Authors: Rebecca Royce
Tags: #Paranormal Romance, #Vampire, #Vampire Romance, #Vampire Love
“My turn.”
Well, she had wanted him to let go and he had done so. In seconds her clothes were torn from her body. Her heart rate increased until it raced in her ears.
“Open your legs for me, Adrienne.”
Her mouth went dry. “Okay.” Apparently her being in charge had ended. She didn’t mind. As she’d told him, she was generally game for whatever. Sex was fun, however she took it. Sex with Hanzi would be intense if the way he started was any indication.
She opened her knees and he shook his head. “I said open. What you did is not open.”
“Oh.” She tried to scrunch and make her knees obey although they quivered. Hanzi’s molten gaze made her self-confidence flip-flop in her stomach. What was about to happen?
Adrienne must have adequately spread her thighs for him at last because he nodded once to a question she hadn’t asked aloud. Scooting closer, he breathed her in. “You’re mine, and my moments of resisting you end now. I won’t turn you. Not unless you ask me to. Although after tonight, you won’t question who you belong to.”
She gulped. Maybe she’d sucked off more than she could handle.
****
T
he woman belonged to him. Mind, body, and spirit. He was going to make her come. Over and over again. Until she couldn’t see straight anymore.
He bent forward, licking her sweet manna until he found her clit. The small bundle of nerves he would soon make best friends with. “Look what I found.”
She sucked in her breath, and her knees shook. His lady was turned on. If he needed no other proof, he had her wetness before he had so much as made a single ministration toward her pleasure. She had gotten hot giving him the best sucking of his life—or non-life—both, actually.
Hanzi licked her clit until it came out to play with him. He buried his face deeper inside of her until he bit. She cried out before she grabbed the back of his neck. He loved the sting of her nails on his skin.
“Shit. Hanzi.”
He snickered, which she must have liked because she moaned again. Her knees tried to close, but he stopped them.
“Keep them open.”
She obeyed. Good girl. His lady knew how to listen, which was excellent since he intended to reward her for her good behavior.
He drew back, replacing his mouth with his fingers. He pressed a finger inside her to explore more of her warmth. She moaned again, and her muscles clenched to greet him. He couldn’t wait until it was his cock and not his fingers pressing inside.
First she had to be ready, completely.
“I want you to come before I’m in you. Your pleasure’s what I wish, Adrienne. My kicsikém.” He added two fingers to his play. She quivered beneath his touch. “I’m going to pleasure you.”
With his thumb he found her clit again and rubbed. A circular motion until he found a pattern she liked. Her body cued him. When she shook and moaned, he listened to the instructions her reactions revealed. Finally, when he’d heated her to the moment, he increased the pressure, holding her legs where he wanted them. He’d forgive her not listening this time about keeping them open. They were learning each other for the first time tonight.
There would be time to perfect their lovemaking. By all that was holy, how she had gone down on him. He loved her tongue.
He pinched her clit, and she cried out as her wetness soaked his fingers. He grinned. Hanzi had told her to come and she had done so.
“Good girl.”
Having fulfilled his need to bring her the pleasure she gave to him, he became aware how hard his balls were. His cock stood fully awake again, as if he hadn’t spent himself only minutes earlier.
When she opened her eyes to grin at him, he was hooked. Whatever was left of his heart belonged to her entirely. He would never escape, nor did he want to. Adrienne was perfection personified.
The universe made such a creature for him? He kissed her, capturing her sweet lips again. She shuddered beneath him, the last jolts of his pleasuring her moving through her body.
Her breasts had been left out of their encounter. He didn’t intend to continue to neglect them. They were supple and filled more than his hand.
“Hanzi.” She whispered his name. “I still need you.” Her voice sounded hoarse.
“I need you, too.” And probably always would. If she didn’t want to be turned, he wouldn’t—he’d spend her mortal life with her. Every day and night of it. Then eternity mourning her loss.
She wrapped her legs against him, and his cock leaked. The woman mastered him. He would do whatever she desired whenever she asked it.
“We needn’t hurry. I realize our joining has been frenzied. Yet we have lots of time.”
Adrienne shook her head. “I feel so good and also I’m aching.”
