Hunger Embraced (The Hunger Series) (6 page)

The elastic of my panties tightened on my belly and thighs for a moment then came free with a rip. My abdomen clenched and liquid surged into my engorged folds. I sucked in a burning rush of air and shuddered, trembling under his grip in anticipation. The sharp nip of his fangs on the back of my neck pinched my skin, and his fingers burrowed into my hip. All I could hear were my own harsh inhalations and the rapid flutter of my heartbeat.

I took a slow deep breath and relaxed a fraction.

He shoved himself inside me in the next instant, and I cried out. Damn, his large cock stretched me painfully. He increased the pressure on my hair, and I had no choice but to follow his direction. He forced me to stand more upright and changed the angle. His dark orbs flashed as they met mine in the mirror, and he thrust again—hard and to the stop. I moaned in ecstasy and closed my eyes against the mirror’s reflection.

The stinging crackle of his power shot through my inner walls and straight to my nipples. “Look at me.” His breath tickled my ear, and he swirled his tongue inside then bit down on the sensitive lobe. I shook my head and reclaimed my ear. The velvet of his lips skimmed my neck, biting, licking, caressing. He withdrew, then plunged forward hard. I gasped at the contact, at the rush of pleasure on the heels of the hurt. I glanced up and met his stare, feeling exposed and vulnerable in the mirror.

“You belong to me. You will come to my court, where you are meant to be. Only I can fulfill you this way. I care not what trysts you engage in. You will join me. Only I can give you what you crave, what the Hunger that lives in you needs to be fed.”

He plowed into me once more, and I was forced to meet his gaze. The grip of his hand in my hair and the relentless pounding of his cock dragged me ever closer to the precipice of orgasm. He leaned on my upper back until my breasts smashed against the countertop, slamming into me with such force I thought I would be left broken. His free hand cushioned my abdomen from the sharp edge of the counter.

Two long, elegant fingers skimmed my belly, parted my pussy, and swept alongside my clit. He squeezed it between his knuckles and pressed on the swollen flesh. My knees buckled under the force of the orgasm sweeping through me, and I would have dropped to the floor if he hadn’t held me up. He grasped my magic, finding it buried inside me, and I was horrified as he jerked it free of the place I’d bound it to. The Hunger latched onto his aura, sucking at him as he came inside me. I watched him jerking over and over in the mirror, horrified and waiting for him to shrivel and waste away. The Hunger had not been free to run through me in seven years.

“Yes…feed me…please…”

But he appeared unaffected. Finally the magic receded, and he winced as he withdrew. I was vindictively glad to see the expression on his face. I was already sore, and knowing he’d suffered something from our encounter gave me a sense of satisfaction. The things he made me feel, playing my body with pain that turned to pleasure, and his ability to call my magic scared me. Embarrassment flooded my cheeks with heat when I thought of how I’d acted.

“How? You’re OK. You’re not… How did you call my magic that way?”

He looked quizzically at me and arched a brow as he tucked his penis into his pants. Three steps took him to the sink next to me to wash his hands and smooth a nonexistent stray hair.

“I am your king.”

“NO…no…arrogant prick…”

The voice in my head screamed and wailed expletives mixed in with incoherent words. I shook my head to clear it, wanting the voice to stop and fade away.

He continued to talk as though he’d had my attention the entire time. Looked like I was the only one hearing voices. The voice and I agreed this guy was a dickhead. “Of course I am unaffected. Your magic is starving. It leaves you quite vulnerable. Why do you think you feel so badly after being bitten?” He shook his head. “Foolish child.”

I smoothed my skirt and shuffled into one of the stalls to wipe between my legs. It hurt, but I didn’t want a mess. I was grateful once again I couldn’t get pregnant or an STD, but it would be nice for one of them to use a condom just once. I bet the cleanup wasn’t nearly as bad.

The egotistical vampire de Sade prick at the counter removed a card holder from his pocket and held it out to me until I accepted the small, thick rectangle. It had a name on it—Adrian Kaiser—and an address, just the street and house number. Guess he expected me to do a Map Quest.

