Kiss of Wrath

by Sandra Hill

  As if she were a puppet, he played her body, directing her to move this way or that, sometimes in positions she would have balked at in the past. Before Mordr.

  So much was going on in so many different places that Miranda didn’t know where to concentrate. His hands at her breasts. His erection inside her. His lips kissing her. She wanted to swat at him and order him to do one thing at a time, and then she wanted to tell him, Whatever you want, baby.

  Her vision went blurry. Her legs, which were looped over his shoulders—How did that happen?—went rigid. She was fast climbing to another climax, heightened by the slapping, wet sounds of his private male parts smacking against her female no-longer-private parts. And, yes, it did hurt. A little. But in a good way. For the love of Fifty Shades!

  When she rose toward an orgasm this time, every nerve ending on her body felt titillated. Her heart was racing. Blood drained from her head. She would have fainted if she were on her feet. She bucked against him, seeking the ultimate reward, an explosion of the senses. For the first time in her life, she experienced what was called female ejaculation.

  No sooner did she peak than Mordr pounded hard, hard, hard into her still convulsing channel. Thick cords stood out on his neck as he arched it back and he climaxed with a triumphant roar.

  When she came back to her senses (she hadn’t fainted, but was definitely dazed), she was splayed out flat on her back with Mordr’s heavy weight pinning her to the mattress. His face was at her neck where she could feel his fangs pressing against her skin. Not biting, just letting their presence be known.

  After what seemed a long time, Mordr lifted his head and smiled down at her. “That was good for a start.”

  She did faint then.

  Fifteen

  He was rusty but no longer broken . . .

  Mordr waited for what seemed a really long time, but was probably only five minutes, for Miranda to wake up. He saw by the bedside clock that it was only midnight. He could have sworn they’d been at it all night.

  He eased himself off her and moved them both to the head of the bed, resting on soft pillows. His arms were extended over his head, touching the spindles of the headboard, which, incidentally, gave him some ideas. Miranda was cuddled up against his side, her hand unconsciously lying over his flat belly, which also gave him some ideas.

  As sated as he was, he wanted more.

  In the meantime, his emotions were banging against the walls of his heart. This had been a life-altering sexual experience for him. The best sex he had ever had. The best sex he would ever have. But more than that. He liked Miranda. She made him smile when he had thought he could never smile again. Oreo, he thought, grinning like a lackwit. They could give Fifty Shades a run for its money and then some. His heart swelled just thinking about Miranda.

  It was a losing proposition for him, of course. Mike would never allow him to have more than this. In fact, he would cut him off as soon as he found out. The best he could hope for was to build up memories to last him a lifetime and then some.

  He dozed off for a moment, his slumber interrupted by the feel of Miranda moving beside him. With one eye cracked open, he observed her trying to crawl away from him and off the bed. He caught her by the ankle just in time and yanked her back to the center of the mattress.

  “Where do you think you are going, sweetling?”

  “Um,” she said, trying to pull the bed linen up and over her nakedness, which he would not allow, flipping it up and off the bed.

  What was it about women that they could perform the most outrageous acts in the dead of night, then turn modest as a pure maiden the next morning?

  “I was going to the bathroom. I should wash off this . . . wetness.”

  He put a big hand over the springy curls of her mons, which were indeed damp, and said, “I like your wetness.” And that was the truth. He who had once disdained red-haired women now preferred fiery hair, especially down there where slick, crimson curls beckoned him like a lantern on the shore to a lost sailor.

  By the runes, I am turning womanish with all these flowery thoughts.

  “Mordr,” she chided. That was another thing. Women did not like to talk about bodily fluids, like the ones they exuded before and during sex. Men, on the other hand, found it a sign of their sexual expertise. The more the better.

  “You’re smiling.”

  “I am happy.” For some reason, he was surprised at that admission. In truth, he could not recall many such occasions in recent years when he could say that.

  She glanced over to him and couldn’t help but notice the size of his continuing enthusiasm. “Mordr,” she repeated.

  “What?”

