Demon Blood
Page 35
He didn’t fucking deserve any of what she’d given.
Rosalia’s legs tightened around his waist, her arms around his neck, repeating his name with every rough pis-toning of his hips. Her voice had become hoarse as if she’d been crying out for too long, with pleasure and grief and loss. Maybe they were just his. He couldn’t sense her emotions, the blood an overwhelming roar in his head. Then Rosalia shuddered and stiffened, arching back with a primal scream, liquid warmth flooding her sheath. Her orgasm slammed through her veins, into his mouth. The bloodlust shattered and he came hard, jetting into her, thick as the blood that heated him and he could only think that he was cold, cold.
Then sense returned, and the cold became worse.
He’d hurt her. He had to have hurt her. Guardians were tough, but not impervious, and he’d used the softness of her throat and pussy like a ravaging beast. His cock still throbbed deep inside her. He lifted his head, began to pull out.
Rosalia caught his face, and he froze. For a long moment, her warm brown eyes stared right through him. He wanted to get up, to take care of her, but she wanted him here and so he didn’t move. Then, gently, she kissed his forehead. His lips. His jaw. Every kiss felt like a healing balm, soothing his grief, easing his guilt.
Dear God, how he loved her. And he’d have given anything in the world to deserve the comfort she offered so easily.
Her fingers threaded into his hair, and when he looked at her again, tears stood in her eyes. “I miss my friends, too. And nothing we do ever seems to make up for not saving them.”
Christ. He hadn’t felt anything from her, just that raging psychic storm. But she’d either sensed his emotions or seen them in him, and guessed exactly where they’d come from.
She was always seeing him at his lowest.
Deacon pushed off of her, roughly shoving his erect cock into his trousers as he stood. When he looked down, he had to force himself not to close his eyes. Blood dried in thin trails down her elegant neck. The pale skin between her thighs had been rubbed raw and pink, still wet with his seed. Her ankle was bruised, ringed with impression of his fingers. He felt sick. He’d bruised a woman—a Guardian, hard enough that it hadn’t yet healed.
She started to get up.
“Stay put, Rosie.” He waited until she stopped moving before heading over to the sink. He gripped the sides for a moment, grateful there was no mirror above it. He wasn’t sure he could face himself now. And he didn’t want to know what Rosalia saw when she looked at him.
He zipped up and wetted a hand towel before returning to her side. She’d come up on her elbows, her gaze searching his face as he wiped her neck. He turned the towel to the clean side before tending to her sex. The rawness had already faded—the bruises gone, too.
And he’d never felt so much like shit.
Where did managing end and love begin?
Rosalia didn’t know. She was ashamed she didn’t know. And she’d wanted to help him, but she’d promised not to manage him—and so the only thing she’d been able to do was offer her support and strength.
It had been strange and wonderful to be cared for in return, even if that care had only been prompted by guilt.
Now he was far away from her. They’d returned to the abbey early, and he was plowing his way down the length of the pool. But she knew too well that he couldn’t outrace anything. Just churn through the water, turn, and try to punish himself against the same length again. Great for thinking. Not so great for escape.
From the walkway overlooking the courtyard, she watched his heavy powerful strokes, as if he could beat himself against the water until it wore him down. A human would be feeling it. A vampire, even one as strong as Deacon, might break a sweat. But he wouldn’t tire. He wouldn’t ache afterward. He wouldn’t feel any pain—and so it wouldn’t be a solace for him.
Sighing, she braced her hands against the balcony rail. He hadn’t said a single word about what he’d felt or heard as he’d taken her blood, and his silence weighed on her heart like a stone.
She couldn’t bear dragging it out. Perhaps it was best just to address it now.
Spreading her wings, she glided to the end of the pool and sat on the edge, slipping her legs into the warm water. Her wingtips bent against the marble tiles behind her, the stone against her feathers gently rough, like the scrape of a cat’s tongue. She watched Deacon approach in the next lane.
Instead of turning and kicking off the wall again, he surfaced beside her legs. Standing in the chest-deep water, he braced his hands on the edge of the pool, water streaming over his heavy shoulders and chest.
He pushed the water out of his eyes. “Everything all right, princess?”
“I came down to ask the same thing. But I know it is not. And that you—”
“Don’t want to talk about it.”
All right, she’d come back to it. “Okay. So I haven’t come to discuss that with you, but instead to let you know how my chat with Camille went.”
“From what I heard of it out here, your call wasn’t so much a chat as a list of things you want her to do.”
She marveled. The War Room door had been closed. His hearing was truly spectacular now. “Yes, well. She likes to be useful.”
That drew a short smile from him.
She continued. “She’ll have the community elders gathered at her apartment the day after tomorrow.”
“And I’ll be convincing them to go along with me.”
“Yes.”
After he convinced Malkvial. He’d make a deal with a demon, and the next day, he’d convince every major European vampire community to join in with him.
“That’s what I thought,” Deacon said, sounding resigned.
Her heart ached. “Where would you like to meet with Malkvial?”
“You don’t already have somewhere picked out?”
