Master of Passion

by Angela Knight

  They dropped into something soft and white on the floor that had not been there a heartbeat earlier. She’d conjured a mattress. But he had no time to wonder about it when she took advantage of the leverage offered by the floor, hunching up at him, that delicious pussy milking his cock.

  “Adam, God…” Opal lifted her face to him, and he kissed her, losing himself in the fire and heat of her mouth. “It’s coming!” she gasped against his lips. “I can’t hold it!”

  Oh, thank God, Adam had been afraid he wouldn’t last long enough for her to climax. He was way too close to the edge.

  She screamed at his ear, the sound piercing, and convulsed.

  Then it happened.

  Energy exploded out of Opal, jangling electric jolts that snapped his every muscle taut, boiled through him, jerking and whipping his body as if she’d suddenly become a downed power line. Pain blazed over his skin as a wave of searing sparks drowned him.

  “Adam!” she screamed, just before a second blast followed the first in a wave of magic that ripped and twisted at his body until he thought it was going to tear him apart. He tried to scream, but his throat locked and convulsing muscles wouldn’t obey.

  The third blast crashed over him, and he began to burn. He knew then he was dying. Nothing could hurt this bad without being fatal…

  His mind winked out.

  Chapter Six

  Adam came awake to a thundering drumbeat.

  For a moment he could see nothing but blinding light. At last the glare faded. Groaning, he stirred, and realized he was lying on his back on the floor. He jolted fully awake, panic steaming through him.

  Boom boom boom…

  Afghanistan. He was in Afghanistan, and the Marine had tripped that IED…

  He jerked upright, frantic, grabbing for his dick. Oh, thank God. It was still there. A second frantic glance proved that so were his arms and legs.

  It wasn’t a bomb, dumbass. It was the Gift.

  Boom boom boom…

  Over the booming drumbeat, he heard Opal groan in pain.

  Oh shit, Opal! He rolled onto his hands and knees, and almost threw up as a wave of pain crashed over him, so nauseating he wanted to heave up his last three meals. Did he have another concussion?

  Where the hell was Opal?

  Boom boom boom…

  Adam looked around, belatedly realizing they were still in the kitchen. He was crouching on the floor beside the prep counter. Spotting piles of something white littering the floor around him, he frowned. What the hell was that?

  Picking up a handful, he realized it was singed feathers and scraps of white silk. It’s the mattress. Or what’s left of it, anyway.

  Boom boom boom…

  Looking toward the sound, Adam spotted Opal sprawled in the corner, propped half against the wall. “Opal? Oh fuck!” He staggered to his feet and started toward her, only to stumble and damn near face plant. His body didn’t seem to be working right. And what was with that booming? It sounded like one of those cars with amps cranked up until you could feel the sound in your breastbone. No actual music, just bass. It was so loud, his heart seemed to be beating in time…

  Then he realized the sound was his heart. Or mostly his heart, because there was a second beat laid over the first. Opal’s?

  Not trusting his balance, Adam crawled to her. She lifted her head.

  “Opal? Opal, baby, are you all right?” His own voice seemed a roar in his ears as if he were screaming.

  Opal only blinked, dazed, obviously not tracking.

  Adam lowered his voice to a dry whisper. “Do I… need to get somebody?” His head thumped savagely. “Was that… was that the Gift?” He’d expected magical sparks, maybe unconsciousness, not fucking Hiroshima going off inside his skull.

  Blue-gray eyes sharpened as her brain came back online. “Adam?”

  He cringed as her voice seemed to knife through his skull like an electric saw. “Not so loud.”

  “’Kay.” With a visible effort, Opal sat up. Frowning in concern, she cupped his cheek in her hand. Her skin felt… Strange, a little rougher than it had before. “Are you all right?” Adam could tell she was trying to whisper, yet the sound hammered into his ears.

  As he eyed her through the booming pain in his head, he realized something red smeared her mouth. She’d bitten her lip. The crimson looked so vivid against the soft pink of her lips, he found himself staring. And the smell… It didn’t smell like blood at all. Instead of the metallic copper scent he’d come to know from too many combat zones, it smelled sweet, impossibly tempting. Adam’s mouth began to water.

