Aaron's Kiss Series Boxed Set (Books 1 - 7) (49 page)

When she focused again, he slowly inserted another finger deep into her again. He watched her, her body undulating up and down against his hand, her juices coating his fingers and hand.

“That’s it, baby. Feel me inside you. Christ, you’re so hot. And you’re wet, so wet for me. I need to taste your cream.”

Dominic pulled out his finger and stuck it into his mouth, moaning loudly at the honeyed taste of her. When he had licked and sucked his finger dry of her, he leaned forward and kissed her thighs, first one then the other. Her need was evident in her scent, her needy response to him and her body making him dizzy with an overwhelming need to claim.

He inserted his fingers again and leaned in to lick at her. His tongue joined his fingers and he fucked her with his mouth, never touching her clit until he was sure she was ready for him. He removed his fingers from her and pulled her thighs further apart, giving him more room to taste her. Just as he sucked her clit into his mouth and teased it with his tongue, he pumped harder into her, stroked her hard then softly over and over, flatting his tongue against her clit. He couldn’t seem to get enough of her and wondered if he ever would.

She was so close; her cries and moans filled his head. He could feel her reaching her peak. He wanted to taste it, her first time. He needed to taste her come for him.

“Come for me, baby. Let go and come now.” Her legs clamped down hard onto his head and she rode his mouth. When she came, she screamed, her body pulsing around his finger and mouth.

He lapped her tender flesh, bringing her to peak twice more as he did. He wanted her now. His cock was aching to be inside of her. He gently guided her to the floor. He leaned over her lax body and looked at her.

“I want you, baby. I want to be inside of you so badly I ache. I need to be inside of you.”

Dominic moved up and between her legs. He kissed her tenderly and completely. He needed to slow down, he realized. His size and her virginity would be a painful combination for her first time. And he didn’t want her to be marred by a painful memory.

“Please, Dominic, I need you. I want you inside of me, please.” Her begging nearly tore him apart, but he knew she would love him more if he remained strong.

“I know, love, but I don’t want to hurt you. We need to go slowly this time.” He moved up, positioned his cock at the core of her, and moved slowly into her. He felt her stiffen beneath him and he stopped. “All right? Am I hurting you?” He knew at the moment if she asked him to stop, he would. At this moment, if she asked him to do anything, he would die giving it to her.

“No, you feel so good there. I want more. Please, give me more of you, all of you.” She moved up to meet his downward push. He stopped when he met with her maidenhead. He looked down into her eyes and fell in love.

“You...this will hurt, baby. I’m so sorry.” And he slammed forward, quick and hard into her. She jerked back against the bed when he broke through and she tried to get away from him.

“Shhhh, baby, it’s all right. I’m so sorry, Pete. I promise you that I didn’t mean to hurt you. I will never hurt you again. Shhhh. I have you.”

He didn’t move his body, afraid of hurting her more. He just held her tightly to him and cooed softly into her ear. He petted her, touched her tenderly, and gave her comfort. When he felt her relax again, he moved slowly back and into her again.

“Dominic, please.”

He reached down and grasped her hip, then slipped his hand beneath her, cupping her ass and tilting her upward, allowing him to slide deeper into her. He felt her legs rise and encircle his thighs, pushing up against him with each downward stroke. He was close to coming. He could feel his balls rise and tighten against him. His fangs elongated, his need to taste her, to mark her, imminent.

“Pete, I want to taste you. I need to taste you now.” He moved his mouth along her jaw, nipping. He found her pulse, suckled it into his mouth. He could feel the blood pounding through her jugular.

“Yes, Dominic, please take me. Take all of me.”

He kissed her where he would bite her, licked the pulse again to take away most of the pain, and bit down. Her blood filled his mouth; her power and the power of her essences roared through him. He drew hard on her vein and came.

