by Tessa Bailey
The way he said excited made it obvious he was understating the truth by quite a lot, as did his eyes. They glowed so hot, the skin of her stomach and thighs was bathed in green. “It just feels so good,” she gasped. “Please don’t stop.”
He groaned into his next lick, using his lips to draw on her nub gently, in between strokes from his tongue. She felt the pad of his middle finger at her entrance and held her breath, the promise of being filled making her realize how badly she ached for it to happen. And when it did, when Jonas’s finger sank home, Ginny’s hips bucked wildly and Jonas visibly lost the battle with his control.
His muscles bunched on a rasp of her name, his fangs slicing out.
“Need.”
Knowing exactly what he meant, she relinquished her right hand’s grip on the bedclothes, sank it into his hair and instinctively drew him to her thigh. “Yours. It’s yours. I’m yours.”
With an expression rife with possession and unholy thirst, Jonas pressed a second finger into her body and bit down hard on her inner thigh, groaning brokenly at the taste of her.
Ginny whipped headlong into an orgasm.
It was all the more brutal and beautiful for its unexpectedness.
Her being didn’t know what to react to. His fingers sliding in and out of her wetness so expertly or the pleasure/pain of his fangs where they punctured her leg, drawing blood for Jonas to devour. One second the spot ached, the next it throbbed like an extension of her sex, sending pulsing ribbons of heat to the juncture of her thighs. And then only the pleasure remained, building and building like a funeral pyre until she screamed, bliss nearly crushing her in its intensity.
“Jonas,” she cried, her body arched in a near fit of pleasure. “Jonas!”
When his head lifted, she expected him to be sated, his hunger fulfilled. She never expected him to look as though he’d been teased. Slowly, he slipped his fingers from inside of Ginny, staring at them for a moment as if they’d been dipped in gold, before sucking them into his mouth.
Her hands moved on their own, trying desperately to get her dress off. She wasn’t sure where the impulse came from, only that she needed to follow it. Needed to feel his chest on her breasts, his stomach on hers.
She needed him inside of her.
Now.
The emptiness was relentless. Lord. Was it supposed to be like this? Like she would die unless he took ownership of her body and soul and never let her go? She could see she already owned his soul, body. Yes, he was projecting that truth in no uncertain terms as he prowled higher, knocking aside her hands where they tried to remove her dress and ripping it clean down the middle, instead.
“Every thought in your beautiful head is translated by this sweet body, love. I asked you to be calm,” he rasped, twisting the middle clasp of her bra until it snapped, then falling on her breasts like they were his last meal. “When you insist on rubbing your pussy against my mouth, you make it clear you’ll be eager when I get you underneath me and I will have no choice but to be rough.” He suckled her nipples in turn with a desperate mouth and by the time he finished, her legs were wrapped around his hips and she was begging for more, all of him, everything. “Please, Ginny, stay calm.”
“I can’t.”
A violent shudder moved through him, his muscles looking as though they could burst free of his skin. “Fuck. I have to stop.”
“No.”
Panic turned his eyes to moss. “I could kill you like this.”
“You won’t.” Ginny forced herself to relax and space out her harried breaths. Ordered her thighs to stop squeezing his hips, her hips to stop shifting. Teasing the distended fly of his jeans and tempting him to take was not helping his state of mind. “Kiss me,” she breathed at his lips. “We’ll slow down.”
His laughter was pained. “Kissing you won’t inspire me to go slow.”
“Look at me.” She stroked the side of his face. “Look at me.”
He pressed their foreheads together and sipped at her mouth cautiously. Their tongues met in a fleeting caress, just a touch, but he groaned like he’d been burned. Ginny slipped her fingers into his hair, scratching her nails along his scalp and let their mouths mate in a slow, rhythmic way that made her sex hot and needy. But she remained still, being seduced all over again by the restrained passion of his kiss, until she was finally rewarded by Jonas dropping his hips into the cradle of her thighs, the denim friction forcing her to trap a cry in her throat.
