by Michele Hauf
Her muscles tightened as the pressure built. She arched against his mouth as he thrust his tongue in and out. “Conner!” she screamed, as sensations blinded her to what he was. She could think only of what he was doing to her. The pressure spiraled, winding tighter and tighter inside her until she jerked with the shock of sudden release. An orgasm slammed through her, her body trembling. She tried to pull away from his mouth, but he held her tight against his lips as his tongue continued to thrust in and out of her wet core.
“No!” she screamed, fighting against the realization that only he could bring her this kind of pleasure. Only him.
He pulled back and stared up at her. “Do you want me to stop?”
“No!” She couldn’t stop now … not when she knew there was more. So much more.
He lifted her onto the bed, satin sheets sliding beneath her back as his satiny skin pressed against her front when his body covered hers. Her leg still raised over his shoulder, he guided his pulsing cock into her. His length and girth stretched her, her inner muscles clutching at him as he thrust then pulled out. He pushed the glistening tip against the nub of her femininity, stroking the smooth skin of the end of his penis over her nub—again and again.
She writhed beneath him then reached for him, sliding her fingers over the wet length of his erection to urge him back inside her. She arched her hips, pulling him deep.
Conner leaned forward, taking her mouth with his … thrusting his tongue between her lips as his cock thrust inside her body. In and out. In and out. The pressure built again, her body aching with its painful intensity.
His mouth pulled from hers, his lips sliding down her throat. His fangs scraped across her skin. “I have to taste you—all of you,” he warned her before he bit her.
She screamed, another orgasm coursing through her as he spilled her blood then lapped it up. She reared off the bed—not in pain but ecstasy. Pushing him onto his back on the mattress, she straddled him. He drove deep, deeper than she ever remembered being touched before. But then it had been fifty years – not since she’d made love. There’d been other men—men she couldn’t remember.
Men who’d meant nothing to her … as she’d searched for him.
Only he had ever reached her like this, pulling emotions and feelings from her she hadn’t believed existed. Even hatred; she had never hated anyone with the intensity with which she hated him.
He pulled his mouth from her throat and arched his neck back as he thrust his hips up, burying himself deeper inside her. Blood trickled from the corner of his lips. She kissed him, tasting the sweetness of the sticky liquid. Her blood. She had to have his.
She slid her mouth along his jaw, to his throat. Curling back her lips to expose her fangs, she bit him with a passionate violence.
He groaned and thrust faster, pumping inside her as she drank his very essence. Reaching between them, he slid his thumb over her clit—back and forth—until her world shattered.
She sat up and lifted her knees, so that his cock sank even deeper inside her as she licked her fingers with the blood she’d taken from him. Then she stroked the tips, sticky with his blood, over her nipples. He reached up until his mouth closed around the sensitive points and lapped up the blood she’d spilled. She shuddered and screamed, convulsing with the longest, most intense orgasm she’d ever had.
He lifted her from his lap and turned her over—then he guided his wet cock back inside her. His hands tight against her abdomen, he thrust inside again and again until he tensed. He bit her neck again as he came, spilling his seed inside her as he spilled her blood.
Conner stared down at the woman in his arms, her pale skin streaked with blood—his and hers. What the hell had he done? What had happened? He jerked away from her. “I’m—I’m …”
“Speechless?” she asked, tilting her head over her shoulder to meet his gaze. Amusement twinkled in her green eyes like those glints of gold the light from the chandelier caught.
“Sorry,” he admitted. “I didn’t mean to …”
“Ravage me?”
Ravage? That was what he’d done to her. Fifty years ago. He had lost control, just as he’d lost it with Brandi. But Brandi was one of them, one of the secret society. Miranda Hamilton hadn’t been.
“I—I …” He needed distance; he needed perspective because for a moment there, when they’d been making love, he had thought she was Miranda. Her body had felt the same, as tight and soft. And she’d tasted the same: sweet with vulnerability yet with a hint of tart mischief. But it wasn’t possible that she was Miranda. He had made that impossible because of his recklessness. “I’ll be right back.”.
