Rachelle knew very little about Levi and everything she did know, she hated. She assumed that Levi had been abusive. Only a controlling, evil man would have been so selfish with Eliza’s time. Eliza tried to explain that no…she was the one who had been selfish, but Rachelle wouldn’t listen. She said that Eliza was brainwashed. Eliza would have almost rather that have been true. At least that would explain her obsession.
She found herself imagining that she would roll over and find Levi next to her. She would reach her arms around him and find him hard and ready. Then she would crawl on top of him…
Eliza screamed into her pillow in frustration. She thought she could still smell him in her hair and in her clothes. Every once in a while she’d think she tasted him on her lips like they had just kissed.
Eliza swung her legs around and hopped out of bed, still completely full of energy. She knew she would never fall asleep in the state she was in, so she decided to try something different. With the light still off to avoid waking her sister, she found clothes, socks, and running shoes. She wrapped her unruly hair into a hairband and padded into the living room as quietly as she could.
She closed the front door behind her, aiming for only a gentle click. The cold air covered her arms with goose bumps, but she loved the feeling. The cold. The dark. It was all so comfortable. She ran down the sidewalk at a much quicker pace than she used to. A year ago, running this fast would give her a stitch in her side and leave her gasping for air. Now it was easy. Perhaps she should put her half-dead skills to good use and start training for the Olympics.
The familiar streets looked so odd in the darkness. The quiet was even stranger than the dark. No car noises, no kids playing, nothing except the sound of her breathing and the blood rushing through her veins. Her blood. She kept reminding herself of that. She was still human and still generated her own blood. No matter how much she craved blood, she didn’t need it.
As she turned a corner to begin pounding up a hill, she detected the faint scent of blood. She tried to ignore it. It was probably a wounded animal. The scent of blood surfaced from time to time. Even a kid falling and scraping his knee several blocks over could be enough to pique her senses.
However, this was different. The smell was too pungent…and too familiar. This was the blood that she had been smelling and craving for the past three weeks. Rachelle.
She thought she had been running fast before, but now she crossed the barrier between fast human and inhuman. She might have been flying. Based on how quickly she passed the houses, she might have been running as fast as she usually drove down this same street.
She bounded up the stairs to her apartment just as quickly, seeming to take the stairs five or six at a time. As she approached her front door, the smell of blood grew stronger. Her own blood seemed to electrify in a mixture of fear and want. She flew through the front door and followed the sound of Rachelle gasping and screaming. As much as she had feared it to be true, she hadn’t hoped to be imagining the scent. But now that she heard her sister’s cries, she knew that this was all too real.
The Queen had Rachelle pinned down in her bed, holding her hands behind her back and immobilizing her legs with the weight of her body. Her mouth was latched on to Rachelle’s neck. Rachelle was whimpering and squirming but looked weak. How much blood had she already taken? Eliza hadn’t been gone for that long, but it would have been long enough to take quite a bit of blood.
“You bitch,” Eliza growled.
The Queen stopped only long enough to turn around and sneer at Eliza, blood grotesquely oozing down her mouth and neck.
Eliza pounced, for once trying to shed all of her human self and draw purely on the vampirism. She needed to be an animal to defeat an animal. Although she was prepared to rip off the Queen’s limbs with her own bare hands, it wouldn’t be easy. With one easy swipe, the Queen knocked Eliza back and flung her across the room, not even looking up from her feeding this time.
Eliza tried again, this time wielding her sister’s dresser lamp. Once again, the Queen knocked her back easily, both Eliza and the lamp went careening back into the dresser. The lamp shattered and Eliza reached for her wounded head and felt the moistness of blood.
“Fuck you,” Eliza screamed, as little good it would do.
She then remembered the dagger her mother had given her. Bronze was used to test whether or not someone was a vampire, but she had also said that bronze weapons were used by vampire hunters. Perhaps that would be the edge she needed.
Eliza dashed into her room and grabbed the dagger out of her bottom drawer. It still had a glint of red from her own still-human blood. When Eliza had made it within five feet of the Queen, she stopped feeding, dropped Rachelle, and turned to face Eliza. She must have smelled the bronze coming.
Eliza eyed her sister’s still body, her throat constricting with terror, but she had to focus on the Queen.
“How dare you come into my home?” Eliza spat.
“It’s just my monthly feeding. Completely in-line with vampire law,” she said icily.
“And it just had to be my sister.”
“I’d been craving her ever since I got a whiff of her in the fall. She’s as decadent as I had hoped. Why don’t you have a taste? I think I’ve left you a few drops.”
“Go to Hell.”
The Queen shook her head back and laughed. Her laugh was sinister enough, but the blood dripping down her chest and glinting on her teeth made her look absolutely maniacal. How could anyone call this woman their Queen?
“Now that,” The Queen said, pointing a bloody finger at the dagger, “is against vampire law. As are you, my dear. I’ve just fed, so I’m stronger than ever. Is this really the time you want to attack? It seems foolish to me. I suggest you put down your illicit contraband and let your Queen pass.”
Now it was Eliza’s turn to laugh coldly. “You’re not my Queen.”