His climax reverberated through him, gripping him hard. He poured into her, deep and completely, touching her womb with each hard thrust. She rolled over the edge of completion with him, her body like a silken sheath, it held him. He felt her milking and pulling him deeper into her. When he was spent, he collapsed on top of her, barely able to roll to the side at the last second and pull her atop him as he went. He didn’t so much fall asleep as he did drift into unconsciousness along with her.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

She heard him stir a little but not wake yet. She didn’t want to face him, not yet at any rate. There were no windows here below the ground so she stared into the empty fire grate and waited until he woke up.

Over an hour later, she felt him touch her mind. She allowed him some of what she was. He had panicked slightly when he discovered she was no longer beside him and wanted to give him this one bit of comfort before she told him she had to leave.

“I’m going to have to leave here soon. It’s not safe. They’re almost here, my family. They’ll come for me now that they’ve found where I am. I’ve been hiding from them for nearly nine years now, you see, not using the curse that I have. But there was no way I could let the baby die, so I led them here, led them to all of you. I’m sorry, so sorry about that. I...we shouldn’t have had sex. I shouldn’t have let you bite me, but it felt so good, wonderful really. Now I’ll have to go, lead them away from you and the others. I have to keep you safe, all of you.”

“Come here, Piccadilly. Come over here and tell me why you think you need to leave me now. And why you think that leaving me is the best solution. Because I can’t let you go, not now. I love you,” he said.

“You can’t love me. Not me. You…just a few days ago you were tossing me away from you. And now you profess to love me? It was great sex, Dominic, but that’s all it can ever be.”

“I was a fool. I know what you are to me. I knew when I…I can’t live without you, Pete. Now that we’ve mated, I can’t ever feed from another person. I will die without you.”

“Why? Why would you do something like that? You don’t even like me. I don’t even…I didn’t even know your name until a few days ago. We can’t be a couple. I’ll have sex with you until I leave, but I’m not staying.”

He didn’t say anything. Pete was sure he thought he could make her stay, but she couldn’t. Maybe some other time, before her family, she might have thought…but it mattered little now. They were coming. She decided to tell him everything. Make him see why they could not be a couple. She didn’t move, didn’t so much as acknowledge him, but continued her story, starting at the beginning this time.

“I was four years old when it started. I only had six brothers then, three older, the other three younger than me. The six of them, me, and my mother, all one big happy family. I never knew who my father was. In fact, I don’t remember there being any men in my mother’s life other than my brothers. She called them ‘her boys.’ Then suddenly, this man showed up. I actually think he knew my older brother somehow, but I’ve never been sure. He promised them everything if they would just learn from him, let him develop their powers.”

“Powers? Like yours?” Pete looked at him. “I know you have them. I can taste them in your blood and on your skin. Are your brother’s the same as you?”

“No. They’re different. I’m not like them on any level. They were horrible...are horrible men. My mother wasn’t any better, of course, always encouraging them in their experiments. They would conduct tests of will and strength on others, humans, they called them, as if they didn’t consider themselves that at all.”

“You aren’t. Not entirely. I’m not sure what you are, but you aren’t fully human. Pete, come here, please? I need to touch you.”

She knew if she did go to him, she’d be lost. Pete kept staring at the grate and thought about her family and why she had to leave.

“They’d lure people to the trailer where we lived by telling them that they were going to be paid. All they needed to do was cooperate with them for a little while. First they’d feed them drugged food to get them to cooperate, then tie them to the iron maiden they’d made specifically for their ‘work,’ they called it. The horrible things they would do to those people. All the while this man would stand over them, telling them where to cut, how deep, and then how to collect their blood and other things. Then they would cause such horrific pain, slicing into them with their powers, cutting into their bodies with lightning or whatever their special talent was.

“One of them, Herne, would use his hands that he could morph into claws with razor-like talons. He practiced lengthening them, cutting deeper into those poor people as they lay there helpless, testing and practicing his ability to control it. The screams would ring through the trailer for days until they finally just died. The stronger they got, the more the man would come around. Almost daily toward the end of me living there. I think he is the main reason I left. He terrified me.”