  “You can’t be thinking . . .”

  I most definitely can be thinking . . . “Why not? That was just a little bedplay to take the edge off.”

  “A little! In what world is that little?”

  “Remember, I am not of this world exactly.”

  “I forgot.”

  He was pleased that she’d forgotten. It made him feel almost normal.

  “Aren’t you tired?”

  “I do not require much sleep. Besides, sex energizes me.”

  She groaned.

  “Go back to sleep,” he said, as disappointed as one of the children when told they couldn’t stay up late for their favorite TV show. He was pathetic, he decided.

  “And what will you be doing while I sleep?”

  “Watching you.”

  She stared at him. “Are you serious? Do you really think I want you watching me when I’m probably drooling in my sleep or some other unattractive thing?”

  “I like looking at you. I like looking at your bed-mussed head, knowing that it was created by your thrashing in the heat of lovemaking. With me. I like seeing you snore softly through lips that are swollen from my kisses. I like that your nipples are still engorged and standing out, calling for more attention. I like the few freckles that bloom on your face after a day in the sun. I like the sex flush that still colors your face and neck.”

  With each reason he gave for watching her, Miranda’s jaw dropped lower and lower. But what she said was “I do not snore.”

  He grinned. “Whatever you say, dearling.”

  “Said like a man who wants more sex.”

  He shrugged. “I do.”

  “Oh, all right.”

  Her lack of enthusiasm deflated his . . . enthusiasm. “I will not take an unwilling woman, or one not interested in bedplay.”

  “Are you kidding? I’m a modern woman. You had me with ‘I like looking at you.’ ”

  He needed no more encouragement than that and rolled to his back, taking her over with him. Then he lifted her up and over to straddle him, his staff enveloped up to the hilt in her convulsing folds. He saw stars at the intense bliss that suffused all parts of his body, but especially his thankful cock.

  Meanwhile, Miranda looked like a bloody queen sitting on a throne. No longer sleepy, her green eyes twinkled with mischief as she wiggled her ass from side to side, presumably to get the right fit, but probably to tease his already heightened senses.

  “Witch,” he said, putting his hands on her hips to hold her in place until he got his bearings.

  “Wretch,” she said, and put her hands under her small breasts, lifting them saucily.

  His cock twitched inside her.

  Which caused her eyes to go wide.

  You give, you get, dearling.

  He took her hands, guiding her on how he wanted her to explore his body. She did more than that. She whispered praise to every part of his battle-scarred body that she touched and caressed and even kissed, the whole while with him still imbedded in her depths.

  “Ride me,” he directed.

  And she did, bless her modern woman’s heart.

  This time he let her sleep and went into the bathroom to shower again. When he came out, he hoped selfishly that she was awake and they could have another bout of sex. Yes, he was a brute demanding so much of her
, but he was a long-hungry man who could not be satisfied with just one meal. His window of opportunity might be slamming shut any minute now. Once Michael discovered what he was about.

  She slept peacefully, though, with a small smile on her lips that he had put there, he hoped.

  He dressed quietly in the short pants he’d worn that day, and nothing more. It was only two a.m. Checking on the children, he noted that they were all asleep. He could not dwell for very long in the room where Linda slept, her arms wrapped around a stuffed woolly lamb. She reminded him too much of Kata.

  He made his way barefooted down the stairs. The kitchen light was on. He couldn’t recall having left it on, but he might have. He wasn’t unduly concerned about intruders, so secure had they made Miranda’s house. Even so, he opened the hall closet and took out the sword he’d hidden there.

  He wasn’t totally surprised to find, sitting around the table, drinking what had to be the last of his beer, not just Cnut and Harek, but Ivak and Trond, as well. The fierce guard dog Ruff was on his back, legs in the air, fast asleep on his rug by the sliding patio doors, dreaming doggie dreams, interspersed with drips of drool and occasional grumbles. Wet dreams, Mordr presumed.

  But that wasn’t the important thing. Mordr went immediately alert. Why were his brothers here?

