Laws of the Blood 1: The Hunt (17 page)

Dating? “Get to know . . . ?”

“Develop a relationship. A rapport. What’s wrong? Why are you staring at me like that?”

Develop a—Selim struggled with the concept. What was this modern generation of vampires coming to? “You’re supposed to bite the girl, then get to know her,” he pointed out.

“Why?”

“What do you mean? That’s the way it’s always been done. Never mind.” They’d talked enough. It was late. He was tired. He stood. “I’m going home now,” he said. He frowned at Sterling. “I’m going to catch you following me again, aren’t I?”

Sterling shrugged in answer.

This was just wonderful,
Selim thought angrily. He already had to control a city full of strung-out vampires overdue for a Hunt. Add to that the possibility that the companion he was trying to keep at arms’ length was cheating on him. And there were those shadowy premonitions of the world’s only
dhamphir
haunting his daydreams. Now it looked like he had to take on an apprentice Hunter to his list of responsibilities. What else could happen to complicate his world?

This is L.A,
he reminded himself.
Things always get more complicated.

If he was lucky, it would only be a major earthquake that he would have to contend with next.

A
SOFT HAND
touched his naked thigh, then drew upward with infinite, teasing slowness. The hand belonged to no one he knew. The presence was unfamiliar, though it pressed lightly against the thin shell of his awareness. There was a strange woman in his bed. She did not belong to him nor to any of the brothers, uncles, and cousins who shared the palace within the palace that was their prison and home. He had no liking for strangers, for any new thing that disturbed his already addled wits. He was a mad prince, mad because they never understood that there were already too many of them. Too many thoughts he had to keep separate from his own.

You know me.

The thought did not drift in by accident, but it wasn’t thrust inside him like a blade. It did not hit him or hurt him, though he knew this strange woman had the skill to do anything she chose with her thoughts. He knew this because she wanted him to know it. She took great pride in her skills. The unspoken words she sent him were simply there and gone, a bubble thought too fleeting and fragile to cause him any harm.

He sent a thought of his own:
Who are you?

I’ve dreamed you.

She heard. No one had ever heard his thoughts before, though he had read the minds of others all his life. Worse, sometimes he couldn’t tell where his thoughts ended and other people’s began. He tried to think at her again, but her hands moved over his helpless, sensitized body, and thought fled before sensation.

His limbs were hot and heavy; he couldn’t move. He could feel every thread, every stitch in the embroidery on the thin cotton bedshirt. The finely woven material weighed like lead against his skin. A breast brushed across his chest, soft promise, quickly withdrawn. His hands could not reach, though longing to cup lush roundness flared and burned. There was nothing but darkness before his open eyes. Nothing but mystery and brief, tantalizing touches. Things sensed, guessed at. A curve of hip grazed against his side. A musky perfume scented the air. A fingernail—or was it the tip of a steel blade?—traced a line of fire down his skin from over his heart to his navel, circled there, then was gone.

Sweat beaded on his forehead, at the base of his throat. Heat rose from him, and flesh scorched where she touched. Desire crashed into him, over him, grew inside him. A stranger’s breath whispered across his lips, warm and sweet. There was a hand on his shoulders, then fingers ruffling through his sweat-curled hair, but it was the hand that had reached his groin that drew his complete attention. He hardened beneath that subtle touch; flesh swelled and grew. A throbbing ache filled his loins, tightened his balls, and blossomed up the length of his shaft. His hips bucked hard.

Patience, love. Have patience.

He had no choice in the matter. Hours passed in this darkness where desire flared, ebbed, throbbed, subsided, then grew ever stronger. He hurt. He hungered. There were hands on his cock, circling, massaging, stroking, until he wanted to come and die. A wet, suckling mouth covered him. Heat and pressure drove him mad. His length was engulfed, swallowed, laved, and licked. Then
the stranger’s mouth was gone again. Her laughter, affectionate but teasing, lingered inside him, all but unheard over his silent screams of frustration.

At first, he was barely aware of the mouth that settled on his. But the lips were so soft, so full, her tongue so gently insistent, he could do nothing but open his mouth for her. He tasted his own blood on her tongue, a hot copper saltiness, with underlying sweetness. He could feel the spot where she’d drawn the blood as he tasted himself. Until that instant, he’d been unaware of the sharp prick of pain on his throat.

You’ve dreamed about me.

He didn’t remember.

We’ve known each other for a long time.

An image formed behind his closed eyes, of himself soaking tired muscles in a chest-deep pool of steaming water. There were eunuchs moving about, and a female slave approached, holding a cool sherbet he’d ordered. She had an extraordinarily beautiful mouth and a sharp, secretive smile. Other images formed and faded.

He knew the woman holding him prisoner in his own bed, though he’d never noticed her before. Known her for years. All his life. She’d been in the nursery when he was a babe. Among the women when he was brought to the Cage. She never changed or aged a day. Never spoke or caught anyone’s attention. She was always just—there.

But never in the daylight.

No. He couldn’t recall seeing her in the daylight.

I waited a long time for you to grow up, she told him. It’s been a long, sweet Hunt. Now you will be my companion.

What a beautiful word. He wanted her to let him touch her. To bury himself in her. That was all that mattered.

My pleasure?

Yes.

He cried out in sudden terror. There was no stopping
the scream, though it had no chance to escape his throat.

What are you?

Another image was thrust into his mind. He remembered the thick, syrupy mockery of a brother’s laughter pouring over him. “They are all the same in the dark; soft, skilled mouths and wet heat between their thighs. Close your eyes as they pleasure you, and you can’t tell them apart.” He had tried that game more than once. His brother was right in some things. The palace women were all expertly trained in the same arts, all equally beautiful, all smiled or laughed or kept silent as the moment dictated. Their names did not matter, their lovely faces were interchangeable.

