by Devyn Quinn
Nerves drawn taut, Maddox shook his head. “It was a mistake to try and satisfy my need with another.” Having sex with Jesse, taking her, had been good—better than good. While inexperienced, she was responsive to his touch and eager to please. And even though they’d shared an explosive climax, she just wasn’t able to deliver the final jolt he needed to go over the edge. She’d bitten, but she didn’t penetrate.
He needed penetration, damn it. He hungered for it the way a starving man craved a full and satisfying meal. He’d thought he could give up the desire by giving up sex. But it hadn’t worked. With every day that passed, his longing grew stronger, almost unbearable in its intensity. It shamed him to think he’d taken advantage of Jesse’s trust, attempting to use her to satisfy the twists in his sexual desires.
Just this once, he told himself. To take the edge off.
Sex. Pain. Blood. It was definitely an acquired taste. Not that he was the only one. Scores of men and women entranced with the vampire mystique also sought out the exquisite pleasure of the bite.
Nayia’s tapered fingers moved to his bruised, bitten neck. “I knew you’d come back to me, Maddox.”
Oh, heaven above. Her touch was wonderful. A shiver of delight closed around his spine and squeezed hard. His nerves were on edge, peaking toward the ultimate sensitivity. “I can’t break the damn habit,” he grated.
Nayia’s gaze caught his. He saw the unholy fire in her eyes, the reddish orange glow flickering behind her gaze. “It is a shame you were born to be a sentinel,” she mused. “You would have enjoyed the rising as one of us.”
“Being an undead, soulless shell?” He shook his head. “I already have eternity, and my soul is my own. What I crave—” His words broke off in a harsh, mirthless laugh. He was an addict, a slave to the pleasurable aspects to pain. His craving would most likely be the death of him, but he didn’t care. He hadn’t cared in a long time.
Her eyes sparkled wickedly, and her full scarlet lips curved into a semblance of a smile. “I know, my love. I know.”
“Just do it.” His need—his desperation—was reflected in the timber of his voice. “Feed your beast.”
Tangling her fingers in his hair, Nayia wrenched his head to one side. “You can still join us. For your loyalty you would be well”—she lovingly nuzzled the hollow between his head and shoulders, her warm tongue tracing a moist trail along his jugular—“rewarded.” Her hot breath scorched his bruised skin.
Maddox tightly clenched the fingers of one hand. “You tempt me . . .” There was a bitter, coppery taste in his mouth, the lingering taste of his own blood mingling with the kisses he and Jesse had shared. But instead of breaking the embrace of this hell-spawned creature, he remained frozen in place. After a year of denying his craving, he needed his fix.
Bad.
Burying her face in his neck, Nayia used her sharp canines to tear through the flesh right above his jugular, her ardent bite unmerciful in its penetration.
Maddox gasped, almost whimpered, shocked by the pain so searing that it seemed to brand itself on the walls of his skull as it ricocheted through his senses. The prickle of some kind of primitive fear ran up his spine. He was paralyzed, body and mind.
His body quivered brutally, and he felt the warmth of his blood trickle over his unexpectedly frigid skin. The pain was strangely exquisite, for her bite lit up the fires of longing in his heart.
What he was doing with her—the enemy—was wrong. It might even get him killed, but he didn’t care.
Lost in the depths of bliss, Maddox closed his eyes. Memories from the far past crept out of the darker corners of his mind—forbidden, yet savored. Time spun away, taking him back to the time of his first encounter with the Telave . . .
Older, wiser men had warned against venturing into the bayous of Louisiana. Bad things lurked there, they’d said—things that didn’t belong in this world. But the lure of beaver and the money their pelts would bring proved to be irresistible to more than one trapper.
He’d been taken during a night raid on his camp, spirited away from the rest of his group, most of whom were slaughtered without mercy. Knocked unconscious, he’d woken in a cave of some sort, bound hand and foot. The dark-skinned, dark-haired men and women attending him didn’t seem to speak his language, nor did they seem interested in communication. Though his captors treated him well, they never attempted to speak more than a few rudimentary words to him.
