This was a power play, and he was happy to give up control, dying to see what she might do.
She didn’t make him wait long.
Her little hands were at his chest, pushing him, until he sat on the edge of the bed.
Then she knelt before him.
His cock, already aching for her, stiffened impossibly.
She mustn’t. If she did this he would burst immediately.
“Darling,” he began.
But she reached for him and stroked him gently with one finger.
A trail of intense pleasure followed the path of her finger. He felt himself flex against her.
Encouraged, she wrapped her fingers around him, squeezing gently, and sending him into a haze of pleasure.
She moved her hand up and down lightly.
He barely restrained his cries, and prayed to the gods, please, don’t let me come.
They both watched as a clear bead of moisture appeared at the tip of him when her hand moved up again.
Her curly head sank toward it, and he was powerless to stop her.
He closed his eyes. There was hot moisture against the tip of his bursting cock, and then more than the tip.
William let his head fall back as Adia explored his throbbing organ with her sweet mouth.
But he couldn’t allow this to go on.
He managed to pull her off, just as she began to suck in earnest.
“No, my love, no, my angel,” he told her. “Not that way. I want you to belong to me.”
She studied him, her eyes suddenly serious.
“I know it will be the first time. If you want me,” he added, hoping he hadn’t misunderstood her feelings.
“I want you,” she said simply.
His heart filled to bursting as he helped her back into the bed, laid her down and crawled on top of her, covering her body with his.
Her arms twined around his neck and she smiled up at him bravely.
“I love you, Adia,” he told her honestly, glorying in the truth of the words.
“I love you, William,” she smiled back, pulling him closer, so close he could see the flecks of gold in her brown eyes, so close he could hear her heart, still beating but more faintly now than before. Soon it wouldn’t have to beat at all.
She arched herself against him greedily before he could distract himself with the future.
The softness of her against him was intoxicating and he was lost in the immediacy of her warmth, her fragrant moisture.
He kissed her long and hard, stroking her tongue with his.
Then he slid a hand down her body, caressing her right breast, molding her belly. Biting his lip and praying for control, he took himself in his own hand and pushed gently against her opening.
The liquid heat of her made him frantic with desire, but she was so tight.
She whimpered and sank her nails into his biceps, exciting him further.
Slowly he pressed his way into her heat, pushing to the point where he felt resistance.
“Please,” she whispered.
Jaw clenched, he pressed further into paradise, and felt something give way inside her.
Fully enveloped by her throbbing heat, William’s mind and body were almost overwhelmed with pleasure.
He forced his raging form to hold still, to let the girl get used to his size.
But then she was whimpering under him and jogging her hips up as if to beg for friction.
He eased himself almost all the way out, then entered her again, slowly, hoping it felt good to her.
Her nails dug deeper into his muscles and she made a hungry, impatient sound.
Deranged with desire, William let loose, plunging into her, feeling her tighten around him, his ears filled with her cries.
But it was too much, he couldn’t take any more.
He slipped a hand between them to massage her clit.
When she exploded around him, he felt himself stiffen in reply and then the world disappeared and there was nothing but Adia’s cries and the pleasure jetting through him, emptying him into her, annihilating him, as she held him like she would never let him go.
He collapsed beside her, reveling in his newfound bliss. He held her close for a long time, stroking her silken hair as she half-dozed in his arms.
Before sunrise, he stood, lifting Adia to her feet as well.
They looked out the window together, across the moonlit boxwood maze. There, in all its glory, stood the summerhouse. William wasn’t sure exactly how far back they had gone, but if the summerhouse was still standing then…
“Can we save them?” Adia asked, echoing his own thoughts. “Stop the party before everyone gets killed?”
William didn’t answer.
Adia turned to him.
“We know when the red-haired woman will return,” she said, her eyes wide. “Can we…?”
“Come, love,” he said. “The sun is nearly up. First, we must rest. Then we shall see exactly what gifts you have brought us.”
She nodded up at him and flashed him a smile that let him know she would follow him anywhere - of her own free will.
He took her hand and led her to the darkened crawlspace, away from the harsh rays of the soon-rising sun. They would rest together, now and forever. And tonight, when the sun went down, he would begin to set his past right.
And he would do it with his love, his Adia, by his side.
Chapter 18
Dulcie Blanco eyed the old photograph by the mantel curiously. She’d been wanting to check this house out ever since she got her Pennsylvania real estate license.
The guys at the office in town said it was haunted and that this was the last house Adia Booth had shown before she disappeared back in November.
But a quick look at Adia’s calendar, still on the desk at Tarker’s Hollow Realty Group, clearly showed that the last house she’d shown had been the brick colonial on Charlestown Avenue.
No, Ogden House had only been the second-to-last showing - so obviously nothing interesting had happened here.
At least not lately.
By the looks of this picture though, there had been good times in this house once upon a time.
The couple in the picture smiled down at her. A young man with too-long hair stood beside a young woman with dark curls, and a mole over her curving lips. Her eyes were dancing.