  Ivak was the first to notice him. “Well, well, well. Someone has been getting some.”

  “Some what?” Harek asked, and turned to see him. “Oh, that. He has been mooning over the lovely Miranda ever since he got here.”

  “And she has red hair!” Cnut told them. “You all know how Mordr mislikes red hair on his wenches.”

  “Apparently, not so much anymore if those scratch marks on his shoulders are any indication,” Ivak commented.

  Mordr propped his sword against the wall and barely restrained himself from touching those scratches, with pleasure that his woman had marked him so. No, no, no, he thought, she is not my woman. Just my woman of the moment. Bloody hell, I am losing my mind.

  “Why are your eyes crossed?” This from Harek, who had found his spare package of Oreos and was gobbling them up. Beer and Oreos . . . what a combination!

  “So, have you regained your virility?” Trond wanted to know.

  “I never lost my virility,” Mordr growled.

  Four sets of eyebrows rose at that declaration.

  “I just lost the inclination,” he contended, knowing how dumb the words sounded even before they left his mouth.

  “And now you have it back?” Cnut inquired.

  Mordr let a smile emerge slowly on his lips. That was all he would say on the matter.

  “Praise God!” Ivak exclaimed. “The gruesome one is smiling!”

  “We finally have our brother back,” Harek said, “and it only took one thousand, one hundred, and sixty-four years.”

  “To Mordr!” Trond raised his beer bottle in the air. The others did likewise.

  But then Cnut asked the all-important question, “What will Michael say?”

  That put a damper on their moods. None of them liked to be in the archangel’s crosshairs.

  “So, why are you all here?” Mordr asked.

  A voice behind him said, “Jasper’s Sin City mission ends on Wednesday night with the culmination of the Perverts Anonymous convention.” It was Zebulan the Hebrew, their Lucie special agent.

  Mordr was getting kind of tired of Miranda’s house being an open turnstile for his comrades. Locked doors and security alarms meant nothing to creatures who could teletransport. But Zeb was a friend. Of sorts. In any case, he always brought valuable information. He was not in his Lucipire persona tonight, but instead wore jeans, a white T-shirt, and his familiar Blue Devils baseball cap. Typical two-thousand-year-old twenty-first-century jock.

  “Whatever you are going to do will have to be done before that time,” Zeb continued. “I have to say, this project for Jasper has been highly successful. He’s preening about, crowing like cock of the roost. Between Las Vegas, Reno, Macau, and Monaco, he’s had about six hundred kills. Dead humans now in Jasper’s killing jars. He’s expecting to hit a thousand over the next four days.”

  This was bad. Very bad. Every new Lucipire was a challenge to the vangels. Jasper’s troops would far outnumber the vangels now. Michael would be livid. Hell and damnation! Mordr was livid himself.

  They spent the next hour discussing a strategy for destroying the most Lucipires and saving as many redeemable sinners as possible. Mordr was especially talented at battle planning and they were all satisfied with the preparations when they were done.

  “Well, I must be off. A devil’s work is never done,” Zeb remarked with dark humor as he stood and stretched. “By the by, you’re looking rather pale tonight, Mordr. Mayhap you need to come back into the city with me. I can point out the not-so-bad sinners if you are losing the touch.”

  “Dost think so, Zeb?” Trond asked with tongue firmly planted in cheek. In other words, humor at Mordr’s expense. “I’m thinking he looks flushed.”

  “And he smells like a flower in case anyone hasn’t noticed,” Ivak added.

  “Shouldn’t you be home with your pregnant wife?” Mordr asked Ivak.

  “She is not due yet, and she will let me know when I am needed.” Ivak grinned at Mordr. “Thank you for asking.”

  “That is not why I asked,” Mordr grumbled.

  “I know,” Ivak said.

  “Congratulations,” Zeb said to Ivak with a decided glint of envy in his eyes. Rumor was that the former Hebrew Roman soldier—and wasn’t that a contradiction in terms?—had lost several children in his human life. Like Mordr.

