Bowing to her, Johnny kissed her jaw, and then her mouth. They danced tongues, she sucking on his while he dragged his lips across her fangs to spill his blood into her mouth. He wanted to feed her until she was sated and then not stop until the universe swallowed them up.
Shaking down his pants to his ankles, he knelt on the bed between her legs. He nudged the head of his cock into her hot, enveloping folds.
“For you,” he whispered.
Forgive me, he thought to himself. Because this wrong could never become their right.
Chapter Eleven
It was going to happen. She would achieve freedom from Himself. Right here, right now, with the man she trusted most to help her claim that freedom. It felt amazing. Johnny was willing to do what it took to make her happy…
Willing to do it, but not as happy as she’d thought he should be. And she knew why.
Kam tried to convince herself this was right, that having sex with Johnny was the only solution to her problem. Her body was in for the ride—and oh, she’d let him bite her all over—but her soul remained distant, as if standing off to the side, shivering with a regret she knew would settle in the moment her lover claimed her.
Johnny thrust his hips forward and his hot erection pressed into her. Anticipation shivered over her skin.
Not like this.
Kam slapped a palm to his chest. “No.”
“I think it’s supposed to hurt a little,” he said.
“No.” She shifted her hips, and his erection sprang free from between her legs, slipping along her thigh. “You’re right. This is wrong. I want the first time to be better than this. I need it to happen with someone I love.”
“I could love you, Kam. But we haven’t known each other that long, and I still haven’t proven my worth to you. And you’re all tangled up in the dark prince’s business.”
“I want to get away from him. I’m so desperate I’d— Well, you know what I’d do. Oh, Johnny, I can’t go through with this. Please don’t hate me?”
“Never. I adore you, Kambriel.” He nuzzled up to her, pulling her against his chest and wrapping his arm across her stomach, their bodies melded together easily. The heat of him was too perfect to ever move away from. “We don’t have to have sex tonight. Because honestly? I don’t deserve you yet.”
Tears slipped from Kam’s eyes. She didn’t deserve him.
“This will feel right to you some day.” He kissed her at the base of her earlobe. “And I hope it’s me you trust when you’re ready to make love for the first time.”
“It will be,” she promised. “It already is.”
“We’ll figure this out,” he said. “I’ll help you get away from him.”
*
A while later, something fluttered against Johnny’s skin. The sensation woke him from the sleep he was always surprised to wake from. He rarely slept, but vampires could, and did, need restorative rest, so he nodded off on occasion. The satisfaction in knowing he had stolen sleep never got old.
A moth fluttered above Kam’s head. He blinked. Ready to reach out and snatch it, crushing it, he paused. Another wing fluttered on Kam’s shoulder. In the darkness he initially thought the moth had landed on her skin. But then he saw what it really was.
The tattoo detached from her skin, becoming real. The moth, or butterfly—whatever it was—floated up, following the other winged creature toward the open window, where they drifted out into the bright luminescence of moonlight.
He sat up, careful not to wake her, and stroked her skin where the tattoo had been. No wound or any scars. It was as if a temporary tattoo had simply been peeled away. How weird was that?
Did she know that’s what they did?
She’d mentioned Himself had given them to her. Anything that had come from the devil could not be good. That thought crept under his skin and something akin to fear skittered up his spine. This entire apartment had been a gift to Kam from Himself.
Anxiety shuddered through Johnny’s veins. He exhaled to calm his sudden rushing pulse. Looking about the darkness, he expected to see red eyes glowing from the depths.
Sleeping with the devil’s girlfriend?
He wagered the percentage of men who survived such a feat was less than zero.
*
The nightwings landed on Himself’s eyes. Their antennae burrowed into his pupils. Ancient pupils set in eyes that had seen millennia and would see many millennia more. Visions of Kambriel in black latex sashayed before him, pleasing him. He could not feel love but he could manifest pleasure, satisfaction, and sometimes even joy. Love was intangible, and he wasn’t sure mortals felt it, either. They had been put on this earth to experience love, yet so few understood that and worked toward embracing the emotion. Presumably because it required utter selflessness.
