by Ravyn Wilde
“The bond would have started to form slowly. Then the separation would have triggered the sickness. I would imagine that the sickness would be more extreme since the mating had already started. As they fight the forming bond they’ll deteriorate, and without each other’s blood they will die. The craving can snap their minds as they go though the mental and physical abandonment. From now on, they will only be able to be apart for a few hours. Our research indicates that the stress of separation will kill them after just a few days. You need to get them in the same room and let nature take its course.”
“You mean they will never be able to spend more than a few hours away from each other, or will it get better?” Luke asked in amazement.
“It gets worse,” Vlad started to reply, and Luke heard him huff in pain. He smiled, knowing Veronica had elbowed him in the stomach.
“The attachment will grow stronger with time, not weaker. Eventually they will have no desire to be apart, and a physical and emotional wrenching pain will nix the idea if they try it. Have Maria call me when she is feeling better, I’ll try and prepare her for what is to come,” Veronica offered.
“Great. So the solution is to take Justin to Maria and lock the door.” Luke ran his hands through his hair in agitation. Just as he’d feared.
“That about covers it. You might want to clear out for a while. Move the bookends to a suite at a hotel and let Maria call them when it’s done. Otherwise they might try to interfere,” Vlad answered. He added something Luke had already guessed. “You realize the mortal will be a vampire when this is done.”
Luke looked at Bill for the first time since the conversation started. He expected to see the old man’s face filled with worry and concern for his son. What he saw instead was gloating cheerfulness. Go figure. He would never understand mortals. He said goodbye to Vlad and Veronica, promising to call and let them know things worked out.
Lord save him from ever experiencing the doubled-edged sword of a vampire’s true mate bond. He didn’t think he could live with the constant togetherness.
He picked up Justin as if he were a baby, heading out the door and down the stairs.
“Was that really Dracula?” Bill asked. Luke couldn’t believe the man would think about asking that question after all he’d heard.
“I don’t know. I don’t ask. I assume Dracula is Ronnie’s pet name for Vlad.” He stopped, thought for a moment and groaned. “Hell. For all I know he could be.”
The pain eased and was replaced with insatiable hunger. For blood. For sex. Maria moaned. Stretched. Her naked flesh making contact with another’s. Justin.
She turned her head to the side, feeling as if she were waking from a dream…and saw him lying beside her. Sprawled, naked. His breathing seemed to speed up as she watched him.
He moaned and reached out to her, sighing as his hand made contact with her skin. He rolled to his side, his hand moving to shape her face, trace her eyelids and the contour of her cheek bones, stroke down her throat.
Her body moved restlessly, her brain struggling in an attempt to sort things out. He shouldn’t be here. He was in danger. From her. From her hunger.
She tried to pull away from him, to move. Protect. Struggled to flee. But Justin shifted so that his large frame pinned her to the bed. His one hand continued to caress the soft, vulnerable line of her throat, moved to trace down to her chest. The other hand tangled in her hair and held her in place. He opened his eyes and she became trapped in his deep blue gaze. In the hunger that burned through those eyes and into her, she tumbled…addicted to the fire and need.
His hand found the warm softness of her full breasts and with his indigo stare holding her gaze, he slowly lowered his head.
Maria’s breath caught in her throat as his mouth hovered over hers. She burned for him. Her long lashes swept down as his mouth fastened on hers. She nearly cried out at the rush of liquid heat that raced through her body as he claimed her. His mouth explored every inch of hers, caressing. Demanding. He dominated with gentle persuasion, using his tongue to stroke along her incisors. He shifted his body against hers, bringing every inch of her skin to screaming awareness. She tore her mouth away from his. She had no control. If they didn’t stop now, she knew with dark certainty that she would change him into a vampire. Which meant they’d be through. “No. We can’t,” she gasped out.
He ignored her. Pressing his erection into her hip, he squeezed the hand at her breast to still her struggles and used his mouth to trail kisses down her throat. His hot mouth blazed a path across her shoulder and moved lower to find the swell of her breast. Maria brought her hands up, intending to tug on his hair, to move him from her. Instead she bunched her fists in the rich softness as his tongue traced a path over the vein in her nipple.