He raised his head to look at her. Her response was unexpected. Was she actually in pain?
“Adrienne?”
“Please. Won’t you fill me, honey? I want to feel your cock inside of me.”
Hanzi kissed her gently. “I will. If it’s what you want.”
“We can be slow another time, okay?” Her eyes were pleading. “I feel as though I’ve been waiting for you for such a long time. I didn’t know I was, but since I’ve realized it, it’s as if I’m thirsty and you’ve only offered me a drop of water. Please.”
For the second time, she’d used the “p” word.
“You never need beg me for anything. If you want a fast coupling, then you’ll have it quick. One time.”
He moved until he positioned himself near her pussy, her gorgeous core, which had opened for him beautifully.
With a kiss to tell her words he might never be able to say—the truth of what their moment meant to him—he pressed inside her. Even ready, she was still tight around him. He bit back a curse. His woman would be treated gently their first time together.
She pressed her hips forward to draw him closer inside. “I know I seem needy.”
She bit on his neck and he almost spent. Adrienne would be his undoing.
“You’re going to have to believe me, to be so wanton is new for me. I don’t usually...crave. I think I’ve been waiting for you.”
He knew her sentiment exactly. She didn’t need to explain more. After so much time, there weren’t words.
Adrienne fit him akin to a glove. The more she spurred him forward, until he was balls deep inside her.
Tears he hadn’t shed in years filled his eyes. He wouldn’t cry. It would be humiliating. Men simply didn’t do such things. The emotion, however, was there. The perfection. The goodness of Adrienne after never knowing any for so long.
Without moving anything else, he pushed her hair off her forehead so he looked on what had become, in such a short period of time, such a beloved face to him. He would do anything for her. How was tonight happening? Why hadn’t anyone told him it would shatter his walls to have her?
“Hanzi.” She put her hands on both side of his face. “I’m real.”
How did she know what he needed to hear? He kissed her hard and, with a jerk of his hips, moved inside her.
“Yes.” Her eyes closed, and her head fell backwards as her body bucked beneath him. “More.”
More was what he needed too. Her hips answered his push, and soon they were in a dance older than even he was. Her eyes met his, and the smile in them moved his cold soul.
He wasn’t going to last long. Their joining was too much. Pleasure warred with pain. How could sex be both? Hanzi didn’t know. Sex had always been meaningless before. With Adrienne, it was something akin to an alteration of the very universe.
He reached between them, found her clit, and stroked. Once, twice, on the third rub she cried out, milking his cock with her movements, driving him home in a way he had never known existed. He tried to hold out. The longer, the better it would be for her. But lasting long was clearly not meant to be. Seconds later, their souls connected in the way only two people joined from the inside would be he followed her into what should have been peaceful oblivion with his body spent.
Only it wasn’t.
His gums ached. Hanzi silently cursed the heavens. With Adrienne beneath him, he would not lose control.
Her eyes opened, and she stared at him, her eyes wide, also not sated. What was happening here?
“I know what you need.”
He gripped the side of the couch. Hanzi had to pull out of her, step away, give them both space. Perhaps Feri might be persuaded to help him once more until they figured out what was happening, why his meeting with Adrienne was going so differently than everyone else’s.
“Look at me.”
Hanzi turned his attention to her eyes. They were clear, level-headed. She was not compelled.
“Adrienne, I am not right. I thought I might control the bloodlust. I had some help. I am weak tonight.”
“Hanzi, bite me. Feed from my neck.”
“No.” He was too raw. Her offer was precious, he’d never forget she had made it, but he would not....
She gripped his face again in the way that she did. The third time in as many minutes she had touched him so.
“You can feed off me and not turn me. My body will heal in two weeks. Surely, between the two of us, we can figure out how to handle or give in to the need within a short period of time. Please, Hanzi, I want it too. Tonight, I want you to feed. Off my blood alone.”
His ears roared, and the room turned red. He swallowed back the pressing urgency. No way could he consider feeding if he wasn’t in control.
“I won’t hurt you.” He bent to kiss her again, keeping it light. “Let me compel you so you don’t feel the first bite of my lips on yours.”