  Before he knew it, he was leaning forward, kissing Opal again. The taste exploded in his mouth, a burst of intoxicating sensation that rolled through him like the incessant boom of their heartbeats. His own began to beat faster.

  Adam swallowed, and his tongue touched something in his own mouth that shouldn’t be there. Something long and pointed. He froze, his lips pressed to hers even as his tongue explored the protrusion.

  It felt like a fang. Oh, holy shit, I have fangs.

  Boom boom boom boom…

  The taste of Opal’s blood filled his mouth, and it was the most delicious thing he’d ever experienced. Hunger roared up, fierce and stark. What if I hurt her?

  And he could. This was dangerous. Adam knew that much from the knowledge spell. They called it going blood-mad, and if you lost control, you could kill your partner. Or she’d be forced to kill you.

  But her taste… Oh God, her taste!

  Boom boom boom…

  Adam wanted her so badly he shook with it. Wanted to sink his new fangs into that soft flesh and let Opal’s blood spill into his mouth. She’d taste so damn good…

  No! Images wheeled through his mind, a nauseating kaleidoscope of all the horrific death he’d seen in two decades as a combat videographer. A Marine’s eyes, blank and staring over the horrific wound in his throat. An emaciated child, skin pulled so tightly over bone, her face looked like a skull. A woman with a bullet hole in her forehead. Corpses lying twisted in positions no living human would assume even unconscious. Broken dolls that had been people.

  Opal’s face, bloodless, her eyes blank and empty, crimson splattering her face, her throat ripped out…

  “No!” Something hit Adam’s back in a stunning blow, followed an instant later by an impact on the back of his head that made him see stars. His legs went out from under him and he fell on his ass, shuddering.

  “Adam!” Opal’s hand caught him under the jaw, lifting his head. Wide gray eyes stared at him in worry. “Are you all right?”

  This close, the smell of her blood rolled over him again. He saw the pulse beating in her throat, heard its boom in his ears, sounding a little fast with anxiety. Twin needles stabbed into his upper jaw, and his cock hardened…

  Gray eyes blank and fixed over a gory throat…

  With a curse, Adam shoved Opal away. She stumbled backward to bang into the cabinet behind her. He started to grab for her, catch her, make sure she was all right, but that smell rolled over him again.

  He shrank back against the wall, afraid to move. Afraid he’d set off the rabid animal crouching in his brain. Terrified it would bury its muzzle in that incredible smell -- and rip. Adam’s stomach cramped with hunger as he fought the animal need. “What the fuck is happening to me?”

  Opal pushed away from the counter and moved toward him slowly, both hands raised. “Look, it’s all right…”

  Boom boom boom…

  “Stay away!” His voice shook as images of death -- her death -- spun through his mind in a horrific slideshow. “You’ve got to get out of here! I’m going blood-mad!”

  “You’re not blood-mad,” Opal said in that patient tone people used when someone was losing his shit.

  “You need to get out of here!” Adam had to yell it over the thunder of her pulse. “I’m going to hurt you, Opal. I’m going to rip out your throat…” He slid sideways along the wall, trying to get away
from her before he lost his slipping self-control. Buried his face in that intoxicating scent…

  Adam was so fucking hungry. He’d been fine before the Gift, but now he felt empty as a kettle drum. From the corner of one eye, he saw something was wrong with the wall. Glancing over, he saw the outline of his head and shoulders indented in the wallboard. “What the hell did that?” Nothing made sense. It reminded him of the time he got hold of some bad pot in college.

  “You jumped away from me so hard, you practically threw yourself through the wall.” Opal spoke in a low, soft voice now, obviously working not to add to his fear. “If you were at full strength, you probably would have. So no, you’re not blood-mad.” But there was something in her eyes that made him wonder whether she really believed what she was saying.

  “How do you know?” The question held a mix of despair, fear and helpless fury.

  “One, Alys told me she’d Seen that you’ll survive the gift. Two, when vampires go blood-mad, they lose it immediately. That’s why Maja court seducers keep a knife under the pillow.”

