Immortal Bad Boys

by R. York, R. Laurey, L. Thomas-Sundstrom

  "Why doesn't the cross weaken you?" Elizabeth countered.

  "I have made it a point never to give away secrets that matter."

  "I am here to change that."

  Unable to help himself, Dante smiled in surprise. "Did you bring her here to bargain with me?"

  "I brought her here as a last resort."

  "For what, might I ask?"

  "Siring."

  "What?"

  "Is that not what you call it? Does one beast not sire another?"

  "I do not follow your line of thought," Dante said, smile fading.

  "Can you not? How unfortunate, since both of our lives are now at stake."

  Dante sat back, gazed down at Elizabeth's ashen face. He glanced to the angel, whose eyes were still downcast. "What has she to do with this?" he asked.

  But he didn't like the expression Elizabeth adopted. It was one of someone getting the better of another. It was Elizabeth thinking she had gotten the better of him.

  Had he missed something?

  What the bloody hell could it be?

  She leaned closer to him again. She looked up at him and he could swear that some of the keenness had left her eyes. He could swear she was waiting, expecting something.

  He watched as she got to her feet on the covers, and as she lifted the cross down from its place. A need to back away nearly overwhelmed him as she brought the cross to him. With a fascination too great to retreat from, he stayed where he was as she pressed the silver cross to his chest.

  The odor of burnt flesh filled the room. Dante's mouth opened in a silent protest. The ache was paramount, but he did not move.

  "Are you not angry with me for doing this to you?" Elizabeth whispered to him, eyes wide and staring intently into his.

  He took hold of her wrist, shook it. The cross dropped to the floor with a sharp, metallic sound. With a graceful bending of his elbow, he brought Elizabeth closer.

  "I am not angry," he said, lips forming the words slowly, precisely, above the soft hiss of his scorched flesh.

  "Then perhaps this will do," Elizabeth said, picking up her dagger, running its sharp tip down the length of his arm.

  Dante's skin opened beneath the pressure of the razor-sharp knife. A thin line of blood gathered and then began to spill. Dark red liquid ran down his arm. A drop of it hit the sheets with a dull thud.

  In an instant, he had Elizabeth on her back. Arms pinned above her head, he looked into her face. "I repeat, Elizabeth: What are you doing?"

  Her lips were on his before he finished his query. Back arched, arms straining above her, Elizabeth rose to meet him.

  There was a noise in the distance. A low growl. But Dante paid no heed. Nothing could get in the way of this moment. Not even the angel.

  There was a score to settle.

  Warm lips covered his, drew on his. Elizabeth's tongue, moist, usually compliant, darted across his teeth, then retreated. The sharpness of his teeth, rivaling her dagger's edge, would have startled her, hurt her, Dante knew. Yet she came on again, undaunted.

  Blood spattered into his mouth. Elizabeth's blood. The scent of it filled him, sent his insides scrambling. The taste—thick, rich, a taste like no other thing—unleashed a portion of his inner beast.

  Hold back, he reasoned as Elizabeth's mouth clung to his.

  Hold back.

  But questions vied for his focus. His mind whirled. Did Elizabeth know no better than to tempt him in this way? Couldn't she reason how fine the line was that he walked? Blood was the key. Blood was his existence.

  "Dear God!" Her hands caressed him with disturbing motions. Blissful ministrations. A murmur rose to her throat, soft, like her touch. Thrilling. Utterly beguiling.

  He caressed her throat, slid his fingers over the velvet band of jewels she wore as a collar. The thing tore easily. Priceless jewels fell to the floor, discarded. Out of the way.

  In full evidence were the two punctures he had made. There, near where the blood flowed its fullest. Beneath her jaw. Beneath her ear. The wounds were raised, raw, the flesh around them blackened and bruised. He had hurt her. It must hurt her, still. How brave she was for facing him after that.

  "If there were actually to be a God, surely he would strike now, for doing this to you. For wanting to do it again," he whispered.

