by V M Black
And then we were naked, me lying on the sofa, him standing over me, his desire as evident in his eyes as it was in the hard cock that stood proud from the nest of curls.
My throat was tight with everything I wanted to say, to do. But I pushed it all down, held out a hand, and spoke lightly. “Don’t just stand there.”
That pulled a chuckle from him. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
He took my hand, and need shot through me at the touch of our fingers, even before I pulled him down on top of me again. My nipples hardened against the bare flesh of his chest. His mouth covered mine as one arm slid under me, wrapped around me to hold me to him. The other hand skated up to find my clitoris.
His mouth was fierce and hungry, perhaps hungrier than it had ever been before, and I felt in him the aching void of loss and fear, the emptiness that only I could fill. Why he felt it so keenly at this moment, I didn’t know, but I felt echoes of it in every touch and his need to possess me utterly.
He rolled my clit in his fingers as his mouth worked against my neck, and I panted into his shoulder. One finger dipped lower, between my folds, teasing me. I shuddered against him. It dipped again, pushing deeper, finding the sensitive place and pressing into it in rhythm with his mouth and body. Another finger slid in beside it, his thumb rolling over my clit, holding me, pushing me up toward a climax, and he lifted his head, looking into my face as I rocked at his touch, at his mercy.
“I love you like this,” he said, soft but earnest. “I could watch you forever. You’re mine, Cora. All mine. And I will make you come tonight until you weep with the glory of it.”
The words filled my ears, my world. I came around him, clasping his hand with the spasms of my body as my head filled with the roaring of my blood. And in the middle of it, he pulled his fingers clear and drove his cock hard into me, filling me with a shattering abruptness and matching the rhythm of my orgasm to send me spiraling into its grasp and out of control until he was the only thing that was real.
Then he slowed enough to allow my body to let go of its peak, and he made love to me slowly, almost worshipfully, and his rhythm became mine, rocking in the grip of deep waves of pleasure. He sent me over again into the hot grip of a climax, and as I was still shaking in the aftermath, he pulled away and urged me to roll over, onto my stomach.
I did without question, without hesitation. He grabbed one of the garish throw pillows from farther up on the sofa and pushed it under my belly, raising my rear into the air. I looked over my shoulder, but he was already kneeling between my thighs.
Dorian started at the sensitive place in the back of my knee, working with lips and tongue and teeth, and he moved up the inside of my thigh to the edge of my opening, which was swollen and needy from everything he’d already done to me that night.
He lingered there as my breath came fast and ragged, the too-tender flesh between my folds begging for his attentions. I tried to wriggle against him, to make him give me what I craved, but a firm hand on my tailbone pinned me in place, and I had to wait for him to choose to pleasure me.
Finally, after an excruciating time, he moved, teasing the bottom of my entrance with his tongue for a long moment before moving up, between my folds. From that angle, he could scarcely graze the top of my opening, but his tongue moved deeper as he slid back again, finally shoving deep between my folds at the lower end again. He kissed it, suckled against it as I bit my lip hard against my whimpers. My clit was aching, begging for the attention of his mouth.
But he moved lower still, kissing the smooth place just below before swiftly circling my anus with his tongue. The shock of it startled a cry from me, and he slid up my body, kissing my buttocks and the small of my back as he moved until he was working against the back of my neck, throbbing for him now from my clit all the way back.
“When will you understand, Cora?” he whispered into my ear. “I want all of you.”
His cock pressed against my swollen entrance, and I whimpered, trying to tilt my hips into him. He increased the pressure slowly, filling me gradually, unbearably, inch by inch. His hand slid between my body and the sofa, finding my breast and cupping it for a moment before slowly tightening around the nipple, teasing it with his fingers as he filled me below. Finally, he came to rest against my body, deep inside, and he began to thrust.
I gasped into the couch—this angle was different from anything I had felt before, pushing harder against the deepest place at the end of each stroke. He drove into me, slowly, deeply, moving almost the entire length of himself out and in. My skin prickled, the heat building up in my center, but it was not enough. I reached for a climax, but it was too far.
“More,” I begged. “More, now.”
And he gave it to me, speeding up, driving harder, his hand releasing my breast and sliding down to find my clitoris and taking it in his skillful fingers and sending me over into the fire. I called out for him, for Dorian, and I felt him come, too, with me, with a shudder and a low sound, before everything was lost in heat for so long that I thought I’d never come out of it again.
Then he rolled off me, getting to his feet as I lay limply upon the couch with the pillow under my stomach. Dorian offered his hand, and still half-dazed, I took it. He pulled me up and kissed my cheeks. I realized they were damp with the tears of my ecstasy.
He’d done it, just as he’d promised he would.
Dorian led me toward the bedroom, then pulled me into his arms and kissed me hard for a long time until I felt his cock, pinned between us, begin to rise and stiffen again with the swift recovery of the vampire.
“Believe it or not, I didn’t bring you here for this, either,” Dorian said, touching my face with gentle fingers. “Not primarily, at least.”
