Rites of Blood: Cora's Choice Bunble 4-6 (11 page)

“I didn’t apply to UMD. It’s not one of my choices.”

Dorian was quiet for a long moment. “The research labs are here, Cora. And at this moment, the world’s politics revolve around Washington, and I’m in the center of them.”

“Right,” I said. “That’s what I thought.”

“I didn’t say no,” he said.

“You didn’t have to.” He wouldn’t leave D.C. And I couldn’t stand to be away from him for a whole week at a time. After only twenty-four hours, I could hardly think of anything but him.

“We can work something out,” he said, but I couldn’t imagine what. “In the more immediate future, I want you to consider coming to my New Year’s Eve party.”

“Will it be like the Lesser Introduction?” I asked. I didn’t bother to hide my distaste.

“No. I will not subject you to that again. You’ve seen the gamut of our society. I want you to see the best of it now. I want you to see what’s worth fighting for.”

I looked at him over my bowl of cereal. “What if I say no? Will you force me again?”

He had that weary look again, the one I couldn’t quite understand. “This is not an obligation that I must keep, nor is it something that must be done to keep you safe. If you refuse, I won’t make you come. But I want you to give me a chance to show you what else a bond can mean.”

I thought about testing him then, refusing just to find out if he was telling the truth about not making me.

But he was right—if there was something better than what the night before had shown me, I should see it. I wanted to, and I was sure it was me wanting, not him. I needed some sign of light beyond the trust in him that the bond had forced on me.

I looked up at him where he stood across from me. In the utilitarian kitchen, his appearance was even more striking. Jarring, even. And he wanted me—more of me than I had ever expected to give to anyone.

Did I even want to refuse him?

“I’ll come,” I said.

He nodded with satisfaction and took the single step to the sink, where he washed his bowl and spoon, dried them, and put them away. I took the last bite of my cereal, and he held out his hand. I gave my own bowl and spoon over and watched as he repeated the process.

I was struck again with an almost dizzying sense of his immediacy, his tangibility, the water running over his too-perfect hands as they moved the sponge efficiently over the earthenware.

“I could clean your toilets as well, if that would interest you as much,” he said dryly.

I jumped a little guiltily. “Can you read my mind?” I wouldn’t put anything past him.

He raised his hand to brush his damp knuckles against my cheek, and I shivered. I would never get used to that touch.

“No,” he said. “But I don’t have to. Sometimes your thoughts are written on your face. I can, however, feel echoes of any particularly strong emotion that you have.”

I thought of how much I had missed him on Christmas morning when I had woken alone. “So when we were apart....” I began.

“I didn’t have to feel you then to know what you were feeling, Cora. I felt myself.” Again, that sad smile.

And he would be leaving again soon. Because I would insist on it. I had to insist on it, to keep my own mind, my sanity apart from him. To put some semblance of a barrier between the parts of my life.

He had stepped between my knees where I perched on the edge of the counter, his eyes almost level with mine. I watched his expression change, growing more intent.

Did he sense how desperately I wanted him to stay? How desperately I wanted him to touch me, in spite of everything?

Involuntarily, I leaned forward, tipped my head up, and he bent to catch my mouth. I sank into the kiss, wishing I could disappear into it, just for a moment, and forget everything.

My abdomen clenched, a twinge of anticipation wakening my body, sensitizing it to his touch. He pulled me to him. I looped my arms around his neck, kissing him back hard, not content this time to merely be stroked by him. My tongue pushed past his teeth, into his mouth, tasting him, wanting him to be a part of me as I wanted to be a part of him. His hands were under my shirt, against my naked flesh.

My nipples tightened at the stroke of his thumb, heightening the need between my legs. My blood sang with it, my head light and hot at once. I ground my hips against the hardness that bulged at his fly, panting against his mouth. His fingers slid beneath the elastic of my panties. Hooking my legs around him, I kissed his neck as he traced the edge of the elastic down to just beside my entrance, urging him on with my mouth, tasting his skin and wanting more.

