by BETH KERY
The next thing she was aware of was Saint panting near her ear. He nuzzled her cheek with his nose. Christina gulped air. Her vagina tightened reflexively around his huge, swollen cock. He grunted.
She clamped her eyes shut and tried to calm her body after its plunge into the storm-battered realms of ecstasy. Eventually, she found the strength to turn her head so that their faces were less than an inch apart. His fragrant breath hit her face in puffs. She tried to read his expression, but when she couldn’t, she read his mind.
“Don’t. Don’t flagellate yourself, Saint. I loved it,” she whispered. She rubbed her lips against his open mouth.
“You love to have your soul sucked until you’re empty?” he asked dully.
“I hardly feel empty.” She tightened around him for emphasis, liking the way his eyes sparked. But then his face transformed into stone.
“Teslar took a young man to the crystal chamber tonight. We found him after Teslar abandoned it. His name was Elliot. Elliot told me that Teslar had been treating him so sweetly for the past month. What he didn’t tell me, I guessed. He bought him expensive gifts, whispered how special he was into his ear, gave him more sexual pleasure than he’d ever dreamed possible.
“The Iniskium and I interrupted a special little ceremony Teslar had planned for Elliot tonight. He’d been about to pierce his supposed one and only love’s brain with a captive bolt. It would have kept Elliot conscious, but paralyzed, while Teslar proceeded to methodically drain every last ounce of blood from his body for his consumption. Do you want to know what Elliot said to me, Christina?”
Christina felt dizzy with horror, but he continued ruthlessly.
“Elliot wondered what he’d done to make Teslar angry with him. You must be his twin, he said. If you see him, will you ask him to give me another chance?”
“Oh my God,” Christina managed through rubbery lips. “How awful for him. How awful for you. Teslar is a monster.”
He reared up, bracing himself on his hands. “Teslar is my clone. Do you know what that means? Not only do we come from the same bloodthirsty race, we share the same genetic material. We are one.”
Christina felt a tear slip out of her eye when she sensed his wild desperation to make her understand a truth that she had no capability of comprehending. He struck his chest with his fist, the force of his blow alarming her.
“That is what you taunt. A ravening animal. You are blind when it comes to me. You see a reality that isn’t there. You were wrong to tease me when you saw I was losing control…when you knew I would take from you!”
“I think it’s you who’s blind, Saint,” Christina retorted, bracing herself up on her elbows. “You didn’t drink my blood. I hardly feel diminished by the experience. In fact…” she twisted around and met his gaze defiantly, “…I can’t wait to do it again.”
His rigid face convulsed when she dipped her hips, sliding his engorged penis out of her an inch, only to push it back in. She studied him intently as she shifted her hips and rocked him inside of her. At first, he stayed immobile, but she could tell that, like her, his entire consciousness had focused on the tiny tongues of flame caused by her bobbing hips.
“Christina.” He closed his eyes tightly. After a moment, he leaned on one hand and grabbed her wrist. He pushed it to the bed over her head and then switched, doing the same to her other hand. Christina’s face fell into the mattress. He pressed his mouth near her ear.
“You want me to prove to you that I’m an animal, is that it?”
“No. I want to prove to you that you’re not,” she whispered.
He placed his hands next to her shoulders and began to fuck her. Christina whimpered in slight discomfort and intense arousal. The head of his cock was still swollen from his previous climax, although not as large as it had been minutes ago.
While their previous mating had been uncontrolled and boisterous, Christina thought they both held their breath for the first minutes of this joining. Only the sounds of flesh slapping flesh entered her ears. She felt hyperaware of him behind her, knew that he watched himself as he fucked her steadily. Thoroughly. She tried to twist her head so that she could see him, but he pressed a hand to the back of her skull gently, keeping her face on the mattress…blinding her from the powerful sight of him.
Then he nailed their flesh together again and again with a precision that stunned her. Her face contorted in an agony of pleasure. She mindlessly bit into the soft comforter. His cock rubbed her deep. Even though neither of them grunted or moaned, she could hear the arousing, wet sounds of him moving so forcefully in her slippery flesh, the smack of skin against skin.
