Read Vaewolf: Damn the Darkness: The Prophecy's Promise (Hearts of Darkness Book 3) Online
Authors: Eliza March
He lifted his head and after taking a deep breath, he murmured against her neck, “Roll over.”
She did and turned to glance at him over her shoulder, her mouth beginning to form the word “oh.”
“Shut up, and enjoy this. We’re good the way we are for now.” He pushed her face down, angled her hips so he could thrust himself against her G-spot, sending those ripples of pleasure she liked up her spine. “I’ll convince Dylan you need him back in your bed as soon as we can find him.”
“Oh, you feel so good inside me.” She groaned. “Fuck me harder, Jackson.”
Jackson chuckled. “Thank you. I needed a little naughty inspiration.”
“You’re hard as steel and big as a bat. It doesn’t feel like you need any inspiration.”
“Oh,
cher
, you say the nicest things.”
“It does feel good, wonderful in fact, but sometimes I feel like a cat in heat with an itch only you and Dylan can satisfy if you scratch it together.”
“When we find him. We’ll see what we can do about convincing him to join us. I have complete faith in your ability to seduce him,
cher.
”
Jackson thrust harder. She needed them, both of them, and they knew it.
Chapter
Thirty Eight
Beau Rivage, Bayou Bar
Damn fate. Dylan felt like a coward hiding out in the bayou, but the few vampires who were regulars in these parts wouldn’t recognize him and usually the Lycans stayed clear of the local bar.
“The sweltering bayou humidity is making the wolves restless,” said a young female vamp sitting near Dylan. She flipped her red hair and her words dragged him back from his reflections. And when he glanced over at her, he realized the long legged woman with a cigarette in her hand was speaking to no one in particular. She could have been a Hollywood starlet from the fifties with her low-cut blouse and her stiletto heels.
“It’s making everyone restless,” Dylan replied, just to be polite.
The male vampire sitting on the other side of her must have died with a bad bleach job. He ran his hand over his stiff spiked hair, but it didn’t help. The stuff popped back up and stood stick straight out from his scalp. Apparently also speaking to no one in particular, he muttered into his mug, “We could use a little action around here.”
The redhead did a little boob shimmy in his face and said, “I offered. It’s not my fault you’re not into females.”
The skinny male who reminded Dylan of some over the hill rock star, gave Red an eye roll. The place was filling up. Another hungry-looking pierced female, apparently a pin cushion before she’d been turned, took a stool two seats down from Dylan. She eyed a couple of humans who looked like regular O-positive donors, but she didn’t bother joining the conversation. And Dylan wished he’d stayed out of it, when the vamp version of a thirty-something-year-old Billy Idol gave him the sexual once over and shook a finger in his direction. “I’m warning you,” he said with a slight lisp—probably a newbie, not used to his fangs yet. “Don’t go down to the bayou,”
“Okay, not planning to. Thanks for the heads up.” Dylan lifted an eyebrow and shrugged, acknowledging the advice with a quick nod.
He turned his attention away wondering if he was the action Billy was looking for. With no particular interest in Billy or action he said, “I think I’ll stay right here and have another beer.”
“Good idea,” Red said, leaning a little closer. “Maybe you and I can dance later.” The vampire leered, eyeballing him from shoulders to crotch.
“Maybe another time.” Dylan flashed the redhead some of his ancient charm and ignored the male.
This time there was no missing Billy’s hopeful look. “What about me? Maybe he’d rather dance with me,” he said, preening like a slender peacock.
Dylan didn’t reply, just smiled benignly, noncommittally reaching for his beer.
“You new around here?”
Dylan, showed just enough fang to warn them off. He let his eyes go dark, put the glass down, and smiled to prove a point. “No. I don’t get out much.”
The females and the guy suddenly decided Dylan might be more dangerous than at first consideration, because they both shut up, deflated, and quietly edged away.
He couldn’t stay. Not under the circumstances. And yet the decision to stay away as long as he had was the hardest thing he’d ever done. Returning to his home moved to the top of his list.
