Point of No Return (5 page)

“Shh, Sar,” Devlin said, slowly working
closer, then drawing me to him. He was shaking slightly. “Danial
said you would be nervous when I told you that I was ready. Don’t
be afraid. My decision to take this potion was not only to lessen
risk to you, but also to waste less time.” He kissed me softly. “I
won’t hurt you,” he said softly, laying me down beneath him. “I
promise. Now relax, so I may enter, Love.”

He was right: this was safer all around. I’d
been worried with trying too soon with Danial, and then been
frustrated when it took so long. We should begin trying now, in
case it took six months, or a year.

“Relax, Love,” he murmured gently, kissing up
my neck, even as his hips thrust lightly against mine, his erection
straining. “Please. I want to be inside you so much...”

I made my muscles relax. The moment the
tension left me, Devlin began pushing, shuddering slightly. Within
a short time, he worked himself inside. I let out a groan of
contentment, the familiar feeling of being filled by him utterly
satisfying.

Devlin began thrusting deeply, groaning, his
arms supporting his weight while he kissed my neck. There was some
pain at the deep penetration, but I was expecting it. I tried to
move with him, willing my body to relax. As his fangs pricked my
neck, I suddenly surrendered with a moan, his excitement stoking my
own.

Devlin quickened his pace. I slid almost
easily into orgasm. As it hit me, he bit down, sinking his fangs
into my neck. I jerked beneath him, awash in pleasure, my ecstatic
moans loud in my ears. Devlin swallowed in long pulls, his muffled
groans of pleasure echoing mine. Abruptly, he drove harder, then
let out a loud cry of release, shuddering as he spent himself.

He moved off me, and pulled me into his arms.
“It seems forever since I was with you last,” Devlin panted. “Much
too long.”

“It was just a week, Dev,” I said, my breaths
also coming fast.

“Never again,” he murmured, biting me gently.
“You’ll come to me every few days, Sar.” He licked my neck, sighing
gently. “I had wanted to do this again,” he said contentedly. “And
now you are well enough to do it with me.”

A small part of me had been worried that Dev
wouldn’t be as interested in me now that I was his and no longer
forbidden. Instead, he acted more excited now than he had been
before. Relieved, I reached up to caress his face, running my
fingers into his hair.

“I love the way you touch me,” he whispered
softly. “So casually, but with such emotion.”

I didn’t reply, just continued to stroke him
gently.

“You like my touch as well, Sar,” he
whispered. He sucked gently at my neck.

“Ouch!” I said, jerking back from him. “Why
must you do that?”

“I like to do it,” he said, giving me a
satisfied smile, and then did it again.

“Stop,” I said grumpily. “Bite and drink, or
just lick me, but stop doing that. It hurts.”

Devlin blinked his eyes at me curiously.
“Does it really hurt, or is it that it feels unsettling?”

“It makes my nerves jangle, like a pinch
does,” I said with a rueful smile. “Is it some kind of vampire
foreplay, that you enjoy it so much?”

“It’s my kind of foreplay,” he whispered,
baring his fangs in a wide smile.

Blood still stained his teeth. My blood. I
shivered.

That seemed to excite him. “Tell me you’ll
scream for me later, Sar. Tell me that you’ve fantasized about
tonight, here with me. About the things you know I’ll do to you.” I
didn’t respond immediately, and he leaned closer. “Tell me,” he
said harshly. “Now.”

“What do you want me to say?” I
stammered.

“You didn’t think of me?” he hissed, his eyes
reddening. “You didn’t long for me?”

God, he was odd
. “I did think of you,”
I replied carefully, caressing him again in hopes of soothing his
temper. “But I wasn’t thinking about sex. I was thinking about
seeing you again, and wondering what your home would be like, and
looking forward to being with you. This week has been a week from
hell, Dev. My life’s turned upside down. Two weeks ago if you told
me I’d be here in your bed Oathed to you and Danial and trying for
another baby, I’d have told you that you were insane. So much has
changed.”

He hugged me to him. “I hope they are all not
unwelcome changes.”

“No,” I said tenderly. “But like I told
Danial, it’s going to take me some time to adjust. I wake up and
think I’m still married some mornings.”

