by Alex Lidell
“I think I’m done taking orders from you.” I wrap my arms around his neck and my legs around his waist, digging my heels into his hard backside so hard that he groans. It’s my turn to take his mouth. No asking, no permission. My tongue strokes his, taking command.
And I’m airborne before I can draw my next breath, lungs emptying with a whoosh as I land stomach down on the overturned punching bag. I gasp like a fish, my head spinning with primal need.
Reese lands behind me, one powerful hand pressing down into my back. With a harsh shove, he rolls me forward over the bag until my ass is high in the air.
A ripping sound fills my ears as my training pants are shredded off me. Bare from the waist down, bent ass up over a punching bag. Pinned. The sudden vulnerability of the position has me rearing back, but Reese’s steel hand holds me easily in place. The restraint only drives my arousal higher, making my breath come in sharp pants.
Moisture drips from my sex, slithering along my heated skin.
Reese rubs his hands along both my thighs, slathering them in my wetness as if it were fucking hand lotion.
My cheeks flame. “You’re an asshole, Reese.”
His hand lifts off my ass and comes down with a hard smack.
“Fuck!” I scream. Fire explodes across my right cheek.
He slaps the other side, but this time, I groan, the pain transforming into blinding pleasure. I arch my back and push back against him, begging for more.
I feel something hard press against my entrance. Hard and large and slippery wet. My hips rise to meet it.
With a growl, Reese pins me down and sheathes himself inside me in a single stroke that makes me scream.
The invasion is so complete, all I can do is gasp for breath.
With Reese inside me, I feel the tension in his body as he stills, letting my channel adjust to the great size of him. Except I don’t want him to wait. Don’t want to adjust. I want him to fucking take me already.
I open my mouth to curse him again, but Reese beats me to it, thrusting deep with a hard groan. Again. Again. He finds a punishing rhythm, pounding into me with precision too perfect to be human, every delicious stroke making my channel clench and pulse for more. I gasp for breath, wet slaps of his sac striking my skin echoing shamelessly through the training room.
I take every hard thrust, unable to move beneath Reese’s shackling hold, unable to do anything but feel.
19
Sam
Heat fills my core and pools in my channel, the little spot Reese’s cock hits with every thrust singing from need.
The canvas rubs my clit each time he pounds into me, making me moan unintelligibly and grind my hips harder against it. Driving me closer and closer to the edge, faster than I’ve ever gotten there before.
The sensations are overwhelming. The friction of the bag, the rasp of his cock against my soaking, sensitive flesh, his callused hands gripping my hips with bruising vampiric strength.
Just like he bruised my wrist in training.
I stop cold for a split second, disbelief ricocheting through me.
Reese. Reese is inside me.
The same cold-eyed vampire who pinned my chest to the mat, who stood over me a week ago and screamed into my ear until I collapsed sobbing into the sand. Who ordered me to obey him in the shower. Just thinking about that makes my blood simmer even hotter, a cry falling off my lips as my hips undulate faster along his rock-hard length.
Reese punishing me. Reese pinning me down against this bag with unyielding hands. My breath comes in short, sharp gasps as the edge grows dizzily closer.
What’s wrong with me? Am I fucked up to be so turned on by this? Last week, I barely knew this male and…and now I can’t imagine him ever pulling out of me. The edge grows further away, my mind spinning with doubt.
“Stop thinking,” Reese growls into my ear, halting my runaway mind in its tracks.
Before I can say anything, he pins me down harder. This time, his hand in the small of my back is so heavy that my hips have no room to move at all. Not even to undulate to the rhythm of his hard thrusts.
I struggle against the pressure—and feel a tiny, needle-sharp point brush my neck. I freeze, blood whooshing in my ears.
I hold still, afraid if I move, he’ll stop. The pressure increases, making me mewl with want. I want him to bite me. I want him to take what he wants. I moan into the mat. Reese inhales sharply, then pulls away, seeming to collect himself.
Fuck me. This is so, so wrong.