Tonight he planned to get stinking drunk, mortally drunk, until he was too numb to care. Because before long, he’d have to face Caitlin and tell her the truth. They couldn’t accept their life mate bond. She’d have to allow Jackson to bind her.
“On the house.” The bartender pushed his unruly, graying hair away from his face by forking his fingers through it, and set a beer mug down on the bar in front of Dylan. “Name’s O’Brien. First one’s on me.”
Dylan sized the man up. He had the look of a man who’d been fit at one time, broad shoulders, and rugged features—human. The light in his eyes reflected the kindness of a man who’d seen much and still cared. A ruddy color and the sweaty sheen on his skin told Dylan his blood pressure could be close to stroke level. Because he liked the man, Dylan paced his heart with his own, slowing it, steadying and regulating O’Brien’s blood pressure.
The man smiled and wiped his brow with the bar cloth. He looked better when he offered, “We’ve got Guinness on tap. You look like a Guinness man.” He slapped his big hand on the bar with emphasis.
Dylan held out his hand and they shook. “Macgregor.” He held up the mug and took a sip. “Thanks. I used to be strictly an ale or Glenkinchie man, myself. But this is excellent, go ahead and set me up with a pitcher.”
To Dylan’s way of thinking, having a powerful ancient, like Niccolai, for a maker had its advantages—powerful blood and powerful knowledge. Dylan was stronger than most vampires his age because Niccolai shared his blood and the secrets to using his ancient powers before he went to ground. Tonight the herb that allowed vampires to eat or drink when they wanted was high on Dylan’s list of favorites.
He didn’t want conversation, no dancing or music. He wanted to sort through his plans, time to reflect, and then time to forget what his decision meant—going to ground or the real death.
Because living without Caitlin wasn’t going to be an option, not after seeing her with Jackson. The first decision was obvious to a blind man. He couldn’t go back to Caitlin’s again—not with Jackson sifting in at will—not with the sexual pull he felt in their presence. He couldn’t join them, according to their traditional rules.
It was stupid to think he could handle seeing her. In three hundred years, Dylan should have learned more about the life-mate bond, known better than to put himself near his life-mate and watch another man seduce her when he couldn’t touch her. He’d been careless, almost let his guard down, and her pain weakened him beyond measure.
Dylan felt defeated. Blocking Jackson meant blocking Caitlin. Jackson was easier because they shared merely a distant link through Niccolai’s bloodline. Caitlin had been more difficult since she and Dylan physically exchanged blood numerous times during and after her change. Blocking both Jackson and Caitlin from his mind took more energy than Dylan expected. And, more self-control.
He took a deep breath, exhausted from the challenge of remaining hidden from the two people closest to him, and picked up the cold mug on the bar.
The first cold beer hit the spot. More than one with a few scotch chasers might be exactly what he needed. He scrubbed his hand down his face, then threw back the beer in one gulp. He should have left when they grew suspicious—left before he saw Jackson touching Caitlin—before she touched him—before she begged him...
Fuck
! He couldn’t think about her, them, that way. He remembered to vividly what it was like to touch her skin, have her hair brush his abdomen, have her lips surround his cock. The tightness in his groin reached epic proportions the more the thought about the way she sucked him hard and took him deeply into her mouth, the way she tilted her head back to take his cock down her throat, the way he came, and how she sucked him bone dry. The force of his climax, the pleased expression on her face.
Gods, this is impossible.
Dylan’s eyes burned. His skin felt too tight. A drop of blood hit his fist and trickled into the crease between his fingers. He opened his hand and wiped his mouth. His lip was bleeding. With a quick flick of his tongue he closed the wound and mentally willed his erection to subside.
“O’Brien, I’ll take another pitcher and a couple of scotch chasers on the side,” he shouted over the music, pointing at the bartender. “Over here, when you get a chance.” He indicated a table surrounded by TV’s where he could watch the baseball game, some guys catching gators, and soccer. Good seat he thought. Good variety. Noise. Mind numbing nothing.