  Adam found himself staring at her throat, listening to the maddening thump of her heart. The taste of her blood filled his mouth, and he wanted it so badly his hands curled into fists. Trying to distract himself, he asked, “How many do they usually have to kill?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. Not that many. The point is, if you were going to lose it, you would have already. The fact that you tried to put your own head through the wall to get away from me tells me it’s not something either of us has to worry about. Everything’s fine, Adam. Calm down.”

  His right shoulder thumped against the wall, and he realized he’d been backing away from Opal until he’d maneuvered himself into a corner. It made him feel a little bit stupid. He forced himself to stop retreating.

  Opal edged closer. His eyes locked on the long, graceful line of her throat. Hunger such as Adam had never felt rolled over him, and his stomach cramped. It reminded him of the time he, Branwyn, and their Afghan driver -- who’d forgotten to put oil in his leaking car -- had gotten stranded in the desert. They’d had to walk for two days with only two bottles of water between them.

  By the time they’d made it to the nearest village, it had felt as if Adam’s tongue had transformed itself into a dirty athletic sock. The thirst had been so maddening, he’d shoved his head under the first water faucet he found and gulped until he almost threw up.

  This felt worse than that.

  His brain produced another drained Opal image, and he shuddered. “Why am I so damned hungry?”

  “You haven’t finished the transition. You need to drink my blood and have your first Daysleep while the spell finishes its work. When you wake up, you’ll be a vampire.”

  Adam blinked. “You mean I’m not one now?”

  “You’re a baby chick of a vampire. I can almost see all the downy yellow feathers.”

  Adam reached down and grabbed his straining hard-on. “Does this look like a feather to you?”

  Opal laughed, her shoulders relaxing, as if the last of her wary anxiety was draining away. “Okay, if you’ve got the brainpower for a double entendre, you’re definitely not blood-mad.” Grabbing Adam’s hand, she dragged him out of his corner.

  Adam resisted the pull too late. The scent of her rolled over his head, and his fangs shot twin needles of pain all the way into his brain. “Ow!” He grabbed at his jaw instinctively. “Shit, that hurts!”

  “Yeah, I know. You need to eat. Come on.” Opal towed him out of the room and down the hall to the living room.

  “What if I can’t stop?” The question sounded ragged with anxiety.

  “Remember yesterday when I marched your ass out of the newsroom when you didn’t want to go? I’ll just do that.”

  “So why do court seducers have to kill people?”

  Opal shrugged. “Since you can’t cure blood-madness -- and we’ve tried -- you have to put them down.”

  Adam gaped at her matter-of-fact tone. “Like Old Yeller?”

  “Pretty much. But you don’t have to worry about that, because -- again -- not blood-mad.”

  He licked his dry fangs and wished he could believe her. “What the fuck did I get myself into?”

  “A body that looks twenty-five.”

  He stared at her. “What?”

  “Later.” She guided him over to one of the armchairs and pushed him down. No sooner had Adam sunk into the leather upholstery than Opal planted her pert little ass on his lap. “We’ve got to hurry. The sun will be coming up in twenty minutes, and you have to finish before you pass out.” Opal reached up, grabbed a handful of her glorious hair and draped it over the opposite shoulder, then tapped a gently throbbing vein. “Right here. Come on.”

  He stared at the vein, his mouth watering. Gray eyes blank and fixed over a gory throat…

  Suddenly Opal gripped his head with both hands as she forced him to meet her eyes. “Do you trust me?”

  Adam stared into her eyes, breathing hard, almost shivering as his body battled his fear. He wanted to trust her. God, he wanted it so bad. And yet… his heart had a really bad track record.

  Her grip tightened. “Do you think I don’t know what it would do to you if you hurt me? Do you think I’d let you do that to yourself?”

  “No.” The word emerged stark, unadorned. And yet, it was also utterly true. He licked his dry lips. “I do trust you.”

  Gray eyes stared into his. “Then drink, Adam. I won’t let anything happen to either of us.”

