Bound by Vengeance

by Brenda K. Davies

  It wasn’t lost on her that she was opening something between them she could never take back, that the treacherous path she walked could result in her madness or death, but it didn’t stop her from bending to run her tongue over his chest. Moving lower, she tasted the saltiness of his flesh as she traced the dips and hollows of his corded abs.

  She’d never considered herself self-destructive, maybe she was, but she couldn’t bring herself to care about the consequences of this while her hands were running over his flesh to grip his taut ass.

  Before she climbed into the elevator, she knew he would come to her. She hadn’t seen him park, hadn’t seen him enter the building, but she’d sensed his need for her, and everything in her yearned to ease that for him. She’d put on this bra and underwear set for him and waited. It took him less time to arrive than she anticipated.

  When he clasped the back of her head, she stiffened. Nathan rested his lips against her ear. “It’s okay,” he whispered. “Nothing you don’t approve of, but I want to touch you too, Victoria.”

  Nathan almost assured her that she was worthy of his touch, but he suspected she’d revolt if he did. Vicky remained rigid for a minute; then, she released his ass. Her fingers skimmed up his back and around to his chest before circling one of his nipples. At first, he’d been curious to see where she would take this, but now he didn’t try to take the lead because he feared it would frighten her.

  Turning him slowly, Vicky nudged him onto the bed. When he sat on the edge of it, she stepped between his legs. Nathan braced his arms behind him and savored the happiness playing across her face as she explored him.

  When her hand dipped down to cup his balls, pleasure speared him. She rolled them in her palm before stroking his shaft. With her thumb, she rubbed the bead of moisture forming on his cock, spreading it across his head.

  Vicky shivered as Nathan’s thighs clasped against her sides and his dick jumped in her hand. Her nipples puckered until the feel of the flimsy bra became too much against her overstimulated skin. Releasing him, she reached behind her to undo the clasp at her back.

  When his gaze fastened on her breasts, she released the clasp but didn’t remove the bra. Instead, she pulled a strap unhurriedly over one shoulder before moving to the other strap. She slid her arm over her breasts to keep them covered as she pulled the bra free and tossed it aside.

  “Would you like to see them?” she asked him.

  “Yes.”

  Vicky smiled at him. “And what are you going to do for me?”

  Nathan couldn’t help but smile in return. He’d never been so tormented in his life, but he enjoyed this game with her. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Give me your hand.”

  When he lifted his right hand, she gripped it and drew his index finger into her mouth. Sucking on his finger, she rolled her tongue over it before removing it and sliding it inside her underwear and down between her legs.

  “You’re so wet,” he groaned when he stroked her sex, and she released his hand.

  “That’s because I’m so horny, for you.”

  He’d never heard a woman talk like that, had assumed it would be a turnoff, but staring into Vicky’s emerald eyes, he was eager to listen to every filthy word she said. He circled her slick entrance before sliding a finger into her. She swayed closer to him as her sheath gripped him.

  “Now,” he said. “Let me see your breasts.”

  Vicky would have teased him further, but the way he moved his finger had her knees trembling and her words frozen in her throat. Deliberately, she slid her hands slowly across her breasts, baring one before the other. His eyes fastened on her nipples with their silver rings, and a rumble of pleasure reverberated his chest.

  She’d removed all her piercings when she was in the warehouse, unwilling to let them be used against her somehow. Her nipples were the only piercings she’d redone herself. At the time, she didn’t know why she bothered, but seeing Nathan’s reaction to them made her glad she had.

  Leaning forward, he drew one of her nipples into his mouth and sucked on the piercing before laving her nipple with his tongue. Piercings and tattoos were forbidden to hunters, and he’d always considered them distasteful. On her, they were the sexiest things he’d ever seen.

  Her hands fell on his shoulders as she braced herself. She’d meant to arouse him into madness, but she could feel her control unraveling when he slid his arm around her and cupped her ass. Vicky’s head fell back as her body found the matching rhythm of his finger inside her.

  “There!” she gasped when he found the right spot. Wrapping her arms around his head, she drew him closer when he nipped at her breast before tonguing her nipple again. She was so close; she was going to….

  Not yet. She managed to retain enough reason to know this was not the way she wanted it to be. No, she longed to feel him sliding against her when she came.

  “Wait!” She grabbed his wrist.

  Nathan couldn’t suppress a growl, and for a second he resisted her. He’d felt the quickening in her body and the subtle tightening of her muscles around his finger. She needed release; he had to give it to her.

  “Not like this,” she murmured and pulled his hand away.

  Then, she was settling herself on his lap and sliding her legs around his waist. Through the thin string of her underwear, her wetness spread over his shaft.

  “My underwear stays on; no penetration,” she said as she nibbled his bottom lip.

  “No penetration,” he agreed and groaned when she lifted herself to rub against his cock. If she hadn’t been so warm and supple in his arms, he almost would have believed this was just another one of his fantasies about her. “Since I first saw you, I’ve jerked off to thoughts of you countless times, but I never could have imagined how good the reality of you is.”

