He lifted his hands, pressing his fingers to his forehead. He hadn’t really slept much, and the exertions of the last few days were beginning to catch up with him.
Gentle hands brushed his away. Straddling his lap, she pressed the pads of her fingers to his skin, making slow circles against his temples. Her hands moved lower, the tips of her fingers caressing his cheeks, then his jawline and down his neck. Her hands settled on his shoulders and began to work the tense muscles at the base of his neck. There was nothing subtle in her touch. It was strong, firm, and more than a little painful when her fingers dug into his skin. But it was a good kind of pain, a pain he welcomed and savored.
As she massaged him, he received a faintly shocking charge of sensual awareness. A wave of heat suffused him, and every nerve ending in his body burst into painful life. His body coiled in anticipation. He subconsciously knew what physical pleasures would be waiting for him if only he dared to succumb to the lure of this lovely woman. It shocked him a little that he should feel this heady, almost wanton longing inside his soul. His entire soul burned with heat and the restless surging male urgency that she seemed to be deliberately trying to incite. He was fighting to hold on to his self-control, and losing.
“You keep trying to fight your need,” she whispered, obviously feeling the tension and resistance shimmering through him. “You should let go and embrace it.”
Swallowing hard, Maddox looked into the depths of her dark gaze. Little sparks of fire seemed to dance in her eyes, wicked and enticing. “I wish I could.”
Nayia gave him a long, sly look, enjoying her power over him. She smiled again. Her straight white teeth appeared to be growing longer—deliciously sharper.
Maddox smiled at the familiar sight. Nayia wasn’t human—she hadn’t been for centuries. Like Serafina, her heritage was a mixed one, that of Spaniard and Native American. As near as he could figure, she was about four centuries old. Like most of the older Consanguines, spreading out in the world to stake out their own claim on the human race, she was allowed to move independent of the core collective. Humans, particularly men, also enjoyed her, for she provided a service that many flocked to experience.
Nayia didn’t sell her body. She sold her bite.
She reached for his shirt, expertly plucking open the buttons and spreading the material away from his chest. Her breath caught in her throat when she saw the imprint of bites on his neck and scratches across his chest. “I see another has been here before me.” She traced one of the scratches with a single finger. “I sense the clumsiness of a youngling.”
Nerves drawn taut, Maddox shook his head. “It was a mistake to try and satisfy my need with another.” Having sex with Jesse, taking her, had been good—better than good. While inexperienced, she was responsive to his touch and eager to please. And even though they’d shared an explosive climax, she just wasn’t able to deliver the final jolt he needed to go over the edge. She’d bitten, but she didn’t penetrate.
He needed penetration, damn it. He hungered for it the way a starving man craved a full and satisfying meal. He’d thought he could give up the desire by giving up sex. But it hadn’t worked. With every day that passed, his longing grew stronger, almost unbearable in its intensity. It shamed him to think he’d taken advantage of Jesse’s trust, attempting to use her to satisfy the twists in his sexual desires.
Just this once
, he told himself.
To take the edge off.
Sex. Pain. Blood. It was definitely an acquired taste. Not that he was the only one. Scores of men and women entranced with the vampire mystique also sought out the exquisite pleasure of the bite.
Nayia’s tapered fingers moved to his bruised, bitten neck. “I knew you’d come back to me, Maddox.”
Oh, heaven above.
Her touch was wonderful. A shiver of delight closed around his spine and squeezed hard. His nerves were on edge, peaking toward the ultimate sensitivity. “I can’t break the damn habit,” he grated.
Nayia’s gaze caught his. He saw the unholy fire in her eyes, the reddish orange glow flickering behind her gaze. “It is a shame you were born to be a sentinel,” she mused. “You would have enjoyed the rising as one of us.”
“Being an undead, soulless shell?” He shook his head. “I already have eternity, and my soul is my own. What I crave—” His words broke off in a harsh, mirthless laugh. He was an addict, a slave to the pleasurable aspects to pain. His craving would most likely be the death of him, but he didn’t care. He hadn’t cared in a long time.
Her eyes sparkled wickedly, and her full scarlet lips curved into a semblance of a smile. “I know, my love. I know.”