  Swallowing, he reached out one shaking hand and tilted her chin aside, arching the fragile curve of her throat. Her skin felt impossibly soft and warm.

  He leaned in. Oh, God, don’t let me lose it. And bit deep, trying to make it quick and painless. The faintest trace of something incredible slid into his mouth. It tasted nothing at all like blood. He wasn’t exactly sure what it did taste like, but he knew he wanted more. Adam sucked harder, but all he got was a couple more maddening drops.

  Which was when he remembered something a Navy corpsman told him once about dealing with stabbings. “Never pull the knife out -- he’ll bleed to death, because the blade plugs the wound.”

  Cautiously, Adam drew his fangs out a little. Frustrating droplets became a delicious trickle. He moved his head, widening the tiny punctures with the tips of his fangs. The blood began to flow at last, and he drank a cautious swallow. The parched tissues of his mouth grew wet, and he sucked a little harder. The flow increased… And sweet Jesus, the taste! An electric tingle rolled down his throat. It felt as if his tongue were having an orgasm in his mouth, every taste bud uniting in a hungry howl for more.

  Almost instantly, an incredible energy stormed through Adam’s bloodstream, throwing his senses into high alert and lighting up his brain with joy. He’d never tried cocaine, but if it was anything like this, he suddenly understood why addicts would do anything to get it.

  The thought sent a shaft of alarm through him. He’d shot stories about what that kind of addiction could do to those who fell into its trap…

  Then he felt the stroke of Opal’s fingers sliding over his head, derailing the rise of panic again. “You have such beautiful hair,” she murmured in a low, dreamy purr. “You really are a ridiculously beautiful man.” Her voice took on a teasing note. “Also an alpha male pain-in-the-ass, but that comes with the territory with Magi.”

  He wanted to frame a smartass retort, but that would have required letting go of her throat, and his body refused to cooperate. Adam had always considered himself strong willed, even stubborn -- every woman he’d ever known had bitched about that very thing, including his mother. Yet reining in his body’s savage need for Opal’s blood felt like trying to pull an eighteen-wheeler out of a skid across black ice.

  With a savage exertion of will, he finally managed to stop, but when he tried to lift his head, Opal’s grip tightened on his hair. “You need more. The magic in you isn’t strong enough yet.”

  With a soft, defe
ated groan, Adam let himself relax into her throat. Into the flow of blood. Let himself float in the intoxicating taste of Opal. He’d made love to a lot of women, but he’d never felt so deliciously intimate with anyone in his life.

  I’m falling in love with her. Despite the hot joy of feeding, he felt a chill. But Opal’s still in love with Joaquin.

  * * *

  “You didn’t tell me blood’s the best drug ever,” Adam murmured. Once he’d fed to her satisfaction, they’d retreated to her bedroom to await the sunrise. His voice sounded a little slurred. “I’m high as a kite.”

  Opal propped her chin on his chest to smile up at him. “Actually, that’s something you have to watch out for. Vampires can get addicted to drinking too much of the bottled stuff. But as long as you don’t drink any more than a cup or so at a time, you’ll be fine.”

  Adam snorted. “Bottles don’t have pulses. You’re what I’m hooked…” He broke off as his buzzing brain belatedly realized what he just said.

  The smile drained from Opal’s face, and her gaze was troubled. He opened his mouth to speak, though he had no idea what he was going to…

  Blackness dropped on him like a weighted net.

  * * *

  Cheryl Parker dialed her son’s number for what must’ve been the hundredth time in the last two days. Her living room TV showed DCN, as it almost always did when she was home. The station was running that terrifying video loop from the fight in the company’s own newsroom.

  Video Adam had shot.

  A man in golden armor was dueling three of the blue aliens with a sword as a woman moved fluidly at his side. All around the combatants, things were exploding, flying around the room, or catching on fire for no visible reason whatsoever. Like magic. Until the armored woman turned to the camera and snapped, “Get out of here!”

  The video cut to an Administration talking head. “The President has sworn to put a stop to these incursions. He’s meeting with the leaders of NATO, China and Russia on…”