Rites of Blood: Cora's Choice Bunble 4-6

by V M Black

  “But it’s really your power, not mine,” I said.

  He raised my hand to his lips, kissing each knuckle in turn. My skin came alive in the wake of his mouth, and I shivered.

  “Who cares how you come by it?” he murmured against my skin. “Don’t underestimate what you can do with it.”

  “I think you may be overestimating me.”

  “Never.”

  Just then, a movement outside of the window caught my eye, and I turned to see the first burst of fireworks rising up out of the Potomac over the National Mall.

  It was midnight.

  Dorian continued, “You might not have been born for this, Cora. But you were made for it. Just because I’m offering something different than how you imagined your life would be doesn’t mean that I’m not offering something more.”

  “This,” I provided, motioning to the empty lounge, the city, and the fireworks beyond.

  “Not just wealth, Cora,” he said. “Not just an extended life, though I have given you that, too. I offer you meaning. A purpose. A significance that can live on long after we’re gone.”

  It isn’t my fight, I wanted to say as I watched his thumb play across the back of my hand. But was it true? If it was a fight for all humanity, then was there anyone whose fight that it wasn’t, whether or not I chose to run away?

  I hadn’t ever looked for meaning in my life. Not like that. And I wasn’t sure if I wanted it.

  “And I offer you myself.”

  My eyes snapped to his face, and I caught my breath at the intensity in his icy blue gaze. It cut right through me, into my very core, and I hurt with it.

  God, but he was so beautiful in his inhuman perfection, his alien strength. I could feel the force of his will curling around me, roiling in turmoil even as it scarcely brushed my nerves and mind. It was such a part of his presence that I hardly took note of it anymore, but I could feel it now, pulsing with the strength of his desire...for me. For me to choose him. Forever.

  The desire that he held back from touching me. Changing me.

  “Dorian,” I said, and then I stopped. I didn’t know what I could say.

  He continued, every word fervent. “I offer you everything that I am. I offer you my black soul, for whatever it’s worth in this world. I love you, Cora Shaw. My heart is a small thing compared to the destiny of nations, but it is yours.”

  The weight of the moment hung around my neck like a great stone. I knew that if I took a step, there would be no coming back—not because of him but because of me. I had the sudden sense of standing at the edge of an abyss and looking down, down into eternity....

  He offered so much more than I’d ever dreamed of calling mine. But could it be enough, when my soul was in the balance?

  “I—I just don’t know,” I said.

  “You do,” he said. “Look inside yourself.”

  But I already was. I’d been trapped inside my own head for months now, ever since the day of my cancer diagnosis. And what I wanted, really wanted was the impossible. I wanted him and I wanted my old life. I wanted his touch and my small dreams. I wanted everything he offered, and I wanted to always be the same.

  “What if I can’t do it? What if I can’t.... ” I trailed off, not wanting to say the words.

  His hand tightened over mine infinitesimally. “You can,” he said. “You must.”

  And I looked straight into those eyes and into the well of pain, and I realized that he wasn’t speaking of forcing me, because the darkness pulsing around him still hardly brushed against the edges of my mind. His words came from his deepest desires.

  I must—because he couldn’t bear it if I didn’t.

  Dorian was like a blast furnace, and I was a moth. He seemed so cold only because of the fierce self-control that kept him from destroying me in his heat. He’d offered me the world first, his material possessions and a role as a symbol and maybe even a hero, not because he didn’t care about me but because he counted those things greater than his heart, his love. And I ached with the echoes of his pain that he could not realize that his heart and mine were the only things I could care about.

  “My God, Dorian,” I managed. Fear and loss battled inside me. The image of Geoff, with his good looks and lopsided grin, was already growing faint in my mind.

  “While I’ve changed much of your life, there is at least one human thing I can give you back,” he pressed on.

  I stared at him as he dropped to one knee in front of me. Just like the first time we met, I thought, a sudden, eerie sense of déjà vu coming over me, when he had taken the vial of blood from my arm and caught the drop that welled up where the needle had been.

