by A. C. James
-Hands behind your head.-
I did as Arie instructed and tried not to cry from the tension of holding back the orgasm welling up inside of me. Arie continued to stroke in and out with the dildo. Then I felt his fingers rim my ass with something cold and wet. I remembered the lube. He must have grabbed it from the bathroom before ordering me to masturbate in front of him. His finger teased my ass and I whimpered from wanting him to slide his finger inside. He pulled the dildo out of my pussy.
-Get on your hands and knees.-
I got on all fours and felt Arie spread my ass cheeks, the dildo nudging its entrance. Slowly, he eased it inside. At first there was stretching, but the pressure and fullness felt incredible. Zip. When I heard that sound I knew without a doubt it had to be the zipper on Arie’s pants. With the patience and experience of a lover who knew what he was doing and knew my body even better, Arie gently slid inside of me, waiting for me to adjust to the intense feeling of fullness before he began to move.
His pace increased as he pumped in and out of my pussy, and then he reached around and massaged my clit. My body ached with need as my hips rocked back into him, meeting each thrust. I was panting and whimpering—vaguely I thought it was fitting, considering my current position. But then I couldn’t think. All I could do was feel every inch of him inside of me, the fullness of it all and his fingers toying with my clit. If I couldn’t come soon... -Come for me.- As if he’d sensed my desperate need and that I was barely hanging on, he ordered me to come on the spot, and my body responded like a well-oiled engine that was revved and ready to go.
I screamed my release, digging and clawing into the bedspread. Arie thrust harder and faster, finally spilling inside of me, and I held on as he met his own climax. Just before falling on top of me, he gently slid the dildo out. We lay in a heap on the bed, both of us breathing heavy. I closed my eyes, even though it didn’t matter because I still couldn’t see anything. Gradually, our breathing slowed and I felt satiated and languorous lying on the bed. I wasn’t sure how much time had passed. Had I dozed off for a few minutes? Then I felt my hand move—something encircling my finger. When I opened my eyes, I realized that Arie had removed the blindfold.
He was lying on his side next to me, propped up on his elbow. “That’s your real Christmas gift.”
I looked down at my finger. Speechless. On my right hand was a ring with an infinity symbol edged with black diamonds on one side.
“It’s beautiful,” I murmured.
“Like you.”
He reached forward, brushing a chestnut strand away from my face. “After almost losing you, I realized exactly what I could lose. This is what I can give. I hope you understand what this means to me.”
It wasn’t the right finger or the kind of ring I’d imagined or wanted, but its symbol meant more to me than any vow. Its promise of forever meant more when there was no mortality. This was a huge step for Arie, for us, and it brought tears to my eyes.
I smiled. “I do know what it means. I can’t begin to tell you how happy you’ve made me.”
“This week is ours…no one else’s, and we’re not leaving this loft until I’ve done this to you at least twenty times.”
I laughed.
“Maybe more.” He teased.
“You’re a fiend.”
“Only for you.”
“Promise?”
He grabbed the hand where he’d placed the ring, bringing my knuckles to his lips to brush them with a kiss, and I knew he meant it. I’d worry about how fast things were going later and treasure this moment for what it was—a promise of a new beginning, the promise of love. I was starting to think that I just might be able to get used to this holiday after all.
Fallen Ever After
He can’t lose her…
Arie Cush wanted Holly from the very first moment he met her. A night at the Hellfire Club (HFC) is filled with old friends and new danger. The long-standing feud between the faeries that run the Chicago Crew and a lethal toxin puts Holly and other fledgling vampires in danger. Can they stop a vampire-fae war that’s been brewing for nearly a century?
when danger strikes again.
Holly Ellis is still adjusting to their relationship and her new supernatural gifts. She never figured on another battle and she certainly didn’t count on a war. Despite the synthetic threat that could hurt their kind, Holly has been waiting for answers her entire life. She finally gets them when her godmother helps her discover even more about the family she never knew. But is there more to Arie’s past? And who exactly is the mysterious T anyway?
