Love Bites (18 page)

She nodded and rose to her knees to drag his shirt over his head. He was a wonderland of supple skin and bunched muscles. Her hands raced over his back, then swept the planes and hollows of his torso. She flicked the buckle open and yanked the belt free of its loops, tossing the buttery leather aside with a child’s glee.

Finally, he would be hers again. This time it was for life.

Moving quickly, she freed his straining cock and licked her lips as she eyed her treat. “Mine,” she growled, making sure her gaze reflected every ounce of her desire.

She waited, half-expecting him to spout some He-Man vampire spiel about how she was his woman, but that didn’t mean the reverse was true. But he only threaded his fingers through her hair, guiding her where she desperately needed to be.

Commands like that, she didn’t mind.

Sydney scooted down and bathed his cock with her tongue. Then she enveloped him, taking his silken-steel length until he filled her throat.
Oh, yes
. How she’d missed this. He filled her in a way no one else could. Overwhelmed her senses like no one else ever had.

It was time she returned the favor.

She sucked hard and palmed his sac, scraping his sensitive skin with her nails. His breathing quickened. How she loved watching his chest rise and fall. Knowing she was the only one who could make him feel this way. As his shaft pulsed with blood, an almost indescribable ache grew in her pussy.

And in her fangs.

She flexed her throat. His broken groan vibrated through her body as he started to pump his hips. Deeper and harder, he drove between her parted lips, and she took him, her fangs lengthening until their points dug into his stiff flesh.

Waves of heat drenched her until it seemed as if fire ate at her skin, burning her from the inside out. Sensations collided and coalesced in her mind, in her body. His salty liquid teasing her tongue, the subtle expansion of his erection as he neared orgasm. Her own endless need, so consuming she had to hold her thighs apart to keep from imploding.

And through everything, smoldering gold eyes leeched the last shred of resistance she had left.

“Do it.
Now
.”

Sydney knew what he wanted. This time, she understood what following her urges meant. She hadn’t decided to bite him on a whim. This was who she was, no matter how hard she’d tried to deny the fact. She was a vampire. Even if she hadn’t gone all the way yet, she would. To turn away from what she was meant to become would jeopardize the truest love she’d ever known.

She slid his erection from her mouth and rubbed the pads of her fingers in concentric circles to spread the moisture. Kellan’s hands clenched in her hair, then gentled as he bundled the damp tendrils and lifted them off her neck. She licked her lips again, letting the dark hunger fill her. The scent of his desire, the relentless pound of his heart, and the tension in his touch all made the need that much more powerful.

“Yes, do it. Please.”

At Emily’s breathless urging, Sydney shifted to watch her best friend push herself over the edge. Emily’s lips spread over her baby fangs as her own fingers brought her to the peak. She’d shed her nightgown somewhere along the way, and her firm, dusky-tipped breasts bounced with each stroke.

Arousal flushed her skin, danced in her gray eyes. Somehow even the blood that coated her mouth—she’d proven herself not a fastidious eater—and smeared her cleavage only enhanced her allure.

Syd smiled and met her lover’s heated gaze. She peeled her lips back to reveal fangs already distended. Slowly, she lowered her mouth to the engorged head of his cock, throbbing so temptingly with blood and more. Already she anticipated the salt mixing with the coppery liquid that would flood her throat as he came and came.

The last thing she saw was his smile. The intensity and the power of it. Such beauty in that smile. So much love.

Poised to strike, she almost missed the flicker of movement in the doorway. A lightning blur of black and blond streaked into the room just as Emily’s rapturous moans crescendoed into climax.

Sydney jerked back on a strangled cry as Kellan was ripped away from her. She blinked, sure that would make the scene in front of her change. As though it wasn’t her lover fighting with someone clad all in black, like death himself, despite the angelic blond hair waving down his back.

While punches and curses flew, Sydney leaped to her feet, hoping to get some help from Emily. But from the look on her face—an odd mix of fascination and afterglow—she wouldn’t be much help.

Syd gritted her teeth and whirled around to see the hand-to-hand hadn’t ceased. If anything, the fight was even more violent. Even more bloody. And the sounds they were making—

Dear God. How she could have been so dense? Kellan was fighting with
Lucas
.