But they were not the same in the dark of his bedroom, or when his eyes were closed as he thrust into sleek, silky, surrounding flesh. It was then, when he was inside them, that he knew a woman best, when she was open and real, her mind as vulnerable for a moment as her body. It was only the ones who actually felt something toward him that he brought back to his bed more than once, even if what they felt was hate or contempt. Greed, ambition, those were familiar emotions, as well. He’d absorbed all of them in one mix or another, been aroused by them. Lived on them.

That was what she was. An emotional vampire.

Clever child.

This—
vampire
—lived on what he felt.

You’re a skinny, underfed thing, but you’ll do.
Her amusement was silent, and terrifying.

Then she was lying with him. Small as she was, she filled the bed, the world. He felt the weight of her very real body, all lush, exciting curves, bare satin skin stretched out on top of him. The tips of her breasts were hot, hard points against his chest. His cock pressed against her belly. He had never been more aroused, even knowing she fed on what he was feeling.

“Not just emotions,” she said, voice husky with her own need. Then she bit him.

• • •

She tasted hot, sweet blood and moaned in her sleep.
Turkish delight.
The thought rose to the surface like a champagne bubble, so bright and happy that she giggled out loud. It was the surprise of joy that brought her as close to awake as was possible in the middle of the day. Yevgeny wasn’t beside her to account for the moistness between her thighs, the delicious ache deep inside her, or the languorous heaviness in her breasts. She felt the brush of cooled air across her hard nipples and actually heard herself moan. There was no blood in her mouth, but she tasted it there. Good Goddess but she was horny! That wasn’t something that happened often, and certainly not in the dead of day when she ought to be still as a statue with every sense turned inward, walking the invisible paths of the old ones.

Or something like that.

Lady of Snakes, but she could fall into archaic language patterns with the best of them. Language evolved. It looked like vampires did, too, or she wouldn’t be having trouble sleeping lately. Of course, if she was going to develop insomnia, it would be better if she was up writing instead of too aroused to think straight and too frozen to do anything about it. Was this some new punishment? Thou shalt not masturbate—because you can’t. Nyah, nyah!

Valentine laughed again. She could actually hear herself laugh! Amazing. The first thing she could do in the daylight was laugh. And be turned on. She was having way too much fun lately. Wasn’t she supposed to be old and wise and deep and decadent? A creature of spirit? A force of evil? To think deep thoughts well beyond the puny concepts that could be imagined by the minds of men? Well, screw that. She’d always been pretty shallow, come to think of it. She felt like a teenager. Giddy. She hadn’t felt this good since—

Ah. That was it.

Valentine made a conscious effort to be unconscious, to sink back down to the level of awareness where she belonged, where the dreams lived. She had never resented
anything so much in her long life, but the daylight world was
not
where she dwelled. It was not where her life was taking place. Down below the conscious level, someone she knew very well was walking in her dreams. Turnabout’s fair play. She’d been walking in his for weeks.

Hello, little boy,
she thought as she plunged through layers of swirling darkness.
Miss me?

He strained toward her, hard and needy. Her light mood fled as she found herself rolled onto her back on a bed two hundred and fifty years in the past. Pillows scattered. Moonlight filtered gently from the latticework windows high overhead. The reflection of sunlight blinded her. She screamed and clawed at the light, until Selim pinned her hands with his, forced her to stare at the full, blazing moon. It was like being trapped in the center of a bright spotlight while sharply cut diamonds rained down, slashing her naked skin. For an instant the legend about vampires being burned by the sun became reality. Somehow the myth was part of Selim’s dream about being with her. She adjusted her reality accordingly, and the light became normal, beautiful, without pain, once again.

She slipped out of his frenzied grasp. Touched him softly. Deft fingers smoothed over his face, through his hair, along the taut muscles of his back and down his flanks, while he panted and moaned. Sweat beaded on his skin. He glittered bronze in the moonlight. Pain radiated from him. And longing, loneliness worse than anything she’d ever felt from the lost boy raised in a luxurious prison.

“What are you on, sweetheart?” she asked him. “What hurts so bad?” She took his face in her hands. He was blind. Gone. Crying. “Tell Mama all about it.” She put one arm around him, rocked him, stroked the pulsing length of his erection, and lifted her head when he nuzzled at her neck. His teeth found her pulse. Fire trailed clean, sweet pain down her throat. She threw her leg over his and guided them together. She buried her claws in his shoulder blades, felt the pop of skin and
blood sticky on the palms of her hands as he filled her. She raked stinging trails swiftly down his back. His spine arched, head coming up with a sharp cry. She grabbed his buttocks as her inner muscles tightened around his shaft, wrapped her legs around his waist. When he tried to buck, she forced him to be still, and let him bleed. She kissed him while she tortured him, her mouth hot on his, their tongues dancing and twining through the barrier of primary fangs.

Fangs. She licked at them, ran her tongue slowly across them. The tip of his tongue touched first one and then the other deadly point of her extended canines. Electric shudders shot through her burning blood.
Sweet Goddess!
She thought, and returned the favor. It had never been like this before. Never, in thousands and thousands of years.

It was never supposed to be like this.

Forbidden! Forbidden! Forbidden!

Whether the thought was his or hers didn’t matter. It was the shock of surprise that sent both of them over the edge. Vampires kissing. Impossible. Forbidden.

Selim screamed into her mouth and jerked frantically. The caged animal escaped her trap, pushed her thighs up against her chest, and drove into her with a mingled cry of terror and lust. She rose frantically to his thrusts in the same horrified fever, monster fucking monster. A scream of need escaped her torn throat, answered by a soul-deep bellow as he possessed her with pounding strokes, unleashing all his strength and force and need. Sun flares of orgasms burned up through her belly and blood and brain.