Embrace the Passion (The Blood Rose Series) (17 page)

“Seth.”

That she whispered his name against his lips twisted his heart again. Lorelei could do things to him with the passion that vibrated through her voice.

That’s when he felt her realm mating vibration come to life, an echo of his own. He held his own frequency steady as he tilted his hips and pushed himself into her. He watched her neck arch and her mouth open with a moan.

“Heaven,” she murmured, her eyes closed. “You feel so good.”

His gaze fell to Lorelei’s neck once more. Her vein throbbed and her blood called to him.

She opened her eyes and held his gaze. “I can feel your mating frequency.” She planted her hands on his shoulders as she arched her hips into him, stroking him with her well, digging her nails in.

The white ruff at her throat invited him all over again to nuzzle, to bite, to feed.

He reached for her with his mating frequency, a vibration that left his chest and touched the center of hers. She extended her frequency and made the connection.

Pleasure exploded through his entire body and the groan that left his throat shook the angled rafters of the tree house.

Seth, that’s amazing. I can hardly breathe. Feed from me, take all that you need.

Sunk in the pleasure of their joined frequencies and the sound of her words inside his head, he dipped his nose once more into the ruff at her throat. Rich streams of apple blossom scent drifted through his senses.

His fangs emerged.

She breathed in short pants as she tilted her head once more, her pelvis rocking into him, stroking him. Holding her tight, he pinned her chest against him in order to keep her upper body immobile while he continued to thrust into her.

A swell of desire and hunger rose as he drew back his head, then struck with his fangs to the perfect depth. He pierced her vein and her blood began to flow.

A familiar elixir like apple blossoms and wine hit his tongue first. Flavor burst in his mouth.

But as her blood traveled down his throat and landed in his stomach, the whole world tilted on its axis. His rational mind winked out. Power flooded his body, desire unleashed as he took deep draws at her neck. At the same time, he drove faster, the strength of his lean body keeping both movements synchronized.

“Seth,” she cried out, a long plaintive sound.

Her nails dug into his back and her scent moved around him like a whirlwind. Her mating vibration glided over his, touching and stroking his own frequency so that he trembled with lust and need.

With his blood-hunger slaked, he drew back and held onto her hips, moving faster now.

The passion on her face took him to the brink, but he wanted more. “Look at me.”

She met his gaze, breathing hard. “You have my blood on your lips. Oh, Seth, I’m going to come.” She drew in a final ragged breath and he felt her tug on him in strong pulls.

His balls tightened and at the last second, with his gaze fixed to hers, he sent a jolt of vibration through his cock.

She screamed her pleasure and his release came, a hot, fiery stream of male power that shot in pulses the length of his cock. He roared now, ecstasy igniting the muscles of his thighs and buttocks. He kept thrusting and just as she came down from one orgasm, he felt a second one firing his body up, the result of her amazing blood.

“You ready for seconds?” He wasn’t even sure how he got the words out.

But she laughed and nodded. “Yes. Sweet Goddess, yes!”

He watched as another orgasm took hold of her again and when her body began to pull on him once more, another lightning strike of pure pleasure streaked through him.

Still he held her gaze, shouting his moans and savoring the expressions of passion that moved over her face, the cries that left her lips.

Ecstasy crested a third time and he roared yet again as his mating vibration wrapped around hers and tightened, taking their joining straight to the edge, close to a complete bond. But he held back knowing this wasn’t the time. Soon perhaps, but not yet.

At last, his body began to settle and his breathing eased down.

She kept chuckling, a beautiful euphoric sound, her arms draped over his shoulders.

“Why are you laughing?” He smiled as he wrapped his arms around her back, holding her tight against him. “Tell me.”

“It just all feels so damn good. Sex with you is a flight to the stars. I’m just amazed, Seth. Amazed and we were so close to bonding. Could you feel that, I mean in the middle of everything?”

He caressed her and kissed her. “We were very close, but I held back. I just didn’t feel like the timing was right.”