His hand shaking, he closed the bathroom door, shutting himself away. He should have done that tonight, should have locked himself inside the apartment so that he wouldn’t do what he had done—use another woman to forget about the one he really wanted. The one he could never have again.
Blood oozed from the fang marks in his neck. He tracked the trails in the mirror above the vanity as he leaned over the sink and splashed cool water on his face. He wasn’t the only one bleeding. He’d bit her, too … as he’d lost control of his senses and his sanity. The woman had pushed him beyond reason … just as Miranda had fifty years ago.
And just as he’d hurt the young starlet, he’d hurt Brandi, too. He reached for a cloth and ran cool water over it. After squeezing out the excess, he pulled open the door and stepped back into the bedroom.
Even though the chandelier glowed yet, more shadows seemed to fill the room, cast darkest over the bed. She’d pulled up the blankets, so that he couldn’t see her until he walked up to her. But even then the satin sheets covered her body and her face. He clenched his fingers in the silky fabric and pulled back the covers.
Shock filled him, tensing his body and jarring his mind into numbness. He couldn’t react. He couldn’t move. He could only stare down at the pale, dead face of Miranda Hamilton. Blood covered her throat and smeared across her cheek, even trailing into her pale blond hair. Her eyes, also pale with that unusual amber color, stared back up at him.
But her eyes weren’t dead—they were vibrantly alive and glowing with hatred and vengeance. Suddenly she sprang up from the mattress, a wooden stake clutched tight in her hands. She pressed the sharp point against his chest. Over his heart …
CHAPTER THREE
MIRANDA’S hands trembled as she grasped the stake, her palms damp against the wood from an ash tree. She’d researched everything in preparation for this day … when she would finally exact her revenge. She’d planned for every contingency—most likely his fighting her.
But he didn’t fight. He just stood—naked—before her and waited for her to sink the stake deep in his muscular chest, to pierce his heart. A laugh bubbled out of her throat with her sudden realization. “I can’t kill you,” she admitted as she pulled away the stake and dropped it onto the bed.
His blue eyes glittered with awe, as he studied her face. “You’re no killer…”.
“No, that’s not why,” she insisted. “It’s because you have no heart.” She, of all people, should have known that.
“You’re no killer,” he repeated as if he hadn’t heard her. He reached out, skimming his fingertips along her jaw then across her cheek. “And you’re no corpse.”
She’d done her best, with stage makeup, to make herself look like death. Over the past fifty years, she’d gotten adept at disguising herself. She raised her hands and tugged the pale blond wig from her head; it was the disguise, a prop, as it had been fifty years ago. Red was her natural color … along with the unusual amber hue of her eyes. The green had been contacts that had been too thin to completely hide the irises.
“I can’t believe you’re alive,” he murmured as he continued to stroke her skin.
She shivered. “You thought you’d killed me.”
“Yes,” he admitted, as he released a ragged sigh.
She reached for the stake again, closing her fingers around the wood.
He might not have a heart, but the stake would stop him long enough for her to escape this time. “Sorry to disappoint you.”
“Disappoint?”
“You must be disappointed,” she persisted, “that you failed.”
“Failed?” His blond brows arched as his forehead furrowed with confusion. “Failed at what? I don’t understand.”.
“And I thought I was a good actor,” she mused with another chuckle. She had been wrong about that, too,
she’d realized when she’d watched her old movies. She hadn’t experienced enough emotion, until after Conner had destroyed her career, to portray her characters with any accuracy or depth.
“You are a good actress,” he assured her, “Brandi.” Amused that he would continue trying to charm her, she smiled. “Now. It took me a while to learn, but you gave me plenty of motivation to get better.”
He shook his head. “You were always a great actress. In fact you should have won an Oscar for that death scene fifty years ago.”