“Do you know who he was? Could he have been your father? Theirs maybe? It would help me to understand why you think you can’t stay here to know what you’ve been fighting.”

“His name was Sherman. If he had a last name, I’d never heard it. I don’t think he was our father. He was too…too enamored of what they could do, surprised at how much they could show him.” She sifted in her chair again. “I couldn’t save them, any of them. I did try to once. I released a man, helped him out into the woods and gave him food and water. That man, Sherman, captured him the next day and brought him back. My brothers tied me to the wall and made me watch while they tortured the poor man, each one of them taking a turn to make him suffer unbelievable pain. When either of us would black out, they would stop and when we woke again, they would start all over. It took him a week to die. A whole week and because I thought I could help him. He was cursing me in the end, damning me and them for making him suffer. Sherman thought it was the greatest thing in the world and told my brothers that I should be rewarded for what I had done for them.”

Pete heard Dominic curse. She was hurt by that. He was finally realizing that she was trouble that he would be better off by letting her go. Yeah, she hurt badly, but continued.

“When I hit puberty, things changed drastically for me. I had my first period at twelve and began to change physically, breasts, hips—womanly stuff. That’s when the mark began to grow and shape itself to me. It was only a small leaf at first. I’d noticed it on my left hip when I was about six, I guess. It started at my thigh and grew up my back and along my spine. I could feel it as it moved, grew. By the time I was fourteen, I was fully marred by this thing. I tried to hide it and did a pretty good job of it too, but when it encircled my bicep and curled up and around my left ear, I couldn’t anymore. When I turned sixteen, Sherman noticed it. I had almost convinced the others it was a tattoo that I’d had put there, but Sherman told them I was marked by a being too strong to allow my freedom.”

She heard him shift again. She had turned in the chair in a way that she could no longer see the bed. When he came up beside her and scooped her up into his arms, she screamed.

“When I say I want to hold you, I want to hold you. Tell me this story, Piccadilly. Tell me so that I can show you how much I can protect you, how much I can love you. Why did Sherman want you to not be allowed freedom anymore?”

“He’d seen it move, see. He had seen it as it shifted along my body. When he asked my mom about it, she told him that the person whom she’d mated with had the same mark. She didn’t know what he’d been, just as she didn’t know who the fathers of the boys were. She had told him that she liked sex and that any man would do. She and Sherman were so proud of my progress; she’d said that she would do whatever he wanted. Then matters got worse, and I needed to leave.”

“Tell me, love. I’m here. Tell me how matters got worse. And Piccadilly, you aren’t leaving me and I’m not leaving you. No matter what is going on in your head right now.”

“That summer, they decided to create a child with me. They had this monthly chart made up of my cycle and circled in red when would be the optimum time to have sex with me. And this would continue until one of them impregnated me. They were my brothers, and you know whose idea it was? My own mother. I shut the door to the mark and ran away. Sherman said that I couldn’t hide from him. That he would find me no matter what. I was safe until the other day, when I opened the door for the little boy. But you understand, I couldn’t let him die, don’t you? Now I need to go.” She didn’t move yet. She really did not have the energy.

“Of course I do. You’re mine and I protect what’s mine. But I need to know how you feel them, how you know where they are? And how close are they?”

She thought he would be repulsed at the idea of her magic, or curse, as she called it, but he seemed more...concerned than mad. She did not understand him.

