Velvet Cataclysm: Princes of the Underground, Book 1

by BETH KERY

  She stroked the animal’s soft fur as she passed and opened the door to Aidan’s room. Scepter followed her as she checked on the boy. Aidan was already fast asleep after letting the wolf inside, his breathing even and peaceful.

  She shut his bedroom door and checked that the front door was locked. When she turned from her inspection, she saw that Scepter stood in the hallway watching her, his ears standing up on his head.

  “What is it, boy? Is everything all right?”

  He made a plaintive sound in his throat, a mixture between a soft growl and a whine. She ran her palm along his neck, scratching lightly.

  “It’s the storm that’s got both of us prickly,” she whispered. “That and what happened tonight. I think I owe some of your brothers and sisters thanks for saving me on that subway platform.” She frowned, realizing that the wolves and their strange behavior was something she hadn’t gotten around to asking Saint about. She recalled that solemn, watchful half-circle of wolves blocking her way on Whitby’s grounds. Her stroking fingers paused.

  “Scepter?” she asked, her voice shaky with uncertainty.

  The wolf looked up at her.

  “I’m going to bed. Do you want to come with me, or stay down here?”

  She got her answer when the wolf padded behind her up the stairs. He stood silently as she settled back into bed and drew the covers over herself. The wolf turned around once in a circle before lying on the floor next to her bed and resting his head on his paws.

  Christina realized that her eyelids had gone leaden. She saw Scepter’s gleaming eyes watching her in the darkness before she succumbed to sleep.

  She dreamed she lay before a hearth containing a roaring fire, the heat penetrating and pleasant. Her body shifted in a sinuous stretch, her naked skin sliding against the softest, sleekest fur. An insistent pressure grew in her, a need for action, a biological imperative like thirst or hunger…but different. It took her dream-self several moments to recognize it as a sexual need unlike anything she’d ever recalled…

  …although there had been once, hadn’t there?

  She groaned and turned belly-down onto the fur pelt. Her pussy felt enflamed and wet, her nipples hard and aching to be touched. She fumbled, her hands feeling clumsy, and grasped at one sensitive crest, squeezing lightly. She writhed in painful arousal, every silky hair on the pelt stimulating her prickly skin to even greater levels of excitement.

  This wasn’t sexual arousal, it was a wild, frantic mandate—the frenzy an animal must feel when it goes into heat.

  Mate or die.

  Thunder crashed in the distance as she squirmed in agony on the fur pelt. Her body felt like it wasn’t her own, and yet she’d never before been so profoundly aware of every patch of skin, every pulsing nerve. In a fit of crazed lust, she threw her arms out and squeezed the fur against her, wishing she could surround herself in it.

  The soft fur smoothed beneath her writhing body, becoming sleek, skin-gloving muscle. She pressed desperately, needing to feel that male strength against her soft, female flesh, her entire world narrowing until nothing existed but a blind sexual need.

  “Restrain yourself, lovely. Do what I cannot.”

  Bright light flashed. Her eyes opened. She found herself staring up at Saint’s shadowed form. Lightning illuminated the room. They were both naked, and Saint reared up over her, his erect penis throbbing against her belly, his full testicles pressing against her swollen, aching labia.

  “Saint,” she whispered anxiously. She licked her upper lip and tasted salt. The room lit up again and she saw they were both covered in a fine sheen of perspiration. She felt so hot…so aroused. She thrust against him, desperate for pressure. He flexed his hips, sliding his stony cock up and down between her sex lips, stimulating her aching clit.

  She arched up in an agony of pleasure. He caught her wrists with one hand, pinning them down on the pillow. She cried out shakily when he leaned down and tongued the valley between her breasts with a wet, raspy tongue. He made a humming noise of satisfaction in his throat, as though he highly approved of the taste of her perspiration-damp skin. He lifted his head.

  “If you won’t control yourself then we’re lost.”

  “Not lost. Found. You are my home. I’m yours, Saint,” she murmured, saying the truth she’d always known out loud for the first time.

