Good As Dead (Dying To Meet You Book 1) (14 page)

When his tongue entered her, she moaned out his name. When his mouth sucked her inside him, she screamed and when his tongue flickered across her clit over, and over again, she lost it. Her eyes scrunched themselves shut and her fingers gripped the satin coverlet as if she was afraid she might fall. Her hips were bouncing up and down, convulsions ripping through her body, and the colours that passed under her eyelids were indescribable. She had never felt anything like it. If sex with a vampire could be likened to a drug, it would be heroin, addictive and deadly. Finally, when the spasms became too painful to bear, she placed her hands around his head and pushed him backwards, gasping for breath.

Mercer lifted his head, cast his eyes slowly over her body, and grinned. “That’s your first orgasm, my little witch, but I don’t think it’s going to be your last.”

“Oh God, I don’t think I’m going to survive this,” Lainey said with a ragged sound to her voice.

“Then I’ll see what I can do about bringing you back to life.”

He gave her a sharp bite upon her thigh, and Lainey jumped up in shock. Her mischievous vampire just laughed and pushed her back down. There was no fighting him. Her body was languid in the aftermath of orgasm, her limbs felt heavy and her mind had gone missing in some dark and pretty place. If Mercer thought he could get her to move again this evening, she figured he’d have his work cut out for him.

That thought lasted less than three seconds because when he brought the thick hard planes of his body up to cover hers, and ran the sharp stubble of his jaw gently along the line of her neck, her eyes rolled back in her head and a series of disjointed moans and whimpers left her lips. This time though, he was merciless and she welcomed it.

Rubbing his erection at the entrance to her legs, he dipped inside her just enough to tantalise but not enough to satisfy. Wrapping her legs around his backside, his lips kissed a fevered line up her throat until he found what he was looking for, and then he really went to work.

With long slow thrusts of his cock, he rocked her body backward and forward against his whilst his mouth worked magic upon hers. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, and couldn’t move a muscle to escape him. However, escape was the last thought on her mind. Pressing up, and pushing her body into his, she ground herself against him urging to him to hurry his pace, her body already priming itself for another round of intoxicating pleasure. This time, she wanted everything. The idea of him pounding inside her, hard and inexorably fast made her throat go dry. She wanted oblivion and she knew he could give it to her, but the infernal vampire would not be hurried.

“There’s no rush,” he whispered, nipping her ear but that’s where he was wrong. There was a desperate burning need that was swallowing her whole and it screamed to be sated. Banging her fists against his back, unable to say a word whilst his lips were devouring hers, her eyes implored him to take pity on her. She was mindless, frantic, and gasping for breath, but he hadn’t even broken a sweat.

Somehow managing to wrench her head away from his, she whimpered. “Harder, faster, please, I don’t think I can’t wait any longer.” Her nails raked at his back and she barely knew what she was doing.

“Ah…but you
can
wait, precious. And the experience will be all the sweeter for it.”

His mouth drowned her screams of frustration as his tongue licked her impassioned words into nothingness.

The bastard was true to his word. Pinning her arms to her sides with ease, he feasted himself between her legs over, and over again. When she thought she could take no more, he would give her a tiny nip and leave her throbbing in agony while he went to work on her breasts, nipples, and throat. If she became too noisy, he would drink in her cries until she was almost too exhausted to protest and then finally, when there were tears of exasperation running down her face, he took pity on her.

With his magnificent body poised just inches from her face, allowing her eyes to swim in the perfection of his beauty, Mercer drove into her begging body and began a steady rhythm that now had some power behind it. Lifting her hips up into his hands once again, he allowed his body to slam into hers with just enough friction between them to drive her crazy. Time, and time again, he gripped her buttocks tightly in his hands as he pushed into her. She came screaming after the third fierce thrust, and then rode out wave after wave of brilliant, blissful contractions as he dragged out her climax. When she thought she could take no more, exhaustion beginning to override every cell in her body, he threw his head back and with a guttural hiss roared out his own pleasure.