  The two raised bumps of her wounds were an invitation to the most inhuman of actions. He had to keep the passions bound. He had to fight his very nature now. Elizabeth had become more than a mere vessel. Much more than that.

  "What is it you have become?" he asked her throatily, rhetorically, vocalizing his uncertainty. "What do you mean to me, so suddenly? Are you a pathway to the truth? A mortal soul to balance the hole where my own soul once had been?"

  He shook his head, going backwards against the tide of his desire. "No. If there were a God, the beasts would not be allowed to roam. There would be no place for what hides in the shadows. You are right to torment me."

  "Dante."

  The utterance of his name momentarily stopped the questions. He fell back into the moment. Into his own sweet torment. Heat engulfed him, spreading from Elizabeth's body to his, through her clothes, through the thin bit of air separating them. Heat. Maybe not the sun, but similar. Golden in feel. Bright. He longed for this sun, her sun. He longed to take her brightness in. He cursed the night.

  Creamy skin moved beneath his hands, his cool fingers.

  Wine-tinted lips, full, lush, moved against his with the murmur of an incantation designed to drive him mad with desire. It mattered not what Elizabeth said, what she whispered, he told himself.

  With a slow, measured gesture, he slid his tongue around the rim of her mouth. Do not go further, he warned himself. Do not go there. You will be sorry. Nothing will be left. No comfort.

  No comfort.

  His hands found her breasts, moved over the luxuriousness of her gown, seeking to bolster the warmth. A breath later, a mere heartbeat, the cloth barrier came apart at the seams with a sound that split the night and sent his senses soaring.

  Elizabeth's heart beat irregularly, loudly. He should have covered his ears, blocked out the sound. Instead, he moved to the rhythm of that beat, as if it were his own heart pounding. He explored her possessively. Pleasure arrived in waves.

  "Now look what we have done," he crooned to her.

  The pulse of her heart beat against his palm as his hand lay upon her chest. Able to hear her blood's frantic journey, Dante closed his eyes, recalled what the mingling of her fluids with his had been like. Lightheadedness returned. Extreme hunger.

  Suddenly and inexplicably haunted by Elizabeth Rothchilde, by everything about her, he got to his knees. With her discarded dagger in his fingers, he slit her velvet skirts from their laces. The sound was muffled, erotic.

  Arms wrapped around her nakedness, he lifted her from the dark green mass that had clothed her. He stretched her long-limbed nakedness out on the bed. He burrowed his head against her soft white belly and bit her gently, just above her right hip bone. The merest dot of blood rose to the surface. Dark red, on white. She muffled a cry. He did the same.

  "Yes, look," Dante repeated, "at us."

  Again a sound floated toward him, low and resonant. Again he let it go. The angel and her plight did not matter now. Nor did it matter how she looked on. Perhaps the angel would learn something of use for her wedding bed…

  Downward he went, lips hovering over every inch of Elizabeth's quivering smoothness. A nip here, there, with his teeth, and then he bit down oh-so-softly to break the skin. Leaving a trail. Marring the beauty.

  She allowed this. Was it her victory over the angel she needed? Is that why she had the angel standing by?

  He moved on to her thighs. Rounded. Gloriously unflawed. Hot to the touch. Flames to the tongue, fueling the fires raging within him.

  Elizabeth.

  Damn you.

  Scooping both hands beneath her buttocks, he elevated her upward, high off the covers, needing to h
old her and feel her next to him. Her legs opened, as they had opened for him before. Yet this motion felt new. Different. The unmistakable scent of musk, of flowering womanhood in a time of need, came to him on his intake of breath.

  Dear… Elizabeth.

  What do you have in store for me?

  One thrust of his tongue to part her light brown fur, to beckon at the door to her desire, and she stiffened. But he would not relent. Could not. She had started this. She was expecting this.

  He took the pink petals into his mouth, sucked lightly at first, then with a harder draw. Elizabeth fluttered, spoke, saying he knew not what. Undulating legs the color of pearls closed around his back as she rose to meet his torturous, treacherous mouth. Her heartbeat quickened, pounding in frantic thumps that resonated just beneath her skin, and near to her silky womb's entrance. He could see the beat move her.

