She hopped to her feet to reach for him, but Thaddeus circled her. She glared at him. “Let him go.”
His fangs dripped from his mouth as he smiled. “Now why would I do that?”
She glanced over at Michael, who was restrained by two large vampires that eyed his virgin neck with obvious hunger. Adele gulped. She only had one card left to play. “Because if you do…if you do I will return to you.”
“Adele, no!”
Her defeated eyes met Michael’s. “I can’t lose anyone else I love, Michael,” she told him sadly. “I just can’t.”
Thaddeus descended on her, his eyes glowing blood red. “You haven’t changed at all, Natasha.”
His mouth widened as he dove down toward her, and she closed her eyes to brace for the pain of his fangs buried into her neck.
Instead she felt herself snatched up into powerful arms. The wind hit her face as she was yanked from the hotel window out into the night.
She clutched her rescuer’s neck out of sheer terror as they soared together high above the towering trees of the forest. She wanted to scream but couldn’t find the voice to do it. She knew that she’d been spared from Thaddeus, at least temporarily, but she hardly felt any safer in the arms of a creature that could shoot through the night like a comet.
That was, until she realized that soft hair fell over her arms, and the hard chest she was molded to felt achingly familiar.
Her gasp was lost in the wind as her eyes searched the face of the one who had saved her. It was her Nicholas – her Nicholai – right down to the dark eyes and the mole that pierced his cheek. Tears flew from her face as she wrapped herself around him, memorizing every detail of his body pressed so tightly against her own. He trembled beneath her, but hadn’t yet said a word. She was too elated to worry. Her love had returned. She didn’t care how or why.
They spiraled toward the ground and crashed through the roof of the deserted ranger’s station. She rolled away from him as soon as the embrace was broken, and he turned his back on her so that she wouldn’t see what he had become.
“Nicholas…” she reached for him but he turned away from her. His shoulders shook. “Nicholai, look at me.”
There were fresh tears on his face when he finally complied. His eyes glowed unnaturally yellow and two fangs sprung from his mouth as he watched her from where he stood just mere feet away. He could smell her blood, and wanted more than anything to taste her flesh on his tongue. This wasn’t a sexual hunger like the one he had burned with for hundreds of years; this was a raw hunger to consume the very essence of her. She was in danger as long as he was here with her, but he knew if he dared leave she’d be in even more danger.
The moments they shared were stolen. They always had been. And soon Thaddeus would make sure they paid for it.
That was, if Nicholas didn’t make her pay with her life first.
“Don’t come any closer,” he growled when she tried to approach him. “Don’t you know how dangerous I am?”
“I’m not scared,” she said, and she really meant it. She remembered how it felt to be in his shoes. She hadn’t hurt him when she was a vampire; she knew he wouldn’t hurt her now that he was one. Their threat was beyond these four walls, and she’d fight all the demons of hell to savor each moment she got to spend with him.
Though he knew he should, he didn’t move away from her as she came closer. There were tears in her eyes when she finally stood before him, and touched his face with the palm of her hand. “I thought I lost you,” she whispered.
A lone tear raced down his cheek. “You did. I am a monster now. Just like the rest of them.”
“I’ll take you any way I can get you,” she murmured, and then pulled him into her arms.
He groaned as her soft body pressed into his own. He touched her hair, tracing the strip that ran down her scalp. When her soft lips touched the nape of his neck, his knees nearly buckled. His body immediately responded to a hunger that had gone centuries unsatisfied. A love never consummated could no longer be denied the minute his eyes met hers. He bent for a kiss, and tried to ignore the fangs that suddenly filled his mouth.
She kissed him back hungrily, completely disregarding that he could be anything other than her eternal love, Nicholai. This was their night. This was their chance. And she wasn’t going to let it pass by again. She lifted herself up against him as he pulled her up into his arms, her legs locking behind his hips. His body sprang to life in ways that excited him and scared him. “I’ve never wanted anything as much as I want you,” he whispered.
