his weapon, not into bubbling gore but mere dust. Nothing.

István rubbed his forehead as if erasing the memory. He’d created a lot of undead dust since then.

“Killing him was almost scarier than running from him,” he admitted.

And even scarier right now was that two years ago, even eighteen months ago, he wouldn’t have thought twice about killing the vampiress currently naked in his arms. The only reason she’d survived their first encounter was the number of vampires in the club who could have turned on them in retaliation. The knowledge left a cold, hollow place inside him, far deeper than the upsurge of self-doubt both he and Mihaela had been facing since Saloman began to change the way the species regarded each other. So his story tailed off rather weakly with, “Hunters found us both shortly after that.”

Angyalka only nodded slowly, as if understanding. Perhaps she did. Vampires were adjusting too. “How old were you?” she asked.

“Sixteen.”

Her fingers tangled in the back of his hair, tugging as if the movement was involuntary, before loosening their grip. “No wonder you hate us. A vicious circle is hard to break.”

“I don’t hate you,” István said honestly. For him, there had never been hate, only pity for the victims of the evil he’d discovered, and a growing scientific curiosity about the perpetrators. “I’ve seen humans torturing other humans too. But this was something new I’d discovered, an evil I could do something about and learn about. The hunters sent me back to school, and this time I did learn. Except…”

“Except what?”

He shrugged. “I’m still learning. Suddenly there’s Saloman who kills without compunction, has the power to walk through foot-thick stone walls, and probably blast you into the middle of next week with one glance from those steely eyes…and yet who troubles about the good of the world. And you.”

“What about me?”

He stroked her hair and her cheeks, because he could, because she let him, but he had no words to describe what he meant, what he felt.

The silence stretched until her mouth twisted into a wry smile. “I’m a damned good fuck?”

“Oh yes,” he said fervently. Incredibly, arousal began to gallop. He wanted her again. But that wasn’t part of his plan. He had to leave her wanting more, or he was finished. “You’re damned good everything…”

She scanned his eyes, as if searching for his meaning. He wasn’t sure of it himself, so he kissed her some more, because he couldn’t leave her alone and she seemed to like kissing him back. Then, forcing himself, he shifted down the bed and released her feet.

She flexed them, and he took one in his hand, running his finger over the slender instep and long, flexible toes. Even her feet were beautiful—and could, if she chose, kick him through the wall.

“Is it really in the word?” he asked.

“My power?” she mocked. “If I have any, it’s in this building, István, not in me.”

He considered it. The walls had contained the explosion. The angel over the door was very powerfully enchanted. For the first time, he wondered if it would actually be possible to manufacture that kind of power storage.

When his eyes came back into focus, Angyalka was gazing at him. She looked—stricken.

Or at least, just for an instant, he thought she did, but the expression vanished so fast, he could have imagined it. She drew her foot free, slid out of bed, and padded naked across the floor away from him.

She wasn’t just a different gender, she was a different species. It was doubly easy, it seemed, to offend her.

His blood rushed south as he watched her hips and bottom sway. She went to the wardrobe and reached inside, stretching the whole of her curvaceous body. He had a brief, tantalizing side view of her lifted breasts, enough for the lust to hit him full-on, and then she pulled a black dress from the recesses and climbed into it.

“Is that my hour up?” he asked ruefully.

“You had two. Be grateful.”

“I am. Fuck, I am.”

She glanced back at him, drawing a fresh black stocking over her long, white leg. The contrast was so erotically beautiful that he groaned.

“I have a club to run,” she said, her voice impatient, and yet he could have sworn he glimpsed uncertainty in her profound, dark eyes. He wanted nothing more than to explore this contradiction—all her fascinating contradictions. But overstaying his welcome—this time—would hardly help his cause.

He rose from the bed and collected his scattered clothes. It wasn’t easy stuffing his new erection into his underpants, dragging his jeans over the top. Extracting all his bungee reels from the wall and floor, he dropped them into his jacket pocket before removing his wallet and counting out a bundle of forints on the pillow.

He didn’t see her move, but abruptly she was beside him, and her face blazed with such fury that just for an instant he thought he was dead. “What do you imagine you’re paying me for?” she hissed.

He stared at her, letting his eyes widen with very genuine surprise. “Maximilian’s little carving of you. You said fifteen thousand forints.”

She blinked. The dangerous glow in her eyes died back. Her lip actually twitched. “Now? You want to buy it
now
?”

“I meant to pick it up this afternoon, but we got sidetracked.”

“You’re a lunatic, hunter.” She swung away from him, stepped into her abandoned boots by the door, and kept walking.

István slid his wallet away and followed her past the trail of her stockings and dress to the elevator. God, yes, tearing off her clothes, sliding into her cool, wet depths… The coldness had been weird, hugging him, enveloping him, and yet it had given him a strange, exquisite pleasure he’d never encountered before; and with the wild friction, she’d warmed deliciously.