  Moistness flowed to meet him. He drank in the nectar of the inferno, darting his tongue across her sensitive threshold, listening to her little cries.

  And it was not enough.

  He would show her that he could satisfy her and leave no doubts to fill his mind.

  He hauled himself upward, unleashing his engorged cock as he did so. Before Elizabeth could open her eyes, he was inside of her savory heat with a smooth, lubricated shove.

  "I cannot bear it," Elizabeth said in a voice as raw as the wounds on her neck.

  " 'Siring,' you said," he whispered to her. "Yet this is as much of me as I can give. You are living, breathing flesh. Your womb will never carry my heirs. I can have no heirs this way."

  But then, she must already know this, he thought.

  "My touch will not heal you," he said. "My touch can burn, harm, maim. I am an abomination. I am darkness, you are light. I am merely shadow to your flame."

  As if in deference to his statement, his hips rose, flattened, and pressed into hers. His prick slid deeper inside of her, was welcomed with the familiar dampness.

  "By God," he said hoarsely, "if I am an abomination, what might you be—you who crave this unholy attention?"

  Another shove. Deeper. Truer. And he went spiraling back to the one word he distrusted. Secrets.

  He would get those secrets from Elizabeth. He would force them out of her, fuck them out of her. She would open her mouth and out the words would tumble. He would kiss her as he drank them in, as her power transferred to him.

  His engorged, unsatisfied cock plunged again into her velvety depths. And again. It felt good. It was a start.

  "Tell me," he said, looking into her eyes as he withdrew himself almost completely, and as he dipped back inside the pink petals, barely, lightly. "What do you need?"

  Without awaiting her reply, he forced his shaft into her lushness with a slap of his hips against hers. He repeated the action, building in speed, listening to the sound of their bodies meeting.

  Elizabeth's fingers curled on the covers. Her head turned side to side. He would take her soon, he knew—down past desire, down past rational reasoning, and into his realm. The realm of the beast. The seducer. The cheat.

  For he, along with the other things that clung to the shadows, had cheated death. And now, he had become death.

  And after everything he could have imagined, was death what Elizabeth ultimately wanted? Did this beautiful Rothchilde want to die?

  He paused. She moved, wrapping herself around him from the inside out, adding fire to fire. Her body swallowed him up, sucked him in, held him there. She said, "I want it all, Dante."

  Elizabeth's skin glistened with perspiration, though the room was cold. The cold of a tomb. Her voice was desperate. "I demand that you give it to me, or I can have no peace."

  "Do not invite me in," Dante warned, understanding dawning, rage building. "Not beyond the flesh. Not beyond this."

  Hot fingers gripped his back, his shoulders, then his buttocks, hanging on, urging him on.

  "All of it," Elizabeth said. "It is why I have come."

  Dante shook his head, shuddered with the thought. Elizabeth's face came closer. She held onto his rigid back. Her chin was lifted, her head tilted to expose her wounds. He could smell the sweetness, remember the taste.

  Her blood had been free-flowing. Thick. She had given it to him willingly, and he was an idiot for not seeing what she wanted from the first. Who better than Elizabeth Rothchilde, sister of Alan the Terrible, would know just what it would take to die? How easy it could be for life to drain away?

  Who better than she would know how difficult it would be for any creature such as himself to give up, once the taste and smell of a mortal had been sampled? It was her blood that sang to him now, dammit all to hell. That was her hold, her wild card. This was the power she wielded over him. It was the Blood Lure. Her mad face had taken on the pallor of the Undead already.

  "Yes," was the sound that escaped from Elizabeth's mouth as he studied her.

  Yes, the shadows urged in a swell of dank, fetid draft. She requests this. She wants this. Is it not what you are? Is it not what you do?

  He wavered on arms that had begun to shake, wondering who in those shadows had spoken, and if he should listen.

  Chapter Fifteen

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  The flicker of the candle seemed uncommonly loud to Elizabeth's ears. Louder than her heart's beat. Louder than the silence that lay heavily upon the cavernous room now that Dante had hesitated.

