by Cate Corvin
In dreams, there was no scent of old copper or Cimmerian’s tunnels. All I smelled was Locke: masculine sweat and a faint spicy scent, like flowers and cinnamon, that made my mouth water.
“For now, my Lucrezia,” he said, his lips moving against mine. “I’m strong enough to come into your dreams again.”
I kissed him, moaning when his tongue slid between my lips and forced me to open. His hardness pressed against me and I was soaking wet, my pussy already swollen and aching for him.
“I am going to make love to you in dreams first, sunlight,” he said, his breathing ragged, eyes luminous in the violet half-light. “I want it to be perfect, the first time I touch you.”
It would be perfect even in real life, but I wouldn’t take away what he perceived as being important to our first time together. I nodded, my tongue feeling thick and wordless after the way he’d made love to my mouth already.
He moved down my neck, pressing a kiss under my ear, in the hollow of my throat, between my breasts before he took a nipple in his mouth and swirled his tongue over the hardening flesh.
I gasped under him, my back arching as the tips of his fangs ran over my skin. Locke paused, his cat-like pupils wide and dark, but he regained himself and moved down over my stomach.
I buried my fingers in his dark waves, sucking in a breath as he parted my legs and kissed the inside of my thigh, his fingers running over my skin like he’d never felt another person this way before.
The dream-sky darkened from violet to deep indigo as Locke’s fangs pressed to the soft flesh of my inner thigh, dimpling the skin.
I shivered under him, fingers clenched in anticipation.
There was the faintest sensation of pressure, a flare of pain that flashed through every nerve ending in my body, but the pain instantly became pleasure. A sharp, hard-edged euphoria filled me, rushing through my veins as Locke drew a mouthful of my blood and groaned, licking his lips.
He drew his tongue over the two tiny puncture marks, sealing my skin.
“I won’t take too much,” he said, and kissed the tender spot, sending a whirl of bliss through me. “Now you know how it feels. It can be agony, or ecstasy.”
“Ecstasy,” I whispered, writhing under him. Just the feeling of his lips against those tiny marks was almost painfully good. Now I knew what my little book on vampires meant when it said their bite could induce euphoria; my body felt like it was floating on clouds, every touch so sensitive it almost hurt, but I couldn’t stop. I needed more.
Locke panted against my thigh, running his tongue over the healing mark, and slipped his fingers between my wet folds.
I bit my lip against a shriek and my hips bucked against him, which might’ve mortified me if not for the ravenous look in his eye.
His tongue was next, his panting moans filling my ears as he sucked my clit between his lips, teasing me as the tip flicked back and forth.
Indigo became scarlet and I was dimly aware that the forest and the ocean were gone. All that was left in this dream was Locke and myself, his thick hair woven between my fingers and his deft tongue sending zings of pure need through me.
Locke’s gentleness fell to the wayside as his own hunger grew. He gripped my thighs and pinned them apart, making me jump for him with every stroke of his tongue until he plunged in, holding me against his face.
My back arched like my body had taken on a life of its own, leaving my mind behind to scream and moan as the vampire fucked me with his tongue and lips, and he snarled when my hips moved against him and my inner walls clenched tight.
An orgasm in real life was the most amazing thing I’d ever felt. An orgasm in a vampire-induced euphoric dream was like losing my mind in the most pleasurable way possible.
Locke refused to release me, holding me in a state of complete bliss that might’ve lasted for minutes or years.
He finally withdrew his tongue and swirled it over my sensitive clit before he climbed over me, every muscle in his body taut and strained. “I cannot be the gentleman, Lucrezia,” he gasped, and drove into my still-tight core.
I screamed against his shoulder, his thick, hard cock stretching my clenched pussy around him, and he gripped my face and forced it to the side. Heat exploded in my center as he began pounding into me, running his tongue over his lips and fangs.
Locke’s lips were on my neck in a flash, fangs piercing my skin with the starburst of pain that became a humming livewire of bliss.
