Death Wish (10 page)

Tight and warm, her body was resistant when I took her. The pained sounds she made as I filled her sent ripples of pleasure throughout me. Her soft whimpers gradually became cries of joy. I was drowning in the waves of her excited energy, drinking it in. I itched to bury my fangs in that delicate throat of hers. Patience is not a virtue I possess. I waited, hoping to time the moment with her climax, preferring to take all that she had to give at once.

I sensed that she was close. My control snapped, and I bit deep into her neck. She screamed. Blood gushed from the wound, and I drank of it greedily. The spell was broken. Free of my thrall, she thrashed violently. I bit her again, pinning her arms above her head. I drank hungrily; her blood coated my tongue deliciously. Though aware that she was in a fight for her life, she couldn’t help but respond to my careful manipulations of her body. Buried deep inside her, I felt her inner muscles clench as climax shook her and euphoria claimed me.

I could taste her. She was mine, and I couldn’t wait to taste her death. To be the bringer of it, the master of all that she was. I heard the shallow gasps for breath but didn’t recognize them as my own. I ceased reading as the memory took over.

Arys had drained her completely. Her screams had accompanied those of her friend, and the vampires took their fill of blood and sex. She begged Arys for her life, pleading and promising. It only encouraged him. Her pleas were like fuel on an open flame. Arys killed her, and he loved every second of it.

The scent of her was thick in my nostrils. Fear, lust and blood all entwined in one storm of sensation to overwhelm me. I was suddenly beside myself with need.

“Alexa?” Arys’s voice was a distant echo, as if he were far away. “It’s not real, Alexa. Don’t lose yourself in my past.”

I wasn’t seeing him anymore. He had faded along with the rest of the bedroom as I spun headlong into a memory that wasn’t mine. I saw the candlelit room with the cream-colored chaise lounge and the shrieking woman upon it. She was young, eighteen perhaps. She fought hard once she broke free of Arys’s powerful mesmerism. Some victims would smile happily as they died under his thrall. But others, they fought until that very last breath.

There was a rush of white noise, almost deafening in my ears. I was lost in my kill, Arys’s kill, and my sense of reality shifted. My four fangs filled my mouth, and I reached with clawed fingers for a victim that wasn’t really there.

I’m not sure how long Arys shook me, trying desperately to get me to come back to him. “Come on, Alexa! You’re not part of that world. I was. I need you in the here and now.”

I mumbled something incoherent. Harley’s devious laughter echoed all around me. I heard his victim wailing. I wanted him to make her stop, to just shut her up. I couldn’t take much more. The screams, the blood and the erotic flavor of terror, it was all driving me into a frenzy.

I was caught between myself and Arys. Feeling his hunger for her and his deep-rooted satisfaction as he drained her life away conflicted with the need I felt to be the one he claimed in such a powerfully intimate manner. My vision swam, alternating from Arys’s past to the present. I had always been a part of him. Even then, when I had yet to be born.

Arys’s voice was firm when he demanded, “Do you want her? Or, do you want to be her?”

It took a few moments before awareness hit me. I was lying flat on my back with Arys straddling me, holding my arms pinned above my head. It became clear what he was asking. He was offering me release from the grips of his horrid memories.

I was flushed with desire for both body and blood. I couldn’t form a response. My mind was a mess of blood stained images. I don’t know what Arys saw in my eyes, but he didn’t wait any longer for a reply. True to his nature, he made me the victim.

He slipped a hand between my legs, finding me ready. An evil light shone in the depths of his eyes, and a smirk tugged at his lips. “Hell, if I’d known that journal would make you so hot, I’d have given it to you months ago.”

“You did this to me. You made me a monster.” I was rambling without thought, saying whatever danced onto the tip of my tongue.

Arys leaned in close, his lips brushing mine as he spoke. “You were always meant to be a monster. I just make you enjoy it.”

