Ash chuckled and he groaned, shuddering under her as she tightened around him.
“Fuuuuckk… You keep that up and I might come again.”
Ash leaned down, pressing her lips to his neck. “I wish to sink my fangs into your neck and drink from you.”
The thought made Tristan shut his eyes and shudder. His cock took notice of the promise of round two, too. “Yes,” he all but hissed.
Her lips curved into a smile against him and then she was kissing the hot flesh below his ear. His hands wandered and filled with the curve of her ass. Her flesh wasn’t so cold anymore.
He turned his face into her neck and whispered, “Love you…”
“Yes.”
Inside her, Tristan was fully hard again. He was surprised at his own stamina, but then she ground herself against him to let him know she noticed, making him forget his own name.
“And I love you.”
He groaned, dug his fingers into her hips and flipped her over without losing their deep connection. She gasped when he rammed against her roughly. Something in her eyes flared and Tristan recognized it a moment later as hunger.
“Yeeesss,” she hissed and urged him to move against her, rolling her hips up into him. And he did. He pulled back slow, achingly so, making her gasp and clutch at him.
He smirked at the desperation in her eyes to be filled again. Slow and careful he slid back into her until she was a breathless, shivering mess of vampire desire under him. Her heels hooked around his ass and she tried to pull him into her faster, but he refused to go fast and hard right now.
“More,” she moaned.
“Hmmm,” he hummed, lips brushing against her neck just below her ear. “Slow.”
“No,” she gasped, tightening her hold on him. He felt a sample of her true strength then, that if she wanted to take from him, she could and he wouldn’t be able to say no. “Harder, faster. Fuck me, Tristan.”
“Fuck,” he hissed. “It’s sexy when you curse. But.” He lifted up onto his elbows. “No,” he answered in a gravelly tenor. “I don’t want to fuck you right now.”
She frowned hard, a touch of fear there she couldn’t hide from him.
“I want to make love to you the way you deserve.”
Her breath was lost for a moment and then she sighed, letting go of all of her tension and smiled. “I’ve never made love to an Uruwashi before.”
So whatever she did with Mamoru wasn’t—no, he was a friend and missed, but this wasn’t his moment. It was Tristan’s. His and Ash’s.
“First for everything,” he said with a smirk and pressed a hand over her right breast. “Thank you, Ash. I know—I’m scared too, but I won’t let anything happen. To either of us. Not if I have any say in it.”
“Move,” she ordered in a breathy whisper. “Show me how the Uruwashi make love.”
What he meant as a snarky response turned into a primitive groan and he had to force himself not to ram against her as her words lit a fire inside him. The hand he had pressed against her chest lifted and when just a breath of a touch was left tingling between them, he raked his fingers over her the curve of her breast. He smirked when she shut her eyes, biting into her lip, obviously fighting herself to not move and force him to touch her nipple.
His fingers glided lower, grazing ribs and then he pressed down hard enough to feel her muscles taught and eager. His hand wandered, smoothing over her hip and he lowered his chest down on top of hers again. She sighed contently at his weight pressing her into the grass and his lips on her neck.
Her own lips went to his neck, moving slowly in time with his own mouth, just a tiny taste of flesh. It wasn’t until his second pass that he realized she was mirroring his movements, almost exactly. Hips still moving achingly slow against her, he groaned and opened his mouth, pressing his teeth to her flesh.
The feel of her two sharp fangs sitting on the surface of his skin, waiting, threatening, teasing, was almost too much for him. He remembered back to the second night he stayed with Ash, of her in his mind while he dreamed and the boldness with which she took what she wanted from him. And now, the sensation of those teeth slipping into him would be real, a memory that his flesh would never forget.
Tristan took in a deep, shaking breath through his noise and bit down onto her neck, hard. He braced for what he thought it would feel like to have his skin torn open by two sharp teeth, but then his imagination wasn’t nearly as tactile as the real thing.
