by Scott, Helen
Fuck.
I was a control freak in many things, and blood taking was one such matter.
Marcella fed from me freely. Could use me as her water fountain if she so desired, and yet, where I was concerned, I tried to refrain.
Why?
Obstinacy and arrogance.
Now, as I tasted her, heard her pursang call to me, and felt her body writhe beneath me, I knew I’d left it too late.
My pursang was out and now hers was present too.
Things were about to get bloody.
My body reacted on pure instinct as I hauled her into me, using brute strength to drag her onto her knees. I ripped off her shirt, then slid my hand between her thighs. The second I did, I felt her juices seeping through the heavy denim jeans she wore and my pursang growled, even as we carried on feeding from her.
Tunneling farther between her thighs, I found her fly, managed to wedge it open, and then, when that wasn’t enough, I let the pursang free.
I tore through the denim, uncaring that it was stiff and unwieldy. It was nothing in comparison to my strength.
I ripped through seams that were reinforced, not stopping until her bottom half was bared to me.
Through it all, the only sound Marcella made was something discomfortingly close to a purr. It was a constant, low-lying hum that set my bones on fire, fueling my need to ram inside her. To be at one with her.
Maker help me, I cried inwardly, and when I got a response, I froze.
Enjoy the ride, Darius. I doubt you get much time with her without one of those young cock-of-the-walks taking up space in your bed.
A cackle was all I was left with before Merlin disappeared, but the bastard didn’t leave it there.
He could have helped me.
Could have taken away the thirst I felt, not just for Marcella’s blood, but also for her body—the two dueling lusts made things a thousand times worse for her safety.
Instead of aiding me?
He ramped it up until my top lip curled in a snarl and I dug my fangs into the other side of her throat, sucking down her lifeblood like it was the finest Beaujolais.
And fuck, to my pursang and me? It was.
There was nothing better.
In all my many years, I’d experienced more females than Marcella could even begin to calculate. I’d tasted more blood, drank more wine, and lived the finest of lives, yet nothing compared to her.
Nothing.
No one.
My pursang, still in control, tore through my fly with his claws, and with barely any thought, I rammed into her.
She let out a keening sound that drove me insane.
It was hungry and needy and with an edge of pain that told me she felt every single pull as I took from her, as I nourished myself from her body. More than that? I heard her pleasure. Her desire to feed me, to give me what I needed.
We were a symbiotic pair, both of us genetically geared toward ensuring the other was nutritionally sound.
All told, I was surprised she hadn’t forced me to feed sooner than this, and knew it was a testament to the craziness that was our world at the moment that she hadn’t.
But said craziness was for another time, and I didn’t give a fuck about anything outside of my woman’s body.
As I slammed into her, thrusting hard and rough as my Vampire demanded, I remained crouched over her, fucking her like I was an animal.
Tomorrow, I’d be ashamed of what I was doing.
I’d feel guilt and mortification at having let my control falter so badly, but now?
I could think of nothing more than the need to stake my claim on her cunt, to make it mine again and again, until she didn’t stand a chance of forgetting it.
The second she began feeling woozy—her heartbeat slowing down to a dull thud was the only warning I had—I pulled my fangs away from her.
Maker, it was hard.
No, it was impossible.
I wanted her blood back in my throat like I wanted my next gulp of air, but only knowing I’d hurt her helped me stop myself.
Burrowing my face in her hair, I stopped bucking my hips, stopped fucking her, and instead, just covered her as I got my breath back.
It took a long while. I was so out of control that every part of me was shaking like a leaf, and beneath me, Marcella was beyond silent. But the scent of her was like a drug. It filled every part of me, making me aware that she was what I’d been missing every single, lonely year that had passed.
Kronos wasn’t what Vampires needed, pursangs needed their blood mates.
It was devastating that they weren’t as readily accessible for this was what we Ancients needed to keep going. To keep existing. Maybe the council wouldn’t be such bastards if they each had their true mate at their side. Maybe, just maybe, our society wouldn’t have been so corrupt if each Ancient had the joy of their other half in their life.
For myself, I hadn’t felt half as alive as I had since Marcella had come into my world, not for a good five centuries. She’d brought color back into my days, warmth to my body. There was a whole world of shit going down around us, and I didn’t give a damn, because she was here, and I was no longer alone.
The thought had me whispering, “Mate?”
She hummed and the sound was drowsy. Perhaps a part of it was blood loss, but I heard the satiation, knew she was like a cat who had just been fed, watered, and had found herself a spot in the garden where the sun could touch her and warm her bones.
“I love you.”
“I love you, too,” she rasped, the words flowing from her freely, easily. So much so, it made my heart pound with how at ease she was with her love for me.
I rubbed my nose against the side of her head, then let my lips drift up to her temple.
“Do you know how badly I need you?”
She tensed slightly, then swallowed. “I know how badly I need you, so I imagine it’s a level playing field.”
I didn’t argue with her, didn’t say she could never understand because until she’d lived as long as I had, and alone—which she never would—she’d never be able to comprehend just what she’d brought to my days.
