The Outlaw Demon Wails (20 page)

Ivy set the cereal box down with a sharp tap. “I'm not going to chemically neuter myself so you can continue to hide from who you are.”

I almost choked on my outrage. “You've never even tried one, have you!” I sputtered, opening up my charm cupboard to show the slew of
uninvoked potions I had been working on. “What did you do with the ones I gave you!” I exclaimed.

Ivy lifted her chin, the rims of brown about her pupils shrinking. “Flushed them.”

She was completely unrepentant, and I shook with anger. “You threw them out!” I yelled, furious. “Do you know how long it took me to make them? Did you not
see
the hours I put into modifying them so you'd be in control and could separate your blood lust from love? How can you know what it will do if you don't try it once!”

Ivy closed the cover of the cereal box and stood, pointing one long pianist's finger at me. “How do you know you won't like sleeping with me if you don't try it—once?” she mocked, every word clear and precise.

It was as if her words took the last of my reason. Tugging the afghan up, I got in her face, pissed that I had to look up at her in her boots. “You are not in charge of me,” I said, neck flaming, but I was so mad it didn't mean anything. “I am my own person. Don't you
ever
forget it! And right now, I'd rather sleep with Trent than you!”

I turned to leave, gasping when she yanked me back into the room. Adrenaline sang as the world spun, and I found my back against the island counter. A pulse of fear dropped deep, igniting my soul, bringing me alive. Ivy's eyes were black. They were utterly, beautifully black, and they pinned me where I stood. From my scar came a surge that made my knees threaten to give way. I couldn't look from her eyes, and I tried to figure out what had happened. I was…I had been arguing with Ivy. Stupid vamp? No, stupid witch.

Suddenly stone cold sober, I stared at her. I wanted her to bite me, but not until I knew she could handle it. Or perhaps more accurately, until I knew I could. And there was the ultimatum that she had thrown down last year: all or nothing. Sex and blood both. Nuh-uh. Not like this.

“Back off,” I said as I gave her a shove to get her out of my way. “I'm not doing this.”

Moving with a provocative slowness, Ivy put her hand on my shoulder and pushed me back, her grip tightening to slow my backward motion until I hit the counter again. A tingling of sparkles lit through my old
vampire scar, sending a twin pulse to ignite the one she had given me just this spring.
Shit.

“I said I'm not doing this,” I said, ticked and scared all at the same time. “Ivy, I didn't start this, and I'm not going to sleep with you to share blood. Get out of my way.”

“I started this, and you don't have to sleep with me to share blood,” she said, utterly still.

I froze.
I don't have to sleep with her?
My gaze rose to meet the faultless black her eyes now were, and she smiled, showing a slip of teeth.

“What do you think Rynn Cormel and I have been doing together for the last two months?” she said softly.

My gaze darted to her new scar and rose to her eyes. A shiver iced through me, between thought and action.
She can separate the two?
“I thought…,” I stammered, then mentally kicked myself. Rynn Cormel wanted us to succeed in this. Of course he'd be helping her learn to take blood without mixing it with sex, breaking old habits. My lips parted.
New angle, he said. Not a sexual position, but a new tack? To help her find control?

Again my attention went to her new bite, now clearly visible as a badge of honor. Of success, maybe? Almost as if she'd heard my thoughts, Ivy leaned closer. “Yes,” she said distinctly, hitting the
S
with a sharp sound. “We've been practicing all month, and this morning, I did it. No charms, no drugs, nothing. It was the most frustrating thing I've ever done. It left one part of me satisfied, and the other…achingly empty.”

I blinked fast to try to gain an understanding of what that meant. Everything shifted, and I held my breath as I became afraid for another reason. It was too easy for me to become drunk on sensation and do something that I'd hate myself in the morning for. But this was something we both wanted. How could it be wrong?

Ivy tilted her head and, smiling, sent her sin-black eyes to drop languorously to my neck, making her intentions clear. Desire pinged through me, and I shuddered, knowing I was lost. Or found. About to be broken, or made whole. Inches away, Ivy pulled in my scent as she closed her eyes, bringing herself to a higher pitch, driving herself crazy with denial even as I stood in front of her. “I can do this, Rachel.”