  Then I looked down at my hand, still clasped in his, and I realized what he intended to do. Panic came over me, and I felt doors slamming all around me. I opened my mouth to speak, to interrupt him, but no sound came out.

  “Cora Ann Shaw,” Dorian began, his eyes piercing me, so handsome that my heart hurt to look at him, “would you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”

  I gasped even though I’d known the question was coming, my heart squeezing so hard that I rocked forward in my chair. Marriage. Marriage to a man I’d known hardly more than a month.

  No, not a man. To Dorian—final, forever, a pledge that could not be broken, the choice irrevocably made.

  I would never feel with anyone else what I felt with him—not the passion nor the danger. No one would make me feel as wanted, nor would I ever want someone with the depth I felt for him.

  But I would always be a pawn in a greater game. He was a monster with a conscience, and it was only that conscience that could save me—but it was also that conscience that might damn me, if the stakes were high enough. And I would be changed. By him. By his world.

  By me, if I took what he was offering.

  And still he knelt in front of me, the light of the fireworks flickering across his face.

  Waiting for an answer. One that, at that moment, I could not give.

  I stood abruptly, the tray on the coffee table jittering as I bumped it with my knees.

  “I—” I started, then broke off. “I don’t know,” I managed. “I can’t. I need some time—more time.”

  I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. I could give him only one answer while he was there, touching me. He knew that. He had to know that. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair.

  And for the first time since he’d changed me, I found the strength to pull away—and he let my hand go, let me slide it from between his own.

  He didn’t have to. He didn’t have to let me do anything. And that was exactly why I needed to escape, get away from his influence where I could think clearly, where I could process what he’d just said.

  Where I could make my choice.

  I spun away and started toward the door. I heard Dorian behind me, and I turned back to see that he’d taken a step away from the table, after me. If he followed, touched me again, kissed me, even with his will clasped so tightly to him, I would be lost forever. My heart was hammering so loudly in my ears that I couldn’t hear my own voice.

  “Please—please just stay away,” I begged, and I lifted my skirt with one hand, turned back around, and ran.

  I slapped the button for the elevator, and it opened immediately. I pushed inside and hit the button for the tenth floor, leaning against the wall as far from his dark figure as I could be as the door slid silently closed between us.

  Chapter Eight

  He knows, I thought, breathing fast, too fast, as I stared at the elevator door. He knew what I’d almost done with Geoff, that I’d almost broken the bond. That I knew that I had a choice.

  And he wanted me to give it up. To give myself over without reservation, now and forever. To him.

  And I didn’t know that I didn’t want to.

  The elevator doors opened, and I stumbled out, my heart beating against my chest. I took two paces before I stopped helplessly.

  What was I going to do now? I didn’
t have a key to the suite, and my purse was still inside, so I couldn’t even call a cab to take me home because I had no way of paying for it when I got there.

  I’d turned back to catch the elevator again before the doors closed, whether to go up or down I didn’t know, when someone called my name.

  “Cora!”

  I froze, the familiar voice taking me by surprise. I turned back around reflexively and blinked at the empty elevator alcove.

  “Cora!”

  Following the voice, I stepped out into the corridor. And I saw him.

  “Geoff?” I asked incredulously. “What on earth are you doing here?”

  It was definitely him, looking every inch the down-to-earth golden boy that he was in a blue Henley and chinos. He looked, for just an instant, like my savior.

  “I heard you were going to be here,” he said, stepping toward me. He stopped, gave me a quick surveying look. “Damn, you look awesome. I would have taken you somewhere nicer than the movies if I’d known you’d clean up this good.”

  “Thanks,” I said automatically. “But seriously, why are you here?”

  “To rescue you,” he said. He grabbed my arm and began hustling me toward my suite. His palm was warm and slightly roughened by his lacrosse calluses. “Wow, that sounded melodramatic, didn’t it? But I mean it.”

