My ass muscles tingled, and I groaned. “Eric, come on.”
“I need to fuck you,” he said, his voice deliciously rough. “I need to… The cold man wants you.”
The cold man, his beast, the part of him that was pure, unadulterated vampire. I rolled onto my stomach and tucked my aching dick between it and the towel. This wasn’t about sex. It was about binding me to him the Vampyr way, like he hadn’t been able to for months. Sex and blood, and oh, fuck. With the cold man rattling his cage in Eric’s mind, the sex would be nice and rough, exactly the way I liked it.
I couldn’t fucking wait, either.
The mattress shifted under Eric’s slight weight, the lube’s cap snapped open, and his fingers spread my ass cheeks. Cold liquid plopped onto my skin, and I shuddered. Lube. Oh, fuck, oh, fuck. It wasn’t gonna be quick. It was gonna be Eric pounding into me for a long, long time, sliding in and out of my ass, his fangs deep in my skin. I buried my face in the pillow and panted into it, a futile effort to control the need swirling ever higher through my blood. I loved it when he did that.
He pressed the tip of his dick against my hole and pushed slowly inside, stretching me so fucking good. “So tight, Adonis.”
The words whispered across my skin, caressing every inch of me. He eased forward, filling me, and my muscles quivered around him, protesting the invasion, a beautifully full, erotically painful melding of him and me. Pleasure shot up my dick to the very tip, and I nearly came.
“Don’t hold back,” he murmured. “I’m not going anywhere.”
He thrust into me, hard, shoving me into the mattress.
“Again,” I whispered, and he did, slapping his hips against my ass as he fucked me. His fangs scored the skin over my shoulder blade and his mouth latched on, sucking flesh and blood into his hot, wet mouth. There was no mercy in his touch, no tenderness, only harsh need bolstered by months of denial, of hand jobs and blow jobs, poor substitutes for the tight clasp of ass muscles around a stone hard erection.
His mind reached for mine and dragged me into we, and in an instant, he surrounded me. His mouth wasn’t just on my shoulder blade. It was on my throat, my chest, my thighs, all at the same time. His tongue licked my nipples, toying with them, and his hand slapped my ass, and none of it was real, not a single touch or lick or nibble. In reality, he was still fucking me, pounding me into the mattress. In we, he was everywhere, inside and out, an integral component I could never escape, even if I wanted to.
The continuous, sensual blitzkrieg overwhelmed me, breaking my control. I arched my hips into him, welcoming the frantic slide of his cock in and out of my ass, and came, throbbing out my need into the towel.
I collapsed under him, completely spent. “Christ, Eric, that was good.”
More, his mind whispered to mine, and my world turned completely upside down.
I don’t know how long he fucked me. I’m not sure how many times he came, or if he came at all. I couldn’t differentiate him from me during the moments when he held me down and dominated me over and over again. I lost track of everything in the sensual haze of his touch, time and sensation, myself. Everything except him.
He laved his tongue over my skin, closing the small holes he’d been sucking, and shuddered. “I’m coming.”
The place in our minds where he’d held me abruptly evaporated. He shoved into me a final time and breathed my name as he spilled inside of me, coming so hard, every pulse of his release echoed into and around me, pushing me into another grinding orgasm.
He collapsed on top of me, panting hard. “Jesus God, Jase.”
I laughed into the pillow, so weak from his touch, so desperate still for his love. “That was all you.”
“Not even close. We sort of went into a feedback loop for a while there. I didn’t think it was ever going to end.”
“I didn’t want it to.”
“Yeah. Me neither.” He eased out of my ass, shifted to the side, and tapped my hip. “Roll over. We’re not finished yet.”
I groaned as I flipped onto my back. “How many more times do you think I can come?”
“At least one more.” He folded up the used towel and dropped it on the floor beside the bed, then cleaned us both with the second one. “You overdid it today. Taking my blood will help.”
“I can manage.”
He discarded the other towel on top of the first and straddled my legs. “You’re turning down my blood?”
“Fuck, no. I’m not stupid.”