“Wrong?” he echoes, and I realize that I spoke my thoughts aloud. A moment later, he slides out of me, and I whimper at the loss of him.
His palm comes down hard on my ass, turning the whimper into a yelp.
Shit. Oh, shit that hurt.
“I said, stop thinking,” his voice rasps behind me. I gasp, inhaling the vinyl scent of the blue mat, my fingers raking along it. Reese lands a second slap, the sting focusing my mind on my burning ass.
Even as I clench in anticipation of what’s to come, I welcome the fiery heat, the way it vibrates straight to my clit. Moisture slithers from my sex, slicking my skin and the punching bag I’m helplessly bent over.
When the next one lands, I scream with the impact, one breath away from the edge.
Reese yanks my hips up and flips me over so my back is flat on the mat, my half-naked body splayed out before him. He towers over me, more breathtaking than he’s ever been, pale face sculpted with focus, blue eyes piercing mine.
The mountains of his shoulders and pecs ripple with tiny muscles as he braces his elbows on either side of me, surrounding me with his scent, his strength. Without warning, he shifts his hips to thrust deep into my channel. When I gasp, he takes my mouth, plundering it as he pounds into me, driving us up the vinyl mat, driving my need up, up, up. I scream against his lips and wrap my legs around him, using the leverage to slam my hips against his so the slaps echo off the gymnasium walls.
His mouth shifts, brushes the side of my neck, his cool breath waking my skin. Then I hear his fangs unsheathe, feel those sharp points again, trailing across my skin until goose bumps light up every inch of my body. I whimper, wanting more. More pressure.
“Samantha,” he whispers, and his fangs just break my skin.
I scream, the wave of orgasm starting at my sex and shooting uncontrollably through my body. My muscles clench around Reese, my toes curling beneath the wave of pleasure so intense, it almost hurts, my channel spasming around his hard, pulsating cock. Again. Again. The aftershocks continue raking through me even as I gasp limply for breath, as Reese groans and his own release spills inside me.
After a long, gasping moment, he pulls out of me with a gentleness that is utterly unlike what we were just doing. Helping me up, he settles me with my back propped up against the punching bag and crouches before me, his brilliant blue eyes studying me intently. Damp dark hair frames his unfairly beautiful face, a thin sheen of sweat glistening on his forehead. Reaching out, he runs a thumb along my cheekbone.
“How are you doing, Samantha?” Reese’s voice is a low rumbling caress that echoes through me.
“Reese—” I start to say and stop, not knowing what to say. That was… That was mind-blowing. Hot. So much so that…that I can’t stop trembling even now from the storm of sensations raking through me. I shift, wincing as my sore ass presses into the floor.
Sore because Reese… Heat fills my cheeks.
The male smirks.
Fuck it. He knows exactly what I’m remembering. I shut my mouth without saying anything. Shut my eyes too, my heart picking up speed. The past half hour was incredible. The height of pleasure. Of intensity. And yet the things I let Reese do to me—the things I enjoyed him doing to me—they’re not who I am. Certainly, they’re not compatible with who I want to be.
The warm glow that has been tingling though my body plunges to ice, shame shoving every ounce of contentment from me. I let a man hold me down. Restrain me. Make me take him as he wante
d. Reese ordered me around. He…spanked me. Hard.
What kind of person likes that? Loves it. What’s fucking wrong with me that even the memory of his iron hold makes my head swim with arousal.
“I need to go,” I whisper.
A flicker of pain crosses Reese’s face, vulnerability flashing in his eyes before he buries it beneath that mask. “What’s wrong, Samantha? Something changed. Talk to me.”
Yes, no shit something changed. I came to my senses and found them not one bit happy with me. I push myself up, ignoring the hand Reese offers. Lifting a hand that suddenly feels heavy as lead, I brush the small spot on my neck where Reese just punctured my skin. A tiny smear of blood comes away on my finger. Yeah, to top off everything else, I not only let a vampire bite me, but found it hot instead of terrifying.