Jonas kept their mouths poised mid-kiss and reached down to unzip his pants, everything, everything balancing on a razor’s edge. Their eyes locked and remained that way while he drew out his shaft in a fist, cursing as it brushed her damp femininity. “I want to know if you’re hurting, love…” His jaw tightened to the point of near shatter. “But I also worry if you cry out in pain, my soul will leave my fucking body.”
She shook her head. “This is inevitable, remember?”
“Yes.”
“Then trust it.”
Affection, surrender, lust, moved in waves across his features. He fused their mouths together and trailed a hand down, down between their bodies, taking hold of himself and dragging the thick head side to side at her entrance. “Christ be with me, please. Hold me back,” he gritted out, before surging his hips forward and planting every hard inch of himself inside her.
His animal growl almost deafened Ginny, but she was thankful for it, because it drowned out her shocked whimper.
Pain pricked holes in the euphoria his mouth had bestowed. But the buzz of cradling his sex within her body was a thrill that dulled the edges of her hurt. She let her neck muscles loosen, let her lids drift down and reveled in the knowledge of what he felt like inside of her, huge and uncompromising. Male.
“Mate,” she whispered.
Jonas’s lust-fogged eyes found Ginny’s and she let him see her full comprehension of every facet of that word. Not only would she sustain his life, she would feed his soul—and he would do the same for her. Endlessly.
The wordless communication passed between them on the wings of velvet, sealing their fate in the history books and Jonas started to rock, his teeth bared, neck muscles straining. And the pain was no more, compared to her soaked welcome of this man’s flesh. This man whom she loved.
“Mate,” he croaked into her neck, his movements turning more and more frantic, his hips pumping and colliding with her eager ones. “My only. My only. Take me as deep as you can stand.”
“Give it to me. I can stand it all.”
“Ginny,” he warned, then, brokenly. “Oh, fuck, Ginny.”
The lamp on her bedside table popped and sizzled. In her periphery, she swore the lights on the Coney Island skyline dulled and brightened to a higher setting, but she could comprehend nothing more than that. Not with Jonas’s mouth clamping down over hers in ownership, his hands scooping beneath her bottom and holding it securely in place as his pace kicked into a frenzy.
“So much squirming. Keep your tight pussy right where it is, love, or I’ll think you’re trying to take it away from me. We can’t have that.”
Oh Lord. Oh Lord.
Completion summoned her closer, brought on by Jonas’s lack of control. She liked it. No, she loved it. The breakneck speed of him mating her, his grunts of her name, the good, honest sweat he built on her body.
She conformed the arch of her feet to his hips and listened to the resulting string of profanities in her hair. They were a glorious hymn and she wanted to memorize them and sing them out loud, all day, every day, proof she was this man’s salvation and poison in equal measure.
“Look at you, moaning and trying to get your legs wider for me when you ought to be terrified. Beautiful, reckless girl.”
Jonas changed angles, bearing down on her clitoris with rough grinds of his shaft and Ginny’s romantic haze was blown apart by all-out lust. Her back arched on a moan and the green in Jonas’s eyes whipped, holding her in thrall. She didn’t think, she simply followed the urges of h
er body and reached down to claw his backside, urging him to go faster, chanting, “Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t stop…”
Everything happened so fast after that.
Fast and glorious.
“If your blood could not sustain me, Ginny,” he growled, yanking her knees high and throwing them over his shoulders. “I swear this pussy would.”
He stroked into her deep, the new angle allowed that slick, thick part of him unfettered access to that spot—and she couldn’t move her hips to meet him or grind up, she simply had to take it. There was a loud sound coming from a distant land and it took her several guesses before she realized it was the entire bed rebounding off the wall.
The wildness of it was her undoing.
Or maybe it was watching Jonas sink his fangs into the small of her wrist, followed by the further swelling and jerking of his flesh inside her. Knowing he was close to finding unimaginable pleasure after a lifetime of going without. His body stiffened at the same time as hers, his mouth released her wrist and fingers clutched at skin eagerly, pulling one another’s bodies closer any way they could.