  I looked at him again, the edges of my surprise blunted now, and I realized that he seemed somehow less impressive than the place he’d occupied in my mind. Handsome, yes, but ordinary in a way that I wasn’t anymore.

  We reached the door, and he produced a key and slid it into the lock. To my bewilderment, the light blinked green, and he opened the door. I noticed a bandage taped across the back of his hand as he pushed it open and I stepped past him inside.

  “What happened?” I asked, nodding at it as I flipped on the lights.

  He glanced at the bandage.

  “Oh, that? Nothing,” he said dismissively. “Cut myself on my way here.”

  “How did you know I was here?” I asked. “And how did you get a key? And who told you that I needed rescuing? Not that I do, thank you,” I added.

  “That guy who talked to me the day I picked you up for our date,” he said. “He told me where you’d be, gave me a key.”

  “Cosimo?” I asked, my breath catching in my throat.

  “If that’s his name,” Geoff said. He was talking too quickly, and his eyes were feverishly bright.

  I backed away slowly, but he approached, seeming oblivious to my uneasiness.

  “He told me everything, Cora. You don’t need to be afraid. I understand,” he continued.

  “What’s ‘everything’?” I demanded, but I was afraid that I knew.

  “About you being bitten by a vampire, turned into his mind-slave,” Geoff said.

  “And you believed him,” I said. Now I knew something was wrong, because the Geoff I knew would laugh that off as craziness. But this Geoff looked deadly serious.

  I remembered the cops who nearly shot me under the thrall of a vampire and looked at the bandage on his hand with sudden clarity. This was bad. Really, really bad.

  Geoff was standing between me and the door now, which he’d allowed to swing shut. For the first time, I looked at his height, his size, and I was afraid. There was no way that I could stand up to him. No way that I could defend myself.

  If I screamed, would anyone even hear? And if they heard, could they come in time?

  I pulled off my heels, first one, then the other, as I continued to back up slowly, clutching them in my hand.

  “Of course I believe him, Cora,” Geoff said. “But don’t be afraid. I can help you get free.”

  Sex with a human would break the bond, forever. No one ever said the sex had to be consensual....

  And Geoff was in Cosimo’s thrall. He could be made to do anything.

  Cosimo had made him want to rescue me. Probably made him love me, too, with the kind of love only a vampire could engender. I could have my old life back, after all, an even better version of my old life, with a lover—boyfriend, husband, whatever I wanted—who was perfectly and entirely devoted to me. Who would never leave me, who would do anything for me, and who would never, ever make me change.

  All I had to do was say yes and go with Geoff right then and ask him to break the bond. There would be no rape then. No violence. I’d be free again, free forever.

  And I realized with perfect clarity that I would rather die.

  I cast around for anything I could use to defend myself, but all I saw were the tacky throw pillows scattered about the floor where I’d tossed them.

  “He cut you, didn’t he?” I demanded. “Cosimo, I mean. He had you drink something—”

  Geoff made an impatient noise. “None of that matters. I’m here to get you free, Cora. He warned me that the monster might have perverted your mind, but as soon as it’s over, you’ll see what I’ve done for you.”

  “You’re talking about rape, Geoff,” I said. “Do you understand that?”

  He shook his head. “It’s not really you who’s saying that. He’s inside your head, Cora. That’s why you rejected me that night.”

  “The only reason I invited you up at all was because I thought that maybe I wanted to break the bond,” I said. “Because it’s my decision to make.”

  But now I was going to lose both the decision and the bond I thought I didn’t want. The thought filled me with a choking panic. I was really going to lose Dorian. I wasn’t playing with the idea or weighing it—it was going to happen, here and now, whether or not I wanted it to.

  And my heart splintered into a thousand tiny pieces.

  I’d been so wrong. Wrong to fear the lesser terror. Wrong to run away. And now I’d pay the ultimate price.

  There was no reasoning with Geoff now. Not after Cosimo had messed with his head. And I’d begged Dorian not to follow me....

