by L. E. Wilson
“Um…”
His body arched on the bed as he worked himself up. “Emma, I’m hungry.” For more than her blood. “Now come here.”
He could scent her rising desire and could hear her blood rushing through her veins, but she still tried one more time to talk him into letting her practice. “I just want to try…”
That was as far as she got. Launching himself from the bed, he grabbed her around the waist. She squealed as he lifted her up off the floor. Twisting around in midair, he was back on the bed with her squirming underneath him before she realized what had happened.
“Nikulas…” she breathed as he ground his hips against her thighs. His cock was hard and ready. He was always ready for his female. Her scent drove him wild, and he growled deep in his throat. Her heart pounded against his chest in response, but not in fear. Oh, no. His Emma was lifting her hips, rubbing herself against him.
She was naked under his shirt.
Moving down just a little, he teased her with the tip of his fang, scraping it lightly down the side of her throat as he slid one arm under her hips, holding her still while he rubbed her clit with the head of his cock.
Emma moaned and tilted her head away, giving him better access to the throbbing pulse there. At the same time, she spread her legs and arched her hips, asking him for what she needed without words.
Kissing his way up to her ear, he whispered, “I want to taste you.” Her body shivered underneath him at his words, and another moan escaped her as her fingers squeezed his biceps.
Nik took that as a “yes”.
Lifting his weight up and off of her, he sat up, bringing her with him. Grasping the bottom of the tee shirt she was wearing, he yanked it up and off. Her hands automatically went for the sheet to cover herself, but he pulled it out of her reach with a warning look and laid her back down on the bed. Tossing the offensive shirt across the room, he followed her down and took her mouth with his before she could protest the lack of any covering.
Distraction. That was the key. And how he loved to distract her.
Her arms wrapped around his neck, and he groaned at the feeling of being held by her. He’d never get tired of it. Whenever she touched him, it was like the first time. One hand slid under her leg and gripped the back of her thigh, lifting it and opening her to him. His mouth left hers as he made his way down the tender skin of her throat. Pausing at the scar by her collarbone, the first one she’d ever shown him, he kissed it reverently, and then continued his way down her luscious body to her small but perfect breasts. They filled his palms perfectly, the nipples puckering for his attention, and he was more than happy to oblige.
Baring his fangs, he scraped one hard nub and then sucked it into his mouth and flicked it with his tongue. When she arched up to him, he bit down. Emma cried out, and he suckled her, flicking with his tongue again and then sucking hard. Her sweet blood filled his mouth and he swallowed, still surprised by the effect it had on him, even after all this time. As her essence flowed throughout his body, his muscles strained with the power it wrought and his cock throbbed almost painfully between his legs at the intensity of their connection.
Ah, gods. The taste of her.
Licking the wounds closed he continued on his way, down her belly to the thatch of soft reddish-blond curls between her legs. Inhaling deeply, he breathed in the scent of her arousal, another animalistic growl escaping him as he did so. Pushing her legs farther apart, he savored her until she was lifting her hips and pressing them to his mouth with an urgency that rivaled his own. Her cries rose in the air and her hands tangled in his blonde hair. She held his head right where it was, like she would die if he dared to move it.
Opening his eyes, he watched her gorgeous body arch, straining upward as he drove her higher and higher, her excitement feeding his own, until he couldn’t take it anymore. Lifting her hips to get a better angle, he pierced her swollen nub with his fangs, holding her against his mouth as her body jerked violently with her orgasm. Her head was thrown back, her thighs open wide, the taste of her blood and her woman’s desire filling his mouth.
She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
Without waiting for her to calm, he reared up over her body and slammed into her, only to pull out and do it again. And again. Wrapping his arms around her tight, he held her to him as he picked up speed, burying himself over and over in her slick sheath. He held off as long as he could, but the tight warmth of her was his undoing, and he couldn’t wait for long.
“Emma…” he grated out. He didn’t need to finish what he was saying.
“Yes, Nik. Yes.” Tilting her head to the side, she bared her throat, and this time he took advantage of her offer. He struck so fast he startled her, but then he felt her arms tighten around him as he began to feed in earnest. His heart pounded in his chest, aligning its rhythm with hers, his muscles strained, his balls tightened.
Not releasing her from his bite, Nik roared against her neck as his orgasm hit him like a freight train. Burying himself as deep as he could inside of her, he rode it out, his body shaking, her answering cries music to his ears.
When he could finally think straight again, he loosened his arms, licking and kissing her throat until the bleeding stopped. Turning her face to his, he kissed her softly on the mouth. “Are you okay?” He always worried that he was too rough with her, or took too much blood.
But she just gave him a lazy smile, her large hazel eyes blinking at him sleepily. “I’m okay.”
He smiled back and kissed her again.
The bedroom door slammed into the opposite wall. “Nik! You need to come…Oh, sorry about that. I see you’ve already had a go.”
Nikulas spun around on the bed, crouching over Emma and protecting her from this new threat. His lips were pulled back from his teeth in a vicious snarl as his hands fisted at his sides, and his blue eyes burned with possessiveness.
