Blood of Angels (Book 2 of the Blood Hunters Series)

by Marie Treanor

  “Does that work on humans?”

  “Not very well. But we can be damned sure we disarm them.”

  “He didn’t disarm me.”

  Clearly, she couldn’t resist it. “Perhaps he knows the stake in your pocket is particularly important.”

  “Is it?” he asked at once.

  This time, her blush was definite. “A hunter’s stake is always respected. What do you want? Marks out of ten?”

  “Ouch. No, I’d settle for a dance.”

  “I told you it’s—”

  “Friday, I know. But that doesn’t really matter, does it? Your staff can run the place very well without you for five minutes.”

  Her beautiful eyes narrowed, challenging him. “Why?” she said abruptly. “Why should they?”

  “Because I very much want to dance with you.”

  “Just dance?”

  He smiled. “No,” he confessed softly.

  She curled her lip as she rose to her feet and turned deliberately away.

  Shit. “Angyalka.” He had to move fast or she’d be gone, and desperation seemed to lend him speed. He jumped up and caught her arm, and she blinked at him in surprise. Her dark blue eyes were veiled, wary, deep enough to drown in. “You’re an obsession that’s very far from out of my system. But I’ll gladly take the dance with no strings.”

  From the table by the door, he was sure, Béla glared at him. But he didn’t break Angyalka’s gaze. A tiny sound came from her throat; it might have been a laugh, or a mutter of annoyance. Then she strode past him toward the dance floor.

  Thank you, God.

  Chapter Twelve

  He followed her into the crowd, where she spun to face him more like a combatant than a dance partner. Alarm bells rang in his head; the hairs on the back of his neck stood up to shriek warning as well as awareness. An angry lover was a difficulty; an angry vampire took things to a whole new level.

  She was trying to maintain a distance, to keep last night’s fling in the one-off category. He got that. And she was angry, possibly, because she’d surrendered, because he’d read her secret desire. Probably, she was confused by whatever this thing was between them and wanted it to stop. He could understand that too. Maybe she was right, but he couldn’t leave it there, not yet. He couldn’t allow her to maintain this distance or he’d lost the game too soon; he’d lost her.

  And so he acted from pure instinct. Ignoring the repulsion glaring from her eyes—after all, she’d come here to dance although she could just as easily have walked away—he stepped right up to her and took her in his arms.

  She felt rigid, no doubt from surprise at his reckless action. They both knew he was relying on her “no biting, no fighting” rule, and it seemed she was prepared to stick to it, for after an instant, she relaxed into him and the sultry, teasing look was back.

  “No strings?” she repeated, wryly. “Bored with them after last night?”

  “God, no.” Involuntarily, he pulled her closer, up against his fast-hardening erection, and her fingers dug into his arms. Shit, she’s strong…

  As if she realized she was bruising him, her grip relaxed, but her palms remained flat on his upper arms. She made no move to hold him properly, just swayed against his erection while the dancers jumped around them.

  She tilted her face up to his, her big, tempting eyes veiled and unreadable. “What is it you want of me, István?”

  “Right now, I’ll settle for this.”

  She skimmed her hands down his arms to his elbows and around to his back. They slid lower over his hips and buttocks, drawing him to her as she stood on tiptoe to let his erection grind into the juncture of her thighs. Her swaying was more pronounced. She bent back from the waist, her breasts pushing outward as she danced. Just occasionally her peaked nipples brushed against his chest, shooting pangs of lust straight to his straining cock, which nestled so close to where it wanted most to be.

  István could barely breathe as he danced. Their lower bodies seemed melded together, all the more erotic for their separation above the waist. István slid his hands over her delicious bottom, stroking, caressing, while his body did the same at her front. He wondered how long he could keep this up without exploding, but fuck, it felt good…

  “What now, hunter?” she whispered, leaning just a little closer to say the words, before bending back again so that their hips ground together, crotch to crotch. “Do you want to fuck me again?”