Slowly, because she deserved tenderness after my brutality, I began to thrust into her, making sure I hit all those deliciously tender spots deep inside her core, while letting my fingers walk over to her clit. The instant I did, tension surged inside her and her body buckled as she dropped her head, panting breaths escaping her lips as I began to tease her body.
“Oh, fuck, Darius,” she whimpered brokenly, as I took her to the edge. “That feels so fucking good.”
Once upon a time, I’d have spanked her for her naughty words, and hell, I might just do that anyway at some point, but the way I broke her control, this strong woman who was so much more than just a pursang, more than a mate, and now a Mother in the making, made me feel alive. It was like lightning was in my veins and slowly, I began to pump my hips more.
Harder.
Faster.
In time with her sobs, I screwed her senseless, and when she came, she screamed my name, ensuring that not even the pilot would be unaware of what we’d done in the back of the jet.
Not that I gave a fuck as I roared my own release, shouting it to the stars themselves as I buried myself in my woman, and filled her with my cum.
❖
Barclay
“Maker,” I grumbled, hearing the sounds of Marcella and Darius fucking again. The slap-slap sounds were unmistakable, but what was undeniably unmistakable?
How okay all of us were with what was happening about ten feet away from us. Hell, it had woken most of us up, and we were still okay with it.
Most of us were twitching in our seats, but not from jealousy.
From lust.
Need.
And from how hard Darius was fucking our woman, I knew she was going to be out for the count for a few days.
That pissed me off a little, especially with the hard-on I was sporting, but it also amus
ed me to think that Marcella was going to be dealing with business that revolved around the Maker himself all while, deep inside her core, she’d be feeling the fucking her mate had given her.
“Gross. Barclay, stop projecting.”
I grinned at Raven. “Don’t snoop if you don’t want the goods.”
He rolled his eyes. “You were shouting that for everyone to hear.”
Barely refraining from smirking at him, I murmured, “Tell me you won’t get a kick out of that.”
“I’ll kick you if you don’t shut the fuck up,” Gideon grumbled, his eyes still closed as he cuddled up to the wall of the plane, his sweater his pillow.
Huffing, I grumbled, “You’re all boring fucks.”
“What were you thinking?” Cade asked, as he peered up from the deck of cards he was laying out in the set up for Solitaire.
Why the bastard did that when he could just use an app on his phone, I wasn’t sure. In his own way, Cade could be ridiculously old-fashioned.
Maybe that was because time was different for him, or maybe it was because he’d been born a grouch and would die one too… who could say?
“That she’s going to be feeling that fucking for days.”
Cade’s top lip quirked up in a smirk. “He has a point,” he told Raven.
“I don’t disagree, but you know Marcella wouldn’t like us thinking shit like that.”
Rav’s tone was so pious that I broke out into laughter. “Since when were you Pollyanna?”
“Since her brain’s been all untangled,” he retorted, ducking his head as he stared at his book. His ears were pink though, and in our kind, that wasn’t as easy to do as you’d think.
I frowned at him. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about how insecure Marcella can be sometimes.” He rubbed his chest. “Seriously, it’s like she doesn’t fucking realize how badass she is. It’s weird.”
“Women are,” Cade countered, but he wasn’t being his usual jackass self. He wouldn’t be where our woman was concerned.
“True,” Keiran inserted softly, finally pulling out the earbuds he’d been wearing to join in our conversation. “But Marcella was always destined to be more complex than most.”
My brother’s eyes drifted over the weird animals that were sharing the cabin of the private jet with us.
Complex wasn’t the damn word, I thought on a snort.
Still, I found it interesting that my wolf wasn’t pissed off at having other animals close by. I said as much to my brothers.
“Maybe because they’re an extension of her?” Keiran suggested, his eyes once again moving over the animals as they rested on the large sofa in a strange kind of pile, which reminded me of a group of puppies cuddling together after they’d fed at their mother’s teat.
The disconnect between Marcella and them was strange. At first, the beasts’ agitation at being confined seemed to have been etched into Marcella’s fatigue-lined face. So much so, we’d all left her to her thoughts, let her process what she was going through, to the point where we’d all fallen asleep. But the fact that she was being fucked and coming harder than a train through a station didn’t seem to affect them at all.
“Well, if they are, they’re not as much of an extension as I’d have thought,” was all I said.
Keiran hummed. “True. We won’t know until she plays with them more.”
The slapping noises coming from the other room reached a fever pitch a moment before my mate and Darius both made their climaxes known to everyone else on the plane. The Romanian cabin crew—an extra addition to this flight, and one only Darius could communicate with—was blushing furiously back by her station as she prepped some food. People, salsang, human, or otherwise, could be such prudes sometimes. She should be cheering my mate on, not blushing from the sounds of pleasure.
I huffed and went back to the conversation, which had been going on without me while I was distracted by sex. Oops.
After a moment’s listening and catching up, I said, “If they are so connected to her, and share her emotions and whatever, wouldn’t that make them more volatile? Shouldn’t we have seen some kind of reaction from them to that?” I gestured to the door—if you could really call it that—at the rear of the plane.