“Hey, Aiden,” Emma greeted him irritably from where she’d burrowed under the blankets.
The damn Brit crossed his arms over his chest and leaned oh-so-casually against the doorframe. “Hallo, poppet,” he said with a grin, completely ignoring the imminent threat to his life that was even now tensing to launch himself at his best friend. “I do hope I didn’t interrupt.”
“Uh, yes and no.”
Nikulas was breathing hard, trying to reign in his instinct to kill the male who was still grinning like a lunatic at his female. His undressed female. Did the idiot not see how close he was to making Grace a widow? A hair-raising hiss escaped without his notice, and his teeth ached to sink into his friend’s throat.
Just as his muscles tensed to leap across the room, Aiden deigned to notice him. “Put some clothes on, mate, will you? I don’t need to see that. Truly. And then if you would be so kind as to meet me in the other room?” With a naughty wink at Emma, he left, pulling the door firmly shut behind him.
Nik leapt off of the bed. Striding over to the door, he turned the lock with a flourish. “I’m going to have to kill him,” he stated to no one in particular as he ran his hands through his hair and tried to chill the hell out now that the “threat” was gone. Feminine laughter sounded behind him, and he turned to find Emma heading to the bathroom wrapped in the comforter.
“You know that lock won’t stop him. I’m going to go get a shower,” she told him as she blew him a kiss. “Why don’t you go see what he wanted?”
“I’m going to go start packing his stuff is what I’m going to do,” Nik told her. “It’s high time he and Grace got their own place.”
Emma stopped and pushed out her bottom lip, effectively gaining his attention. It made him want to bite it and kill whatever it was that was making her sad all at the same time.
“But I like Grace being here, and she doesn’t know anyone else but us. And, if Grace leaves, she’ll take Mojo with her.”
“They can come visit whenever they want,” he muttered distractedly.
Emma just tilted her head and look
ed at him.
Nik tried to stand firm with his decision, he really did, but it was no use. There was no arguing with that sad face. It broke his heart. He sighed in resignation. “Fine. They can stay.”
“Yay!” Throwing her arms around him, she kissed him soundly. “Thank you.” Then she ran off to the bathroom to start her shower.
Nik found a pair of sweats and pulled them on, then headed out to the living room of his apartment to kill his best friend. He found the pain in the ass on the chair by the window, thumbing through one of Emma’s running magazines. Nik tore it from his hands and threw it on the coffee table.
Aiden quirked an eyebrow. “Don’t stand there huffing and puffing over me, Nikulas. We both know you’re not going to do anything. You love me. Why, it was just this morning that you were hovering over me like a momma hen, worrying that my demon was going to come out and play.”
Accepting defeat, he plopped down onto the couch. The bastard was right, but Nik gave him one last glare. “I don’t worry about your demon.”
“Yes, you do. As do I. Now let’s move on to something a bit more pleasant, shall we?”
“What’s up?” Nik asked, leaning back against the cushions and crossing his long legs at the ankles. His rage receded as quickly as it had come on.
Scooting to the edge of his seat and leaning forward, Aiden rested his elbows on his knees and laced his fingers together. He opened his mouth to speak, hesitated, frowned, then straightened up and reached back into the hood of his hoodie. Pulling Mojo out, he placed the hedgehog on the coffee table where he huffed and puffed much like Nikulas had earlier.
“Why is that thing in your hood?” Nik asked for the tenth time that week.
“No bloody idea,” Aiden answered. Then he shrugged. “He likes it in there. But he is quite prickly.” Leaning forward again, he picked up the conversation where he’d left off. “So, Leeha’s possessed vampires are running amok in the area. We need to do something about it.”
“How do you know?”
Aiden just stared at him with steady grey eyes.
“Ah. I didn’t realize you were that in tune with them.”
“I’m not. But Waano is. And he can feel his kind whenever they’re anywhere near. I used to not notice it until they were quite close, but I’m getting better at it.”
“And they’re in the area?”
“Yes. She had a group up by her mountain. She showed them to me right before she…” He didn’t finish what he’d been about to say, but he didn’t have to. He cleared his throat. “Anyway, they must have gotten bored. Or maybe they sense that she’s gone now. They’re running around, probably causing havoc and terror. But there is good news!”
Nik glanced up from watching Mojo. “What news is that?”
“Well, at least we know they’re still alive and didn’t expire immediately when she did.”
“That is good,” Nik agreed. They’d been worried about exactly that happening. Those vampires she’d possessed had all originally been created by Luukas, and if they died, he would weaken with every death. At least that’s what they thought. But with all the voodoo she’d done to get the demons inside of them, who knew what would happen?
“Okay. Let me finish getting dressed and we can head up and get Luukas and go check out that van. We can tell him about it on the way and see what he wants to do.”
“Sounds good, mate. C’mon Prickles,” he told the hedgehog as he scooped him up from the table. “Time to go to your home till Grace gets back.”
Mojo stared at him with forlorn black eyes.
“Don’t look at me like that, you can’t come with me. If we got into trouble and you fell out and I lost you somewhere, Grace would never forgive me.”
Nik left him to argue with the hedgehog and went back into his room to see if he could catch Emma in the shower before he had to leave.
