by Kresley Cole
“Apparently, I’m your Bride.”
“I was wondering if I could get you to turn for me,” Myst purred to Wroth, as he struggled to hide his shock.
She’d found him to be a cool, disciplined man, but she’d heard a new heartbeat was deafening for these unblooded vampires, the sudden rush of sexual desire overwhelming, their breaths unpracticed and rough at first. With soft touches, she eased him against the wall. His eyes were half-lidded as she rubbed up and down his chest. “How does the air in your lungs feel?”
He inhaled deeply. “Cold. Pressure, but it feels good.” He looked at her with such gratitude for blooding him.
They always did.
“How does your blood feel, heating and moving?”
“Stronger. It’s … searing.”
She palmed his erection through his pants, and his entire body jerked as he threw back his head to yell out. My Gods. She’d known Wroth was very well endowed, but when hard, he was overly so.
Like Demon or Lykae endowed.
He held her hand in place over his shaft, curving her fingers around it as he slowly thrust against her palm. Her body softened when she imagined the onslaught of need clawing at him. In a sensual whisper, she asked, “And how does this feel when it swells and distends?”
“Good,” he grated with a shudder. “So damn good.”
“It’s been three centuries? Well, you are due I suppose.” She unzipped his pants just enough to wiggle her thumb inside and rub the broad tip of his penis, making it grow slick. His eyes rolled back in his head. “I can only imagine how heavy and tight this feels, throbbing with pressure, close to exploding.”
“Why are you doing this to me?”
Because I can.
Soon he would have no more thought than an animal. His eyes were growing black. She stroked his length through his pants, relieved she would never have to take his uncomfortable size within her. Five, four, three, two …
Wroth attacked, with surprising strength, snatching her wrists in a viselike grip, securing them behind her back as he slanted his mouth over hers. Seeming to brand her with his lips and tongue, he kissed her deeply, possessively, groaning against her. He left her panting when he bent down to lick her nipples, sucking at them through her blouse. His other hand cupped her sex.
With a growl, he abruptly drew back from her, taking her elbow. “Come with me.”
Damn it, dawn neared. Where were they? She had to keep him here. “No, Wroth,” she said.
“Won’t claim my Bride in a dungeon.”
“But I can’t wait,” she cried. “Order the guard to leave.”
“No—”
“Wroth,” she gripped his shaft hard while whispering in his ear, “my body weeps for this thrusting inside me.”
He bellowed out that order, then tore open her blouse and bra, suckling and tonguing her nipples roughly. Involuntarily her back arched, pressing her breasts into his gorgeous lips. When had she begun undulating her hips for him?
“I’ve waited for you,” he bit out. “So long I’ve waited.”
One hand pinned her wrists above her, the other shot up her skirt and ripped her panties completely from her. His fingers roved, hot and slow over her, teasing. He knew exactly how to set her on fire, using her own moisture to slide his thumb around her clitoris in slick, mind-numbing circles.
“So wet,” he rasped against her breast. “As soon as I saw you, I wanted it to be you.” His lips took her hardened nipple, sucking on it till it throbbed. He turned to the other one for the same attention.
Myst made a decision then. There was simply no way she was going to miss this.
She moaned in truth, unable to control herself as lightning fired outside in conjunction with the emotion inside her. When he plunged one finger into her, withdrew, then thrust two deep within her, she wanted to come around them. He slid them into her unhurriedly but with enough force that she was rocked to her toes each time.
She arched her back more, wanting to offer up her breasts. She spread her legs, taking his fierce touch. “Don’t stop,” she panted, so close, aching to reach for his shaft. But he’d trapped her hands above her.
“Never.” He thrust harder, until she didn’t know if her toes even touched the ground, then he spread his fingers inside her as if preparing her for his size. Her head fell back and she moaned at the overwhelming feeling of fullness.
She raised her leg to lay it over the knee he’d placed against the wall as if just for that purpose. Bared to him, she ground her hips wildly.