She shook her head. “You are the one taking the risk. It should be somewhere you know the territory, where you have the advantage of location. And where I can set up surveillance ahead of time.”
He closed his eyes, as if trying to picture such a place. “I got rid of my property in Prague. The community meeting places, the house. I wouldn’t want to make a deal with a demon there, anyway.”
No, not in the house where his partners had been killed by the last demon he’d made an agreement with.
“Should it be a public location?”
“No,” Rosalia said. “He’ll want to test you. He’ll interpret your caution not as prudent, but as a weakness.”
He opened his eyes. “I’m going to end up hurting tomorrow, aren’t I?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
His jaw clenched. “What about the church I found you in six months ago? Your brother owned it. Is anyone using it now?”
On the northern side of the city, Lorenzo’s church was situated near his house and had once served the vampire community. Beneath it lay the catacombs where she’d run into Belial’s demons. The same lieutenant who’d directed Caym had been the one to drive the spike through her head, leaving her helpless to the nosferatu.
She didn’t remember any moment of those eighteen months beneath that church. She still hadn’t been able to bring herself to enter it again.
“I own it now,” Rosalia said.
He must have read her hesitation. He shook his head. “It’s too close. It might lead him to you.”
She considered that. “Actually, he’d probably assume that you would choose a city that was only loosely connected to you. He wouldn’t think to search for you here, afterward.”
“And it fits.” His face was grim. “I led Irena there and betrayed her for a demon. Now I’ll make a deal with another.”
“Making a deal, with the intent to kill him,” she stressed.
“Betraying a demon instead of a friend is that much different, then? It just erases what came before? I don’t think it works like that.” His gaze narrowed on her. “And what of you? That’s not a good place for you.”
“Do you?”
“Yes. Considering the list of humans I’m compiling, I know exactly.”
Bringing in the nephilim hinged on breaking the Rules—something that Rosalia would set up. Something no Guardian should do. Fail or succeed . . . what Guardian could respect her afterward?
He was watching her face. “Maybe you do know.”
But she’d known all along. Deacon, when he’d agreed to help her, had thought he’d only be slaying demons. The burden of that was a heavy one.
“Now you don’t look all right.” He leaned back, as if to get a better look at her. “Confess, princess.”
“Confess what? I’m surprised you don’t know. Didn’t you hear everything in me?”
“No. Just sound. A lot of sound.” The corners of his mouth deepened in a smile. “Apparently the nephil blood shouts over everything else.”
So he hadn’t known? She’d taken that risk, opening herself, but he hadn’t heard it.
She wanted to laugh. And she supposed it served her right, for trying to take the easy way out—letting him into her blood instead of telling him. Showing him.
“I haven’t done this the right way,” she confessed. “I’m terrified of a mistake, but the biggest one has not been in execution of this plan, but how I have approached you—and kept so many things from you. I do not know if I can make up for it.”
His sigh was a heavy thing. “I didn’t sign up for this, no. But I’m here now, and no one’s got a knife to my throat. So just stuff your making up for it.”
“I just need to—”
“Overcompensate?”
She flicked water at him with the tip of her left wing. “I need to say thank you. And I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you from the beginning about Malkvial.”
“How about you say thank you when it’s over, and I’ve pulled off this thing with Malkvial.” He looked up at her; then his gaze slid over her wings. “Jesus Christ, Rosie. Considering what happened tonight . . . some apologies just got turned around. I should be begging for forgiveness at your feet.”
“I could have locked the door,” she said.
“Why didn’t—”
She cupped his cheek, and he broke off. He tore his gaze from her wings. Leaning sideways, she pressed her mouth to his, a soft graze.
“I wanted you,” she said. “And I’m not above taking advantage of an opportunity to have you.”
His brows drew together and his mouth opened—she kissed him again, slowly this time, sliding over until he stood between her legs.
His hands came up, curled around her waist. Water slapped the tiles.
Rosalia slipped into the pool. Heavy warmth enveloped her wingtips, saturated by water. Deacon pressed her up against the pool wall, his hands sliding up her back, and pausing when he encountered the base of her wings.
She shivered as his fingers traveled up the soft, downy feathers covering the frame.
His mouth hovered over hers. “That feels good?”
“Yes.” Not like the almost unbearable caress between her legs, but like a stroke over sensitive skin. “I’m not used to anyone touching them.”
His hand skimmed down her spine. She shivered in the same way, and he laughed quietly.
“What part of you is used to a touch?”
She didn’t think it mattered. Even if he did this a thousand times, she would still enjoy it. And enjoy the feel of her hands on him even more.
The thick muscles of his chest, the broadness of his back. She found nothing that she didn’t love to explore. The sensitive spot on his side that made him jerk away from her fingers, warning her not to tickle. The ridge of a scar, the coarseness of the hair that drew her fingers down. He kissed her deep when she found him hard beneath his shorts. She wrapped her hands around his length and freed him.
She couldn’t resist. “Does that feel good?”
He laughed. Wrapping his arm around her waist, he braced his opposite hand on the lip of the pool, and with a powerful surge, lifted them out.