“Come here,” he said after a minute or two more of this exquisite torture. Even though he’d verbally made a request, he was the one who moved her, sliding her across the silk comforter until her thighs fell off the edge of the bed. He stood with one foot on the ground while the knee of his other leg remained on the bed.
He spread his big hands over her hips and ass, lifting her as he straightened. A shaky cry burst out of her throat as he began to use his arms to slide her pussy up and down his cock. Christina’s mouth sagged open. She stared blindly in the face of the crashing pleasure. He was eerily focused as he drilled into her, creating a nearly unbearable friction. She felt helpless and small as he used his powerful body to completely control the movements.
A moment later she gripped the silk comforter and screamed in orgasm. He continued to fuck her as she came, hard and mercilessly. Jesus, she was going to be sore tomorrow, but she couldn’t care less today, as her vagina clamped madly around his plunging cock and pleasure tore through her. She was so lost in the delicious sensations that it took her a moment to hear him speaking to her as he shifted her limp body yet again.
“You’ve got such a hot little pussy. You burn me every time you come,” he rasped from behind her as he lifted her sagging body. “Up on your knees, baby. Face down on the bed.”
Then he was fucking her again. He had both feet on the floor now and was plunging his cock into her at a downward angle. She moaned in mixed shame and excitement when she realized he’d pushed her ass cheeks wide. She felt the cool, air-conditioned air on her slick perineum and asshole. He held her buttocks tightly, making her an immobile target. He made free with her. When his strokes became more choppy and short, she knew he was about to explode.
He reached between her thighs and rubbed her clit. Christina shouted hoarsely and detonated with him.
This time, he didn’t scold her or try to push her away with blatant reminders of his clone’s evil nature or his bestial race. Instead, he remained standing behind her while the swelling in his cock subsided. He stroked her bottom and back soothingly while her breathing returned to normal.
After he’d calmed her, he reached around her and used his fingers to bring her to climax yet again. The utter precision of his actions stunned her. Certainly she’d never given herself such powerful orgasms, and never so rapidly in succession. It was as if he coaxed reactions from her body she hadn’t known existed.
“You’re magic,” she whispered when he finally withdrew his cock from her body and they embraced on the bed.
“Elliot mentioned something similar in regard to Teslar,” he murmured, his chin on top of her head.
Christina clamped her eyes shut. “You’re not Teslar, Saint.”
She squeezed him and pressed her face to his chest. His arms tightened around her. She felt the kiss he placed on the top of her head in every cell of her body. A feeling of lassitude weighted her eyelids and limbs. She still sensed Saint’s turmoil, but it seemed distant…a storm brewing on the horizon on a lazy, sunny day. She reminded herself to take heart in the fact that he hadn’t walked away this time.
That was progress, wasn’t it?
But she wondered about that when he tensed and gently pried her arms from his body. Christina’s heart froze.
“If you walk away from me again, I can’t be responsible for what I might do, Sain
t.”
He grimaced as he glanced back at her from a sitting position. “I’m sorry. It’s not what you’re thinking. Kavya is here at Whitby. He’s speaking to me with his mind…asking me to meet him.”
“What’s wrong?” Christina asked as she watched him lunge off the bed. “You seem upset. Surely he’s requested a meeting before, hasn’t he?”
“Yes. But never once in my living memory has he indicated the summoning was urgent.” He froze in the action of reaching for his heartluster.
“What is it?”
“Kavya indicates you should come as well,” Saint said warily.
Chapter Sixteen
Whitby was a three-story, granite, Romanesque-style mansion. A fifteen-foot-wide balcony stretched along the length of the front of the house, couched between two cupolas. Mahogany French doors opened to the balcony from a library, the dining room, and the entertainment studio.
Saint led Christina by the hand through the entertainment studio and out onto the balcony. Her eyes caught movement. It was as though the shadowed granite wall had shifted and sprung to life.