Such a cruel trick their God had played upon them all.
But he could not pity them their lack of love. The world would be less easy to inoculate with his malice and darkness were it peopled by higher-evolved beings.
When Kambriel was on stage she connected to the pitiful mortals in ways that amused him. So like the mortals to worship false gods and goddesses. They would never know true worship demanded flesh and blood and the being’s very soul. They were simply pleasing themselves, pressing salve to their stupid emotional wounds.
Kambriel was a salve to his need to possess the finest, the most exquisite, to feed upon and ultimately corrupt innocence. She was the closest he would ever come to touching the elusive love.
Himself sat up stiffly upon his throne. His talons cut into the obsidian throne arm. The nightwings showed him the insufferable Johnny Santiago kissing his Kambriel. And touching her skin. Fangs grazed over her breasts—he bit her!
Ripping the nightwings from his eyes, Himself growled and fisted the air. His fist collided with the column to the left of the throne, crushing the meteoric stone to dust that glittered in the air as it settled about his hooves. Hadn’t his meddling with that idiot longtooth’s family been enough?
“I will crush that vampire!”
*
Johnny woke with a gorgeous woman wrapped in his arms. Her hair spilled over his face and he smiled through the silken strands, not brushing them away. The closeness of her warm, chocolate and cherries curvy body against his bare chest made him shiver. He had an erection, and realized he lay with his leather pants partly down around his hips. He tugged them up because it felt weird to lie so exposed next to a woman he hadn’t completed the deal with. It shouldn’t, but— Hell, this not-fucking was new to him.
He kind of liked the intimacy that hadn’t demanded they go all the way. To think about it, he actually felt… Yeah. He felt.
Because usually after having sex he was ready to hop up and leave, maybe to see the chick again, maybe not. He’d not had a serious relationship because it had always been so easy. To find quick satisfaction. To walk away. To just have a good time and not tangle with the intricacies of relationships. His tribe didn’t call him the charmer for nothing. So the women tended to follow him around like lovesick teenagers. Singers always got the girls.
Kam he wanted to linger in, to really get to know. He wanted to wait until she was ready to commit to a sexual relationship. Weird feeling, that. And the coolest.
He had been willing to take her virginity because she had thought that would free her from Himself. Much as he’d not wanted to do it in such a ‘clinical’ manner, he would do anything for Kam. He’d been relieved when she’d decided she wanted to wait until they were truly in love.
That kind of thinking was so far out of his realm, and yet, again, it felt right to him. Kam was divine. She was artwork. She was like a flower that shouldn’t be touched because to do so would mar the perfection, and yet, he wanted to rub away some of her beauty to reveal the insides. It was not ugly inside Kam. She was darkness and bright and beauty and danger and all those other poetic things that sallied back in forth in his brain right now.
“Pretty, sexy, d
ark love,” he murmured, and smiled, because that was a song lyric he could sing as opposed to reciting poetry to her.
Turning and sitting up at the edge of the bed, he eyed the bathroom door not far away. He cast his gaze about for the hellcat. It snoozed on the floor at the end of the bed. Toad. Seriously? What dark demons were laughing at him right now for the situation he found himself in? Would the hellcat let him tiptoe off to take a leak? Or would it attack, pinning him down at his shoulders and landing its fangs in his skull before its mistress even stirred from her angelic sleep?
He had to risk it.
Dashing toward the bathroom door, Johnny paused to glance back at the bed. Both cat and vampiress still snored. Rather, the hellcat snored; the vampiress purred.
Closing the bathroom door behind him, he tiptoed in the darkness until his toes jammed into the base of the porcelain toilet. He winced, holding back a yelp. Didn’t want to wake anyone—or call in the big dark dude.
But to think over last night, he was surprised the demon prince hadn’t interrupted their heated bite session. What was with that?
“Can’t be this easy,” he whispered.