Her body clenched, waiting in horrified anticipation. “Don’t,” she moaned, and arched her body in direct contradiction to her plea. His teeth nipped the taut peak gently, and she shuddered with pleasure as his mouth drew her nipple into its moist heat.
He murmured against her skin, “I need to taste you, Maria. I’ll die if I can’t have this.”
And he would. He hurt. His skin burned and was unbearably sensitive. He moved to stroke his tongue over the small cut that had never healed. The cut he’d made with his teeth over her left breast. He teased his senses with the remembered taste of her.
The memory of the fiery-sweet flavor of her blood as it filled his mouth and burned through his body with a searing jolt of pleasure almost pushed him into madness. But he’d hurt her. He started to move back when he felt the wrenching pain. His mind screamed in denial as he fought the pull to claim his woman. His gut clenched and his soul cried out in forced demand.
He snarled in feral warning as he shifted over her. Blanketing her. Imprisoning her, as his knee effectively parted her legs and he took her hands in his to stretch her arms above her head. He pinned her body with his, allowing no withdrawal. He nudged the sensitive head of his cock against the liquid heat bathing him invitingly and slipped inside her.
She arched into him, taking him deep, thrusting her breasts up in a mindless offering. A red haze of desire overcame him. No longer able to fight the crushing compulsion to taste her blood—the addiction couldn’t be denied.
He lowered his head once more to the temptation of her nipple. He knew his teeth would hurt her. He found the small wound and stroked it once more with his tongue. And bit down around the nipple.
Maria gasped at the red-hot lance of pain and the wave of intense pleasure coursing through her body. She arched upwards, struggled in his grip…needing to hold him to her.
Justin’s body swelled in ecstasy, every muscle taut, rigid. She tasted hot, spicy, his. He needed to bury himself in her as he fed, his body urgently demanding their union…body and soul. He lost the effort to control the wild cravings. Instead the need for dominance gained with a frenzied, heated mating…rode him hard. He wanted to mark her forever as his possession. He surged into her.
She was hot and tight, the friction threatened to engulf him as the velvet fire of Maria gripped his body.
He buried himself deep in her very core, his mouth drawing the essence of her life. The world narrowed, receded, until she was his breath, his heart…the blood flowing in his veins.
His hips flexed, pulling back and pushing forward as he worked to dig his cock into her sweet softness. Her keening cries echoed in his mind. His body craved hers, more and more. Harder. Faster. Deeper. He drove on and on, slamming his shaft into her cunt. Slapping their bodies together. Straining to meld their souls.
Her blood fed the insatiable hunger, stoked it higher. He gave himself up to the lust and greed and wave after wave of unbearable pleasure as his mouth continued to suckle at her breast.
Her body clenched, gripping him like a vise. The earth seemed to roll and shake as molten heat coiled and he reared back, tearing his mouth from her as he cried out. His seed gushed and his body went up in flames.
He looked do
wn at the woman sprawled beneath him, felt her hunger and his body reacted immediately, once again hard and needy as ever. She moaned and shifted, opening passion-glazed eyes to meet his.
“Justin?”
“Yes, my love,” he whispered, as he pulled her up into his arms and stretched his legs out to sit with her, still joined to him, her legs straddling his thighs. He guided her mouth to his neck. “Feed from me the way I fed from you. Need me. All of me,” he growled, as he felt her mouth move over his neck, his throat.
His body raged at him. Swelled and hardened to fill her completely. His heart jumped as her tongue caressed his pulse. Swirled. She brought one hand up to tease around his flat nipples. The simple thrill added fuel to the fire. He gasped in anticipation as her teeth scraped once, twice…and then sank deep.
Justin’s growl echoed in the dark room, the sensation beyond his imaginings. He lay back, arms wrapped as a steel cage to take Maria with him. Bending his legs for leverage, he planted his feet on the bed and thrust upward, plunging his cock with wild abandon into her velvet sheath as she drank from him. His palm held her head to him, pressing her closer as his body took hers with unyielding demand. He could never get enough.