“I’m yours, Nicholai,” she promised. “Today and for always. Heart, body and soul.”
Their mouths met in a sweet kiss, but passion quickly overtook them. He drove his tongue into her mouth as she wrapped both arms around his neck to pull him closer into the circle of her soft body.
He eased her down onto the floor. It was dusty and hard, but they didn’t care. Their mouths were locked together in kiss after heated kiss. Her fingers tore his shirt open and pushed it from his massive shoulders, as he slid his hands up her torso under her own shirt and beneath her bra, brushing his thumbs across each nipple as he explored each full breast. She grunted in frustration as she ripped her shirt away to bare herself before him.
He couldn’t speak as he looked down at her body, the moon illuminating her shimmering skin. She was a masterpiece; there had never been another who could ever touch her beauty or satisfy his desire. “My beautiful Natasha,” he breathed as he pulled her close. She filled his embrace like a missing piece of the puzzle. “I dreamed about you every night for two hundred years,” he said against her lips, his hands sliding down her graceful back until he cupped the full curve of her hips in his hands.
“No pressure,” she teased as she rained tender kisses along the ridge of his strong shoulder. He clutched her to him when she reached his neck. She spiraled tiny circles of love against his salty flesh, before sucking his skin into her mouth. He growled from the hunger that incited deep within him.
Her hands slipped down his back and down under his pants to press him closer. He thought he would burst into flames as her fingers slid around the waistline to the front, dipping low to cup his rock hard erection. Her tiny bare hand against his stomach as she released him from his clothes felt like a cool piece of heaven. When she surrounded him with her fingers, he leaned his head back with a sigh. He wound his hand in her hair as she sweetly tortured him. “Natasha,” he groaned. “I need you.”
She spread out on the floor and pulled him down on top of her until they were laying bare chest to bare breast, and this time he was the one kissing her passionately on the mouth, fangs be damned.
She drew his hand up to the generous swell of her breast, and it was the only encouragement he needed to explore her sensitive flesh with his inquisitive fingers. She gasped and gyrated under him as he traced the hardened outline of her breast with the feather-light touch of his fingertip. He tasted her lips and then nuzzled her neck, doing everything in his power to keep his fangs away from her vulnerable veins.
The more restrained he was, the more ardent she became. Her brazen hands explored his body. The hard contours made her hunger for him even more. She pushed him onto his back and allowed her own warm mouth and soft lips to memorize every line of his body until he quivered under her. They rolled together in the midst of soft moans, quiet murmurs and continuous kisses and caresses.
She took possession of his body, and he hers. There wasn’t a square inch their lips, fingers, hands and tongues didn’t touch. He played her body like a finely tuned instrument so that she was delirious with ecstasy by the time he poised over her. She couldn’t form the words that thundered in her heart. She wanted to belong to him in every way that mattered. There was no one else or nothing else.
So she opened herself up and pulled him inside.
He lost himself in her eyes as he felt her body completely close around him as he buried himself within her. Tears sprang in his eyes as
he felt her heal what had been broken for so long. She felt soft around him, like a cloud, and warm around him, like the sun. She was everything he had always wanted, in this lifetime and beyond. His hands wound themselves in her scalp as he slowly began to move inside her. In turn she ground herself against him, needing him so deep inside her they were no longer two but one. They simply could not get close enough. They both wanted to disappear inside the other. It was such a sweet fulfillment to a long-awaited promise that their appetite drove their motions. It was wild. It was raw.
It was love.
Her nails bit into his flesh as she encouraged him to release all his inhibitions. He gathered her legs up by the crooks of his elbows as he drove himself deeper and deeper within her. Like a rocket she took off into the stratosphere, pleasure raining upon her like sparks of a flame that would not die. She screamed his name as she let herself tip over into the abyss. He drove her from peak to peak of pleasure until she contemplated the unthinkable. She wanted to be with him forever. She knew that now. She bared her neck for him but he closed his eyes to the tempting sight of her glistening skin. She moaned. “Make me yours in every way, Nicholai,” she pleaded. “I’m not scared anymore. I want you to do it.”
