There are no humans here. Even those who appear human are something else, something Para and bad, pressed together tightly like one big bowl of trouble. I spot a group of men dressed head to toe in leather, bald heads tattooed with strange symbols. On another podium is a girl in a floaty skirt, her bare breasts covered in diamantes. She’s hovering half a meter from the ground thanks to her fluttering wings. I catch her eye and she smiles at me. Her Vampire teeth are stained pink with blood. Fuck! I look away quickly.
She must be a Para-Cross. You can get them either through birth or turned. I’ve only read about mixed-blood Paras, I’ve never seen one up close. Fae Vamps. Shifter Elves. And my father – the Witch who was bitten and turned into a wolf every full moon. A curse that killed him. I can’t help but think of my sister, Mikayla, and the baby she was carrying when I last saw her. Who in Para hell was the father?
I suppress a shiver as Lukka nods at someone behind me and a tray of shots is thrust between us. The waitress is dressed in white like an angel. I notice her neck, collarbone and wrists are covered in double-dotted puncture wounds. She’s walking fast, a cat-like tail flicking beneath the folds of her skirt - this club’s very own Blood Bunny. I wonder how much she gets paid to serve drinks to Paras before she herself becomes the last beverage of the day.
Lukka toasts us with a shot of blood and knocks it back in one go. My chest contracts at the wink he gives me, then I copy him with my own clear drink, shivering as it pools hot in my belly. Vodka.
“So? What do you think?” he shouts over the music, his cheek grazing mine. “My fun is better than my brother’s, no?”
Konstantin’s idea of fun is being admired and in control, whereas Lukka just wants to be surrounded by freaks who don’t give a fuck. These are his kind of people, and in all honesty, I don’t know what to think. I’ve been to plenty of clubs before, and I’ve even been to a few Para parties, but nothing like this.
“It’s amazing,” I shout back. “This music is strange, though. What is it?”
“Magic,” he replies, threading his arm around my waist and pushing my body against his. “Can you feel it?”
I can feel a lot of things, but he’s talking about the visible wisps of music winding their way through the dancers. Yeah, I can feel it now. An enchantment spell of the highest order - a complicated trick that only the grand Witches can perform. The enrichment of music with magic is no easy feat, but it’s powerful. Some tunes can stop a man in his tracks, or seduce a woman, or even kill. This one is making everyone on the dancefloor euphoric.
I rest my arms around Lukka’s neck and let the magic soak into me. Witchcraft doesn’t affect Witches as strongly as it does other Paras and humans, but I’m not a very powerful Witch so I’m buzzing like a wasp in a jam jar. It’s like tiny champagne bubbles washing over my skin, a whisper in my ear saying ‘Do it, Saskia. Do whatever you want. You’re young and alive and glorious. Now is the time.’ And I nearly believe it. I nearly do what I want. And what I want, with a Vamp in my arms and his lips so close to mine, is going to be a very very bad idea.
Lukka has his eyes closed, giving me a chance to take a long look at him. His pale skin and taut face. Thick lashes and crazy bleached hair. The tattoos climbing up his neck and temples, and a tiny speck of blood at the side of his mouth. Whose blood was he drinking? I’m partly revolted, yet I still have the sudden urge to lick it off his lips.
“Let go,” he says.
What? I take my arms away from around his neck, but he shakes his head and places them back, pulling me closer until my body is flush with his.
“That’s not what I meant, little Witch,” he says into the side of my neck. I shiver as he runs the tip of his sharp incisor from my collarbone to behind my ear. “I mean let your body go. Sink into me.”
The music is winding around us now, silver strands of magic loosening my limbs until I feel like I’m going to fall, but the magic is holding me up. I’m floating. My head flops forward on to Lukka’s shoulder and we stay like that, swaying and moving to the hypnotic beat.
After a while I pull back to say something but Lukka is already staring down at me, giving me a twisted mischievous smile. Then he sticks out his tongue. Stark white against the tip of his tongue is a tiny pill. But not a normal pill. This one is pearlescent and shimmers as the lights bounce off it.