She glanced back at her best friend. And the reason why was curled up like a satisfied kitten in the center of the bed.

“Goddammit, stop it!” She could handle this. On her own. For God’s sake, she knew Lucas. She’d slept with him twice. He’d listen to reason.

She’d
make
him listen.

This wasn’t Kellan’s fault. Or even hers, not really. Emily had brought the change upon herself, and Lucas would just have to come to terms with that.

The blinding white flash of fangs in the darkness shocked her into stillness. Somehow he’d pinned Kellan, who’d ceased fighting and now lay prone on the floor with fangs at his neck. Why wasn’t he fighting him anymore? He was incredibly strong, but he didn’t move from his supine position. Instead, he stared up at Lucas, his skin pale, his features drawn tight, as if all the fight had drained out of him.

Did he actually want to die?

Terror bubbled in her stomach as she quelled the urge to rush forward. He couldn’t kill him. They were both vampires. And Kellan was Lucas’s best friend—

Sydney stepped forward, but Lucas’s hiss in her direction nearly sent her to her knees. The absolute destruction in his eyes—eyes that blazed as scarlet as the blood that still clung to Emily’s lips—blasted through her.

She took his look for what it was. A warning.
Stay back, or you’ll be next
.

But when he again lowered his fangs to Kellan’s neck, she didn’t think. She reacted. Springing into a leap, she landed on Lucas’s back. He attempted to buck her off, as she’d known he would. But panic and love and fear had given her strength, and he couldn’t knock her free. And she sank the fangs she’d readied for Kellan deep into Lucas’s artery.

***

The dark greeted him as he climbed toward consciousness, but it wasn’t the cold bleakness he’d come to associate with a million other mornings. Because this morning, he didn’t wake alone.

Warm lips slid over his thigh, her kiss more a brand than a lover’s caress. Even without opening his eyes to see who had him, he knew.

Finally, she had come to him.

A slice of teeth, the flick of tongue. Both aroused and soothed simultaneously. Everything inside him reached out to her, his hips lifting off the mattress even as he fought the last vestiges of sleep.

Her mouth claimed him in one satiny stroke, and his hands clawed at the sweaty sheets pooled under his body. She lapped at him, bringing him from the unfeeling dark to the pinnacle of orgasm in mere moments.

Sweet hell, she knew how to suck cock.

She’d obviously done this before, and here he’d believed his woman was a virgin. Though he could hardly mind the experiences that had given her such incredible oral talents when he was on the receiving end of her expertise.

Groan after groan ripped from his throat at the masterful force of her suction. And then, just as his balls tightened in frantic expectation, she tore her mouth away.

He waited, not moving, hoping she just needed a breather. His body shook like a man caught in withdrawal and his dick ached so badly he feared he might combust, whether or not she finished him off. She’d been that good. But then the one thing occurred that could bring him back from the brink.

She started to cry.

Lucas’s eyes flew open. His curtains were drawn and only a single candle illuminated the room, but the murky light didn’t hamper his vision. He zeroed in on the woman balled up in the corner of his bed. Her dark hair shielded her face as she rocked back and forth, and what had been tears were now sobs.

“Hey, hey.” He started to sit up and jolted at the pull in his wrists. Heat arced between his shoulder blades as he yanked at his arms.

Fury burned through him like an inferno. Goddammit, they’d chained him to his own bed like some kind of animal.

Not her. She hadn’t restrained him. She wouldn’t. But
them
—his supposed best friend and his damn tramp—they would do anything, obviously. With or without his consent.

When Emily lifted her head and her swollen lips fell open, he saw a hint of sharp white teeth. His rage at Kellan’s betrayal sang through him anew.

He’d made her a vampire. Why, he had no clue. It made no sense. Kellan didn’t have designs on Emily, at least none he’d ever revealed. But Lucas had seen the three of them together—

He hauled in a breath. Okay, he’d seen Syd and Kellan together. Emily hadn’t exactly been participating, but she’d certainly looked engaged by what was going on. She’d brought herself to orgasm while he’d watched, and her mouth had glistened from her fresh feed.

Never had he felt an anger so hot and pure explode inside him. He could’ve killed Kellan. Would have, if Syd hadn’t stopped him with her sure-didn’t-feel-like-a-fledgling’s fangs.