Wandering back to bed, Johnny flinched when the marble floor beneath him suddenly cracked. He jumped, one foot to either side of the widening chasm. Paris didn’t have earthquakes. Did it?
The room shook, yet strangely, the chandelier above the bed hung still. The hellcat growled and slinked into the shadows where the morning sun had yet to warm. Kam was still asleep.
And then he smelled the sulfur.
Nope. Never so easy as he wished for.
Johnny glanced toward the window. A quick getaway? He wasn’t about to run with his tail between his legs because the other man was big and forged of black, rippling muscles and sported horns that could eviscerate him.
And if that wasn’t enough, his rival also ruled Beneath.
“Fuck,” Johnny muttered as he stepped back from the approaching menace.
His shoulders hit the wall. The marble behind him cracked and chunks tumbled onto his head and shoulders. His jawbones slammed together and he tasted his own blood. A chunk of marble crushed the back of his neck and he went down, landing on hands and knees before the devil Himself’s hooves.
“You have violated my dark angel,” Himself said in a voice that delivered electric eel jolts to Johnny’s spine.
With a thrust of his hand, the devil sent Johnny’s body flailing backward to mash up against the crumbled wall, pinning him as if a bug.
“No!” Kambriel rushed from the bed—to her master’s side.
Johnny did not miss the significance of that choice. As soon as he could peel himself away from the wall he’d show the big ugly demon what he was up against. His vampire strength could take out a dozen normal men, probably a few demons as well.
“Don’t hurt him,” Kam pleaded.
Himself brushed her aside and she landed on the bed, an abandoned flower in violet silk. The devil squeezed his fist and Johnny’s throat contracted inward, crushing his larynx. Bones cracked, cutting through soft, inner tissues.
“Stop it!” Kam’s body slammed against Johnny as she rushed before him and spread her arms protectively. “He means nothing to me!”
The truth? Or merely a desperate plea for his life? He hoped it was the latter. But in a few more seconds her pleading wouldn’t matter. His brain was fogging and his eyelids were difficult to hold open. Blood drooled out of his mouth and at his eyes. He felt as if he were chewing on his own throat.
“He has touched you,” Himself growled.
“As many other men have when I’ve bitten them,” Kam argued. “You’ve never had a concern before. Stop it, he’s choking to death!”
“Vampires are difficult to kill through oxygen deprivation.”
Oh yeah? At this moment, it sure felt as if his toes were hovering over a big, deep grave. His spine now met his voice box. He couldn’t yell out in pain. And his brain had begun to wilt inside his skull…
“You will never have what you want from me if you kill him,” Kam defied her dark master.
“You lie to save this insignificant longtooth’s soul?”
“I never lie to you. You would know it.”
“Then tell me what he means to you? Why you have allowed him into your bed when all the other bites you meet in their homes?”
“I…”
Kam’s fingers tangle within Johnny’s lifeless hand. She may have squeezed it, but he could barely hear their voices now. It would be easy to give in, to surrender to the agonizing pain.
Then she won’t have the hero she asked for. And you will not have proven your worth.
Snapping his head upright twanged at his damaged throat but Johnny managed a smirk. He thought he said, “Bring it,” but he couldn’t hear his voice.
“He is kind to me,” Kam finally said. “And he makes me feel beautiful. Special.”
“I give you everything you desire,” Himself said. “Is that not special? You frustrating bit of—“
“I love him!” Kambriel suddenly cried.
Johnny’s head twisted unnaturally to the side, unsupported by his broken neck.
“Then you must sacrifice love for your freedom,” Himself demanded.
“You’ll set me free if I never see Johnny again?” Kam asked.
Himself nodded.
He hadn’t said he would set her free, and Johnny knew that would be the sticking point when it all came down to it.
“You’ll let him walk away from here, completely restored and whole,” Kam insisted. “You won’t ever bother him again?”
Again, the bastard from Beneath nodded.
