Reluctant Partnerships (39 page)

They had discussed plans repeatedly over the past two days, trying to avoid jumping each other in the hospital room. They had not come to any firm decisions. Martin still had most of his sabbatical left, which gave them time to explore options. On one of his visits, Raymond had not-so-casually mentioned that he was hoping to expand the research staff and would love to have Martin stay on long term. Martin had laughed and asked on what record, given that he had yet to actually start a project at l’Institut. Raymond had shrugged and assured him that would come in time.

Denis had offered to split their time between France and Canada if Martin did not want to stay on at l’Institut full time, suggesting they could spend the winters in France and the summers in Canada. While Denis was not as susceptible to the cold as a mortal, he had no real interest in experiencing a Canadian winter. Martin had considered the idea and then decided they could take their time and see what the year brought before making up their minds for good. At the moment, Martin had a hard time imagining not going home, but he had observed enough of the vampire-wizard pairs to know that in a year, his growing connection to Denis might have changed that opinion. “I’ll pack my bags and move them here the next time I go to l’Institut.”

“When did Raymond say you should come back to work?” Denis asked, tugging Martin toward the bedroom.

“No sooner than next Monday,” Martin replied, “but only if I felt up to it. If I need more time, he said I should take it.”

“Good,” Denis said. “That gives us a week to get better acquainted.”

Martin chuckled. “How much better acquainted do you think we need to be?”

Denis toppled Martin onto the bed, following him down and pinning him there firmly. “I think I need to taste your climax in your blood.” He nipped at Martin’s neck. “I think I need to feel you coming with me inside you.” He rocked his hips against Martin’s groin. “I think I need to hear you begging and pleading for more of what only I can do to you.”

“I think you need to hurry up,” Martin replied, mussing Denis’s hair as he pulled the vampire close for a kiss fraught with desperation. Denis returned the embrace with all the passion that had simmered in him since he had first tasted Martin’s blood. That night, his fear had muted his desire. Since then, the necessity of limiting how much he took had kept him from relaxing into the feelings, but tonight he no longer had to hold back. He could relinquish his hold on his passion and show Martin what it truly meant to be paired with a vampire.

Neither of them had the patience for gentleness as rough, eager hands pulled clothes out of the way. Another time, Denis would linger and appreciate the curve of muscle, the expanse of skin across Martin’s chest, the line of hair between his navel and his groin. Another time he would kiss and caress and devour the way Martin deserved, but tonight he needed skin and then he needed blood, and he could not wait any longer. Fortunately Martin seemed to feel the same way, his hands having already stripped away Denis’s clothes.

Denis pinned the wandering limbs, the fear he had felt at nearly losing Martin still strong despite his partner’s obvious recovery. There would be time later to let Martin return his caresses, perhaps even to let Martin take charge, but right now, Denis’s control was balanced on the edge of a knife. One push too hard and he would lose all power over the beast within him.

Hoping the taste of Martin’s blood would calm him, Denis licked quickly across the skin of Martin’s neck, feeling the pulse pounding beneath his tongue. His own heartbeat raced in time. Unable to wait a moment longer, he pierced Martin’s flesh, his fangs sinking deep into his partner’s body, hot blood rushing into his mouth, flooding his senses with Martin’s eagerness and desire. Beneath him, the wizard’s hard body arched against his, rubbing their cocks together and only adding to the sensual tension that built and built and built until Denis lost control of himself and his beast, his climax blindsiding him and leaving him wrung out and trembling on top of his recumbent lover.

Only the matching repletion he could taste in Martin’s blood kept him from recoiling in shame.

“That wasn’t exactly the way I imagined it going,” Denis said, cheeks flushed with a combination of satiation and embarrassment.

“Shhh,” Martin said. “You’re killing the afterglow.”

Denis subsided, letting the moment stretch, but eventually the stickiness between them grew uncomfortable. “I should get a rag to clean us up.”

Martin’s arms tightened around Denis’s shoulders. “You should stay right here and let me lick you clean.”