  He never would have admitted this to another woman, but then no other woman had ever made him feel the way Vicky did or haunted his dreams the way she did.

  “You have no idea how many times I’ve done the same,” she murmured. “At least two or three times a day, I’ve pictured you while fucking myself.”

  “Two or three times a day?”

  She smiled as she ran her tongue across his lips. “What can I say? You make me crazy, and I have a very healthy sexual appetite.”

  As she said this, she rose over him. If she moved her hips in the right way, she could take him into her and ride them both until dehydration forced them to stop, but she had enough self-preservation left to keep herself restrained.

  “And I assumed I was the only one who’d become overly familiar with their hand,” he murmured as he gripped her ass while she continued to ride his shaft.

  “It’s always your cock I’m picturing inside me while I’m doing it,” she said.

  It took all he had not to reposition her and drive himself into her, but though she appeared as lost to him as he was to her, he wouldn’t break her trust in such a way.

  That bastard Duke had already betrayed her enough.

  Then, Vicky moaned, and all thoughts of anyone else vanished as her body moved faster against his. In the middle of their building passion, a sense of calm descended over him as the rest of the world faded away until she was all he knew.

  Leaning back, he gazed up at her as she lowered her head to meet his eyes. Her pale blonde hair fell forward to tickle his face as red shimmered in her eyes.

  “I have to admit, I thought it would disgust me, but when your vampire nature slips through, it makes me want you more,” he said.

  She didn’t have a chance to reply before one hand released her ass, he clasped the back of her head, and claimed her mouth in a kiss that spoke of all his pent-up desire for her. He relished her sweet taste as he thrust his hips and tongue in matching rhythm with each other.

  Her fangs lengthened, and he prodded the tip of them with his tongue while his other hand, gripping her ass, guided her against him. The world faded away until all he could feel was her body pro
pelling him closer and closer to the brink of release.

  Vicky broke the kiss and gulped in air. She’d lost complete control of this situation, something that had never happened before, yet she didn’t care. Nathan set the pace, and her body matched his demands with the ease of two lovers who had done this for years.

  The coiling pressure building in her body told her she was nearing release, but she wasn’t ready, not yet. She intended to draw this out for as long as possible to….

  His cock stroked her clit, and she was lost completely. With a cry, her back bowed and her head fell back. She thought she’d experienced an orgasm before, but she’d never experienced one where her entire body quaked and all she knew was pleasure, until now.

  The erotic sounds she made, the way her body arched in his arms, pushed Nathan over the edge. Drawing her flush against him, he came in a rush that seemed to go endlessly on before he finally spent himself.

  Vicky continued to leisurely grind herself against him as she felt the pulsations of his release against her stomach. The heat of his semen branded her, the salty scent of it filling her nostrils stimulating her again.

  His head fell into the hollow of her shoulder, and he inhaled a shaky breath as he regained control of himself. He couldn’t bring himself to release her. And then she started riding him again. He’d believed it impossible, but his softening dick rose once more.

  CHAPTER 16

  “I have to go,” Nathan said more than an hour later.

  Lying prone on the bed, her arms spread out around her and feeling more satisfied than she ever had, Vicky wasn’t sure she had the strength to reply.

  “I know,” she murmured.

  She hated it, but he would always leave her. He belonged to the hunters.

  Tears burned her eyes. She hadn’t cried in months, and she never cried over something she’d always known to be true. She’d denied them both the gratification of an intense fucking because she knew she could never have him, and having sex with him would only increase her compulsion to seal the mate bond between them.

  She’d believed he was her mate since first seeing him. The intensity of what just transpired between them, and the feeling of rightness he brought to her life, only confirmed it further, and after what they’d shared, she knew she would allow this to continue until one or both of them walked away.

  There was no way she would deny herself, or him, this pleasure again.

  Propping his head on his palm, Nathan gazed at Vicky lying beside him on the bed, heedless of her near nudity. He was reluctant to leave her and the strange sense of calm she brought to his life. Everything he knew was in a tumult now, but when he was with her, the rest of the world faded away and it was only the two of them.

  He rested his hand on her back and felt the subtle stiffening of her muscles beneath his palm. Except for her small reaction to him at the start, she’d remained relaxed while they were pleasuring each other.

  “Why do you do that?” he asked.

  “Do what?” she murmured and turned her head to look at him.

  Brushing back a strand of hair falling across her face, he tucked it behind her ear. He traced the delicate shell of her ear, noting the small point at the tip. She didn’t completely relax again.

  “Why do you tense when someone touches you as if they care for you? I noticed it with Sister June, the children, Duncan, and with me. Is it because of what happened to you? Do you believe everyone will hurt you now?”

  “No. Before my capture, my life was pretty much perfect. I had a horrible experience, but I’ve had far more good ones than bad, so I know not everyone will hurt me.”

  “Then what is it?” He believed he already knew the answer; she felt unworthy of kindness after killing that woman, but would she admit it to him?

  Vicky didn’t know how to answer him without exposing herself to him more than she already had. “I’m not over what happened yet, I guess.”