“No.” She shook her head. “I want to feel it, Hanzi. Every second of it. From pain until you’re done. No compulsion between us. Not ever. Do it.” She raised her eyebrows in a challenge. “Immediately.”
And so he did. Faster was better for the first bite. Without altering her mind there was no way to make it painless. She cried out and he cursed himself for the monster he continued to be. The first taste of her coppery blood filled his mouth, and the beast within him stilled. For the first time since he’d awakened in the ground, he felt no anger, no monster to push away.
All that existed was Adrienne. She hugged him close, and his cock pressed to life still inside her. Feeding during sex was new, too. Blood had never meant sex before.
“Hanzi.” She closed her eyes and lifted her hips as she had done earlier. “More please. More.”
He slowly pressed to fill her again and pulled out, keeping his lips where they were. His sucks would slow. He would not take too much or abuse the gift she was giving him.
It didn’t take long, as if the extra pleasure was simply an additional moment to further bind what had happened earlier between them. Adrienne shattered again, crying out his name in the sweetest plea.
As his cock emptied, for the third time and still as strongly as the first, he let go of her neck. With a swipe of his tongue, he closed her wound and at last fell on top of her, a man with no energy left to think.
Seconds—or maybe hours?—passed before he had the strength to roll over, pulling her on top of him. His cock was no longer ready to explode. She mumbled something as he tugged her closer and let his lids fall shut. How long since he had last rested?
Two thousand or so years?
****
T
he pounding on the door jarred him awake. Sunset had come and gone, and he hadn’t noticed. On top of him, Adrienne did not stir. The rise and fall of her breathing told him she slept deeply.
“Hanzi, please.” Jerome’s voice at the door. “There’s been a death.”
He wrapped his arms around Adrienne tightly. He should have known the sunshine, which was their night, would never last. Death always came knocking.
A
drienne slept deeply, and, although she hadn’t seen Feri again, she dreamed as she had earlier. Maybe Feri’s magic wasn’t finished yet. Adrienne didn’t know, and she didn’t care. All she knew was she warm, she was sated, and she apparently had more to learn about Hanzi.
In her new dream, she wasn’t Ema, which was a good thing because the person whose body she inhabited was staring at Ema’s corpse. She stood in a hallway looking at the woman, who would have been lovely had she still lived. Instead, her eyes started open, unseeing, at the ceiling of the small hut where Adrienne found herself.
Ema had fallen next to a small, gray bed, which looked more a cot than any bed Adrienne had ever slept in. She supposed she should have been shocked. If she’d stumbled across a dead body in real life, Adrienne would probably have screamed bloody murder. But, given how all of the slaughter had happened two thousand years ago, she couldn’t help but feel the distance time was playing with her feelings.
Adrienne squatted, glad to see she had control over her own body. Looking away from Ema and down at herself, she noticed her own arms were still tattooed. Was it possible? Had she managed to stay herself during the dream journey?
A door swung open, and a young man rushed into the room.
“No,” he cried out, nearly doubling over, before righting himself. “Every house. Every damn house.”
She stared at the stranger for a moment. He gave the impression of being familiar, but she couldn’t quite place how. The young man paced between the door and Ema for a few moments before kneeling in front of her dead body.
He raised his eyes to look at Adrienne. “You can see me, yes?”
She gasped, nerves moving through her. “I can.”
“Good.” He stood and nodded. “How else am I to lead you through what you have to see?”
“Who do you think I am exactly?” She followed his lead and got to her feet.
“Adrienne. Who else would you be?” He shook his head. “Your dream is your vision.”
“Okay. My second trip is slightly different than before.” He held out his hand to shush her, and she stared. Something about the way he held his head to the side while he listened....Jerome? She reached out to grab his arm.
“Are you Jerome?”
He scratched his chin. “Not called by such a name in the time period you’re viewing, but yes. And before you ask, no, I’m not a vampire. I wasn’t here when the witch cursed us. It seems to have screwed my version of the curse a little. I stayed human, and I didn’t die. Ever. I age very slowly. Here, at the moment you are witnessing, I’m still not sure what’s going on. Let’s fast forward a bit.”