A wave of nostalgia came over him, compelled him to walk down the rutted roadway toward the small community the Reynard clan called home. For a moment Wim paused before the thatched-roof hut where his blood mother had lived and died. How would she have dealt with the d’Argents? His throat suddenly became itchy when he thought of how the old vampire had cared for him, a mortal child turned vampire . . . and of the torture Louis had put her through after she’d tried and failed to conjure up a way for Louis to seduce Alina. Torture Wim had been powerless to prevent.
The last time he’d been here, she’d been carried, bones broken, flesh tortured, to the clearing in front of the elders’ council, where her fellow vampires had given her the merciful ending Louis had denied her. Staked in the sun, her heart carved away, she had turned to ash before Wim’s eyes.
Poised to escape that hideous, most recent memory yet compelled to go inside and meet it head-on, Wim stepped into the room where he’d grown up at the vampire healer’s knee. His gaze settled on her supply of potions, specifically on a dusty amber vial. Her voice rang in his ears, as though he were still a child and she were still alive. You must never touch that, child, for it contains a sleeping potion. A mere drop will kill a mortal instantly, and it can make a vampire sleep for days or weeks. Hesitating for only a moment, Wim lifted the vial, checked the lid, and tucked it into his shirt pocket.
That evening Wim fed on an unsuspecting farm girl he found milking cows in a barn near the Flemish headquarters of Clan Reynard. Once he had drained her, he left her dead body where it had fallen. Satiated for the moment, he took to the air, propelling himself halfway around the world. After an uneventful journey, he landed atop a recently rebuilt levee overlooking New Orleans just as the sun was beginning to rise over the Mississippi River Delta.
Blinking at the bright light that was his constant enemy, he set out to find a lair in which to pass the day. Tonight he would take on the d’Argent queen and destroy her.
• • •
Alina rolled over in bed, ducking under a pillow when Sam pulled back the curtain and let sunlight into the room. Why couldn’t this man—the perfect lover who wouldn’t quit until he’d wrung the last bit of sexual pleasure from her—be more considerate about her aversion to the morning light?
Because he’s mortal, idiot. Unlike you, he thrives on sunshine. Which was why she shouldn’t let herself fall in love, why the relationship between them had to be strictly temporary. Unless . . .
Unless she used her powers of vampire seduction, made him beg her to change him, take him into her world. Her fangs itched and began to elongate. Suddenly she was ravenous. Starving for mortal blood. His blood. He’d be a made vampire, yes, but the d’Argents possessed the ancient knowledge of how to preserve his virility—his ability to pleasure her.
She tried to block the pangs of hunger. Hunger she’d assuaged for centuries from delicate crystal stemware . . . never directly from the source. Once more she reminded herself her lover wouldn’t want to move into the shadows. He thrived on heat and light from the sultry New Orleans sun. More to the point, her powerful lover wouldn’t tolerate living in a woman’s shadow—even if that woman were queen of a powerful vampire clan.
Sam was a born leader. He’d never be happy, being a consort. If Alina took him as a mate, he would have to be a consort, and she couldn’t imagine him filling that role of his own accord. She tamped down this hunger . . . this compulsion she had never experienced before to use her seductive power for the purpose of luring a mortal into her world. She dared not do it now.
Their liaison was a thing of the moment, a beautiful thing to revel in while it lasted and to cherish in her memories, but not to extend into the future. Not even in her fantasies. Alina blinked back tears. Over the centuries she’d learned not to agonize over situations she couldn’t—or wouldn’t—change. She pasted on a smile and held out her arms to Sam. “Would you care to take me to your club today? I feel in the mood to experience more of your domination.”
He bent and took her lips, obviously unaware how close he’d come to becoming something she knew he would hate to be. The taste of him was bittersweet, yet it fed her need. Her need to be taken, swept away from her world, where the madness of Louis Reynard had to dictate her every action. “I wish to bring more pleasure here to you, chérie.”
