by Juliet Lyons
I chuckle, dropping my hand to her breast and brushing a thumb over a silky tip. It hardens at once and I groan, pressing my lips to her open mouth and kissing her deeply. She clings to me, small moans of pleasure escaping from her throat. The last of my resolve disintegrated to dust during that moment on the sofa, when I slid inside her tight, hot sheath for the first time and felt the whole world turn on its axis. There is no going back now.
I roll her over, spreading her legs wide with my knees, her burgeoning heat beckoning me in.
“Mila,” I groan between kisses. “How will I ever live without this?”
“I’ve been asking myself the same question,” she whispers, her head tipped back against the pillows, exposing the satiny, white column on her neck.
My fangs prick at my gums, but I fight them back.
“Do it. Bite me,” Mila hisses. She writhes around beneath me, rubbing her soaked core against my skin and sending my erection into overdrive. My cock twitches as if it’s on the end of a string.
“No,” I whisper, beginning to pant. “You have your party tomorrow night. You won’t heal. Please, Mila. Don’t tempt me.”
She brings her hands up, holding my face steady above hers. “Then at least let me see them. I want to know all of you. It won’t change the way I feel, Vincent. Nothing will.”
This time when my gums prickle, I let the fangs slip out, watching her face in silence.
She holds a finger up to them, as if she’s Sleeping Beauty touching the spindle of a spinning wheel.
“They’re sharp,” she murmurs.
Her eyes retain their drowsy look of lust, and when she coils a hand around my head and draws my lips toward hers, I sag in relief. She places a kiss on each fang. “They’re sexy. You’re sexy.”
Some of my anxiety melts away. “You don’t know how relieved I am to hear you say that.”
“If you won’t bite me, use them on me. I want to feel them on my skin.”
Staring into her shining eyes, I release a sigh of pure happiness. I lean down to her breasts, round and heavy with need, scraping my fangs gently around the sensitive skin of her nipples before sucking one between my lips.
Her back arches, a breath catching in her throat. “Keep going,” she urges.
I dip lower, the sweet aroma of her arousal filling my senses. My cock is so hard it’s verging on painful as I graze the soft skin of her inner thigh.
“Lick me,” she says desperately, as if it’s been hours and not just minutes since her last orgasm.
My tongue sweeps through her core, the prow of a ship parting the ocean, and she bucks her hips, forcing me deeper into her glistening, pink flesh. Just when I feel her start to contract tightly around me, I pull out, guiding my bulging length into her entrance and burying myself to the hilt inside her. She comes at once, her sheath tightening around me, sucking me in. If only we could stay in this moment forever, our two bodies merged as one. This is how immortality should be lived.
Though I’m about to explode, I manage to hold back, watching as she climaxes, her eyes half-closed, her pink lips parted in a perfect O. Her body shudders, her heart thumping as the waves of pleasure hit. She repeats my name over and over.
I have lived for over two hundred years, have watched the sun rise and set on every continent, in almost every country known to man, but I’ve never been so moved as I am by the sight and sound of this woman falling apart beneath me.
When she reaches up and twists her fingers into my hair, tugging at the ends, I plunge back into her, enjoying her gasp of surprise. A few seconds later, my own orgasm takes hold—powerful and even more satisfying now that I don’t have my fangs to control. I spill into her, not just with my body but with my mind as well. Anything she wants is hers. I would give her the sun and the moon if she asked.
After, we lie tangled together in a tight knit of limbs, my head buried in her soft breasts, her arms wrapped tight around my neck and shoulders. I lost track of the time hours ago, but it feels past midnight. The city is dark and silent outside the window.
“Do you make all women feel this way?” Mila asks suddenly.
I lift my head from the swell of her cleavage to meet her tawny-eyed gaze. “Which way?”
She averts her eyes, worrying at her plump bottom lip. On impulse, I push myself up onto my elbows and draw it into my mouth, sucking on it the way I’ve been longing to since we met.