He gasped, his slow, careful pace against Ash faltering as the initial shock of being bitten made him forget everything but the feel of those teeth in him. It was quick, her strike, and clean, but he felt every tiny molecule break under the pressure and then the wall of his vein being opened. A tug on his heart. Then the fangs slipped out as easily as they had gone in and the tug on his heart tightened.
She drew his blood into her.
Her sultry moan seemed to reach right into him, slip through his blood and curl around every vessel and ignite them in pleasure until he was overwhelmed by it. He moved faster and harder against her as she pulled swallow after swallow of his blood.
A cry that the others from the house must have heard burst from Tristan as he found his second climax of the night and Ash, tipped over the edge by his orgasm, submitted to her own. A strangled cry echoed out of Ash and he realized she nearly choked on the blood as her whole body curled in tight to clutch desperately at him.
After a moment of panting, after his vision cleared, Tristan whispered, “Are you okay?” He rolled over so that they were on their sides facing each other.
“By the Goddess,” she said in a breathy whisper, “I should be asking you that.”
Satisfied and exhausted, Tristan smiled. “I’m great… just really tired now. God, what’d you to me?”
“Sorry, I fear I took too much. It was so hard to stop.”
He laughed a little. “Yeah, it was good for me too.”
He licked his lips in a nervous little gesture and Ash sobered, obviously reading him. He touched his neck. “Did you… You saw my life?”
“Tristan…”
He shut his eyes and sighed. “Yeah, I guess you saw everything.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
He snorted, opening his eyes to look up at the sky over him. “About what in particular? What was more of a shock to you, that I was drunken loser the past year of my life, or was it the arrests? Or maybe it was almost being charged with rape? Fuck, that woman was crazy…”
Kim Levine, just some random hot girl, willingly signed up for a night of random fun with Tristan, only to renege the next morning, disappointed in her lack of self-control. It was only the girl’s roommate, who happened to join them during their sex-fest, that vouched for Tristan’s innocence and set him free. But it was a close call. He left Maryland shortly after that—it was an eye opener for him, a nudge in the right direction to un-fuck his life.
“Or was it—” He hesitated, unsure if he could say the man’s name aloud now that he knew the truth. He coughed to clear his throat and choked out, “Sebastian?”
She lifted her hand as if she meant to touch him but stopped halfway, drawing back into herself. She sat up and turned to face him. “I’m so, so sorry for what happened to you. You—”
“Yeah,” he said in that same strangled voice. “I get it. One-hundred percent.”
“Tristan, I—you.” She sounded so disorientated that Tristan’s hackles rose and he turned stiffly to look at her, suddenly very tense.
“What?”
She bit her lip for a moment, her eyes full of questions she was hesitating on asking aloud. “You remember… everything?” Obviously, she knew what he did. But she didn’t seem to be able to accept. Didn’t want to, he guessed.
He frowned. “I remember hurting you before we left for France. I remember Lucien, how I…” He licked his lips, the ghost tang of vampire blood upon them. “I drank your blood and it gave me strength, changed me. I killed Lucien with your
blood fueling me.”
She shut her eyes and nodded.
“Was I… Did I scare you that badly?”
She opened them again, meeting his eyes. “Yes. You were terrible and glorious.”
“Ash,” he started but she cut him off.
“You remember because—” She stopped and took in a deep breath, her eyes boring into his. “Because of the same spell you gave me?”
He nodded.
“And your deal with Trevor was to help free him from Nastasia for the truth about your lineage?”
Tristan nodded numbly. He should have asked Trevor about it before he left with the fae. “Ye—yeah. He says even without Lilith telling him, he knows what I am. He… he can smell me, that it’s a lycan thing. I know that’s the one thing he held back from you when you bit him… Do you know what he means?”
Her eyes widened and she swallowed hard. “I—I fear I do.” Jesus, did her voice just quaver? “Do you have my biblos here?
Tristan frowned at the familiar ache in his belly screaming “danger”. “What—”
“My biblos,” she repeated. “My spell book.”