What did he mean? Alina pulled back enough to look into Sam’s slate-gray eyes. A ménage. Here, in my bed. Two mortals bringing you pleasure . . . His thoughts came through crystal clear, made her nipples tingle and her inner muscles clench with anticipation. Oh, yes. If only they could both be Sam. “Tonight?”
“Tonight. Meanwhile, sleep well. I have things I must arrange, and I want at least some of what I’m planning to be a surprise, which I know won’t happen as long as I’m here and you’re reading my mind.”
She smiled. No need to let him know she could divine his thoughts whether or not she could see him. No need to do anything now but close her eyes . . . sleep . . . dream.
• • •
Of home. Of a time long ago before her grandfather’s destruction, when she’d been just five hundred years old and free of responsibility for the clan, when she’d joined her cousins in celebrating their uncle’s birth. Restless and growing aroused at the memory, Alina shifted against the covers, remembering the last time she and her cousins had performed the ritual celebration of birth to lend an infant vampire strength and power.
Recalling past rituals couldn’t fail to rouse her body, already maintaining a low thrum of erotic heat just from remembering last night’s sex with Sam, inhaling the smell of his body still on the sheets surrounding her. They performed the ritual of celebration more frequently to enable a newly made vampire male to mate again as he had when he was mortal. When she recalled those rituals, though, the newly made vampire looked disturbingly like Sam, so she focused instead on the ceremony that accompanied an infant vampire’s birth.
“Come, cousin, let us celebrate the birth of our new uncle, Claude,” Alexandre coaxed, his green eyes glittering with promise of vampire passion, his massive fist wrapped around a slim glass device shaped on each end much like a male’s appendage. “Stefan, join us.”
Stefan hesitated just for a moment, before shedding the air of melancholy that had surrounded him since he accidentally destroyed the mortal he’d planned to wed. The grief in his expression faded, replaced by a look of anticipation.
Instinctively Alina bared her throat for her cousins, welcomed the tickle of a chilly wind blowing through the arrow slits of the d’Argents’ ancestral castle, damp and dreary on its perch above the English Channel despite a roaring fire that crackled in a massive fireplace. Candles flickered in elaborate wall sconces, casting golden shadows across her cousins’ dark hair. Flames caught flecks of precious minerals buried in the age-darkened stone of the massive hearth. A perfect setting, one that tied the present to their shared past.
The way their passions flowed together in celebration of the infant Claude’s birth heightened Alina’s anticipation. In unison, like dancers at the cabaret, they shed their clothes and with them the cloak of humanity that let them walk freely with mortals. Alina welcomed the wet heat pooling between her legs, the tingling sensations playing along her nipples.
They moved together, so close she felt two accelerating heartbeats. Alex’s sharp fangs pierced her throat first, the sensation mesmerizing, arousing. When Stefan duplicated the action on her other side, she experienced all his passion—and all the grief he wore with such determination.
A feeling of euphoria came over her. Senses heightened, she closed her eyes and saw . . . two beautiful males, naked in their perfection. Four hands, one holding the cool glass, their motions smooth and sure, stroked her skin, heated it despite the darkness and chill of the night. Reaching down, she stroked both of their cocks, rolled their sacs against her palms.
She anticipated them piercing her body. Claiming her, stretching her and filling the emptiness inside.
Alex swelled, grew harder against her thigh at the stimulation. Stefan’s did as well when he completed the tantric circle by clasping her and Alex, drawing them so close that they touched as they probed her belly. As her two young cousins sipped her blood, she felt her fangs extend, brush against her lower lip. Apparently satiated, the two males raised their heads, bared their own throats as her blood dripped from their extended fangs.
“Take us now,” Alex told her.
Alina drank first from Stefan, for he was the older by more than two hundred years. Then she sank her fangs into Alex’s delectable young throat while Stefan guided them all to the fur rug before the hearth. She withdrew her fangs from Alex’s throat when she felt the thick fur tickling her knees, beckoning her to lie down and let her lovers complete the vampire ritual.