With all thoughts of blood and death firmly wiped from her mind, she sank immediately into sleep.

Chapter 10

Mercer rolled over removing his heavy weight from Lainey’s body. Propping himself up on an elbow, he looked down at her sleeping form and smiled. It’d been one hell of a session, and the anticipation of the last day had only fuelled the desire to bury himself deep inside her. The sex hadn’t been a disappointment. She’d been incredibly tight, dripping wet and almost as eager as he had been. In fact, when she got revved up, the woman turned into a snarling tigress, kicking, screaming, scratching, and biting. He didn’t mind that at all. What he did mind, however, was his growing attraction to the witch.

At the point of climax, her neck had automatically drawn his mouth, and his fangs had been itching to emerge. It had taken all of his restraint to keep them from lunging forward to complete the mating process. Whilst the sex had been good for a vampire, it was nothing compared to the bliss of taking blood at the point of orgasm. It was that merging of minds, and the feeling of completeness, which he missed. Well, not to mention how it enhanced his fun by about five hundred per cent. Still, that was all wishful thinking since there was never going to be a future for him with a witch, as much as he might hunger for this one. What happened to Gaius had taught him that much at least.

Dragging the coverlet carefully over Lainey so as not to wake her, he took a moment to close his eyes and reenergize. It had been quite an evening. Playing it back in his head, he tried to remember all that Athanasius had said. There was something important that he’d missed. Racking his brains as he went through his memory, he finally came upon the thing which had been bugging him.

She has developed something a little unsavoury for our tastes and she needs to be questioned, and then destroyed.

Mercer couldn’t begin to imagine what Lainey Hargreaves had done but it was serious enough to warrant several sets of people, both vampire and witch, to be on the hunt for her blood. When she woke up, they’d need to get to the bottom of the problem, one way or another. For now, he’d let her sleep away the nightmares of the past few hours. He needed to go back outside anyway, and help Guillaume tidy up the mess. It was the least he could do after having blown up half his back garden.

Pulling on a pair of Levi’s, he grabbed a thick wool sweater and began lacing up his heavy-duty boots. Looking at his watch, he realised that more than two hours had passed since he’d been upstairs, and it was quite possible that Guillaume had already done all the hard work. He hoped not. His friend was going to be pissed enough as it was. At least they’d managed to keep everyone out of the house.

Flinging the double doors of the chateau wide open, he embraced the icy wind that met him full force and inhaled a lungful of air. Scouting from left to right, he detected no movement nor did he smell the scent of death, which should have been everywhere. Something was wrong.

Taking a few cautious steps into the garden, he risked a whisper. “Guillaume?”

The only reply was the howl of the wind. Gritting his teeth, he ran around to the back garden where they had been fighting only hours before and he couldn’t help but suck in a sharp breath of amazement. There were no dead bodies, no mud, fire or shrapnel. There were no bullet casings or ammunition of any kind and most importantly, there was no damage. None. Not a leaf was out of place. It was as if he had completely imagined the events of earlier. The lawn was in pristine condition and the grass was dry. Swinging his body around, and wondering if he was going crazy, his eyes focused on the Chateau’s gates. They stood unmarred and neatly closed.

What the hell? Guillaume was good, but he wasn’t that good. This looked like the work of a…

“A witch.”

The Temptress

Her voice was loud and yet a beautiful and seductive whisper. It echoed throughout his entire body. She had Mercer ensnared, and mesmerised with nothing more than a word.

At first glance, he could have mistaken her for an angel. Floating slowly down to earth, she wore a brilliant magenta gown and the folds of her dress whipped around her body in the violent wind. Her eyes were startling—glowing with an effect similar to a vampire’s, but the colours were different. A pale violet seemed to irradiate the entire surface of her eye, and her pupils were nothing more than tiny pinpricks of black. The whole of her body seemed to burn with the same luminescence, and she lit up the sky with a beauty that rivalled the full moon. Simply put, she was incredible.