A day passed, and then another.
On the third, the leather cords that bound him were cut. He was then led into some sort of small antechamber within the cave. Lit by fire, the hard stone ground was covered with soft animal-skin furs.
Half-dazed by his confinement, Maddox hardly protested when two native women began to undress him, running their hands over his back, shoulders, and chest with eager anticipation. One unlaced his shirt and pulled it off his arms, leaning over to lick both of his nipples. She tossed it on the ground as she sucked the tip of one into her mouth and pulled back, nipping it with her teeth.
His hands flew to the back of her head, stroking her hair. A soft moan emanated from between his lips when a second woman wiggled between them and began kissing down his stomach, dropping to her knees in front of him and letting her hands roam over his manhood. His shaft rose as he watched her take down the front of his breeches before tugging them over his hips.
The woman on her knees nuzzled his erection with her lips. She smiled before moving forward and letting her tongue run smoothly all over the crown, tasting the clear liquid seeping from the tip. Her hands moved around his hips and gripped his ass, pulling him against her as she opened her mouth and slowly moved her lips over his throbbing glans. Her lips tightened, holding just the head in her mouth.
Maddox moaned and roughly pushed his fingers in her hair, unable to resist pushing his hips forward to get her to take more of him into her hot wet mouth. He couldn’t help whimpering softly when her sharp fingernails dug into his ass cheeks.
He was a willing captive and made no objection when the women pulled him to the ground and stretched out beside him. All he could think about was their hands exploring his naked flesh.
Very softly, he moaned when two wet mouths pressed against his skin, licking, sucking, exploring every inch of him. He felt long fingers wrap around his shaft, the beginning of a slow, carnal seduction.
A third person joined the group, a man. Instead of being shocked by the addition of another male, he was strangely excited by the feel of solid, rugged flesh pressing against his own. A second man joined, rubbing his hard penis against Maddox’s thigh, marking him with his uniquely male scent before licking away the damp trail with slow moist caresses of his tongue.
A nipple was pushed into his mouth. He suckled the hard nubbin eagerly. Through the haze of pleasure threatening to overcome him, he was vaguely aware of a new set of warm full lips closing around his sex. His penis, solid and weighty, pulsed as someone—he knew not whether a male or female pleasured him—took him down the throat. Hard teeth grazed his tender skin.
Groaning with delight, Maddox held back the urge to penetrate the warm mouth deeper, to feel more of the soft tongue flicking the underside of his shaft. He was almost desperate to relieve the pressure, but he didn’t want to climax just yet.
Surrounded by dark-skinned men and women on all sides, Maddox could only groan. Lost in the sensual dance of skin on skin, he could hardly keep up with the sensations threatening to overwhelm him like the waves of an all-consuming ocean.
He made no protest when those making such sweet love to him captured a limb—two taking his arms, two his legs—pinning him down. Too late, he realized their intention, for even as he tried to fight against captivity, he saw their features had lost all human resemblance. Their faces were changing, distorting, evolving into what could only be described as demonic. Their mouths opened wide and he caught a flash of fangs.
Pulse freezing in his veins, Maddox tried to writhe away from the hideous vi
sions. The pounding of his heart caused an unholy racket in his chest. His mouth opened and he tried to cry out for help, but no sound escaped the cavity of his throat.
The demons attacked, biting deeply into his flesh, then eagerly sucking up the blood seeping from the savage wounds.
“Mon Dieu!” he cried. Spare me, O Mother in heaven above.
But the Enlightened One was not listening, having turned deaf ears to his plight.
The beasts consuming him seemed to take pleasure in his useless straining, in his pitiable cries for mercy. He was panting now, his fear close to smothering him. Even as darkness flowed across his vision like ink over a sloping surface, the sounds of sucking continued to fill his ears . . .
