by Cate Corvin
Which I did immediately, straining against her when her back arched.
Victoria drew a sharp breath, her nails digging into my shoulder. “Oh, fuck it, Càel. Just take your clothes off already.”
4
Tori
There were so many things wrong with this situation.
By killing Eluned, I’d taken her place as Morrígna. I was a sister to Rhianwen and Morgrainne. Most importantly, I was Càel’s bloodsinger, not just a convenient lay, but a gift from the vampires’ first Maker.
I was unequivocally going to Hell, so I might as well enjoy it.
Càel growled low in his throat, swirling his tongue around one of my sensitive nipples and sending a thrill through me. I didn’t waste any time in yanking his shirt off, exposing the scarred skin stretched over the broad slabs of his muscles.
He flipped me over, burying me in his bed as his hands worked at the zipper of my jeans. A second later he stripped them off, running his hands down my bare thighs and back up again.
“Take off yours,” I insisted, sitting up and unbuttoning his pants. I knew what I was doing was wrong, but that didn’t stop my pussy from clenching just from the sight of Càel’s naked body, all brawn and thick cock that was already hard.
He crawled onto the bed between my legs, kissing the inside of my knee and working his way up. I leaned back on my elbows, wanting to push him back so I could have my way with him, but the way his tongue teased me was too much to resist.
He pushed my legs apart, pinning them down to the bed. Pleasure danced through my nerves when he parted my lips, running his tongue over my clit in a long, slow stroke that seemed to last forever.
I didn’t even care about his sharp teeth, the danger of his fangs so near a vulnerable spot. Of all the people in my life, Càel was the one I trusted the most, strangely enough. He wouldn’t pierce my skin unless- or until- I asked him to.
Even with his tongue swirling over my clit, that thought disturbed me. Until? I had zero plans of letting a vampire lay fangs on me. Ever.
But instead of disgusting me, the thought of Càel’s lips on my skin, just ready to bite, made me flush even harder, my heart galloping.
He slid his tongue inside me and I arched towards him, my breath caught in my throat. I tangled my fingers in his silky, light gold hair, and his grip on my thighs tightened. He licked and sucked until I was shaking under him, teetering on the edge of climax.
Càel’s low, satisfied rumble when my grip on his hair tightened was what did it. He sucked my clit between his lips, his hand leaving my thigh to slide two fingers inside me, curling them as I clamped down around him.
The orgasm left me a quivering, gasping mess, but that wasn’t nearly enough. I wanted all of Càel, top to bottom, in every way possible.
I pulled him up onto the bed- or rather, he humored me as I made my desires clear to him. I pushed the vampire back, straddling his hips and driving myself down around his thick length. The sensation of him filling me entirely made my eyes roll back.
I fucked him hard, grinding my clit against his hard stomach with every stroke. There was no need to worry about him being breakable or hurt; he’d already pounded me into a brick wall, without a bruise on either of us to show for it.
He sat up and pushed his tongue into my mouth, stifling my moans, and caught my lower lip with his teeth. The sharp tips of his fangs grazed the pink flesh, leaving behind the faintest trace of almost-pain and drawing a groan from me.
His lips moved down over my neck and I let my head fall to the side. His cock in me felt amazing, the shivers of pleasure running through my veins urging me to let go and do it. What would it feel like? Would it hurt, or would having Càel buried in me when he did the deed make it better?
He kissed my neck and nipped the skin hard enough to bruise. For a second I thought he was going to bite, pleasure zinging straight to my clit as he drove upwards. The neck, the spot where vampires bit when they were willing to claim a person as theirs.
I clamped down on him with breathless cries as I came again, but instead of biting my neck, he rolled us over, driving into me with quick, heavy thrusts. The orgasm wracked my entire body, wave after wave of heated bliss swamping me as Càel released inside me.
He curled around me as we came down, kissing the spots that had bruised. I raised a hand to my neck, touching the tender spots, but strangely enough, I didn’t mind.
