His self-disgust had extended to his bond with Fegan, who couldn’t understand Stephen’s attitude. Their strained father-son ties had all but snapped; Fegan wondering how a son of his could be bored with this existence. Wondering how that boredom could have ever grown from the realization that they could possess everything, that there was no longer anything to look forward to.
Stephen’s disillusionment had spread to other gang members: “Lucky” Diggory, a street rat, who had carelessly allowed humans to stake him during a trip to New Orleans. Edward Marburn, the wrong-side-of-the-blankets son of a titled father, who had left the gang during the Second World War. And Thomas Kincaid, a poet, who had gladly surrendered himself to a terrified mob in Bucharest after they had found him feeding.
Yet Stephen had stayed with the family through it all. They were not going to leave him this time. He was never going to let them go.
A tug on his hand brought him back to the moment. Kimberly’s face cleared in his vision—the beautiful, delicate features that reminded him of a woodland pixie, the bold red hair, the parted lips that had brought him so much pleasure.
The woman who had actually sought out and reveled in his bite.
His perception crashed around him, like fragments of mirror warping his vision with different angles of view. He could not see the truth anymore—could not put together a whole picture.
“Stephen?” she asked. “Tell me more.”
He knew that he had primed her with mere words, with the promise of fantasy.
She wanted him, the vampire, and, though part of him despised that, part of him was overcome.
As his fangs elongated, he looked into her eyes. She was willing, allowing him to come into her, to fuse with her own thoughts.
Unable to fight himself any longer, he captivated her mind, giving both of them what they hungered for.
9
HE PAINTED a picture in her mind, knowing exactly what she wanted—dark woods, looming trees whispering in the wind, the clatter of a team of horses as they pulled a grumbling coach over the rough road.
Then, as if caressing her with an artist’s brush, he clothed her fantasy self in a gown of dove-gray silk, a matching hooded cape. Her upswept hair was powdered, as the fashion of the day dictated. Around her neck she wore a strand of diamonds that set off her delectable throat, so pale in the moonlight nudging through the coach’s window as she opened the curtain a slit, curious about what lay outside.
No woman of her station would have been traveling the dark woods unescorted, but this was a fantasy. Hers.
Theirs.
As the clatter of the coach and horses consumed him, Stephen impulsively embraced the resurging sensations: The thrust of adrenaline, the devil-may-care eagerness of a coming robbery. He had not realized how much he missed the thrill of darkness and road, the anticipation of what was going to happen next.
“You are a lady,” Stephen whispered, readying her. “A young insatiable one who is bored and spoiled with the abundance in your family’s coffers.”
In dreamlike time, she smiled, and he knew she would be doing the same in reality.
Carried away, he continued, body heat rising in near fever, in remembrance of how it used to be as a human who had gone from good man to bad. “You are returning much too late from a ball in town. If you are caught tiptoeing into the mansion at this hour by your family, you will, no doubt, be punished.”
Fantasy Kimberly closed the curtain and leaned back in her seat, languid. She was a wanton who didn’t mind chastisement, for she would only tiptoe out the next night and do the same wicked things.
Stephen’s pulse banged, much like it had way back when, while he waited for coaches to approach on those wooded roads. His veins were taut, like vibrating wire stringing his body together.
It was as if he had been fully transported to a wonderfully mortal moment now, sitting casually on his mount while his blood punched its way to his skin. He was wearing a half-mask to shroud his features, a tricorne and a cloak. In his hand, he held a pistol.
When the coach rumbled around a corner, Stephen urged his horse forward, raising his weapon.
The driver, no fool, brought his horses to a halt, understanding the message a pistol presented. There were no footmen, no escorts to contend with. No, the lady inside the coach had attempted to remain discreet tonight.
The convenience made the fantasy much smoother.
With a wave of his pistol, Stephen persuaded the driver to alight from his perch. Then, with nary a spoken command, he signaled that the poor wretch strip to his underthings.
“Sorry, my friend,” Stephen said, dismounting, tying the shivering man’s wrists and ankles together, then positioning him on the side of the road. Out of a stray sense of pity, he draped the driver’s coat over the man’s shoulders.
With a tip of his hat, he returned to the coach, heartbeat booming like a cannon.
At the conveyance’s door, he raised his pistol, grinned, then opened up.
And there she was, hand to her swelling breast, hood slumped away from her powdered hair, lips parted in anticipation.
“Hello, m’lady,” he murmured. “How fared the festivities?”
She was almost panting at his appearance. “I’m sure they weren’t half as interesting as this.”
The combination of Kimberly’s anachronistic speech and sexy throwback apparel drove him on—especially since he knew what lay beneath both her cheeky words and her skirts.
No turning back now, he thought, feeling every last vestige of doubt slipping away. Worry later about the consequences of what you’re allowing to happen.
There. He felt light, happy…new.
“Well, luv.” He leaned against the doorframe, still training his pistol just off target. “Surely, you know these woods are dangerous. Only the brave ride at this time of night.”
The jeweled necklace gleamed. To the human Stephen, its riches would have represented such hope, such a promise to finally bring his brother to live with him in comfort, had Nathan the desire to do so.
