“Oksana,” he said hoarsely. “I need all of you. Please say yes…”
It was all she could do not to start rending the fabric of his clothing with inhuman strength, right there in Mama Lovelie’s sitting room. But… he needed to know what he’d already gotten a glimpse of, the first time they’d kissed.
Mason, she sent along the bond. You have to know first that something inside me is broken. You saw before, when I lost myself to the past after I kissed you. The feelings you stir in me… they’re all tangled up with what Bael did to me, and what I did to you. Or rather, what I did to Augustin.
Mason straightened so that he could meet her eyes, and she could feel through the link as he dragged his need under control.
“You’re not broken,” he said aloud, “and did I happen to mention that I’m a doctor who specializes in helping people move beyond traumatic experiences?”
His crooked smile, along with the feel of his emotions through the mental connection, robbed the words of any sting they might have had beyond gentle teasing.
She found an answering smile for him, though it was tremulous. Her voice was wry when she said, “I imagine none of your previous patients have been nursing their post-traumatic stress disorder for more than two centuries.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Maybe not. But that only means you already have some pretty damned good coping mechanisms in place.” He regarded her for a moment, his eyes fading back to their normal ocean blue. “You’re claustrophobic, but moments after I met you, you were crawling through a collapsed building. How did you do that?”
Humiliation rose to her cheeks. “No great feat of psychology there, I’m afraid. I told Xander and Duchess to give me a mental smack upside the head if they felt me start to lose my shit.”
He snorted in amusement, but the feeling leaking through the bond was respect. “An elegant and no-nonsense solution,” he said, succinctly. “Why am I not surprised in the least?”
He lifted a hand to smooth her hair back, his thumb brushing her temple. “Okay, next question. Do you trust me to listen through the mental link while we make love? I probably still suck at using it, I’m afraid. Duchess tried to show me, but it was only just now that I really started to feel it properly.”
Mason, she sent, if I didn’t trust you, I’d be shielding. Being able to sense you like this is one of the most incredible things I’ve ever felt in my life.
He made another one of those low noises that played havoc with her senses. Then let me look after you. Because I have an idea about that.
His communication was a little clumsy… a little louder than it needed to be. It also made her want to burrow into his aura of protective warmth and never see the light of day again. Could she do this? Could she let go and trust Mason to keep her from falling.
Please, she said. Help me stay here in the present. With you. I can’t do it alone.
Saying it so bluntly along the bond almost felt… freeing. She was still straddling him, but now she was the one burying her face in the crook of his neck, as his muscular arms wrapped around her back and held her close. Utilizing the new strength that came with vampirism, he moved one hand down to cradle her hip and stood up, still holding her against him.
“Does the door on the guest room lock?” he asked, with the barest hint of humor. “I can’t really say I’m in the mood to give our hostess—or anyone else—a free show.”
“Sorry. You won’t find locking doors in a place like this,” she said, wrapping her legs around his hips carefully, so as not to accidentally stab him with the Cheetah’s epoxy arch. “But the others won’t be back for hours yet.”
I’m going to hold you to that prediction, he sent, his mental voice already gaining confidence. His tone of delicious promise sent a clench of desire through her belly.
The small guest room only held a single, narrow bed. While it was far from grand; compared to the slave shack in which she’d grown up, it was a palace. And given a choice between being back at the Royal Oasis in Pétionville, or here with Mason—feeling fragile tendrils of hope for the future unfurl behind her ribs—she would choose this simple house in rural Haiti any day of the week.
I’m right there with you, sweetheart, Mason said, setting her down with infinite care. Luxurious trappings are overrated. Though I’ll admit I’m relieved as well—I did warn you I was a poor doctor, not a rich one.
The mattress was soft beneath her back. She smiled up at him, a feeling growing inside her that she tentatively identified as… joy.
“Here’s what’s going to happen next,” he said, his fingers caressing the contours of her face. “I’m going to taste every single square inch of your body.”
Her eyes flared as he straightened away from the bed and began matter-of-factly unbuttoning his shirt.
“And the instant I sense that you’re starting to drift away from me,” he continued, “I’m going to do something to remind you just exactly where you are and who you’re with. I’m going to bite you, and I’m going to drink from you.”
A rush of heat swept over her cool flesh from the roots of her hair to the toes of her right foot. “Yes…” she breathed.
The shirt slid to the ground, and Mason pulled off the black tee he wore underneath. His were not the sculpted muscles of a gym rat, but rather the hard muscles of real use—hauling crates of medical supplies, trekking from village to village to meet with rebel leaders, swinging a hammer to fix and maintain substandard facilities.
He toed off his shoes, his hands dropping to the fastening of his trousers as he went on. “Then, when you’re crying out my name, begging me to take you, I’m going to sink my fangs and my cock so deep inside you that all you’ll be able to feel is me.”
Trousers and boxers slid down together. A lust far different than the sweet and tender excitement she’d felt as a girl in Augustin’s arms surged up. It was the lust of one dark creature for another—the part of herself that Oksana had spent centuries denying, controlling, and subsuming.
Now… it wanted out.