His fingers slid sideways, between my folds. I made a strangled sound. He stroked me slowly, holding me against his hand as he dipped shallowly, teasingly into my entrance, coming up to rhythmically roll the root of my clit between his thumb and forefinger while I shuddered in his arms. He pushed me right to the edge of an orgasm, but he held me back, until my entire body felt so suffused that I thought I could stand it no longer.

“Dorian,”
I managed.

I felt both his hands at one hip, then a sudden ripping noise, which he repeated on the other side. My panties dropped away—he had torn them from my body.

Even in my befuddled state, I felt a surge of outrage. “What—?”

“I’ll buy you more,” he said, his hands at his fly.

That wasn’t the point, but I was in no position to argue it at that moment. A moment later, Dorian was holding me again, smothering whatever protest I might have managed with another kiss.

His hand, still damp from stroking me, slid between the counter and my buttocks, then up, to my entrance again, where his fingers resumed the maddening rhythm that pushed me right to the edge again.

My hands tightened into fists in his hair as I strained to reach climax.

“Tell me how much you want it,” he said, his voice rough and low in my ear.

“You know, dammit,” I said.

He just gave his wicked laugh and looped his arms under my knees pulling my ankles up over his shoulders. Then, slipping his fingers inside of me, he hooked against that sensitive place, and with his thumb against my clitoris, he took me up and over.

Without losing the rhythm, he withdrew his fingers and thrust himself deep inside me, and the first spasms of my orgasm were launched into something far more intense. His wet fingers worked my clitoris as he drove into me, the contractions wringing my body in time to his movements. His other arm held me against him even as my own arms loosened uselessly.

I felt him shudder just at the last surge receded as his release came after mine. For a long moment, I just clung to him as he held me, feeling his heart beating through the thickness of our shirts, his breath in my hair, the strength of his arms around me.

I realized I never wanted him to leave. And it scared me.

With every ounce of will, I let go of him, my body protesting its reluctance with an almost physical pain.

“I need you to go,” I said. “Before I ask you to stay.” Or before I asked him to take me back with him to that beautiful, dangerous house and the place that was made just for someone like me....

He stepped back, his eyes hooded, and adjusted his pants. “You’ll find a way to be at peace in your own mind, Cora.”

“Because I have to?” I asked.

“Because you will want to,” he said.

He pressed his lips against my cheek, and I closed my eyes, just breathing him for a long moment. And then he was gone.

I
let out a breath. The apartment seemed smaller and dingier, somehow, and I had to fight the urge to go running out half-naked after him.

I shook myself.
Get it together, Cora.
I had my own life to live, things to do before school started.

Such as?
That foolish part of me dared to come up with anything as imperative as following Dorian home.

If I felt like this now, what would I feel like in a month? A year? He would wear away everything I used to care about until all I wanted was to please him.

There had to be some escape.

I looked around the sparkling apartment. I’d planned to clean it because Lisette had been taking up my slack for the last two months. It was time for me to pull my own weight.

But Dorian had already taken care of that.

I washed up, got properly dressed, took out what little trash there was, including my shredded panties, which did little to help me in my goal of not obsessing over Dorian.

Restlessly, I went downstairs to the mailboxes. In the half-lit lobby, I sorted my mail over the trash can—six credit card offers, a shiny grad school brochure, and yet another medical bill, this one with
OVERDUE
stamped on the outside. And, last, an envelope from the University of Chicago.

A thick envelope.

My hands shaking, I tore it open and scanned the contents:

Dear Cora Shaw.... Thank you for your application.... It is with pleasure that we announce your acceptance into the Master of Science program in the Department of Economics at the University of Chicago.

My whoop split the silent air, my heart pounding with joy and relief. I’d been so sick that I’d hardly managed to fill out my application, but I’d managed to drag myself through it with Lisette’s help.

Chicago. My top choice, one of the most innovative and exclusive economics programs in the entire country.

I read the letter again, and then a third time, making sure that I hadn’t misunderstood. There was no doubt. I really was accepted.