“I’ve hurt you.” Càel held me like I was something precious to him, the center of his universe.
I shrugged with one shoulder and kissed him, wrapping a leg over his hip. “It’ll heal. I’m not all that breakable.”
“I’ve noticed.” His voice was dry, but his arm tightened around me. “You thought I was going to bite you.”
Ah. So he had noticed his fangs against my neck was enough to make me come. Sneaky. “Maybe I did. That’s what vampires do, right? Or do I have my Shadowed Worlders mixed up?”
“Oh, that’s what we do, mo shíorghrá. Whenever you please.”
I needed to be realistic with myself. Had I wanted him to bite me, or was it just because I’d been in the throes of total bliss? I buried my face against his neck, hiding my expression as I thought, and felt sucker-punched by the conclusion I came to.
I’d wanted it. Every fiber of my being had shivered and come apart at the idea of Càel marking me where, as Sura had said, a vampire marked a person in the place where they showed their love.
Which was ridiculous. I didn’t know anything about him. And love? Please. Love was for push-overs, wimps, and the gullible. Nobody’s dick was so good it’d override every sense of my self-preservation and moral integrity.
Except maybe Càel’s. But I really didn’t need him to declare any sort of love on top of his insistence that I was his bloodsinger.
“We’ll see. Right now, all fangs are off-limits.”
“Of course they are.” Càel cupped my face. “My fangs are the only ones that will be permitted to touch you.”
“I mean all fangs, Càel.” I leaned into his touch and pulled him tighter. “Even yours.”
“You’ll change your mind someday.”
“And what if I don’t?” I challenged, meeting his eyes. “What if in twenty years you still haven’t tasted my blood?”
He gave me a feral sort of grin. “Ah, so you expect to be with me in twenty years.”
“That is not what I meant, nor does that answer the question.” I pushed away from him. Presumptuous goddamn vampire.
Càel pulled me back. “I want you to want me, Victoria. Until the day comes that you ask me to do it, I will continue to live on bland, tasteless blood.” He gave a small, sad sigh.
A misgiving twinged at me. “Do you feed on the women Thraustila brings in?”
The night Càel had kissed me, when the bar was shut down for Thraustila’s blood-sports, I’d seen him kiss and lick the neck of a bleeder. Inexplicable jealousy had speared through me.
The same inexplicable jealousy I was feeling now.
I thought Càel might call out my jealousy to needle me, but instead, he propped himself up on his elbow, his soft, blond hair brushing my face. “Only the wrist, shíorghrá. It’s necessary to live.” He gripped my wrist, rubbing his thumb over the network of greenish-blue veins. “The day you offer yourself to me, I will taste no one else from that day forward.”
He stared into my eyes, a frightening amount of intensity in his gaze. All I had to do was say the word, and one of the world’s most infamous vampires was mine forever.
If that wasn’t scary as fuck, I didn’t know what was.
And the fact that I was feeling relief because Càel didn’t get any sexual pleasure out of the other women he fed on wasn’t good. In fact, I might classify it as a total catastrophe. This wasn’t a committed relationship; I had no business wanting him for more than sex.
Hell, I had no business wanting a vampire for sex at all.
I tried to pull my wrist out of his hand, but he
just pinned it to the bed over my head. “Well, don’t hold your breath,” I advised him. “I’m not a blood vending-machine.”
“I’ll hold my breath for as long as it takes, Victoria Holmwood.” He rolled over me and found my lips, silencing whatever objections I had until I forgot them entirely.
Càel allowed me to leave Bathory alone, but not unmarked. When I checked myself in the cut-glass mirror of one of the club’s many bathrooms, his not-quite-bite marks stood out against my skin as lavender and plum bruises.
Guess even a thousand years wasn’t enough to outgrow the hickey phase.
Not that I minded all that much. Every muscle in my body was still pleasantly sore from the workout he’d put me through, my constant stress and anxiety settled. For now.
The vampire-driven car dropped me off a block from Libra Academy. It silently pulled back into traffic after I shut the door behind me, and I strode to the museum’s front steps.
