Dark Embrace (Principatus) (18 page)

His mouth filled with saliva, and he lifted his arm from across her chest to trace the tip of his index finger down the line of her neck, following the path he knew her carotid artery took hidden beneath her flesh. Waiting to be punctured by his fangs.

But you don’t want to bite her, do you?

Ezryn let his gaze roam over Inari’s profile, the throb of her pulse a delicious beat under his fingertip. No, he didn’t want to bite her. Well, yes, he did—his body hungered for the sensation of piercing her flesh with his teeth—but it was a purely physical response. He wanted to bite her but he didn’t. Not until she wanted him to. And he knew she didn’t. Not yet.

Dark Ones, he was making no sense.

Nothing makes sense about this, Ezryn. Nothing.

So why was he still here? Holding her? Why wasn’t he biting her? Feeding from her?

Killing her? Just as he had been ordered to do by the overlord?

Dark guilt twisted through him and he closed his eyes. His time was running out. If he didn’t end her existence by sunup tomorrow, Harry would begin the methodical slaughter of hundreds of innocent vampires.

And if you do kill her, you will never be able to hold her like this again. Is that what you want?

He bit back a silent growl, shutting the confusing jumble of questions out of his mind. At this very point in time, he didn’t want to face the answers.

But you will have to. And very soon. You can’t escape that, no matter how much you want to close your eyes, hold Inari close and stay this way until the sun sets again.

Inari sighed in her sleep, as if she too thought the idea agreeable, and wriggled her backside closer to his groin. Ezryn’s cock twitched, and this time he couldn’t stop his growl. He’d never been so fucked up. Nor so wanted to make love to a woman again.

Then wake her and do just that.

The suggestion, as dangerous as it was, was too appealing to ignore. He smoothed his palm over her ribcage, down her belly to her—

Inari jerked awake and slammed her elbow into his rib.

“Hey, hey, hey,” he soothed, catching her wrist in his hand. Damn, she could hit hard. His side felt like it was on fire.

She snapped her stare to his face, her confused expression still glazed by sleep. “What…” she began, twisting on the mattress until her hip pressed against his stomach. “Did I doze off?”

He smiled, brushing a strand of her hair from her eyes. “You could say that.”

She pulled a face, her nose wrinkling. “Damn it, I can’t let that happen again.”

Ezryn raised his eyebrows. “What?”

“Fall asleep with a vampire in my home.”

He laughed, returning his hand to the flat plane of her belly just below her navel. “I’m not going to rob you, y’know.”

She pulled another face. “That’s not what I’m worried about.”

“Ah,” he said, nodding his head in mock seriousness. “I see. I won’t bite you either.”

“Ha!”

Ezryn gave her a level look. “Trust me.”

A slight frown dipped her eyebrows as she studied him. He didn’t say a word, and neither did she, but if his heart had been capable of beating, Ezryn knew it would have been thumping like a sledgehammer. He waited for her to say something. Instead, she rolled back onto her side and wriggled her body into the curve of his. “So, master vampire,” she said, her voice the definition of deliberate off-handedness, “what do you do when you’re not doing…whatever it is you do?”

Ezryn laughed, curled his arm around her waist and snuggled her closer to him. “I enjoy long, moonlit walks on the beach, Piña Coladas and getting caught in the rain. I’m not much into health-food junkies—their blood always tastes of tofu—and I’m pretty certain I like making love at midnight.” He laughed again, tightening his arm around her when she began to pull away from him. “Kidding. I’m kidding. Sorry.” She relaxed, but not before she gave him a mocking, sideways look. He smiled and ran his hand over her hip. Dark Ones, it was so smooth, so warm. “I spend most of my nights observing,” he said in all seriousness. “Listening.”

“To what?”

He shrugged, for the first time conscious of the real lack of obvious purpose to his existence. “The world.”

Unsettled discontent stirred in the pit of his gut.
Born to lead the vampire race, and you do nothing but protect it from afar.