Kam turned and pressed her hands aside Johnny’s cheeks and tilted his head upright. Her palms were warm against his skin. He wished now he had made love to her last night. It would be the last bliss he’d ever know, because one way or another, he wasn’t walking out of here alive.
Hell, he was staring into bliss right now.
“I love you,” she whispered.
He tried to speak but nothing inside his mouth or throat worked. It was a jumble of broken bones and massacred tissue. If love felt like everything and brightness and music, then he did love her. Because she was strong and she sang to his soul. Together they made a new kind of right.
“So we’re going to do this my way,” she said. A kiss to his cheek, and then she turned to Himself. “I won’t give up! And you will not squish him like a bug because you can.”
“I can, indeed.” Himself lifted a hand, palm out and facing Johnny.
“No!”
The devil curled his fingers into his palm. With a snort, he announced, “But I don’t need to go directly to the source. Family always cuts the deepest. Doesn’t it, Johnny boy?”
Johnny gagged on his own blood. Family? It had been him. His grandmother had been compelled by Himself. And his father had surely been compelled to faery dust by the devil as well.
If he could get away from this wall he’d rip the demon apart!
“You’ll give him opportunity to win me from you,” Kam said, unaware of Johnny’s struggles. “Like a duel!”
Johnny’s body dropped to the floor. Contact seemed to push his spine up to pierce his brain. He yelled, releasing the pain as he collapsed forward. His throat began to rearrange and fix itself, due to a vampire’s rapid healing process; though it was the wonkiest feeling and certainly not a picnic.
As soon as he could stand, he’d rip out the devil’s heart.
“As you wish,” Himself said. “I like a good challenge. If the vampire proves capable of defeating me then he most certainly deserves you.”
Himself clapped his hands together. The room shuddered. The hellcat snarled and jumped onto the bed, whipping its tail back and forth in annoyance.
“Tomorrow evening, beneath the full moon, we will meet for the death of this miserable vampire.”
And Himself was gone in a shudder of chill air. The cat leaped off the bed and land
ed beside Johnny’s broken body. It licked the side of his face, dragging its scratchy tongue over his skin as if a demented carpenter going at him with sandpaper.
Kam leaned over him and pushed aside his bangs. Still wearing the flimsy dress she’d worn to seduce him last night, she was his tattered angel, fallen to rescue him when he hadn’t even thought to need it.
Her hair tumbled over her shoulders and dusted his bare chest. “I meant it,” she said. “I love you, Johnny Santiago. Don’t let me down.”
“I won’t,” the words croaked out of his damaged throat. “I love you, too. I wish…I could have torn out his heart. He’s…Kam. He’s been manipulating my family. My G-ma. My…dad.”
“I believe it. Oh, Johnny, I have to tell you something.”
Pushing up with his hands, he managed to lean back against the wall—now strangely not cracked, broken or crumbled—and heaved out a sigh. He patted his chest, surprised that he, as well, was no longer cracked, broken, or crumbled.
“That was weird. What do you want to tell me? That your boyfriend is a homicidal maniac who can kill people without touching them?”
“I’m so sorry.”
He managed a weak smile. He may be whole again but the lingering remnants of merciless pain twanged at his nerves. And he’d not had opportunity to put his hands about the devil’s neck.
“It’s about what you asked me in the club the other night,” Kam said. “When your grandmother was there.”
“Himself lured her, Kam. I think he did it as a warning to me. And my dad—Vail. He did faery dust. He’s been clean for decades. The devil made him do it to get to me.”
“He does that. I think he’s done it to my family too.”
“Yeah.” Johnny winced, searching for the memory. “Your brother.”
“My brother?”
“I’m sure it was him in the club, but my brain is foggy about it. I think he was looking for you, and then, he forgot. It’s like he didn’t know you, didn’t even know he had a twin sister. You’re twins, right?”
Kam nodded, worrying at her lower lip with her teeth. “He’s a werewolf.”
“Yes! I remember that now.”
Love's First Bite: Bad Boys and Alpha Vampires Boxed Set (6 book bundle) Page 41