“I know it would solve the problem, but I don’t think either of us should feel pressured. Just keep me away from other mastyrs and I’ll be fine. Do I want to bond with you? I’d do it in a heartbeat, but for now, I’m content like this, savoring your body joined to mine.”

His heart swelled at the sight of her soft, brown eyes, and all her grace and affection. He brushed a lock of hair behind her shoulder and glanced at her throat. “I think I sucked a little too hard. I’ve left a bruise.”

Her voice became a throaty whisper. “You can suck me that hard any day of the week, mastyr.”

He chuckled this time and his hips flexed automatically. He didn’t always return to a flaccid state following sex and often, with just a little encouragement, he could be brought to life again.

He told Lorelei as much and she squeezed him low.

He groaned. “You are so my kind of woman.”

“I’m part shifter. We like sex a lot. The more physical in nature the better.”

“I noticed.”

She kissed him and with her eyes at half-mast, she whispered, “Tap my vein again and let’s go for round two.”

He nodded, but this time drank from her wrist. As he firmed up, he rolled her onto her back and for the next hour worked her out slowly at first and then with his speed and a few extra vibrations from different parts of his body had her whimpering and screaming once more.

Later, holding her in his arms, he found it difficult to fall asleep and apparently so did Lorelei.

He hadn’t been to the treehouse in over a month, though he liked to come here to think, and maybe that was one of the reasons he’d brought her here. He really needed to think.

He had a vampire crew that came in every other week to clean and restock, and to top off the water tank, a feat that required a lot of hard work. He paid everyone really well for their services.

Like his home at the gorge, his treehouse had plenty of windows. But with dawn coming, he would need to lower the protective metal shades.

He caressed her arm. “I’m so sorry for all of this.”

“Seth, after what happened with Jude, I guess I’m just worried.”

“I know.”

He’d talked to all three bonded mastyrs and knew that there was more than one way to bind himself to Lorelei if that was what he really wanted to do.

Quinlan, in particular, had defined the act more than anything as a strong effort of the will, of clear intention:
to decide was to bond
.

He walked the line, however, hovering just shy of a final commitment. He knew Lorelei was willing, that apparently she had less concerns than he did about what would happen once the bond was forged.

And he hated the thought of what he risked by not bonding with her. There was a strong likelihood that he’d end up battling for her again, if not Jude, then another mastyr.

In the middle of wrestling with Jude, he’d felt how much the experience had been a fight to the death. Without the help of the shifters to haul them away from each other, he was pretty sure one of them would have died. Given Jude’s brute strength, Seth knew he would have fallen on the ill-fated side of that coin toss.

“And you have no doubts that you want to bond with me?”

She turned in his arms slightly to place a kiss just below his ear. “If we were bonded, I’d never have to worry about another mastyr coming after me, tempting me. Besides, you must know by now that it’s you I want.”

He wanted to believe that Lorelei’s longing for him went beyond the call of the blood rose, but how could he trust her if she could so easily offer her vein to Jude?

He also knew that seeing Lorelei with another mastyr had brought up the old wound, the one Kristen had inflicted all those centuries ago. She’d cost him the one thing he should have been able to give to the woman of his choice, a heart free to love unreservedly.

“I just don’t know if I can believe any of this is real. The intimacy that would come from bonding with you would be built on air, nothing more.”

“That’s where we differ because I believe with all my heart that what we share between us is very real, despite that the blood rose part of me is willing to feed other mastyrs.”

He knew she was sincere in her belief, but he couldn’t agree with her. “I can’t do it, Lorelei, not under these circumstances.”

“Is it that you don’t trust me?”

He didn’t answer right away, because he wanted to respond as truthfully as he could. Finally, he said, “I believe in your character but I don’t trust the situation.”

She leaned up on her elbow to look down at him. “It’s okay. This is new to both of us so how about until Jude leaves, we just stick close together. How does that sound?”

“Like a good plan.”

Though she smiled softly, he couldn’t mistake the longing in her eyes.

Her gaze drifted over his face. “You look a lot better. That fight with Jude had you pretty bruised up.”