She scrabbled at her top, dragging it off. After a mere moment’s frustration with her sports bra, she ripped it down the middle—not really having intended to do so, but not particularly worried about it either. Meanwhile, Mason had crawled onto the foot of the bed, and was now prowling up her body to drag off her shorts and panties.
When he pulled them down to her knees and then paused, it was as though someone had thrown a bucket of ice water on her. He was looking at her prosthesis. Her breath caught in her throat, but Mason only threw her a gently chiding look, and paused in his removal of her shorts to ease her leg free of the Cheetah’s molded sleeve.
He set it aside on the floor near the bed, and pulled everything else off, leaving her bare. Despite her best efforts, her mind hummed with uncertainty.
Well, now, sweetheart. Mason’s mental tone was wry, but there was a hint of sadness in it, as well. I think that solves my dilemma of where to start first.
She watched in amazement—in near disbelief—as he cradled her left leg and pressed an open-mouthed kiss below her knee, only inches above where the limb terminated in an ugly stump. It was such an odd feeling, that gentle press of lips. With the exception of the occasional lucky blow by an opponent during a fight, no one had touched her there since—
Since… well… ever.
How could he stand to do that? It was such a hideous deformity, with the puckered scars and the muscles atrophied—the visual distillation of her monstrous nature. Of the unnatural thing she’d become, in those moments when she’d awoken underground and started tearing at the boards of the coffin… at her own flesh and bone…
Fangs sank into her leg, and the twin flashes of pain followed by a deep, drawing heat jerked her back to the present with a gasp.
I did warn you, Mason sent.
He drew another mouthful of her blood from the wound, and the wash of carnal pleasure that flooded the bond from both directions blasted away the unwanted memories under its force.
“M-Mason,” she moaned, and received an answering rumble as he pulled out, lapping at the wounds until they closed.
He resumed kissing his way up her leg, awakening every nerve as he passed. It had been so long. So long since she’d felt anything more intimate than a chaste kiss on the cheek or a sisterly embrace. And when she had felt something like this, all those long years ago, Augustin had always started at her breasts, cupping and teasing them. Not running his tongue up the inside of her leg, teasing his way slowly upward—
I told you, said the voice twining inside her mind, I’m not him.
Fangs slid into the sensitive flesh high on the inside of her thigh, and she cried out, writhing, hands clawing at the bedclothes as he drank again. The dark lust from earlier surged back, swamping thought and leaving only need behind.
Mason pulled his fangs out and caught her wrists, pinning them by her hips when she reached for him. Fuck, yes, he thought, That’s it—I don’t want you thinking, Oksana. I want you feeling.
And, oh, was she feeling. She felt every wrinkle in the blanket beneath her as she twisted restlessly against the bed. She felt the addictive jolt of pleasure through the bond as Mason’s hips flexed unconsciously against the mattress upon seeing her give herself up to sensation—give herself up to him.
She felt the ache of delicious frustration as he continued to kiss up her body, bypassing the place that burned for his touch, in favor of sucking marks onto her belly that faded almost as fast as he could make new ones.
She didn’t slide into the past again. Yet he still pierced her with his fangs and drank, over and over, because they were vampires and they both wanted it, and why shouldn’t he?
At some point, he released her wrists. By the time he finally kissed his way up her neck to her lips, she was growling and digging furrows into his back with her fingernails. She quieted when his mouth slanted over hers, demanding entrance, teasing her tongue out to duel with his. He coaxed her to invade his mouth in return, sucking on her tongue as his fangs scraped deliciously against her tender flesh.
Her sex throbbed, aching and wet, though he’d barely so much as brushed it with his lips on his way up her body. She tore her mouth away from the kiss, tasting blood, though she wasn’t sure whose.
“Take me, damn it!” she nearly snarled. “Take me right now, Mason, or I swear I’ll drink you dry, just so I can feed you our mingled blood and then do it all over again!”
Some tiny, quiet part of herself was completely shocked by both the threat, and how very much she meant it. But Mason was a vampire now. She couldn’t hurt him by feeding from him. Nothing she could do to him with her fangs would damage him permanently. Quite the opposite. The wall of lust that slammed into her from his side of the mental link proved that if she did get the upper hand on him in such a way, he would go down happy and come back looking forward to the next round.
We might need to work on your begging skills just a bit, sweetheart, he sent, even his mental voice sounding breathless. But in the mean time, far be it from me to argue.
A strong thigh forced her legs apart, and teeth sank into her neck, pinning her in place as his cock, large and blunt, slid along the folds of her sex, further enflaming her. She canted her hips, lining him up, and keened as he thrust inside her tight passage.
After so long untouched, the sudden penetration was savage, punishing, and perfect. It was everything she needed, and nothing like anything she’d ever had before. It was exactly what her inner darkness craved. She didn’t want time to adjust to his girth piercing her. She didn’t want tenderness and sweet nothings whispered in her ear. She wanted her mate, all at once, here, now, with nothing held back.
Her fingernails raked down Mason’s back and dug into the hard globes of his arse, dragging him into her body over and over as they sweated and writhed together. Her head started to swim as he drained her blood, the room growing dim and hazy around her. Oksana’s perception narrowed, all the unimportant things falling away, one by one, until everything was focused on those two incandescent points of contact between them.