Now it was more a reflection of Kimberly’s pale eyes as they glittered in the moonlight with playful abandon.
The highwayman came back to Stephen all too easily as he thought, This one isn’t as afraid as she should be.
It amused him even while keeping him on edge. “Perhaps,” he said, “you’re waiting to remove that bauble until I speak the magic words?”
Laughing softly, Kimberly relaxed on the plush cushions, resting on a hip and sliding over until she leaned her elbow on the back of the seat and propped up her head.
“What words would those be?” she asked lazily.
His body stiffened, just as it would have if he were still mortal…gloriously mortal. To complete the fantasy, he strained against his trousers, feeling the tip of his cock beading with slight fluid—a secretion that would be potent, unlike a vampire’s.
Stephen lowered his voice to a midnight scratch. “Stand and deliver, luv.”
It seemed to be just what she had been waiting for. Yet, instead of moving to appease him, she merely sank farther into her naughty pose. Moonlight revealed her ripe breasts almost spilling out of her décolletage, the tips peeking out as her breathing came faster.
“I believe, I’ll make you work for it,” she said.
Even in human form, Stephen had been athletic and skillful, so in this fantasy he dove into the coach before she could react, threatening without carrying through on any dark promises.
Yet.
He sat on the opposite side, legs splayed before him while resting his arms on the back of the seat. His pistol dangled, belying its readiness.
Free, he thought. So many years and only now do I finally feel free.
“Really, m’lady. Consider divesting yourself of that necklace. Help out a hardworking lad.”
“And what would I get in return?”
Minx. Pressure seemed to be expanding his cock into one pounding distraction.
; “I suppose,” he said negligently, “your reward will have to remain a surprise until you earn it.”
Her smile growing wider, she moved forward in her seat, her skirts rustling. When she reached behind to undo the necklace, her breasts swelled even more, and saliva flooded Stephen’s mouth, stinging his jaws.
“Hmm.” Flummoxed, she raised her empty hands in a mock helpless gesture. “I’m having some trouble here. It’s the clasp. No wonder I’d need a maid to help me dress.”
Her modern sense of humor sent Stephen’s thoughts into chaos. He was not even certain whether he was reliving his humanity or being guided by her own fantasies.
This had never happened before; he had always been the one to lead the hypnosis. How—
When she turned her back to him, presenting a long, graceful nape, his thoughts blanked out. Almost worshipfully, he ran his fingers from her hairline down her spine, stopping at the bump where the necklace rested. Goose bumps rose over her skin.
Her flesh gave off an intoxicating scent—purity, musk, the perfume of the living….
Feral need rose inside him, destroying the fantasy as it was.
Vision going red, he tore at the clasp. The necklace broke, falling piecemeal to the floor like diamond drops of rain. Kimberly gasped and reached for a descending gem, but Stephen had lost all restraint by now, his dream-inspired humanity destroyed with just the hint of dizzying blood that was pumping under her skin.
His fangs grew sharp and long, his throat tightening in horror, in disappointment, in self-disgust.
He was vampyr, fantasy or not.
But his roughness seemed to kick the blood through her at an even hotter rate. She leaned her head back, offering her neck to him.
“Do it, Stephen. Do it.”
He was almost beyond resisting; only a tremble of selfcontrol held him back.
Yet, even that disappeared in the next heartbeat. He dropped the pistol and moved his hands around to her front, putting all his rage into tearing the bodice from her chest.
The rip was like thunder in the confines of the coach, her intake of breath sharp enough to abrade his nerve endings. Mouth watering, Stephen bent her back so that she was lying on his lap, her head resting on his coach seat. Locks fell from her neat, upswept style as her eyes widened, pupils eclipsing her irises.
His attention traveled down to her naked breasts, round and creamy and painted by the moon. The deep red tips of them puckered under his hungry gaze.
He pulled her up to him, arching her back as he fixed his mouth to one of those nipples. He sucked at her, tonguing her and devouring her until she winced and knocked the tricorne off his head while grabbing his hair. Meanwhile, he kneaded her other breast, unable to get enough of its fullness, its warmth.
A stray thought from her mind invaded his own: Just like Tom Jones…
He mentally swiped that aside. To him, this was real. But the parallel unreality of it kept him safe from what he usually forbade himself to do outside of fantasy. Here, in her mind, could he love her, taste her, even…bite her again?
Shaken, he buried his face between her breasts, catching his breath, his sanity.
“Don’t you dare stop,” Kimberly panted, pulling his hair and forcing him upward.
A false romp, he thought. That is all this is.
He pushed her skirts up, feeling silken stockings, garters and…nothing else. Should he be surprised that he had given Kimberly no underclothing in this dreamscape?
Not really—not when there was a driver outside who probably would have been causing trouble by now, had this been reality. Not when there were no other gang members to watch his back as he took his leisurely time in here.
He brushed his fingers against the center of her legs, feeling a thatch of downy hair, then the drenched heat of her need.
Wet, he thought. Ready for me.