“If you’re running a tab I’ll need a card.”
The bartender put the drinks down in front of him, and Dylan handed the dude a hundred dollar bill. No cards. No trace. Jackson had put out feelers looking for him since Dylan showed up on the radar last week. He wasn’t ready to deal with all this yet.
“Take twenty percent for yourself, and let me know when I’m running low.”
“Thanks, man.”
This time, Dylan downed the smooth aged single malt followed by another beer. The old flavor eased the edge in a heartbeat. Tension eased and he loosened up. He didn’t feel as if he was wearing a helmet with nails poking into his skull. Good, his plan was working. Another scotch, another beer, and the stabbing pain in his chest might let up, too.
The vampire with the bad hair found some sweet young dude with equally bad hair, and Dylan watched as they ground against each other to the rhythm of the music. Dylan wondered what happened to the female who’d asked him to dance. Probably looking for a meal or sex.
“Sex, hmmph, over-rated,” he mumbled and downed another shot.
Who was he kidding? Sex with someone you love was everything.
He looked around his table. No more shots. Beer was running low, too. He raised a hand to his friendly bartender and within seconds his refills appeared on the table. “Thanks.”
“No problem, buddy. You driving?”
“Me? Hell, no.” He’d sift to mist and materialize wherever he wanted before dawn. On second thought, he hoped he could handle sifting drunk.
“Good. You think you want another round? This is all the cash covers.”
He hadn’t been drunk since the night before Niccolai turned him. What the hell. If he passed out and ended up frying himself at dawn, all his troubles would come to an abrupt end, anyway. He’d raised his maker’s son to take over, and since Dylan had been gone Jackson handled both the pack and the council admirably.
“Keep ’em coming.” Dylan slapped another hundred in the man’s palm. “I’m staying ’til I’m blind drunk.” Until the vision of seeing his mate with another man blurred from his mind.
“You sure that’s a good idea, buddy?”
“Yes. Actually, it’s an excellent idea.” Nice guy, Dylan thought, worried about me.
The bartender met his gaze, and his expression changed. His eyes took on a sympathetic softness. Man to man, he recognized the depth of Dylan’s pain in that one glance and backed off with the advice. “Your life, your choice.”
“Haven’t been really drunk in a long time.” Three hundred years passed without a thought to tying one on. Getting drunk was a weak man’s way of dealing with his problems. Tonight, Dylan’s pain tolerance reached his limit. Too weak.
The extent of his despair went beyond comprehension, but some of it must have been emblazoned on his face. He braced his elbows on the table, and let his head fall forward into his hands.
“Sometimes letting go is what a body needs.” The bartender laid a big grizzly hand on Dylan’s shoulder. “I’ll keep an eye out. You can stay here if you need a place in the morning. Key’s on the hook over there.” He pointed to a rack with one set of keys.
“Thanks, man. I won’t forget this.”
“No problem. Let it go.”
He wished he could.
Chapter Thirty Nine
A silken strand of hair brushed over her cheek as Jackson gently kissed her eyelids. The feather light touch relaxed her. The gentle caress, such a distinct contrast to the hard angles and planes of this man, did more to bring her to her knees than the usual driving lust between them.
She cupped his strong, scruffy jaw in her hands and softly kissed his mouth, parting his lips, lips soft as velvet. Seducing him with her tongue, exploring the deeper recesses of his mouth, Caitlin opened her mind to his, and allowed him to feel what she was feeling—his heat, her lust.
The inside of his mouth tasted like hot honey.
“Hot honey?”
He lifted a brow and curled his lip. “
You like it when I’m gentle?”
He took the kiss deeper, harder. With it, he probed at her mind.
“I like it when you’re rough. I love your every touch, any way—rough or gentle, slow or desperate.”
She opened her mind to him, allowing him limited access to feel how his touch affected her—the sizzle, the desire, the need—nothing beneath the physical surface and nothing emotional.