“Don’t remind me.” He huffed a sigh, scowling.

“Everything will be all right.”

He hadn’t loved anyone in a long time, but he was damn close to loving this woman.

With a sigh, he reached for the button that controlled the shades, lowering them just enough to prevent direct sunlight from entering the house. The remainder of the panorama view he retained, which consisted of a wintry sky filled with snow-covered trees, and the occasional hawk hunting through the quiet forest.

Putting his head on the pillow, he drew Lorelei into his arms, holding her close. “You can rest now.”

He needed to sleep as well. The brigade had a big battle coming.

* * * * * * * * *

Once Seth was sound asleep, Lorelei eased out of his arms so that he rolled on his back, his lean, powerful body spread out in relaxed disarray. She’d spied on him more than once during her weeks as his bodyguard, but she had to admit this was the first time she’d ever seen him so at peace.

She had a hard time defining all that she felt toward Seth of Walvashorr, but above all things she wanted his well-being.

He was unutterably handsome with strong cheekbones defined in part by his super-lean body. She marveled at the sculpted shape of his muscles because he had so little fat on his bones.

When he would rise for the night, well before full dark, he pumped iron for an hour, exerting himself by adding weights quickly, working his arms and shoulders, his buttocks, thighs and calves. Then, just as night fell, but before calling on his Vampire Guard or his Shifter Brigade, he ran ten miles up and down the rugged ridges of the gorge riddled Shauck Mountains. He only levitated when a rock slide threatened to throw him off a cliff, something that happened at least once a run.

She’d taken to running near him, though at a distance, and savored these times of shared quiet and intense exercise.

She rose from the bed and moved to the windows. In her fae form she wouldn’t be able to tolerate the sunlight very well, though not so badly as a vampire. A vampire’s skin would blister with any level of light, even when the sun was hidden behind a thick layer of clouds. Caught out in the open, her fae constitution would endure a more gradual, though extremely painful, disintegration.

Pacing the room, she made a quiet circuit around the foot of the bed, up one side then back to track up the other. She felt as she always did around Seth, that Rosamunde had been right; she needed to continue to serve as his bodyguard. He was in danger, more than he knew.

In her fae form, she would need to sleep soon, but not as a wraith. For reasons she couldn’t explain, her wraith-form was immune to sunlight, which meant she could go outside and have a look around, see what was happening.

With one last look at Seth, she transformed, taking on the long thin legs and arms of her wraith’s slightly opaque and much lighter body. Her lips were dark in this form, her teeth a pale yellow. She pulled her multi-layered enthrallment shield tight around herself and added another one around Seth that she could manipulate at a distance.

With her safeguards in place, she slowly levitated to the upper level of the treehouse. As she flew, she took care not to bump into any of the angled ceiling beams, then left by the front door.

Wraiths were a different species altogether and though she wore only the familiar strips of gauzy fabric, so typical of her kind, she adjusted her body temperature constantly. She flew above the tree line, knowing she was invisible to every creature around her.

The weak December sun bothered her eyes, another realm result of a world lived mostly at night. But she ignored the discomfort and tracked above the treehouse, going well beyond Redheart Peak to see if the enemy was anywhere near.

But all she found was an expanse of snow-covered ridges that comprised the central part of the Shauck Mountains. The terrain was a land of rugged peaks and ridges cloaked in a quiet blanket of snow, of icy streams and rivers, and of waterfalls in just about every gorge.

She spent the next several hours moving slowly back and forth, going several miles from east to west, north to south, watching and waiting, always returning to check on Seth every fifteen minutes or so, then heading the opposite direction for another pass.

From the time she’d made love with Seth, her faeness had kicked into high gear and now told her that Margetta had targeted Seth. Though she had no idea why, she fully intended to keep her man, her chosen shifter-mate, safe.

As the sunlight finally began to wane, a strong vibration out of the northwest started to build. And just as she turned to head back in Seth’s direction, from a position near Bephotine Gorge, a golden glow of light suddenly appeared in the far west.