He straightened, eyes widening. Oh god, what did he do? Had he hurt himself with that spell? “It’s in my car.”
Ash stood in a rush, holding out her hand to him. “Come with me, now.”
15: Animal I have Become
THEY were both dressed and standing in the kitchen at the center island going through the box of spelling supplies that Kiba had packed so carefully earlier that day.
“Ash, seriously, you’re starting to freak me out a little here.” He put a hand over the sore on his neck. The bite was starting to itch but he didn’t think it was the right time to ask Ash to give him her blood for it. Not that he was at all interested in it, not like had been interested in Lucien’s blood. Maybe that was a fluke, but then he remembered how he had attacked her in the shower back in Japan and frowned. Did that still haunt her, the memory of that night?
She flipped open the cover of her biblos and turned to face him but wouldn’t look him in the eye. She was positively vibrating with unease. “Show me the spell you used.”
“Okay,” Tristan said suspiciously. As he flipped the first page he felt a strange sensation that he could only describe as a squeezing around his brain. He flinched and Ash gaped at him in return.
“You heard that?” she asked.
“Heard what?”
A moment later Wren was coming down the steps looking stunning in an yukata with his hair pulled back from his face. He might have had make-up on too. The deep V-cut of his kimono showed clearly that he was a boy, but that didn’t make him any less beautiful. Even Ash seemed momentarily distracted by his striking splendor.
Wren came into the kitchen and stopped, looking concerned. “You called for me?”
Was that what he felt? Ash calling Wren?
Ash glanced nervously at Tristan. “Yes, you and Tristan need to tell me step by step what you did to make that spell you gave me.”
The vampire’s eyes shifted to Tristan and widened when he noticed the two neat holes on his neck. “Ano… Hai, hai. Mochiron.” The man seemed distracted like he wanted to ask Tristan about it but knew better than to defy Ash when she was like this. “Is there a problem? Are you ill?”
Ash’s jaw tightened as she glanced at Tristan. Looking at Wren, she said, “Tristan took it too.”
Wren nodded, glancing at Tristan in turn. “Yes, he did. The very same.”
“Please,” Ash said, motioning to the book. “Show me.”
Wren joined Tristan at the counter, his attention flicking to Tristan’s neck and away quickly when he lingered too long.
“Do you mind?” Wren asked Tristan softly with a nod.
“Hm? Oh right.”
The book felt more… alive than it did last night. It tingled under his fingers, felt good. He glanced at Ash. Was it relevant? And why the fuck wasn’t he saying anything? Could be something to do with that lump at the back of his throat.
“This one,” he said and stepped back, wiping his hand on his jeans. Wren looked it over and agreed with a nod.
Ash was watching him closely but said nothing. Not to Tristan anyway. She turned abruptly to Wren and started to speak to him in some of the fastest Japanese Tristan’d ever heard. Seriously, she took no breaths and the words nearly ran into each other. He wasn’t sure how the other vampire, as gifted as he was, could even understand her.
Ash stopped each of her long-winded sentences with a huff of frustration at Wren’s answers and after several stops, she finally let out a hiss through her teeth and turned her attention to Tristan.
“What? What is it?”
Wren wouldn’t look Tristan in the face and his panic peaked.
“Damn it, what?”
Ash took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I let you have your space after Mamoru’s death, but it is time we talked about it.”
Tristan furrowed his brow, glancing at Wren then back to Ash. “Whoa, what the fuck—what does Mamoru have to do with—”
“Please. Just. Listen.”
He scowled belligerently at Ash.
“He was my friend too, but there is an importance to his death that is relevant here.”
Tristan huffed but nodded for her to go on. Mamoru was Uruwashi, so yeah, he was totally relevant. Tristan didn’t want to remember his failure at keeping his friend alive.
Ash let out a long breath as if preparing herself. “I ended Mamoru-san’s life, took his last blood.”