He moved his lips along her jawline, nibbling his way toward her ear. His ragged breaths burned hot against her sensitive skin. The sound of their pulses beat wildly in her ears, blood swishing through veins and arteries as his tongue drew a path to her collar. Wave after wave of goose bumps raised over her skin stimulating her beyond belief.
“Your skin is so soft, so—”
“Cold?”
“No, not now, not with my blood in your veins. You actually feel hot.” He winked and lifted her breasts together then playfully nuzzled them both. “I want to fuck these.”
“Silly wolf.”
New to all this, she didn’t understand how he could be everything to her at moments like this, while she still craved Dylan. He was the very heart of her soul, and the one thing she couldn’t deny was the way she needed him like water, like air—his presence, his touch, his mind and body merged with hers. But she was convinced what was between them was something more than mere lust or fate. She’d fallen in love with him before any of this.
Jackson’s hands squeezed her ass, distracting her from her thoughts. When his long fingers teased inside her, he took her breath away, and her attention refocused on him. Those fingers of his were temptingly close to where she needed to be touched. If she moved slightly right, he’d hit just the right spot and spark the climax that would drive her over the edge. But she couldn’t. His weight held her firmly in place as he teased her, mercilessly.
“Jackson?” she gasped.
“Uh huh?”
“I. Will. Get. Even.”
“I hope so.”
The pressure, low in her groin, bubbled like a pot on a slow boil. “Touch me, dammit!” She bit down on his shoulder when his fingers sneaked inside her panties and drove inside her, just as his thumb pressed her clit screaming for attention. She couldn’t hold back the orgasm.
Pleasure. Pure simple pleasure.
When she could catch her breath she murmured, “God, I love your hands.”
“My hands love touching you.”
It was damned difficult keeping him out of her head when all she wanted to do was open for him—body, heart and soul, and mind. While he continued to seduce and caress the next orgasm from her, his powerful mind relentlessly battered at her blocks, demanding she open to him.
Finally, unable to take any more of the mental mugging during his physical assault, she moaned and the desperate plea was all she could manage. “Jackson, please, just for tonight. I’m begging you, let it be. It’s you in mind and my blood. You I want inside me. You I need, tonight.”
“Tell me what I want to know.” The mental barrage stopped, but the physical one kicked up a notch when Jackson let out a low steady growl rubbing the bulge in his jeans more forcefully against her.
Her hands slid from the T shirt covering his powerful shoulders, down his lightly furred arms to his thick wrists.
This time she cuffed him. “Please?”
Even she heard the disappointment in her voice.
“Make no mistake. I would if I could.” He reversed their hands and gripped her wrists in his. “Dylan loves you. He left because he cares about both of us. Even I understand that.”
“I know you’re right,” she said, as he pulled his wrists free of her hands. There was more than one way to turn his attention elsewhere. She reached for his belt.
“He took sexual tension to a whole new level with his pillow talk, and he promised to teach me all sorts of exotic sexual practices when he came back.”
“Dylan always did have a way with words.” Jackson took the one step he needed to reach the bed and sat her down. His eyes flashed silver, his canines extended beyond his lips. Jealousy radiated off him.
“They were just words,” Caitlin assured him. But his eyes had narrowed studying her.
“Really?” he asked, and before finishing his question, Jackson flipped her onto her back across the bed, gripped her wrists, and spread her legs wide between his knees as she hit the sheets. “So where would that leave me?” He growled, a low rumble in his chest.
Caitlin blinked and smiled. “Jealous,” she said, suppressing the giggle with a little snort.
“Right. And dangerous.” His face was like stone, but his lips twitched when she snorted.
Spread eagled under the alpha male who’d taken over the Lycan council and the vampire territory when Dylan left, Caitlin should have been intimidated. Instead, she found herself throbbing with desire and longing to tease him into a smile. “Well, I was really looking forward to sharing those ideas with you.”