At her ear, he rumbled the words, “Come for me, milaya.”
“Ah, yes … Wroth,” she moaned again, about to succumb to his stroking. She gave a strangled cry and climaxed with a fiery, wet pulsing that staggered her and made him groan as if he had as well.
“I can feel you come,” he grated while she clutched him, rolling her hips against his masterful touch until she was too sensitive to continue. But he didn’t stop until she was mindlessly moaning his name in his capturing arms.
When she was spent, she sagged against him, still weakly undulating for him. Her nipples were damp and achy from his tongue.
He cupped the back of her neck and yanked her up to face him, gazing down at her with lust, but his words were more. “I will be good to you, Myst. I will protect you. You are mine.”
He was saying these things because he was about to shove into her with that huge shaft, to claim her. A true vampire’s Bride. He took her leg and clutched it to his hip, about to free himself.
Her half-lidded eyes had just widened with true alarm when she heard the merest whisper at the gateway to the dungeon.
Before Nikolai could react, Myst flung herself away. Why would she do that? His hand shot out to pull her back, but she shrank from him. Why wasn’t he inside her right now? He’d made sure she was wet, ready to receive him—
He heard movement and jerked his head around, fangs sharpening in fury.
“Look at the lovebirds.” A creature similar to Myst was standing at the entry to the cell, a bow at the ready.
A second one with bright, glowing skin joined the first, happily chewing gum and flipping a dagger in the air. “Don’t make me look—I think I’ll be sick. Myst, cavorting with a vampire is a new low even for you.”
“What is this?” Nikolai demanded, stalking toward them.
The archer nocked an arrow with supernatural speed and let it sing without hesitation. He lunged to dodge it, but she’d anticipated his move and the arrow pinned him to the wall. A second took his other shoulder, drilling its tip half a foot into the stone. He cast her a killing look, then lurched forward to simply let the arrows tear through him, but the shafts were ringed like shank nails.
When he realized he wouldn’t be moving, he bellowed with rage.
He saw Myst pulling her clothing together, turning for the door. “Don’t you walk away from me!”
“So sorry to interrupt your plans for tonight.” She cast him that hurt look. “You almost made me forget that you’d come down here to torture me. You want to learn? Know that we hate torture. It starts to add up over the years—”
“That was before I knew you were my Bride.”
Her face went cold in an instant. “Before you knew you could finally screw me? Now that your body’s in working order, I don’t feel the skin flayed from mine?”
“You’re my Bride. Mine. You belong to me.”
She flew back at him, enraged. The bright one tossed her a dagger and Myst caught it behind her without looking. Again his mind demanded to know what she was.
She pressed the blade to his jugular. Her pupils were silver and lightning bombarded the castle. “If I belonged to every man who wanted it so or to every vampire I’ve blooded there’d be nothing left of me. But no one cares about that.”
“You’ve not blooded others. They would be here protecting you, fighting for you.”
“Not”—she leaned in closer, tilting her head like an animal—“if I killed t
hem all.”
Then she grabbed the back of his head and pulled him to her, pressing her lips against his. She kissed him hard. Yet he soon tasted … her blood? Just as he groaned, she drew back with an inscrutable expression on her face.
Unimaginably warm and rich, her blood was as exquisite as everything else about her, and he shuddered in ecstasy at the luscious taste. “You know I’ll want nothing else now,” he rasped.
In response, she snapped her teeth at him. To the others she commanded, “Leave him,” then exited the cell.
The archer and the bright one exchanged a confused glance. “And by ‘leave him’ you clearly mean leave him beheaded, disemboweled, and chock full of quills like a pincushion.”
“You heard him—I’m his Bride.”
“Ohhh,” the bright one said, blowing a bubble. “You mean he hasn’t, uh, you know, released, the first time since his blooding?” Then with a quick glance at his crotch, she said, “And he stays like that without you, right?” She chuckled. “I’m cool with the plan.”