Not an inch of her skin escaped the stimulation of Stefan’s hands or Alex’s eager mouth. She guided Stefan’s pulsating cock to her lips as soon as her fangs retracted fully, sampled the drop of lubrication at its rounded tip while Alex flailed her intimate flesh with his agile tongue and dipped inside her with his fingers. He spread her juices along her labia. Her heart, usually so still she didn’t notice its slow beat, pounded against her chest.
She skimmed her fingers along Stefan’s hard-muscled chest, enjoying the feel of satin-smooth skin over bone and sinew, the slow pounding of his heart from within him. They rolled, taking her to her side, forming a sensual triangle. Mouth to cock, cock to mouth, mouth to feminine orifice, they lay on their sides, their limbs raised, open for the heat of each other’s lips and tongues. Pressure built low in Alina’s belly. She grew wetter and warmer, ready to take both of them whenever they chose to claim her. Stefan’s cock swelled even more as she took him deep down her throat. From the way Alex redoubled his licking and sucking and stabbing his tongue inside her in imitation of the act that was to come, she imagined Stefan was swallowing Alex’s cock, toying with his guiche ring and the other man’s anus as he stroked his scrotum.
Pleasure exploded through Alina’s body. It was time. Stefan lay on the fur, his legs spread. Alina knelt and inserted one end of the ceremonial dildo into him. Alex slid into place, his legs beneath his cousin’s, and Alina fed the other end of the dildo inside Alex as he slid in until his anus lay flush with Stefan’s. Not an inch of the dildo was visible now. Their perfect cocks, jutting forward only inches apart, made Alina’s mouth water. She bent, wet first one then the other, then straddled them and took both inside her body. The circle of possession was complete. Three d’Argent vampires possessing, being possessed, burning with the fire of sexual arousal, striving for the ultimate pleasure. She rose and fell like the waves against the shore, milking them with strong inner muscles, coaxing out their cries of pleasure, their hot seed. Her climax hovered just out of reach, waiting . . .
Then it came along with theirs, a perfect vampire ritual. Unanimous pleasure. Commitment to each other and the clan, though not the kind of sexual commitment that would last forever. Alina knew that, knew that in time they all would take their lovers, mortal or immortal. But the vampire bond they’d forged would last and strengthen in many ways.
The picture in her mind faded, replaced with the face and body of the man who had left her in his bed to sleep. Sam. Her mortal lover who had brought back sensual memories when he promised her a ménage. Who had made her dream of the sensual ritual of her clan, performed whenever a new d’Argent child was born . . . and within hours after a d’Argent female had turned a mortal to be her mate, if her desire was for that mate to regain his sexual abilities.
Alina blinked once when she opened her eyes and saw the sun sinking, a great ball of orange on the western horizon. Not bothering to dress, she wrapped the top sheet around her naked body and waited. Anticipated . . .
• • •
When Sam strode through the entryway to the BDSM club, he sensed a subtle difference. An aura of desertion, of gloom. Good thing he’d decided not to bring Alina here. She projected a sense of joie de vivre he’d have considered incongruous for a vampire before meeting his new son-in-law and the others of the d’Argent clan. He loved her smile, the incredible softness of her voice, and the pale beauty of her alabaster skin. The emerald fire in her eyes when he aroused her.
Yes, he’d do anything to make Alina smile. To hear her shout out her pleasure under his touch. He scanned the main playroom, considering and quickly discarding possible partners to invite to the very private ménage à trois he’d hinted about to his beautiful, submissive vampire.
Beau Forte wouldn’t do. The young club dom with an angel face and a pedigree that went back to when Louisiana belonged to France possessed a streak of sadism. Sam had no intention of letting Beau practice on the woman he loved.
Loved? What the hell? Sam had loved Madeleine and no one else, except their daughter, and what he felt for Julie was a father’s affection. Not this overwhelming feeling that encompassed not just sex but affection. This . . . this sense that Alina was the other half of his being.