“It would be in rather poor taste.” I smiled up at him. I still felt the darkness in him and echoes of his desperate hunger, and I felt that something important was coming soon, maybe something dangerous. But at that moment I felt unaccountably light.
Dorian swore, abruptly and coarsely. I’d never heard him speak like that before.
“You have no idea what you do to me, do you?” he demanded. “I want to take you so many ways....”
My breath caught. He held me in his gaze. “Show me,” I whispered.
He pushed me back onto the bed, my knees buckling as my calves hit the mattress. He came down on top of me. His hands were everywhere, his mouth blazing a trail of sensation across my skin. His kisses deepened, little nips that left me breathless before he kissed away the sting. My knees came up around him, clasping him against me as I rocked my hips into his. His hands slid down my legs, grasping my ankles where they hooked behind him.
Dorian broke off, standing at the side of the bed, holding my ankles in his hands.
“I want to watch your eyes as you come,” he said. “I want to see it.”
I shook my head, afraid, after everything, of that level of intimacy.
But he said, “For me, Cora,” and how could I refuse him?
He pulled my legs straight, spreading them until they ached from the stretch. I bit off a groan of pain. I looked into his eyes, and I could see awareness there—that he was hurting me, that he meant to, and then it twisted in my head, turning around into something else. And it still hurt, but now it hurt so good I could hardly breathe with it, and I could feel myself getting wet with it as I sucked in air.
And I gasped as he drove into me, swift and hard, and pleasure roared up around him and around the place deep inside that he thrust against. His hands held tight on my ankles, and he urged them even farther apart until I whimpered desperately, the burn of the muscles and the pleasure of his thrusting tangled together into a single, overwhelming sensation.
And I didn’t look away. Dorian was there, watching me, and I looked back over my breasts that quivered with every thrust, my whole body laid out bared to his eyes as he drove me onward. My hands bunched into fists in the bedspread as I struggled to find myself in the middle of it all. But it was too
late—I was already falling apart. I screwed my eyes shut as sensation rose around me—
“Look at me,” he ordered.
And reflexively, I obeyed, meeting his gaze even as the orgasm came over me, broke me, tore me into a thousand pieces—still I was caught in those icy eyes, and they seemed to fill my world until there was nothing but him, coming with me, and my pain and my pleasure, all jumbled together until I couldn’t tell them apart.
Slowly, slowly I came out of the fog and became aware of other things—the bedspread under me, the cool air on my skin, Dorian pulling away, stepping back. Leaving me alone.
I gave a slight shudder and pushed to a sitting position. The faint remaining aches in my legs were already receding.
While it had lasted, that hadn’t been a tease or playing at roughness. It had been real pain.
And I’d loved it, because Dorian had made it so. Another line crossed. So why couldn’t I summon the terror this once would have caused me?
And why did that frighten me even more?
Dorian caught my chin, tilted it up to catch my lips in a brief kiss. “Come get dressed for dinner,” he said.
I nodded, gathering my scattered wits, and began to head back to the living room of the suite, where my clothes had been left scattered on the floor. But he stopped me, opening a closet door and pulling out a long dress in a deep shade of red.
“Jane sent over everything you need,” he said.
I shook my head in bemusement. “You really do change for dinner, don’t you?”
“It will be worth it,” he said. “I promise.”
And I knew he could make that promise come true.
I took the dress and the silver shoes that were on the closet floor, then opened drawers until I found one that held a strapless bra and a pair of panties. I took everything and headed into the bathroom, where I discovered an array of cosmetics and hair products and tools laid out for my use.
I stared at them rather helplessly—I could not hope to replicate Jane’s magic. But I cleaned up quickly, pulled on the new clothes, and did my best to repair the damage to my makeup without trying to start from scratch. My hair was hopeless, the finger-waves an impossible mess. I brushed it out and put it in a sleek French twist rather than trying to mimic the artistic disarray that Jane had managed on the night of my Lesser Introduction. I straightened the teardrop necklace self-consciously against my chest, the one Dorian had given me. It caught the color of the dress and seemed to intensify it. I had not taken it off since my date with Geoff.
I stepped out of the bathroom to find Dorian already dressed, dazzling in a tuxedo and black tie. He smiled down at me as he went into the bathroom, and my breath caught a bit despite myself. I simply could not get used to how handsome he was—or how he looked at me.
“Are you ready to go?” he asked.
“I would ask where, but you’d just tell me, ‘You’ll see,’” I said.
“You know me so well,” he replied, his lips twitching.
But did I? I wondered. Every day, there was some new surprise to him, some hidden depth that I hadn’t perceived before. Even if I lived to be a thousand, would I ever fully know him?
And would knowing him be worth everything I stood to lose?
Chapter Seven
He guided me out of the suite and back to the elevator, but instead of hitting the button for the lobby, he hit the top floor—“P.O.V. Lounge,” a small sign next to it read.
“So that’s the surprise?” I asked.
“The best view in Washington, D.C.,” he said. “And tonight, it’s all ours.”
The doors opened, and Dorian led me out into a dimly lit room scattered with clutches of outrageous furniture in front of a great bank of wide windows overlooking the Capitol and the monuments. It looked like a child’s model, as if I could reach out and pluck up the White House for my own amusement.