She sighs, raking fingers through my hair. “I mean with the orgasms and stuff. Is that one of those special gifts you were talking about earlier? Exceptional lover?”
“I’m not sure. I mean, there have never been any complaints, but nor have there been any medals of honor.”
She chuckles, flicking my shoulder. “It’s just I’ve never felt like that before. During sex, I mean.”
“Like what?”
Her face turns a vibrant shade of pink. “You’re going to force me to say it, aren’t you?”
“No. Not unless you want to.”
She slaps a hand over her face. “I never had an orgasm before you.”
I grin from ear to ear, my heart bursting with joy. I’ve never been the possessive type, but the idea that I might be able to give her something no other man can fills me with an inflated sense of pride.
“Am I pathetic?” she continues.
I move her hands away from her face. “No. It’s different from anything I’ve ever experienced too.”
“You’ve lived for centuries. How can that be?”
I trail the back of a hand over her flushed cheek. “It just is.”
She searches my face, her hair splayed across the pillow like a shot of spun gold. “Are you sure you’re not just being a gentleman?”
Shaking my head, I say, “I’m not convinced there’s a gentlemanly bone left in my body after the kinds of things we’ve gotten up to tonight.”
“Vincent?”
I lean forward, pressing a kiss to her soft lips. “Hmm?”
“Were you ever married?”
The words hit me like a gust of cold air. We were always going to discuss the past eventually; I’d just hoped it would be later rather than sooner.
“Yes,” I say. “A very long time ago. When I was human.”
“Was it happy?” There is a tinge of regret in her voice, as if she’s sorry she asked.
I shake my head, pleased that on this occasion the truth will not hurt her. “No, it wasn’t happy. There has to be love for a marriage to be happy and we never loved each other.”
She visibly brightens. “Why did you marry her, then? If you didn’t love her?”
I roll off, turning her on her side so we’re nose to nose, my arm coiled around her waist, her sweet breath warming my skin. “It was arranged between our families, before we were born. That’s the way it worked in those days within nobility. Marriage was a business contract, each family getting something out of the union. My family needed her money and her family needed our good name. It was the perfect match for them.”
“Didn’t you mind? Marrying someone you didn’t love?”
“Yes, I minded a great deal,” I murmur. “Particularly as I was in love with someone else at the time.”
Her face drops. I know how she feels—punched in the gut. I feel the same whenever she mentions anything to do with Australia or that scumbag ex of hers.
Lips turned down at the corners, she says, “Oh. That sucks.”
I smooth hair away from her beautiful face, urging her to meet my gaze. “It was a really long time ago, Mila. I was a completely different person in those days. If you went back in time and we met, you might not even recognize me. My hair was long and I wore tights.”
“Tights?” she repeats, grinning.
I smile back, relieved to lighten the mood. “Personal hygiene wasn’t so hot in those days either.”
> We both chuckle. I rub lazy circles into the peach-soft skin of her lower back.
“Tights and long hair can be pretty hot,” she says. “In a Dangerous Liaisons sort of way.”
“Is that another movie?”
She nods. “I’ll add it to the list.”
I narrow the tiny gap between us and kiss her, loving the way she moans deep in her throat, her hands burning a trail over my chest and torso.
“Stop trying to change the subject by kissing me,” she whispers breathlessly, drawing back.
“I wasn’t,” I murmur.
“Tell me how you became a vampire.”
That takes the wind out of my sails. My shoulders droop. Like most vampires, I’m not overly fond of telling the tale. An immortal life means always moving forward, and in truth, most of us would rather forget.
“Unless you don’t want to. I understand if it’s too painful,” she says, her hazel eyes rounded.
I stare into her pretty face, but this time, I see only the miniature portrait hidden in my bedroom drawer, the amber eyes and ink-black hair of its sitter. If I tell Mila about how I turned, chances are I’ll have to tell her about Adrienne and how she died. Will she look at me the same way when she knows the truth about that night? How I was responsible for the death of the only woman I ever loved?
