Cake (51 page)

“
Turn around…and assume the position, Sex.”

I lowered my legs and turned around, placing my hands on the wall, the bass music pounding through it and into my fingers, racing with my blood. I couldn’t stand still, and my hips swayed in time with the music.

“
You’ve been planning this,” I gasped, shuddering as Marcus’s massive hands skimmed expertly over my body, making me tremble.

“
I have missed you every day for the past four months. But I knew I could not look for you. I had given up my claim on you.”

His mouth was at my ear. I thought that it should have been busy doing something else other than talking.

“
What did you tell me?” I said. “Oh, yeah…Shut the hell up.”

I soon realized that I was going to have to change his name from Pretty to Octopus. While his teeth nibbled at the back of my neck, his hands were everywhere, touching and reclaiming each and every inch of my yearning body. The bronze halter I wore was skintight, so he had no trouble plucking my nipples to life with his teasing fingers. I arched into him and dropped a hand off the wall in an attempt to touch him, but he caught my wrist and pressed it back to the wall while his free hand unbuttoned my leather pants and pulled the zipper down. He stilled when he discovered I was bare underneath.

“
Naughty, naughty,” he chided playfully.

“
They were too tight,” I tried explaining.

“
Good,” he answered, his hand circling around my cock, pumping as he buried his nose in my hair. “I’ve missed your scent so much. I thought I would never smell it again. I actually had Chesterton go out to a bakery and buy pastries that smelled just like you,” he confessed.

What? I couldn’t concentrate on what he was saying, not while his hand was administering such pleasure to my body. A bakery? Who cared about some bakery?

Flipping my hair sideways, I bared my neck to him, and this time Marcus took the bait. I cried out loud as his fangs sank deep. He knew how to bite. He also knew how to move, and somewhere between the first suck and the third, I found my pants pushed down to my knees.

“
Keep your hands on the wall,” he instructed, squeezing with the hand that was pumping me, pushing at my portal with his other, his fingers tenderly opening me up to his touch before leaving my body.

I heard the sound of his own zipper, and then something blunt and slightly wet and slick and oh so good was pushing at my entrance.

“
You have the right to remain silent…but I do not think you will manage it,” Marcus challenged as he slid home, pushing himself inside me.

He was right. I couldn’t. I groaned and whimpered as Marcus rocked hard, thrusting and sucking, sometimes using a fast rhythm that almost drove me to my knees and then other times moving his hips tortuously slowly. He alternated between the two, driving up my volume even higher.

As far as I was concerned, there were just Marcus and me in that club, the rasping gasps of our heavy breathing the only sound to be heard, apart from the smacking of our bodies that were slamming against each other.

But apparently we were being too loud, making far too much noise, and possibly attracting attention, because all of a sudden, we weren’t able to make any sound at all.

Claudius sat at the top of the stairs, looking a little disgusted and amused at the same time by our antics. Marcus ignored him, giving me a couple of strokes and angling his thrusts to hit my prostate at the same time.

I exploded.

Pulling his fangs free, Marcus began to take me hard and fast until I felt him thrust one final time and then hold still as his cum surged into me. My body began to collapse, and as I dropped to my knees, he fell on top of me, still connected deep within, still continuing to thrust into me slowly as I lay pinned under him, working out his orgasm.

Too much…Oh God…Too fucking much.

The blue flames might have faded from my vision, but the natural, overwhelming sensations I was experiencing were making me shudder. I did a semi push-up, and Marcus drew himself out of me so I could kneel. Then I turned, pulling away from him until I could face him.

Start out as you mean to go on, I thought to myself as I reached up and wrapped a fist into his hair. And when I knew I had him secure in my grasp, I hauled back my other fist…and hit him as hard as I could.

Claudius saw my punch, and he dropped the binding he’d had on us, watching silently as Marcus toppled over, one hand at his jaw, staring at me, stunned, because he was still in that post-coital state. I must have looked quite a sight—naked from the waist down, dressed in a skintight bronze halter, wearing gold tinted sunglasses, and my mess of red hair flying in all directions. I reached out and brushed my fingers softly over where I’d hit.

“
I did that because I love you,” I said to him calmly. “And if you ever need to get that whip of yours out, you come to me. Is that clear?”

His eyes melted, and I melted. And if Claudius wasn’t standing so far away, he’d probably have melted too. There would have been little vampire puddles all over the place.

“
You have to spell things out for me, Marcus,” I told him, laying close up against him. “You’ve survived some really dark places, and you’ve dragged both Claudius and me down that road. But Claudius shouldn’t have to go any farther with you. I’m willing to walk a little bit more, but you’re going to have to come out of the darkness and meet me halfway.”

“
What do you want me to do?” he asked.

“
Treat me as your equal.”

“
You have always been my equal,” he said, his voice slightly put out.

“
No, I was weak and beneath you,” I said, shifting position and pulling my pants back up around my hips, not feeling confident enough yet to have a lover’s quarrel almost buck naked and oozing cum. “You were right to treat me with contempt,” I told him.