Dedication
This book is dedicated to Diane Peters and Kathy Kulig for their critiques. I’d also like to dedicate this book to Vikki Jankowski her friendship and support. Oh, hell. I dedicate this book to all the gals of the Pocono-Lehigh Romance Writers who’ve supported my writing and have become my friends!
Acknowledgments
And I’d like to thank Alexis Arendt as my editor.
Chapter 1
Having an eternity to figure things out is a really long time. It seemed like a good advantage to have, since I was only twenty-two, but that was before things got messy. Really messy. On the other hand, adjusting to being a vampire and everything that went with it would have been more difficult if not for the fact that I’d dealt with having the Sight my whole life. Freakish, supernatural occurrences were an everyday thing in my world long before I met Arie Cush.
The afternoon sun filtered through the bedroom window of the loft as I shifted in Arie’s arms. It had been a week since Katarina’s death—a week since I’d become a vampire through some strange twist of magic that I still couldn’t wrap my head around. Killing Katarina had killed us both, except now I was a vampire. Not a small side-effect.
I studied Arie’s face while he slept. He had a face that I didn’t think I’d ever get tired of looking at. A dark curl fell across his forehead; I wanted to reach out and brush it back, but I didn’t want to wake him. His eyes, had they been open, would have been a somber gray, and his lips did unimaginable things to me. Just thinking about it made my thighs tingle. Throughout the week he’d been patient as I adapted to my new life as a vampire, as a Night Walker.
Or at least that’s the ancient term that Victoria used, even though bloodstone made it possible for vampires to withstand the sun. I could walk in the daylight as long as I wore the ring that Arie had given me. But he’d explained that ‘Night Walker’ had been a superstitious term that villagers used in Victoria’s time. I twisted the bloodstone wrapped around my ring finger. One day I hoped Arie would give me a different sort of ring, that I’d wear on an entirely different finger. I sighed. I doubted that would ever happen, given his tumultuous history with Katarina.
Katarina is dead. And I’m here now.
But I wondered how he felt about me killing the woman he once loved. Still, it was self-defense and she had terrorized the entire city. She was a whole different kind of crazy. I hoped her memory wouldn’t haunt us, but it had me thinking maybe we should slow down. We’d been thrown into a living situation that neither of us was ready for. Now that my life wasn’t at stake and I could protect myself, there wasn’t any reason to rush. My heartbeat quickened at the thought of disappointing him. I couldn’t help feeling just a little bit guilty over killing his crazy-ass ex, even if I didn’t have a choice. It was me or her. And I chose her.
His chest rose and fell with the steady rhythm of his breathing. “Holly…you know it’s not polite to watch someone while they’re sleeping.”
His eyes were still shut but the hint of a smile curved his mouth. God, he was sexy as sin and twice as wicked. The word for Arie was hot with a capital ‘h.’
“How did you know I was watching you?”
Arie’s eyes fluttered open. “I could hear your pulse quicken. I can only imagine what dirty thoughts are running through that pretty little head of yours. What are you thinking?”
Warmth flooded my cheeks and my pussy clen
ched just from the sound of his raspy voice. “I was thinking it’s Saturday, so it’ll be busy at the club.”
I lied rather than deal with a subject that would be difficult for him to hear. That insecure part of me wondered whether we’d stay together, because we’d been tossed into a dangerous situation and he’d only wanted me in the first place because I looked like her. But that was over now. Besides, the world didn’t stop spinning just because Arie and I had been wrapped up in one another, cocooned in the loft since the night of the gala. The night I’d killed Katerina and everything had changed.
“Holly,” Arie said in a stern voice. “You know Tessa said to take all the time you need.”
“I know. It’s just that I need something that resembles normalcy after everything that’s happened. A distraction might be good for me. Besides, I can’t stay in bed with you forever.”
Arie laughed. “And what’s wrong with that? You really think going to the club will bring you a sense of normalcy? You’re joking, right?”
I couldn’t help but grin back at him.
The Hellfire Club operated as an underground BDSM sex club upstairs and a Goth club downstairs. But that was the very normal, very human part, that hid Chicago’s playground for the supernatural right in plain sight.