With a brief tingling shock, Maddox returned to the present. Weak, gasping, and wholly exhausted, he was lying sprawled and numb. The candles around him had long burned down, and even though the cramped space was stuffy, his skin was covered with perspiration that chilled him to the bone. Bits and pieces of the far-gone past insisted on floating across his mind’s eye.
Lying beside him, Nayia propped herself up on an elbow. “You went under fast,” she commented. “For a moment I feared I’d lost you.”
Feeling a stinging sensation in his neck, Maddox gasped painfully. His head and heart were pounding, his teeth chattering. “Why do I do this to myself?” he gasped, feeling as if someone had dropped a block of concrete on top of him.
Nayia laughed low in her throat. “Because the Telave have seduced you with our wildly wicked and erotic ways.” Rolling on top of him, she ran her palms over his sweat-matted chest, circling his dusky nipples, then pinching the little nubs.
“Admit you want to be with us. You always have.”
Despite himself, Maddox groaned with pleasure. Every breath he took was reinforcing his emotional and physical awareness of her. “No.” He moaned. “Not at the price of my soul.”
“Bad boy.” Nayia methodically worked her way lower. “I guess I’m just going to have to work a little harder to persuade you.” Her hands moved down over his abdomen, expertly working to undo the top button of his jeans. He heard the crunch of the zipper. A moment later she freed him from his clothes, fingers wrapping around his swelling erection.
Maddox wiggled beneath her weight, shifting his body into a more comfortable position. He was weak and helpless and didn’t care what else happened.
As long as she didn’t stop.
Chapter 12
The sky was leaden, the day as cold and overcast as she felt inside her soul. Chilly fingers of a gusty wind tugged at her jacket as she drew the folds around her body. Pellets of hard rain beat the pavement around her, stinging her bare face.
I should find someplace to stay, Jesse thought. Still, she stood immobile, unable to make her feet go, to put her body into motion toward a dryer, warmer sanctuary. Instead, she lingered in the rain, a perverse self-torture she really was not enjoying, but to which she seemed incapable to call a halt. Since seeing Maddox with another woman, she wanted to feel pathetic, put upon, and utterly downtrodden. It suited her mood to a T. She would sacrifice herself to the rain, hoping that the water would purge her by washing away her aches and loneliness and hate.
A baptism.
That’s what it was.
She wanted to be punished, then cleansed, set free of the past.
She shivered, catching a glimpse of her reflection in the cracked window of an abandoned pawnshop where she’d been standing for the last ten minutes. Her hair was plastered down. Smudges of exhaustion underscored her eyes. Her face was a pale oval without a trace of makeup. Even her soft, full mouth looked bloodless. She looked, well, shitty.
For some reason this pleased her. Nerves strung as tight as a piano wire, she looked miserable because she was miserable. Her whole life had fallen apart, and she felt powerless to stop the depression. She was like an earthquake victim, with seemingly no way to dig herself out of the rubble.
Jesse shivered again. She felt the rain striking her, trickling down her neck, inside her clothes. Where, exactly, should she go now? Since retrieving her backpack from Maddox’s place, she’d spent the last few days wandering aimlessly. Even though she hadn’t known him long, she already felt lost without him. For the first time in eons she’d felt safe and accepted.
She bunched her hands into fists and pressed them against her thighs. Why did men have to be such ass-holes, anyway?
As the gloomy day began to descend into an even gloomier evening, clouds sank low to the ground, creating a purplish luminescent fog. It blanketed the abandoned area, giving the impression that the derelict buildings and abandoned streets were wrapped in a layer of gauze—a beautiful, if eerie, sight that perfectly suited her mood.
Jesse sighed and set her legs into motion. If she kept standing in the rain, she’d probably catch pneumonia and die. Given her present state of mind, that probably wouldn’t be a bad thing.
She walked, block after block disappearing under her restless feet. She had no real destination in mind. The only thing she knew was that she should keep moving, putting as much distance as she could between herself and Maddox. When she found a place to stay, she’d settle in and decide what to do next.