And when he’d come…it had been amazing, as if the seed had been drawn from him, almost sucked, like she’d milked him…or drunk from him.

She didn’t speak in the elevator. Her face was a beautiful, devilish mask, her eyes thoughtful but so distant as to be repelling. He hadn’t expected that to hurt quite so much. Because although he’d worked out she needed to scratch this sexual itch as much as he did, he had the uncomfortable feeling his obsession had only just begun. He didn’t want hers to be over so soon. He was rather gambling on it not being.

The doors opened into the club.

“Wait there,” she commanded. “I’ll send one of the waitresses to fetch it for you. She’ll let you out of the gallery and lock up.”

Dismissed.
He leaned his shoulder in the doorway. “Thank you,” he said. And meant for everything.

Perhaps she heard it in his voice, for she glanced back over her shoulder, and something flickered in her unreadable eyes. Her lips curved into the teasing, mocking smile that had first set his blood on fire. “You’re welcome. You’re a damned good fuck yourself.” And then she vanished into the depths of the club.

****

“Do you suppose she killed him?” Gabby asked anxiously when Angyalka—the beautiful vampiress who, according to their new undead friend, Igor, apparently owned the joint—returned to the club alone. Jacob hadn’t seen them leave, but he had observed them all over each other shortly before he noticed neither of them was there anymore.

Basilio snorted. “She hasn’t survived here two hundred years by killing hunters.”

“Fucking them’s a novel approach,” Jacob observed. “Not sure I’d care for it myself.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Gabby murmured. “That one’s kind of sweet.”

“Sweet,” Basilio repeated with distaste.

“Well, he is. He knew right away I was a vampire, but he treated me with perfect respect, perfect manners. Like a gentleman.”

Basilio curled his lip. To him, there were no human gentlemen anymore. He was descended from a noble Spanish conqueror of Mexico and considered everyone else, alive or dead, to be immeasurably inferior. He made no further comment on the issue, but Jacob knew he was considering how the hunter’s bizarre relationship with Angyalka could help them.

Go and look for the hunter,
Basilio commanded Jacob.
Find out where he lives, but on no account engage him, let alone kill him.

Despite his innate dislike of being ordered around, Jacob rose with alacrity. The rules of this place were too damned constricting. He wanted human blood and human money, and he wasn’t going to be able to steal either here. Outside, while keeping half an eye on the hunter, the possibilities were endless.

****

Since Gabby was eternally hungry, Basilio let her feed from the young man she’d picked up in the Angel, without transporting him farther afield.

Don’t kill him,
he ordered, leaning against the high wall that bordered the Angel’s ground at the back of the building. Beside him, Gabby wrapped herself around her startled prey and bit. The young man was helpless to do more than yelp.

Basilio ignored them both. Being so much older, he was in no great hurry to feed. When he did, he’d no intention of doing it so close to the Angel. That would be to give away his presence before he was ready. But he was already convinced the foundations of his unformed plan were here. Which was why he masked Gabby’s feeding, and watched the premises.

He almost missed it, because someone else was masking too, rather more powerfully than he was prepared for.

A vampire holding a young woman in his arms leapt up the back of the building and sat on the open windowsill.

Basilio blinked. The vampire was one of the Angel bouncers. His strength was not negligible, but his approach had been disguised not just by his own masking but by another vampire’s, the one who waited inside now. The hostess, Angyalka. Together, they’d kept the approach from him. Until now.

And now he had the advantage because he could see them. They still couldn’t see him, or Gabby, still slurping away from her weakening human. Without taking his eyes off the vampire at the window, Basilio plucked Gabby off her dinner. She gave a mewl of distress as her prey slithered down the wall.

More later,
Basilio said coldly. She could feed again when he did, well away from here. He felt the need of a savage kill, the taking of a helpless human life, but didn’t want the ensuing trouble leading back either to him or to the Angel. Not yet.

At the window, the vampire pushed the young woman inside the building and gazed up at the night sky. A few moments later, he leaned inside and came back with the same woman in his hold. He jumped to the ground and ran off with her.

Bizarre. The bouncer was feeding his mistress humans. Why? Surely she was able to hunt for herself? She was two hundred years old, a friend of Maximilian and Saloman, and she had considerable strength of her own. Did she disdain to hunt for herself? Like some human princess keeping her hands soft and clean?

Or was there some deeper reason that kept her inside the Angel building?

This was something worth watching, worth knowing. He reached behind him, picked up Gabby’s prey, and, staring into his dazed, pained eyes, he hastily blanked the young man’s memory of Gabby and him.

Basilio wasn’t yet ready to show his hand. Especially when he wasn’t quite sure yet what he held.