by Cate Corvin
I gripped the seal and gave it a hard yank. The chain snapped, releasing the seal into my palm. I rubbed the flat face of it with my thumb, but our mingled blood would never come off until it was consecrated. “And I’ll show you that I’m not afraid of who you are.”
He leaned forward another inch. The mattress shifted under us with a creak.
“When you said you wanted more than sex, someone to love you, I know that was the truth.” For one heart-stopping moment, the fire in Suraziel’s eyes flickered. “So that’s where we’ll begin again.”
I leaned in another inch and waited. No matter the effect his presence had on my body, I wouldn’t let it rule everything between us.
Suraziel was the one who closed the gap. My heart stuttered to a halt and restarted with a bang, but I kept my hands on my knees. His lips were soft on mine, exploring every contour of my mouth. I ignored the heat pooling in my belly, the urge to shift or grab him and pull him against me. This was a new start, one where uncontrollable lust didn’t hold sway over us.
I forced myself to break away first, breathing hard even though it was chaste as far as kisses went. Even without his tongue slipping into my mouth, his entire being was like a drug waiting to kick me into overdrive.
“See?” he said softly. “Nothing to be afraid of. You control yourself. I want you, but I don’t make that call until you do.”
It was clear he wanted me just as badly as I wanted him, if the thick bulge in his jeans was anything to go by, but he forced himself to lean back against the pillows, stretched his legs out, and held out an arm.
I gave him a wry look but snuggled into that space all the same. His chest made an excellent pillow, firm and soft at the same time, warm under my cheek. He wrapped his arm around my shoulder and turned on the tiny hotel television.
An hour later, when Càel and Will came back in and deadbolted the door behind them, that’s how they found us: snuggled up and watching a rerun of Dracula, with clothes still on and the seal of Solomon resting on the dresser.
Càel glanced at the television. “Dracul loved this one.”
“Dracul watches television?” I asked with interest, sitting up in the comfortable nest of Suraziel’s arms, and found something even more interesting: Càel and Will wearing Hawaiian shirts.
“He made us get matching shirts,” Will said in a dead voice.
“Like it?” Càel asked, holding out his arms. His shirt was aquamarine and splashed with bright yellow flowers. Will had been stuffed in a pink and green shirt. I stared at them incredulously.
“We got palm trees for the incubus.” Càel held up an extra shirt.
Suraziel was off the bed in a heartbeat. “Hell yeah.” He yanked off Will’s tee shirt and tossed it aside. “If I’m going to be tortured with clothes, I might as well feel fancy.”
Will’s eyes followed the pile of stretched-out fabric. “Is that one of my shirts?”
“Not anymore.” Suraziel shoved his arms in the palm tree-festooned button-down and left it open to reveal his chest. “How’s this look?” He flopped across the foot of the bed, striking a ridiculous pose with a pout and his hand propped on his hip seductively.
The entire bed shook under his weight. I waited until the mattress had stopped bouncing before answering. “It’s the middle of winter in New York. A vampire, a demon, and a slayer wearing Hawaiian shirts are going to draw a lot of attention.”
“Will runs hot,” Càel said, slapping his arm around Will’s shoulders. My stepbrother nearly buckled under the sudden weight. “The cold has no meaning. A brotherhood needs a battle-standard.”
“Hibiscus and palm trees?” I asked as Suraziel rolled onto his back and held up his hand for a high-five. Will gave him the limpest high-five in the history of friendship.
“Hawaiian bros,” Suraziel stage-whispered, and made explosion noises as he made a fist and flung his hand open.
“No. I refuse to explode for this,” Will said, and winced when Càel squeezed him.
My vampire’s smile wasn’t inviting in the slightest. “Do it for Victoria.”
Will flapped his hand and made a small explosion noise that was somehow even more pathetic than his high-five.
Càel released his hostage and grabbed my hand. I realized what he was doing was for his sake as much as my own: everyone needed to be on the same team if we stood a chance of surviving our plans to kill Thraustila and Percival. He might not like Will and Sura, given what they’d done to me, but he was willing to attempt a bond of friendship to make me happy.