In her hands, she held a ball of purple energy, which crackled and sparked as her hands moved around it. Tendrils of power floated from the ball, whirling and spiralling around her body as if caressing its master. A vortex of power displaced the air around her and tongues of lilac flame shimmered and glistened giving her a startling halo. Although she smiled at him, he didn’t make the mistake of underestimating her. The woman was deadly.

As if she’d read his thoughts, with a casual flick of her fingers she released the ball from her hands and it flew at him, spitting flashes of energy with malevolent intent. He couldn’t move a finger to escape it. Bracing himself for the worst, he knew this was going to hurt but he was damned if he was going to give in easily.

A jolt of power hit him, not unlike being struck by a lightning bolt, and the shock punched straight through his body. Everything tightened and locked, and the next thing he knew, he found himself falling face forward towards the ground. Surprisingly, after the shock had passed, there was little residual pain but he knew nothing in his body was going to work quite the way it should for a while.

“That’s how you greet a witch, on your knees, vampire, with your head down. I’d remember that for next time if I were you.”

“Hello Kalliope,” Mercer couldn’t raise his head from the lawn, but he knew she would hear him.

“I’ve waited a long time to meet you, Mercer. Your brother’s description does not do you justice.”

“Gaius.” Mercer whispered the name and felt his body shake. The crushing wall of grief, which he’d managed to compartmentalise for the past day, came crashing back down upon him. “You killed Gaius.”

The ground began to move as she walked towards him.
His warped sense of humour found it amusing that the grass seemed to part on either side of her feet as if not wanting to touch the evil residing within her body.
When the hem of her dress began to blow around his face, he felt his head lifted effortlessly in her hands and she stared at him.

“You look so damn pretty when your eyes are immersed in pain, Mercer.” She smiled at him but the smile never reached her eyes, though her lips spread from ear to ear. “Do you want to know how much fun we had? He made such a great pet, Mercer. I’m rather hoping you might make a good replacement.”

Her hypnotic voice stopped and her eyes went dark. The next thing he knew, images of Gaius played across his brain. He couldn’t fight the invasion and he wasn’t even sure that he wanted to. These might be the last images of his brother he would ever see and even though he knew they would be awful, just seeing his face again would bring tears to his eyes. He had missed his twin so damned much. The ache grew stronger every day and the hole left by his passing was so big, nothing would ever fill it. The longing for his own death had lessened with Lainey’s presence, but now it seemed to bloom brightly before him.

The first image of his brother was of his naked body shackled to a brick wall. Thick leather cuffs encased his wrists and ankles, and thick heavy-duty eyebolts had been drilled into the brick in order to restrain him. The floor beneath him was a mess, littered with clay, mortar, and cement as Gaius had done his utmost to try to break free. The muscles in his back were rigid with the strain of having his limbs spread wide, and the faint tremor they displayed indicated he had been this way for a while. His face was in profile, as it angled over his shoulder to glare at the tormentor behind him. The planes of his cheekbones were more angular than Mercer remembered making it clear that Kalliope had not allowed him to feed. She wanted him weak and compliant. She was going to break him down bit by bit, starving him until he became a beast she could control.

Caught up in the vision, he watched as she caressed a thick leather tawse in her hand and began walking towards her victim. Gaius’s face turned stony and he directed his gaze back towards the wall as if trying to deny her the pleasure of his pain, but she had already thought of that. With a flick of her fingers, his neck twisted his head back so that she forced his eyes to follow her every move.

Fluttering her eyelashes as she looked up at him, the pale lilac of her eyes glowing with a different heat now, she smiled. “I love it when they fight. You are going to fight me, aren’t you, Gaius? If you prove to be a disappointment, I’ll have to search out your brother to serve in your place. You wouldn’t want that, would you?”

Gaius’s face paled, and there was a small shake of his head.

“I didn’t think so,” she purred. Attaching a thick leather belt around his neck, she buckled it tightly around his throat and nailed the end through the wall.