“You have three days. If you do not attend me in that time, I will come for you. It will be better for you to come willingly. It is time for you to fulfill the contract your father signed when you were a child.” A feather light finger traced my jaw, full of a dreadful promise of violence and sex. A part of me wanted to curl around him and purr. The rest of me alternated between terrified and pissed.

“Contract?”

The door opened and Daniel strode in, his lips set in a thin line and his shoulders hunched up tight. Adrian raked the larger man with his gaze, disdain evident in his expression, but inclined his head a fraction before disappearing through the door. Daniel wasn’t as polite. A growl rumbled from between his lips, the points of his fangs gleaming bright white. His eyes flashed neon blue and then turned the deep gray-blue of an ocean during a winter storm.

I smoothed my ponytail with shaking hands and put a damp paper towel against the nape of my neck. Hot prickles erupted everywhere. My skin wasn’t glowing, but the shadows under my eyes looked better. The soreness between my thighs was already receding. I guess Incubi kings made a good meal for sex magic. A wave of nausea rose, but I shoved it down with ruthless force.

“I’m sorry I was too late.”

I glanced over at him then slid my gaze away in shame. “For what?”

He waved his hands around the air in some sort of all-around gesture. “For this.”

“Ah, well, this is nothing new.” I shook my hand to try to stop its trembling and tossed the paper towel in the trash can. “Well, maybe for a day at work it is. But otherwise…”

He took my elbow in his right hand. “We should leave.”

I shrugged away. “Reading my thoughts again, T.T.B.? What am I going to tell my boss?”

“I already saw her.” The critical once-over he gave me made the threatening moisture in my eyes well up. I blinked and turned my back on him. “You don’t have to report back until Monday.”

I swiped one hand under my eyes and dried my fingers on my skirt. “How exactly do you do that? And I know you somehow persuaded her to go to a salon.” A surreptitious glance revealed he’d moved closer to me. My heel clicked loud on the floor when I stepped away. “Don’t deny it.”

He shrugged noncommittally, and I resisted the urge to kick him in the shin.

A million questions bubbled up, but I popped them all. I had to focus on getting out of the building before anyone stopped me. I didn’t think I’d be capable of any kind of regular conversation right now.

My panties were in a sad little ruined pile on the floor. I picked them up and gave them to Daniel along with the business card. My purse was locked in my desk drawer. “Do you mind?”

He shook his head and tucked both away in his pant pocket.

We emerged from the restroom like fugitives. I patted at my hair and smoothed my shirt down, wondering if anyone had noticed or heard anything. Daniel had returned to being self-confident and possessed by a seemingly unflappable calm. I shouldn’t have worried so much. Everyone we passed sat at their desks or on the floor with dazed expressions. Some of them were even asleep.

The warmth of his palm on my elbow was the only warning I had before he used soft pressure to guide me toward my desk. “Let’s go to my place and have a chat, hmm?”

The endorphins wore off, and the rub of raw, sore skin jolted through me with every step. I could only imagine how it would be if my Hunger hadn’t fed.

Heading to his house sounded fine to me. I had to get some answers to what was going on. I stopped to grab my purse, and Shelly waved at me when I told her I was going.

“T.T.B.”

He leaned down closer to me, tilting his head toward mine. I took a surreptitious sniff of the scent wafting from his collar and warmth curled in my belly. “Hmm?”

“Why is everyone looking like they just got laid?”

“It’s what happens when humans are close to Incubi having sex. Although, I’ve never seen it affect so many at once.”

I resisted the urge to grab his neck as he straightened back up to his full height. “Oh. Daniel?”

He looked down at me.

“Were you following me this morning?” When I’d gone out for lunch I could have sworn I saw him behind me on the street.

“Yes.” He frowned. “You shouldn’t have known I was there.”

“Why were you following me?” I sneaked a peek at him from under my lashes.

“To keep you safe.” He sighed heavily. “I don’t think I did a very good job.”

A black smudge on his knee caught my attention. “Did something happen to you?”

“I was delayed by some of Adrian’s court.” The pressure on my elbow propelled me forward. “Do not worry about it. I took care of it.”

Oh, I’d worry all right. He’d been attacked by an unknown number of assailants and all the damage I could see was a smudge on his pant leg. Who was this guy?