I gasped as he sucked, clamped to my neck and shaking my body with every surge of his hips. He slid out, his cock glossy with my wetness, and drove forward, primal snarls vibrating against my neck and into my chest.
I dug my fingers into his back, holding him against me and wrapping my legs around his hips, my mind consumed with nothing but thoughts of heat, wetness, and deep pressure as he fucked me, the lover he wanted to be gone and replaced with a beast determined to make me his.
“Harder,” I growled, and he turned my face back to his for a hard kiss that left my lips bruised, his amber eyes blazing.
I tilted my face when he broke away, leaving my neck exposed and vulnerable, and his lips fastened on me again with moan of need. My nipples rubbed against his chest with every thrust, my breasts feeling full and heavy with the friction.
“Harder! You can’t hurt me in dreams.” I gasped as he took me at my word, lifting my hips so he could pump deep into my core, rubbing my clit with every rough stroke.
He licked the puncture marks in my neck, grinding into me, and my mind shattered into a thousand stars when the second orgasm hit. My pussy clamped down on his cock and Locke groaned, straining against me. His fingers dug in with painful pressure when he came, gasping against my neck.
I curled around him, wrapping a lock of his hair around my finger and breathing in his spice-tinged scent. He touched the tender marks on my neck, sending another thrill through me.
“I meant to take my time with you,” he confessed, and I shivered as his lips moved against my neck.
“This was just the first time in dreams.” His hair was so long and dark, winding around my finger in a coil. That pang of unplaceable familiarity hit me again and was gone just as quickly. “We still have every night… and the real world.”
Locke propped himself up on his elbow, looking down at me through black lashes. “Yes,” he said, but the confidence that he’d had when he first stepped into my dream had been replaced with a pensive slyness.
“What aren’t you telling me?” He kissed me, moving over my neck to run his tongue over the sensitive, healing wounds, but I wasn’t going to be dissuaded.
A pang of fear struck me. He said it worked, and I assumed that was because he’d hunted and eaten animals.
Maybe my assumption was wrong.
“Locke?” I pressed my hand to his cheek, forcing him to look up at me.
He looked me in the eye, and I relaxed a little. Locke wouldn’t look me in the eye if he was going to lie, or if he’d failed to hold back from hunting humans.
“I was strong enough to come into your dreams, but I fear that my self-control is still… questionable.” He pulled my hand from his cheek and kissed my knuckles, the glassy smoothness of his fangs touching my skin.
I hadn’t realized how much I’d feared he’d killed someone until I went completely limp under him.
He seemed to sense what my relief entailed, and a look of hurt flashed in his amber eyes. “That’s all? We’ll just wait until you’re ready, then. I already knew this could take a while.” It was my turn to kiss his hand, examining his long, graceful fingers and broad palm.
He let out a soft sigh and cupped my face in his hand. “And therein lies the problem, Lucrezia. I do not wish to wait. I have lived so many years without this that I feel like I might go insane for waiting one more day.”
“How… how many years?” I traced the outline of his ear, running down his neck even as my heart began galloping in my chest. I knew Locke felt the hollow thud of it beneath my c
hest. He lifted his head, giving me a wry smile.
“I don’t know. Everything has changed. There is a strange sort of road cutting through the forest now, with yellow lines painted on its surface- I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“The highway,” I said. The same highway my matriarch had taken to bring me to Cimmerian, although we’d needed to take several branching side-roads before we arrived at the gates. Locke hadn’t been outside since humanity had started paving asphalt roads.
I suddenly understood his frustration. Vampires lived forever until someone killed them. Witches didn’t.
To him, we were living on finite time, and every moment we waited was a moment wasted as we drew closer to my eventual death.
“Highway,” he said, tasting the word and adding it to his modern lexicon.
“Locke… a few more days won’t hurt us,” I whispered into his ear. “If it works, then we have all the time in the world together. But I’m not going to give up on you while we figure this out.”