Caught in her own misery, she didn’t notice the vehicle gliding up behind her. A horn sounded, breaking the inner shell she’d stuffed herself into.
Hand flying to her hip pocket, she whirled on her heel. Anyone could have accosted her, taking her down before she’d even known what hit her. It was stupid to let her guard down, but at the time she hadn’t cared. Seeing Sam’s Pontiac delivered a much-needed jolt of reality. It was a welcome sight.
The passenger-side window rolled down. Sam Chen leaned across the front seat. “Hey, where the hell have you two been?”
Hitching her backpack into a more comfortable position, Jesse shook her head. “I’m not with Maddox anymore,” she said. “It’s just me.” She shrugged. “I don’t know where Maddox is, and I don’t really give a damn.”
Sam frowned. “Oh, shit. What happened?”
She spread her hands. “None of your business, man. I ain’t a part of your little group anymore.”
Sam reached for the handle, pushing it open. “Yeah, you are. Get your ass in here.”
Jesse planted her feet and dug in like a stubborn mule. “No. Whatever games you guys are playing, leave me out.”
Sam shook his head. “This isn’t anything you walk away from,” he said. “Once you’re in the club, you’re in for good. Only way to get out is to die. And if Reyen finds out you’re not under Maddox’s wing, he’s going to come after your ass just because he can.”
Jesse stuck out her lower lip. “What if I don’t want to be under Maddox’s fucking wing?” she snapped. “I’m just on my own. I always have been since this thing infected me.”
Sam rolled his eyes. “Okay, I get that something must have happened between you two. Get in and let’s get this sorted out.”
“No. I don’t want to.”
“So, what are you going to do?” Sam countered. “Stand there in the rain until you melt? Come on. Where else have you got to go?”
The answer echoed in her mind. Nowhere. What she had with her was all she had in the world: a few changes of clothes and the money Maddox had given her. Ninety-three dollars and some change wouldn’t get her very far for very long. Unless she really wanted to keep living on the streets, she’d have to break down and admit she needed some help. A year of running and hiding was enough. She was tired, worn down to the bone—not to mention soaked to the skin.
“I’ll get in,” she said. “But only if I can stay with you until I can find my own place.”
Sam nodded. “Good enough.”
Shrugging out of her backpack, Jesse slid into the front seat. “Sorry about getting your leather seats wet,” she apologized.
Sam sighed and turned up the heat. “I’ll live,” he said, guiding the car away from the curb.
Silence hung between
them.
Jesse held her cold hands toward the vents. The warm air blowing across her chilled skin felt wonderful. “So Maddox has been missing a couple of days,” she said, opening the way to conversation.
“Yeah. Last two days he hasn’t shown up to work. I’ve gone around his place, but it doesn’t look like anyone’s been there in a while. We were worried something nasty wanted a little revenge to get even for the Consanguine we took out.”
“I guess that would piss them off,” she allowed.
“Oh yeah. You can bet they get pissed when we start invading their territory. I know you think we’re a bunch of pussies for not running out and kicking undead ass every night, but you have to consider that they outnumber us about fifty to one. For every fledgling we do identify and locate, we might miss two or three more.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because sometimes they toss us a few red herrings, killing people just to have a body to dump. So they’ll kidnap half a dozen, kill them all, but infect only one or two. We can’t be everywhere in one night. A few are going to slip through. I hate breaking into a crypt just to find a plain old corpse. And don’t even get me started on the Consanguines. The older they are, the smarter they are. We got lucky with that one simply because he thought he knew you.”
Jesse shuddered involuntarily. “I don’t like thinking Amanda’s out there, preying on people,” she said, looking out the rain-splattered window. The rain had settled down into a light mist that made the cold air wet and sticky.
“I don’t know how anyone could handle something like that.”
“I’d suspected,” she said, turning away from the window. “I always thought I could feel her out there, even though it wouldn’t be possible, I know. What she was—who she was—is gone.”