I swallow heavily. Unflinching honesty has always been my curse, but she has a right to know. If we carry on in this vein, someday she will need to decide if I’m worth the sacrifice of a normal life.
“I wish you hadn’t asked.” My voice is hoarse as I rake my fingers through her hair. It’s too soon to lose her.
She grips my wrists. “I’m sorry. Forget I said anything. I’m too nosy for my own good. My mum always says I’ll grow old and be one of those women twitching behind their net curtains.”
“No, it’s okay. I want to tell you.” I press a kiss onto her forehead before reaching down to draw the sheet over us. She laughs as I plump the pillows.
“Geez, how long will this story take?” she asks.
“I just want you to be comfortable,” I say, dropping back onto the bed beside her and weaving my legs through hers. I figure I might as well make the most of being able to touch her. She mightn’t want anything to do with me before long.
She yawns, stretching out like a cat. “Tell me.”
I take a deep breath, wondering if, like Scheherazade of The Thousand and One Nights, I could spin the story out for a few years. At the very least until morning.
“Like I mentioned before, I was born in France in the eighteenth century. As the son of a duke, my family was well connected, friends to the court of King Louis XVI. I grew up with every privilege.” I pause, remembering our large chateau in the South of France: sharp-edged lawns sloping down to the sea, the scent of lavender and roses mingling on a salty breeze.
“It was a happy childhood. My mother and father were almost never around, but my siblings and I had good nursemaids. We wanted for nothing. There was a girl I grew up with—she was the woman I mentioned being in love with when I married my wife.” I take a deep breath, my throat tightening as I swallow her name. “Her father was our gamekeeper at our chateau in the South of France. She was not of my class, so marrying her was out of the question. If I had, my father would have disowned me and no doubt evicted her family from their home. She had several brothers and sisters—a dozen lives would have been ruined. Besides, I was extraordinarily pragmatic back then and felt a great duty toward my family.”
Mila gives a little snort. “You haven’t changed so much.”
I grin, tickling her sides. “The old me would never have relinquished my police duties to fraternize with the witness, no matter how sexy and alluring.”
She narrows her eyes playfully. “I’d have managed to seduce you somehow.”
I try my best to ignore the pulse of arousal I feel at her words, but gazing into her pretty face, her complexion soft and dewy from our lovemaking, it’s hard to believe she doesn’t have a point.
“But you didn’t marry her? You married someone else instead?” she asks.
“Yes, a daughter of another aristocratic family. Then after we wed, shortly before the French Revolution, an unusual gentleman arrived at the court of Louis XVI.”
“Wait,” she interrupts, holding up a hand. “You were in the king’s court?”
I nod. “My wife was a lady-in-waiting to Marie Antoinette.”
Mila’s jaw drops. “But isn’t she that famous woman who died on the guillotine and said—”
“‘Let them eat cake.’ Yes. That’s her. Though I’m not convinced she used those exact words.”
I see a faded image of the lady herself in my mind’s eye—ivory skin, silvery-blond hair the hue of gossamer. She was more faerie than human. Born into such extravagant wealth she truly held no notion of anything less.
“If you were the son of a duke, why did your wife have to work as a maid?”
“In those days, ladies-in-waiting weren’t servants. They were companions, handpicked from noble families. They lived at the court, away from their husbands. Like I said, our marriage was arranged and we didn’t love each other. Aside from our wedding night, we slept separately, so the arrangement suited us.”
Her brows knit together. “Love or no love, she must have fancied you. Was she gay?”
I chuckle, leaning forward to land a quick kiss on the end of her nose. “Not all women find me irresistible. As I recall, she had a bit of a thing for her father’s Master of the Horse. She held no interest in me.”
“Oh, come on,” she says, smirking. “I mean, you’re sex on a stick.”
My hand slips from her back to the curve of her bottom, my cock stirring as I massage her soft skin. “You’re not so bad yourself,” I say in a low voice.