“Scene?” she asked, repeating just one word of what he’d said—as he had with her.
“Obviously it was all an act—playing dead.” He pushed a slightly shaking hand through his hair.
“Playing?” she repeated, her voice cracking with emotion. “You thought I was playing?”
“Yes,” he said, gesturing at her. “You had to have been acting because you’re very much alive.”
“No thanks to you.” She lifted the stake and pressed the point against his chest again. “You drank my blood and left me for dead.”
He shook his head. “No …”
Miranda applied more pressure to the stake. “You murdered me.”
“You’re not dead,” he said again. Relief filled Conner. He cupped her cheek in his palm, stroking his thumb over the delicate bone beneath the silky skin. “I can’t believe I didn’t recognize you.”
But he’d spent the past fifty years seeing Miranda in every woman he saw. So, in an effort to maintain his sanity, he’d blinded himself to any resemblances. “It was you the other night, too,” he realized, “the girl with her heel stuck in the sewer grate.”
“Yes, but you didn’t take her home,” she pointed out as if she’d been disappointed. “You must have lost your appetite for sweet, innocent young things.”
He laughed now. “You might have been young, Miranda Hamilton, but you were never innocent. Or sweet.” The only sweet thing about her had been her blood.
Her face flushed with color beneath the nearly opaque layer of what must have been stage makeup. Heedless of the stake pressing against his heart, he lifted the damp washcloth he held and wiped it across her face. After washing away the deathly pallor, he eased the cloth from her face down her throat and removed the blood. Only some of that was makeup; the rest oozed from the fang marks in her neck.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Her bright eyes hardened with anger and hatred. “For trying to kill me?”
“I didn’t want to hurt you,” he insisted, “then or now.”
But he had. He dropped the washcloth onto the floor and lifted his fingertips to the wound on her throat.
She tensed and jerked away from his touch, and fear added to all those turbulent emotions in her unusually colored eyes. She’d made love with him, but she was afraid of him?
“You came here to kill me,” he realized, his heart clenching—not with fear, but regret. “And you thought you could do it.” That was why she hadn’t been scared to make love with him; she’d had the stake for protection … and his murder.
“I can do it,” she insisted. But the stake shook as her hands trembled.
Conner wrapped his hands around hers and pulled them back until her crude weapon dropped from her grasp. While the jagged wooden point had scraped his skin, it hadn’t drawn blood.
“You’re not a killer,” he told her again. “And you have no reason to kill me.”
Her chin jerked up and down in a vehement nod. “You know that I do. You tried to kill me. You thought you had.”
“I did think you were dead,” he admitted, his heart clenching with all that anguish and loss. “And I suffered guilt over your death for the past fifty years.”
“You suffered?” Her voice cracked with outrage. “You
suffered? You stole my life from me. You stole my humanity and made me into … into a monster.”
Hell, he had deserved the guilt and still did. He had done all those things to her but one. “I did not try to kill you.”
“So biting me, stealing my blood—it was all an accident?” she asked, shaking her head in disbelief. Her red hair tumbled around her bare shoulders.
“No,” he admitted with an unsteady sigh. “I lost control. I never wanted anyone the way I wanted you.”
She snorted. “Lucky me …”
“I’m sorry.” He couldn’t apologize enough for what he’d done to her, for what he’d made her. “I shouldn’t have … but I didn’t want to lose you. I wanted us to be together—always. That was why I tried to turn you.”
“I don’t believe you,” she said. “I don’t believe anything you say.” But yet her gaze held his, as if she searched his eyes for the truth.
“I don’t blame you for not trusting me,” he said. He barely trusted himself around her. Because even now, even knowing how much she hated him, how she wanted him dead, he could barely resist the urge to push her back onto the bed and bury himself inside her again. “I can’t believe it’s really you.”.
She shook her head. “It’s not. I’m not the same woman I once was … because of you.”