  Leave it to Trond to not drop the subject. “Mordr has five children now, did you know that, Zeb?”

  “No!” Zeb appeared shocked. He knew Mordr’s history well.

  “They are not my children. They are the children I was sent here to protect.” Mordr’s explanation sounded weak even to his own ears.

  Just then a female voice could be heard calling out from the stairway, “Mordr? Are you down here?”

  Mordr put his face in his hands, knowing what was to come.

  Four beaming faces, no, five, including Zeb’s, turned to the doorway where Miranda soon stood, wearing naught but his “Vikings Rule” T-shirt, which extended only to mid-thigh. Her red hair was wild and sex-mussed. Her lips appeared bruised and ripe from kissing. The sex flush remained on her face and neck. He hadn’t fed on her, but she had the imprint of his fangs on her neck, nonetheless. She had a suck mark on the inside of one knee. She was Playboy Bunny of the Year, Bimbo Barbie, and Male Fantasy Number One, all in one neat come-to-bed-lover package.

  “There is a God,” Zeb said into the stunned silence.

  “Amen!” the rest of them concurred. Except Mordr. He was speechless.

  And that wasn’t the worst thing.

  The motion detectors caused all the outdoor lights to go on suddenly, followed by the ringing of the doorbell. At four a.m.!

  “It wouldn’t be a Lucie,” Zeb told them quickly. “We don’t announce ourselves with doorbells or knocking or other civilized greetings.”

  Miranda gasped. By use of the word we, Zeb had outed himself as Lucipire.

  “Roger wouldn’t come knocking at four a.m., either,” Mordr concluded, “unless he’s a total idiot.”

  “He is an idiot,” Miranda said, and with no sense at all when it came to her safety, headed back down the hallway toward the front door. Mordr practically tripped over his feet racing after her, with his brothers and a demon vampire close on his heels. Ruff shuffled along after them, bringing up the rear reluctantly, giving only an occasional halfhearted bark. The dog obviously did not like having his sleep interrupted.

  “You are going to give me a heart attack.” Mordr hauled Miranda back with a hand on her upper arm just before she reached the door. Pushing her behind him, he gazed through the peephole, then cursed, “What a dragon fuck this is turning out to be!”

  “Swear
jar!” Harek said behind him.

  “What’s a swear jar?” Ivak wanted to know.

  “Ruff!” Ruff said.

  “Would you all shut up?” This from Miranda, who surprised them all.

  “Ruff, ruff, ruff!”

  “Somebody grab the dog by his collar before he bites one of you by mistake.” Mordr was already undoing the dead bolts and high-tech locking systems on the door. Before he opened the door, he turned to the others and said, “I forewarn you all. Do not make rash judgments about what . . . who you are about to meet.”

  The door swung open and there stood a six foot two male in a red spandex miniskirt, hooker high heels, huge fake boobs, a blond wig, false eyelashes, and siren-red lipstick. “Hey, Mordr,” Jack Trixson said in a deep male voice. “Just finished working and was passing by in the neighborhood, saw your lights on, and thought I’d drop by.”

  “I forgot you lived in the neighborhood,” Mordr said dumbly.

  Jack, his square jaw gaping with amazement, was enjoying his first view of Miranda the Sex Wench as she stepped around him. That, combined with five big Vikings and an equally big demon, must have appeared like an orgy. In fact, Jack said, “I didn’t mean to interrupt your party.”

  His brothers and Zeb were enjoying this scene and his discomfort immensely. Ruff was just sniffing the newcomer.

  “I cannot wait to tell Vikar,” Harek hooted.

  “Forget Vikar. I cannot wait to tell all of vangeldom about Mordr’s unusual friend,” Ivak said. Then he addressed Jack, “No offense, but you have to know our brother Mordr to understand how funny this is.”

  “Mike must be having a coronary,” Cnut contributed.

  Miranda made a gurgling noise, then turned on her heels and started back toward the stairs. “I’m going back to bed.”

  “Good idea,” Mordr called after her as he waved Jack inside. “I’ll be up shortly.”