Kick The Candle (Knight Games) (20 page)

I leaned into him, not from fatigue but to indulge the sensory drive of my body. Even through the ache of my muscles and joints, a different kind of discomfort bloomed from my core, an ache for him. My body knew what it wanted, what it needed.

He finished rinsing my hair, and our eyes locked. A torrent of energy and magic spiraled through my body, building as we stood skin-to-skin. The corners of his eyes wrinkled, but he shook his head, breaking the connection.

Reaching for another bottle, he coated my hair in conditioner that smelled just as good as the shampoo, then grabbed a washcloth from the rack outside the door. He worked the soap inside the cloth, then placed my hands on his shoulders. “Can you hold yourself up?”

I nodded, unable to speak around the lump in my throat.

He kneeled down in front of me, carefully lifting my right foot and lathering it with the rag. He worked his way up my calf, around the back of my knee, and up my leg. As he neared the apex of my thighs, I gripped his shoulders more desperately, not for balance but because my body burned for him. My breath came in shallow pants. He switched to the other foot, the other leg. When he reached my crest, he stood, lathering my abdomen, then my back.

I tried not to register my disappointment, as he seemed to skip the parts of me I wanted him to wash the most. My nipples were straining, peaked with anticipation. My core throbbed with desire. And under it all was this hunger, an unnatural, inhuman craving for his blood.

Supporting the base of my neck, he tilted my head back, rinsing the conditioner from my hair, then positioned me, a rag doll in his arms, under the spray to wash the lather away. I slipped my arms around his neck and pressed myself against him until no space was left between our wet bodies. He wanted me too. I could feel the hard length of him against my belly. Why was he hesitating?

“Please,” I whispered into his ear. I followed up my plea by wrapping my lips around his earlobe and sucking gently.

He moaned. “Are you strong enough? I don’t want to hurt you.”

“I will be. I need this…to heal.”

“My blood first, then.”

Unlike my skin that moved aside easily for Rick’s teeth, I had to cut or bite him for access to his blood. I didn’t have my blade, and I was too weak to bite through his skin, so he did the honors. With a partially shifted hand, he dragged his talon across the space where his neck met his chest. As his flesh opened for me, I latched on, suckling the sweet ambrosia that was his blood. Warmth and strength spread outward from my stomach. My hand trailed down his abdomen to his thick shaft, partially sheathing him with my palm. He gasped. I stroked as I drank, until his hips began to thrust into the ring of my grip.

Feeling stronger, I pulled back and licked the opening in his flesh. It knit together, healing itself. He didn’t wait a moment to replace flesh with flesh. His mouth came down on mine, his velvet tongue stroking inside until I thought I might explode from need. He bit my lower lip gently, then worked his way along the bone of my jaw and up to my ear.

“I haven’t finished washing you,” he whispered. I heard the soap jostle in the dish and then felt him back away. He built up a lather between his palms, replaced the bar. Those soapy fingers gripped my waist and twirled me around. Sandwiched between his large hands, one on my belly and one on my lower back, he slid both down, cupped my sex, worked his soapy fingers along my most sensitive area. I hinged forward, catching myself on the shower door, my chest pressing into the cool glass. His other hand rounded over my ass, washing me in the spray. Back and forth, around and around. I arched my back to give him easier access.

Every time we’d had sex before felt like a feeding, pleasurable, erotic, his excitement pulsing through our connection and mingling with mine. I could tell he was holding back, keeping me from seeing all of his emotions. But oddly, his guarded soul didn’t put a damper on my attraction. After the last twenty-four hours, I felt exposed and vulnerable. I wanted him to own me, to control me. I wanted to be his in every way possible.

I pressed into his massaging hand, needing more. The spray rinsed over me, his palm smoothing the soap away. I inhaled sharply as he pressed against my backside while his hands swept up my sides to knead my breasts.

“Please,” I begged. “Take me.”

He pinched my nipples, hard, making me moan with ecstasy. The head of him pressed at my opening and I eased back until he was completely inside of me. His hand swept down my side, to the back of my leg and hitched one knee up, setting my foot on the ledge of the tub. I answered by raising my hips, to get a deeper angle. That was all it took. Gripping my shoulders for leverage, his hips unhinged. The glass door rattled with his advance and retreat. At the same time, he reached between my legs, massaging and stroking until the pressure grew to the point of no return. I exploded around him, my sex constricting as I called out his name again and again. I held nothing back. If our connection was open at all, he must’ve felt the change, that he owned me in that moment. But I felt nothing in return. He was closed off to me.

Patiently, he slowed while my body calmed, then pulled out just long enough to spin me around. He was back under me in a heartbeat, bending his knees to thrust inside of me from tip to base in one lithe move. He gripped me under the ass, and I wrapped my legs around his hips, my back crashing against the opposite shower wall. Joined, he stopped, ran his nose up the side of my face and looked at me with hooded, black eyes.

“I am yours,
mi cielo
. You own me.”

“I don’t—”

“You hold my chain as surely as if I were your dog.” The words were matter of fact. No hint of resentment.

“You’re not—” Didn’t he know he had it backwards? I was his.

He pressed a finger over my lips and tilted his hips so he was deep inside. “You own me, but I am a jealous slave, and if you can not be mine in return, I can only assume you are better off without me.” In and out, slowly he stroked. “Are you better off without me?”

“No,” I moaned.

“Can you be mine?”

“Yes!”

Holding on tight to his neck, I braced myself as he began to slam into me in earnest, his entire body fully engaged in the act. And wasn’t that a turn on? Watching him lose himself pushed me over the edge again, my orgasm milking his until the spray of the water ran cold and my fingers turned pruney.

Rick reached back and shut the water off, then kissed me at the base of my neck.

“Do you need to feed?” I asked him.