“Just do it.” His need—his desperation—was reflected in the timber of his voice. “Feed your beast.”
Tangling her fingers in his hair, Nayia wrenched his head to one side. “You can still join us. For your loyalty you would be well”—she lovingly nuzzled the hollow between his head and shoulders, her warm tongue tracing a moist trail along his jugular—“rewarded.” Her hot breath scorched his bruised skin.
Maddox tightly clenched the fingers of one hand. “You tempt me . . .” There was a bitter, coppery taste in his mouth, the lingering taste of his own blood mingling with the kisses he and Jesse had shared. But instead of breaking the embrace of this hell-spawned creature, he remained frozen in place. After a year of denying his craving, he needed his fix.
Bad.
Burying her face in his neck, Nayia used her sharp canines to tear through the flesh right above his jugular, her ardent bite unmerciful in its penetration.
Maddox gasped, almost whimpered, shocked by the pain so searing that it seemed to brand itself on the walls of his skull as it ricocheted through his senses. The prickle of some kind of primitive fear ran up his spine. He was paralyzed, body and mind.
His body quivered brutally, and he felt the warmth of his blood trickle over his unexpectedly frigid skin. The pain was strangely exquisite, for her bite lit up the fires of longing in his heart.
What he was doing with her—the enemy—was wrong. It might even get him killed, but he didn’t care.
Lost in the depths of bliss, Maddox closed his eyes. Memories from the far past crept out of the darker corners of his mind—forbidden, yet savored. Time spun away, taking him back to the time of his first encounter with the Telave . . .
Older, wiser men had warned against venturing into the bayous of Louisiana. Bad things lurked there, they’d said—things that didn’t belong in this world. But the lure of beaver and the money their pelts would bring proved to be irresistible to more than one trapper.
He’d been taken during a night raid on his camp, spirited away from the rest of his group, most of whom were slaughtered without mercy. Knocked unconscious, he’d woken in a cave of some sort, bound hand and foot. The dark-skinned, dark-haired men and women attending him didn’t seem to speak his language, nor did they seem interested in communication. Though his captors treated him well, they never attempted to speak more than a few rudimentary words to him.
A day passed, and then another.
On the third, the leather cords that bound him were cut. He was then led into some sort of small antechamber within the cave. Lit by fire, the hard stone ground was covered with soft animal-skin furs.
Half-dazed by his confinement, Maddox hardly protested when two native women began to undress him, running their hands over his back, shoulders, and chest with eager anticipation. One unlaced his shirt and pulled it off his arms, leaning over to lick both of his nipples. She tossed it on the ground as she sucked the tip of one into her mouth and pulled back, nipping it with her teeth.
His hands flew to the back of her head, stroking her hair. A soft moan emanated from between his lips when a second woman wiggled between them and began kissing down his stomach, dropping to her knees in front of him and letting her hands roam over his manhood. His shaft rose as he watched her take down the front of his breeches before tugging them over his hips.
The woman on her knees nuzzled his erection with her lips. She smiled before moving forward and letting her tongue run smoothly all over the crown, tasting the clear liquid seeping from the tip. Her hands moved around his hips and gripped his ass, pulling him against her as she opened her mouth and slowly moved her lips over his throbbing glans. Her lips tightened, holding just the head in her mouth.
Maddox moaned and roughly pushed his fingers in her hair, unable to resist pushing his hips forward to get her to take more of him into her hot wet mouth. He couldn’t help whimpering softly when her sharp fingernails dug into his ass cheeks.
He was a willing captive and made no objection when the women pulled him to the ground and stretched out beside him. All he could think about was their hands exploring his naked flesh.
Very softly, he moaned when two wet mouths pressed against his skin, licking, sucking, exploring every inch of him. He felt long fingers wrap around his shaft, the beginning of a slow, carnal seduction.
A third person joined the group, a man. Instead of being shocked by the addition of another male, he was strangely excited by the feel of solid, rugged flesh pressing against his own. A second man joined, rubbing his hard penis against Maddox’s thigh, marking him with his uniquely male scent before licking away the damp trail with slow moist caresses of his tongue.
