For the second time, she’d used the “p” word.
“You never need beg me for anything. If you want a fast coupling, then you’ll have it quick. One time.”
He moved until he positioned himself near her pussy, her gorgeous core, which had opened for him beautifully.
With a kiss to tell her words he might never be able to say—the truth of what their moment meant to him—he pressed inside her. Even ready, she was still tight around him. He bit back a curse. His woman would be treated gently their first time together.
She pressed her hips forward to draw him closer inside. “I know I seem needy.”
She bit on his neck and he almost spent. Adrienne would be his undoing.
“You’re going to have to believe me, to be so wanton is new for me. I don’t usually...crave. I think I’ve been waiting for you.”
He knew her sentiment exactly. She didn’t need to explain more. After so much time, there weren’t words.
Adrienne fit him akin to a glove. The more she spurred him forward, until he was balls deep inside her.
Tears he hadn’t shed in years filled his eyes. He wouldn’t cry. It would be humiliating. Men simply didn’t do such things. The emotion, however, was there. The perfection. The goodness of Adrienne after never knowing any for so long.
Without moving anything else, he pushed her hair off her forehead so he looked on what had become, in such a short period of time, such a beloved face to him. He would do anything for her. How was tonight happening? Why hadn’t anyone told him it would shatter his walls to have her?
“Hanzi.” She put her hands on both side of his face. “I’m real.”
How did she know what he needed to hear? He kissed her hard and, with a jerk of his hips, moved inside her.
“Yes.” Her eyes closed, and her head fell backwards as her body bucked beneath him. “More.”
More was what he needed too. Her hips answered his push, and soon they were in a dance older than even he was. Her eyes met his, and the smile in them moved his cold soul.
He wasn’t going to last long. Their joining was too much. Pleasure warred with pain. How could sex be both? Hanzi didn’t know. Sex had always been meaningless before. With Adrienne, it was something akin to an alteration of the very universe.
He reached between them, found her clit, and stroked. Once, twice, on the third rub she cried out, milking his cock with her movements, driving him home in a way he had never known existed. He tried to hold out. The longer, the better it would be for her. But lasting long was clearly not meant to be. Seconds later, their souls connected in the way only two people joined from the inside would be he followed her into what should have been peaceful oblivion with his body spent.
Only it wasn’t.
His gums ached. Hanzi silently cursed the heavens. With Adrienne beneath him, he would not lose control.
Her eyes opened, and she stared at him, her eyes wide, also not sated. What was happening here?
“I know what you need.”
He gripped the side of the couch. Hanzi had to pull out of her, step away, give them both space. Perhaps Feri might be persuaded to help him once more until they figured out what was happening, why his meeting with Adrienne was going so differently than everyone else’s.
“Look at me.”
Hanzi turned his attention to her eyes. They were clear, level-headed. She was not compelled.
“Adrienne, I am not right. I thought I might control the bloodlust. I had some help. I am weak tonight.”
“Hanzi, bite me. Feed from my neck.”
“No.” He was too raw. Her offer was precious, he’d never forget she had made it, but he would not....
She gripped his face again in the way that she did. The third time in as many minutes she had touched him so.
“You can feed off me and not turn me. My body will heal in two weeks. Surely, between the two of us, we can figure out how to handle or give in to the need within a short period of time. Please, Hanzi, I want it too. Tonight, I want you to feed. Off my blood alone.”
His ears roared, and the room turned red. He swallowed back the pressing urgency. No way could he consider feeding if he wasn’t in control.
“I won’t hurt you.” He bent to kiss her again, keeping it light. “Let me compel you so you don’t feel the first bite of my lips on yours.”
“No.” She shook her head. “I want to feel it, Hanzi. Every second of it. From pain until you’re done. No compulsion between us. Not ever. Do it.” She raised her eyebrows in a challenge. “Immediately.”
And so he did. Faster was better for the first bite. Without altering her mind there was no way to make it painless. She cried out and he cursed himself for the monster he continued to be. The first taste of her coppery blood filled his mouth, and the beast within him stilled. For the first time since he’d awakened in the ground, he felt no anger, no monster to push away.
All that existed was Adrienne. She hugged him close, and his cock pressed to life still inside her. Feeding during sex was new, too. Blood had never meant sex before.
“Hanzi.” She closed her eyes and lifted her hips as she had done earlier. “More please. More.”
He slowly pressed to fill her again and pulled out, keeping his lips where they were. His sucks would slow. He would not take too much or abuse the gift she was giving him.
It didn’t take long, as if the extra pleasure was simply an additional moment to further bind what had happened earlier between them. Adrienne shattered again, crying out his name in the sweetest plea.
As his cock emptied, for the third time and still as strongly as the first, he let go of her neck. With a swipe of his tongue, he closed her wound and at last fell on top of her, a man with no energy left to think.
Seconds—or maybe hours?—passed before he had the strength to roll over, pulling her on top of him. His cock was no longer ready to explode. She mumbled something as he tugged her closer and let his lids fall shut. How long since he had last rested?
Two thousand or so years?