“Quite right, I suppose. You’re a girl with no home. Not a human. Not a vampire. An aberration.”
Eliza eyed Rachelle again, watching her back to see if she was breathing. Even if she was alive, she hadn’t moved her head and might be suffocating against the mattress. She needed to call 9-1-1. No more games.
Eliza did her best to stab the Queen in one swift motion that she wouldn’t see coming, but instead the Queen knocked her hand aside at the last minute and the dagger clattered to the floor. The Queen moved so quickly that Eliza hardly knew what was happening.
All she knew was that now the Queen was on top of her. She used her hand to press Eliza’s forehead, pinning her to the floor and her other hand to grasp Eliza’s hand while she drove her knee into Eliza’s chest.
“Too bad I just ate,” she said. “I’d love to suck you dry. I guess I’ll have to settle for something more…pedestrian.”
She moved her hand from Eliza’s forehead to her neck and squeezed.
“Don’t worry,” the Queen said. “You won’t die. Not really. I’m simply saving you from your limbo. Righting a wrong.”
Eliza couldn’t move and she certainly couldn’t scream, the Queen had made sure of that. Even if she did live, she wasn’t sure if she would ever scream again. The Queen’s supernaturally strong hand had crushed her neck. She could feel her wind pipe collapse far before she began to suffer from lack of oxygen. Eliza tried to kick her legs, but seemed to be only able to make tiny movements. She knew it was useless. The Queen would kill her. Perhaps she had killed her already. But Eliza was going down fighting, even if she could barely move.
As white flashes flickered in Eliza’s vision, she saw something strange. Black blood began to ooze out of the Queen’s mouth. She realized that the Queen had released her grip, but she still couldn’t breathe with her crushed neck. Right before she passed out, she saw Rachelle’s hand clutching a bronze dagger covered in black blood.
Chapter Seven
When Eliza woke up again, she was exactly where she wanted to be. She knew he was close before she even opened her eyes.
She could smell him, and she could smell the spicy orange scent of his linens, and the lavender sage of his body wash. This was what home smelled like. She should have never fought against it.
However, there was another smell that was less welcome. Blood. Not that the smell of blood was distasteful, far from it. It smelled better than all other scents of that room combined. It smelled like Christmas cookies, summer rain, melted chocolate, and fresh squeezed lemonade all at once. But she didn’t want to know why she smelled so much blood in Levi’s bedroom.
She opened her eyes carefully. The world looked different. Like when you’re near-sighted and put on your first pair of glasses, and see it crisp and clear for the first time. Levi smiled down on her tentatively. He looked different too. Better. Somehow, his hair and skin seemed less pale. It seemed to glow like he was an angel, not a demon. She knew that he hadn’t actually changed, she had.
A pinch in her arm showed her the source of the scent of blood. A tube filled with red was attached to her arm. She was being fed blood with an IV bag, and considering how many empty bags were in the bin—a lot of blood. She knew what this meant. She had been strangled, which wouldn’t have caused her to lose blood and need a transfusion. This meant that she had crossed to the other side and needed the blood for sustenance.
When Levi saw her eyeing the bag, his smile faded. He sat on the bed next to her and squeezed her hand.
“I’m so sorry,” he said.
Eliza released a shaky breath. “I’m dead,” she said.
“Yes, but also alive. I know this isn’t what you wanted. It’s not what anyone wants. But don’t give up hope, Eliza. As a vampire, you’ll get to see the world in ways that humans can’t even imagine. You’ll get to live to see a distant future. I know you have to sacrifice things you wanted, but you may not need to sacrifice all that you think. You can have all the things you once had. You can finish college. If you’re careful about it, you can still have a relationship with your sister and your father. And you can have the other things you wanted. You can certainly have love. Companionship. Even marriage if you want. And there are lots of children out there that need a mother. And no human mother could protect them as fiercely as you can.”
Tears spilled down Eliza’s cheeks. She grieved for her losses, but Levi’s words did give her hope. Her future would be absolutely nothing like she had once imagined it to be. Her life plan was completely shot. But maybe that was a good thing. The possibilities were endless…perhaps literally.
Eliza touched the needle in her arm. “Can I take this out now?”
“How do you feel?”
“Fine. Good, actually. I never realized I had so many aches and pains until they were gone.”
Levi gently removed the IV from Eliza’s arm. The small hole in her skin appeared to close almost immediately and it didn’t hurt.
Eliza sat up straight and began examining her body. She was paler than before, but hadn’t turned ghost-like. Or if she had, she couldn’t tell. Her skin seemed to shimmer like Levi’s did. She gently ran her fingers down her forearm and relished the sensation. It’s almost as if she could see her nerves reacting to the touch, sending tiny ripples down her skin. She also ran her fingers along her collarbone and then gently brushed her lips. The nerves in her lips seemed to twinkle as she touched them.
She looked at Levi and saw that he was watching her intently. With her half-dead senses, she could tell when he wanted her, and she loved that. But this was even better. She could feel the blood rushing in and hardening his cock as keenly as if she was him. They might have shared a body. And even still, he smiled at her so serenely, as if she didn’t know exactly what he was thinking. She could feel what he was thinking.