My life had been derailed by cancer, all the plans I’d laid out meaningless in the face of my diagnosis. It was only mule-headed stubbornness that had made me apply to graduate school at all. But now I was cured—and I’d secured admission into my dream school.

The same school Geoff had been accepted to.

I had a sudden wish that I could call my Gramma and tell her that it had all turned out all right, that I was going to get everything she’d wished that she could give me. That all she’d done was worth it. Everything that had been taken away from me was in my grasp again.

Or at least it would be—if it weren’t for the bond that kept me tied to Dorian.

My stomach dropped as I remembered the conversation I’d had with him just an hour before. I was Dorian’s cognate. He might indulge my whims as long as I stayed close to him, but that was as far as his tolerance went.

I looked at the letter again and the fat enrollment packet behind it, and my victory turned bitter in my mouth. I now had a door open to everything I had ever wanted. And it was still as impossible for me as it had been when I was dying.

Slowly, I went back to the elevator. It opened at my touch, and I stared at the steel doors as it carried me up, back to my apartment.

I’d won against the cancer, but at the cost of all my goals.

Back in my dorm room, I put on my headset and tapped over to my favorite phone numbers to call Lisette. Dorian hadn’t taken my friendship with her away from me. At least, not yet.

But no sooner had I gotten to the screen of favorite contacts than I frowned. There at the top was a new one—“<3 Clarissa.” I remembered a random snatch of Dorian’s conversation, something about the djinn being interrogated by Clarissa....

I blinked at the phone. She’d picked it up when I’d dropped it, then, and she’d sent it back...with her phone number as some sort of cute joke?

Gah. It didn’t matter. She was the last person I wanted to talk to right then. I tapped Lisette’s name decisively.

“So, what have you been up to?” she asked finally after she’d spent an hour detailing her post-Christmas activities with the various member of the Bonner clan.

“Just making sure the apartment’s clean.” Not quite a lie.

“What, you’ve been cleaning since Christmas?” she asked skeptically.

“Ha, ha. I went to see the oncologist on Friday,” I said, dodging her question and deliberately leaving out my visit to the Health Center to get a birth control prescription. “I should be able to check my results tomorrow.”

“Awesome,” Lisette said. “I hope the news is good.”

“I think I’m feeling too good for it not to be.” I took a deep breath. “And you know that CEO I was talking about?”

“Uh-huh.” Lisette sounded deeply unimpressed.

“Well, he kind of asked me out last night.” I cringed, waiting for her response.

She was incredulous. “You didn’t go, though, did you?”

“Maybe I did.”

“Cora, what the heck is wrong with you?” she demanded. “How old is this guy? Thirty? Forty?”

“I don’t know his exact age, but he doesn’t look a day over twenty-five,” I said, leaning against the wall. I winced a little at my own reply. It was both honest and outrageously disingenuous.

“I just don’t think it’s a good idea,” Lisette said. “He’s probably just using you. I mean, you’re young, you’re hot, you’re grateful....”

“I don’t think it’s like that,” I said.

I could almost hear her eye-roll. “So did he try to get you in bed?”

“Lisette!” I said. There was no way in hell I was answering that. “I think he’s going for something more serious than a quick screw.”

“Like, how serious?” Again, her voice dripped with suspicion.

I pushed away from the wall and began pacing the room. “Like he gave me a necklace that’s worth more than my car.”

“And you took it?” Now she was exasperated.

“Sort of,” I said. The pendant was still in my pocket, digging slightly into my hip. I didn’t know why I’d taken it. “He had it specially made for me. He didn’t say so, but he kind of didn’t have to.”

“Huh,” she said dubiously. “And are you ready for something more serious? I mean, you’re a senior in college. You’ve applied for grad school. You have plans.”

“Yeah, I know. And I do,” I said.

“Well, are you like boyfriend-girlfriend with this guy?” she asked. “What’s his name, anyway? I can’t just call him Mr. Moneybags.”

“Dorian Thorne. And no, not boyfriend-girlfriend. Not quite.”
More like vampire-consort.
Oh, yeah, that would go over well.

“What about Geoff?” she asked.