“Why are you doing this?” Gaius’s beautiful blue eyes were searching Kalliope’s face for some kind of reason, some idea as to why his life was being served straight up to the devil.

She deliberately misunderstood him. “Because you look cute with black leather bands all over you, and when you tire of my whips, canes and paddles, the belt won’t allow your neck to drop. You’ll be forced to watch every second of your torment.” She smiled. “I’m curious…will your brother feel it through you?” Gaius thinned his lips and the incensed glare he gave her was obviously enough of an answer. “I thought so. Well, we’d better get started then. I have a feeling it will take a lot of work to get you where you need to be.”

The tawse crashed into his body over, and over, and each strike left a line of red fire imprinted on Gaius’s back. Although he had received more than fifty of the vicious blows, he never gave her the satisfaction of a single whimper or moan, but that had been only the beginning.

Mercer quietly fumed in the wet grass. He had finally found the witch who had evaded him for the last ten years, and it didn’t look like the intricate revenge he had planned was going to happen any time soon. His body wasn’t obeying a single command he sent it. He was powerless to lift even a finger. What was even more annoying was that Kalliope’s voice made Mercer hard, and he loathed her especially fiercely for that.

The vision changed abruptly into another. It was a couple of years later judging by the more prominent ridges against Gaius’s ribcage and the total emaciation of his muscle tone. He was still naked, and this time he was crawling along the floor. He remembered the image well. His brother had tried his hardest to shield his thoughts from him through the first couple of years, and he’d only shared the most intense bouts of pain with Mercer. He’d had no choice over that. Even the strongest vampire couldn’t concentrate on doing anything when his body was screaming in agony.

Mercer knew the moment Gaius had lost the battle for control. Starved to the point where his brother barely knew what his own name was, the daily beatings and torture sessions Kalliope provided took care of the rest. His mind was a mess and he no longer had the strength to keep his fractured thoughts at bay.

This was Gaius’s first submission to the witch, and the beginning of the end for Mercer’s twin. Now wearing a leash of steel chain attached to the leather belt around his neck with the end held circled around Kalliope’s wrist, he followed wherever she led. His body obeyed her every word and there remained only a broken shell of what had once been a truly remarkable vampire.

Mercer remembered Kalliope lifting her skirts and spreading her legs wide as she demanded Gaius bring her to orgasm. That was the day the fire died in Gaius’s eyes for he no longer had the energy, or will, to disobey. The beatings were unbearable, but they were nothing to the fireworks she ensured exploded in his head at each display of disobedience. Every day his twin prayed to anyone who would listen for the opportunity to end his life and it was those thoughts, which had killed something inside Mercer. Trying to inspire Gaius with the will to live and communicating his continuing efforts to find him, Mercer had used anything he thought might help him get through his ordeal. That day, however, Gaius had closed his mind to his twin, and he hadn’t seen or heard anything regarding him since.

The last images he remembered receiving were the ones now forced through his brain showing him the look of utter defeat in Gaius’s eyes as he struggled to his knees, his shaking hands, and his shattered mind. The words,
No, No, No
, had been a permanent mantra for weeks, but even those had fled. The only things left behind were a flat empty stare and the actions of an automaton, now only capable of doing what she commanded.

Mercer watched, his heart aching for his twin when he saw him nestled between her legs, closing his eyes as if that might block out the horror of his compliance whilst he began to lap at her sex. Kallipe began to bark out orders as her body twisted under his tongue, and whilst Gaius obeyed them as well as he was able, he remained mute. The art of conversation had been lost and it would never return.

Of course, it hadn’t bothered the witch. He remembered her gasp of triumph as Gaius had finally done exactly as she bid him. Her hands fisting in his hair as her body shuddered in pleasure, her nails raking along the thin pale skin of his neck. Her hands had been all over his body, and though Gaius could not contain his revulsion at her touch, he hadn’t pushed them away. He had accepted his place at her feet. When Kalliope climaxed, her groin pushing wildly into his face and her nails drawing blood, she wore the widest smile Mercer had ever seen for she knew she had won.