Inari didn’t respond, and Ezryn found himself wishing for one of those inexplicable moments when he could hear what was going through her mind. When she stayed silent, he gave her a slight squeeze. “What about you? What are you doing when you’re not watching skin shows at the Pleasure Pussy?”

Another stretch of silence followed his question before Inari said, “Movie marathons. Specifically, cult musicals.”

The answer, completely not what Ezryn had expected, made him laugh. For the third time. When had he laughed so often so quickly? “Cult musicals? As in—”

“
Rocky Horror Picture Show
,
Little Shop of Horrors
,
This Is Spinal Tap
,
Mamma Mia
,” she finished for him, and he could hear the self-deprecating mirth in her voice.

“So you go to these movie marathons by yourself?”

She made a noncommittal sound. “Sometimes.”

A wave of jealousy crashed over Ezryn at the idea of Inari sitting in a dark movie theatre with someone else, their arms sharing a seat armrest, their knees close to touching. Tight, hot and undeniable jealousy. “Sometimes?”

It was her turn to shrug. The action made her breasts move against his arm in such a way his head spun. “Sometimes.”

The urge to press her to her back, pin her to the mattress and make her tell him who she went to the cinema with and where he could find them surged through him. He almost did. Until he felt her laughing. Silent shakes vibrated through her body into his. Tiny quakes that not only made his head spin but his cock twitch. “What so funny?” he growled, the turmoil of unprecedented emotions churning in his gut irritating him.

“I just had an image of you sitting in a movie theatre dressed in a black corset, suspenders and fishnets singing ’The Time Warp‘ at the top of your voice and throwing popcorn at the screen.”

“Right,” he muttered. “That’s it.” And he yanked her onto her back, slid atop her body and kissed her.

She kissed him back without hesitation or delay. She snaked her arms up around his neck, and her lips parted to his tongue.

The candor of her response sent him reeling. He’d kissed her many times since finding her in the Pleasure Pussy, but never once had she been so straightforward, so immediate in kissing him back. She slanted her lips over his and her tongue mated with his, purposeful and confident. Gone was the battle he knew had waged within her from the second he’d touched her flesh. Gone was the fierce determination to fight the chemistry between them. She kissed him, wholly and totally, fisting her hands in his hair in a grip far from tender, wrapping her legs around his.

He groaned, more than a little stunned, a lot more than a little turned on. The woman in his arms, the woman who enjoyed cult musicals and could decimate a demon with her bare hands, wasn’t just a woman of sublime sensuality. She was a sexual force to be reckoned with.

Dark Ones, he loved it.

And still I have to kill her.

He refused the thought, deepening the kiss instead, sucking on her tongue, drawing it into his mouth until he heard her moan. She arched beneath him, sliding her foot up the back of his leg to his ass, down to his calf and back up again. The simple sensation of her ankle rubbing over his cool flesh sent wicked pulses of lust into his belly, and he tore his mouth from hers, hungry to taste more of her. Before he could capture her breasts in his hands however, before he could claim one rock-hard nipple with his mouth, she growled and flipped him onto his back.

She straddled his hips, staring down at him through heavy-lidded eyes, her thick, black lashes hiding all but the tiny glint of her emerald-green irises. “Touch me,” she ordered, a very small, very cheeky smile curling the edges of her mouth. “I so want to feel dirty right now.”

Ezryn recognized a lyric from one of the musicals she’d confessed to enjoying in her command, but the waves of pleasure rolling over him at her sudden assertive turn destroyed any hope of remembering the next line. Or maybe it was the way she looked.

He gazed up at her. She was beautiful. So beautiful. “Fuck, you are gorgeous.”

Her smile stretched wider. “Thank you.” She leaned closer to his body and curled her fingers around his wrists, raising his hands to her breasts. “Now, touch me.”