Chapter 9
Christian stood in the room where he’d been held prisoner for so long. He felt slightly less homicidal since he’d fed, but not much. Unfortunately, the human hadn’t survived his hunger. He’d dragged the body along with the woman’s up the stairs and down the hall and placed them near the door. He’d give them a proper burial as soon as he could. No matter what they’d done in this life, or what circumstances had made them do it, they both deserved at least that much. After checking the rest of the building for any others, he’d found himself back in this room.
Running his hand down the stripper pole, he bided his time until the sun went down and he could leave. He didn’t dare get any closer to the showing booth he’d been trapped in out of fear that the fucking glass wall would come slamming down again, capturing him like an animal. And no one was here to get him out of the box this time.
There was no clock on the wall to inform him of the time, and he’d dropped his cell phone when he’d been abducted. So he had to rely on his vampire instincts to tell him when sundown came, and they were telling him that he still had a few hours. So he stared at the box, and he waited.
A trail of sweat ran from his temple to his jaw, and he wiped it away with the bottom of his shirt, showing off rippling abs covered by light, copper colored skin. The air inside the building was thick and heavy and hard to breath, and he knew from the short excursion he’d taken outside that it wasn’t much better out there. He had stripped down to nothing but his cotton tank and jeans, but he still felt overheated.
A hiss escaped from between his clenched teeth as he adjusted his swollen member away from the zipper of his pants. The fucking thing never went down now. He almost laughed thinking about his younger pre-vamp self. Back then, he would’ve thought having a never-ending hard on was awesome as fuck. Man, was that guy fucking stupid.
However, he felt strangely calm. Yeah, he was still uncomfortable as all hell, but he wasn’t as hungry now, and somehow he knew the woody from hell was only temporary now because of the girl. He just needed to find her.
He hoped she was okay out there. And then he did laugh at himself. Why wouldn’t she be? And really, what did he care? Other than the fact that she’d been dick teasing him for weeks…months?….with her slutty little outfits that never stayed on her long and her sexy dances simulating all the nasty things he wanted to do to her in bed.
Leaning against the pole and crossing his arms and ankles, his nostrils flared as he caught a whiff of her lingering scent, and he had to adjust himself again.
Sometimes he wished he could just tear the damn thing off. It had caused him nothing but grief for years now, ever since Luukas had disappeared. He’d never been this much of a horn dog before that had happened, and he often wondered: Why now? Why this insatiable lust for females now? When his friends and fellow Hunters needed him to be on top of his game?
Although, come to think of it, strange things had happened to all of them since Luukas had disappeared. If he believed in that stuff, he would think it was a fucking curse or some voodoo magic or something. Or maybe it was just a natural reaction to whatever was happening with their maker. After all, they were connected by blood. Maybe this was what happened when a master vampire was out of the picture.
Christian’s eyes were again drawn to the box where he’d been caged like nothing more than an animal. Maybe if he’d been more worried about his Master and less concerned about his dick he wouldn’t have gotten himself into this mess. His face burned when he thought about facing the others again. Nik, Aiden, Dante…and Shea. How was he going to explain to them what had happened?
Yeah, sorry guys. See, I took off from our meeting to go meet up with this blond that worked in that little strip club right there in Belltown so I could get a good fuck-n-feed in before we went to go meet up with Nik and Aiden to save Luukas, instead of prepping for the mission like I should have been. And maybe if I hadn’t been so worried about my dick, I would’ve noticed whomever it was who had snuck up on me in that alley. But it happened, and I’ve been stuck in a steel box behind a wall made of glass that’s not really glass becaus
e I couldn’t break it, and forced to watch this beautiful girl take off her clothes and dance for me. No, really. And the same chick finally released me, and then she just took off. Oh, and to top it all off, I lost my phone. Think I can get another one?
That would go over well. He’d be lucky if Shea ever spoke to him again, and Dante…yeah, he didn’t even want to think about what that mean motherfucker would do to him when he saw him again. He was more afraid of him than Luukas, if they had, indeed, managed to get him back from that crazy bitch, Leeha, without Christian’s help.
Shaking it off, Christian rolled his head around on his neck. He’d make it up to them. To all of them. He’d earn back their respect, if it was the last thing he did. They were his family. He owed it to them. And to himself.
Chapter 10
Ryan’s hands shook as she held the lighter under the foil packet, dissolving the tar inside until it was bubbling. A hypodermic needle was held between her teeth, ready to be used as soon as she was ready. Withdrawals had hit her quick this time.
A quick glance around told her no one else was in the back alley with her, and by the location of the sun, she figured it must be around dinnertime. The song that was playing inside the restaurant she was hiding behind sounded like sad carnival music, and she laughed weakly as tears ran unheeded down her face. It kinda suited the situation and how she felt at the moment.
Laying the foil on the dirty pavement, she grabbed the needle out of her mouth and stuck the pointy end in the liquid. She didn’t have a filter. She should have a filter. But she had nothing to use. Slowly and carefully, she pulled back on the plunger and filled the barrel. Was it too much? Not enough? She’d have to take her chances.
