Blood Sin (2)

by Marie Treanor

  Chapter Twenty-one

  The hunters’ organization took care of the dead; the injured were taken to the hospital, apparently unsure what they’d seen or done. The hunters seemed to think any babbling about stakes and bodies turning to dust would be put down to head injury and trauma.

  Josh refused to go to the hospital. His only injury appeared to be chafed wrists where he’d been tied. “I’d rather just go to a hotel,” he said tiredly as they finally left his prison for the last time. He held up his slightly battered travel bag. “I still have this, complete with credit cards and passport—though I’d appreciate a lift.”

  “I think you should be in company,” Elizabeth said anxiously, taking the bag from him. “At least for tonight.”

  “There are beds at headquarters,” Konrad said. “I can take you there and someone would look in on you from time to time.”

  Josh wrinkled his nose. “Forgive me, it sounds just like a hospital. I’ll take the hotel.”

  “You could stay with one of us,” Mihaela said unexpectedly. “Except that the boys have grotty studios and I only have one spare room.”

  Elizabeth cast her a grateful glance. Mihaela’s cool, comfortable flat with casual company was just what Josh needed for tonight. “I’d be happy on the sofa,” she said. “Josh should have the bed. Or he can’t come,” she added, as he appeared to be about to protest.

  Josh laughed, and in that way it was decided. As Elizabeth finally climbed the dark staircase from the tunnels into the dim shelter above, she found Mihaela waiting for her. Beyond her, in the predawn gray light, Josh was walking a little unsteadily between Konrad and István.

  “You can give me the bag, if you want,” Mihaela said.

  “I can manage.”

  “Yes, but there’s no point—you won’t be on the sofa.”

  Elizabeth frowned. “Mihaela, Josh and I—”

  “You might come back with us,” Mihaela interrupted, “but you won’t stay, will you?”

  Elizabeth closed her mouth. Her whole heart, as well as her body, was crying out to be with Saloman. Mihaela had seen it all when she’d persuaded Saloman to spare Dante’s life. Not just that there was something between them, but the depth of her feelings.

  “Mihaela . . .”

  “End it, Elizabeth,” Mihaela said intensely. “If you must have tonight and you survive it, for God’s sake end it.”

  “I can’t,” Elizabeth whispered, grateful for the darkness that hid her from Mihaela, that hid Mihaela’s accusing eyes from her. “I’ve tried. I’ve tried so hard, but I can’t.”

  “Oh, God, Elizabeth.” Mihaela’s hands gripped her shoulders, her eyes shining like lamps as they stared into her face. “This has been going on since the night he took you from the Angel, hasn’t it? Jesus, no wonder you understood so easily about unsuitable lovers! But you must know this isn’t a relationship. You can’t have a relationship with a being who kills your people, who will kill you in the end.”

  I will never kill you. “He won’t.” Elizabeth gasped. “He won’t kill me. And you must know he isn’t insane, or even the unprincipled killer you thought he was. You must have seen that tonight.”

  “He’s not exactly as we thought,” Mihaela allowed. “I’ll give you that.” Her fingers gripped tighter. “But he isn’t like us either. Whatever principles he has, they aren’t yours or mine. He’s a different species, stronger, more cerebral, perhaps, than the monsters we kill every day, but they are him too. Never forget that. You’re alive only on his whim.”

  “Mihaela, it’s not—”

  Mihaela’s grip changed, sliding up to Elizabeth’s face, which she held hard between her hands. “There’s more going on than you understand. There’s prophecy; there’s death and worse! God, even if he doesn’t kill you, he’ll kill your spirit. Look what he’s done to you already.”

  Elizabeth stared at her. “What? What has he done?”

  “Enslaved you,” Mihaela said harshly. “As surely as Dmitriu or any one of his minions.”

  Elizabeth jerked back out of her hold. “Dmitriu isn’t enslaved. He loves him.”

  Mihaela’s arms dropped to her sides. “As you do?” she whispered. “You love him? Oh, Elizabeth, please, please end this. Because you mustn’t, you really mustn’t fool yourself about this. He doesn’t love you. He can’t.”