He shook his head as he rode her harder, bringing her to yet another blinding orgasm. He wasn’t going to turn her. He loved her too much. And love was all he planned to show her.
By the time he came she was incoherent. It was a raw passion that made her feel so complete, yet so empty all at the same time.
She wanted to feel his fangs penetrate her veins the way his body had penetrated the deepest and most intimate part of her. She wanted to once again taste immortality so that she could be with him forever. How could he give her one night of pleasure and deny her an eternity of love?
The tears in his eyes answered the question. He was saving her, much the same way she had saved him so long ago. She wiped the tears from his cheek as she cuddled in the crook of his arm, her bare body covering his own. Neither spoke for long moments afterward. What was there to say? He was lost in a world he refused to let her join.
“So what happens now?” she finally asked.
“I have to go before the sun rises,” he answered quietly.
“Go where?” she asked, though she knew.
“Back to Thaddeus.”
She cuddled against him, pulling him into a strong embrace. She couldn’t even begin to think about letting him go. Not now. Not when he had imprinted himself on her very soul. “He’ll destroy you.”
Nicholas shook his head. “No. He’ll use me to destroy you.”
She wanted to tell him she didn’t care. Maybe it would be worth it to return to Thaddeus if it meant they could be together. But somehow she knew that they would never be together. Thaddeus would never allow it.
So they were both right. He’d destroy Nicholas, and that would ultimately destroy her.
“You have to kill him,” he told her.
She shook her head. “No. I will not lose you again. Do not ask this of me.”
“What about Michael?” he asked, and with a drop in her gut she looked away. How could she have forgotten Michael? And Dani? And Vincent?
The stakes were so much higher than her and Nicholas. And she knew that Thaddeus would use her human family to make her choose him in the same way she chose Nicholas.
The thought made her ill. She couldn’t bear to think of the touch of his claws and the feeling of his decrepit body in between her legs, forcing his sick lust upon her.
Her skin crawled and she shivered so violently Nicholas pulled her closer. “For hundreds of years I’ve watched innocent blood be shed in his quest to reclaim you. Only you can end his evil reign.” He tipped her face up to his. “We’ve toyed with the hands of time to steal back a few moments only. Is that worth our very souls?”
She looked away. Nicholas was worth everything – and yet the price to be paid was so high she couldn’t even consider it.
“If you love me,” he said, “you will do it.”
Her sad eyes met his. She did love him. With all her heart and soul.
And just for one night… he was hers.
She slid her body on top of him and staked her final claim. Unlike that fateful night so very long ago, he did not deny her as she rocked her body against him. He grew hard once again, and he slipped inside the warm recesses of her body. It was his sanctuary, the only true church he had ever known. He watched her as she rode him, languid like a cat. She became a woman at the tips of his fingers, as he touched her wherever it would bring her the most pleasure to touch. Her screams echoed throughout the night and they made love repeatedly until just before dawn, slowly savoring each other and each moment they had left. Not only was it their wedding night, it was every single night they would never get to share from henceforth, condensed to one magical, pleasurable, bittersweet moment.
She didn’t ask him again to turn her. She knew now why he wanted her to remain human.
He was trying to save at least one of their lives once Thaddeus was dealt with once and for all.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Adele didn’t sleep when she returned to her apartment the next day. Instead she sat on her sofa, holding the tiara Nicholas gave her in her hand, staring into the thousands of tiny rainbows cast by the diamonds as she twirled the piece around in her hands.
She was pulled from her reverie by an unexpected knock at the door. Her brow knit as she uncurled her legs from under her. Everyone who would normally come visit her was either missing, indisposed or not speaking to her.