Without thinking, he tried to touch the wound he knew had already healed on his throat. But the cuffs held fast and he let out a furious growl.

Emily’s tears slowed and she stared at him as if seeing him for the first time. Her eyes were red and bleary, but her silver irises appeared as smoky as mist over the moors.

“It’s for your own good,” she said in a hollow voice.

“Says who?” He couldn’t keep the snarl from his words. “
Him
?” He wouldn’t use his name. “The man who changed you?”

She gazed at him as unblinkingly as an owl. Her eyes were too big for her face, and the knowledge in them, so much more than had been there even days ago, shredded his heart. “How do you feel?”

“Sore.” And he didn’t mean from the bite, either. He looked pointedly at his unwavering erection. “Your fault.”

She didn’t follow the direction of his gaze, but turned her head away so that her hair again curtained her face. “I have no control of myself yet. I’m sorry.”

“Did you hear me complaining?”

“You’re not in control of yourself, either.” She dashed at the tears that thankfully appeared to be drying. He couldn’t handle a woman unraveling in front of him. Especially
this
woman.

“I beg to differ.”

When he would’ve continued, she gave him a strange look. “You revived awfully fast. It’s been less than twelve hours. We gave you blood, but—” She gasped as his lips peeled back. “You already have fangs!”

Duh. Of course I do
. Luckily he’d gained enough sense to resist explaining that not only did he have fangs, but that he’d had them for thirty-plus years. But she didn’t know that. To her, he’d been newly changed.

Apparently, his Judases had kept his secret. How charming.

Lucas swallowed and willed both his erection and his fangs to retreat. He seriously doubted he’d have a need for either anytime soon. “Why were you crying?”

She rubbed a hand between her breasts. Only then did he notice her attire, an almost sheer pale pink nightgown with tiny bows on the shoulders and over the nipples.

He’d seen those nipples earlier, when she’d been touching herself. Her small breasts had pressed against her gown, their full outline silhouetted in blush silk. While he’d watched, she’d bared them almost as if they were a gift for his enjoyment, though her eyes had been as blurry as an alcoholic’s during a bender.

He’d been tempted. He was a man, after all, along with being a vampire. But then he’d taken in the whole of the scene in front of him, and the rage had won.

Still, the memory was enough to coax his cock back to brutal attention. Lucas had to cough to smother a laugh at Emily’s alarmed expression.

“Your fault,” he said again, keeping his voice easy. From her perch at the edge of his king-sized bed, she looked like a startled, fragile bird. “You’re the one sitting there almost naked after you started me up.”

“Please, don’t. I know I made a mistake. I thought if I read the literature, I’d be able to get a handle on my—” She seemed completely lost for words. Very unlike her.

“Needs?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve denied yours for awhile. Becoming a vampire—” even the word tasted foul “—will only intensify them.”

“Shouldn’t I be telling you this?” Emily let out a dry laugh. “Since you’ve been a vampire even less time than I have?”

As he understood, he closed his eyes. Apparently she thought Sydney’s bite had been enough to change him, which meant Syd must’ve held on for a while. Emily, better than any of them, knew that it took a matter of minutes and the loss of a lot of blood for a susceptible human to be tainted with vampirism, so his ex-best friend’s woman must have made quite a good show out of gouging his neck and then feeding him her blood after. Something he barely recalled.

Goddamn latent blood. It was worse than cheap vodka.

“Are you sleeping with Kellan?” he asked when he’d regained some hold over of his emotions. “And/or his girlfriend?” he added.

She didn’t answer for so long that he wondered if that was all the answer he needed. Then she rose and walked to the curtains, drawing them back enough that the watery light of dawn haloed her thick dark hair.

“It hurts,” she said, almost to herself. But she didn’t move. “The light burns, just a little.”

“Stay there longer and it’ll hurt more.” Frustration eked through his tone as he tugged at his cuffs. He could break the lock with little more than a thought, but that probably wouldn’t cement his rep as a new vamp. “In time, your skin will toughen up a bit and you’ll be able to walk outside in sunlight for short periods. But it’ll never be like it was. You’ll never be able to tan on a beach unless your preferred look is extra crispy.”