With her skirts around her hips, he turned both their bodies so that they stretched over the cushions. Then he tugged her legs so that she could clasp them around his hips. In an inspired touch, he drove his cock against her, teasing her just to be cruel.
“Pants…off,” she said, grinding against him in an equally furious response.
Laughing, he stilled her hips, then slowly taunted her with his tip. Even through his trousers, he could feel himself sliding up and down her slick crevice.
Blood thundered into his penis, buffeting and demanding to set something loose.
“Be that way, then,” she said, moaning and laughing, too, then reaching back between his legs to brush beneath his balls.
With a grunt of pleasure, he pushed right back against her sex, thrusting again, then again until she groaned.
Soon, they caught a rhythm. The coach’s springs moaned as he played with her, drove her to a frustrated cry.
“Now,” she yelled, pushing down his head and guiding his mouth to her neck.
The scent of her, the heat—
He sank his fangs into her jugular. She pulled at his cloak, bucking against him and wincing. Though he soothed her with his mind, sedating her, she seemed to embrace the pain, embrace everything his bite obviously gave to her.
This woman who wasn’t afraid of his true face, this woman who couldn’t be pushed away with what he truly was…
Then his sight went dizzy and white. How? Why?
As her blood filled his mouth, sending a shock through him, he came, shooting hot and wet against his trousers, spilling in violent spurts. But he was not famished for her blood so much as for her—the spirit of the woman, the essence.
White…
…life…
…white…feeling…
…pain…white…pleasure…alive—
A cry ripped from her throat at the same time it did his. With one long yank at his cloak, she stiffened against him, rocking upward as if seeking the skies.
As their climaxes crashed, they both gripped something besides each other. She grasped his coat while clamoring for breath. He clutched the seat cushions until the stuffing bulged out of them, his fangs finding his own lips, his own blood.
Feeling…
…alive…
Slowly, very slowly, the real world dimmed into focus.
He was lying on top of her on the couch in the abandoned building. The smell of the nearby city’s thick, polluted air shook him out of his trance, and he backed away while keeping his healing fingers to her neck, where the tattoo-covered evidence of this latest bite.
Something he barely remembered doing.
As the punctures began to close up with expedient efficiency, her heartbeat evened out.
He kept staring at that bite, avoiding her searching gaze.
I did it again, he thought. I couldn’t stop.
His gaze wandered. Where she would have worn a gown’s bodice, her tank top and bra were now torn, exposing her perspiration-gleamed breasts. Her jeans were sticky with his juices; the sight of that clutched at him because even though he had come against her, there was no life to his seed.
Just as there could be no life outside of the completed fantasy, either.
KIM’S GAZE began to adjust out of its scrambled puzzle, but she didn’t want to leave the beauty of what she’d just experienced. Not yet.
Had it really happened? Had Stephen given her the most shattering orgasm of her life?
She wanted to return to the coach, to the silk gown and diamond necklace, to the highway robber who’d seduced her. After Stephen had told her his history, she’d been his—ready and willing. His life story had turned her on.
But there’d been something about the telling itself, as if a lot of pain had been etched into what he wasn’t revealing. It was as if even more of his tale had been left in the white spaces, the “gutters” that separated panels of a comic book and forced the reader to fill in the blanks.
The mystery of him thrilled through her again. Stephen, the enigma.
Absently, while her eyes were still mist-filled, her body still lazy with pulsating warmth
, she skimmed a hand to the wetness between her legs. Evidence of what was hers and his.
She’d made him explode, too.
Sliding her other hand up to her neck, she felt the tender, sore skin. Her adrenaline gathered, then flooded every inch below her skin.
Another bite.
She’d cried out for it, wanting with all her soul to be the best he’d ever had, knowing it would somehow matter. But she could feel the completeness of the bite seeping out of her like spent blood.
She couldn’t hold on to the feeling.
Why? Was something missing? What would make her happy beyond what had just happened? What would really make this a definitive connection?
She didn’t know. But as the swirling afterglow released her from its grasp, reality set in. Suspicions about how she could feel so full, yet so hollow at the same time.
When her eyes focused, she found Stephen leaning against a paint-chipped wall. The light that angled over him was a predawn tweak that signaled the passing of night. He wouldn’t be staying for much longer at all.
Her heart dropped, and that surprised her. Her heart shouldn’t have anything to do with this.
Getting herself together, she smiled at him, and he returned the gesture.
“Wow,” she said.
A beat passed, awkward yet intimate. He raised an eyebrow, still too mysterious for his own good, even though she thought he looked pretty damned satisfied, himself.
But he also looked…regretful.
Kim struggled to sit up, and her head swam.
“I stopped drinking before I took too much blood from you,” he said. “I was not hungry so much as…”
It was beyond her to supply him with a description. She couldn’t think of much to say, either. Maybe he had fed off of something else besides blood tonight; she’d gotten a hint of that during their second bite, on the hood of the Chevy. It’d been as if he’d been sustaining himself with a psychic quality. She’d read about vampires who did that—drew off human energy and not blood. Maybe Stephen needed both.
The Ultimate Bite Page 12