Tristan’s mouth dropped open at his own stupidity. God, how could he not think of it? It was just like with Malik. Maybe he just didn’t want to think about what she saw, to actually hear it. He tried so hard to stop thinking about Mamoru, to get over the loss of what could have been that he’d all but forced the possibilities of Mamoru’s legacy left behind in Ash’s mind off the table. “You saw…”
She nodded. “He showed me everything he knew about the Uruwashi.”
“And?”
She shared a worried glance with Wren. “Depending on how much Uruwashi you really are and my strength, which is considerable for a Master, then you can expect your transformation to take up to four days.”
“Four days—like a vampire.”
“Yes, but you are free to roam. No coffin.”
He said a silent thanks for small consolations.
“If you were a normal Uruwashi then you should start feeling my emotions soon, then hearing my thoughts as well as others thoughts as your power takes hold. My seikonō is now yours but it too will take a few days to become a part of you and then you will need to train with it to use it properly since there is no transmute stage for the Uruwashi. You may or may not lose your teeth to grow fangs or have mild light sensitivity, food aversions… New strength should be yours the moment I bit you, as well as a stronger constitution after you’ve had a full feeding of my blood—which, we must do soon. Whatever you will become will take full hold within the next four days…” Her voice lowered and went cold. “If you were a normal Uruwashi.”
Maybe he was feeling Ash’s emotions, but Tristan was near bursting with anxiety. “If I were normal,” he repeated in a hollow tone. “But… I’m not. We already—”
“Yes. And that brings me back to this.” Ash lightly placed her hands on the open book. If it bothered her the way it bothered Tristan every time he touched it, he couldn’t tell. And Wren couldn’t touch it at all. “Wren says this is the spell you used for my memory—our memory.”
He looked down at it. “That’s right.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Wren was nodding, but looked a little pale, especially next to Ash who wore Tristan’s blood as a pink flush to her cheeks.
Ash swallowed, her nostrils flared. “And you used your blood in this spell, yours alone.”
“Yeah, that’s right.” He showed her the small bandage on his left wrist, the one she’d been carefully avoiding looking at. “Why, did I do it
wrong? Because you seem okay now…” And he sure felt normal enough.
Ash let out a shaky breath as she pushed herself up on a barstool. She and Wren exchanged a look and Tristan frowned. Shaking her head, she lowered it to her hand, running her fingers through the dark strands. “I really do not know how to say this.”
“Holy Christ, Ash. Seriously, I’m about to lose my shit here. Just say it already.”
She shook her head, looking off at nothing. “It should be impossible. It is impossible.”
Wren uttered his own shocked agreement.
“Dammit, Ash—”
“The spell was mistranslated. What Wren understood to mean as a simple blood offering was actually a blood quickening…” She looked him in the eye. “As in, a pythia’s enzyme activation.”
He let that sink in for a moment then stuttered, “S—so, wait. You’re saying the spell we used called for a pythia’s blood to activate it, right? So then… It didn’t work? ‘Cause there was no pythia blood added, but then how did you… and I?”
Wren shifted nervously and Ash’s eyes implored Tristan to understand.
“Uh… Oh, so then… it’s an Uruwashi thing?” He frowned. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Because it is not an Uruwashi thing. The Uruwashi have as much to do with pythia as the vampire do.”
Tristan was thinking too hard on this and when he finally understood what Ash was trying to say, what that tormented look on Wren’s face meant, Tristan felt sick. “No. No. It’s impossible, right? I mean, it is. It’s why your sister, when Malik tried to—There’s no fucking way!”
“Yes, Tristan.” Ash stood and took a step towards him, but stopped when he back up, looking spooked. “It is impossible, just as spelling a vampire human is impossible.”
He understood what she was saying, but he just couldn’t accept it. “But, but that… I’m…?”
“Of everything Mamoru gave me, of the memories the pythia-activated spell restored to me, I can tell you with full certainty that there is no possible way an Uruwashi’s blood could have activated that spell. The enzymes are not the same.”
Primal Burdens: (The Uruwashi Series #5) Page 17