He didn’t understand why, but Sam guessed he’d fallen head over heels in love, for what good that might do him. Alina belonged in Paris, in the vampire world she ruled. His home was here. Nodding a greeting to Beau, Sam spotted another of the club doms, Chad Lalanne. At the moment the buff Cajun was occupied with one of the club’s willing submissives, paddling her buttocks while she lay spread-eagled across a padded sawhorse.
“It’s been too long, Sam. Shall I book you with Tricia? She’s running a little late today, but she should be on the floor in a few minutes.” Andre, the hulking black manager who kept the club members in line, nodded toward the naked sub as she came through the swinging door from the women’s dressing room. “There she is now.”
“I don’t think so, thanks. I’m waiting to talk with Chad.” Sam’s cock rose—apparently it was only his brain that had no desire for sex with anybody but Alina—as Tricia came his way, eyes downcast as a proper sub’s should be. Her golden skin suddenly seemed too dark, her black hair too harsh. Contrasting the sub he’d enjoyed in past BDSM scenes with the woman who waited for him in his bed, he quickly lost whatever interest his hormones had aroused.
“Setting up a ménage?” Andre shot a knowing glance toward Chad. “Good choice if you’re more interested in giving your sub more pleasure than pain.”
“I am.” Suddenly the sight of Beau using a metal-tipped flogger on his partner turned Sam’s stomach. He only wished Alina were his, in truth. To love, pleasure and protect for the rest of his life—a period of a few decades at best, while her own future on earth was practically endless. God, but he’d flat out gone insane.
He didn’t want to watch another man pleasuring her, a scenario he’d enjoyed many times here at the club with women who’d stirred his passion but never his emotions. He wanted Alina all to himself. “No. I was, but I think I’ll pass.”
Andre laughed then sobered when he looked Sam in the eye. “Wedding bells, Sam? Sounds to me like you’ve been bitten by the old love bug.”
Bitten? Andre couldn’t have known how aptly he described Sam’s feelings. “Not likely, my friend.” Though he kept his tone light, he couldn’t help wondering if Alina would want to turn him . . . and how he’d answer her if she brought the subject up. “I think I’ll pay a visit to the toy store. See what I can find to liven up our sex games.”
A few minutes later, Sam left the club with a bag full of toys. Thinking of the ways he’d soon make Alina scream with pleasure had him distracted—b
ut not so much so that he missed seeing the young Reynard vampire, the same one Alina had pointed out the day before when he’d been lurking across the street from the Café du Monde.
How could he have failed to notice the creep? Sam’s skin crawled under the man’s intent scrutiny. He turned, looked Reynard in the eye, his fingers curled into his palms so hard the short nails bit into his flesh. He took a step closer, then stopped.
Vampires don’t fight fair, Sam. Leave it alone. Alina’s voice rang in Sam’s ears, made him stop, look around. There. He saw Philippe and Jacques, the two burly-looking d’Argent vampires who’d stayed on in New Orleans after Julie’s wedding. Both had Reynard in their respective sights, though they made no move to take him out.
One of them—they looked so much alike that Sam couldn’t tell which was which—trotted over to Sam and stuck out his hand. “We won’t let the bastard get near Alina. You go on, do whatever it is you’re doing.”
“All right.” Damn it, Alina shouldn’t need bodyguards. Not while she was under his roof. Sam should have been able to protect her from all comers. He had no doubt he could best most mortals, but against Alina’s kind he apparently was impotent.
He’d never questioned his ability to protect the woman he was with, keep her safe and watch over her. In some ways, it was part of what he could offer, something as instinctual as the ability to deliver pleasure. Knowing he couldn’t offer Alina his protection, part of the package of his dominance, made him uncomfortable. Almost as uncomfortable as knowing she didn’t expect him to. Damn it, he might not be as strong as a vampire. He couldn’t fucking fly or look into his enemy’s mind and know what he was thinking.
Stalking the Dark Page 4