Even if that meant coercing them into wearing Hawaiian shirts for his own amusement.
I stood up when he pulled me and wrapped my arms around his neck. “Thank you,” I whispered in his ear, and kissed his temple.
“When we’re free to travel wherever we please, I’ll bring you to Hawaii,” Càel said. “We might not have the sun, but I will fuck you senseless on the beach by moonlight and bring you many fat tourists for dinner.”
“I love it when you’re romantic,” I said, and sharp pain burst through my lower lip when I bit it. “Ow.”
Càel ran his tongue over my mouth, catching the few droplets of blood that spilled. His eyes darkened, and he picked me up, carried me into the bathroom, and slammed the door behind us.
Five
Tori
My ideal way to reunite with Càel wasn’t hiding in a hotel with Will and Sura on the other side of the door, where’d they probably hear everything, but it was better than not having him at all. Even if he was wearing that hideous shirt.
I kissed him hungrily, unbuttoning the ridiculous garment as fast as I could without ripping the buttons off. He let the shirt slide over his shoulders while I attacked the zipper of his jeans next.
One of the first things I’d discovered in my second life was that I liked Càel in me when I fed on him. He was just as quick about stripping off my clothes before he picked me up under my thighs and supported me against the wall, a reminder of the first time I’d ever slept with him.
Well, technically we hadn’t slept. Far from it. But he knew how much I liked this position. I wriggled against him, not much interested in foreplay when I had two whole days to make up for.
He drove inside me with a hard thrust, his head buried between my shoulder and neck. His growl reverberated through me as I wove my hands through his pale blond curls, every nerve in me singing at his closeness.
He pulled out and slid back in, more smoothly this time, and every time his hips moved, my breath grew more ragged. I dug my nails into his thick shoulders, my back arching to take as much of him as possible.
When the pressure building in my abdomen was on the verge of exploding, he pushed himself deep and stayed there, holding me up against the wall. My legs were quivering even though they were wrapped around him like steel bars.
I kissed my way over the hard line of his jaw to his throat. Two tiny scars, white even against his pale complexion, marked my eternal love for him, visible to all.
Sliding my fangs into his throat was second nature now. The skin split under my teeth like gossamer and a burst of hot blood filled my mouth.
Where Sura’s blood tasted like smoke-tinged caramel and Will’s was like drinking an intoxicating wine, Càel’s blood had a darker, richer flavor. He still fed on the occasional human to replenish himself, given my appetite, but the taste of us mixed in the veins of a thousand-year-old vampire was enough to make my eyes roll back in my head.
I took a deep drag, unafraid of hurting him, and his cock throbbed inside me, growing even harder. “Don’t you dare make me come before you, shíorghrá,” he growled. I tightened around him, my legs clamping down tighter, and drew another mouthful of blood from him.
Càel groaned against my shoulder, his hips angling forward and up. His hands ran all over me while I drank my fill, and he kept me pinned there until I released him. The wounds in his neck healed almost instantly, and I licked my lips before letting my head tilt to the side.<
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He was at my throat instantly, taking care to pierce the same spot. The gentle, wet suction at my neck, combined with the glide of his cock in and out of me, made it impossible to hold back the heat in my veins.
My body surged against him. I could’ve sworn I saw actual stars as Càel ground into me, drawing out the orgasm with every flick of his tongue against my neck. When I shivered into pieces around him, he released himself, gasping before he took another draught.
He kissed the tender spot before it healed but didn’t allow me to escape his grasp. I wrapped my arms around his neck, every muscle in my body loose and languid, veins humming with the blood we’d drunk tonight.
“You taste like the ennui-afflicted one.” His tongue flicked out and traced the rim of my earlobe, sending a shiver down my spine. “Is drinking from him as depressing as his outlook on life?”
“Càel,” I chided. “He’s got some serious shit on his plate right now.”