“That will pass,” Devlin said quickly. “How
is Elle?”

“She was upset to see I had on your choker.
But I explained to her how things were and are now. I think she
accepts it.”

“She is tough,” Devlin said, murmuring into
my hair. “She’ll bounce back from this in time. Children are
resilient.”

I nodded.

“Are you hungry?” he said next. “I had
planned to take you out, but I couldn’t wait to be with you, Sar. I
had to have you like this, at least once before anything else—”

“I’m not protesting,” I said wickedly. “I
love that you wanted me so badly, that you couldn’t wait to have
me. I worried I might not still make you feel that way—”

Devlin cut me off with a hard kiss, and
pulled me on top of him, so I was straddling him. With a wicked
grin, he clamped onto my hips with his hands, and simultaneously
thrust up with his hips, impaling me. I let out a scream of shock,
then braced myself, my hands splayed on his chest, his heart
beating wildly beneath my fingers. We had never done this position,
and it was too much. I felt every inch of him as he slid in and out
of me as fast as he could, slamming himself into me hard. I let out
a cry every time he shoved himself home, both from sensation and
also the pain as he hit my cervix. He was hissing, crying out
himself with every thrust, writhing beneath me as tremors rocked
his body. All at once, he screamed, pumping into me, his back
arching.

Devlin gave a large satisfied groan, lowering
my torso to hold my body against his tightly, his member still
inside me. “Ah, Sar,” he said contentedly into my hair, his breaths
ragged. “I have wanted to do that since the moment I first laid
eyes on you. To see you above me, riding me, and to get into you as
far as I could, as fast as I could. To hear you scream as I entered
you, and to hear your cries as I had you.” A tremor went through
him, and he gave a long delicious sigh. “It was just as good as I
imagined it would be,” he said, giving me a kiss. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” I said, drawing back to
look at him. “But why didn’t you do this with me before now, if you
wanted it that badly? You could have told me your fantasy.”

“Because the fantasy was a selfish one,” he
said tenderly. “I was afraid of hurting you that day in the hotel.
You were so nervous, even after you gave in.”

“What about last week?”

“When I came to you then, you needed more
from me than what I just did to you. Both times you needed
gentleness and love. Rough sex had to wait, at least until
now.”

“You didn’t hurt me,” I said, fingering his
golden hair fanning over the pillow

“In a way I did,” he said ruefully, stroking
the small of my back. “I came and you didn’t.” He sighed
contentedly, and closed his eyes. “I’m sorry for that, Love,” he
whispered. “I’ll make it up to you later.”

Strange that not giving a woman climax was a
crime, yet forced sex wasn’t. Still, he had grown up in another
time, when women were property, and any man of power could have any
woman he wanted below his station, whether she returned his
affections or not. In view of that, what he had done to me that day
in the hotel was likely the norm back then for men of his class.
Given that fact, I got how he might think it wasn’t wrong, or
hurtful to me. Briefly, I wondered why he cared if I came or not,
knowing how different women were perceived to be than men four
hundred years ago, and how little rights they had. I finally
chalked it up to pride, that he relished knowing after an encounter
was over that the woman would be counting the moments until the
next time he made love with her.

“Penny for your thoughts, Love.”

“I was happy to give you that fantasy, Dev. I
don’t have to come each and every time, so long as you make love to
me again later on, and give me an orgasm or two then.”

He gazed up at me, considering. “I’ll be
slower with you later,” he said with an easy smile. “You’ll have at
least two orgasms, Love. I promise. But first,” he said, rolling me
off him carefully, “we have to get you something to eat. I’ll
dress.”

He went to his closet, and rolled back the
mirrored door, revealing more clothes than I had in my closet at
home. Some were casual, jeans, denim shirts, T-shirts and heavy
cotton shirts. Yet over half were suits, leather pants, silk
shirts, with some at the far right being so ornate as to be almost
costumes.

Devlin was a clotheshorse. That was something
I hadn’t seen coming.

He slipped into some jeans, and a heavy
heather gray cotton shirt, putting a white T-shirt on under it.
Then he noticed my staring. “What?”

“I’m surprised you have so many clothes,” I
said, getting up to look for my own garments.

