Spicy, deep, so good. I rolled him onto his back and straddled his hips, catching his erection between my pussy and his stomach. His hands caught my hips and held them firmly, trapping the heat building between my thighs, heat and lightning and throbbing desire. I needed to move, needed to ease it and the shadows. More, they cried in a slithering chorus, take more. I closed the wounds with my tongue and kissed his chest, angling for his throat.
His fingers tangled into my hair, winding ‘round and ‘round, holding me tightly. “No more, not yet.”
I squirmed and struggled, fighting the hands, unable to break his hold, and the shadows rose up, engulfing me in their dread weight. Silly man. He was my prey, not my guardian. Who was he to deny me nourishment?
“Breathe through it, Gigi. Come on, now. Take a breath and let it go.”
I didn’t want to let it go. I wanted his blood, so dark and beautiful, needed it to appease the shadows. I opened my mouth and scraped a fang down his chest, breaking the skin. His fingers tugged hard on my hair, pulling my head steadily away from his chest until our eyes met.
“I said no more.” His voice, so low and soothing before, turned hard as granite. “Find your control.”
I blinked at him, battered by the cold glow in his gaze. “I need…”
“I know, baby. Take a breath for me.”
I shook my head and he laughed.
“Stubborn. How about a trade, then? You push down the beast, tuck it out of sight, and I’ll let you have another kiss.”
My breath wheezed in and out of my lungs in shaky gasps. “Kiss me now.”
His mouth curled into a smile. “Not yet.”
I glared at him and wiggled my hips as much as I could under the firm grip of his hand. Triumph surged through me when he let go, and was cut short by the stinging slap he delivered to my bottom. The shadows dissipated abruptly, leaving me dizzy. I slumped against him, limp and drained and utterly astonished. “You hit me.”
“I did,” he said mildly. “Go to sleep now. We’ll talk about it when you wake up.”
I didn’t have enough energy left to argue. My eyelids slid shut and I drifted into sleep where I lay, draped across his broad chest, cradled in the arms of my second husband.
Chapter Two
I woke surrounded by heat, pinned in place by a solid weight, muddled by the hazy remnants of sepia-toned memory. A deep voice, the rough feel of a ball under my hand. The sun shining down, warming my skin, and the smell of freshly turned earth. The rumble of a tractor moving smoothly through the fields as music thrummed in my ears, hard and heavy.
Pleasant, nostalgic, sweet, and I knew right away that it wasn’t supposed to be lodged in my head. The tumble of light and sound and smell was memory, yes, but not mine.
The anchor around my waist tightened and warm air puffed across the side of my neck. “Mmm. Morning, baby.”
Jason’s arousal pressed into my bottom, bold and firm. I tilted my hips back and rocked, sliding his erection along my panties. He hissed in a moan and pulled me into him. “Don’t tempt me. All I’ve thought about this week is how you feel wrapped around me.”
“You could’ve had that earlier.”
“No.” His hand inched under my shirt, cupping my breast. “Earlier, you had to find your control.”
I hid a grimace in my pillow. Damn him and his control. “I haven’t forgotten how you hit me.”
“That was a love tap, just a little something to get your attention.”
“You liked it.”
“Oh, yeah. Do it again, if you’ll let me.” His thumb rubbed over my nipple, teasing it into a tight nub as he peppered butterfly kisses along my shoulder through the thin material of my t-shirt. “Will you?”
“What, let you hit me?”
“Spank, not hit.” He nipped, and I arched into him, eager for the heat his touch bestowed. “Pull down your panties and bend you over my lap with your firm ass in the air, spanking you until your skin is dark and your pussy is wet.”
My muscles tightened and ached, and I breathed out a laugh. “It already is.”
“Hmm.” His hand trailed down my stomach and dipped into the waistband of my panties. A moment later, a single finger slid along my sex, perfectly centered over my clitoris. “So it is.”
Up and down his finger stroked, ratcheting the heat pooling there a little higher with every pass. “Jason, please.”
His finger eased down and circled around the opening of my pussy. “If you’re gonna beg, you need to be more specific.”