“Just obstinate,” he said drily. “I miss having you in me.”
That one sentence ripped through me, hardening my dick into a ready-for-anything machine. Surprise, surprise. I grinned and scooted backward, easing myself upright with my back against the headboard. “In that case, come here.”
I lubed the tip of my erection as he turned around, then guided his ass down on me. He wiggled up and down, back and forth. Christ, there was so much wiggling I nearly lost it. Finally, I was all the way in, buried so deep I’m not sure how he took all of me. I tipped his head to the side and gently dug my fangs into his throat, savoring the splash of his intricately flavored blood across my tongue as he fucked me, sending us rocketing in tandem toward a blissfully urgent peak.
Chapter Twenty
On Saturday, we groomed ourselves to within an inch of our lives and dressed in the monkey suits Eric had insisted we buy during our first week in Crookston. If it were up to me, we’d live in casual clothes, but Eric always had part of his mind on the possibilities, and thank God for it. Otherwise, the lack would’ve forced us into another shopping spree. Like Pop, I’d had my fill that first week back home.
We ate a light supper with my family, sans Di, then packed my wheelchair into the trunk of our car and left an hour and a half before sunset, headed for Remy’s home in Fargo. Eric picked up a nice bottle of bourbon along the way. Me, I would’ve arrived empty-handed. Then again, I was kinda pissed we had to go at all.
If Remy turned out to have half the attitude Oriana did, pissed was gonna be the emotional tip of the iceberg.
Eric drove, carefully following the directions Remy’s favorite had given me over the phone. We chatted about nothing in particular over the music playing on the radio, a mix of hits from the past few decades. I forced myself to relax in the passenger’s seat of our rental. Jumping to conclusions about what awaited us in Fargo was begging trouble, and I’d had enough of that to last me a while.
Remy’s house wasn’t a house at all. It was a penthouse apartment in downtown Fargo. Eric parked in front of the building and turned the keys over to a valet, a normal man, not a trace of vampire anywhere on him, and we checked. After being fooled by Oriana’s pet taxi driver, neither one of us wanted to take a chance on being drawn into another trap.
You live, you learn.
I tucked the brown-bagged bottle of liquor into my lap. Eric wheeled me through glass doors into a luxurious lobby. Marble floors, artfully arranged sitting areas, a massive chandelier overhead. Two suit-clad security guards sat behind a curved desk at the far end. Another man stood to one side. He was whip thin and dressed in a tailored, charcoal gray suit, and his milk chocolate skin glimmered under the tasteful lighting.
He strode forward and met us in the center of the room, his expression neutral. “Master Eric, Jason. I’m Paolo, Remy’s favorite.”
I stuck my hand out. “Some digs.”
His mouth twitched into a smile as he shook my hand. “We enjoy the view, if not the ever-present sunlight.”
“Tinted windows help,” Eric said.
“They do. This way, please.”
Paolo pivoted and led us around security to elevators tucked discreetly into the wall behind them. He inserted a keycard into the lock beside the call button. The elevator doors slid open, and he waved us inside. “We have keycards waiting for you upstairs, in case you want to leave while I’m otherwise occupied.”
I wheeled myself into one corner. Eric settled into the other and said, “
Thank you.”
“It was the least we could do after your…ordeal.” Paolo slid his keycard into the slot below the buttons and punched the one for the penthouse. “Unlike some, we value the queen’s good will, and that of your mistress.”
Eric’s eyes narrowed on the favorite. “I’m sure Marco has nothing to do with it.”
“Of course he does. Your relationship with Marco is well-known to my master. We have no wish to bring the wrath of that one into our fair city, nor yours.” Paolo’s black eyes glittered in the harsh light thrown from the elevator’s overhead fixture. “Did you really eliminate a dozen of Oriana’s pets?”
“Fourteen,” Eric said softly. “The most vicious of them, save Fen.”
“And him you escaped.”
“With help.”
Paolo nodded. “Still, you were chained and beaten, on the edge of meeting the Reaper, and you managed to best them. Outstanding.”