I wanted this. I wanted to feel good. I wanted the closeness with Ivy I knew a bite would bring. I wanted to push away the pain we both felt from Kisten's death with something real. And there was no reason not to.

I shuddered at the barest touch of her fingertip as she brushed the afghan from my shoulders and it pooled at my feet. A shiver took me, born from the cooler air hitting my skin and the heat she was pulling from my core. Vampire incense filled me on a slow intake of breath; it rolled in my soul, flashing up to make her light touch feel like electricity.

“Wait,” I said, self-preservation stronger than the remembered ecstasy she could fill me with, a millennium-old payment that evolution had gifted us in return for freely giving what a vampire's soul needed to survive.

And she waited.

My eyes closed. I could feel her breath against my skin, the heat from her body against mine though air stood between us, and the tension making the air tingle against me. I weighed her obvious desire against her slow movements and the fact that she had stopped when I asked. I had to be certain. She said she could do this, but I didn't want to make another stupid mistake. Could she do it?
Could I?
My eyes opened. “Are you sure?” I asked, searching her expression.

She leaned closer, her lips parting to say something, but then her brow furrowed and she stiffened. Dropping her grip on my shoulder, she spun. The clatter of pixy wings shattered the silence.

“Ivy!” Jenks shrilled, and I almost thought I heard her growl. “No! It's too soon!”

I took a deep breath, willing myself to stay upright. I had forgotten the soporific effect vampire pheromones had, and my heart pounded as I propped myself up; I leaned against the counter as I took a deep breath to steady myself.

“It's okay, Jenks,” I said, not looking up from my faintly trembling fingers. “Ivy's got a handle on this.”

“What about you?” he shouted, darting from her to me. His tiny features were pinched in worry, and I could see a row of faces at the window, watching, until Ivy closed the curtains, sealing us in a soothing blue.
“Look at you!” he said, the dust spilling from him turning a pale green. “You can hardly stand up, and she hasn't even touched you yet.”

Ivy was standing at the sink, arms crossed over her middle and her head bowed. I didn't want it to end like this. “I can't stand up because it feels that good!” I shouted at Jenks, and he flew backward in surprise. “I'm fine! So you can take your little pixy ass out of here! She stopped when I asked her to wait. She's over there right now, not”—I hesitated, feeling a surge of anticipation rise through me—“not ripping my throat open!”

Ivy's head came up and she gripped herself tighter. Her eyes were absolutely black, and adrenaline made a burning trail from my neck to my middle. Oh, God. This couldn't be a poor decision if we both wanted it so badly. Right?
Please let this be a good decision.

“I slaked my blood lust three hours ago,” she said, her soft voice in contrast with her sharp body language. “I can do this. If it gets to be too much, for either of us, I can stop.”

“So we're…fine,” I stated. “Get out, Jenks.”

“You're not fine.” Jenks got in my face to break my connection with Ivy. “She is trying to overcome an addiction. Tell her to leave. If she can leave, then maybe she does have enough control and you can try again later. Just not today.
Not today, Rachel!
”

I looked at Ivy standing by the sink, hunched with a need so deep it hurt to see it. I had waited with Kisten, hadn't let him bite me, and now he was dead. I couldn't wait for later if there was a now. I wouldn't.

“I don't want her to leave.” I brought my gaze to Jenks. “I want you to.”

Ivy closed her eyes and the tension in her face eased. “Get out, Jenks,” she said, her voice low and laced with a threat that set my insides quivering. “Or stay and watch, you perverted Peeping Tom. I don't care. Just shut your damn mouth for a fucking five minutes.”

He sputtered, rising up out of her way as she pushed herself into motion and came to me. My pulse was racing, and I knew that the more fear I showed, the harder it would be for her to find control. We might not be good at this right away, but we had to start somewhere, and I wasn't going to be the one to fail.

“Ivy,” Jenks pleaded. “It's too soon.”

“It's too late,” she breathed into my ear, her fingers resting lightly on my shoulders. The pounding of my heart was loud, and I could feel my pulse lifting the skin at my throat. Jenks moaned in frustration. After darting into my charm cupboard, he zipped out of the kitchen.