A tentative tap hit the door and Alice called softly, “Are you awake, Gianna?”
Jason’s laugh feathered across my skin. I groaned and clamped my thighs around his hand. “She’ll want to come in.”
“Let her.”
“You have to stop.”
“Not a chance in hell.” He wedged his hand deeper between my thighs and slid his finger into my pussy. “I’m happy right where I’m at.”
“You’re so bad.” I covered my cheeks with my hands, hiding the heat flaming there, and raised my voice. “Come in.”
Alice poked her head in and her eyes went wide. “Hey, Jason.”
He propped up beside me in the bed and added a second finger to the one stroking in and out of me. “Hey, Alice. We were about to have hot monkey sex. Wanna join us?”
“Jason,” I hissed.
Alice compressed her mouth into a thin line. “You already have my answer on that.”
“Just checking to see if you’d changed your mind.” Jason lowered his voice and placed his lips near my ear. “Alice there won’t have sex with me, won’t even take my blood. She’s eager enough for Eric’s, though.”
I shifted on the bed and glanced between Alice’s suddenly pink cheeks and Jason’s knowing smirk. “She’s had sex with Eric?”
His expression hardened as his fingers stilled. “Jealous?”
My kneejerk response was yes, but I drew back and considered. One of the first things Alice had confessed was how hard it was to find a good pet, someone with rich blood who was also trustworthy. I gathered there’d been a recent problem with this and, because of it, my vampire aunts were running low on willing donors, forcing them to rely heavily on bagged blood, as I did, or on the unsuspecting.
How could I leave them to that fate when I had the means to ease their hunger?
“If Alice needs Eric and he doesn’t mind, who am I to stop them?” I held my hand out to her, silently urging her to join us on the bed, for companionship, if not sex. “It’s not like she’s going to try to take him from us.”
She crossed the room and sat beside me, grasping my hand within her own. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
“There, you see?” I smiled at her, my first friend in the Now. “Though I hope you won’t hesitate to use Jason, if you need him.”
“Hey, now. Maybe I don’t want to be used.”
Alice laughed. “Says the man who pouted when I refused him.”
“Did not,” he said with a grin.
“Did, too,” she retorted. “You wouldn’t believe the lengths he went to to change my mind. Backing me into an alcove…”
The memory hit me with the chill of the winter sea, splashing over me so abruptly I gasped…
(…Come on, Alice. I know you need blood. The press of a hand, the wild scent of a man’s blood, echoing like the crash of cymbals along the semi-circular walls. Not you, Jason. I can’t…not you…)
“…stealing blood from my wrist during a dance.” Alice clucked her tongue. “Naughty.”
I trembled from the cold of the memory evaporating, leaving a hollow for the shadows gathering in my mind to fill. “You shouldn’t’ve done that, Jason. She loves someone else, God, so much love, so much pain.”
He jerked his hand out of my pussy and rolled me onto my back, yanking the covers up around my chin. “The fuck, Gigi. You’re shaking like a leaf.”
Alice rose from the bed. “I’ll fetch Elizabet.”
“No,
don’t, p-please. Stay.” I huddled against Jason, teeth chattering, fingers curled into the sheet. “I’m ok.”
“You’re freezing. Jesus.” He chafed his hands up and down my arms under the bedding. “What happened?”
“Memory, not m-mine. Alice’s m-maybe?”
She blinked at me. “That’s not possible. My mind is closed to you and we have no blood bond.”
“I f-feel you all the t-time.”
“When I reach out to you or when I feel you reaching toward me.” She exchanged a glance with Jason. “Only the very strong can penetrate a vampire’s mind, Gianna, and frankly, you’re not whole enough, not yet.”
“Still heard it, saw it. S-smelled his blood. J-Jason said, know you need it, and you s-said, not you, c-can’t, and I f-felt the happy light for…someone. Him, you can’t have him.”
“You’re in love,” Jason murmured. “Is it true, Alice? Is that why you won’t take from me?”
“It’s not relevant right now,” she said stiffly. “We need to warm her up. Give her your blood.”