Drugs aren’t really my thing. I haven’t done anything too serious since my mother forced me to go to a mage party where we had to cut ourselves and put frog poison in our wounds. The goal was to ascend to a higher level of mystical power. Obviously, I didn’t ascend. Instead, I rocked back and forth in a corner all night muttering theories about Charlie Sheen.
That vacation was not the precious mother-daughter bonding experience Mom had been hoping for. Why couldn’t she have settled for a movie night of ice cream and Love Actually like a normal mother?
But this is nothing like that.
I don’t know if it’s seeing him in the orphanage earlier, this hypnotic magical music, or just Lukka being Lukka - but I trust him. He makes me feel untouchable. And inside this crazy club I feel wild yet safe. The outside world isn’t real anymore. There are no consequences here. Lukka won’t let anything bad happen to me.
I stand on my tiptoes and open my mouth, and he runs his tongue against mine, passing me the pill. It tastes like watermelon and straight away starts to fizzle in my mouth. He goes to pull back, but I won’t let him. My hands graze the shaved side of his head and I cup the back of his neck, pulling him down. Then his mouth crashes upon mine, lips bruised and teeth clashing. The taste of fizzy watermelon and blood mix with Lukka’s ravenous hunger for me and my head starts swimming.
His hands get lost in my hair and his mouth explores mine, his feral growl vibrating on my lips. My want for him is growing hungrier with every beat of this music. I’m floating. I’m falling. I no longer know where he ends and I begin.
His tongue is on my collarbone and I realize I want to feel the delicious sting of his teeth puncturing my skin. I want my blood in his mouth. I want to drink his and get high. I want him to consume me. But he won’t. I’m not his food.
What am I to him? Who am I really? It doesn’t matter anymore. Right now, I’m nothing but light and love and this beat. The music swirls around us like birds dragging colored smoke across my vision.
Lukka. Milky eyes, lids half-closed, moves his body with mine while trailing icy fingertips down my spine as if he’s counting each vertebra. My hands reach under his top and I find his v-lines. I trace them.
“What the hell is in these pills?” I mumble, my voice sounding far away.
Maybe it’s not my voice. Maybe it’s someone else’s. Someone standing in a tunnel on the other side of the world.
“You like it, little Witch?” he says.
His tattooed thumb brushes across my lower lip and I moan, taking it into my mouth. I’m hungry. For him, for more, for all of it.
He laughs. “The pill was my brother’s idea.”
I shake my head a bit, trying to clear it. I know what Lukka’s saying is important, I need to concentrate, but I don’t understand. Konstantin makes pills?
“Drugs? That doesn’t sound like something Konstantin would get involved in,” I say. As if I know what Konstantin would get involved in. Less than two weeks with these brothers and suddenly I know then? I trust them?
It’s taking all my energy to form each word. My face feels like Jell-O and my mouth like rubber. I want to be kissed again. I want to feel Lukka’s cold lips on mine and make me forget why I’m really in Russia. I want to be the girl he thinks I am.
“Kostya makes them. Normal pharmaceuticals don’t work on us Paras, so he created something special.” Lukka’s face floods with something like pride. “This is a happy drug. He likes to make our people happy.”
I think back to a few days ago when I walked into Konstantin’s office and he was talking to a man in a lab coat.
“Konstantin is a chemist?” I say.
Lukka laughs. “My brother doesn’t get his hands dirty. Dr. Vassily makes them for him. He’s a pathetic excuse for a Vampire, too whiny. I don’t like him...but he makes good drugs.”
What?
“Where?” I say. “Where does this doctor make your brother’s drugs?”
Lukka shrugs like it’s no big deal. “Kostya has a lab beneath the Black Rabbit.”
A lab? I blink once, twice. What is he saying? Is this linked to the blood results I saw on Konstantin’s email?
The pill starts to work its magic and I feel it travel through my veins like liquid stardust. The club’s strobe lights flash and the twinkling lights flickers and the colored beams blind me and I let go. All questions evaporate from my skin. I let the music wash them away.