“Sharing? Ideas, maybe.” Jackson released a low growl. “You were bound to him first, but you’re mine now, and I have no intension of abdicating, my position with you or this territory, not to anyone, including Dylan.”
“I don’t think you have anything to worry about in my department.”
“There’ll be no sharing you with anyone else. Any conceivable
sharing
will be between the three of us.” Jackson lowered his voice and murmured intimately into her ear, “You know... I’ll do whatever you need to bring you pleasure, but things have changed. My feelings for you have changed.”
“I know you’d do anything for me,” she said, and kissed him. “But, I’d never ask you to do something you weren’t capable of living with.”
“Then know this.” He pulled up on his elbows and stared at her. “I won’t sit idly by if he decides to saunter back thinking to replace me in your bed.” His expression softened and he tugged at a strand of loose hair at her nape. “I’ll share you with him because you need him, but I won’t be replaced.”
“I do understand.”
“There’s something else. I want my old friend back. But he’ll have to accept what I’ve become while he’s been away. The Lycans need a leader who can produce an heir as much as the vampires do. The vampires resent the fact their leader is part Were, but an heir would change all that.”
“You can work out the leadership and the territory, but I won’t compromise when it comes to you. What if I can’t produce this heir everyone needs so desperately?”
He kissed her nose. “Neither Dylan nor I think of you as our brood mare. If it’s meant to be, it will be.”
“Okay...”
“No more talk about Dylan or babies or prophecies,” he said, as he cupped her breast with one hand and stilled her hands on his belt, “for now. Later, we’ll talk.”
He nudged his knee between her thighs. “Scoot back.”
Caitlin finished undoing his belt and the button on his pants before she did as he asked and made room for him on the bed. She would have her answers, and Dylan, sooner or later, would have to make good on his promise. For the moment, she had a wolf to satisfy, and she intended to drive Jackson to distraction so he’d forget about this discussion until much, much later.
He edged up her body, finally straddling her hips with his arms bearing his weight above her. The dark trail on his chest lead to his groin, tempting her to lick her way down his body and take his thick length inside her mouth. Instead, she took time to admire the perfection between her thighs. She traced his taut muscles rippling with power beneath his golden skin. “God, you’re magnificent.”
“That’s a helluva term to live up to. Let’s see what I can do about it.”
Gripping Caitlin’s nape, he pulled her mouth to his and kissed her. The pressure was forceful and bruising, as his tongue plunged into her mouth, driving passionately at first then thrusting, demanding everything from her. While he took out his frustration in that kiss, he removed her shorts and tore off her black lace panties in one swift motion. He lifted his lips and said, “Sorry, sometimes I don’t know my own strength.”
“Don’t apologize. It’s part of what I love about you.”
Once she was completely naked beneath his fully clothed body, with his weight completely on top of her, there was no doubt who was in control of this seduction. She felt almost vulnerable. Caitlin nearly laughed at the thought.
Not yet thirty, when Dylan turned her, she might be young for a vampire, but her one vulnerability, tonight was her heart when she thought about their problem. Remembering his words—the things he’d explained, the plans they’d made, and the love he’d sworn—scared the hell out of her. Those worries would have to wait. She wouldn’t bring thoughts of Dylan into bed with Jackson. She was too defenseless against the pain to keep the wolf out of her head. If she let him, he’d see what she wanted, what she needed to be whole, and despite his claims, she wasn’t sure he’d be able to accept the entire truth.
Caitlin needed both men in her life and in her bed to survive. Her need grew greater every day.
Chapter Forty
Jackson dropped soft kisses between her breasts and down her abdomen. What the damned wolf in him wanted was to drive into Caitlin without waiting. No foreplay, no preliminaries, just take her and satisfy the hunger for his mate. Instead, he forced himself to hold back—to take this slow—appreciate the anticipation. The man in him wanted to savor the softness of her skin, her sweet scent, and the way she responded to his touch. He forced the wolf back and dropped soft kisses between her breasts and down her abdomen.