There was nothing either one of us could say to that. We’d survived. It had been a close call, for Eric especially, but we’d made it. Neither one of us really wanted to revisit our stay in that stone room.
The elevator dinged and opened into a square foyer. A double door was set into the opposite wall. Two hulking pets wearing matching black suits stood in a parody of parade rest in front of it. Paolo nodded to them. One opened the door and stepped aside, and Eric and I followed Paolo into a spacious, glass-sided room. A string quartet played one of those classical tunes Eric liked from a dais in the far right-hand corner. A bar curved outward from the far left-hand corner. More than forty men mingled in the space between us and those points, some in the center of the room on heavy leather sofas stationed around an empty fire pit, others standing in uneven clusters. Small, linen covered tables were scattered throughout the room and held platters of food, punch bowls, and other assorted items.
The conversations of those closest to us petered out as curious stares turned our way.
Fuck. Eric had anticipated Remy’s whole stable being here, but knowing something and experiencing it were two different situations. I hated being dumped into the middle of a sea of unfamiliar pets, hated it, especially considering what had happened the last time it had happened to us.
Eric placed a hand on my shoulder, holding me in my chair, calming me down enough that I didn’t leap out of it like a trigger-happy favorite. For him, I shrugged off my unease and settled for glowering at Paolo. “What’s going on?”
“A party in your honor. Remy insisted, and I hadn’t the heart to deny him this small indulgence. We have so few occasions for celebration these days.”
“Thank you,” Eric murmured. “We appreciate the welcome.”
“The pleasure is ours, I assure you. Come. Allow me to introduce you around.”
I handed the bottle of bourbon off to Eric. He was the diplomat in our family. Let him handle the nice-nice.
We trailed Paolo through the room, meeting every single one of Remy’s pets in attendance. No one mentioned Oriana, but the weight of the pets’ curiosity pressed against our minds, accompanied by their wariness. I caught random images from the newer pets, those who hadn’t yet learned to guard their inner thoughts against intrusion. Some were reflections of rumors passed from mouth to ear, others were truth propagated initially by Mike and Kyle and allowed to develop into legend.
Barely a month in Minnesota and Eric already had a rep. Words like ruthless and brutal were bandied from mind to mind, along with one observation that startled me, pulling me between pride and jealousy. They thought he was beautiful, a perfectly formed sculpture breathed into the living by the hand of a benevolent god of old. If Eric caught the comparison, it didn’t show, not even in that tell-tale blush of his.
Maybe he was saving those for me.
We circled in a slow spiral around the room and ended up near the fire pit at its center. Paolo bowed low to a man sitting on one of the sofas. “Master, it is my pleasure to introduce Eric, the unnatural child of Elizabet of our Southern kin, and his favorite Jason.”
Remy handed off his leaded crystal tumbler to a pet and rose slowly. He was easily six two and leanly muscled under a black suit. Unlike every other man there, he wore no tie. His deep red shirt was open at the collar, exposing the sturdy column of his neck and the pulse throbbing at its base under skin two shades richer than Paolo’s.
He glided to a stop inches away from my feet and fixed his piercing gaze on Eric. “The pleasure is mine.”
Eric handed the bourbon we’d brought to Remy, smiling politely the whole time, like we weren’t in the middle of another potential shitfest. “A small token of our appreciation for meeting us on such short notice.”
Remy pulled the paper bag off and rotated the bottle in his hands, studying the label. “Blanton’s. An excellent choice. Join me?”
“Of course, Master Remy.”
Remy handed the bourbon off to the pet who’d taken his glass. “Call me Remy. We eschew formality here, young Eric. Please, be at home. My majordomo prepared a small feast in anticipation of your arrival. We’ve set aside rooms on a lower floor for you, should you need them.”
“Thank you, but we’re expected back in Crookston.”
“Ah, well. On a future visit, then.” Remy waved another pet forward. There were so many, I’d long ago lost track of their names. This one pulled a small envelope out of a pocket on the inside of his suit jacket and passed it to Remy, and Remy promptly gave it to Eric. “Security cards, yours to keep. They gain access to every room in the building except my private quarters. Please feel free to avail yourselves of them whenever you’re in the area.”