  Geoff came toward me even as I fell back, deeper into the room. “It’s the sickness talking, Cora. Come with me, and it’ll all be over in just a little while, and then you’ll see. I love you so much. All I want is to make you happy—the real you.”

  I screamed then at the top of my lungs, and I threw the shoes at him. They bounced harmlessly off his chest, his earnest expression showing no reaction at all. He continued to advance as I backed up towards the wet bar.

  He isn’t Geoff, I told myself. Not now. Not really. My groping hand encountered a bottle, and I threw it hard.

  He caught it easily and let it drop harmlessly to the floor, where it rolled away.

  I screamed again, even louder. “Help me! Somebody—anybody. Help!”

  “Hush, Cora. I’m not going to hurt you,” Geoff said. He was only a few steps away now, still squarely between me and the door. Pinned against the wet bar, I had no place to go.

  I reached behind me and began hurling glasses at him. He brushed away the one that would have hit his face and ignored the others, letting them strike his body and shatter on the floor. I found another bottle, swung it—

  And Geoff caught my wrist before it could come crashing down on him, plucking the bottle from my grasp and setting it back on the wet bar.

  “Be quiet, now,” he admonished.

  I screamed again, kicking and biting, struggling to hit or scratch him. But he outweighed me by eighty pounds of muscle, and he deflected or ignored my blows.

  Dorian, please! Save me, Dorian. Please! The words were a frantic chant in my mind. I’d told him not to come. I’d told him to leave me alone. I’d stripped myself of my protection, and now my only hope was that he’d listen to my heart as I called for him.

  Geoff grabbed for my dress and tore it from my shoulders with one motion, pulling it down to my ankles with one more wrenching yank that nearly knocked me off my feet. He reached for my panties as I struggled against him, his arm pinning me with my back to his chest.

  I wasn’t even trying to form words anymore, just screaming over and over, the sounds tearing at my throat
. He snagged the edge of my panties and pulled hard, the elastic cutting into my flesh as the seam gave. He dropped them and fumbled at his fly. I threw my entire weight to the side, wrenching free with such force that I sprawled against the floor.

  Shards of glass from the shattered barware cut into my hands and knees, but I scrambled to my feet and darted around him, running for the door.

  Geoff was faster, though, and his body hit me, slamming me into the wall and knocking the wind out of me as lights flashed behind my eyes. I dragged in a breath, trying to clear my vision as I struck out blindly.

  “It’s all right, Cora,” he kept muttering. “It’s going to be all right.”

  His pants were loose around his hips, and he was pulling out his cock.

  This is really going to happen, I thought with frantic clarity. This is really, really happening, and I can’t stop it.

  “Dorian!” I screamed one last time, and then the room exploded.

  Dorian came through the door so fast that I hardly saw him, his vampiric will lashing through the room with such force that my vision darkened. And he was the most beautiful thing that I had ever seen in my life.

  “Stop!” he ordered, and every muscle in my body went instantly stiff in obedience.

  But Geoff was under Cosimo’s thrall, impervious to Dorian’s control, and he continued to jerk at his clothes, intent on his assault.

  Dorian moved faster than any human could, smashing into Geoff and flinging him across the room even as I dropped to the floor hard, my rigid muscles unable to save me.

  Dorian raised a fist, and I forced my tongue to work inside my frozen jaw.

  “Don’t kill him! Don’t kill him!” I pleaded. “It was Cosimo. He’s done something to him.”

  Dorian cast me a look, and in it I saw such darkness, such vengeance and black fury that I could taste it in the back of my mouth.

  But he stopped—Dorian stopped, and he scooped up one of the glass shards from the ground before stalking forward swiftly as Geoff struggled to his feet. I saw him make two slashing motions—one on his hand, the other on Geoff’s. The blood ran free. Dorian clasped their hands together for an instant, palm to palm to make the blood mingle, even as Geoff fought against him. Then there was another movement, almost too fast to follow, he had Geoff in a headlock and was forcing his cut hand against Geoff’s mouth.