He felt as if something snapped into place. The perfect connection, their souls threading together—two halves of the same whole, never to part again. He shattered with his release. Flew. Dragging Maria with him every step of the way.
Maria lay very still, unable to get her mind around what had just happened. She was shocked to her soul. This time she couldn’t escape the fact that Justin had taken a great deal of her blood, a complete exchange. And still she hungered for more. In a panic she tried to sit up, to get away. To save him.
His arms closed around her in a hard grip, holding her to him. “No!”
She felt the deep grumble of the command in the body pressed against her and fought the compulsion to give in. “Justin, you don’t understand what we’ve done!” she exclaimed, and again tried to move away from him. This didn’t make sense. She should be stronger than him, able to break his hold with an easy flex of her muscles.
She yelped as he flipped her over onto her stomach and stretched his body flat against hers. She felt the hard ridge of his erection as it pushed between her legs. She squirmed beneath him, straining to buck him off…to move away.
He laughed against the skin at the back of her neck, moving with her, bending. Allowing her to lift her ass in the air just enough so he could slide his cock through her swollen and slick folds. She gasped at the sensation, fighting the hunger. He stroked his hips, moving in short jabs, and she groaned as he slid his shaft across the hard nub of her clit. Again. And again.
He opened his mouth over the sensitive flesh at her neck, zeroing in on the frantic pulse of her jugular vein. She felt the sharp prick of his teeth.
Sharp.
“Justin, your teeth!”
“Ummm…I feel them, love. Not quite as long as yours yet…but I’m hoping they’ll get there,” he murmured, licking her skin.
“You don’t understand,” she cried. Every movement she made to escape only increased the sensual slide of his cock. The deterioration of her will.
“I understand. I understand I crave your taste, the hot spice of your blood and the warm heat of your cunt. I know that without both, I’ll get sick. Die. You are mine, Maria. Mine to take and to fuck. To feast from. I’ve spent two days in hell without you and I won’t go there again. Burn, baby. Just feel the burn,” he said as he pulled back, rocking against her.
The bulbous head of his cock dipped into her cunt and she felt her body melt, opening for him. Felt the pleasure-pain as his teeth broke the skin at her neck and he grabbed her hips to tug her back, impaling her with his shaft and his lengthening incisors.
Oh, God, did she burn. Each dig of his cock into her pussy, each hard pull of his mouth on her neck lit a fire that raced along her skin.
He thrust slow and hard at first, sucking at her neck in tandem with each forward jab. She was shocked to feel his mind in hers, feeling the sensations he experienced as he pumped in and out of her. Harder. “More,” she demanded from him.
Their thoughts were one as emotions flew back and forth between them, swirling through their veins and pounding within their joined bodies. She felt what he felt, the soft, warm clenching of her muscles around his cock. The growing desperation to have her feed from him.
Along with each orgasm came the budding knowledge that this would be alright. They were destined to mate. To bond. Her pussy spasmed around his cock and she could feel her blood rushing into him, could feel his pleasure and his climax coming in an uproar.
An explosion of light and need burst through her, expanding throughout her body. She could feel her fangs extend as she cried out—wild and feral in her hunger.
He raised his head and shouted his release, and she reached blindly to the side, finding his hand and pulling his wrist to her mouth. As she plunged her teeth into his vein, she felt him grow thick and hard once again, and the cycle started over.
The unique blend of sex and their blood bound them together forever. Each time they exchanged blood the need grew stronger, their bodies more insistent.
Chapter Eleven
“Maria?”
She smiled as she heard the tentative plea in Brian’s voice. Well, she supposed he had a right to be nervous. She and Justin had been locked up together for several days and nights. They’d been first unable and then unwilling to communicate with the outside world. Luke had managed to impart enough knowledge to her the first time she could think rationally—explaining how the true bond mating fever would have to run its course. He told her to quit worrying and just get it done.