“
I have never…” I felt my gaze burn for a second as I glared at him, and Marcus stopped his protest. “What do you want from me, Little One?”

I said the first thing that popped in my head. “I want to fuck you.”

Marcus blinked. “You only had to ask,” he replied.

“
Oh, I…Um…really?” Crap, now I was blushing red like a tomato.

“
Ask, and you shall receive, Xavier,” he said. “I thought I had made that plain to you before.”

“
I want you to dance for me as well,” I blurted out.

“
I cannot dance in the same evocative way that you do, but I will certainly show you how I dance. It’s a poor effort compared to yours, but I will do it because you ask it of me,” Marcus said, standing up and reorganizing his appearance before stepping closer to me and offering me a hand up.

Reaching out, I took his hand and let him haul me to my feet. He stroked my hair back into some semblance of order, and then his palms cradled my face and urged it up. I closed my eyes and waited for his kiss, but it never came. I opened my eyes in puzzlement, and found him smiling down at me indulgently.

“
Come, Little One, your dance card is filled,” he said, hooking his arm through mine and leading me to the stairs, walking with me back down to the dance floor.

“
I am going out to hunt again,” Claudius mentioned as he followed us down the stairs, a small smile playing on his face.

Marcus nodded at our father, and then he escorted me to the center of the dance floor, kissing my hand before disappearing amongst the crowd in the general direction of the D.J.

Now that I was full, all the young bodies that gyrated around me simply annoyed me. I cringed as I got bumped from behind once…twice. Biting back my temper, I turned and looked at a beautiful, blond haired man. Desire and appreciation flooded off of him as he stared back at me.

“
I know you,” he said. “You’re that model, Sex. Your billboard poster is hot.”

“
Er…thanks.” He gave my hip another bump.

“
You want to get out of here?” he asked.

“
I’m with someone,” I told him, my eyes searching the crowd.

“
Uh huh…And where is he?”

An arm came over my shoulder, and a hand shoved the man away from me. “Right here,” Marcus drawled, dropping his hand down across my chest and pulling me back to his hot body possessively.

“
Yo, chill, man,” my would-be pursuer said, holding his hands up and backing away. “I was just asking. I wasn’t sampling the merchandise.”

I felt…cherished. The big monkey behind me was trying to change for me. And to think all I’d had to do was knock his block off.

The music dimmed as the voice of the D.J cut in over the loudspeakers. “We have a request for a special dance. Clear the floor, people.”

I went to move like everyone else, but Marcus caught my wrist.

“
I am a little rusty. I have not danced much since the 50’s, but bear with me, Little One,” he said, moving us out to center stage on the dance floor. The music that began playing was soft and romantic. I recognised it. The tune was “A Kiss from a Rose,” taken from a popular Batman movie.

Marcus took my hands and adopted his starting stance. A waltz; Marcus wanted to waltz with me.

I forced a knowing smile off my face, for I was about to give him a surprise of my own. My parents had tried to give Shayne and me a normal kind of childhood. Of course, at the time, I hadn’t known that competitive ballroom dancing wasn’t
a part of
normal
childhood. But I had been good at it until I was reduced to wearing bottle-bottomed glasses and had started gaining weight. Then I’d had no coordination at all, and losing heart, I had stopped going to classes, choosing to sit in front of my computer day and night and eat instead. But now, everything was perfect.

What happened next was something that happens rarely in life, an event so magical that you can only watch or experience it in awe.

We danced. I mean, we waltzed. And our steps were perfect, our bodies moving as one. I didn’t hear any snide comments being made about two men dancing together. Actually, I didn’t hear anything at all. My whole world was centered on Marcus and the moment.

The music came to its beautiful conclusion, and we stopped dancing and just stared into one another’s eyes, holding each other.

Suddenly there were cheers and riotous clapping, and the loud hollering and applause broke into the private little bubble that Marcus and I had insulated ourselves in.

Grinning at the crowd, Marcus let go of me, kissing my forehead tenderly and then lowering himself to one knee. I froze and could only watch in stunned silence as he pulled out a small jeweler’s box and opened it, offering the contents up to me. It was another ruby stud to replace the one I had given away.

“
Xavier, will you be my mate?”

Oh fuck…
no!
No. no, no, nonononono.

T
wenty-Three

A Darker Road

I had spotted the laser sight centering on Marcus’s chest just as he had lifted up the jeweler’s box to me, but I’d reacted a quarter of a second too late to avoid the shot hitting its target.

Shoving Marcus to one side, I took the brunt of the gunshot. It went through my back, leaving an exit wound in the front of my shoulder. I dropped to my knees, and Marcus caught me, his expression changing from that of puzzlement to concern as the scent of my pouring blood hit him.

“
Shit…” The word slipped out softly as pain ripped through me, and then in the room, screaming started, and humans began running everywhere.