His fingertips played over the puncture marks, and I had the urge to bare my neck to him again, my stomach flipping pleasantly. “I know, my sunlight. But the clock never stops ticking.”
I kissed his eyelids and cheeks and lips, slid my hands around his neck as I opened my mouth to reassure him, but out in the real world a noise startled my sleeping body in wakefulness.
Locke and the dream slipped away like so much fog and I sat bolt upright in my bed, my heart pounding in my chest and unspoken words still on my lips.
Shane made a soft sound and reached out for me, pulling me into his arms, and I settled against him. I didn’t sleep much for the rest of the night, the last memory of my dream floating through my mind: Locke’s amber eyes, sad, angry, desperate to win against time and himself.
Chapter 7
Locke
Everything was both different and the same.
I took a deep breath of the forest, tasting the green of growing leaves, sap, and churned earth. Most of my memories were gone, but drinking in this smell was like pulling back a curtain and peering at a past locked away inside my mind.
There were new smells, acrid and pungent, that drifted over the forest and soured the air.
I stood at the edge of what Lucrezia had told me was a “highway”. My toes curled at the gritty sensation of the black stone under my feet.
It began vibrating, gently at first, and finally sending reverberations through my legs as a blazing light ripped through the forest.
I was back in the trees, crouched and ready to spring, before the beast was on me, but it charged down the highway like a metal comet.
It wasn’t a beast at all. The horseless metal carriage passed, and I glared after it. The acrid taste in the air was much stronger after its passage.
My sunlight was right. I no longer felt true fear, but there was a trepidation in my soul at what I faced in this new world.
I abandoned the highway, leaving behind the humans in their metal carriages. The taste of the smoke had quelled my appetite for the time being, every cell in my body rebelling at the thought of feeding next to it and inhaling that filth.
It would’ve been easier to stay below in the darkness, where everything was simple, and time never really changed. Now I was free to drift the halls of the basement, finding the iron door that stank of Mallory and death, tracing the fingernail scratches gouged into the walls as I passed.
It was a terrible place, but it was the only place I knew.
At least my strength was back after feeding on several deer, and I was no longer an ashen, shrunken creature, but the predator a vampire was meant to be: sleek, lithe, powerful. My skin was the burnished bronze it had been in life. Scents were so much stronger.
As long as I could control myself, my sunlight would be pleased.
A rumble escaped my throat as I passed through the dark forest like a shadow. Walking into her dreams was so much easier when I was sated; all I had to do was find a quiet place, close my eyes, and pick out her slumbering thoughts among the multitude of others.
Several had called out to me in their sleep, but I ignored them, focused entirely on the one bright dream that beckoned me with open arms.
I’d tried so hard to restrain myself the first time I took her, but it was impossible to hold back. Now that I was stronger, I no longer felt her dream in my own body like a pale echo, but as intensely as if it was happening to my physical self.
Her hot blood tasted like the ripe nectar of the gods’ own fruit on my tongue, and nothing could’ve held me back after that. I reached out to her with my mind when my fangs punctured her silky, tender flesh, giving her the gift of ecstasy while I fed on dream-blood.
By the time she was clamping around me, her hips bucking, my cock was painfully hard in life where I stood in the forest. I gasped, both dream-Locke and real Locke, took myself in my hand, and released myself into her and on the forest floor at the same time.
As grateful as I was for the gift of dreams at all, I didn’t just want this imitation. I wanted to feel her tight wetness wrapped around me in life, her sunlight and woodsmoke in my nose, the sweetness of her blood filling my mouth.
But I didn’t trust myself yet. Hunting the deer had brought my more savage impulses to the surface. Controlling myself in dreams, where things were slightly more muted, was much easier than facing reality.