As though my words had summoned them, Marcella and Darius opened the door and came out into the main cabin. The scent of blood and sex was heavy in the air, making any of the remaining blood that was circulating my body rush toward my cock, until it became painfully hard. It took every ounce of will power I possessed not to lunge from my seat, grab Marcella like I was some kind of fucking caveman, and take her back into the bedroom to make her mine, as though whatever she’d just done with Darius could possibly erase any claim I had on her.
Gideon caught them up with the animals’ lack of reaction to what had happened while I thought about adding to the daze in Marcella’s eyes and worsening the semi-rat’s nest in her hair.
“I think the creatures didn’t react because the longer they are out in the world, the more independent they become,” Darius surmised, as he snagged a bottle of water from the mini fridge. “The longer they are away from Marcella and their own entities, the more they develop their own personalities and quirks.”
As he spoke, I took note of the fact the bastard looked more than simply smug. He appeared more relaxed and satiated than I’d ever seen before, and that was saying something. Marcella, on the other hand, looked pale and as though she needed to sit down before she fell down.
Not one to waste an opportunity, I hopped up, scooped my mate into my arms, and sat back down with her nestled on my lap. She didn’t even squeak at my actions—testament to how weak she was, I figured. My erection strained against my jeans, and having her sweet ass resting against it was a whole other kind of torture, but to me it was worth it, even if all I got to do was breathe in her scent. She calmed my wolf like nothing I’d ever experienced, and that in and of itself would have made me fall for her if I wasn’t already head over heels in love with the woman.
“How much blood did you take, Darius?” Cade growled, sounding pissed as he studied our suddenly fragile woman.
Knowing that Cade would never insert himself into a private session with Marcella—oh no, he’d need to be explicitly invited or he would stay back—I couldn’t help but wonder if he was more pissed that he missed out on the fun or that he was actually worried Darius had drained Marcella too much. Darius, at least, had the decency to look bashful, even if he looked healthier than ever before.
“Don’t give him shit,” Marcella snarled at Cade, surprising all of us. “I told him to feed and my pursang wanted him to take even more than he did, so just be thankful she didn’t get her way and I’m not sleeping it off.” Her whole body was tense, as though she was itching for a fight, which was not something any of us wanted, and definitely not something we could do on a plane.
“Chella, he’s just worried about you,” I crooned in her ear. “All we want is for you to be happy and healthy. Are you hungry?” I inquired, expecting her to shoot me down or turn her wicked sharp tongue on me instead.
“Yes,” she breathed, her longing making her voice sound stretched and thin.
I brought my wrist up, and before it was even in her line of sight, she was biting down on it. She may as well have been fucking me with her fangs, because that’s what it felt like. Every pull she took from my vein felt like she was sucking on my cock. My hips began moving of their own accord, and while I could hear conversations going on around us, it all just washed over me like the tide on the shore.
My only focus was making the woman in my lap happy.
❖
Cade
Watching Barclay hump Marcella like the dog that he was while she fed from him was like watching skinamax through static. I knew something was happening, but it wasn’t doing anything for me.
When he finally came in his pants, my mate stopped slurping down his lifeblood and stood, not because
she was disgusted by what he’d done, but because she needed to continue feeding—I saw the hunt in her eyes, and knew she was going to feed from another of us.
After dropping a quick kiss on Barc’s lips, she sauntered over to me. I glanced over my shoulder and saw the door to the cockpit was firmly shut now—evidently the stewardess had decided we needed our privacy.
Good.
When my eyes roamed back to the space in front of me, I realized that I could tell, just from the way she was walking, that there were no panties on under those sweatpants. Hell, I didn’t even know whose sweats they were—she’d gone in wearing a pair of jeans, after all. What I did know was that I wanted to get my hands on her bare ass cheeks.
When she dropped down in my lap and batted her eyelashes at me, I knew I was just as wrapped around her little finger as the others were… denial was a river in Egypt.
“May I?” she asked, her voice low and sultry.
“Take whatever you want, love,” I replied.
She grinned at me and swiveled in my lap until she was straddling me. “What if I want this?” she inquired, her hand gripping my hard cock through my jeans.
“Sweetness, I don’t think that pussy of yours can handle what I want to do to it after what Darius just did, but if you want it, it’s yours,” I murmured, before nipping at her mouth and kissing her softly.
I wasn’t usually a soft kind of guy. I was rough and ready, the kind of man most people avoided because I intimidated the fuck out of them. But my Chella didn’t give a shit. She saw me for me, and that let me be soft when I wanted or when she needed without feeling like it was an act.
When I nipped her bottom lip, Marcella giggled, fucking giggled, as she slid closer so that her hot pussy was resting on my cock, and I couldn’t stop the growl that left my mouth.
Maker, what this woman did to me was unreal.
Before I could think about it anymore, though, her fangs were in my neck and she was feeding. I knew someone moved but I didn’t care who or why. My awareness slipped away shortly after that, and my hands slipped between the waistband of the sweats and the soft, porcelain skin of my mate. I squeezed and kneaded her luscious ass, while rubbing my cock against her pussy the whole time she was feeding.
