Vampires' Consort: Magical Menages, Book 2 (14 page)

“How do you feel?” he asked.

She didn’t pretend not to understand him. “Different. Me, but more than me.”

He nodded, understanding what she meant. Although it had happened a long time ago, he would never forget what it had been like to wake as vampire instead of human for the very first time. Of course, his change had been a bit different for it had come with a raging, unquenchable thirst.

“You’ve assumed your full identity, tapped into your paranormal lineage.”

She looked up at him, studying him with that direct brown gaze. “How do you know?”

“The Sisters said something like this might happen.”

“You might have warned me. What other bits of wisdom are you holding back?”

He shook his head. “That’s all.” But he felt a niggling sense of guilt for there were other things they’d intimated that he wasn’t ready to mention to her. As always, his mind trod the familiar groove of W.W.O.D.—what would Oxanna do? She would likely counsel him not to withhold any scrap of information from Akila, especially something that was potentially life-altering.

Akila leaned her arms on the railing and gazed at the view. Her hip cocked, jutting her ass at a fetching angle. The extra-long T-shirt she wore rode high in back, revealing her plain white underwear. It contrasted beautifully with her smooth, brown legs.

Valarian swallowed his rising lust and looked away. It would be easy enough to fuck that sweet ass, but at the moment he’d rather take the more complicated route of having a real conversation. He moved to stand beside her, resting his forearms on the railing.

“You’ve been through a lot these past couple of days. What do you think about it all?”

She paused before answering. “To be honest, when I got here I had the idea I’d use the experience—and I imagined the invitation was for some wild sex orgy—to write an exposé about you. Even after you showed me what you are, I still imagined how the headline would look with my byline underneath it.
Billionaire Philanthropist Shows Fangs
by Akila Massri.”

He smiled, unsurprised by her admission. “But you changed your mind?”

“The talk about destiny and saving the world kind of made my agenda look small.” A sardonic smile curved her lips. “But now that I’ve come to know and care for Jacob,” she glanced at him, “and for you, I wouldn’t write about you. Not unless you agreed. I still feel we could nip Overton’s bid for power by revealing what he is, but, as you say, that would expose all of your kind to scrutiny.”

Valarian chose to ignore her subtle bid for him to change his mind. “You have trouble saying the word, don’t you?”

“What? Vampire?” She maintained composure for about a second, then burst out laughing. “Yes. It just sounds so ridiculous. Part of me is still waiting to wake up from all this—ancient prophecies, gods and vampires and magical babies. Even the amazing three-way sex. This is so not my life.”

She fell silent and he waited for her to continue, guessing she had more to say.

“But I have to admit tonight something shifted and clicked into place. The change in me, the sense that I
could
be more than I’ve always thought I was. I’m just not certain what that means.”

He reached out and rested a hand on her back. “Well, you don’t have to figure it out tonight.”

Akila fixed her gaze on him, leaning her cheek on her hand. “You’re enough of a puzzle all on your own. I’m never quite sure what to expect from you. Sometimes you seem dangerous, barely leashed. Other times, like now, you’re so gentle and…almost courtly.”

He patted her, then took his hand away before he reached down and grabbed a handful of her ass. “I told you I’m working to overcome my nature. It’s a slow process.”

“Who was the person who made you want to change? You must have loved her, or him, very much.”

Valarian turned away from her assessing gaze. He’d never talked about Oxanna and didn’t intend to start now.

“Tell me about her.” Akila’s quiet voice fell somewhere between a command and an entreaty as she threw down the gauntlet.

The memory of brown eyes as earnest as Akila’s, but more trusting, filled his mind. “She was a simple country girl living outside a village in the Ukraine. No different from hundreds of other simple country girls I’d fucked or fed on in the course of my life. To this day I don’t know what stopped me from using or killing her. I don’t know what was different about that night, or about her.”

“Love at first sight,” Akila said.

He shot her a glance. “Not that romantic. I did bite her and fuck her and planned to leave her behind, grateful to still be alive. But she got me talking, and then laughing. And pretty soon, listening to her. I came back another night, and another. Like Scheherazade, she had me wrapped around her finger, listening to her words, unable to get enough of her voice.