She reveled in the feeling of their life force twining together. In the way his pleasure grew and grew, until he jerked his head away from her neck, red liquid dripping down his chin and pleasure coiling at the base of his spine, ready to explode.
She surged up, fangs tearing into his neck, swallowing great mouthfuls of their combined blood as he cried out. He jerked into her, arms holding her tightly to him as his blood and seed filled her at the same time, flooding her with their mingled power. Ecstasy shook free from her center, spreading outward through her awareness in great, rolling waves until she was certain her body would not be able to contain it all.
When the blood red haze across her vision finally faded, it revealed that she and Mason had collapsed into a tangled heap on the narrow bed. He’d rolled to the side just enough not to crush her, but her legs around his hips meant that his length was still nestled intimately inside her.
“Bloody Christ,” he mumbled against her neck. “Oksana…”
She held him in a tight embrace, something like awe blanketing her mind.
I guess I was a bit overdue when it comes to accepting what I am now, she thought, a bit sheepishly.
A puff of cool breath against her collarbone accompanied the Mason’s flash of exhausted amusement. Well, whenever you need a reminder…
I know exactly where to come, she agreed.
He lifted his head enough to look at her with eyes still lit from within with sparks of cobalt. She smiled, bringing a finger up to swipe a thin trail of red from his lips before sucking it clean. Despite the shattering climax they’d just shared, his cock twitched inside her at the sight. They both shivered in reaction, oversensitive, and she reluctantly let him slip free.
“I don’t know how I could possibly have gotten this lucky,” she said, the words barely more than a whisper.
His mouth twitched. “Funny, I was thinking very nearly the same thing.” He rolled them into a more comfortable position in the cramped space, her head resting on his chest, one arm and one leg flung over him.
“I can’t say that I’m not terrified by what’s coming,” he said truthfully. “But it would still be coming whether we’d found each other or not, Oksana. This way, we have someone to lean on, when times get hard. I’m so glad that we stumbled into each others’ lives.”
Tears clogged Oksana’s throat, and she didn’t fight them. Unlike all the bitter ones that had choked her over the past days, these felt cleansing. Freeing.
Mason must have sensed that, because he only held her tighter against him as she let them run their course.
“I was lost,” she said, once they’re passed. “I’ve been lost for so long, Mason. But you’ve showed me the way home.”
They kissed, with none of the urgency of lust, and none of the bitterness of the painful past. When Oksana finally pulled away, she settled back against him and traced her fingers over the hard lines of his chest.
“What will you do about the clinic?” she asked, knowing that she would do anything in her power to support whatever he decided.
“I don’t know yet. I plan to talk to Gita—she’s my partner there.” Mason met her eyes, his expression serious. “I intend to tell her the truth, Oksana. I trust her with my life, and something inside me says that it’s time for us to stop living in the shadows.”
A week ago, Oksana might have protested. But she had felt the same thing in the last few days. “I’ll speak with the others,” she promised. “But I think you may be right about that. It feels as though something is changing. Something fundamental.”
He nodded.
“What about family?” she asked. “Do you have any?”
“My mother is in Australia, at a nursing home in Sydney. She has early-onset Alzheimer’s. I’d like to visit her, but it’s unlikely she’ll recognize me,” he said, and she could feel the old pain leaking through the link. “I have a brother, though. In Singa
pore. His name’s Jackson. We’re as close as two people can be, who live on opposite sides of the world. So that’s another difficult conversation I need to have.”
“Then we’ll go to Singapore together, if that’s what you want,” she said.
He smiled. “I’d like that. He’s going to go head over heels for you, you know. I bet his wife and their kids will, too.”
A faintly sheepish look came over his face, and Oksana looked at him questioningly. “What is it?” she asked.
“As it happens, you’ve got Jack to thank for us being here right now,” he said. “He’s one of the two people who called me an idiot.”
That strange, unfamiliar feeling of joy crept over Oksana once more. “In that case, I’m even more excited about meeting him. Though he was still wrong.”
“You two can argue that one without me,” he said with a smile. He paused and gave a short laugh. “Oh. You know what? That just reminded me of something. Stay here for a tick.”
He eased out of bed and rummaged through the pockets of his discarded trousers in the dark. When he came back, he held a mobile phone. Oksana looked at him curiously, but didn’t protest as he got back into bed and arranged the blanket over them, pulling her back to rest against his chest when they were settled.
“That’s not a sat-phone,” she pointed out. “You won’t be able to get a signal out here.”
“I know,” he said. “The battery’s about dead, anyway. But Jack has been after me since the day you and I met to send him a picture. I assume since I still have a reflection, that means I can take a photo?”
Oksana nodded, amused.
Mason unlocked the screen and pulled up the camera app, before holding the phone out at arm’s length and angling it toward their faces. “I think this one will convey all the relevant information, don’t you?”
She laughed softly. “I guess it will, at that.”
His chest moved beneath her cheek as he chuckled. “Smile for the camera…”
She did, not blinking as the flash went off. He brought the phone down and tapped the screen, bringing the photo up for her to see.
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