“You are comparing me to Danial,” he said,
rolling his eyes. “He would wear denim all the time if he could.
When you are a king, Sar, you have to dress like one. People expect
it. And I get invited to a lot of parties, some requiring costume,
like Danial’s.”

“I understand that,” I said, slipping on my
sweater and thinking I really didn’t.
Why not put costumes worn
once a year, if that, in the attic, or a spare room?
“Can I use
your bathroom?”

“Go ahead,” he said gesturing with his hand
to a door by the right side of his bed. “It’s through there. It’s
stocked. I’ll wait out here.”

Wondering what ‘stocked’ meant, I grabbed my
overnight bag and went in. His bathroom was a surprise. I’d
expected grey or just white, but it was done in black and white.
Black tile, black towels, and white walls with mirrors everywhere,
accented with silver fixtures and silver throw rugs. There was an
oversize shower like Danial’s with two showerheads and also a full
size Jacuzzi, the clear water steaming.

Casting a longing look at the inviting water,
I closed the door and put on a fresh pad. I’d had a lot of sex, so
that was the wisest thing to do. Then I washed my face, and put on
a touch of makeup. When I went looking for a towel in the nearby
closet, I saw what Devlin had meant by stocked.

He had everything a woman could conceivably
need stocked there on shelves: pads, tampons, nail care items, foot
care items, bottles of hairspray, several types of high-end shampoo
and conditioner, body lotion, massage oil, hairbrushes and pins,
aspirin, cold medicine, thermometers, toothbrushes, mouthwash,
toothpaste, several packages of pantyhose and even several
lipsticks, all in shades of a deep rose pink.

Everything was in the packages it came in,
and seemed to be trial sizes, the kind bought when going on a trip.
Or the size a man would have on hand if he expected a lot of
different women to need something they forgot, and wanted to have
something handy to slip in their purse before or after bedding
them. That was who all this was for. Danial had said Devlin was a
lover of women. Lash had been telling the truth.

I had never met a man I considered a Don Juan
before, but Devlin clearly was. How many women had stood where I
was now standing, or been on their back in his bed? He’d had over
fifty in a little under four months or so he had said. Taking that
as average made him bedding close to a hundred and fifty women a
year. Doing the math with his four hundred years made the sum total
something like forty thousand. It was sickening. I was disgusted
with him for being like that and with myself for caring for someone
like him, no matter what he had done for me.

There was a knock at the door. “Sar, are you
done? We should leave soon, unless you want to eat in.”

I didn’t want to look at him, or talk to him.
I wanted to leave, and never come back. But that wasn’t an
option.

“Sar?” he said a little louder, agitated.
“Answer me.”

“Almost,” I said softly, then washed the
makeup off my face. I got out the toothbrush and paste I had
brought with me, brushed my teeth, then rinsed out with one of the
single use mouthwash bottles. After smoothing some of the skin
lotion I had brought into my face, I took a deep breath and opened
the door.

I tried not to look at Devlin, but he was
standing right there and I couldn’t avoid it. He took one look at
me and his eyes narrowed. “I see distaste in your eyes, Sar,” he
hissed dangerously. “Is it for me?”

“It’s for me,” I said tonelessly, leaning
against the doorframe. “For being with someone to whom a woman
isn’t a person, just an experience, something to wile away the
hours with and forget in a few days, if you remember their faces or
names at all, that is.”

“I like being with women,” he hissed harshly.
“And they like being with me. I am not going to apologize to you
for it, Sar.”

“I’m not asking you to,” I said, moving past
him towards the door. “But you should let me go then, Dev. I’m not
going to be content as a face in your adoring crowd. And you
clearly need that, a crowd of women to sate you. You have one-stop
shopping in there.”

“What really bothers you, Sar?” Devlin said,
cutting and sarcastic. “Is it really that I’ve had many lovers, or
that you think that you might not be enough of a woman to hold on
to my love? That I might compare you to one of them and find you
lacking?”

Bastard. I let all of my disgust show on my
face. “It’s neither,” I stated flatly. “It’s that the women in your
bed were all one night stands, Devlin. You didn’t care anything
about any one of them past the night you spent with them, did you?
How can you be so shallow? And how can I trust that you really care
about me after seeing that?”