She wondered if he had always been so attuned to her too. When she began to feel warm and wet, did he feel it too? Did he always know? He had always been good at anticipating her needs, and perhaps that’s because he shared them.
Eliza grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him toward her, locking his lips in a kiss. She knew it would be amazing, but she never could have imagined how amazing. Pleasure rippled from her lips and through her body, singing along every nerve. She thought she could hear their heart’s beating in tandem.
She might as well have been a virgin again. These sensations were so new. Even as amazing as sex with Levi had been as a human, she had no idea how many other dimensions of pleasure were available to experience.
She was torn between wanting him to kiss every single inch her body so she could feel each individual skin cell shimmer, and ripping into his jeans and taking him right then and there. The long days and nights of wanting him had built up inside her. She felt pleasantly swollen and ready to finally release all of that pent up tension.
But if you’re immortal, what’s the point of skipping foreplay? It’s not like you don’t have the time. They lay next to each other and kissed deeply, slowly removing each other’s clothes. She ran her fingers lightly down his back and abdomen, and teased him on the rim of his cock. He did the same to her, taking his time to remove each piece of clothing. He ran his fingers delicately across her nipples and butt, and rubbed her from over her underwear, also teasing. She moaned and tensed her body into him, amazed at how much sensation she felt even through the silk of her panties.
“We need to take it slow,” he said. “It can be a bit overwhelming when it’s all new.”
He had urgency to his voice that told Eliza that he didn’t really want to take it slow. He wanted to pull off her panties and begin thrusting into her right now. She could sense him throbbing, perhaps also pent up from the time spent apart.
“Mmmmm,” she replied, kissing him again.
As primed as she was, she didn’t feel impatient. As a human, she felt like she had to run toward her orgasms as soon as she started to feel them coming. She thought she might lose them if she didn’t grasp them right away. Her own body a complicated, unpredictable machine.
She felt in control now. The idea of “losing” an orgasm or not chasing it fast enough seemed absurd. In fact, she didn’t want to rush. She wanted the feeling to build.
They were both naked except for the thin layer of Eliza’s panties between them. He rolled on top of her, and pressed against her urgently. Eliza thought he might contradict himself and enter her right then, unable to wait any longer.
However, just when she thought he might slip himself inside her, he pulled away, gently removing her panties. She gasped in expectation, thinking he was about to go down on her, but he made her wait again. He kissed her from her ankle all the way down to the inside of her thigh. Right when he reached the edge of her bikini line, he pulled away again, now kissing her down the other leg.
Then he moved just north of her throbbing region kissing her stomach as he fondled her breasts. She moaned in delicious exasperation.
Finally, he gently dragged his tongue from her belly button to her clit, and then stayed there, massaging her in rhythmic pulses. She couldn’t stop herself from crying out. Just like the kiss had radiated through her body, these sensations did as well, but a hundred times stronger. The pleasure in that one special spot between her legs didn’t stay localized, it travelled along her nerves like an electric current. Then, the sensation was so glorious that she didn’t even want to cry out. She didn’t want to moan or do anything else that might distract her from drinking in each moment. She just arched her back and closed her eyes, rhythmically pressing herself into him ever so slightly. She noticed that she didn’t even need to stop to breathe. Nothing would disrupt the beautiful perfect rhythm of his tongue. Her body lay still and in motion simultaneously. Each cell seemed to pulse along with the rhythm, a movement imperceptible to humans. She felt like she was emitting sparks.
She felt a rush toward orgasm and broke her silence with a loud moan of pleasure. He seemed satisfied that he’d brought her to her edge, but no further, and stopped the rhythm. Her stomach fluttered with delightful anticipation. She knew he was about to be ins
ide her. Finally. It’s all she had wanted for so long.
Before he eased himself inside her, he stopped to kiss her again, as if the kiss was just as desirable as the main attraction. They had obviously kissed plenty of times before, but they had never kissed as much while making love as they did this time. Something had shifted in their relationship. It had become less about lust, and had moved toward love.
He groaned into her ear as he slowly entered her. He had been right, the feeling was almost too wonderful. She cried out again and grasped at the sheets, not knowing what to do with herself. He went slow, letting his thrusts radiate the pleasure through her gently. As always, he found just the right spot. An angle that rubbed her in all the right ways. She tensed her butt to press herself against him more decisively. As a human, she had known sex with Levi was amazing, but she had been missing so many sensations. She had been in such a hurry, and so alarmingly unobservant.
She felt everything now. His stomach brushing against hers. The feeling of his body against the insides of her legs. And of course, his kisses. Although now they were getting so close that they couldn’t kiss each other for long without having to stop to moan. Although he still thrust slowly, she could tell that it was taking more willpower for him. He breathed long, slow breaths to keep himself in check.
She pressed herself against him again hungrily. Her legs and core were so strong now. Even though he was on top, it was easy for her to raise her hips to guide the thrusting herself. She relished in speeding up the pace, making him work even harder to keep it together.
BILLIONAIRE ROMANCE: The Unforgettable Southern Billionaires: The Complete Collection Boxed Set (Young Adult Rich Alpha Male Billionaire Romance) Page 93