Her wings drooped, heavy and sodden. She shook them. Her skin prickled in the heat. The soaked silk of her dress clung to her breasts, her stomach, her thighs.
Deacon led her to a patch of lawn, laying back on the grass and pulling her down over him. Straddling his hard stomach, she leaned forward to kiss him, stroking his fangs with her tongue, relishing his groan of need.
“I want these in me, too,” she told him.
His body went rigid, and he stared up at her with intense, heated eyes. “You liked that?”
“Yes.” Oh, God, yes. When she’d imagined the pleasure of him taking her blood, she hadn’t come close to the reality. “And I don’t have anything to hide.”
Still, she trembled as he cupped the back of her neck and scraped his teeth against her throat.
“You’re shaking,” he murmured.
“I want it again. That doesn’t mean I’m not nervous.”
“Afraid of losing control? Trust me.”
“Always.”
A faint pain stung her throat. The flat of his tongue swirled against her skin. Pleasure twisted through her, tightening her nipples, a subtle ache in her clitoris that demanded friction. She rocked her hips, grinding her sex against his ridged abdomen.
Breathing hard, Deacon gripped her thighs. “You taste so good, Rosie.”
“More,” she said. “Everywhere.”
He followed a scrape against her collarbone with another lick. She arched back, panting, her blood turning molten, heated through to her core. Beneath her, his stomach flexed as he rose onto one elbow. He offered a wicked smile before he ripped the front of her dress.
His tongue circled her nipple. Rosalia tensed, her anticipation so high it was almost a pain inside her. She worked her hips, pushing her sex in a slick burn over his stomach. He drew the tip of her breast between his lips. Rosalia moaned. His mouth felt so good, he didn’t even need to—
The soft bite came as a surprise. She jolted forward, but he caught her. Then he began to suck and she could only feel him, in her blood, hard behind her, beneath her. Crying out, she cupped the back of his head and held him close, her eyes shining across his dark hair.
She wanted to weep. She wanted to laugh. But she only gasped, her face tilted to the night sky, euphoria moving through her, expanding through her veins and tightening her skin, a frenzy of sensation. His left hand slipped between her legs. His fingers parted her, pressed in, began a slow, slow rhythm until she came apart, her body stiffening, her wings flaring out and shaking.
Deacon released her breast, returning for a soothing lick before laying back in the grass and staring up at her. Something in his eyes hardened. “I shouldn’t even be touching you, princess.”
Rosalia thought she would die if he didn’t. Leaning forward, she kissed him. “You should. You truly should.”
His laugh held a harsh note. “I’m too damned needy to disagree.”
If he needed, then she’d give. She kissed him again, a sweet, wet tangle of lips and teeth and tongue. When she broke away, his eyes were a stormy green, his face harsh with his arousal. He came up on his elbows again.
“Scoot back, Rosie.”
It was a guttural command. She slid down his stomach until the steel weight of his erection bumped up against her backside. His breath hissed in as she lifted her hips and reached back for him, dragging his length through her slick folds.
“Take me deep now. Until you can’t take any more.”
Her wings whispered over the grass as she rose up to her knees. He was hard and big in her hand, soft skin over steely flesh, his pulse beating headily against her palm. Positioning the thick head at her entrance, she slowly pressed down. Her body stretched, accepted.
His teeth clenched. His hands fisted in the grass. “I took you so hard, Rosie.”
She reme
mbered how hard, the excitement of being caught up in that maelstrom. Her sex responded in a liquid rush, and she moaned. “Yes.”
“I hurt you.”
Her eyes flew open. She said fiercely, “No.”
She pushed down, taking him to the root. His beautiful body arched, muscles straining as his hips lifted. Bracing her hands against his wide chest, she rode him, watching his face, the clamping of his jaw, the way his mouth fell open and he dragged in air before groaning her name. His hands roamed her thighs, her belly, pinching her nipples and then hauling her down to kiss him, hard and deep. His biceps bunched beneath her fingers and he threw his head back, but she followed him, sensing how close he was, wanting to be there with him. She drew his mouth to her neck.
He reared up to sitting, shoving her down over his thick length even as he sank his fangs in her throat. Rosalia cried out as the orgasm fried her senses, as he pulsed deep inside her.
Panting, she let her wings fall forward, wrapping around them. Deacon rolled her over so they lay on their sides, tucking her against him, her wings spread out on the grass behind her. Her head still spinning, Rosalia looked up at the stars. She used to dream of flying up there. Using her Gift, and seeing how far the darkness went.
Now she was just glad to be here.
“I love you,” she said.
He didn’t say anything. She lifted her head. His eyes were closed, his mouth in a firm line, bracketed as if fighting off pain.
“Deacon?”
“Don’t, Rosie. Just—Don’t.”
“Don’t what? Don’t love you?”
Too late for that.
He rocked to his feet, leaving her on the ground. Stalking over to the pool, he swept up his clothes. Anger heated his psychic scent.
Anger? If he’d been unsettled, she could understand. She’d said it out of nowhere. They had a lot to deal with. Her timing might be atrocious. But angry?