His exact words, mentally shouted at her when she’d tried to resist taking more of Justin’s blood. He insisted they slake the fever’s needs. Jeez. Like it was its own entity.
“Maria, are you okay?”
Maria smiled, stretching into Justin’s sleeping embrace. “Oh, yeah. I’m doing just fine.” She knew her mental voice purred with deep satisfaction.
“Why, you little slut. You do realize your sexual marathon has gone on for three days?” Brian asked over their mental bond.
“Three, hmmm. I would have said two. But I seem to have lost a day.”
“Well. I know Luke said it would take at least this long. He explained you would be no use to us while you were in heat. But we really need you back if you can quit diddling long enough to come up for air. I hate to be the one to break it to you…but we need to go Emp hunting. The body count is growing out here.”
Maria sat up quickly. How could she have forgotten? “In heat!? Diddling? How many bodies?”
“Ewww. Don’t use those terms in the same breath. Living with a vampire is no reason to have visions of necrophilia running around in my head.”
“Brian!” Maria’s impatient demand was very clear.
“Four. The body count since you’ve been…indisposed…is at four. Three humans and a rogue Were. Luke’s found the Empousai twice but he hasn’t been able to get to her feet. The damn bitch disappears every time he tries. We are afraid she will be moving on to another region soon.”
“I’m up.”
Maria could feel Brian’s sigh of relief as it whooshed through her mind.
“I’ll gather the troops. We’ll be back home in about half an hour.” Brian’s link with her closed and she turned in Justin’s arms. She debated leaving him to sleep, but wasn’t willing to test his resolve to keep her safe.
“Justin. We need to wake up and return to the living.”
“I’m awake. And I heard everything Brian said. Is that going to be something permanent? Having your human servants running rampant in my head?”
Maria frowned. “You heard Brian?” She felt his shrug.
“Ummm…three-day…sexual marathon…necrophilia…four bodies. Heard, felt, whatever.”
Maria couldn’t read Justin’s tone of voice. Is he mad? Disgusted
?
“Not mad or disgusted. And it seems as if I also have an open conduit to your mind. I can read your thoughts. Can’t you read mine?”
Now that he asked, she focused. And got a very clear picture of him kneeling between her legs with his mouth on her sex. She could almost feel him there. She shuddered and swore.
When he laughed and hugged her to his chest, she tried to smack him. “Good God. You’ve turned into nothing but a sex-craving, insatiable beast. Get up! We can’t do this now, we have to go find that damn Empousai.” She sighed, not knowing if it was from relief or disappointment as he listened to her and did what she demanded. His arms slipped from her as he rolled out his side of the bed. She already missed them.
Justin was playing around in Maria’s war room when he heard her coming down the hall. He stuck his head out and whistled. He couldn’t help his sigh of satisfaction. This woman was now his. She was dressed in skin-hugging, black leather pants and a red tank top that lovingly cuddled her breasts. Her dark hair lay straight and sleek to just below her shoulders, and her feet were encased in black steel-toe boots, which put the finishing touches on his Amazon warrior woman fantasy. She took the shoulder holster and gun he handed to her as she gave him a kiss.
Until the Empousai was caught, they’d all be dressed in leather or jeans, with thick-soled boots and all sorts of weapons in pockets and holsters. The guns and knives wouldn’t kill, just maybe slow her down, and Maria had discovered if they kicked her while wearing boots they wouldn’t get paralyzed. The style had become their uniform for battle.
He marveled at the turn his life had taken. The little bit of conversation he’d been able to grasp over the last few days centered on the fact that he and Maria had somehow formed a very rare bond. It seemed a vampire true bond only came about when two people had the perfect chemical compatibility. A sexual bond usually formed first, the mental and psychic bonds followed, and denying the bond would have meant their death. Both he and Maria would have died if they’d continued to fight the drive to mate. It hadn’t been necessary for him to take so much of Maria’s blood to become a vampire, but they’d both been so beyond thinking after their two-day separation that Justin needed her blood to feel complete.