  “Yes.” He had a plan for that, somewhere, getting lost in the more urgent fantasy of pushing her up against the nearby pillar and doing it now. This place had a disinhibiting effect on everyone. Put Angyalka in the equation and he was lost to everything except her beauty and his own lust. He tried to think, pushed one hand upward over her back to bring her face nearer his. “But there are two of us dancing. What do you want with me?”

  Her eyes glittered. A profound hunger that he recognized from last night gleamed at him, swiping at what was left of his breath. She leaned into him, placing her lips close to his ear.

  “I’m a vampire. I want blood with my sex.” Her nose brushed against his skin, heightening desire and fear and every other kind of awareness of which he was capable. “Mmm. You smell good…” She leaned back to look into his face. “Still want to play, hunter?”

  “If I can choose the place.” And distract you from the blood…

  Her hips pushed against his. “I thought you’d already chosen right here.”

  Oh yes, instant gratification, instant Angyalka enveloping him, massaging him to joy as he pushed into her… If she wore anything under that dress, it was as wispy and easily dealt with as last night.

  He pushed her back, and she let him. Her eyes were all pupils as she hit the pillar, such a tempting, mocking smile on her lips that he wouldn’t have been human if he hadn’t kissed them, if he hadn’t ground and circled his hips against hers, trapping her between the pillar and his urgent body.

  Except, of course, she wasn’t trapped. She could throw him across the room if she chose. He didn’t give her the chance.

  With a monumental effort, he tore his mouth free, groaning when he glimpsed hers still open with passion. He unstuck his hips from hers and took her hand.

  “Not here,” he said breathlessly. “I have something much more exciting in mind.”

  He grasped her hand, and, after an instant’s surprise, her lips curved once more and she went with him. Béla glowered at them from a barstool but didn’t move as István led her toward the public exit.

  Angyalka laughed softly. “The grimy stairs. I knew you fancied it there.”

  “I fancy it anywhere with you,” he said truthfully.

  Another vampire guarded the door on the outside. Angyalka glanced at him, probably issuing telepathic orders, for without a word, the vampire went inside the club and closed the door. István took the opportunity to push her up against it and kiss her some more, running eager hands up from her waist over her wonderful breasts.

  She wriggled, egging him on, grazing her fangs along his lip. The sound of arrivals downstairs provided the excuse to drag her away from the door and up the shadowed, narrow staircase toward the roof. A hiss of excited laughter tickled his ear, gave him an instant’s warning before, halfway up the stairs, she shoved him against the wall and hooked her leg over his hip. He held it there, running his hand up her thigh, over her stocking tops to the cool, silken flesh above.

  István groaned as she stroked his crotch between her thighs and glided her lips down his jaw to his throat. Her whole body shuddered with hunger, filling him with some weird, intoxicating pleasure he’d never even imagined before. Everything about her excited him beyond belief, even the threat of death. He’d watched her drain a man in instants, only a couple of nights ago…

  Distraction.

  He took her by surprise, spinning her around, so that now it was her back against the wall. He seized her mouth in his, flattening her body with his for only a moment before he leapt back and drew he
r on up the stairs.

  She elected to play on, running with him, letting him jump her again on the landing. Keeping her mouth occupied with his, he pushed his knee between her legs, rubbed his thigh against her crotch while he pulled down the back zip of her dress. He urged the fabric down her shoulders, caressing in its wake until he found and cupped her naked breast.

  She moaned into his mouth as he kneaded and caressed, pinching the nipple between his finger and thumb and gently pulling, over and over. Puckered and hard, her nipple seemed to reach out for his fingers whenever he left it. She bit at his lips, softly yet urgently, gave a tiny growl as he moved his thigh rhythmically against her pussy. She rocked against it, looking for immediate release.

  He moved her along the wall, swaying, rubbing, rocking her, until his free hand found the door in the darkness. He hoped he wouldn’t have to pick the lock, because in this state, he didn’t think he could, especially not while concentrating on the writhing Angyalka. He found a handle, turned it, and pushed hard. The door swung open easily, and he all but fell through it, dragging Angyalka with him.