Tomorrow I can be a reporter, but tonight I’m Lukka’s.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Lukka is light on his feet as we tip-toe through the Volkov mansion. He supports my weight because my feet are killing me from dancing all night, and the drugs and magic are still thumping through me, slowing me down.
I knock into a statue of a naked nymph and lightning-fast Lukka catches it before it shatters on the marble floor.
He curses.
“What? Scared of waking big brother?” I tease. Then I giggle. Because everything seems supremely funny.
Must be the Witch music. He frowns at me, ushers me into my guest apartment, and closes the door quietly. There’s a moment of silence between us, as we just stand there, staring at one another.
“It’s late,” he says.
Although what he means is that it’s early. The sky was turning pink when we shut the front door and the shutters are already down in the house.
I grin. “Stayed out past your curfew?”
He smiles down at me. The smile of a madman. “It’s you who stayed up past your bedtime, little Witch.” He leans close to my ear. “Spokoinoi nochi.”
Goodnight.
When he withdraws I feel like the air has been ripped from my lungs.
A full night of kissing. A full night of dancing. And now he’s just going to leave me here with nothing? With no…. satisfaction?
“Maybe big brother Konstantin will ground you. That’s what your boss does, right? Punishes you when you’ve been a bad dog,” I say.
It works.
With impossible speed, Lukka whips around and crosses the distance between us. He pushes me and I fly backward onto the bed.
“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” he growls.
It didn’t hurt but I’m still shocked at his reaction. I wanted his attention, yes, but I didn’t expect to hit a nerve this sensitive.
Then Lukka tilts his head to the ceiling and laughs.
“You should see your face,” he says.
I breathe out a sigh of relief. “Still prettier than yours,” I tease.
“I’m sorry for pushing you.”
Laying back on the bed I playfully nudge him with the tip of my boot.
“Then make it up to me. Take off my boots. They are killing me.”
Lukka rocks back and forth on his heels, as if considering this. Then he reaches forward and hooks his fingers beneath the suede of my right thigh-high boot and slowly pulls. I feel the suede slide past my knees, and calf and foot. Lukka takes his time. He drops the boot on the floor with a thunk. Then pulls the other one off, even slower this time, allowing the boot to slide along the fabric of my tights. He drops that one too then contemplates me.
The release of no longer being in tight high heels is like a mini orgasm in itself. I groan and flex my toes. He turns to leave.
“And my tights!” I call.
When Lukka turns to me his expression is wild. He strides over to the bed, shackles my ankles with his hands and yanks me forward, hard, so that he’s between my legs. I swallow, looking up at him. I know I was taunting him, but it feels real now. Terrifyingly real. Perhaps I’ve gone too far - yet I don’t want it to stop.
The enchanted music is still flowing through my blood, making every inch of me thrum. The cold from his hands grasping my ankles feels like someone is running a tongue along them. No, not someone. Lukka.
I suppress a moan. I don’t want to be that girl, the one who groans just from someone touching her ankles. Plus, Lukka might think I have a foot fetish, and that’s not sexy.
My internal monologue is interrupted as he reaches forward and slides his hands beneath my ass, lifting me and causing me to arch my back. I gasp as he hooks his fingers into the waistband of my tights and slowly, infuriatingly slowly, peels them off. As he does so his thumb glides along the inside of my thigh, goosebumps collecting in its wake.
He tosses my tights to the floor and stands. “Time to sleep, little Witch.”
There are a million reasons I don’t want to sleep - the Vamp between my legs being the highest on my list.
But also, I’m parched. I gulp painfully against the dryness of my throat.
“Tell me a bedtime story,” I say, my throat constricting at the words.
Before I can even blink Lukka’s left the room with that Vamp speed of his. He’s gone. The door slamming shut behind him.
Did he…? Did he seriously just leave me here. LIKE THIS?
I curse angrily and sit up. The prick! That arrogant, stupid, blonde…
With a whoosh Lukka is in front of me again. This time he’s shirtless beneath his purple gun holster, and he’s grinning. In his tattooed hands, he’s holding a bucket of ice and an open champagne bottle. He managed to change, go to the kitchen and fetch a bottle of champagne in under ten seconds. I close my mouth, not realizing it was gaping open.
