Alain only has thoughts of my sister. And they are heartbreaking.
You wouldn’t know it, though, to look at him. He converses with Hakan and his lieutenants; shares a joke or two while sipping his blood.
He’s the only one not eating the food here.
It’s a strange thing to witness vampires eating roast meat and steamed vegetables as if they have working stomachs. I have to force myself not to stare.
It’s not hard.
Zahra is like a flame to a moth; I can’t help but gravitate toward her.
I feel her mind brush mine.
I’m instantly hard.
It’s embarrassing, really. How easily I react to this woman, I know so little about. Just her nearness is setting my skin alight. The smoke I see in her eyes when she looks at me turns my body inside out. I’m restless. Horny. The food, while superb, is something I endure until I can feed the insatiable hunger inside with Zahra.
Nothing will assuage me but my Witch.
“Ekram has been seen on our border,” Hakan is saying. I struggle to concentrate on the words. Zahra has pressed her long leg against mine. She reaches across my plate for the salt, brushing her breast against my arm.
I fist my hands on my thighs, my jaw flexing with the willpower needed to stay calm.
“Our scouts are watching their progress,” Hakan says, between sips of blood wine. “He thinks he’s sneaking up on us, but we’ve changed our patrol routes since he was last in the castle.”
“Or he’s merely offering you something to watch while he sneaks in a soldier from the rear,” Alain offers.
“We’ve got the rear covered,” Ellie says, and Alain hides his despair from everyone else but me, and only because I am his Kindred and can read his mind and heart. “And we’ve tripled our guards.”
Alain says nothing. He’s barely said two words to Ellie since we got here. In his mind, however, he tells her so much.
“The latest intel,” Hakan adds, “leads us to believe he will wait until tomorrow to strike.”
“Daylight hours?” Alain asks.
If Ellie’s aware that Alain speaks only to Hakan and not to her, she doesn’t show it. I brush her mind with mine and find her focused on her Entwined and no other.
Hakan’s mind is equally as devoted to his wife, but he’s better at keeping the conversation going.
“It’s possible,” he says. “But he may expect us to only prepare for a nighttime attack. Either way, we’ll be ready; we have the high ground.”
Not literally. The castle is slightly elevated, but not enough to make it difficult to attack. No, what the Kral has is the castle itself. I’ve seen some interesting things in the short time we’ve been here. Papa would be intrigued by the intel.
I look at Alain across the table from me and wonder if he thinks of sharing this knowledge with his master.
His thoughts tell me he is only concerned with his Éliane.
Vampires are strange creatures. They hunt for their blood. They hunt for other things as well. Alain hunted Ellie for years.
He did not catch her. He was never meant to catch his prey. Papa saw to that.
Nosferatu and Blood Enchanted are not destined to kindred-join.
They’re meant to entwine.
I glance at Zahra. She sips her blood wine, watching the conversation with hooded eyes. I know instinctively that she misses nothing. Her gaze flits across the table, landing on one vampire and then the next; staying only long enough for me to know she’s reading them.
I do something then; something I’ve not dared to do until now.
I read her mind.
Hello, she says, not looking at me, still surveying the scene around us.
Hello, I reply, unsure if I should be chagrinned to have been caught reading her thoughts uninvited.
You’re invited, she tells me. We are entwined.
What if you’re thinking something I don’t like?
Then you must deal with it.
I like the simplicity of it. It rings true of vampire-kind. It’s familiar to me. I was raised with parents who could read each others’ minds. To my eye, it curtailed a hell of a lot of needless arguments.
Maybe, it created a couple as well. But Mama and Papa never complained about the making up afterwards.
Reading minds is what I know. And until I came of age, I wasn’t sure I’d ever have that kind of intimacy. There was a chance I would with my Kindred, should the joining become a Bond. But no guarantee.
So, when I started hearing thoughts as I approached my twenty-fifth birthday, I was surprised. But quite accepting.