  The cool night air made him gasp. Angyalka froze in his arms.

  They stood on a large area of flat roof, with the glass dome of the club ceiling rising to one side. The dark swirling sky and the city spread out around them, below them, as far as the eye could see. This was his gamble, his risk—to save her and have her…

  “This is exciting,” he whispered. “Sex under the stars.”

  Something very like a whimper fell from her lips. He stopped it with a kiss, a long, deliberately arousing kiss. As he pushed her in against the door, he felt her body gather strength, ready to throw him off. She trembled in panic. But he used her movements, meeting them with the blatantly sensual caresses of his own hands and body. He flicked her naked nipple with his thumb, slid his other hand up under her dress and over her thigh, thrusting aside the damp thong to bathe his fingers in her cool, alien desire.

  Either from fear or lust, the heave of her body was too feeble to dislodge him. It only pushed her onto his hand, and he deliberately slid a finger inside her. Her mouth opened wide in a silent gasp.

  “Fuck me here,” he whispered against her lips. “I dare you.”

  She made a sound, halfway between a growl and a cry, and thrust herself onto his fingers. He laughed softly, provoking her, slid a second finger inside her, pushing them in and out of her while he circled her clitoris with the pad of his thumb. All the time he kissed her mouth and fondled her breast, and she writhed and wriggled as if she no longer knew whether she wanted to bolt or have sex.

  When she tore at the fastening of his jeans, he had his answer.

  He slid his fingers out of her. She cried out in pure frustration and then jumped, wrapped both legs around his hips and impaled herself on him.

  Almost at once, her cry changed to one of pleasure. The intensity of her body’s cool, tight grasp almost overwhelmed him. She began to ride him, lifting herself up and down on him, clenching her muscles around him, and now it was he who groaned in a desperate effort not to come too soon. She was his wildest erotic fantasy incarnate, every inch of her stunningly beautiful and wickedly lustful. Her dress was rucked up to her hips, exposing long, silk-covered legs and white-topped thighs. He’d never seen anyone, never experienced anything, half as sexy as this. Part of him couldn’t believe it was happening to him, that he’d made it happen. Most of him wanted it never to stop.

  He couldn’t take his eyes off her ecstatic, shadowed face, pale and eerily lovely in the moonlight, as she moved on him, undulating, lifting and dropping on him with exquisite sensuality. He thrust back with more instinct than design now, led by pure lust. Only some shadow of self-control remained, holding on by a thread when she threw back her head and shouted her orgasm to the night sky.

  Fierce triumph at her pleasure washed through him, and with it came the ragged memory of his plan, his knowledge of what she liked. And so as she convulsed on him, falling forward in search of his mouth—or his throat, he’d no idea which—he lowered her to the cold ground and hammered her. Her voice changed, softened in its cries and moans, as she arched to meet his thrusts, careless of the rough ground under her body, only seeking and giving joy as he thrust into her hard through her long, long orgasm.

  Her convulsing muscles both enchanted and undid him. The pleasure was too intense, and he let go with a huge cry. Before he collapsed utterly, he was aware of her eyes staring into his with avid wonder and that wild, all-consuming hunger that he was in no condition now to avoid.

  Orgasm still battered him as she suddenly pushed him onto his back, straddling him, rising and falling with the rhythm of the pleasure ripping through him. She smiled, wicked, spellbinding, sexier than sin, still moving on him with delicious hums of pleasure as she lay forward on him and kissed his throat, at first delicately, and then with increasing strength.

  She seemed to inhale him, then licked. Oversensitized and still coming, he acknowledged the new, exciting twinges that ran all through his veins. Her whole body shuddered. Her teeth grazed his skin and poised.

  She’d won. He hadn’t distracted her after all, and more frightening than any of it was the fact that he hadn’t noticed or cared that he’d thrown her the upper hand. He felt frozen, paralyzed, and somewhere deep inside him, he wanted it.