  He growled and lowered his head again. Christina stared up at the ceiling blindly as he inserted the tip of a breast between his lips. His mouth was as hot as the rest of him. He lashed at her nipple with his tongue and then suckled until she squirmed beneath him in a frenzy of desire.

  She felt his heartbeat throbbing in his engorged cock, heard her own pounding in her ears. She spread her thighs, desperate to fuse their desire. When she shifted her hips, trying to capture the thick head of his penis in her cleft, he cursed and lifted his head. Quicker than she could blink, he rolled her onto her belly. He came down over her, pressing his mouth to her neck.

  “This is how an animal mates,” he whispered darkly. Christina shivered uncontrollably as he scraped his teeth along her skin. His fist slid beneath her waist. He used his forearm to lift her. He braced himself on his knees, his thighs spread around her hips, and urged her bottom up in the air. She felt the thick, hard knob of his cock jutting against her tender slit. He pushed against her, parting her wet, aching tissues, insisting she take him.

  “Ah, God, Saint!” she murmured in helpless bliss as he penetrated her, inch by steely inch. Every time her body resisted his possession, he pumped his hips, gently but firmly, working past the obstacle. Her vagina clenched around him tightly, hungering for his total penetration.

  Her entire body trembled by the time he fully sheathed himself in her. He pressed deep. Christina felt him shaking just as greatly as she did.

  He began to pump. Not just their bodies, but the bed, the room, her world seemed to quake as he fucked her while rain battered at the windowpanes and shadows from the wind-lashed trees made a frantic dance across the walls. She couldn’t stop herself from crying out in bliss, the sound swallowed by a blast of thunder. Saint’s loud groan outlived the crash and continued to rumble in his chest long after the thunder faded.

  They slammed together again and again, as wild and violent as the storm. Her blood surged in her veins like waves pounding on a breakwater. His cock probed her so deep, stretched her, filled her, until she felt ready to burst. The sensation was sharper than a typical impending climax…far more volatile. She heard Saint groan in agony behind her, his hips striking her buttocks and thighs in a hard, merciless rhythm.

  “Oh, oh…God help me,” she mumbled into the pillow, not even sure what she begged for. She moaned when he paused, his cock fully sheathed, his balls pressing tightly to her moist outer sex. When he leaned over, her vagina tightened in a paroxysm of excitement.

  “No god can help you now,” he whispered in rough misery near her ear. He slowly withdrew his cock, the sensation of the thick, defined head sliding across her aching flesh, making her inhale through clenched teeth. He re-sheathed himself, half-staff.

  She turned her head so that she could see the outline of his face in the dark room. A flash of lightning showed her his gleaming eyes and sharp white teeth. She also saw the essence of distilled agony on his face. She moved aside her hair, exposing her neck.

  “You can, though, Saint.”

  She tightened her vagina around him hungrily. He snarled as though in pain and fell on her, sinking his teeth into a vein at the same moment he plunged his cock deep. Christina’s eyes opened wide in shock. For a moment, she struggled. Human beings weren’t accustomed to experiencing such a blast of pure sensation. At first, she thought it was pain, and then she realized it was previously unknown levels of pleasure that flooded her consciousness.

  He spread a hand over one hip and buttock, making her a stationary target for his thrusting cock. He fucked her hard and relentlessly while her blood boiled and surged, as though every cell in her body rushed t
o be the one consumed by him. She opened her mouth, ready to scream as climax hit her, the blast shuddering not just through her body, but her very spirit.

  His mouth covered hers abruptly, muffling her scream. He pounded his cock into her one more time, their flesh smacking together at the same moment thunder shook the night. He groaned roughly into her mouth. Christina whimpered in mixed pain and ecstasy when she felt him swell impossibly large inside her, then the exquisite sensation of his warm seed pouring into her.

  Their lips fell apart, but they remained close as they gasped for air for several minutes. His cock remained embedded inside her, still erect, still stretching her hypersensitive flesh. The full, gravid sensation felt strangely familiar to her, although she couldn’t think why…only that it had something to do with Aidan.