Molten heat poured inside of Ginny, mixing magically, addictively with her own release and she found herself flattened on the mattress, beneath a vampire in the throes—and it was a sight she would remember for the rest of her life. His blind eyes and exposed fangs, his thrown back head. His repeated groan of her name.
“Ginny. Fuuuuck.” He lunged for her mouth as if he was scared what might happen if he didn’t kiss her. “You feel so good. It feels so good.”
When he collapsed a moment later, she’d never been more thankful for his beating heart because she could hear it rioting out of control, matching her tempo perfectly, and she loved him so much just then, tears clogged her throat.
He lifted his head, concern a living thing on his face. “Are you hurt?”
“No, Dreamboat,” she managed between shallow breaths, allowing him to draw her protectively into his side. “No, I’m perfect.”
“Truer words were never spoken,” he said hoarsely into her neck, breathing her in like he was already starved for another course of her. “Are you satisfied, mate?”
“Yes. So very yes.”
His relieved exhale stirred her hair. “While you sleep tonight, I’ll try to come up with the adequate words to describe what we did, if those words exist.” He wrapped her tightly in his embrace, tucking her head beneath his chin, his heart pounding wildly in her ear. “For now…suffice it to say, you are magic. My God, Ginny. You are…my magic.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Ginny had never been afraid while inside the dream.
This time, however, she trembled while walking along the path on the outskirts of the fair. The funhouse sounds were distorted now and she could feel the sweat clinging to her palms, trickling down her rigid spine.
He was under the tree. The man in the newsboy cap and suspenders. More than ever, she desperately wanted to reach him. There was an urgency to be with him that had only been present in lighter shades before. Now, she picked up her skirt to run in his direction. Get to him by any means possible.
“Don’t,” he mouthed, stiffening and separating from the tree. “Please don’t—”
The crimson hooded figure moved in her periphery and she broke into a sprint, desperate to reach the man beneath the tree. If she could just reach him, no harm would come to her. His protectiveness was somehow a given. It was understood, though they’d never even had a conversation. The closer she came to reaching him, the more the ominous presence dragged her back, making it impossible to run as fast as needed.
The wind whipped his hat off and for the first time, she saw the face of the man who waited for her night after night beneath the tree.
“Jonas,” she whispered, extending her hand, knowing he’d take it if he could.
Somehow she’d already known it was him that waited, hadn’t she?
Yes. Of course. She’d always known.
Everything went silent.
Silent and…vast.
Still dreaming, but she couldn’t see.
Could only feel the breeze slithering around her bare legs, uneven ground beneath her feet. And Lord, she was cold. A shiver caught her in its grip and wouldn’t let go, her teeth chattering. Her hands lifted to her face and found a blindfold there, across her eyes. Who had put it there?
Where was Jonas?
She whimpered his name as she drew off the blindfold, the air vacating her lungs in a terrified gasp. There was no time to prepare or find her balance. She teetered on the tiny outcropping protruding from the side of the cliff and slipped, falling down…down to the rocks below, her screams ripping in the wind behind her.
Ginny braced for impact that never came.
It never came, but she was blind again. Back on that unsteady ground, the air endless and noisy around her. Noisy. That was different. She couldn’t be back on the cliff. Not wanting to startle herself into falling a second time, she slowly reached up and drew off the blindfold—and trapped a scream of horror in her throat.
Tears scalded her eyes, her knees shaking violently.
“No, no, no, no,” she sobbed, her lips numb from shock.
A body of water spread out in front of her, seemingly going on for miles, dotted intermittently by boats. And they were so small. Lord, they were so small, meaning she was extremely high up. Traffic rushed behind her. Wind thrashed and tangled her hair. Land to her right and left. Bridge. She was on a bridge.
On the ledge of a bridge.