Smiling, she reaches behind and moves my hand back to her waist. “There will be plenty of time for that later. Now, carry on. What did you do back then?”
I emit a lusty sigh. “I was a courtier to the king. Which was a sort of male version of a lady-in-waiting. We hung out with him, hunted, drank, gambled. That was pretty much it.”
“What was he like? The king?”
“He was a sensitive man. I got the impression he’d rather not have been king. That’s the odd thing about power—the ones who can handle it don’t want it in the first place.”
“And you mentioned an unusual guy arriving at court. Who was he?”
“At court, he masqueraded as a Scottish laird banished from his lands by the English—the king and queen had a penchant for surrounding themselves with people of interest. In reality he was a vampire. An ancient.”
“Ancient?”
“Yes. There is a group of old vampires. They’re the only ones capable of turning humans. They’re stronger and faster than the rest of us, and until recently, it was thought nothing could harm them. But then one was killed by an old curse. Afterward, all the vampires she’d made across the centuries turned back into their human selves. Which was handy for us at the Met Police because she was a psychopath, and her subjects were mainly killers. Most of them are now languishing in jail.”
Mila pales. “What are you planning to do? If you catch Jeremiah Lopez? Would a prison hold a vampire?”
I shake my head. “No. He would be disposed of.”
“How?”
I move a hand to cup her face. “There’s only one way to kill a vampire, and that’s decapitation.”
She recoils in horror. I can practically see the cogs in her mind turning. “Who would do it?”
I drop my gaze to her hand, curled on my chest. “Me. I’m the only one fast enough.”
“But that’s dangerous! He could kill you.”
“It’s unlikely.”
“Unlikely?” she echoes incredulously.
“Mila,” I say soft
ly, stroking her cheek. “I’ve faced worse than Jeremiah Lopez or whoever he really is.”
The words do little to ease the crease in her brow. “What happens to a vampire when they die?”
“We go to our graves as if the vampiric life was never lived at all. In other words, the body decomposes. Fast. In a way, we’re already dead.”
Her fingers come up to my face, tracing the line of my jaw, making me shiver. “You’re not dead, Vincent.”
I cover her fingers with mine, touched by her concern—there’s been no one who would miss me for many, many years.
She gulps, opening her mouth and closing it again, as if she wanted to say something but changed her mind. Then she says, “Carry on with what you were saying about the ancient in the king’s court.”
“Right. The ancient, Gregor McLaren, lived among us at court. No one suspected he was anyone other than who he said he was. They were hedonistic times—people lived to excess, and Gregor fit right in. He was there many months before I saw the first sign of what he was. By that point, the French Revolution was in full swing. The king and queen were sent to Tuileries Palace to be kept under surveillance. I think it was the revolution which drew him to court. He’d been around so long, lived through so many monumental moments in history, that he liked the thrill of a front row seat. He certainly got one with us. We were all there when an armed mob stormed the palace and began killing people.”
Mila sucks in a breath. “Oh my God.”
“The royal family were led out through the gardens, but I was one of the last to leave. I noticed Gregor was in no hurry. Everyone else was in a state of pure panic, but Gregor seemed amused by all the chaos. At the time, I thought he must have seen worse in the barbaric Highlands. As I fled after the others, I called to him, but he hung back, as if waiting to be caught. Then the door to the lounge burst open and a group of men appeared, brandishing swords and other weapons. I was halfway out an open window in the corner of the room at this point. I froze as the men landed on Gregor, expecting him to be murdered and mutilated in front of me. Instead I saw a blur of movement and heard screaming. When the calamity was over, the lifeless bodies of the men were piled in a bloody heap at the center of the room. Gregor was laughing, as carefree as if he’d just won at faro, sharp fangs the same chalk white as his powdered wig, spilling from his lips like shark’s teeth. It was at that moment he spotted me, still half hanging from the ground floor window. In all the excitement, he hadn’t even realized I was there.”