  The feeling of his warm, fragrant breath striking her face in uneven bursts soothed her somehow…hypnotized her.

  She closed her eyes as a feeling of delicious lassitude and profound rightness pervaded her awareness.

  “Stina?”

  His deep voice edged with anxiety made her blink her eyes open in surprise. He reared up over her, his hands on the mattress supporting his upper body weight.

  “Yes?”

  Lightning lit the room. For a split second she saw his handsome face framed by tousled, wavy hair, his brows pinched. Thunder rumbled in answer to the lightning, the sound softer than the previous shattering booms that had rent the night.

  “Are you all right?” he rasped.

  “I’m so good,” she murmured drowsily. She wanted to remain with him planted deep inside of her, but she also needed to hold him in her arms. Her mixed desire made her shift her hips in a half-hearted manner.

  “Don’t,” he grated out through clenched teeth. “I can’t…I can’t withdraw from you for a bit.”

  Christina’s mouth fell open in wonder. She thought she understood what he meant. His cock not only felt iron hard, it felt even more swollen than before his climax.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were a wolf?” she asked abruptly.

  He just stared for a moment before he gave a bark of laughter. Christina wished lightning would have flashed at that moment and let her see his face. He smiled so infrequently, it was always such a gift when he did.

  “When would you have had me tell you? Just after you learned I was what you would call a vampire, or maybe before?” He shook his head. “I told you there were so many things you didn’t understand, Christina.”

  “I understand more than you think. I understand this.” She flexed her muscles around his turgid flesh. He groaned.

  “Do you?” he challenged after he’d recovered.

  “I know it was right, Saint.” She shook her head against the pillow. “Is Teslar a wolf as well?”

  “No. Never a wolf. He can transform into any number of creatures, though. All of them foul.”

  “Like that huge bird he changed into tonight?”

  She sensed his nod more than saw it. “Usually much worse, though—a blood boar, a canid, a stalker. But Teslar never becomes a wolf, while that is the only animal nature I possess.

  “A blood boar—is that one of those things the Scourge revenants transformed into?”

  “Yes. Javier Ash morphs into a blood boar. Javier was the tall one. He is very powerful, Teslar’s first lieutenant in a rag-tag army. Crowbar is a canid—that huge dog-like creature. They were both on the platform tonight, along with Selena Constantine and Jacob Crane. It was Jacob left on the platform.”

  “So the Scourge are limited to one creature transformation while Teslar—”

  “Can transform into all.”

  A tense silence ensued.

  “All those times Scepter slept in this house...all those times you slept here with me. How could you not have taken what’s yours?”

  The room lit up briefly. He stared down at her, his nostrils slightly flared. “Do you think I wasn’t tempted?” he growled. “I’ve allowed you a glimpse into my world, Christina, and yet you insist on staying in fantasy land.”

  “No, don’t,” Christina cried out when he withdrew his cock from her body. She gasped in slight discomfort.

  “I’m sorry,” he mumbled, wincing. She glanced back between them in fascination. Her eyes widened when she saw the outline of his penis jutting from his body. It looked blood-engorged and enormous.

  “Is it…uncomfortable?” she asked awkwardly, referring to his still-swollen cock, when he lay next to her on his side. She pushed herself up and rolled on her side to face him. She scooted closer to him, stilling when her naked hip pressed against his damp erection.

  “It’s very sensitive,” he muttered through a clenched jaw. “I shouldn’t have withdrawn so quickly. I’m out of practice at this. Not that I’ve ever really had much practice.”

  She looked at his shadowed face incredulously. “Who are you trying to kid? All those women I’ve seen leaving Whitby over the years with a smile on their faces and a glazed look in their eyes? You’ve got a lot of nerve telling me you’re out of practice.”

  She couldn’t really see it in the darkness, but she sensed his mouth curving into a smile. “You wouldn’t believe me if I say that it’s very uncommon for me to actually mate with a woman?”