A dark figure waited there, leaning against a pink marble Corinthian column. Will. The last person I wanted to see, his hands stuffed in his pockets, looking like a kicked puppy dog. Good. “Victoria.” His voice was raspy and harsh. “Where’ve you been?”
I stopped in my tracks, glaring up at him. “Oh, sorry, I thought you weren’t my keeper. Or my prefect. Where I go is none of your business, asshole.”
“It’s three in the morning,” he said, taking one step down towards me. “You weren’t in your room.”
All the warmth washed out of me, leaving ice behind. “How did you know that?”
Were there more hidden cameras? They’d gotten one past the electronics-frying Faerie once, and they could do it again. But where could they possibly hide a camera in the almost-bare room I lived in now?
“I knocked for fifteen minutes.”
“Yeah? And it didn’t occur to you that maybe I was sleeping and didn’t want to be bothered?”
“Well, you weren’t sleeping, were you?” Another step closer. I braced myself, planting my feet firmly on the pavement. If he thought I was going to back down, he was so very, very wrong.
“Are you spying on me, William? Gathering more damning evidence to give to Dad?” His jade eyes flashed pale fire when I called Percival ‘Dad’. The man might’ve been my stepfather, but he could never replace my real dad in my heart. Stooping to Will’s level and playing these games made me feel like I’d rolled in sewage… but it was also the easiest way to hurt him. A satisfying cheap shot. “Letting him know Whorey Tori is out gallivanting around, making more sex tapes to send to all his pervy old friends?”
He finally stopped, his jaw tight and lips set. “No. You left alone, and I wanted to know you were okay.”
We stared at each other for a fraught moment that felt like an eternity. “I don’t need you to look out for me,” I finally said. “I just need you to stay out of my face.”
I pushed past him, but three steps up, I spun on my heel, a question rising to the surface of my mind. This was my first chance to speak alone with Will since everything happened. “What did you mean, it was my fault?”
It was his turn to look up at me. He looked exhausted and haunted, with a black eye on top of the lavender under his eyes. “I’m sorry, Tori. I never meant for any of it to go like it did. Not your picture of James, not the saliva… I didn’t realize what it would do. How bad it would be.”
I waved my hand, brushing aside his apologies. “I don’t care what you’re sorry for. It’s too late for that. Explain to me why it was my fault. I’m not the one who struck the match or lit the fire. All I did was exist around you, and you took out all that hate on me.”
“All you did was exist? You-” He stopped himself, his throat working as he swallowed back words. “You still have no idea. An entire person is gone because you asked Father to make Constance comfortable. Vanished. Like we were just paper dolls for you to arrange. Remember what you said the first time you ever saw me?”
I stared at him, my fingers curling at my sides. “No.” All I really remembered from that vague blur of a day, with Mom’s fugue gone in favor of a manic frenzy, was Will’s cruel comment after I’d introduced myself.
His expression split into a humorless half-smile. “‘He’s no James, but I guess he’ll do.’” His head cocked to the side like he was already bored and couldn’t wait to leave, imitating my body language from that day.
Shame burned in my gut. Now I remembered.
I’d spent three hours that morning trying to get Mom to take her medication. Then there was the wedding gown fitting. Saying goodbye to everyone I knew in Port Leona before she packed us off to a cold, isolated mansion. Percival’s grimace as he took in our trailer and the subsequent flood of hot anger at his judgment.
The moment I’d first seen Will from a distance, walking across the massive lawn of Godalming Manor towards us, my nerves had been so frayed I’d wanted to throw up. He was so cold, so austere, so beautiful… so far from everything my real brother had been.
Mom had asked me what I thought of my new brother, and my temper had finally frayed and snapped. New brother? Who needed a new goddamn brother? I’d said those exact words, my mind full of James and how easily she’d overwritten him in our lives.