Nothing could have prepared her to see her mother standing on her stoop, her eyes darting around like a scared rabbit that just discovered the outside world for the first time. “Ma!” She pulled her mother into the apartment. “What are you doing here?”
Her mother was a bundle of nerves, and understandably so. She hadn’t gone out in public alone since she was raped by a vampire decades ago. “I had to come,” was her only comment. “To tell you the truth.”
Adele led her mother further into the sanctity of the apartment. As they sat Adele said, “Ma, I already know the truth.”
Brenda nodded. “Then you know what you have to do.”
Adele gulped hard and looked down. Yes, she knew what she had to do. She just didn’t know if she had it in her heart anymore to do it.
“It’s your destiny to do it,” Brenda forced herself to go on. It was painfully clear this is a conversation she had hoped never to have, and it was breaking her heart into a million pieces to have it. “After I was… after it happened… I went directly to the church. I had to know what would happen now that I was,” she paused only briefly to deliver the word that still hit Adele like a gunshot, “defiled. Somehow I knew I was pregnant and I needed to know what would become of children fathered by a vampire. The priest hid us the best that he could, and in that time we learned what there was to know about vampires and those children who were bred to hunt them.” Her eyes met Adele’s. “Children like you. And like your brother.”
It tore at Adele’s soul to watch the agony on her mother’s face as she recanted the story about her firstborn being stolen practically from the womb. “By some miracle he didn’t know about you and you were left in my care. You were the sweetest gift, the dearest miracle, of my life. I swore before God I’d give my last breath to protect you. But somehow…I always knew this day would come.”
Adele grasped her mother’s hands. “Ma…”
“Find your courage, my daughter,” she said softly. “Be stronger than I have been.” She produced one of her many wooden crucifixes and presented it to Adele. This did not have a stand to turn it into a decorative piece like all the other ones she’d carved and sold.
Instead this one looked like exactly what it was – a wooden stake carved sharp to take the life of a vampire, swift and true. Her mother had not been carving religious figurines. She had been creating weapons for a war only her daughter could fight.
Adele’s eyes shot to her mother’s. Brenda just gave her a brave smile. “Sometimes we spend a lifetime preparing for one moment,” she said.
By that evening the staff was tucked away behind her back and under her jacket when she arrived at the hotel well after dark. It wasn’t just Thaddeus she needed to see. She wanted to see her Nicholas, alive and strong, just one more time.
The suite was literally alive with activity the minute she let herself into the room with her key. None of the vampires seemed to be surprised by her presence, and in fact the biggest and strongest ushered her immediately into the tomb room.
Michael was strung up on one wall, and Nicholas was on the other. Her heart was immediately torn which one to rush to first. There was her past life with a soul mate for the ages. Then there was her new life with a man who loved her every bit as much as Nicholai could no longer. In the balance teetered Adele, whose heart was torn by both words she belonged to.
Thaddeus, who sat upon a mock throne on his pedestal, recognized her dilemma and began to chuckle. “My Natasha,” he murmured. “Always motivated by love.”
She crossed her arms in front of her. “And what are you motivated by, Thaddeus?”
He rose languidly and crossed over to where she stood. “Isn’t it obvious?” he asked as he reached out to touch her. Even though his hand remained inches from her face, she could feel his cold skin caress her. “I’ve turned the world upside down to find you.”
“You raped my mother,” she accused.
“She refused to be seduced,” was his unapologetic reply.
“You killed Nicholas.”
“And yet here he is, quite undead.”
She glared at him. “He died the minute you turned him into your killing machine and you know it.”
Thaddeus just smiled as he circled around her. “And yet he did that willingly for you. As did Michael.”
Adele’s eyes shot over to where Michael hung, almost like Jesus on a crucifix, bled and delirious. He was fed upon, but she knew instinctively he had not been changed. He was still alive, and she knew that she had to do whatever it took to keep him that way. She couldn’t curse yet another noble and brave man that had done nothing more but fall in love with a cursed woman.
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