A nipple was pushed into his mouth. He suckled the hard nubbin eagerly. Through the haze of pleasure threatening to overcome him, he was vaguely aware of a new set of warm full lips closing around his sex. His penis, solid and weighty, pulsed as someone—he knew not whether a male or female pleasured him—took him down the throat. Hard teeth grazed his tender skin.
Groaning with delight, Maddox held back the urge to penetrate the warm mouth deeper, to feel more of the soft tongue flicking the underside of his shaft. He was almost desperate to relieve the pressure, but he didn’t want to climax just yet.
Surrounded by dark-skinned men and women on all sides, Maddox could only groan. Lost in the sensual dance of skin on skin, he could hardly keep up with the sensations threatening to overwhelm him like the waves of an all-consuming ocean.
He made no protest when those making such sweet love to him captured a limb—two taking his arms, two his legs—pinning him down. Too late, he realized their intention, for even as he tried to fight against captivity, he saw their features had lost all human resemblance. Their faces were changing, distorting, evolving into what could only be described as demonic. Their mouths opened wide and he caught a flash of fangs.
Pulse freezing in his veins, Maddox tried to writhe away from the hideous visions. The pounding of his heart caused an unholy racket in his chest. His mouth opened and he tried to cry out for help, but no sound escaped the cavity of his throat.
The demons attacked, biting deeply into his flesh, then eagerly sucking up the blood seeping from the savage wounds.
“Mon Dieu!”
he cried. Spare me, O Mother in heaven above.
But the Enlightened One was not listening, having turned deaf ears to his plight.
The beasts consuming him seemed to take pleasure in his useless straining, in his pitiable cries for mercy. He was panting now, his fear close to smothering him. Even as darkness flowed across his vision like ink over a sloping surface, the sounds of sucking continued to fill his ears . . .
With a brief tingling shock, Maddox returned to the present. Weak, gasping, and wholly exhausted, he was lying sprawled and numb. The candles around him had long burned down, and even though the cramped space was stuffy, his skin was covered with perspiration that chilled him to the bone. Bits and pieces of the far-gone past insisted on floating across his mind’s eye.
Lying beside him, Nayia propped herself up on an elbow. “You went under fast,” she commented. “For a moment I feared I’d lost you.”
Feeling a stinging sensation in his neck, Maddox gasped painfully. His head and heart were pounding, his teeth chattering. “Why do I do this to myself?” he gasped, feeling as if someone had dropped a block of concrete on top of him.
Nayia laughed low in her throat. “Because the Telave have seduced you with our wildly wicked and erotic ways.” Rolling on top of him, she ran her palms over his sweat-matted chest, circling his dusky nipples, then pinching the little nubs.
“Admit you want to be with us. You always have.”
Despite himself, Maddox groaned with pleasure. Every breath he took was reinforcing his emotional and physical awareness of her. “No.” He moaned. “Not at the price of my soul.”
“Bad boy.” Nayia methodically worked her way lower. “I guess I’m just going to have to work a little harder to persuade you.” Her hands moved down over his abdomen, expertly working to undo the top button of his jeans. He heard the crunch of the zipper. A moment later she freed him from his clothes, fingers wrapping around his swelling erection.
Maddox wiggled beneath her weight, shifting his body into a more comfortable position. He was weak and helpless and didn’t care what else happened.
As long as she didn’t stop.
Chapter 12
T
he sky was leaden, the day as cold and overcast as she felt inside her soul. Chilly fingers of a gusty wind tugged at her jacket as she drew the folds around her body. Pellets of hard rain beat the pavement around her, stinging her bare face.
I should find someplace to stay
, Jesse thought. Still, she stood immobile, unable to make her feet go, to put her body into motion toward a dryer, warmer sanctuary. Instead, she lingered in the rain, a perverse self-torture she really was not enjoying, but to which she seemed incapable to call a halt. Since seeing Maddox with another woman, she wanted to feel pathetic, put upon, and utterly downtrodden. It suited her mood to a T. She would sacrifice herself to the rain, hoping that the water would purge her by washing away her aches and loneliness and hate.