And lying there with the sunlight streaming down on us, everything felt right. It felt natural, almost, after the nightmare that filled the previous months. Katarina had killed so many innocent people, and it took all my strength and embracing a magic I didn’t understand to stop her. Somehow I didn’t think the calm would last, and I wanted to enjoy every minute of it while it did.
Reaching out, I grazed Arie’s cheek with the back of my hand. He caught the back of my knuckles with a kiss that made my breath catch in my throat. “I want to see how Victoria is doing. I haven’t seen her since the night of the gala. You said she’s been asking about me.”
Every detail of the night of the gala, the night that I died, would be etched in my memory forever.
“Did you forget? She stopped by and helped me decorate the tree—helped me plan the scavenger hunt?”
I blushed. “Oh, right. I forgot she stopped by, but I had a good reason to be distracted.”
Arie’s eyes darkened with desire. After he’d almost lost me, it didn’t take much to get the blood pumping in our cold, dead veins. A look or a touch, even one as chaste as brushing his cheek or kissing my knuckles, could end with us falling into bed. Then we’d make love until the sun came up and sleep until noon.
But I’d died.
Arie didn’t bring me back as a vampire. Some strange mystical exchange happened. Maybe because Katarina drank my blood and then I’d used Rue’s words to summon magic and by some lucky accident I’d defeated her—like Dorothy dropping a house on the Wicked Witch of the West. The happy accident had worked out. Well, mostly, if you ignored the fact that I was a real-life-blood-sucking-vampire.
Death had drawn us closer together. Gone was the moody and brooding vampire I’d fallen in love with. We were both mad about each other. I got under his skin almost as bad as he got under mine. His sexy scavenger hunt over the holidays had ended with a multitude of mind-blowing orgasms and Arie giving me a promise ring. I could wait for more, because I knew what that meant to him—what a huge step it was. In that one gesture he promised me forever. It made me feel happy and scared all at the same time.
If I could stay in bed with him all day, I would, but we’d done exactly that for the past week. Arie’s phone never stopped ringing. I wasn’t even sure how my godmother had tracked down Arie’s number, but with her anything was possible. First Tessa, then Victoria, and then Luna had called, but it felt good to have friends worrying about me. They were more like family, and considering that I’d never really had one, I loved feeling like I belonged—even if the family that I belonged to was a dysfunctional, supernatural hodgepodge of vampires and faeries and witchcraft.
“How can I say no to you?” His sexy look melted me.
“Then don’t,” I said with a smile. “Don’t say no to me. Just be with me…always and forever.”
Arie sighed. “I’m yours for eternity, but I don’t think you realize what forever means—at least not yet. But someday you will, and I wonder how you’ll feel about it then.”
“What? Do you think I’ll get sick of you or something after a few hundred years?”
I couldn’t help teasing him. It felt good to be lighthearted and free. Things had been so tense between us, but now we could put Katarina behind us and just focus on our relationship. God, I never realized how looking like his ex would make me feel. Like I was somehow less than the psycho-vamp-tramp, and I knew it didn’t make any sense but that didn’t change the way I felt about it.
He pushed a stray chestnut strand away from my face. “No, I think you’re young, you’re beautiful, and you have no idea about the implications of this life.”
His suggestion insinuated that I didn’t yet understand what it meant to be a vampire. And maybe I didn’t, but part of him still worried about how I’d deal with the Sight now that I’d turned. Katarina had the Sight too, and it had driven her to madness once she’d been turned. Now that she was out of the picture, it might be a good idea to let us get used to the idea of our relationship. Our lives had completely changed over the past few months. I loved him with everything I had, I just didn’t want to screw it up by moving too fast. Nagging, useless insecurity and guilt dug into my conscience.
“Arie. Let me…” I brushed my lips over his mouth. “Let me love you.”
“Please,” he whispered, his fingers linking with mine. “Don’t ever stop.”
“Never. I can’t.”
And no words were ever truer.