“Not yet. You’re not strong enough.”

“I am. I feel good.” It wasn’t a lie. The sex and the blood had chased away the remaining ache. I grabbed the nape of his neck and pulled, while tipping my head to give him access.

He pressed his lips to my throat but didn’t bite.

“Please, Rick. I don’t want the last set of teeth in my neck to be Julius’s.”

For a moment, he hesitated. Then, with a possessive growl, he struck. My flesh moved aside, accommodating his teeth. I stroked the back of his head as he drank from me.

S
everal hours later, I changed into a heavy pair of Rick’s sweats and allowed him to drive me home. Once he established the house was safe, he left, and I climbed the stairs to the attic to find Nightshade. I was done going out without her. Not with my face on Bathory’s supernatural wanted posters.

As I turned the key in the lock and entered my most sacred abode, Poe dive-bombed me at the door, flapping black wings and squawking like a chicken. “Poe! What the hell?”

“Where have you been?” Poe demanded. “Your phone has been ringing off the hook. I can’t answer it, you know.” He waved a wing in the air. “No opposable thumbs. And some of the messages sounded quite urgent.”

“I’ve been recovering at Rick’s.”

“Recovering? Is that what they call it these days? You do look better than the last time I saw you outside the Thames Theater. You were the color of death. I thought we might be worm fodder.”

“We?”

“If you die, I die, remember?”

“Death sounds so permanent. Wouldn’t it be more accurate to say we’d be recycled?”

He bobbed his black beak introspectively. “I’m not ready to be recycled, Miss Witch.”

“Me neither. So, who left messages?”

“Your father, every day times three. Logan, my God that man needs a hobby, and your friend Michelle.”

“I think the leprechaun who poisoned me stole my handbag. I’m sure they’re just freaking out because I’m not answering my cell phone.”

Poe flapped his wings and took off for the corner of the attic where I kept my trunk full of witchy paraphernalia. He grasped something in his talons and flew it over to me, dropping it in my hands.

“My purse!”

“I had to claw the little shit’s face for it, but he was more interested in delivering you to the vampiress Bathory than keeping your bag.”

I grabbed Poe by the shoulders and planted a huge kiss on the end of his beak. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

He chuckled, then cast me off with a ruffle of his feathers. “You realize you weren’t this excited when I saved your life from the mountain troll? My God, what’s in the bag? Rare, uncut diamonds?”

I reached in and retrieved my smart phone. The screen was cracked but still useable. “Better. My life, in digital form.” The voicemail icon displayed a red number in the double digits. I jabbed it with my finger.

Damn!
Logan sounded beside himself with worry and Michelle was pissed. She’d covered a shift for me at the hospital. My father’s real estate agent voice devolved into his father’s voice and then to something I wasn’t proud to be related to. He’d tried pleading with me to call him again and again and bribing me with various apartments in the city (one of which was in Logan’s building), until finally he left a message that the Nekomata sale would close on Friday, December 20th at ten in the morning. I’d have to be moved out by then.

“Shit, Poe. Julius told me the nekomata are waiting for the winter solstice. They need the energy of a celestial event to open the vault that the book is stored in, the one Julius thinks is under
this
house.”

“The winter solstice happens December 21st.”

“Exactly. What the fuck are we going to do?”

Poe didn’t have the answers but he did demonstrate a very un-birdlike behavior. He began to pace. “Can you ask your father to push back the closing?”

“We’re not exactly on speaking terms.” I tapped my foot nervously.

An exaggerated sigh told me what Poe thought of my excuse. “Might you consider a reunion, considering it is the fate of humanity at stake?”

“Of course, I’ll ask him, Poe. I’m not stupid. I’m just saying that he might not be receptive. Especially not with Seraphina around.”

“Who’s Seraphina?”

“Dad’s new girlfriend.”

Poe fluttered over to the desk and rested his chin on the tips of his wings. “Do tell. Is she a bimbo?”

“I wish. No, she’s gorgeous and intelligent, and as condescending as they come.”

“Ahh.”

“Anyway, she’s got my dad on this kick that I should move closer to them. It’s going to be a hard sell pushing back the date.”

“Then we have to move the book,” Poe said.

I spread my hands in frustration. “I told you, I don’t know where the book is!”

“Not that book. The
Book of Light
! God help us if they obtain both of them. They’d be unstoppable.”

“You’re right. I’ll ask Rick to guard it for me.”

The raven groaned. “Bad idea.”

“Why?”

“Rick’s cottage is one story, right?”

“Yeah. You’ve been there before.”

“Here’s the rub, Spam-witch, if I’m not mistaken, your elemental power source is air. His is Earth.”

“Yeah, Rick may have mentioned that to me once before.”

“You store the
Book of Light
in his stone cottage and you will literally be hiding your light under a bushel. It will render you powerless. Not advisable if Nekomata does get his hands on the
Book of Flesh and Bone
.”

“Fuck. Where, then? Maybe I should have my father buy me that apartment in town.”

Poe opened his beak to answer me when the doorbell rang. “Who might that be?”

It rang again. I blinked slowly and crossed my fingers. “Let’s hope it’s not Mr. Nekomata. I’m not sure I could spare the opportunity to kill him.” Just in case, I grabbed Nightshade from her space near the wall, before jogging down the stairs. I checked the side window first and breathed a sigh of relief before opening the door.

“Logan—”

“Jesus H. Christ, Grateful. How could you do this to me?” His face was red.

“Hello, Logan. Nice to see you again. Please, come in.”

He was not amused. He paced into the house, fuming. “You storm out of my office, disappear before I can catch up to you, and then don’t answer your phone for two days? I thought you were dead in a ditch somewhere!”

I stared at him, mouth agape, never having seen him so angry.

“Well? What happened?” He spread his hands expectantly.