The archer wasn’t convinced. “Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy condemning vampires to unending sexual torture as much as the next fabulously talented huntress …”
When Nikolai heard a guard charging in, she leisurely shot an arrow in that direction, tilted her head at the result, then sighed to Myst, “But Vampire Bride just sounds so B-movie. He just dragged you down to B-moviedom.”
The bright one made her voice overly dramatic, saying, “For that alone … he must die. Seriously, Myst. Your ‘husband’ has irrevocably damaged your street cred unless you kill him like the others.”
They were all mad.
And still he was hard, aching for her body, for the blood she’d given him just to torture him. “You evil, teasing bitch. Kill me then.”
For just the merest second he imagined he saw compassion in her eyes, but when she shrugged, his hazy mind finally grasped that she was going to leave him here with nothing but a body knotted with lust for her and a taste of blood that he would go to his knees for. “You’re the most malicious bitch I’ve ever known.”
“Flatterer,” she chirped.
Across the corridor, she easily leapt to the window forty feet above, opening the shutters to draw the unfortified bars from the space as though she might pluck back a curtain. She held a hand down for the others.
“I will find you,” he bit out. “I will find you and make you pay for this a thousand times.”
The bright one leapt up and caught Myst’s forefinger with her own. “Sounds like he’s setting up a date,” she said as she dangled.
“Oooom,” Myst purred, her gaze flickering over him. “Dress casual.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Present Day
Never-ending sexual desire that could never be slaked.
She’d knowingly—delightedly—surrendered Nikolai to this torment. His Bride had blooded him, giving him his first need as a vampire, then stoked it to a fever pitch—and only his Bride could work his seed free the first time.
If only she had stayed long enough for him to claim her just once, or to merely touch her skin as he’d taken his own ease, she could’ve spared him this. But then she’d clearly said that that was the plan.
And for the last five years, Nikolai had been cursed with more than that. He was cursed with her memories as well.
The minuscule drop of blood taken directly from her flesh did more than make any other blood taste like tar to him—it did just what the Forbearers feared. With her living blood came dreams where her memories unfolded, so realistic he experienced scents she’d smelled and textures she’d touched. Sometimes he could even feel her hands clench in anger. But he’d told no one, keeping his secrets because he didn’t want to lose his power within their army—or be killed.
Each sunset he rose and checked his eyes for the telltale red, and every day if he could manage to sleep, he was subjected to the same series of memories that subtly grew in detail each time.
The first found her atop a hill, the sun bright above, snow still on the ground. He perceived her every sensation—the constant sway of her chain around her waist, the smell of the ocean just below her, brine on a cold day. She spoke an ancient language that Nikolai shouldn’t understand, but he did. “I’ve cursed you to your hell,” Myst hissed at the site of a rough gravestone. She was roiling with so much hostility that he knew she must have murdered whatever being lay there.
Another dream memory revealed a drunken Roman senator kneeling at her feet. “At long last, I’m about to have Myst the Coveted,” he slurred. “And you’ll no longer be coveted, you’ll be possessed.” He gave a broken laugh. “You’ll make me twist on your little hook no longer.”
Nikolai had discovered the full name of his tormenter. Myst the Coveted.
With disgust, he saw the Roman take Myst’s dainty foot in his mouth, sucking greedily, stroking himself, as she slowly lifted her skirt up her silken thighs for him.
The first time Nikolai had suffered that dream, he’d dreaded seeing its sick conclusion. When another scene interrupted it, he’d felt relief. But never again …
Myst was running past a Viking raiding party on the coast of some northern land. Purposely. She wanted them to hunt her. To catch her and throw her to the ground in the hard snow. What kind of twisted need did she have? She was excited, her blood pumping. Her skin felt like it was sizzling with electricity; as if she generated lightning from her excitement. When the men gave chase with bellows and cheers, she stifled a smile.
As ever, Nikolai fought to force his mind away before he saw a dozen Vikings rutting on his Bride. To her delight.