His love drove me like an addiction, and I couldn’t stop even if I wanted to. Not now. He closed his eyes and pulled me close. Unbidden tears ran down my cheeks. Why was I crying? Was it my heightened senses and emotions from being turned? Lifting my head, I took his mouth, our kiss flavored with the salt of my tears. Arie wrapped his arms around me and squeezed me so tight I almost couldn’t breathe. Not that I depended on it anymore. It was a good thing, too, because it felt like dying, the way air was being sucked from my lungs by my hot vampire boyfriend kissing me senseless.
As much as I loved our week together, it would be fun to hang out at the Goth club downstairs at HFC. Tonight a Euro-Goth band called Defiance promised to bring out the vampires—both the wannabes, or fang-fakers as Victoria liked to call them, and the actual undead. Tessa had surprised me by not making demands of me this week. Still, a change of scenery would be nice, since we hadn’t left the loft.
Not that I could complain about the scenery. Arie’s tongue explored my mouth with a hunger that seemed insatiable, and the air filled with a charge of awareness. In an almost dreamlike state, I pulled him closer. It could be the apocalypse and I wouldn’t care—probably wouldn’t even notice—because whenever Arie kissed me the whole world fell to pieces. All I could focus on was his tongue brushing against my teeth, and I realized now that I’d never noticed the details of his mouth before. At least not like this. The swirl of his tongue, the sensuous textures, contrasts, and each finite detail that made my finely tuned senses nearly explode. Anticipation made my skin tingle. My breasts pressed against the hard wall of his chest, his hand fisted in my curls as he pulled me deeper into his mouth. God, kissing Arie now that I was a vampire, with every sensation amplified by about a billion, was so fucking hot.
Seriously, I could get used to waking up like this. We’d never be the normal couple that went to picnics, movies, and hikes in the woods, growing old as we held hands and kissed. But I wouldn’t have it any other way.
We’ll never have children, either. Or grandchildren that I can spoil rotten. I only started living with him when my life was at stake. It’s all too fast.
I pushed the thoughts aside as I met his tongue with mine. The possessive yet gentle meeting of our lips left me breathless and r
eeling. He thrust his muscular thigh between my legs. His hands dropped to my lower back and he pulled me toward his knee, rocking his leg against me. The pressure felt incredible, and I knew without a doubt that if he kept it up I could come like this. Easy. Or tear his clothes off and forget all about meeting up with Victoria and Luna at the club. I groaned.
Maybe I should. The pleasure streaking through my core overwhelmed me, and I arched into him without him pulling me forward. I took what I wanted, rocking against…
Arie pulled his knee away.
He broke off the kiss and threw me a smile, that cocky curve that lifted his mouth in a way that made me want to either kiss him again or smack him. Or maybe both.
“Shouldn’t you start getting ready, if we’re going to the club?”
Unquenched desire and irritation at both his cockiness and my own weakness tangled into a conflicted knot at my core.
“Arie! I know what you’re trying to do, and it won’t work.”
I threw off the sheet and swung my legs over the edge of the bed. “No matter how sexy you think you are, you can’t seduce me into staying in bed with you. I swear. We’re going to the club—I really mean it.”
But it didn’t sound very convincing—even to me.
Arie sighed and reached for my underwear. He managed to grasp the string side of my bikini, pulling me back into bed and into his arms. I tumbled into them less reluctantly than I let on.
“You don’t mean that,” he said, taking my hand and bringing it to his lips, where he nipped the pad of my finger. “But I want to give you something to think about…for later.”
He knew me so well, and of course he was right, which was irritating, especially when he looked completely amused.
I jerked my hand away playfully. “Fiend!”
Definitely the wrong thing to say—the erotic light in his eyes became hotter and more intense. He looked like he might pull my underwear down and plunge into me with one stroke. The sheer fabric of my bikini happened to be the only layer of clothing between us; I’d discovered that Arie preferred to sleep naked most of the time. But his preference kept us from doing a whole lot of sleeping. His lust-filled look could have burned a hole through the material, and there wasn’t much to my underwear to begin with. He stared at me the way a lion might look at an antelope right before the chase. And my first thought was that, like the antelope, I should run for my life. My second thought was that I really wanted to get caught.