****
The pounding on the door jarred him awake. Sunset had come and gone, and he hadn’t noticed. On top of him, Adrienne did not stir. The rise and fall of her breathing told him she slept deeply.
“Hanzi, please.” Jerome’s voice at the door. “There’s been a death.”
He wrapped his arms around Adrienne tightly. He should have known the sunshine, which was their night, would never last. Death always came knocking.
Chapter Five
Adrienne slept deeply, and, although she hadn’t seen Feri again, she dreamed as she had earlier. Maybe Feri’s magic wasn’t finished yet. Adrienne didn’t know, and she didn’t care. All she knew was she warm, she was sated, and she apparently had more to learn about Hanzi.
In her new dream, she wasn’t Ema, which was a good thing because the person whose body she inhabited was staring at Ema’s corpse. She stood in a hallway looking at the woman, who would have been lovely had she still lived. Instead, her eyes started open, unseeing, at the ceiling of the small hut where Adrienne found herself.
Ema had fallen next to a small, gray bed, which looked more a cot than any bed Adrienne had ever slept in. She supposed she should have been shocked. If she’d stumbled across a dead body in real life, Adrienne would probably have screamed bloody murder. But, given how all of the slaughter had happened two thousand years ago, she couldn’t help but feel the distance time was playing with her feelings.
Adrienne squatted, glad to see she had control over her own body. Looking away from Ema and down at herself, she noticed her own arms were still tattooed. Was it possible? Had she managed to stay herself during the dream journey?
A door swung open, and a young man rushed into the room.
“No,” he cried out, nearly doubling over, before righting himself. “Every house. Every damn house.”
She stared at the stranger for a moment. He gave the impression of being familiar, but she couldn’t quite place
how. The young man paced between the door and Ema for a few moments before kneeling in front of her dead body.
He raised his eyes to look at Adrienne. “You can see me, yes?”
She gasped, nerves moving through her. “I can.”
“Good.” He stood and nodded. “How else am I to lead you through what you have to see?”
“Who do you think I am exactly?” She followed his lead and got to her feet.
“Adrienne. Who else would you be?” He shook his head. “Your dream is your vision.”
“Okay. My second trip is slightly different than before.” He held out his hand to shush her, and she stared. Something about the way he held his head to the side while he listened....Jerome? She reached out to grab his arm.
“Are you Jerome?”
He scratched his chin. “Not called by such a name in the time period you’re viewing, but yes. And before you ask, no, I’m not a vampire. I wasn’t here when the witch cursed us. It seems to have screwed my version of the curse a little. I stayed human, and I didn’t die. Ever. I age very slowly. Here, at the moment you are witnessing, I’m still not sure what’s going on. Let’s fast forward a bit.”
“Wait. What?”
The room around her changed, and she whirled around to try to figure out her surroundings. She was in some kind of study. It was dark outside with only lights from the candles illuminating the room. Jerome sat in front of a desk looking at a book.
“I’m the only person in town who can read.” He raised his head to stare at her. “Sorry about the whirling around. You aren’t going to be asleep for very long and we have ground to cover.”
She tapped her foot on the ground. “I hate the dreaming thing.”
“Tough. Hanzi will never tell you what you need to know. He’s silent, and he thinks he’s protecting you from his monster. Feri arranged the whole scenario to give you the knowledge you’ll need to make your choice. I’m how he managed tonight to manifest. I’m not real. The actual me has no idea you’re seeing me at all. Let’s go where we need to go. Shall we?”
She sat on the side of the desk. Hanzi hadn’t been able to read. Had he learned to read? He’d had time. She’d have to ask him.
“What does the book say?”
“It says the witch had no choice but to destroy our town. A very wealthy man who wished to have more took her son and told her to kill us or lose her child. She did as he asked. Ema and the others, they dropped dead before they went to bed. But the witch had given some of us an out—a way to find revenge for the deaths of the others—she’d turned some members of our town into vampires. Right as you watch, I—the version of me who was real—am reading the book, and I don’t understand it. Vampires weren’t a concept any of us were familiar with. Hanzi and ninety-nine other strong males would crawl from the graves I dug them or simply stand up where they had fallen. They would be filled with bloodlust, and I’d be drained several times before the particular night ended.”
He stood and walked to the window. “I don’t know how I felt about what happened? I’m Feri’s manifestation of me. I know how Feri felt and it wasn’t pretty. He hasn’t given me Jerome’s thoughts. How do you feel about happened?”
She rubbed at her nose. Truthfully, she’d rather not over analyze. “Utter horror. I can’t imagine waking a vampire tomorrow.”
“The witch wasn’t done. She knew their lives after death would be horrific. To give them revenge, she’d made them monsters. They had to live in the night except someday they would have the chance to find a love—a woman to mate with—have children with. They’d be matched.” He stepped forward and touched her wrist. “For example, you and Hanzi.”
Once again the strawberry birthmark played a role. “The wedding part I know.”
“It got worse.”
She hugged herself as a cold wind blew past her. Where was the breeze coming from? She looked around. Nothing seemed out of order. Was she cold wherever she slept in the real world? Dreamland sucked.
“Okay, we have to go on then. Whirling again? Flying somewhere else?”