Denis groaned at the image, rolling onto his back when Martin nudged his hips. The instincts that had driven him to become the youngest chef de la Cour in France urged him to resist giving in to Martin, but he ignored them. Martin was no threat to him. To his sanity, maybe, as he took his time licking his way over Denis’s slender body and down to his groin, but not to him or his position.

Denis stayed still for as long as he could stand it, but the need to touch Martin, to taste, to ravish, grew undeniable. Pulling his lover up for a kiss, he returned the favor, licking Martin clean and then lingering, sucking on his balls, nipping at his inner thighs, and generally doing everything he could think of to return Martin to fever pitch.

Or maybe not.

“Bite me for real,” Martin said, pushing a tube of lube into Denis’s hand. “Bite me while you make me ready.”

Another time, Denis might have wondered where Martin found the lube, but now he was merely grateful for its presence. He slicked his fingers as he prepared Martin’s skin for his fangs.

Martin shifted his other leg, making more room for Denis between his thighs. Denis took advantage of the new position, teasing the guardian ring as he teased the sensitive flesh of the crease where Martin’s thigh and hip met. When Martin writhed on the bed and a moan escaped his throat, Denis smiled and sheathed his fangs and his fingers in one firm stroke, winning a sharp cry from his lover. He might have worried he was hurting Martin had he not tasted the mind-numbing pleasure in the wizard’s blood.

Instead, he delved deep, fingers stroking over Martin’s gland as his fangs probed the sensitive skin of his hip where the veins ran near the surface, and let the ebb and flow of pleasure in Martin’s blood guide his movements.

Finally, Martin reached down and tugged on his hair. “If you keep that up, I’m going to come again, and I’m not sure I’ll be good for a third round.”

Denis thought that sounded like a challenge, but he would save it for another night when his own need was better controlled and he was sure he could wait the time it would take to rouse Martin again. Freeing his fangs, he licked the wounds closed, stealing a taste of fluid from Martin’s cock as he passed on his way to his lover’s mouth.

Martin’s legs wrapped around Denis’s hips, drawing him close. Denis shifted a little to fit his cock into the berth his fingers had prepared, leaning down to kiss Martin as he did. He would bite him again, because nothing tasted like an orgasm in a lover’s blood, but the need had not grown urgent yet. He could afford to take his time, rocking slowly against Martin’s groin as their lips met, parted, and met again.

Eventually the need grew more urgent and he released the mortal kiss in favor of another vampire kiss. Martin worked at l’Institut, surrounded by wizards and vampires steeped in the culture of the partnerships, so perhaps he would not mind multiple bite marks on his neck, but Denis had spent too many years conscious of leaving those he fed from as discreetly marked as possible, so he carefully slotted his fangs into the marks he had made earlier when he first bit Martin.

He could feel Martin’s magic enveloping him as he fed, the same sense of warmth and homecoming he had always known when he fed from Noël and had never hoped to experience again. Pushing aside regret, he focused on the man in his bed now, the man who would share his bed and his existence for the next untold number of years if Denis had anything to say about it.

Their bodies moved in concert, striving for mutual fulfillment. Denis could taste it building in Martin’s blood, a slower climb than the first time but no less inexorable, and when they crested together the second time, Denis tasted the same joy in Martin’s blood that overflowed his own heart.

Denis had no idea what the next few months would bring, but he knew the most important thing for certain: he had found his partner.

About the Author

A
RIEL
T
ACHNA
lives outside of Houston with her husband, her daughter and son, and their cat. Before moving there, she traveled all over the world, having fallen in love with both France, where she found her husband, and India, where she dreams of retiring some day. She’s bilingual with snippets of four other languages to her credit and is as in love with languages as she is with writing.

Visit Ariel’s web site at
http://www.arieltachna.com/
and her blog at
http://arieltachna.livejournal.com/
.

Partnership in Blood by
A
RIEL
T
ACHNA

http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com

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Ariel Tachna