Cimmerian’s wall rose above me and I jumped easily to the top, my feet moving between the iron spearheads. Something nagged at my memory as I stared out at the manicured lawn, the sickly-sweet scent of roses poisoning the air, but it slipped through my fingers before I grasped it.
I dropped into the grounds, blending seamlessly with the shadows of the wall.
Lucrezia’s scent emanated from the forest and I followed the tree line, tasting her on the air. In many places her scent was faded, but when I came across a clearing with flattened and torn grass, she might as well have been rolling in it herself right at that moment.
My lips curled back over my teeth. She often smelled of other men when she visited me, a fact I didn’t believe she was aware of. One of them was one of the night-creatures. The other was the warlock who’d failed to strike a bargain with me only months ago.
The smell of that warlock was here in the clearing with hers, his own scent dripping lust and tinged with irritation.
I would continue to tolerate him for her sake. Surely Lucrezia would be furious if I fed from one of her lovers for petty revenge.
But knowing he could get so close to her, while I couldn’t, was galling.
Another woman’s scent was here as well, but she was new, not as ingrained as my Lucrezia and her warlock. I wrinkled my nose at her needy, spiteful smell and turned away.
If I went to her window, would I be able to resist? I was so much stronger now.
Instead, I paced the gardens, my feet guided by a foggy intuition. At the center of the rose garden was a courtyard with a sunken floor. A riot of nearly-black roses grew from the basin, but something about the area caught my eye and froze me in place.
Another memory tickled the back of my mind. Something else had been here once… but I couldn’t remember anything beyond that.
A low rumble shivered through the air. One of the night-creatures stepped around the hedge, his pointed head lowered, and icy eyes fixed on me.
They had achieved an impressive strength with their forms. The wolf’s paws were as large as my own hands.
“Name yourself, night-creature, unless you wish to be blooded.”
The wolf rumbled again, circling the bed of black roses until it was between us, and began to shed his wolfskin for his human one. I didn’t tell him that I could cross that distance in less time than he could blink.
“Look who’s talking,” the night-creature said. I raised my head and sniffed.
I had smelled this one on my sunlight before, the night she’d broken my chains.
“What are you doing out of the basement?” he asked,
crossing his arms over his chest. He was as tall as I was, an equal match in height and build. “Oh, let me guess… Blondie decided there wasn’t nearly enough crazy shit wandering around in here, and she thought you deserved a chance to fuck things up, too.”
“Lucrezia freed me, yes.” There was no point in dissembling to this adversary. He spoke of her like he knew her well. “I have no intention of… fucking things up.”
The statement felt crass and absurd, but also satisfying.
The night-creature examined me from head to toe, his handsome face twisted. “What are you to her, anyway?”
“I am her…” What was I? Her dream-lover, yes, her suitor of the shadows, but… if I told this man she had a lover, would he look down on her? Everything was different now, but some things never changed. “Friend.”
He snorted disbelievingly, circling the basin of black roses. “Sure.”
“Do you doubt my Lucrezia’s honor?” I bristled, drinking in the hot scent of his blood. I’d never tasted the blood of a night-creature before.
The night-creature looked at me askance. “Your Lucrezia. That’s a mighty definitive claim of ownership over a friend, if I do say so myself.”
“I never said I didn’t love her. Only that she considers me her friend.”
He finally stopped pacing, only ten feet from me, and glanced aside at the black roses. “At least she does one of us,” he muttered.
“Explain yourself.” If he was the reason my sunlight had smelled of tears… I would ensure he didn’t live to see the light of dawn.
“I don’t think so, vamp. Right now, you’re intruding on my time, so why don’t you tell me why you’re lurking up here?”
I sensed that this night-creature didn’t want to fight me, so I forced my own muscles to relax. He didn’t speak of Lucrezia with hostility, only a deep sense of sadness.
“There is something that draws me to this place.” I gestured to the black roses. “I may have… known it before, in my previous life.”
“How long have you been around?” he asked, taking the steps down to the garden’s edge.