His kiss was gentle and soft, so contradictory to the tension I felt emanating from him. Nudging my legs apart with a knee, he positioned himself between them so that I was comfortably pinned beneath his weight. Every time I closed my eyes I saw her, the redhead sprawled out before him, bleeding and begging even as she enjoyed his touch.

“Look at me.” Arys’s demanding tone startled me. “I want to see terror in your eyes before I bleed you.”

I almost choked on the stifling sensation that flooded me. Fear. Arys had frightened me during such an encounter only once before. That same time he’d also threatened me. Once again, the promise of pain in his words made me ache for him.

Burying his face in my hair, he pressed his lips to my neck and breathed deeply of my scent. He was encouraging my fear with the taunt of his fangs against my vein. I tensed, uncertain. The thick swell of his erection against me was both exciting and intimidating. I felt him draw on my energy, feeding on my bloodlust, fear and desire.

Arys slipped inside me with a rough thrust, forcing a cry from me. He groaned as the power rose up to engulf us. His mouth was warm on my skin. I could feel him shaking with the strength it took to keep from biting me, to hold out for the right moment when it would throw us both headlong into the abyss that sought to claim us.

There was a change in him, a shift in our dynamic that made Arys the aggressor. He often was aggressive, but never did I truly feel like a victim with him. Not until now. He peered down into my eyes, and all I saw was the predatory gaze of the wolf looking back at me. My wolf. It was an unsettling reminder that Arys had as much of my monster inside him as I had of his.

“Please, don’t,” I heard myself say. I wasn’t sure what I was asking him.

With every slick stroke of his body into mine, my panic began to subside. The energy binding us grew and writhed, wrapping us in its magnificent hold.

He showered me with kisses on my lips and along my jaw. “You know me. You always have.”

Conflict filled me as anguish over his words warred with comfort. Until I really knew what that meant, I could find neither solace nor regret in his words.

I gripped him with claws that cut deep red ribbons into his flesh. Every time he filled me, he brought me closer to the edge. He was aggressive, as if he couldn’t possibly get deep enough. We were as close as we could physically get, and still it wasn’t the union I ached for. Despite the fervor in which he made love to me, his kisses were soft caresses. But, only until his patience ran thin.

With a hand tightly entwined in my hair, he forced my head to the side and bit deep. My heart thundered in my ears at a deafening level as my blood poured into Arys’s mouth. I had a moment of clarity, and I wondered if my life would end in his hands. Maybe not today but one day. If our destiny was to destroy each other, that might only be fitting.

I gasped for breath, unable to fill my lungs. Time felt non-existent. I had no conscious awareness of what time it was or how long it had been since I’d dropped the journal. All I knew was the pleasure and the promise of Arys’s mouth on my bitten neck and his body declaring me as his.

He drove me headlong into the flames of passion that threatened to consume us. I was free falling through the throes of climax while my heart stuttered in an erratic beat. The metaphysical energy we’d called pulsed around and through us. It was too much for me. I couldn’t breathe nor could I escape it. It was inside me, part of me. And for a moment, I thought it would kill me.

Blood trickled from my nose. My head felt as if it would burst. Arys’s name was on my lips, but I couldn’t speak. He sucked at my bloody neck. When he raised his head, my blood was smeared on his lips and teeth. Realizing that the power we’d drawn was more than I could safely conduct, Arys stripped it from me, effectively freeing me from its deadly hold.

I clung to him as I sucked air into my lungs. There was a hum in my ears, and tingles shot through my limbs. The bite on my neck throbbed in time with my racing pulse.

“Are you ok, love?” Arys pressed the side of his face to mine. “That was intense. Too intense for you.”

My voice was raspy with the wolf. “I’ll be alright. I might get a hell of a headache though.”

Arys rolled over beside me but stayed close, pressed to my side. After tugging the bloodstained pillow from beneath my head, he pulled me into the safe confines of his embrace. I snuggled in against him, my head on his chest while he lazily stroked a hand through my disheveled hair.

“That’s been happening to you a lot lately. The nosebleeds and headaches. I don’t like it.”