“I don’t know any good stories for good girls,” he says playfully. “All I know are bad stories...for bad girls.”
He sets the bucket next to me and climbs on to the bed beside me, sitting up on his knees.
“Tell me a bad story then,” I whisper.
His expression shifts. He’s no longer amused - he’s hungry.
Lukka runs his hand through my hair and cups my head, then brings the champagne bottle to my mouth. I wrap my lips around its head and drink, eyes gazing up at him. He pushes the bottle a tiny bit deeper into my throat, then withdraws it quickly making the foam trickle out of my mouth and down my chin. Slowly, he pulls my chin up and licks the side of my mouth. Then he raises the bottle and tilts it so champagne flows down his pale muscular abdomen. The foamy liquid trickles down his tattoos and onto my sheets.
I quickly put my mouth against his abs to staunch the flow, licking and sucking my way down the V shape of his Adonis belt. Lukka squeezes my cheeks in his palm and waterfalls champagne into my open mouth.
I don’t take my eyes off him, not for a second, as I drink and slurp the cold champagne he is pouring all over me. It flows along my neck, over my breasts, perking my nipples against the wet fabric of my dress.
Lukka stands up again and I’m breathless. My core aches for him. I don’t want him to leave.
“You’ve got me all wet now,” I say, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. “And sticky.”
He gives me a demonic grin and reaches for me again. I lie back as his hands slip under my dress, his fingers hooking the straps of my thong. Then slowly he peels it away.
I arch to make it easier for him and the glimpse of my flesh makes him utter a low growl.
I feel the fabric of my underwear as he slides it down my hips, down my thighs, and the feather-light touch of them on my ankles before he flings them aside. I arch my back again to give him a second look for good measure.
Lukka’s fangs are out, making indentations against his lips as he bites them.
“I’ll tell you a story,” he says, his voice low and husky. “A story about a naughty little Witch.”
He leaves me on the bed and wanders around the room, lighting decorative candles as he goes. His silhouette is eerie against the flickering light. He returns to the bed and looks down at me. Then
he takes a slow deliberate swig of champagne, before setting the empty bottle aside.
With a yank, he tugs the knotted curtain ropes from my four-poster bed free. The ropes flex over his tattooed knuckles, and suddenly he’s tying my ankles to the bedposts, my legs spread wide. I gulp.
“What did she do, this little Witch in your story?” I ask breathlessly. I want his hands on me again. I can feel the heat between my legs aching and growing tighter by the second. The ropes dig into the soft skin of my ankles, and pressure builds in my core. I sit up and stare at him from under my lashes.
“The little Witch hunted the truth,” he tells me. His milky gaze is haunting in the dim light. He smiles, trailing a lazy finger past my abdomen, over my left breast, and brushing it against my mouth. “But the little Witch that sought the truth was made of lies herself.”
This line of the story jars me even though his finger is still making lazy circles over my body and I’m halfway to pleasure town. Does he know who I am? Does he know I’m a reporter? Is that why he’s calling me a liar?
Maybe he doesn’t know anything. Maybe this is just Lukka speaking in fucking riddles as usual.
I’m trying to make sense of it when suddenly he’s tying my wrists to the bed, lacing the remaining curtain ropes around the bedpost. He’s gentle as the flutter of a butterfly, then quickly tightens them with a hard tug.
That’s what Lukka is, tenderness wrapped in violence.
He reaches behind me into the ice cube bucket and plops a cube in his mouth. Then he smiles. A mad, feral smile.
No. He doesn’t know who I am - and neither do I anymore
With his soft half-open mouth, he uses the ice to trace up my calf and along my inside thighs. I shudder against the cold, then yelp when I feel his ice-cold tongue slip between my legs. The cold pressure mounts higher and higher, higher still, until I can barely take it anymore.
Vampires of Moscow (Blood Web Chronicles Book 1) Page 16