Adrienne blinked, and she was in a field. A dark landscape at night. The moon lit the grass, and Jerome stood to her right.
“I wasn’t here for the battle to come. Once I stepped back into our township, I never could leave. For two thousand years, I’ve lived within the borders, one way or another, where I was born.”
“Jerome.”
She sucked in her breath. Hanzi had been put through hell and so had Jerome. She had no idea. He seemed so chipper. She was going to have to do something for him. Although she had no idea what an appropriate gift for him would be.
“No feeling, remember? Not from me here.” He pointed at the field. “The scene in front of us is Feri’s memory the night he and Hanzi had their first battle. Thirty years later. The man who wanted their land is long dead, throat slit. So is the witch. Her son. All of their living relatives. And countless others.” He turned to look at her. “See the crowd forming over there?”
She stared in the darkness. There did seem to be people there who hadn’t been seconds earlier. How had they gotten there so fast? “The scene in front of us is about to be very bad, isn’t it?”
“You already know, I assume, that vampires are made through the sharing of saliva to blood during the feeding. They didn’t know right away. There were hundreds upon hundreds of vampires made in the three decades after my friends were turned. Consequently, the original vampires called themselves the royals. All new vampires were lesser creatures in liege to them. Those years were heady. My brothers had come to enjoy their dark selves. Hanzi’s vampires will kill Feri’s. Slaughter them in blood and flames.”
Adrienne tried to make sense of what she had been told. She had a lot of information to process. Things which had never been explained before were starting to take shape in her mind. She wanted to scream from frustration.
“They made an army of vampires. The ones I know from home, they’re them?”
“Likely not. This poor group will be slaughtered soon. The ones who don’t die find they can do something the witch made impossible for my brothers to do without their destined mate—they can breed.”
She sucked in her breath. “The new ability would mean hundreds make hundreds and more.”
Her head hurt. The ramifications were startling. After enough generations passed, the world would be overrun with vampires.
“When my foolish friends finally pulled their heads out of their asses, they realized they had a problem, if for no other reason than their food supply would soon be at risk. They finally stopped fighting long enough to remember we had once been close. Rules were set. If nothing else, the original vampires were stronger, faster. They became the police. Breeding policies were put into place. How and when to feed. The life you’ve lived back in the United States is controlled by a series of highly documented rules, the breaking of which would mean death to all of them. The royals are scary. They have talents. Feri can move into minds. Hanzi can find anyone. Others can manipulate the world around them.”
“The vampires near where I grew up were very meticulous about things.”
Jerome snorted. “They would have to be. No modern vampire wants the royal vampires showing up to enforce the law.”
“And policing is what Hanzi does? He keeps things in order.”
“No.” Jerome shook his head, and when he did he changed. She gasped as his whole form altered. Where one second he was Jerome, the next, with a switch of lighting, he was Feri. Hanzi’s brother stared back at her. The same distant gaze which had freaked her out before still did so. She wanted to take a step back, but shit, here was her dream. Where was she going to go?
“Adrienne,” Feri reached out to touch her arm. “Hanzi is our hunter. When someone breaks the law, tries to run, Hanzi finds him or her. He delivers the deathblow. Without him, we would be in serious trouble. I know you think you’ve been given a raw deal. You had no choice. Fate picked you and decided you should
be his companion. Perhaps you have not a single altruistic cell in your body. I’m not asking you to consider him for charitable reasons. Imagine you have been gifted the single most powerful monster who will love you forever. All you have to do is make him think he might actually deserve you.”
Adrienne sat straight up on the couch. She shivered uncontrollably. Feri’s words resonated in her brain. Hanzi was no ordinary vampire. He was the vampire other vamps were frightened of. The image of his sad eyes when he looked at her, when he spoke of himself, flashed through her mind. Hell, the man needed her, and he was beautiful to boot.
She rubbed at her face trying to force her body to calm. Feri’s run around in her head had to be done, or she was going to show them all a fit they’d never seen before.
“Hanzi.” Adrienne called out.
Where was he? She’d fallen asleep on him and he’d left her? When he didn’t answer, she popped off the couch. He’d destroyed her clothes, so she quickly went into the bedroom and changed into some new ones.
A quick glance in the mirror showed her that her black yoga pants and long tunic made her look presentable, if not stylish. Still, it was the mark on her neck that caught her attention. Two small marks where Hanzi bit her still marred her neck. She rubbed her fingers against it, and a surge of warmth passed through her body, specifically through her lady parts.
Actually, having his mark on her was kind of sexy. She’d been properly laid, and she had a real mark to show the world, a really outstanding hickey. Adrienne had never been opposed to permanently placing things on her skin for the world to see. She loved it.
Damn it. She’d always been such a horn dog. Hanzi was only going to make her sexual cravings worse—if she found him. Where the hell had he gone?
She put on her shoes and walked out into the hall. Unlike earlier, Jerome didn’t meet her at the door. Was she to be given free range of the castle?
“Hanzi.” She called out one more time into the hall. When she’d exited to go to town, she had gone left, and it seemed as good a direction as any considering she didn’t know where she was going.
Bitten Surrender Page 6