Tonight a new dream arose. Finally. Snow outside, packed so high it covered half the window. Women, or other creatures like her, met around a great hearth. They were all half sisters. Nikolai saw their faces as though familiar, knowing them as well as Myst did. He recognized the archer as Lucia, the bright one as Regin the Radiant. A vacant-eyed one was called Nïx, the oldest of her sisters and believed to be a soothsayer. Their clothing indicated early twentieth century.
They were meeting over the fate of a baby that their leader, a somber creature named Annika, wished to keep. Myst frowned at the little girl in Annika’s arms, confused to feel some stirring of feeling for it.
“How are we to care for her, Annika?” Lucia murmured.
Regin snapped, “How can you bring a vampire among us when they slaughtered my people?”
One named Daniela the Ice Maiden knelt beside Annika, gazing up at her, briefly touching her with a pale, icy hand. Myst shivered to think of the pain Danii had just felt to offer that rare contact. Part ice fey, Daniela had freezing skin that burned when touched by anyone not of her kind. “Sister, the babe needs to be with her own people. I know this well.”
Annika shook her head determinedly. “Her ears. Her eyes. She’s Valkyrie as much as vampire.”
Valkyrie …? Impossible.
“She’ll grow to be evil,” Regin insisted. “She’s already snapped at me with her baby fangs. By Freya, she drinks blood!”
“Trifling,” Myst interjected in a casual tone. “We eat electricity.”
The vacant-eyed Nïx laughed.
A vampire child? Eating electricity? His heart was racing.
Annika said, “I will keep Emmaline from the Horde and guide her to be all that was good and honorable about the Valkyrie before time eroded us.” Her words were laced with sadness and triggered a memory that Myst hated.
Nikolai wanted to see it but couldn’t.
Annika rubbed noses with the baby and asked her, “Now where’s the best place to hide the most beautiful little vampire in the world?”
Nïx laughed delightedly. “Laissez les bon temps roulez …”
New Orleans.
Nikolai shot up in bed, body drenched with sweat.
My Bride’s a Valkyrie? he thought with a choking cough. His mind couldn’t wrap around the idea.
He hadn’t known they even existed.
A character from legends told around campfires was linked to him for eternity. From the dreams, he knew she was a millennia-old mystical being born of a fierce Pictish princess—who’d plunged a dagger into her heart rather than be taken alive by an enemy—and of gods.
She didn’t eat because she took electrical energy from the earth and gave it back with her emotions in the form of lightning. She was a killer and had been a Roman senator’s whore. She despised men and enjoyed tormenting them, just as she’d done with him.
He glanced down at his throbbing erection. Even his hatred couldn’t battle his relentless need for her. The impulse to take his cock in his fist was there, but he fought it, knowing he could never bring himself to come, knowing it would only increase his pain.
For five years she’d sentenced him to this constant, excruciating ache. Before he’d learned there was no relief without her, he would’ve futilely stroked himself or thrust against the bed, imagining it was Myst clutched beneath him, but he never took release.
Other females repelled him—because they weren’t her. Even if he believed he could find ease with another woman, he would never demean himself with another. He’d felt his Myst’s incredible softness, felt her wet with desire for him, her body squeezing around his fingers as she’d climaxed from his touch.
He shuddered and his cock pulsed hungrily. Linked for eternity. To Myst the Coveted, a mythological being who despised him. The only way he’d keep her for eternity would be to punish her for that long.
He knew he coveted her as none other had. And now he knew where to find her.
CHAPTER FIVE
The fumes of swamp, steamed hot dogs and soured beer wafted up to Myst and her sisters as they perched on a roof above the chaos that was Bourbon Street.
There were rumors of vampires running about in New Orleans.
Vampires in Louisiana? Unheard of.
If there’d been only one account of leeches, then she and Regin and Nïx would still be back at Val Hall, their bayou manor, playing video games. But a demon friend had sworn he’d seen one—and a phantom had whispered that there was not just one faction of vampires, but two.