Reese watches me look at the blood, standing silently as he scans my face, trying to read what I’m thinking. “I didn’t drink your blood, Sam. I would never do that without your permission.”
My pants are a torn black mess in a corner of the mat. I pick them up and walk unsteadily over to my bag, pulling out the spare uniform skirt that I always keep in there.
It takes me three tries just to get my first leg into the skirt, Reese’s hand twitching toward my elbow before I glare at him. The whole room seems cold now. Strange.
Reese brushes his hands over his face. “Talk to me, Samantha.” The request turns to command, his British accent growing clipped. “Did I misread your body? Did you not enjoy what we did?” He holds very, very still, waiting for my reply.
“I enjoyed it fine.” That’s the problem. I turn my back to him to change my racerback tank for the uniform blouse from my bag. “I’m on birth control, in case you were worried,” I say over my shoulder, my words dull.
“I know. I have your medical file.”
Yeah. Of course he knew that. Reese knows everything about my own body better than I know it myself. “May I be dismissed, sir?” I ask without turning around.
Reese steps in front of me, cutting off my route. “You can tell me what the bloody hell just happened.” His blue eyes flash at me, his hands opening and closing at his sides. “One moment you are wet and—”
“Stop!” Blood rushes to my cheeks. “I know exactly—” I cut off with an angry snap. I know well enough what I did without Reese spelling out my shortcomings for me again. Or maybe the vamp doesn’t consider them shortcomings. Maybe in his world, that is how women are supposed to act. Submissive and happy about it. “I don’t want to talk. I want to leave. May I do that, sir?”
“Sam—”
Grabbing my bag, I hurry out the door before waiting to hear the end of his sentence.
20
Reese
Reese tossed his phone onto Cassis’s leather couch and stared at the glass of whiskey his brother—Cassis was his brother no matter what Reese had said to Victor—had placed before him. The liquid reflected the sparks of overhead light. Taking the glass, he downed the drink in a single shot.
“You are broody, even for you.” Refilling Reese’s glass, Cassis crossed his legs and leaned back in his chair. In black silk trousers and a French-cuff white shirt, the male looked positively polished—but Reese knew it was just another skin. Reese had been there in the centuries when Cassis’s sword was the deadliest known, and the ones when Cassis had traded that sword for a scalpel and dove into medicine. And when Cassis walked away from that too. Dusk was the latest in the male’s adventures. But Reese had to admit, when Cassis threw himself into something, he went all the way. And currently, Cassis had his sights set on him. “And if I’m going to be sharing my good whiskey,” Cassis continued, taking a savoring sip of his own drink, “it seems only polite that you should share something in return.”
Reese gave him a dark look.
“Do let me savor your pain, Reesand. I want all the gory details.”
“I came here to get drunk, arsehole,” Reese told him.
“Yes, about that.” Cassis refilled Reese’s glass, which was somehow empty again. “You are a vampire, I must remind you. The amount of alcohol it would take for you to get drunk…well… Let’s just say you should settle in for a long night of effort before you can enjoy the effects of oblivion. On the bright side, it’s wonderful for me from a business perspective.”
Reese snorted. Cassis was not lacking for funds—none of them were. Hell, when you have investments with over six centuries of yield on them—especially when you make smart choices—well, there were advantages to immortality. None of which was currently of any help with the fact that he’d gotten ripped apart by a witch. Again.
“I took Samantha,” Reese blurted.
“Took?” Cassis studied his whiskey. “Are we having trouble with words, or did the witch not participate in the decision?”
“Of course she participated,” Reese was on his feet at once, the glass he’d been holding crushed to bits in his grip. The notion of forcing a female—any female—repulsed him. Samantha had wanted him. He had smelled her arousal as plainly as perfume. Hades take him, the way the witch’s body had responded to him was enough to make him hard even now. The control it took to keep from ending things prematurely had strained Reese in a way he’d never felt before. Not even with… No. He wasn’t going to think of his wife. Not now. Not when he could still feel the tightness of Sam’s channel around his cock.