He slashed his thumbnail across his chest and nudged my mouth toward it while Alice slipped off her shoes and climbed into bed on my other side, cocooning me between Jason’s furnace-like body and her lesser warmth. I curled icy fingers into the space between us and dug into the cut with half-dropped fangs. Hot blood trickled in a slow, spurting stream into my mouth, and with it came the shadows.
“None of that now.” Jason slipped a hand between my legs and delved under my panties, touching me as he had earlier, but harder, rougher, sending me soaring with need under the quick jerks of his fingers. “Can’t have you vamping out on us again, not after we conquered it earlier.”
I focused on his hand and not the blood, and searched for a memory to hold in my mind, something good. Anything to keep the shadows at bay. I found it in him, at the forefront of his mind, waiting as if he wanted me to find it, like earlier when he’d shown me his memory of how we’d met. In this new memory, he was nude and laying on a couch. Eric knelt between Jason’s legs, his mouth and hand working Jason’s erection, and I sat beside them…
(…are you ok with this? Oh, God, was I. Wanted to be with you a long time…)
I relaxed as the memory washed over me and fell into its comforting weight, letting it wrap around my mind in much the same way that Alice and Jason had wrapped themselves around my body.
Alice spooned me, aligning her legs with mine, and rubbed her hand in slow circles over my hip. “What were the two of you doing before I came in?”
(…why didn’t you say anything? The rustle of clothing, her thigh under my hand. God, she was so beautiful, so perfect and sweet, and I was a backwoods farm boy. Thought you were too good for me…)
“Having sex,” Jason said. “Talking.”
“Anything unusual happen?”
(…want to feel your pussy. Her eyes went round and she glanced at Eric. I laughed softly. He sucked me deep into his mouth and I bit my tongue, stifling a gasp as my hips arched into his touch. It felt so good, so Goddamn good. Only one thing could make it better. My hands on her, inside her, making her come. I promise, he’s not watching what we’re doing now…)
“I shared a memory with her earlier, trying to help her find her own. She vamped out for a minute, but we brought it under control soon enough.”
His words yanked me out of the sweet haze of memory. I mmmd and scratched his chest and clamped my thighs tight around his hand, stilling the delectable rubs and twists of his fingers.
He laughed. “I spanked her luscious ass once.”
Alice tutted. “And you wonder why I won’t take you into my bed.”
“Prude,” he said mildly. “We dozed for a couple of hours and really, that’s all that’s happened since I got here.”
He rubbed his chin over the top of my head and his spicy scent washed over me. My nose twitched as an undertone stirred memory. Jason hadn’t always smelled like that. I closed my eyes and concentrated on the memory he’d given me when he’d first come to me. His memory, yes, but something I could use. I played it over and over again in my head while he and Alice talked softly beside me; examined the angles of the light, the background noises he’d memorized without knowing it, and his smell, soft and natural, like rain falling on dirt.
My eyes popped open and I ran my tongue over his skin, sealing the wounds my teeth had made as I swallowed the last mouthful of blood. “You were driving a tractor. Um. A combine, maybe?”
His jaws snapped shut with a click. “What?”
“When I woke up, you were driving a tractor and listening to music.” I glanced between their worried expressions and rushed on. “It was your smell that reminded me. You used to smell like rain and now you’re kind of spicy.”
“Pheromones,” Alice said. “Pets exude pheromones, a lot or a little depending on how far along in the turn they are. It’s why they’re so attractive to mortal and vampire alike. With Eric as your master, as strong as he is?”
“I’m pretty damn far along. I used to smell like rain, huh?” Jason smoothed my hair away from my forehead. “Only problem is, you’ve never seen me driving farm machinery of any kind.”
“What were you dreaming of, just before you awoke?” Alice said.
His mouth curled into a slow grin. “What do you think?”
“Not tractors, then.” Her hand slowed on my hip. “You really need to ask Elizabet about this.”
I grasped her hand. “No, please. I’ll do better next time.”
“She’s not going to put you back in the cage, dear girl.” Alice turned her hand over and held mine tight. “In fact, that’s why I’m here. The three of us were supposed to go shopping this afternoon.”