And then I started to hear the birds and the bees. Literally.
Zahra snorts into her wine.
You’d be surprised what cats think about, I tell her, and she starts coughing when she mis-swallows her drink.
Hakan turns his head to stare at her. So does every other vampire at the long table. Zahra waves her hand as if to say she’s alright, and they resume their conversations.
But not before a few of them think thoughts that have my blood boiling.
What is it? Zahra asks in my mind.
Nothing. Which is a stupid thing to say, because, in the next instant, she reads my mind.
Oh, she thinks. Oh, she repeats, this time with meaning. They mean no harm.
They covet what is mine.
To be expected. I am a Cadı of Muska. Most becoming of my kind. Have you read the minds of the female vampires?
I haven’t. I’ve only been focused on the males — the true threats to my pursuit of this woman to my mind.
Read them, Zahra encourages.
I do. And I’m horrified to note they think much the same as the males of the species.
You are a Falcı of Muska, Zahra tells me, laughing inside my mind. Should I not sharpen my knives?
Yes, I tell her. We can bathe the room in red together.
In the next moment, her hand is in mine, and she’s hauling me to my feet. Everything stops. All conversations. All eating. All eyes stare at us.
Zahra steps back from the table and takes me with her.
And then we are somewhere else.
“Enough,” she says, pushing against my chest to make me sit down.
I realise I’m sitting on a bed.
“Enough,” she whispers. “You have caught me.”
“I wasn’t aware it was me doing the hunting.”
“Have you not realised, aşkım, that I have been caught in your trap from the start?”
I don’t know what aşkım means, but I do know one thing.
I am tasting my Witch tonight.
* * *
She pushes against my chest until I’m out flat on the sumptuous bed. Then she climbs atop of my body, knees by my hips, thighs against mine — her hot centre pressing down on my aching cock.
She rubs herself wantonly against me, lifting her hands above her head and closing her eyes. Her hips roll, her flat stomach undulates, her nipples peak as her breasts jiggle above me. My hands find themselves grasping her ample bosom, my fingers and thumbs tweaking the nipples, both equally.
“Yes,” she says, purring. “Harder.”
Who am I to deny her a thing?
I pinch hard, my cock jerking when she hisses out in delight, rubbing herself more forcefully against me. I watch as she throws her head back, her long, dark hair falling in satiny waves behind her shoulders. The buttons on her top are straining as she arches her back.
I take the precious seconds needed to rip her blouse open and then place my hands back on her bare breasts.
Mmm, she hadn’t been wearing a bra. I wonder if the males in the grand hall knew that. I squeeze her boobs once, twice, three times, to make sure they know they are mine.
“Yours,” she says, reaching down and tearing my t-shirt in half right down the middle.
My chest is displayed, and Zahra uses her nails to mark me. Long slashes from nipple to pelvic bone. Claw marks that let it be known I am
hers.
I know our lovemaking will be rough and painful. I also don’t care even a little. It would be more painful if we stopped ourselves now.
My jeans are removed in short order. I rip her pants off, uncaring of the fine fabric. Our bodies are already glistening with sweat. Our eyes swirling smoke that is somehow attractive.
“Mhachkay treasure our kind,” she tells me as her lips lay a trail of fire across my pecs. “We are revered.” She bites a nipple, then laves it with a hot, wet tongue. “You had no need to run, aşkım. All here accept you. Some even covet you.”
“Why?” I ask because, despite the obvious, I am capable of doing two things at once.
One, suck a nipple between my teeth while I finger her wet pussy. And two, follow the train of her thoughts as she speaks.
“We are powerful in our own right,” Zahra tells me as she gets herself off on my hand. “Together,” she says, panting for breath she doesn’t need but at the moment craves as much as she craves coming, “we are unstoppable.”
I wonder briefly — extremely briefly considering what’s about to happen here — whether the unstoppable power we’ll become is a good thing.