Bloody fucking hell. Reese walked to Cassis’s window, looking out over the sparkling lights of downtown Talonswood.
He’d kept the memory of his wife alive for four hundred years precisely by avoiding entanglements like this one. The moment he’d given in to the temptation with Sam had felt like plunging off a cliff—terrifying, and probably just as deadly. This wasn’t what he’d wanted. Just like their last lesson, when he hadn’t meant to carry her broken body into his own shower and wash her clean. She did things to him. He walked in with one intention and walked out with his body and soul turned inside out.
The coupling had driven Reese insane. Made his head swim with want and need, and something more. Something even stronger than that.
When he had slid himself into Samantha, he’d felt a jolt of life energy shoot through him, taking away his rare breath. As if something long gone had returned for a spell, only to disappear again when Samantha turned her back on him. Reese still felt the reverberation of that blow.
“I let my cock get ahead of my common sense,” he snapped at his brother. “Given that this is an everyday occurrence for you, I thought you’d understand.”
“I take no one I care about to bed,” Cassis replied.
Reese looked at Cassis for a long moment, then dropped himself back onto the couch. Yes. Yes, that was exactly the bloody problem. His body had roused to Samantha’s since the moment he let her out of that damn limo in front of the Academy, the painful throbbing of his cock a regular companion anytime he looked at the girl too long. With the red streaks in her hair matching her fire-filled personality, those full breasts and full lips he couldn’t help but imagine closing around his cock, Reese’s anatomy hadn’t stood a chance. But that was all it ever should have been. Anatomy. Physiology. Infuriating, but nothing more.
He should never have allowed himself to do anything as stupid as care.
Taking the witch to get his need for her out of his system would have been one thing. He knew he could ensure she enjoyed herself, and Hades take him, her body had responded to his like a tuned violin. Especially once he got that busy mind of hers to stop thinking so much. Fuck. Maybe that was where he’d gone wrong. He should never have allowed himself to savor Sam’s plunge into discovering her pleasures, never tried to take her to the next level of trust and arousal. That type of thing created too much of a bond. Or the illusion of one.
Ironically, the joke was on him. Reese had poured too much of his soul into the whole thing, showed enough of himself to the witch to give her access to the part of him that could still be hurt. He hadn’t meant to. But once he was i
nside her, it felt as though something inside him unlocked and wouldn’t close again.
And when she’d turned her back on him at the end, all her body shouting her regret at having allowed him inside her, it had fucking hurt. Worse, the darkness that had settled around him when Samantha walked out of the training room was closing in more with every passing hour. Suffocating him.
“I think you are talking to the wrong creature,” Cassis said, taking another sip of his whiskey. “Ellis appears to have lost whatever passes for his common sense after bedding Samantha as well. You two can get together and self-flagellate as a pair.”
“The arsehole thinks you are connected to the witch as well, you know,” Reese said. It was a jab, but he didn’t care. Not with Cassis sitting there all smug and controlled as if he hadn’t a care in the world. “You and me, and him and Asher. The whole horsemen foursome.”
Cassis’s face darkened, his eyes flashing. “No one made you stick your cock into a witch, brother.” He finished his drink, setting the glass carefully back down on the table. “Not you, not Ellis. I think I’ll make my own decisions as to what I do with that particular body part. Unlike you, I know when to let it do the thinking and when not to.”
“You feel it, Cassis. The damn pull. That’s why you have Samantha working at Dusk,” said Reese.
Cassis shrugged one shoulder, his anger hidden as quickly as it had flashed.
Reese’s gaze fell onto his phone, the screen flashing with yet another message from Jack. His hand went to the Delete button by habit, stopping a millimeter away just in time. His jaw tightened. Fuck it.
He got to his feet.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Cassis asked. “You’re still a good ways away from getting plastered, which I thought was the purpose of this little brooding session.”