“I know, shíorghrá,” he said with a quick grin, nipping my lower lip. “It took all my considerable charm, but I dragged it out of him. Will and I have something in common: a murderous gut-bag of a Maker.”
My hands paused in their exploration of his body to squeeze the broad slopes of his shoulders. “Càel, I know you don’t like them, but I really do appreciate that you haven’t ripped their spines out yet. I thought I was prepared to kill them. I was ready for it.” I brushed the marks on his neck with my thumb. Will had a matching set. Sura bore my scars on his wrist. “But now I know I would’ve regretted it. We all had something we were hiding, something evil in us, and now it’s bled out in the open.”
Càel’s eyes roamed over my face. “Better to wait and kill them later than live to regret their blood on your hands.”
True enough. “That’s one way to look at it.”
“You know who I am, yes?” Càel pushed a lock of black hair out of my eyes.
“Càel, the White Wolf. Obviously.”
“And when you hear that name, what do you feel?” He finally let me down, carefully lowering me to the floor.
“Love.” I looked up at him from the circle of his arms. He released me just long enough to turn on the shower- boiling hot, the way I liked it. “Protection and security.”
“You are one of three people on this earth who feels those things when they hear my name.” Càel gave me a rueful smile. “Everyone else hides. We’ve all done evil things. You never even asked me what I’ve done.”
I stepped into the hot water with him and drew the curtain, shivering when cold plastic touched my back. “I already know from books. You’ve single-handedly killed enough people to make a mountain of bodies and burned down cities…”
And yet I loved him unconditionally. Will and Suraziel might’ve betrayed my trust once, but Will was making up for it with his entire life, and Suraziel… well, Suraziel wasn’t even human, unbound by our moral codes. To him, I’d been the evil.
What was one video next to taking a thousand innocent lives? They’d done me wrong. Now they’d paid. If I could forgive Càel a thousand years of mayhem, surely they deserved a second chance to prove themselves.
“Yes. I did those things. The people I killed were not the enemy. They weren’t soldiers nor Shadowed Worlders. They were human beings living their lives, and I took that from them. I spent many centuries bathed in blood before I woke up and realized that I had become the evil I’d hated and feared as a human. It took another two centuries to come back from that pit.” Càel ran his hands through my wet hair, smoothing it over my shoulders and back. “My point is that I would’ve ripped Will and the demon apart for you, but if you’re willing to accept that someone like me can love you, you may be willing to accept their love for you, too. As long as you want them in your life, I’ll be willing to make an effort.”
I stood up on my tiptoes to kiss him. Droplets clung to his eyelashes, and he grinned when one dropped on my cheek. “Besides, their presence will make me look really good in comparison.”
“There’s no comparison,” I growled, wiping the water off my face. “There’s something about every one of you I love.” As soon as that word left my mouth, I froze. “Well, I love everything about you. I refuse to apply that word to them yet. Càel, is a bloodsong really free will? We don’t have to accept it, right?”
His hands ran over my waist and hips, stirring heat low in my stomach again. “True. It’s your choice. Lilith always gave us a choice, and I could do no less for you.”
I relaxed a little. It wasn’t binding. Just because Lilith was a little too generous in bestowing her gifts on newly-Made vampires, in my humble opinion, didn’t mean I had to unwrap every present under the tree. Even though Càel had reassured me before that the bloodsong wasn’t destined, I’d feared that it would somehow force me into loving Will and Suraziel against my will.
“And what if a vampire had more than one?” Càel’s hands tightened on my hips as I spoke. “Say they had anywhere from two to four?”
“So… three.”
“Hypothetically.” I allowed him to turn me so the hot water sluiced over my back. His chest made the perfect resting place as I closed my eyes and pondered my predicament.
“Then I would say I made the right call in not draining Will and leaving his husk for the moonspawn to gnaw.”
“Jesus, Càel.” I looked up at him, resting my chin on his chest and lacing my fingers behind his neck. “You weren’t even going to share? I already called dibs.”
A muffled shout came through the plaster wall. “You can’t dibs my blood!”