And then I’m not thinking at all as my hand is forcefully removed from her wet centre, and my cock is positioned to her liking, and then she’s impaling herself on its length.
I don’t think about much else after that than getting her to moan in delight once or twice or ten times, and making sure I fill her with my seed.
It’s fast and furious; we bite and suck, and Zahra definitely screams when she comes, and then I’m pumping into her harder and more urgently than I have ever fucked a woman before, and still I can’t get enough, and she’s asking for more.
Against the cold stone wall. On the exquisite rug on the floor. Under the spray of her shower. In amongst the high-thread-count of her sheets. Against the cool glass of her window. Bent over her dresser.
We come. We start again. She sucks me off. I penetrate her in ways I have never been inside a woman before. She makes me beg and moan and come harder and longer than I thought possible.
Sweat glistens on our bodies; we stop to rehydrate. Only to start again when she thinks a position at me.
I think one back, so we have to try both.
The sex is out of this world, but the thoughts that she shares while we do this is beyond this world and all others.
She shares her life. The good. The bad. The horrific. She can’t not share it and a more brave person I have yet to meet. The things the former Kral did to her. She survived. She lived. I am in awe of her.
I tell her of my upbringing. Of being raised by the Champion, a position she is wary of for relevant reasons. I share my love of my parents with her — their love of me. How different and yet the same they are. How their roles have defined how they have loved me.
I share Ellie with her.
She shares Hakan, her favourite cousin and closest relative. Her best friend since they were three.
Our childhoods. Our rebellious teenage years.
Everything.
By the time the sun is close to rising, I know more about this woman than I know about anyone I have ever met or loved. She knows me.
And she knows everything I know about Alain.
We lie in the twisted sheets on her bed, her head on my arm, my fingers lazily tracing an image on her breast that has no meaning. I have my free hand up behind my head, as we both stare at the canopy above us. A cool breeze sweeps through a gap in the window.
We both need cooling.
“It is the entwining,” she tells me. “The effect it has had on your kindred-joining.”
“What do you mean?”
“It is…how, do you say? Paylaşım.” Sharing.
I realise she’s speaking Turkish. I understand some of it, having made an effort over the past two years to learn her native tongue. But ‘sharing’ is not a word I have come across before, and yet I understand her completely.
The sex, she tells me silently. Magic, she adds, as if that’s enough.
Magic sex. I get it. Honestly, I do. I’m a Blood Enchanted freak of nature; magic sex is nothing unusual.
OK, I say and resume my finger tracing. “How does sharing explain why Alain found you attractive.”
“Am I not attractive?” she demands, sitting upright and glaring down at me.
She knows damn well I find her irresistible.
“Beautiful,” I say, the words a benediction. “You’re beautiful, Zahra.” Inside and out. A warrior woman who has such large twin hearts and the most gorgeous twin souls I have ever encountered.
She smiles down at me. Then says, “Ours is not an exact science, Lucien. We dabble in smoke and darkness. Black Magic has no rules. That’s why it’s called Black. Not that it should ever be considered Dark, you understand.” She emphasises the D there. Dark as in, not Light. “Black simply means there are no limits. The limits that exist are of our own making.”
“That’s actually a little frightening.”
“Only if the practitioner’s soul is not pure, aşkım. And your soul is the purest I have seen.”
It’s surprising how much I needed to hear those words. How much I needed to know that what I’ve become is not inherently evil. There have been times when I have considered that I am the monster Ekram saw in me. That I am wicked or wrong or not worthy.
Zahra’s hand cups my face, and she leans down to kiss me. For a moment, we both get lost in the sensations, in the new closeness we share. I am hard for her again. She is wet for me. It’s inevitable that we join in a physical way as our hearts and souls and minds have joined in a more ethereal fashion.
She rocks back and forwards, up and down, on my cock. I hold her hips and guide her slowly. We’ve done the hard and fast. Something more profound and less defining is emerging.