“I wanted to turn her. This perfect, angelic woman. I wanted to keep her with me forever. But, thank God, I never got the chance to make her into a monster.”

“What happened?”

His jaw tightened as memories overwhelmed him. His fangs descended automatically, ready to tear into those long-ago phantoms.

“She died,” he said flatly, and then unexpectedly felt an urgent desire to tell her the rest. “She was put to death because of me. I’d hunted in the area too long. Livestock mauled, stories of a devil appearing to people and nearly sucking the life from them. Someone made a connection to Oxanna. They accused her of consorting with the demon, blaming her not only for the attacks but for everything that went wrong from warts to the current drought. This was the nineteen-twenties, supposedly a modern, enlightened time. Well, not in the backwoods of the Ukraine.”

He clenched his hands, still feeling her life slipping between his fingers. When she’d needed him most, he hadn’t been there and nothing could ever change that.

“I’d traveled to the city to make arrangements for moving there with her. When I returned the following night…” He swallowed the bile that choked him. “I saw the glow of a bonfire before I reached the village, and felt Oxanna’s terror even from a distance. Then I smelled scorched flesh, burnt hair…”

“I’m so sorry,” Akila whispered.

“I saw their faces, so gleeful and sadistic. My first impulse was to kill them all. But Oxanna had been working on me, changing me like water shapes a stone, and her voice still haunted me. I saw these people were no different from what I’d been. I could continue my bloody course or change. In that crucial moment, I had to decide.”

A harsh, mirthless laugh rattled in his chest like a cough. “I’ve been working on it ever since, but old habits die hard.”

Akila had turned so her back leaned against the railing. Her arms were folded across her chest and her eyes continued to study him, not judging, just calmly assessing. For a second she reminded him so much of Oxanna he could barely breathe.

“You’re kind of a miracle,” she said at last. “And Oxanna would be proud of the person you’ve become.”

At her words, something twisted and cracked inside him. His eyes burned. He rubbed a hand across them and when he drew it away, his fingers were wet. Tears? For God’s sake was that even possible? He couldn’t remember ever crying in the entire several hundred years of his existence. Not even when Oxanna died. He’d been enraged and in so much pain he’d considered walking into the sunrise, but incapable of shedding a tear. And now one kind word from this slip of a girl and he was whimpering like a child.

“Jesus,” he cursed.

She moved close and wrapped her arms around him. “It’s all right. Go ahead and let it out.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” His voice broke and more tears ran down his cheeks. His chest ached as if metal bands were tightening around him and he clung to Akila like a shipwreck survivor grasping at anything to keep afloat. She rubbed his back and made those soothing, clucking noises women made over small wounded things. It was humiliating, but he couldn’t stop crying or hanging onto her.

After a while she wiggled and muttered, “Ow. You’re kind of crushing me.”

He realized he hadn’t been holding back his strength as he usually remembered to do with human women. Pure vampire-on-vampire sex could be like a clash of the titans, violent, loud and delightfully painful, but with mortal partners he had to be more careful. Loosening his arms around her soft, warm body, he lifted his face from her damp neck.

He wiped his eyes dry. “Sorry.”

“I told you it’s okay. Like the song says, ‘everybody hurts, sometimes’.” She smiled and a different kind of pang shot through him, his melancholy replaced by the joy inherent in her youth and vitality. She slid a hand around the back of his neck and tipped her face up to him for a kiss.

Valarian bent and covered her mouth, giving her the kind of gentle, tender kiss he rarely indulged in. For him, sex was about passion and fire, an act of need rather than a union of spirits. The only time he’d allowed his heart to become invested, it had ended badly. His soul had been scorched along with Oxanna’s body and he’d learned his lesson about allowing himself to care deeply for anyone, particularly a vulnerable human.

But now, with Akila, he felt a softening inside him as he lifted her in his arms and carried her to his bed. She clasped her arms around his neck and rested her head against his shoulder. She was light and delicate, and a strong protective feeling surged through him instead of the desire to devour.