Ginny stayed very still, afraid to even turn around and find a way off the ledge. The wind was so fierce that any shift of her equilibrium could knock her off balance and plunge her to the water below. Water that was nothing more than a horrible, mute blackness.
My heart is going to kill me.
It pumped with such force, her body moved along with the frantic beats.
“Jonas,” she whispered, tears raining down her cheeks. “Jonas.”
Something was wrong. Very wrong, or he would be there. He never would have let her reach the bridge in the first place. She would have to save herself. Not only because she desperately wanted to live, but because Jonas might die without her and the mere possibility nearly ripped her down the middle.
She could die without telling him she loved him.
No.
No, she owed it to both of them not to lose hope. If he was in danger, she would damn well expect him to live. To make it back to her.
There was no way she could stand there for much longer without making a move. That was for certain. Already her legs were wobbling from maintaining total stillness on the tiny ledge—and yes, she knew without looking down that it was tiny, because her toes hung over the edge.
Panic welled in her throat and the condensation of her shuddering breaths wafted around her face. Anger broke through the soil of her fear like a little green sprout, growing larger and larger. Someone had put her here. Someone who wanted her harmed. Dead. Seymour might have been killed, but there was obviously another vampire who sought to do her harm. Had Seymour ever really been the threat to begin with? Whoever put her on this bridge was following the same pattern of not outright killing her, but flouting the rules by putting her in a position to do it herself. And this…just like her trip to the Belt Parkway, would look like a suicide, wouldn’t it?
Whoever wanted her dead might get away with it.
No, she couldn’t let that happen.
With a long, slow intake of breath, Ginny turned her head to the left, searching for a handhold. Anything she could inch toward and grasp, to keep herself from pitching forward into the icy black. There was nothing. Just a flat, light blue wall of painted-over steel. Light blue. I must be on the Verrazano, she thought dimly, trying not to succumb to the despair of finding no anchor.
Carefully, she placed her palms flat on the bumpy surface behind her, breathing in and out. In and out. She closed her eyes and tried to find her center, find anyt
hing that would help her maintain motionlessness.
She might have been able to stay that way long enough for Jonas to find her, if it weren’t for the crash. In a weird way, she felt it coming. Perhaps because of the dream wherein she toppled off the cliff to the jagged rocks below.
This was unavoidable, wasn’t it?
Tires screeched overhead and Ginny braced, her teeth drawing blood on her lower lip. Metal crunched and the bridge vibrated beneath her feet. All it took was the tiniest shake and she stumbled forward, her foot catching nothing but air. It didn’t happen in slow motion, the fall. It was a downward drop at a hundred miles an hour with no control of her body, limbs pinwheeling, a shriek rupturing her vocal cords. Ginny squeezed her eyes shut and in those final seconds, thought of beautiful emerald eyes…
Weightlessness.
Her pulse rioted in her ears. A fog horn wailed in the distance.
No impact.
Nothing.
Another dream?
Had she been having another dream?
Cautiously, Ginny opened her eyes to find Jonas above her, mid-jump. Jumping off the bridge, his hands extended down toward her. As he drew closer, it became obvious that she wasn’t moving. Was she hovering? A peek to the side told Ginny she’d stopped several feet above the ominous, black water.
“I’ve got you,” he shouted, voice hoarse, commanding. “I’ve got you, Ginny.”
He reached her then, wrapped both arms around her waist and twisted, flipping their positions so his back would hit the water first, and everything sped up. They landed with a splash, sinking down into the ink in a swath of bubbles, the freezing cold temperature flaying her skin. It seemed to take forever for them to surface, when in reality it was probably only seconds. Jonas took her face in his hands and scrutinized her closely, rasping indecipherable words to himself, appearing on the verge of total madness.
“You fell. Christ, you fell. You fell. You fell.”
Ginny sucked in a hysterical sound, her adrenaline taking a sharp nose-dive and she burst into tears, a ripple moving through her body before gripping her in violent shakes, stirring the water where they bobbed like buoys.