“Yes, I can-” I started, then realized who had said it. “Oh my god, they heard everything we’ve said.” I buried my face against Càel. I didn’t really blush anymore, but my cheeks still felt like they were burning.
“Thanks for dinner!” Suraziel called.
“That’s it. We can’t all stay in a single hotel room. I’ll go insane long before Thraustila finds me.” My gaze drifted upwards, past Càel’s face and at the vent in the ceiling. Something small, purple, and shimmery looked back at me.
A split-second later, I’d been shoved in the corner of the shower and Càel’s fist had punched straight through the metal grate. He withdrew his hand, blood streaking down his wrist even as the wounds opened by the torn metal healed.
A pixie writhed in his grasp. Golden dust glittered as it burst from the tiny Faerie and mixed with the water to wash away around my feet in a sparkling stream.
Someone knocked on the door. “What the hell’s going on in there?” Will demanded.
“Càel’s traumatizing a pixie,” I said, but in truth, my heart was pounding. Was this it? All it took was one pixie and Thraustila would know where his wayward son and illicit singer had run off to?
The pixie glared up at Càel and held her arms out beseechingly… to me.
What the hell?
“I don’t want to hold you, creeper.” I crossed my arms over my chest, realized my lady bits were still showing, and dropped a hand to cover myself. “I’m not sure what you were expecting, watching people have sex from vents. That’s a one-way trip into a jelly jar for you.”
Càel raised her to his face and sniffed her. The pixie went almost faint with panic, her eyes like little pinpricks of ink rolling. “She smells like…”
The door’s lock clicked. Will crashed in, clutching cold iron daggers. “Where’s the pixie?” he demanded, and his eyes went from Càel’s prize to me, posing like Aphrodite on the half-shell in a shitty hotel bathroom.
“You avert your eyes right now, Will Godalming.” I snarled until he closed his eyes, still holding the dagger up, and reached out to snag a threadbare towel from the rack on the wall. When I was firmly wrapped up, he opened them again, a touch of pink to his cheekbones.
He at least managed to pull his eyes from me and focus on the pixie, who was the real trouble here. “She’s the same color as the one near Libra.”
“Because she’s the same pixie,” Sura
ziel said, poking his head in. He looked radiant with energy. Must be nice to be able to eat a six-course meal just because your roommates were screwing. “She’s Korso’s girl.”
Càel opened his hand and the pixie fluttered to an awkward halt on his palm, still glaring at him. I squinted at her. One of her iridescent wings was tattered and frayed at the edges.
She hadn’t been a drunken pixie. She just couldn’t fly properly with a ruined wing.
“Why didn’t you mention that outside Libra?” I still wasn’t going to hold her. Had she watched us the entire time?
“She’s five inches tall, Tori. That’s like trying to identify one lightning bug out of a swarm of a thousand from a hundred yards away. Better to not risk it.” Suraziel reached around Will and the pixie flutter-hopped into his hand and hugged his thumb with relief. It was almost cute.
You know what wasn’t cute? Voyeurism. “If she’s Korso’s pixie, why is she here?”
Sura brought his hand to his head and the pixie scrambled onto one of his horns, her wings fluttering behind her. She’d been clinging to Korso’s horns the one time I’d seen her before. A patron had licked up her dust and kissed her. Maybe she just felt more secure on top of a demon’s head.
It gave her a good vantage point over the rest of us. Tiny black eyes stared down at me, and the ragged wings flapped. Clinging to the edge of Suraziel’s horns, the pixie lowered herself far enough to whisper into his ear.
We watched in silence. Even with heightened hearing, my ears couldn’t pick up the pixie’s words, only a thready, unbroken sound like a guitar string being plucked.
“She says Korso and Rhianwen sent her as a gift,” Suraziel translated, his brow furrowing as the pixie squeaked. “She’ll serve as our secret messenger inside the Clouded Court in exchange for a lifetime supply of Cocoa Puffs, a Barbie Dream Mansion, and a Ken doll with a- no. I’m not telling them that.”