He hadn’t killed her, as he’d agonized over the past fifty years, but he had taken her life from her. “I was selfish.” So selfish. “But I thought I loved you. I thought I couldn’t live without you.”
She laughed, but the laughter resonated with bitterness not amusement. “Yet somehow you managed. I guess all your sexual conquests helped you forget all about me.”
“I hoped they would,” he confessed. “I tried … to forget about you. But you were always here.” He pressed his fist against his heart, where she had pressed the stake moments ago. “You were always here.”
She shook her head, the fear back in her eyes. Maybe she was afraid that he was telling the truth. “I should know better,” she said, her voice thick with self-disgust. “I should know what a charmer you are.”
“I’m telling you the truth,” he insisted. “Since you can’t believe what I say, maybe you’ll believe what I do…”. Kneeling on the mattress, he joined her on the bed.
She didn’t cower away from him, but her body tensed and her eyes widened. “I know what you can do,” she said. “I know that you’re good at what you do.”
“Is that why you made love with me?” he wondered, unable to stop a grin from lifting his lips. “Because I’m good?”
She shook her head. “You’re bad.” “And you intended to punish me,” he reminded her. With a wooden stake through the heart? The endangered organ slammed against his ribs, but with dread, not fear, again. She hated him so much … and she had every reason to hate him.
Could he make her love him? Could he make up for what he’d taken from her with what he could give her? His love.
He touched her, skimming his palms across her slender shoulders and down the length of her bare back. A shiver rippled through her, and her breath escaped in a gasp. He clenched her hips and pulled her forward, so that his cock pressed against her flat stomach. The hard length of it throbbed against her navel. He wanted to bury himself inside her, to forever join their bodies.
But he restrained his own desires to focus on hers. He lowered his head to brush his lips across first the bridge of her nose, then the curve of her cheek. Before he had the chance to kiss her lips, she moved … and her mouth pressed against his, a moan emanating from her throat.
He swallowed her moan, as he parted her lips and slid his tongue inside the moist sweetness of her mouth. She tasted of blood, his blood
. And hers.
She pressed her hands against his chest, pushing him back even as her hips arched against his erection. Tearing her mouth from his, she cursed him, “Damn you. Damn you …”
Her nails nipped into his skin as she clutched his shoulders and pulled him against her again. A smile curved his lips at her urgency, her passion just as intense as his. Maybe she didn’t hate him as much as she wanted to.
But would she ever be able to love him … after what he’d done to her, what he’d taken from her? Her lips touched his again, and he shut off his mind. He didn’t want to think; he wanted only to feel and touch and taste … every inch of her. His chest tight against her breasts, he pressed her back until she lay on the bed. Her legs parted, her knees lifted, so that her thighs cradled his hips. She arched, rubbing her mound of reddish blond curls against his erection.
His body shaking with the urge to bury his cock inside her wet heat, he pulled back … and focused again on her. He concentrated on her silky skin, running his fingertips over every curve and dip of her exquisite figure. She murmured and shifted on the tangled sheets, arching against his caress. He kissed her again, drinking the sweetness of her mouth … sliding his tongue across hers.
She ran her nails down his back, pressing him against her … rubbing the nub of her desire up and down the length of his straining erection. But still he held back, even as his body shuddered with the need for release. Instead of sliding his cock inside her, he slid his fingers … stroking them in and out of her slick canal as his tongue stroked between her lips. He pressed his thumb against her clit, rubbing it gently as she squirmed and writhed beneath him. He pulled his mouth from hers, letting moans and whimpers spill from her lips as she struggled toward her own release. While he trailed his mouth down her throat, he resisted the urge to taste her again, to drink her essence.
He continued down her neck, over her collarbone and the slope of her breasts, leaving only kisses as he skimmed his mouth along her body. He stopped at the dark peach tips of her breasts, tugging a nipple between his lips. As his fang brushed the sensitive point, her body jerked then convulsed beneath him as an orgasm gripped her.