  She was afraid to look away, afraid to look anywhere but into the dark, bottomless eyes that sought and held hers. Though Dante was still erect and firmly embedded inside of her, though his hips remained molded to hers, his eyes had clouded over.

  Was the thing Dante had called an angel, so securely wrapped in her garlic streamers, calling to him in a way only creatures of their kind could hear? Could Dante truly not comprehend the essence of this queen of the damned that her brother had chosen?

  "I can see down into your soul. Beyond the surface things," Dante said to her, moving slightly, letting her know he maintained full control of his body and his actions.

  Elizabeth forced a grin, felt like doing anything but smiling. "I assumed it was another part of your anatomy that concerned you."

  "Then you value my other talents too little."

  "I have no delusions about your talents, or your desires."

  "I will not play this game, Elizabeth. If Lady Wallace desires to be rid of this castle and her impending marriage, what is it to you?"

  "More than you seem able to guess," Elizabeth said, arching her back slightly, elevating her rosy breasts, breath escaping when Dante's focus drifted downward.

  "Yet you can have her now," Elizabeth added in a tone of challenge. "And you are inside of me."

  Dante's eyes came back to hers. Not clouded over—at least on the surface.

  "I offered her to you on a silver plate," Elizabeth said, testing him further. "Am I but a nibble, and she the main course?"

  "Why is she here?"

  "I told you, Dante. She is here out of necessity. It is your honor my brother will take from me this night. I cannot have that. I will not allow it. I must force your hand. It is the only way."

  "What part does she play, Elizabeth? I mean to know."

  "Then you shall, my dearest Dante. If you must. But first you must make a choice. You—"

  "Ah. A choice." Dante withdrew from their intimate connection, disallowing her final remark. He turned on the bed to stare beyond the candlelight, covered meagerly in a shred of green velvet that had once been a part of her skirt.

  Elizabeth could not move. She lay back with her legs still slightly parted, feeling the cold air return, suppressing a shudder. She watched as Dante signaled for her guards to step back from the dark-haired creature they hovered near. The guards obeyed.

  Dante's eyes flicked to the creature, then back to Elizabeth's face. Once again a frown marred his pensive, chiseled features.

  "You did not kill me," Elizabeth said to him.

  "And you imagine it was honor t
hat stopped me?" he returned.

  "You did not try to take her. You did not even try, Dante."

  Dante's furrow deepened. His eyes darted back to the dark-haired creature. "I thought her the most beautiful woman I had ever seen."

  Elizabeth felt her heart slide against her ribs. She experienced a moment of what seemed very much like defeat.

  "It is her power," she said. "And the reason my brother brought her here."

  Dante wore a puzzled look now. He knew something of this, Elizabeth thought. He did not know enough of it to save himself from what was happening. Time was running out.

  "You may sense her innocence, Dante, but it is not what you think. She is not what you think."

  "Shall we cut the bonds you have placed upon her and see?" Dante countered.

  "You would choose her, then?"

  "If I had chosen her, you would not be here, I think."

  Elizabeth lifted her shoulders and sat up slowly, careful not to move too quickly, thinking that hope now stirred where shadows had begun to dwell. Dante had said was. The creature was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

  Dante caught hold of her right ankle before she could straighten. He gave her an inquisitive look.

  "What is this, Elizabeth? What are these marks on the bottom of your foot?"

  He ran his fingers over the bumps—old wounds scarred over. She flinched, not from pain but from the discomfort of a secret partially exposed.

  His eyes were on her. His fingers stopped exploring. "My God," he whispered, as though it had been hidden text he'd found and read. "How long, Elizabeth? How long has your brother been cutting his teeth on you? How long have you been prisoner here?"

  He looked up. "How could I not see what this angel is?"

  Chapter Sixteen

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  Elizabeth's eyes searched his with a sudden seriousness.

  "How long?" Dante demanded, feeling his rage rise, feeling his strength return in direct proportion to it. "I want to hear it, Elizabeth."