“Christina. It is my greatest honor to meet you.”
Christina shivered when Kavya took her hand. She didn’t think it was from fear…more like awe. His hand felt cool and dry when he squeezed her hand in greeting. Wonder reverberated through her flesh when she realized she touched a being from a different planet.
An alien.
“Yes, in the truest sense of the word,” Kavya responded immediately. “I’m forever bumbling about your lovely planet…forever an interloper. We are much more similar in genetic make-up to humans than different, but alas…the difference is telling.”
“You’re not telling me anything new,” Christina replied with her mind. It somehow didn’t seem strange at all that she carried on the conversation with Kavya telepathically. She’d always possessed the skill, but without the company of truly adept telepaths, her talent had never been prodded into full expression. Aidan and Saint were both mind readers, but Kavya’s sharp, blazing clarity of thought was like nothing she’d ever experienced before.
“Saint is so strange, sometimes. I can’t believe other humans don’t notice it,” she said.
“Humans don’t notice many things. The richness of their planet, for instance. The vibrancy of their souls. They are forever wasting their vitessence—allowing others to rob what is theirs by right. They respond to the theft by draining another’s energy, and the cycle proliferates. Shame, really.”
She peered at Kavya’s lean, angular features in the dim light cast from the entertainment studio. The strange hat he wore covered his hair, but his thick sideburns were light brown in color. His face was arresting—stunning, even. It was so perfectly proportioned, so elementally masculine, that she had the impression she gazed at a god. She stilled when she looked into his striking blue eyes. She turned her hand in his hold, gripping his wrist, absorbing his energy more fully.
“You’re Saint’s father.”
He laughed aloud, the joyful sound making Christina start in surprise. He’d been so sober before, so formidable. To see two sets of lethal-looking fangs set amidst that genuinely beautiful smile certainly underlined the difference of Kavya to an exponential degree.
“Yes. Saint has my genes, in addition to those of a particularly fierce human-wolf shapeshifter I once knew.”
“Human shapeshifter? You mean creatures like that actually exist outside of Hollywood—I mean, aside from Saint and the Iniskium, of course,” she finished awkwardly.
“Oh, yes,” Kavya replied matter-of-factly. “Many things exist here on Earth that apparently only a few chosen humans can see. But, in regards to Saint’s true creation, you are as much responsible as I.”
“Excuse me?” Christina whispered out loud.
“What are you two talking about?” Saint asked, his tone sharp with irritation. Christina realized he was even more perplexed by what was going on than she was. Kavya must have blocked him from their telepathic exchange.
“I need to speak with you both about the boy,” Kavya said aloud.
Christina slowly withdrew her hand from Kavya’s.
“Do you mean Aidan?” she asked warily.
“The time has come. I must explain about—”
But Kavya’s words were cut off by a loud crash and then the sound of tinkling glass. Christina grabbed for Saint in alarm, but he was already moving.
“That sound came from Aidan’s room,” she heard him growl. Much to her disbelief, even though she’d seen him do it once before, he vaulted over the balcony and just...dropped.
“Saint,” she shrieked. She ran to the stone railing and peered into the darkness. When she saw nothing, she turned around and raced for the French doors. She gasped when Kavya reached out and grabbed her arm, pulling her up short.
“Let Saint deal with it.”
Christina jerked her arm, but Kavya had a grip as unbreakable as his biological son’s.
“Saint told me we were safe here from Teslar and his revenants,” Christina muttered as she tried wildly to get out of Kavya’s hold.
“He’s correct. Teslar cannot enter. My magical ward is intact. That’s got nothing to do with Teslar,” Kavya said, nodding toward the stone railing where Saint had dropped out of sight a moment ago.
“Let go of me,” she seethed telepathically. Several more loud bangs and a whimper emanated from below.
“He should be fine,” Kavya said. The sound of wood splintering was followed by the howl of a dog in pain. Kavya shook his head regretfully. “Damn tortuous process, growing up.”