  The words twisted in Elizabeth’s stomach like a knife, even while she denied them. She stumbled backward, away from the source of her pain, but Mihaela kept talking.

  “Oh, maybe he’s capable of passing affection of some kind, of loyalty, but that’s not what you’re looking for, is it? You’ve gone way beyond that, and you won’t find it with a vampire.”

  “That’s the trouble, Mihaela,” she managed. “I have to look.”

  Mihaela stood very still in the darkness. The silence echoed in Elizabeth’s ears. Mihaela twitched forward and Elizabeth tensed for the attack that Mihaela would perceive as for her own good. Elizabeth wouldn’t fight back; she’d run.

  Mihaela’s breath caught on a sound that could have been anger or frustration. Her shoulders slumped. “Look, then,” she said dully. “Look and leave and come back to us safe. Please.”

  Saloman was leaving it late. He could tell from the color of the sky, with the moon already gone, that the sun would not be long in rising. He had arranged to meet Elizabeth here on the Széchenyi Chain Bridge when it was over, and like a human boy on a date, he kept waiting just in case she still showed up.

  He stared down into the depths of the Danube. The wide, seemingly endless river was just about all that was left of the city he remembered. He liked the new Budapest; he felt at home here. But sometimes it was good to be with the past. To remember past triumphs, past loves, past losses. To remind himself that everything passed.

  There were many reasons for Elizabeth not to come, all of them valid. But it would have been good to stand here together, watching the river flow under them in the last of the night.

  He had always known this would be difficult for her. When she was around the hunters, she was tugged both ways, and he rather thought the cat was out of the bag now, so far as the hunters were concerned.

  Two more minutes to watch the Danube and the threatening light in the sky, to imagine her with him . . . to wish it so hard that in the end he wasn’t even surprised when at last it became reality. He sensed her presence as she approached from the castle side of the bridge, breathless from running. He felt the warmth of her arm as she rested it on the wall next to his. He smelled her blood, sweet and strong and eternally alluring. The bridge was empty save for the two of them: no cars or pedestrians to disturb the illusion that they were the only two beings in the quiet city.

  There seemed to be nothing to say, now that she’d come, so he simply let the moment absorb him, soaking up the gladness of her presence. After a minute, she took her phone from her bag and handed it to him.

  He glanced down at the screen at a text message from someone called Richard. It contained only two words: “Dr. Silk.”

  He smiled. “You have your PhD.”

  She nodded, taking the phone back and dropping it into her bag. “I’m glad. You worked hard on it and you wanted it so much.”

  “It was something I needed. Proof that I’m good at something. Almost like a justification of my existence.” She gave a quick, apologetic smile. “I have confidence issues.”

  “Less so,” Saloman said. One of his many delights in her was watching her grow.

  She leaned her head on his arm, as if in gratitude. “The funny thing is, now that I have it, I’m not nearly as pleased as I thought I’d be. It doesn’t seem as . . . important, in the light of . . .” She waved her arm, encompassing both sides of the city, and meaning, probably, the whole world and all she was discovering in it.

  “And what will you do now?” he asked, turning to face her and leaning back on the wall. “Go home and celebrate?”

  She nodded. “I suppose I will.”

/>   “And the hunters know you’re with me tonight.”

  She swallowed, and he knew that whatever had passed when he left hadn’t been easy for her. He felt a spurt of anger at the hunters for interfering, for trying to spoil what she had found with him. He could imagine what they said, knew some of it, at least, was true.

  “Mihaela knows. I don’t think the others are very sure what the hell’s going on. Neither am I.”

  She raised her gaze from the river, turned up her face to look at him. Her eyes were clear and beautiful and heartbreakingly tragic. “I didn’t mean to do this, Saloman. I couldn’t help the love, but I didn’t mean to deepen it; I didn’t mean to understand you and care for your every thought and dream and . . .” She drew another shaky breath. “I didn’t mean any of this, whatever it is.”

  He stirred, as if that would shift the pain. “Do you regret it?”