In spite of the aged and yellowed photo paper, Dulcie swore they could have been standing in front of her right now.
The End
About Tasha Black
Tasha Black is a USA Today bestselling author of Paranormal and SciFi romance. She lives in a big old Victorian in a tiny college town. She loves reading anything she can get her hands on, making up stories, and sipping pumpkin spice lattes. Claim your free Tasha Black Starter Library at her website.
www.TashaBlack.com
Black Blood by JC Andrijeski
Black Blood by JC Andrijeski
A Quentin Black Mystery Story
After Black spent weeks imprisoned and tortured by the evil vampire, “Brick,” Miriam is still dealing with the fallout of her husband’s nightmares and strange silences. When Black asks her to accompany him to New York for an extended business trip, Miri quickly agrees, but before they can leave, Brick ambushes them again.
This time, he wants Miri, though.
Kidnapped and blindfolded, she’s positive he’s using her as bait to lure her husband. But it turns out Brick wants her for an entirely different purpose… to act as psychic psychologist to his vampire girlfriend, Lila, who is suffering from trauma of her own.
Forced to work for a creature she despises, Miri finds herself drawn into his personal life in a way she never could have imagined, even as she fights to stay alive.
Chapter 1
Trauma
My husband was kidnapped by vampires.
I know how that sounds, believe me. I was definitely on the denial train myself when I first found out who had him. I also went a little crazy trying to get him back. Now
that I had him back, and more or less in one piece, I still couldn’t fully wrap my head around it.
You’d think it would be easier for me.
After all, my husband’s not human, either.
Neither am I, for that matter, although maybe I’m still in denial about that as well.
Anyway, I’m half-human at least, so I still feel like I qualify a little. In the human being department, that is.
My husband, Quentin R. Black, is not human. He’s 100% not-human.
He’s not a vampire, either.
He’s a seer.
What’s a seer, you say? Exactly. I had no idea what they were, either. Not before I met him.
Yet somehow, it was easier on my mind to accept my husband’s being not-human simply because I had no previously conceived notions about what being a seer even meant. His entire backstory was such an utterly foreign concept to me, my mind just sort of accepted it.
But I didn’t have to ask what a vampire was.
Vampires are fairy tale monsters.
Seeing them as real, not in the metaphorical or psychological or sociological sense, but actually real, as in a genetically different race living alongside humans... a race that fed on humans and had a taste for seers, too... well, that was a lot harder.
My husband hadn’t dealt with that information very well, either.
He hadn’t known vampires existed any more than I did. To him, just like to most humans, vampires were nothing but a myth––a myth a lot of humans happened to share in different forms across the span of history.
Black had no idea another species shared the planet with us.
He said he would’ve had trouble believing it, too, before they kidnapped him in the middle of an LAPD murder investigation and held him captive for a few months.
He hadn’t known anything about them then.
But he definitely knew now.
He woke me from a heavy sleep. Writhing next to me on the mattress, he let out a low groan, threaded with pain, then a heavier cry.
It wasn’t the good kind of groan... it wasn’t the good kind of pain, either.
It was nothing like the sounds he’d made earlier that night, when we first got back to his penthouse apartment. Those sounds brought up a much different reaction in me, especially after he threw me down on his couch after spending about two seconds removing every article of clothing I wore.
Since we’d only just gotten off a plane after a five hour flight from Birmingham to San Francisco, I’d been thinking I’d take a shower first... but, oh well.
We’d spent most of the car ride from New Orleans to Birmingham getting reacquainted with one another as well. After that first, initial conversation when he first got in the car, we didn’t really talk. But I was worried about him, yeah.
To be honest, I was really worried.
So when I heard that groan, I found myself wide, wide awake, first staring at the ceiling, then looking down at him where he lay naked on the bed next to me.
He was still asleep.
He was sweating though, panting.
His light, that part of a seer that allowed us to read minds, communicate feelings, create walls against one another... and a million other things I hadn’t fully figured out yet... coiled around him like an erratic cloud, emitting sparks I could almost see with my physical eyes. A hard pulse of anger left that cloud––anger and frustration and a darker grief that brought my heart to my throat.
When he groaned again, closer to a growl that time, I didn’t think.
I slid up against him, wrapping my arms and body around his back and chest. I’d intended to massage him awake, or massage him into a calmer sleep at least.
But he shocked the hell out of me.
First by wrenching away from me roughly––
––then by twisting his body around liquidly and, lightning quick, pinning me to the mattress. It happened so fast I couldn’t take a breath.
I found myself staring up, frozen, at his raised fist. Fury twisted his features, more anger than I’d ever seen in his face before, at least prior to the last forty-eight hours.
Seeing him that way was terrifying.
Black is not a small man.
“Black...” I managed, raising my hands to shield my face. “Black, it’s me... it’s Miriam. It’s Miri... don’t hit me, please... wake up...”