Ivy's touch became liquid heat in his absence. Leaning forward, she traced a path with her fingers across my neck, searching for the unseen scar under my perfect skin. I held my breath, tension rising as she circled for it. This had to be okay. She'd worked hard to find a way around her own desires, and I'd be nothing but a damned tease to say no now.

My air came in fast as her touch turned into a firm grip on my shoulder. I felt her weight shift, and I opened my eyes, surprised at the soothing blue the curtains made. I couldn't see any of Ivy but her hair. She was that close.
God, what is she waiting for?

“Let me,” she murmured, her lips brushing the sensitive skin under my ear, dropping lower, lower, as her head tilted, the blue light making a glint in her hair. I tensed at the sensation, heart pounding. Her hands slid lower, finding the small of my back. Leaning away, she stilled her fingers until our gazes met. “Let me…,” she said again, utterly lost in what was to come.

I knew she wouldn't say the entire thing.
Let me take this. Give this to me.
Asking permission was so ingrained into living vampires that if she didn't, she would think she had blood-raped me even if I cut myself and bled into her mouth. I gazed into her pupil-black eyes, seeing her desperate need raw and unhidden instead of the impassive face she usually showed the world. A last strike of fear lit through me at the chance I was taking. A memory of her biting me almost to death in Kisten's van rose and fell. I could feel the tension in her where we touched: her right hand on my shoulder, her left at my back, one hip drifting close to mine. She wouldn't overstep the bounds and would keep the sex out of it. If she didn't, I'd be gone and she knew it. It was a cruel game she played with herself, but I think she hoped that if she waited long enough, I'd come to her.

Maybe she was right. If someone had told me last year that I'd be here now, teasing a vampire into biting me, I would have said they were insane.

My eyes closed. It wasn't worth the effort to try to figure my life out. I
had to live it as it came. “Take it,” I whispered, locking my knees against the coming rise of feeling.

A sigh came from Ivy, and she pressed lightly into me. Her grip tightened, and with absolutely no hesitation, she tilted her head to meet my neck and sank her teeth.

Ecstasy burned, the pain of the bite shifting instantly into bliss. I took a gasping breath, then held it, stiffening for a glorious instant before catching myself. I couldn't lose myself to sensation. It would all go wrong if I did, and as Ivy's teeth sank deeper, I vowed I wouldn't. Not this time. I wouldn't let this become a bad decision.

Her breath against me came and went in time with the pulls of her mouth, drawing my blood into her to fill her. My hand drifted up to touch her new scar, and I pulled away. In a flash of tension, I brought myself back. “Ivy, slow down,” I breathed, needing to know that she could stop. Fear pulsed through me when she didn't, and when I hinted at pushing against her, she pulled her lips from me with a ragged, rough breath.
Thank you, God.
We could do this. Damn it, we could do this!

Pulse fast, I did nothing as we stood, our heads inches from each other. I realized my hands were on her shoulders, and I weighed the sensations flashing through me to gauge Ivy's control and my resolve not to slip into a vampire-pheromone-induced stupor that her instincts wouldn't be able to resist.

Ivy's head was bowed. Her forehead almost touched my shoulder as she steadied herself. Her breath on my broken skin made feeling ebb and flow, building on each other as she tested her will not to move. I felt the warm trickle of what had to be blood turn cool, and still she did nothing though even I could smell it.

She wasn't losing control. She was maintaining it. This probably wasn't the best blood she'd had, but I was taking baby steps, and she was charting a new path. And I was ecstatic.

Ivy scented my acceptance on the very air, and slowly, carefully, until she knew it was welcome, she leaned in again, her lips meeting my neck in a soft pull, turning the cold spot warm again. Tingles shot to my middle and grew.

“Slow,” I whispered, not wanting her to stop though fear made me cautious. This was working. I didn't want to tear down this new balance with impatience.

So she lingered, which in hindsight was probably more arousing than simply sinking her teeth again. Her lips moved to the tiny scar she had given me this spring, teasing, luring.