Chapter Five

I controlled the shaking until we reached the sidewalk. It started in my hands and spread up my arms to encompass my teeth. My incisors clacked uncontrollably until I clenched my molars together. Daniel took in my expression with a quick sweep of his dazzling blue eyes and held an arm out. A cab squealed to a stop, and he scooped my feet off the ground in a fluid movement. He cradled me to his chest and slid into the back of the car, giving the driver an address I had never heard before. I tried to shake my head no. I wanted to go home where I could throw up in private.

He pressed his lips to my head, muttering nonsense into my hair. It sounded like gibberish in a foreign language. The words soothed and calmed me enough that the shudders became more intermittent instead of a continuous pulse through my body.

Thoughts chased through my head on an infinite loop. My king, not my king, couldn’t be my king. I had no king, belonged to no one.

I raised my butt off Daniel’s thigh and tried to resettle in a more comfortable position, but no matter how I sat, my swollen, sore labia suffered. Somehow he knew what the problem was and eased one forearm under my ass, the other under my thighs behind my knees. He spread his legs and then let my weight settle into the cradle of his body. It didn’t fix everything, but it sure helped a lot.

“Don’t be such a crybaby. You liked it.”

I turned my face into Daniel’s chest—away from the voice in my head—and burrowed in as close as I could get. A part of me had reveled in allowing Adrian to dominate my body and bend my will. But it was wrong.

“Why is it wrong? You going all vanilla now? You? The biggest slut in Cleveland?”

I shoved my fingers in my ears and squeezed my eyes shut.

“You’d ride Daniel right now if he wanted it. Whore.”

“Shhh…” Daniel rubbed his cheek on the crown of my head and hummed under his breath. I concentrated on it for a few minutes, and the voice quieted before coming back.

“Quit denying what you are. Adrian was right; you’re starving. You stupid, pathetic bitch.”

I clapped my hands hard over my ears, but he caught me by the wrists and held both of my hands in my lap. The humming began again, louder this time, and I was able to fall into the sweet notes of the melody until the voice stopped.

* * *

The cab dropped us off outside a converted warehouse apartment building. The units were closer to the size of a condo, and he carried me straight to the elevator. I kept my face averted and firmly entrenched in the hollow of his neck, too ashamed to look at anyone and still shivering.

The elevator dinged six times before stopping. His keys jiggled against a lock, and then he stepped across a threshold, kicking the door shut. He set me down on a cream-colored sofa and laid a soft knitted afghan over me. I stayed curled up in the fetal position, staring blankly at a built-in shelf on the far wall loaded with hundreds of books and CDs. A large stereo system dominated the center, surrounded by an impressive record collection interspersed with other paraphernalia.

I closed my eyes as my teeth began to clatter again and failed to keep my jaw closed. My facial muscles were too fatigued to be effective. The sound of water running somewhere down the hall reached me. Daniel returned to pick me up from the couch. He held me against his warm, muscular chest and carried me down a hallway of polished, honey-colored hardwood. We entered a bathroom permeated with the smell of flowers and mint. He perched on the edge of a large bathtub, holding me securely in his lap. The surround looked like marble or some other kind of natural stone. The tub was big enough to be outside on a deck.

The heat of his thighs radiated through the afghan and thin material of my skirt. He had stripped to a pair of boxer briefs, but I was too freaked out to care. He peeled the blanket from my fingers, cupped the back of my calf with one hand, and slipped my shoe off with the other. After lining both shoes up with careful precision next to the surround, he moved to the buttons on my shirt and slid them free. When he reached for the zipper on my skirt, I grabbed his hands and shook my head.

“Miranda, I will not harm you. I just want to get you undressed and into the bath.” His hands smoothed endless circles on my back.

“I…I…what if…”

I couldn’t say the words. I was too terrified to say them aloud. I didn’t want to hurt him. It was strange enough to be here in his apartment letting him remove my clothes when I barely knew him. What if that terrible power came back and sucked him dry? Now that it was awake again, I didn’t think I could stuff it back into the box I’d kept it in for the last seven years.

He shook his head and sighed. “You cannot harm me. Not in the way you are worried about.”