I hadn’t realized Will had overheard me, or how shitty I’d sounded. All I’d been able to think about was how much I wanted to go home. I didn’t want us trapped in that mansion with all its empty halls and the domineering man who ruled over it all.
“So I deserved to have my life ruined because I made a rude comment?” I asked quietly.
“No.” He held out his hands. “No, I’m sorry. I blamed you because it was those words that set everything off… but it wasn’t your fault, and I know that.”
“Thanks, Will, for that enlightening babble. You’ve really clarified things for me.”
I turned to go, but his hand caught my wrist, holding me a vise-grip. “You’re bruised.” He touched the violet mark on my throat, his frown growing deeper. “I… are these teeth marks, Tori?”
“You wanted to show the world what I am,” I said with a shrug. “Don’t act like you have a problem with it now. Besides, he didn’t break the skin.”
“Whose teeth? Càel’s?” His frown was positively stormy now. “Were you in Club Bathory?”
“I’d really like to see you try to plant a camera in his bedroom. Watching him rip you limb from limb might be even better than fucking him.”
“They are from him. You’ve been with Càel.” He released my arm and I brushed off my sleeve, giving him my most winning smile.
“Do you have a problem with that, Will? He was the one who kept me safe the night you fuckers beat the shit out of me and drugged me. He dressed me and gave me a ride home.” I leaned in close. “Think on that. A mass murderer took care of me after the Tenebris prefect forced demon spit down my throat. The irony.”
“Is this your revenge, then?” His eyes looked more hollow than ever.
I laughed, feeling genuinely cheerful again. The poor little lamb. “Oh, no, not at all. Not even close. I’m doing this because I want to. My revenge on you hasn’t even begun.”
5
Sura
Will’s endless chasm of self-loathing and remorse was a total downer.
Rather than wallowing over my own part in our fucked-up antics, I was a little more concerned about the black gulf of pure hate that filled Tori. It would’ve been a lot easier to figure out how the fuck we were going to apologize if my bond-brother wasn’t in a constant state of misery.
Objectively, we both deserved to feel it.
My essential self was now divided into two parts. One facet understood humanity and feelings. Will’s remorse was my remorse; Tori’s pain was so acute it took my breath away. No matter how deeply it cut that she despised all demonkind, I’d drawn her in and then stabbed her in the back.
Every time I saw her, regret burned in my stomach like a smoldering coal. Everything I’d wanted had walked into my life, and inste
ad of treasuring that gift, I’d ruined her.
The other, smaller piece of me was self-righteously angry. She hated us. The tiny black tattoo at the apex of her spine told me all I needed to know.
It was at times like these, when I was brooding over that dot and how inconsequential my life was to her, that I lost what I’d learned of humanity and fell deeper into the abyss, back into the demon I was before.
The demon I was before I met Will. Rude, careless, entertained by the notion of pretending to be a teenage slayer. The objective my Prince gave me was simple: get close. Watch carefully. Slither my way into their hearts, minds, and beds until no secret was safe from me. Attend slayer school with Will and learn the lay of the land.
If slayers knew how many demons attached themselves to their families and houses, they’d shit bricks.
Turns out Will was pretty good at slithering himself. Hence, the Cords of fucking Fate that refused to let me go.
Today, there was more than just the endless chasm of bitter regret thrumming along those cords. There was a spike of sharp, hot anger, too.
“She’s fucking Càel.” He watched her across Ermengol’s training grounds with narrowed eyes, his lips set.
“Càel… the White Wolf?” It was my turn to be surprised. Tori was willingly fucking a vampire? There was no way.
And yet, I’d felt her lust for him myself, no matter how deep she tried to keep it buried.
“How many Càels do you know?” Will asked impatiently. “Yes, that Càel. She said he was the one who…” He stumbled on his words. “He was the one who took care of her the night I drugged her.”
He’d gone pale under his tan as he spoke. Meanwhile, the object of our regret picked up a sword on the other side of the training court. Beatrice Glover tried to trip her, but Tori rammed the sword’s hilt to the side, smashing it into Glover’s kidney.