  It was only half a lie. Vicky wasn’t over what happened to her, not completely, but she also knew she didn’t deserve others being concerned for her.

  “Somewhere out there, the loved ones of the woman I killed are grieving their daughter, sister, friend,” she said for some reason she didn’t understand, but when he was gazing at her with that look of concern, she found herself wanting to open up to him, at least a little.

  “I considered trying to locate someone to let them know she was dead, but all I remember about the woman is her brown hair. How horrible is it that I killed someone and all I know about her is she had brown hair?” But she’d been too starved in the beginning to take in many details, and too devastated by what she’d done afterward to look at the woman.

  “I know you know this, here,” he tapped her temple, “and I’ve told you this, but what happened wasn’t your fault.”

  “Hmm,” she murmured. “Perhaps not, but….”

  “But you still blame yourself,” he said when her voice trailed off.

  “I always will.”

  “I understand blaming yourself.” He rested his hand on her back. “I should have been able to stop Joseph from killing my father.”

  “Could you have stopped him? I mean, could you really have done something to make the outcome different, or do you just think you could have?”

  Nathan contemplated this for a minute. “I don’t know. It happened so fast, and there were so many other Savages there.”

  Unable to stop herself, she set her hand over his heart to feel the reassuring beat of it. She’d give anything to take away the sorrow in his voice.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  Nathan hesitated. The only ones who knew what happened that night were the hunters who were there. He’d never shared it with anyone, but this was Vicky. She’d shared her worst with him, and if anyone could understand his driving need to see Joseph dead, it was her.

  “We found some Savages in a boathouse. There were two of them for every one of us, but we were winning, or at least I thought we were. Then, Joseph descended from the rafters. I’d already searched the beams; he wasn’t there when we first entered. I have no idea where he came from, but there he was. He fell on my father and broke his neck before any of us could react.”

  Rage and grief turned his eyes an almost electric blue. Reacting on instinct, Vicky lifted herself to kiss him tenderly before resting her forehead against his. When his hand fell on her hip, she felt his palm burning into her flesh.

  She’d been determined to protect herself by keeping him at arm’s length, but she could feel him digging his way into her heart. As different as they were, they were also very much alike and in need of someone to understand why they were so broken.

  Hatred simmered in Nathan as he recalled those last seconds of his father’s life, the knowing look in his dad’s eyes before all life vanished from them. Never had he believed it was possible to loathe someone as much as he did Joseph. That hatred had grown within him until killing Joseph became the driving force of his life.

  However, lying beside her, he realized his hatred wasn’t the ball of fire searing through his chest that it had been for months. Not only did she shut out the rest of the world, but she also soothed the rage-filled part of him that made it so some days he barely recognized himself and feared what he might become.

  “So there was nothing you could have done,” she murmured.

  “No, not really,” he admitted, “but I’ll always think there was.”

  “I know,” she said simply. “What a train wreck the two of us are, huh?”

  He laughed and kissed the tip of her nose. “Maybe that’s why we’re so good at working together.”

  Vicky forced a smile as her heart twisted in her chest. “Yeah.”

  “I will show you how deserving of kindness you are,” he said as he ran his fingers lightly down her spine. “Until the day you stop stiffening at my touch.”

  Don’t. The word choked in Vicky’s throat. She didn’t know if she wanted to tell him don’t touch h
er, don’t find her worthy of anything, or don’t be so kind to her because it might make her fall in love with him.

  Leaning forward, he kissed her temple. She smiled as she turned her mouth to his.

  Nathan pushed himself away from her when his cock stirred again. “How can there be any life left in you?” he demanded of it as he rose from the bed.

  Vicky laughed and rolled over. Propping herself up on a couple of pillows, she watched as he walked into the bathroom. A minute later, the shower turned on. She remained on the bed, inhaling the tantalizing scents of their mingling aromas on the air as she listened to him. She could get used to this domesticity between them.

  Stop it! she shouted at herself.

  She composed herself when the water turned off, and he reemerged with a towel tied around his waist. When he spotted her, he halted to gaze ravenously at her. Leaning back against the headboard, Vicky draped her arms over the pillows next to her and smiled at him. She could fake casualness; she could fake anything if she had to.

  CHAPTER 17

  “Are you trying to make it so I don’t leave this room?” he asked.

  “Not at all,” she purred. “I’m simply making sure you have a clear picture of me for later when all you have is your hand for company.”

  “I’ll never forget the way you look, taste, and feel,” he assured her.

  Vicky gulped as his words stirred emotions she never knew she had. No one had ever said anything like that to her before, but more than that, she sensed he meant it. Unwillingly, her eyes flitted to his neck and the rush of blood she heard pulsing through the vein there.

  Hunger speared her as did the longing to taste him and bind him to her. She could force the bond on him, but though she was physically stronger than him, he was better trained and might be capable of killing her. He would also despise her for doing such a thing to him.

  No, not even to save herself would she risk turning him against her, or leave him with awful memories of her.