I watched him blink down at me, that hard expression still on his angular face. I almost didn’t recognize him in the dim light coming from the penthouse window. That window was bright even at three in the morning since it overlooked most of downtown San Francisco, but his face appeared alien in his single-minded rage.
I saw him recognize me, though.
Disbelief plumed off him once he had, right before he lowered his arm.
Slowly, that fury dissipated from around his living light, leaving something closer to shock. His light continued to coil around me. I felt him using that light now to make sure I was okay, to make sure he hadn’t hurt me before he remembered where he was.
Replacing that shock was a kind of horror when he realized what he’d almost done.
Because his light was all over me now, I knew he’d been really damned close to hitting me. I also knew why, so my fear towards him had evaporated, too.
Well, fear for myself anyway... my worry about him got a lot worse.
I knew it wasn’t me he wanted to hit.
“Hey.” I rubbed his shoulders and chest, watching his face as he fought to come back from where he’d been. “Hey,” I said softer. “You’re okay... I’m okay. Everything’s fine, Black. You were having a bad dream. That’s all it was... a dream.”
I knew it might have been more than that. I’m a trained psychologist after all.
It already crossed my mind I might be seeing trauma symptoms, that he might have been having a full-blown flashback, in addition to the bad dream. It was too early to tell of course, but I couldn’t help worrying he might develop some form of Acute Stress Disorder or even full blown Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD.
Given how little I still knew about his past, I really had no way of knowing how the experience would affect him, or what triggers it might set off.
Just the thought brought my heart to my throat, though.
I don’t know if he felt me thinking any of that or not.
He shook his head, avoiding my eyes. Then he rolled over onto his back. Letting his head fall to the mattress, he shook it again, staring up at the ceiling.
“Gaos,” he said, using the seer word. “Gaos... I’m sorry, Miri. I’m sorry.”
Shifting to my side, I went back to massaging his chest, knowing he needed the contact, even if he was avoiding me now with his light.
Maybe more so, because of that.
“I’m just glad you’ve got good reflexes,” I joked.
“That’s not funny, Miri.”
I smiled. “Believe me, I know.”
He turned his head, quirking an eyebrow at me, and I smiled for real, in spite of myself. I was relieved when I saw the barest edges of an answering smile touch his perfectly sculpted lips. It wasn’t a real smile though. I’d only seen maybe one of those since I got him back.
I bent down, kissing his mouth. When he kissed me back, I coaxed his lips to part with my tongue, and then we were kissing for real. After what must have been a few minutes of that, he fisted a hand in my hair, lifting my mouth off his.
“Gaos.” He was breathing harder, staring up at me. “You’re impossible.”
“I’m impossible?”
“Yes,” he growled. “...I almost hit you. I almost hit you, Miri. Now you’re trying your damnedest to give me a hard on.”
“Is it working?”
“Yes,” he snapped.
He glared up at me, still breathing hard, and I tried to decide what I could see in his face, if teasing him was helping distract him into a lighter space or just making him feel worse. I found myself looking down at his bare upper body as I thought i
t, wincing before I could stop myself. He was still beautiful, of course. Perfect lines made up his chest and shoulders, which had lost some of their bulk while he was gone, but very little of the muscle. He was leaner but hard as a rock... he was also bruised, beat up, and covered with new cuts and marks, some of them fresh enough that they hadn’t even started to heal really.
But my eyes wanted to keep going back to the crescent-shaped series of cuts covering a lot of his upper body and arms.
I could barely make myself believe what they were, but I knew what they were.
Bite marks.
Most of those crescent shapes had two harder puncture holes at the top of the arc. I knew what caused them––I knew what had bitten him. I’d seen the damned things in action, face-to-face, but I still had trouble wrapping my college-educated and used-to-be-highly-rational brain around the reality that my husband was covered in vampire bite marks.
He still hadn’t said much about it.
When I glanced at his face, I saw him watching me look. I studied his gold, tiger-like eyes, which I could see even in the dim light. A hard pulse of heat came out of me––not desire that time so much as love. I knew some part of me was still in disbelief that he was back, that he was alive, that we were really here.
That same part of me felt almost psychotically protective of him.
He’d been gone for over four weeks.
Four weeks, three days, seventeen hours.
As the reality of that hit me again, an even hotter pulse left my light.
I saw him wince, right before his expression softened. He sighed then, looking up at me. Rubbing his face with the hand that wasn’t still coiled in my hair, he exuded a pulse of what felt like surrender.
“Go ahead and look,” he said gruffly, giving me a bare glance before he went back to looking up at the ceiling. “Ask me whatever you want, Miriam. I told you the worst of it in the car, but I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
I shook my head, biting my lip. “I don’t want to ask. I want you to tell me what you want to tell me... when you want to tell me. Same with anything you want from me. If you want something, ask. You can ask me for anything, Black.”
Taming the Vampire: Over 25 All New Paranormal Alpha Male Tales of Contemporary, Military, Shifters, Billionaires, Werewolves, Magic, Fae, Witches, Dragons, Demons & More Page 140