  And her whole face softened into a smile that melted him. “I can’t even do that. I can’t stop and I don’t want to.”

  He listened to the quick, strong beat of her heart, comparing it with the slower, steadier rhythm of his own. “Then don’t. There is no need to make black-and-white choices. You have a life, a good life that you’ve made for yourself, a home that you care for. Just make yourself another home that is always welcoming.”

  A deeper gladness, of anticipation and excitement, made her eyes, her whole face, glow. “Where?” she asked.

  “Wherever I am.”

  She lifted her arms around his neck, stood on tiptoe, and kissed him. Her breath in his mouth was sweet, almost like the blood of life as he crushed her to him. “Saloman, Saloman,” she whispered against his lips, interspersing the words with wild, sensual kisses. “I am so far in love, it’s out of control. . . .”

  “That’s the way I like you,” he said huskily, and jumped. At any moment, the sun could singe him, and it would not be hotter than the desire burning inside him now. He wanted to take her as he ran, pausing against chimney stacks and balconies to caress her wildly eager little body, to kiss her and fuck her and hear her scream with joy before he jumped to the next stable surface and did it all again. But there was no time. He had to get out of the sun. And then to bed.

  Immortality. She could see the charm of it as she fell naked on his silkcovered bed. Spending eternity like this, with Saloman. The thought made her smile, welcoming him as he loomed above her, fitting his pale, hard body over hers. She was wet for him already, had been since they’d stood embracing on the bridge, and the exhilaration of the race against the sun hadn’t dampened the fire. He entered her immediately, as if he couldn’t wait another instant, and only then, as she gasped at the familiar mingling of shock and pleasure, did he pause with a groan of satisfaction.

  “At last,” he whispered. “I have missed you, missed this.”

  “So have I.”

  The characteristic half smile formed and faded on his sensual lips before he kissed her. From instinct, she arched up into him, hugging him with her internal muscles, but still he didn’t move inside her.

  “Did you know that vampires experience more intense sexual pleasure than humans?”

  “I believe you mentioned it,” she said shakily, although right now, with him, she couldn’t imagine how such a thing was possible.

  His hand trailed down the side of her breast, then moved inward. One finger traced the dark circle around her nipple, teasing. “This is because all our physical senses are enhanced. And also because, telepathically, we can enjoy the pleasure of our partners and add it to our own. Would you like to feel my pleasure, Elizabeth?”

  She stared into his profound, burning dark eyes, clouded with a fierce lust that was all the more exciting for being temporarily controlled. She swallowed. “Would it kill me?” she asked, not entirely joking.

  “You have no faith,” he said, bending his mouth to the nipple his finger was teasing, “in your body’s capacity for pleasure.” As he kissed her nipple, flicking it with his sensual, wicked tongue, he continued to trace arcs around it with his fingertip, and again her internal muscles contracted around him, urging him to thrust.

  “What do I do?” she whispered with difficulty.

  He lifted his head. “Open your mind to mine. As if you were talking to me. I’ll let you in. And if you want to, you can allow me to feel with you.”

  “Don’t you already?”

  “Up to a point. I want it all.”

  She gasped. “I can’t concentrate like this. . . .”

  “Yes, you can. Concentrate on the pleasure.” He moved once inside her, a long, caressing stroke that sent delight coursing through her whole body. See?

  She smiled. I see.

  The sensation opened like a flower. She could feel the tightness of her own wet, velvety warmth around him, feel what it did to him. Oh, my. Oh, God . . .

  He began to move inside her, blasting her with his pleasure, which grew all the greater as he lowered his head and began to suck on her breast. She couldn’t hold back. She’d told it all, everything that mattered, so she let him see it too, her body’s abject enslavement as well as its unbearable joy in him, every spark of bliss, every wicked fantasy, because once her mind opened the box, she couldn’t close it again, and didn’t want to, because it fed her own pleasure like a rushing spring.

  She saw which of her caresses affected him the most, as well as what he wanted to do to her, and it made her moan and cry out as she writhed frantically in the grip of a passion so fierce it was almost savage. But she couldn’t stop. His lust, his ecstasy rampaged through her, dragging her body in its wake, and she hung on to him, glorying in it all, straining to give even more, to absorb everything that was flung at her.