I wiggled my fingers, watching as the claws retracted. There was blood on my fingertips. “I’m fine, Arys.” I felt better already. Besides, he was in worry mode lately; I wasn’t going to feed it.

He wanted to say something more. I could feel it. After a long moment of contemplation, he gave in and spit it out.

“I don’t think it’s fine. I think it’s starting to become more than you can handle.” His hold on me tightened possessively. “It’s dangerous.”

I swallowed hard, willing myself to relax. My mortal body had been the subject of concern before, regarding the power we shared. My body bound me to the earth and to the wolf, but his undead energy was never meant for a living being. Together Arys and I were life and death, a nearly unheard of combination.

The full extent of what we were capable of was still unknown to me. I’d already decided that I wasn’t ready to become a vampire. It would happen upon my death, something I planned to avoid as long as possible. 

“Hey, what happened to enjoying the afterglow?” I asked, setting his worry aside.

He grinned, but I could see that it was forced. My intent wasn’t to downplay his concerns. I simply didn’t want to think about them right then. After a violent, messy expression of love, I wanted nothing more than to allow the illusive peace that came after to sweep me away. Reality could wait.

Chapter Eight

I didn’t come to the office much anymore. Since I’d killed the man who had run it, I’d had little reason to return. Back when I’d been hunting idiot vampires that drew the wrong kind of attention with their kills, this had been grand central, where we all came to regroup and to unwind.

Now, it was just a building that housed many memories. The kitchen was where I’d found Jez in a pool of her own blood the night Kale attacked her. My office down the hall was where Kale and I had succumbed to temptation for the first time. And, the main office at the very end of that corridor was where I’d killed my former boss, Veryl Armstrong.

I closed the front door hard when I came in, announcing my arrival. Noise from the kitchen greeted me. Lilah looked up suddenly, mild surprise creasing her brow.

“Alexa. Hi. How’s it going?” She asked, closing a cupboard so fast it slammed.

I found it odd that she hadn’t sensed me before I’d come inside. I was getting better at cloaking my energy. Good to know. If Lilah couldn’t detect me, would Shya? I’d have to find out.

Lilah was a demon, one I didn’t know nearly enough about. All I did know was that she was some kind of big bad in the underworld. Or, she had been. A curse held her trapped in a corporeal form, a vampire. Her demon power was limited, but it was still deadly. I’d seen her vanquish other demons with merely a word.

“It could be worse.” I shrugged. “You?”

“Ditto.”

“I just came in to get the rest of my things since I’m not spending much time here anymore.” I headed down the hall to my office, aware of her silent steps behind me. A chill crept up my spine. I resisted the urge to turn around.

“Falon told me what happened last night. Close call.” Lilah hung back in the doorway, leaning against the frame. Her long copper colored hair fell in waves over her shoulders. Dressed all in black, her hair looked more like fire than usual.

I opened a desk drawer and started pulling out pens and notepads. “Not close enough for whoever was asinine enough to take that shot.”

“They don’t know who they’re messing with.” Lilah flashed me an encouraging smile.

“So I take it you haven’t heard anything about who it may be?” I was acutely aware of her pale orange eyes on me as I tossed small desk items into my shoulder bag.

She paused, considering my question. “I have heard there’s a werewolf asking a lot of questions about you.”

I dropped my gaze to the desk drawer as I scooped out office supplies. What could Lilah possibly know about Juliet? “So I’ve heard.”

“Let me know if you need any help tracking her down. I’ve got eyes and ears all over this city.” Her expression was stone cold. Her smile had vanished.

“Thank you. I appreciate that.” I had no intention of letting on that I was way ahead of her. If she didn’t know it was my sister, I wasn’t about to enlighten her. I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something more she wanted to say. I was curious but not enough to prod her.

I gathered up the knickknacks scattered about on the desk: a small stone wolf statue, a magic eight ball that had been a gag gift from Kale and a shiny green chunk of jade. Lena had given me the jade, along with many other crystals and charms over the years. I rubbed a finger over its smooth surface before dropping it into my bag.