He laid her down on the peacock blue coverlet and sat by her, simply gazing at her face for several moments. Her bone structure was prominent beneath her smooth, tan skin. She had the kind of face that would age well, more beautiful as time whittled away the non-essentials and left it stark and graceful. And even though she was a young woman now, Valarian could see a new wisdom in her eyes. The essence of Ra permeated her and radiated from her.

Akila reached up and traced the line of his jaw with her hand, a light invitation to bend and kiss her again.

After he at last pulled away, he helped her remove her T-shirt and panties. Then he took off his own clothes and lay beside her. He’d been naked with bed partners thousands of times in his life, but he’d rarely felt as exposed as he did under her direct gaze.

She grazed her fingernails down his chest and abdomen, then grasped his cock. He was solid and ready, but he had a long lifetime’s practice in controlling his responses. Even when she slithered down his body and brought him to her mouth, he was able to keep his desire to thrust in check. He relaxed on his back, arms behind his head, and watched her beautiful face as she gave him pleasure. She wrapped her lips around him and his cock glistened wetly as it slid in and out of her mouth. He shivered, and the muscles in his abdomen tensed.

Akila moved her palm briskly on his shaft and cradled his balls in her other hand, smoothing one finger over the soft tissue behind them. The sensation was heaven on earth, but he wanted more than a blow job right now. He craved the connection of lying face-to-face with her, looking into each other’s eyes as they came together.

“Come,” he ordered, reaching down to touch her springy curls.

She obediently released his cock, which flopped hard against his belly, and crawled up to lie on top of him. Her breasts pressed softly against his chest and her eyes sparkled as she looked down at him.

“You’re very beautiful.” He cupped the side of her face and traced her lips with his thumb.

She captured it in her mouth and sucked.

“And such an oral fixation. I appreciate that,” he teased.

Letting go of him with a wet pop, she leaned closer. Her breath tickled his chin and he smelled the mint of her toothpaste. “Not nearly as much as you have, I bet.” She touched her mouth to his, plucking softly at his lips with hers.

He groaned and shifted beneath her, feeling every inch of her naked body sliding over his. He gripped her rear and rocked his hips, but the ache in his cock needed much more than a soft belly to press into.

Valarian grasped her hips and lifted her to guide her onto his erection. She slid down on him with slick ease, her body open and welcoming. Golden heat surrounded him and he released a long, pent-up breath of satisfaction. He’d had oceans of sex in his span on earth but, other than with Oxanna, he’d never felt such a sensation of coming home.

Akila moved on top of him, rising and falling slowly, rocking her body a little as she seated him deep within her. Her eyelids fluttered and began to close.

“Look at me,” he demanded.

She opened her eyes and focused on him, a small smile quirking the corners of her mouth. He loved the air of cockiness that always lingered around her. He splayed his hand over her chest, capturing her heartbeat in his palm for a moment, and then he moved his hand around her back, so long and smooth.

Her hips bumped his as she moved against him. Swells of pleasure shimmered along the length of his cock with every stroke. Tension gathered in his groin and pooled there. It was as if they were moving underwater, everything slow and easy and prolonged. Sweat sheened Akila’s skin and his as they continued to slide against each other.

“Oh yeah, baby,” she murmured, grunting as she came down hard on him.

He loved the sound of her voice, rasping with need as she began to mutter and curse. The tempo of their thrusting sped up, their bodies slapping together harder, but still they maintained eye contact.

Valarian smiled. They were like two children refusing to blink or look away first. Her stubbornness amused him, but it was also an aspect he admired in her. Such a quality would prove useful once she’d fully committed to becoming the mother of his child. She’d need a strong will in the face of whatever fate threw at them.

The thought of her carrying his seed to fruition, albeit by way of Jacob, suddenly moved him deeply. He wanted to see her belly round, her body full of new life, and later, her arms holding a tiny infant that bore his stamp. During all his planning for getting her here and impregnated, he’d never dwelled on such details, but all of a sudden they were all he could think of. And with those thoughts in mind and her face blazing in his sight, he thrust once more and released his sterile seed.