“Their magic, or whatever it is, speaks to me. I think it’s because we all have the same mother maybe. I don’t know. It’s like I can feel their taint, taste it almost.” She looked away and shrugged. Her tears threatened to spill.

~~~

“I didn’t see it, your mark. Where is it, baby?” Dominic asked her quietly.

He was holding her tight now, close to him, and when he shifted and stood up, she did as well and faced him. She had wrapped a sheet around her body and she dropped it. There was a gentle stirring in the air, a small hum of magic then he felt it when she dropped the hold on herself and turned around to face him and let him see her fully for the first time.

Her eyes were glowing again, brightly this time, lighting the room as well as herself. The vine did indeed start at her thigh and wrapped around it and moved up her hip. She turned around so he could see her spine where it was growing up it as if her bone were a trellis, drooping here and there from the weight of the leaves. A single vine broke off from the mass and curled up her hair line and across her jaw to come up her cheek to her ear and curve below her left eye. Yet another vine ran along her shoulder and down her arm to her bicep, once again wrapping around the muscle with a small curl drooping to her elbow and midway down her forearm. The vine was an intricate and beautiful work of art, and looked as real as anything ever seen in nature. The vines were dark greens and browns, as big as a thumb. The leaves were large and open with varying shades of green. But it was the flora that grabbed one’s attention. There were hundreds of flowers in different stages of bloom, all in shades of reds, yellows, pinks and blues. The opened flowers were as big as a fist; the buds were as long and as thick as Dominic’s thumb.

Dominic reached out to touch her, and was surprised to find heat coming from the vine and flowers even before he made physical contact with her skin. He spread his hand along her spine and the leaves moved, disturbed by his touch, he realized. He bent down to smell one of the flowers and the sweet scent of nutmeg and cinnamon wafted to his nose. He jerked back in surprise.

“Christ! It’s your scent. I smelled it that first night. You smelled of cinnamon. I tried to blame it on the pantry, but it was your mark.”

She started to step away from him, but he wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her to him. He cradled her under his chin and held her. “No, Piccadilly. Not again. You’re mine, I told you. Let me hold you. I need to hold you, baby.”

He was awed at what she had shown him, and wanted to just keep her there close to his heart and with him to protect her. He scooped her into his arms and carried her to the bed where he laid her down and joined her. He covered them both with the comforter and pulled her closer still to him. He could feel her crying, the soft sniffle and the stiff way she was holding her body. He held her, whispering in her ear, kissing and soothing her as best he could until he felt her relax and fall into a fitful sleep.

Dominic did not sleep, but mentally reached out to Aaron and Sara and the other magical women in the Kiss. He told them what he knew, her name, her family’s discovery of her and of the vines and their movement when touched. Everything she had shared with him. Mel was going to contact her other relatives, Shade was going to contact her mother, the Queen of Forest, Fiona. They would meet with Piccadilly in the kitchen in a few hours’ time. They were all willing to work with her and for her. Then he told them about Sherman.

“I don’t know a lot about him from before. But from the way she talked about him, I’m sure it’s the same man from the cave when Shade had been hurt,” Dominic told Sara and Aaron.

“Yes, I believe you’re right. Dominic, did he...had he touched her, sexually?” Sara asked him.

“No, my lady, he did not. Nor will he ever. None of them will, not ever again, I assure you. She is mine. I have claimed her and we have mated. She thinks to leave me, to leave to protect us from him and the others. I can’t let that happen. She’s mine and I mean to protect her.”

“Well of course she’s yours. And we’ll all protect her. She is as much our family as you are, Dominic. Let us get to work on this and we’ll see you at last light. And Dominic, don’t let her out of your sight. She is a crafty little thing.”

Dominic grinned at the warning from Aaron. They both had taken quite a beating the last time she tried to get away from them, one he did not think either of them would forget.

Aaron was impressed with the young woman’s courage and strength, he’d told Dominic when Dominic begged him for his help to protect his mate. And Aaron told Dominic that he could do no less than to help her, because—and none of them were under any delusions that it was anything but her—had it not been for Pete and her magic, the children would not be here.

Two hours before sunrise, Dominic woke Pete up. He dreaded telling her what he had done. Knew the only way to fight against evil was to combat it with all you had at your fingertips. With a power base of the magnitude he knew Sara’s family had, he had no doubt that they would triumph against whatever forces Pete’s family thought they had.