He did as she told him, for the first time in his seven hundred years taking orders from a sexual partner. He flattened his palms over each heavy swell of flesh, massaging them, kneading them with growing pressure. She moaned and her eyes fluttered closed for a brief moment. “Oh…”

He bent upward, determined to capture one of her nipples with his mouth, but she pushed him back to the mattress, curling her lips in an entirely too sexy grin. “Not yet,” she stated with a quick shake of her head. She rolled her hips, stroking her sex up the length of his erection. Her wet sex. “Touch me.”

He returned his hands to her body, sliding them up her ribcage, over her breasts and back down to her hips. He closed his fingers around them, tugging her a little forward, desperate to align her pussy with his cock. She relinquished control—for exactly half a second, the folds of her sex parting to the domed head of his dick—before squeezing her thighs together and shaking her head once again. “Not yet.”

Ezryn laughed, even as his body began to ache with undeniable want. He flashed his fangs at her, smoothing his palms down the length of her thighs, following her calves to her ankles. Circling each one in a loose grip, he levered his body upward again, feathering his lips over the base of her throat. The throb of her pulse beneath her fine, delicate skin made his mouth fill with saliva, and he felt his fangs lengthen. Dark Ones, he could bite her now. He could—

Kill her. Or Harry will destroy your—

She pushed him back to the bed, a glint in her green eyes. She raised herself slightly from his hips and he groaned, the loss of her damp heat pressed to his cock beyond painful. Without a word, she extended her body, hovering just above him on all fours, her gaze holding his as her nipples brushed two tormenting lines up his chest. He groaned again, cock jerking, balls aching.

“Touch me,” she whispered, her lips level with his.

He did as she ordered, skimming his hands from her legs up to her ass cheeks. He explored each one, reveling in the toned muscles bunched under her flawless skin.
Not just hours of hard work and dedication, Ezryn,
he thought, running his fingers over her butt.
Centuries. An ass this perfect comes from a lifetime of hard work. A lifetime of sweat and…

He dipped his fingers in the cleft between each cheek, finding the puckered hole of her anus, and he lost the train of thought. Oh, what would it be like to penetrate her there?

“Not yet.” Inari’s whisper, barely audible in her trembling moan, filled his cock with new desire and agonizing anticipation.

Nostrils flaring, jaw clenched, he moved his hands from her ass and slid them up the line of her spine to the defined angles of her shoulder blades. He gazed up at her, the featherlike caress of her nipples on his chest driving him insane. If he wanted to, he could yank her to his body and thrust his cock into her pussy. His arms already circled her, and she was in such a tenuous position, suspended as she was above him by only the strength of her hands and knees. He could yank her to his body and drive his length into her sex, burying himself in her tightness in one swift move.

And then sink your fangs into her neck and drain her until she is an empty, lifeless shell.

He ground his teeth, anguished conflict drilling into his chest. No.

Are you really going to sacrifice hundreds of vampires, those who declared their loyalty to you in the face of Haral’s wrath, for a Principatus? An assassin of the Highest of Powers? The born enemy of your kind?

Yes.

No.

Dark Ones, all he wanted to do was forget who they both were, what they both were and make love to her until they were too weak to move.

He ran his hands over her back and then to the side swell of her hanging breasts. For the moment, Inari was in charge, and he loved every minute of her control. Admired it. Was turned on by it.

He brushed the back of his knuckles over the outer curve of each breast, watching her face. She gazed back at him, her breath ragged. Shallow. Still, she didn’t move, the heat of her body, so close to his and yet a world away, stimulating the ancient vampire he truly was. He’d never released that side of himself during sex. Not once in his three hundred years, but at this very second, he wondered how much longer he could contain it. For as long as he could remember, the demonic creature he truly was hungered for only one thing—blood. Tonight, it hungered for something more. And she rested above him on all fours, the musk of her juices a heady perfume on the air as she watched his face with unreadable eyes.

Not much longer. I can’t last much longer.

He moved his hands to capture her breasts completely, squeezing each one with a force he knew was not gentle. She sucked in a sharp breath, her eyelids fluttering closed, her pulse quickening. The potent power of her blood surged through her veins. He could feel it. Dark Ones, it was beautiful.