Something so full of Light that I can believe there will never be Darkness again.
We’re both close. Our eyes locked onto each other. I’ve forgotten what we were talking about, all that matters is this creature above me — this woman who is so fierce and strong and yet so giving.
There is nothing, not a thing, that is Dark in this Black Witch.
She’s full of smoke and Light. So much Light, to me, she is dazzling.
Closer still we come, so close, I am panting. Zahra is sweating. A glistening goddess, rocking herself to completion on my cock. I thrust up and grunt with exertion. She moans as she comes and then all bets are off; I’m thrusting, and grunting, and fucking her senseless.
But not so senseless that she doesn’t have the wherewithal to say as I come, “The sharing of blood and love and lust. We are entwined. We are as three.”
It takes a minute or two for me to recover from that mind-blowing orgasm. And then her words penetrate the sex-crazed fog making love to Zahra means for me.
“What?” I say, unintelligently.
“Alain,” Zahra murmurs, slumping down on top of me, almost asleep with sated fatigue. “Your Kindred. He may not be entwined as we are entwined, but the magic has spoken; it has seen.”
“Seen what, Zahra?” I ask, shaking her lightly. She’s almost snoring.
“Hmmm?” she mumbles cutely.
“What has the Black Magic seen in my Kindred?” I ask.
Her eyelashes flutter and then she’s looking at me, smoke pulling me in and I go willingly.
“We are entwined, Lucien,” she murmurs. “He is your Kindred. We are not two; we are three.”
That’s not what I want to hear. “Is that why he was inappropriately attracted to you?” I ask.
“He wasn’t attracted to me, aşkım. He was feeling what you were feeling.”
I lie there for a while as Zahra sleeps. The sun has risen, the shutters have closed automatically. The castle may look old, but it has modern facilities.
Zahra’s words play on my mind as my Witch snores softly.
It isn’t long before I pull myself free of her loose-limbed
body, and climb out of our bed.
I dress. My eyes sweeping over the miracle that lies before me.
And then I step lightly from the room and follow the thread that will lead me to my Kindred.
* * *
Alain is fucking. I shouldn’t be surprised. It’s not as if he hasn’t fucked a woman over the past two years. And considering what Zahra just told me, it kind of makes sense.
Zahra and I have just had countless rounds of awesome-as-shit sex. How could Alain not have felt some of that?
Which is embarrassing and awkward and…how the hell do we deal with this?
I wait outside the quarters he’s been assigned, aware he knows I’m standing here, filling in mindless time until he’s finished. Of course, this just makes him slow down, draw it out. The woman moans as she comes, and then I hear the voice of another woman, a different woman, and she’s coming in the next heartbeat too.
I smile to myself. Alain’s The Man.
But when I inadvertently touch on his thoughts, they are not bliss-filled, but desperate.
He fucks with abandon. First one female, then the other, then back again as if he can’t get enough. Then he’s drinking their blood down as they come all over again.
They’re human. Blood whores. He could have had his pick of the female Mhachkays; I saw many of them look lasciviously at him. I heard their thoughts.
But Alain has chosen Norm blood donors whose profession offers a willing bed partner on the side if that’s what the vampire wants with his dinner.
Maybe Alain wanted it tonight; maybe he didn’t. But after what Zahra and I have just done, he didn’t have much of a choice either.
I lean back against the wall and close my eyes. Several minutes later, the first human woman staggers out. She’s pale, and Alain has left his bite mark visible. Stopped the bleeding but not healed the marks themselves.
I suck in a breath of air and smell his scent on her body. She smiles blearily at me, as the second female staggers out, grasping for her arm before she falls down to the floor.
He’s had too much. Taken more than was needed. They don’t seem upset by this. In fact, they practically babble excitedly to each other about how good he was in bed as they stumble off down the hall toward a Mhachkay guard who’s waiting to escort them from the castle.
Never Show Fear Page 11