  Her teeth slid along his skin, and she pulled away from him, throwing her head back as if straining away from temptation.

  She hadn’t bitten him.

  By no action of his own, he’d won.

  And suddenly he saw that it fused together. This was who she was. He’d taken her; he had to take all of her.

  He reached for her, seizing her face between his hands, and drew her back down to him, angling his head to display his neck.

  She let out a sob. “István,” she said in agony. “Don’t.”

  “Take it,” he whispered. “I won’t let you kill me.”

  He wouldn’t. He already grasped the stake in his pocket, held it ready as her trembling lips returned to his throat. Her tongue licked delicately; her teeth took hold and bit. He gasped at the sensation, although there was surprisingly little pain. Instead, as she sucked, he felt his blood pulled into her mouth from every part of his body, including his cock, which, with the sudden pang of renewed pleasure, began to move inside her again almost of its own volition. She met him, circling her hips as she sucked the blood from his vein in long, streaming pulls of sensual pleasure.

  “Mmm,” she moaned against his skin and took more. István felt in some strange no-man’s land between sexual satisfaction and continuing orgasm. He held her in one arm and went with it, absorbing the new ecstasy like a sponge. His fingers loosened on the stake, and it entered his head that after all, this was a stunningly beautiful way to die.

  The thought no sooner entered his head than his eyes snapped open with renewed alarm, and his fingers scrabbled for his dropped stake.

  Angyalka’s mouth released him. She licked him once, and there was no pain, only tingling pleasure where her teeth had been. His hand found the stake and gripped.

  Angyalka raised her head and stared down into his eyes as if she knew.

  She whispered, “You gave me the night and pleasure and your blood. Why would I kill you for that?”

  Something wet fell on his cheek. Something dark stained her face, dripping from her eyes. In wonder, he touched the corner of her eye with his fingertip and tasted.

  It was true then, that vampires wept blood. He’d never seen it before.

  “Angyalka,” he said helplessly.

  She caught his hand and held it to her cheek. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  Then she moved, faster than he could see. The door from the roof banged shut, and he lay alone under the stars.

  ****

  Had she ever cried the blood tears before? She didn’t think so. Vampire existence had been so preferable to life for her that she’d seen very little to weep about over the centuries
of her undeath. Even now, they weren’t tears of misery but of joy she couldn’t express in any other way.

  He’d given her back the night. And she hadn’t realized until now how much she’d missed it. The quiet darkness, the beauty of the black velvet sky with its sparkling stars and pale, ancient moon, had flooded her as she lay beneath him, convulsing with sexual pleasure. István and the night had overwhelmed her without ropes, even before he’d given her the greatest gift of all: his blood.

  No wonder emotion tore at her. What István had done for her was huge. She couldn’t take it in properly, let alone analyze it. She could only feel it.

  As she ran downstairs, rezipping her dress with one hand, she dabbed at her eyes with the other, trying to stem the flow of blood. Her skin began to reabsorb it. She only hoped she looked clean enough to get past Karoly on the door. He threw it open for her with alacrity and the subservient smile of the young vampire to a more powerful ally, and she swept past him and straight to the ladies’ room.

  There were a few human women reapplying makeup and chatting. Ignoring them, Angyalka turned on the tap at the nearest basin and splashed water all over her unnaturally flushed face. The water flowed pink as it ran down the drain.

  Only then, seizing the clean, soft towel from the shelf above, did she dare glance at herself in the mirror. There was no sign of blood on her face. She rubbed the towel over her cheeks and gazed into her own eyes. They glowed warm and soft. Even her lips looked soft. Instinctively, she touched them, to see if they felt different too. The lips István had kissed.

  What’s happening to me?

  I have a human lover who let me drink his blood. I’ve been out in the night, felt the wind on my face and my body.

  I’ve had a good day.

  A breath of laughter caught in her throat. She became aware that the women a couple of mirrors away were watching her with curiosity. She winked at them, grinned, and strolled out of the room, ready to take up the reins as hostess.