My eyebrows shot up. I slid a quiet message to Eric, mind to mind. Trusting fucker.
He wants something. Eric slit the envelope open, handed one of the cards to me, and tucked the other into his right pants pocket. “Your generosity flatters us.”
“As your presence does our humble home. Come, sit. We have much to discuss.”
He resumed his seat on the leather sofa. Eric found a place on one side of another one. I rolled to a stop next to him, curious to discover exactly what game the master of Fargo was playing.
The pet came back carrying a tray of leaded crystal tumblers, each filled with two fingers of amber liquid. He was small, not even Eric’s height, though he carried a little more muscle on him. His dark hair was shorn to the skin on the sides and in the back. The top was pulled into a long braid falling down his back past his shoulders. He had an angular face and wore small hoops pierced into his right eyebrow and through the center of his lower lip. He held the tray out to each of us, Remy and Paolo first, then Eric. When he bent forward to offer the final glass to me, the collar of his button-down shirt shifted, flashing the top edge of a black line, vaguely tribal tattoo.
Heat stirred unexpectedly and my dick reared its head. Ok, yeah, I had a type. So sue me.
The pet’s murky green eyes widened and flickered to mine and away, and his smile was slow and coy.
Remy lifted his drink toward the pet. “Tangi is on loan to us from the werewolf pack based outside of Minneapolis-St. Paul. Oriana drove them out of the Twin Cities when our mistress greeted the sun.”
“You’re a wolf?” I asked.
“Yes.”
His voice was softer than I’d expected, almost shy. “Your pack helped us escape that harpy bitch.”
Eric choked on a sip of bourbon. “For God’s sake, Jase.”
Remy tossed his head back and laughed, long and hard. Tangi slipped away under the cover of his temporary master’s amusement, and Paolo scooted off the couch and followed him. I lost track of them in the press of the crowd growing around the central sitting area.
Remy’s laughter subsided, though his mahogany eyes twinkled mischievously. “Oh, God, that’s a good one. The next time I have to talk to her, I’m using that one.”
I raised my glass, saluting him. “Happy to help.”
Eric cut a side-eyed glance at me, a silent chide I chose to ign
ore. “Oriana seems to have done a lot of damage in her time.”
“Yes, I’m afraid so.” Remy sipped his bourbon, and his mahogany eyes flashed bright and hot. “Everything she touches turns to dust.”
“When I surveyed what I’d worked for, everything was meaningless,” I murmured. “Nothing was gained under the sun.”
Remy snorted. “She’s been quoting Bible verses again, as if that alone could justify the destruction she’s wrought since clawing her way to power.”
Eric propped his elbow on the couch’s arm nearest me. “She hasn’t been able to extend her reach.”
“Her vicious ambition helped her take control of the Twin Cities, but it’s been a hindrance since then. She simply cannot understand the need to compromise and negotiate. Everything must be done according to her will or no way at all.”
A bitter anger underscored Remy’s words, tainting them with the hard truth of experience. Eric’s hand drifted to mine, and his fingertips brushed lightly over my ring finger, exactly where I’d once worn Gianna’s ring. “You’ve had bad dealings with her.”
“Decades of broken treaties and betrayals.” Remy swirled his bourbon in the glass. When he spoke, his voice was quiet, sorrowful. “Not long after the schism, when we were all struggling to grab what we could upon our mistress’ death, I agreed to meet with Oriana in the hopes of hammering out a truce. The constant battle for dominance was doing more harm than good, and I hoped we could find common ground.”
“She wasn’t interested in common ground.”
“Not in the least. I should’ve known better. She ambushed us. What was supposed to have been a diplomatic meeting turned into a slaughter.”
I met Eric’s gaze, and understanding passed between us. We’d had a first-hand taste of her underhanded machinations. It wasn’t one we were likely to forget anytime soon, or forgive.
Remy shook his head and raised his glass high. “To my unnatural daughters and the pets who fought bravely at our side. May they evermore be at peace.”
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