I released the breath I’d been holding. “I forgot.”
“If my favorite were here, I’d forget, too.” Alice smiled gently. “There now, you’re all warmed up. Feeling better?”
I nodded. “Thanks for helping me.”
“Anytime. I’ll reschedule our shopping for next week. You’ll need a new dress for your birthday and a gown for your coming out party.” She squeezed my hand and bussed my cheek, then slid off the bed. “We’ll talk at the evening meal.”
She was gone before I could ask the million questions floating through my mind. I snuggled into Jason’s embrace, not quite rid of the chill that had held me in its grip. “It’s my birthday?”
“Next week. You’ll be twenty-one. Eric and I were planning on taking you out, doing something special.”
“Can Alice come?”
“Sure. It’ll be fun.”
“She likes you, a lot. That’s not why she won’t feed from you.”
“Yeah? How do you know?”
“She told me, my first night out of the cage. How adorable my boys were, how lucky I was to have you.” I sighed and slid my leg along his. “I think she’s lonely.”
“Hunh. That’ll get better once she finds a favorite.” He brushed his cheek over my hair and tightened his arms around me. “You didn’t happen to see who she’s in love with, did you?”
I shook my head. “I felt love and pain and hunger. She’s not taking enough blood.”
“That’s not good.”
“She can’t help it. It’s something…” I searched through the brief glance I’d gotten and came up with only the most vague impression. “Sad. It almost feels like she’s lost something important.”
“Or someone.” He stilled for a brief moment, then chuckled. “I can’t believe I thought that.”
I leaned back and caught his gaze. “What?”
“Something really, really crazy.”
“Jason, geez.” I poked his ribs. “Tell me already.”
“Would you mind if I brought a guy friend along on your birthday?”
“A guy friend.” My lips twitched into a grin. “For you?”
“Fuck, no.” He shot me a sour look. “For Alice.”
“You want to set a vampire up on a blind date.”
<
br /> “I told you it was crazy.”
“No, this could work.” I turned the idea over in my head, trying to find a weak spot in the plan. “She needs another pet and you’d be able to find someone she could trust.”
“You vampires and your trust issues,” he murmured. “I know just the man.”
“Yeah? Who?”
“You’ll find out when he gets here.” His fingers slid over my clitoris. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get back to what we were doing before Alice interrupted.”
I raked my nails lightly across his chest and inched closer to him. “No spanking.”
“Spoil sport,” he said, and then his mouth came down on mine and he filled my thoughts for a long while afterward.
Chapter Three
Jason stayed with me for almost three whole days. I still had duties and he had to study for a summer literature class, but we managed to spend a lot of time together anyway. Either he would set up his laptops and textbooks near me as I performed my duties, or I would read a book from Elizabet’s humongous library while he studied.
Though my memories were returning in fits and starts, some more painful than others, the love of reading was one carryover from the Before that bore little trouble. I submersed myself in tales familiar and new, in the musty fragrance of the printed word and the faint remembrances of more pleasant times. My mother’s voice as she read to me, the solitude and joy of an hour reading, ensconced in the dormer window in my childhood bedroom. This was never a chore, though Elizabet and Alice both assured me that learning was my primary duty. A vampire could not expect to maintain her position in society without being well-read and conversant on a wide variety of topics, so study I did.
My other primary duty was as an assistant to Elizabet’s cook, Matthias, a stocky middle aged man of German descent. I helped him prepare one meal per day unless excused by more pressing duties, though I never had to serve and he always allowed me to leave in time to dress for the meal.
When we weren’t otherwise occupied, Jason and I hid away in our rooms, watching movies or making love or talking about everything under the moon. His memories bled into my mind as often as my own did, filling me with a deeper knowledge of him than he would’ve wanted, I was sure. As close as we grew, as close as we needed to be, he held back, always stopping short of opening himself fully to me. Sometimes, I reached out to him with my mind, a skill he was teaching me to hone, and encountered an impenetrable barrier guarding the most precious part of him, save his heart.
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