He was right. The view put even that of our suite to shame.
For a moment, I thought the lounge was empty. Then I saw the bartender and, over in a corner, a man behind a piano and a full-figured woman in front of a microphone. The pianist was playing softly, and as we moved into the room, the woman began to sing a slow, bluesy song.
“Impressive,” I said, trying to compute how much this must have cost him. I decided on far, far too much as he guided me to a pair of red leather loveseats that faced each other across a low cube-style coffee table. I came with him hesitantly, half frightened by the extravagance of it—frightened by what it might mean. Dorian never did anything without a reason.
As soon as we sat, a server materialized with an array of appetizers and took our cocktail orders. The tantalizing smell hit me, and I realized how hungry I was despite the food I’d eaten on the boat. I dug in shamelessly.
Dorian chose some kind of delicate seafood spring roll, then sat back and watched me. The sense of restlessness I had felt from him that afternoon was back, a sort of pent-up energy that seethed beneath his marble composure.
“Do you like it?” he asked, his wave encompassing the lounge, the hotel, everything. I felt like the answer was important to him, deeply important, though I couldn’t guess why.
“Of course I do,” I said. “Very impressive. Beautiful,” I added when that didn’t seem like enough. “But you don’t have to do something like this for me.”
“What’s the point of having money if I don’t spend it on what I want?” he returned. “It makes me happy to use it this way.”
“I don’t want to owe you any more than I already do.” I owed him my life. How could I even begin to even that score?
“You can’t keep accounts for this, Cora,” Dorian said, a quiet intensity in his words. “Matters of the heart cannot be drawn up on ledgers.”
I shrugged helplessly. I had little in the world beyond myself, nothing to offer him except what I was most afraid to give. And that was exactly what he wanted from me. I couldn’t say it was impossible anymore because nothing was impossible with him.
Restively, Dorian pulled his phone from his pocket and glanced at it. “It’s almost midnight,” he said, sliding it back again.
Midnight. The beginning of a new year. It was less than two weeks ago that I had finished my finals and stepped out of Dorian’s Bentley, afraid I would never see another dawn, much less a new year. So much had changed since then—my whole world had turned upside down.
Dorian had changed it all.
I looked across the table at him. If I broke the bond, would I be filled with regret or relief? I would hurt him. I knew it. The sadness I saw in his eyes when he talked about his other cognates, gone so long ago, would include me, too—perhaps a deeper wound, since my separation from him would be from betrayal. At that moment, I felt his future pain as if it was my own.
And I was frightened that I loved him, that I really loved him, both through and beyond the bond that held us. I was afraid that I loved him for who he was, not just what he had done to me. It seemed more and more impossible with every passing moment that what I felt could be nothing but an imposition from something outside of myself—or that it could be removed without taking a piece of me with it.
“Thank you,” I said, dropping my eyes to my drink. “I don’t think I ever told you that. Thank you for saving me.”
No matter what the future held, I was glad to be alive. I hadn’t always felt that way since I’d woken. At times I had wondered if I had entered the proverbial fate worse than death.
But now I was glad for it, for everything that had passed between us, even the things that still made my heart shudder in fear. I felt myself slipping closer to that edge, the one from which there was no return.
I still had a choice tonight. I wasn’t sure that I would by tomorrow.
“You are more than welcome, Cora,” Dorian said. “And that’s some part of why I’ve brought you here tonight—to celebrate your life. Though I understand that it has not entirely worked out as you anticipated.”
“That’s an u
nderstatement,” I agreed with a wry smile.
He took a drink of his cocktail, then set it deliberately on the small cube table between us. Again, I had the sense of urges and desires scarcely contained, but when he spoke, his words were measured, almost impersonal. “I have asked—will continue to ask a great deal of you. The world that you have stumbled into is one of the highest stakes, not just for you personally but for all humanity.”
I nodded mutely. I refused to accept responsibility for it, but that didn’t keep it from being true.
“You see yourself as a victim of circumstance. But my own role was in many ways thrust upon me as well,” he said, as if he were weighing every word. “To stay true to what I believed, I was forced into opposition to those who would want to destroy it. Nothing would please me more than to achieve the ultimate goal of my research and retire from society. But I won’t be left alone to do that—we won’t be left alone. We’re a part of the world whether we like it or not.”
And his sense of duty kept him from even trying. But I didn’t have a duty to his world—or to humanity, in the abstract. I’d been just a regular girl, with ordinary dreams.
But I wasn’t sure they were enough anymore for the girl I was becoming.
“I just don’t know where I fit into that. How I can fit into that. There doesn’t seem to be room for me,” I tried to explain.
He reached across the table and put his hand over mine, sending the familiar, sweet, trembling awareness through me. He threaded his fingers between mine, trapping them as his thumb stroked the palm of my hand, the darkness pulsing with energy within him as it yearned to break free. “All you see are the requirements. There is power, too—in wealth, in the position that I hold in society.”
I remembered the guests who had streamed onto Dorian’s yacht—senators and lobbyists, he’d said.