“Let me go to my son, dammit,” she shouted furiously. Much to her surprise, Kavya released her. Fear-saturated blood rushed in her veins as she raced down the stairs to the first-floor bedrooms. More sounds of chaos followed—yelps and growls, the sound of items being knocked to the floor, and furniture being moved violently as bodies crashed into it.
“Aidan,” she screamed as she flew into the bedroom. She couldn’t see anything clearly in the moonlit room but the white curtain billowing inward from the opened window and shadows writhing on the floor.
She reached for the light and flipped it on. It took her a second to recognize Saint in his wolf form. He stood rigid, his mouth clamped on the back of the neck of a smaller wolf. The other animal lay on its side on the floor, writhing and struggling against Saint’s hold.
“Scepter… Saint, where’s Aidan?” she demanded. She looked desperately around the room. The bed was mussed, but there was no sign of her son. She ran to the attached bathroom, but it was empty. The smaller wolf continued to snarl and whimper as it struggled in the hold of Scepter’s jaws. She whipped back the curtains.
“Aidan!”
The snarling wolf went quiet. She froze.
Christina turned around slowly. For several seconds, she just stared at the two wolves. Horror crept over her slowly and then swelled when the smaller wolf tried to rise off the floor, but Saint held it down firmly.
“Let go of him,” she screamed.
Scepter’s eyes were on her as she charged across the room. When she was several feet away, he unclamped his jaws. Christina pulled up short when he growled at her through bared fangs. The smaller wolf began to writhe and convulse as though it were having a seizure. Its body jerked against the wooden footboard of the bed, causing the bed to lurch several inches on the wood floor.
“Aidan?” she whispered incredulously, tears splashing down her face. As before, the smaller wolf paused in its agonized writhing when it heard her voice. She started toward the fallen animal. Scepter stepped in to her path, teeth bared ominously.
“You bastard. What have you done to my son?” she asked, horrified panic nearly stealing her voice. The wolf that Christina sickeningly believed to be Aidan gave a high-pitched bark of pain and growled. She lunged past Scepter, desperate to give comfort. The next thing she knew, Saint was wrapping his very human arms around her. He lifted her off her feet. Christin
a kicked furiously, but he swung her around his hip until her feet thrashed in the air.
“Put me down!”
“I can’t let you near him. He might hurt you unintentionally while he’s struggling.”
Her mind went numb for a suspended moment. Was this really happening, or was she caught in some kind of horrific nightmare? She needed to get her son and get out of here. Saint sat her down on the edge of the bed. Through the haze of her rising panic, she noticed he was naked. As soon as he released her, she stood and tried to get past him, slugging him in the ribs when he didn’t get out of her way. He grunted.
“Dammit, Christina.” There was a ripping sound. Saint grabbed her thrashing arms and shoved them behind her back. She realized he’d torn a length of decorative braid off the bedspread. He tied her wrists together. She screamed and kneed him in the groin.
“Ouch!” He shoved her onto the bed. Christina fell back and stared up at him. His breathing was harsh and his eyes flashed fire.
“I need to go help him. You’re not making this any easier,” he said as he picked up a pair of jeans from the carpet and hastily donned them.
“Why should I make this easy? You attacked my son. You changed him into a…whatever you are. How could you?” she accused. Tears soaked her face.
Saint blanched visibly. “I didn’t do anything. When I came into the room, he’d changed into a wolf. He was frantic, fighting the transformation. It usually happens that way the first few times and—”
“You were biting him,” Christina accused.
“I was holding him so he didn’t hurt himself. I don’t know any more about this than you do, Christina.”
“You liar. How can you claim not to know anything? He’s a wolf—like you.” Something caught her eye and she struggled to a sitting position.
“Kavya,” she said through numb lips when she saw the Magian’s impressive figure sweep into the room. He said nothing, but approached the whining wolf at the foot of the bed.
He drew a small rectangular box from the pocket of his robes. He uncapped the end and Christina saw a needle. “No, wait…don’t.” She started to stand again, but Saint held her on the bed with his hands on her shoulders. “Don’t you touch my son!”