  “You mean have intercourse? Why?”

  He didn’t answer immediately. He spread a hand on her hip and pushed her into him. Christina couldn’t help but touch his engorged penis. She sensed the tension in his body when it pressed against her belly. She tried not to breathe to save him from more uncomfortable stimulation.

  “Breathe, Christina, it’s okay,” he murmured with a chuckle when air began to burn in her lungs. His hand slid along the sensitive sides of her torso and over her shoulder, making her shiver. He delved his long fingers into her hair, his fingertips rubbing against her scalp. “Run your hand up and down on it,” he ordered gruffly, referring to his penis. “It will help to desensitize it a little.”

  Her clit pinched in painful re-arousal when she wrapped her hand around his warm, damp cock. There must have been a good inch-long gap between her encircling fingers, he was so thick. He groaned deep in his throat when she began to slide her hand up and down his length.

  “I have told you that I don’t feed from a woman more than once. The more…intimate the joining, the more painful it is when I…”

  “Refuse to see her again?” Christina finished for him when he faded off.

  He nodded. She wondered if his penis was sufficiently de-sensitized. Should she let go, so they could press their bodies close? She didn’t want to stop stroking that hard, dense column of flesh, however, so she kept pumping him with her fist. It was exceptionally exciting, stroking what might have been the phallus of a god. For several long seconds, silence stretched between, both of them motionless with the exception of her moving arm.

  “Intercourse is very…intimate. I try to avoid it. If I do choose to mate, I usually use certain equipment that helps me to maintain my control,” he explained gruffly after a moment.

  She paused at that, running her thumb over the ridge below the fleshy, arrow-shaped crown of his cock, finding the slit and rubbing the liquid she found there into his skin. He hissed and grabbed her wrist.

  “You’re not soothing me, you’re readying me to mate again.”

  “I’m sorry,” she murmured as she began to stroke his entire length again with slow, firm strokes, purposefully misunderstanding him. She felt the tension rise in his body and continued in a tone of mild interest. “Will I become a vampire now?”

  “Of course not,” he growled. “I didn’t take anywhere near enough of your vitessence for a Final Embrace.”

  “Final Embrace? You mean death?”

  “The end of mortal life. Yes.”

  “Do you have to bite me three times or something?”

  “No, that’s legend and Hollywood stupidity,” he murmured distractedly. Despite the darkness, Christina sensed he watched her hand with a tight
focus as she stroked his cock. His fingertips continued to massage her scalp in a motion she found both relaxing and arousing. A troublesome thought suddenly wriggled its way into her awareness.

  “We didn’t use anything.”

  His fingers didn’t pause in their delicious massage. “I can’t get a female pregnant. I don’t have a soul.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  He grunted in irritation.

  “Believe what you want, it doesn’t change the fact. Both the Sevliss and their Scourge clones are sterile. We cannot create, unless you consider what happens with those who survive the Final Embrace, and that’s a twisted, unnatural creation,” he mumbled bitterly.

  “But—”

  “Don’t you think if one of us could impregnate a human female, it would have happened at least once after half a dozen centuries?” he asked sharply.

  Christina scowled at him in the darkness. If the Sevliss couldn’t impregnate a woman, there must be some genetic reason for it, but the cause certainly wasn’t because Saint didn’t possess a soul. She didn’t want to argue with him right now, of all moments, so she leaned forward and pressed her nose into a hard pectoral muscle, inhaling his scent, never ceasing her stroking of his cock.

  When her lips touched his chest, his hand tightened in her hair, pushing her closer against him. For a few seconds, she nibbled at smooth, thick skin.

  “Saint?” she asked huskily, her lips hovering over a flat, stiff nipple.

  He grunted in response.

  “You were wrong about losing control if you made love to me.”

  She immediately wished she hadn’t spoken when his fingers froze in her hair.

  “I didn’t this time.”

  “You’d never harm me. You yourself said you didn’t take anywhere near enough of my blood for the Final Embrace.”