  It couldn’t last at that pace, not for her, although she saw through him how it might be possible, how he made it go on and on and then began again. One day, perhaps. For now, there was only this wild, shattering orgasm spinning her violently over the precipice, dragging her with him in a writhing, straining heap. She no longer knew which pleasure was hers and which his, nor even which body belonged to whom, only that there had never been anything like this.

  There was an instant when she thought she would lose consciousness, and was furious that she would miss any of this astounding experience. But as if he saw it, he let her come down slowly, withdrawing part of himself without breaking the connection entirely.

  When she could see, she smiled, because he did and because she couldn’t do anything else. She imagined she could still see herself through his eyes, familiar and yet not—an oddly beautiful and exciting stranger with her hair, her eyes, beads of perspiration on her forehead, purring, satisfied passion on her sensual lips.

  “Is that how you see me?” she whispered.

  “Some of how I see you. You’re constantly new, constantly surprising me.”

  “You need novelty. Dmitriu told me.”

  “What else did Dmitriu tell you?”

  She shied away from that. The connection was too close and another quarrel too far from what either of them wanted or needed. Instead, she said, “I thought you’d be angry because I stopped you from killing Dante.”

  His black, sculpted eyebrows twitched. “You couldn’t have stopped me if I’d chosen to do it. For the rest, we are different. You insist on illogically preserving deeply flawed and dangerous humans. I drink blood to exist.”

  He rolled suddenly onto his back, and she moved her legs to straddle him.

  “But then again, we are not so different,” he said softly.

  “What do you mean?” She thought of the fight in Travis’s club, of the one in the castle tunnel, the reluctant yet undeniable joy of battle that was so shamefully close to the vampire love of killing, and realized finally that she could live with that too.

  The smile in Saloman’s eyes, hovering on his lips, was wicked, and so exciting that despite the unprecedented bliss he’d just given her, desire surged once more.

  “I mean I’ve seen some of your fantasies,�
� he said huskily. “And I’m hungry.”

  Her breath caught as he moved suggestively inside her. Then, without warning, he sat up and shifted across the bed to stand with her still held in his arms. He didn’t break eye contact as he walked across the room with her. Then she realized a leather armchair was traveling toward them, and her lips parted in shock.

  The chair stopped in front of a mahogany chest of drawers with a large, ornately framed mirror above it. Saloman shifted the position of her leg and sat down in the chair with her in his lap, so that they both faced the mirror. Nudging her hair out of the way, he touched the vein at the side of her neck.

  The brief, almost forgotten fantasy sprang back into her mind. She’d wondered how sexy it would be to watch him as he drank from her. Moisture flooded from between her legs, soaking him as he moved lethargically inside her.

  “It was a wicked thought,” she whispered, twisting to look into his face rather than the mirror. “I was lonely.”

  “No excuses. Watch and enjoy. As I will.”

  He bent his head and his hair brushed her naked shoulder, spreading down her arm. His lips touched her skin, his tongue flickered over her vein, and she tensed, waiting for the pain. But he coaxed her, caressing her throat with his silken tongue, distracting her with his hands on her breasts, moving inside her. Only when she relaxed against him, lost again in the blinding desire, did he pierce her skin.

  She cried out. Her closed eyes flew open and as he began to suck her blood, she watched the ecstasy replace the agony in her mirrored face. With a moan of bliss, she moved on him, relishing the rhythmic flow of her blood into his hungry mouth, and watched avidly to catch every movement of his lips on her skin. God, it was ultrasexy and wicked and weirdly, almost frighteningly beautiful to watch this being draw her lifeblood into himself while making love to her. It was like an endless cycle of life and pleasure, and when his eyelids lifted to meet her gaze in the mirror, she came in a long, drawn-out cry of bliss.

  Still, she couldn’t look away, saw his teeth detach from her bleeding skin and his tongue lick the wounds. When he lifted his head to kiss her mouth, the skin was already healing and she could taste her blood on his lips.