SEDUCTIVE SUPERNATURALS: 12 Tales of Shapeshifters, Vampires & Sexy Spirits (113 page)

My, my
.

A wicked throbbing took over my nethers as I ran my gaze over his erection, and I reached up as if I could touch him from here.

After he opened a drawer and unwrapped a condom from its packaging, his smile flashed in the night. Sheathed, he pushed back his hair and made me pound for him even more when he said, “
Cher
.”

He sounded so taken with me, so true, as he crept onto the mattress, crawling over me. His Eye of Horus pendant dangled from the cord round his neck, and I touched it, welcoming him, tangling my legs round him and bringing him to me, flesh on flesh. When he pressed his tip against my clit, grinding and toying with me, I dug my nails into his upper arms.

But he was only getting started. He reached between us, holding his cock, then slid his tip over me before slipping in just his head. I groaned at how he separated me with a burn. Was he testing me to see if I could take all of him?

Did
he
think I was a virgin? Was that the reason for his tenderness or…

There’s more
, I thought.
You know that from the way he’s been watching you, wanting you…

But there had always been those clouds in his eyes, that haunted something holding him back.

He pushed in a bit more, and I shifted beneath him. Tight. So tight, but I had to have him.

“All the way,” I whispered. “I want everything, Philippe.”

And I meant more than only this. At least as much as I could give.

Did he understand my full meaning, though? Was I a nutter to be asking this of him when I had no business committing to him as much as I could?

He leaned down and kissed me, softly, like a promise he wanted more than anything to keep. We had gone too far for him to hold anything back, and he thrust into me with one smooth motion.

With a gasp, I moved with him. It burned even more at first, but such a good burn, and as he slid in and out with gentle strokes, I warmed to the sensation. When that dark, inky stain in me gradually rolled over my vision again, I felt bathed inside with thick, liquid heat that was rising and rising, boiling and bubbling and tickling me in a way that I surely had never felt before. And when it parted inside me, going from liquid to spikes that tore at me, I—

This time when I cried out, I was loud, the sound echoing from the corners of the room.

“
Cher
,” Philippe said, his rhythm coming faster as I gripped him.

I churned my hips, giving him all the pleasure I could, instinct pushing me. Sweat misted my skin, making us slip and slide and…

When I saw one of my vines waving in the air, I held my breath.

But I was too passion-soaked to do anything, even as it traced over his back. Then it lifted itself again, just as Philippe tensed, thrusting into me one last time before he collapsed onto me, nuzzling my neck.

I held him close, not wanting anything to separate us, breathing with him, every part of me at a slow meltdown. Meanwhile, as he kissed my throat, my vine skimmed his arm, as if exploring the bulging muscle there.

He stopped kissing me, touching both my hands, which were threaded in his hair. Was he realizing that I couldn’t be touching him with a third hand?

Shite
, here it came.

But my vine sucked back into my boot before he could turn and see it petting him, and with a rough sigh, he buried his face against my throat again, kissing me as if he had no idea that there was even more to me than he had realized.

* * *

After he cleaned us up, he turned down the bed, inviting me to nestle under the sheet with him. He pulled it over us while the rain danced on the window, creating squiggly shadow patterns on the wall.

He didn’t talk, and I thought he had perhaps drifted into a post-coital sleep, so I let him be, stroking his hair as he closed his eyes. I wished he would stay awake so we could spend every moment we had left together, but I remembered, most likely through idle talk, that men were more easily knackered by sex than women.

But what had we just had? A wonderful shag? Or had we…

The term “made love” floated through my mind, and I tried to grasp it, only for it to wiggle out of my grip, on its way out of the room.

Philippe’s voice rode over the slight darkness. “So was that a vine I felt?”

Oh. Here it
really
came.

I stopped playing with his hair. “It was.”

I waited for him to make a disgusted sound or perhaps storm out of the bed, appalled. But he did neither.

“It just…happened,” I said.

“I figured.”

He paused, and fear gripped me again. Now that his libido had calmed, was he realizing that I
was
too much for him with my boots and a façade that wasn’t even real? Had he started to fear that my boots had been working themselves off during our passion and, if we went another round, he would be left with a crispy hag underneath him?

He turned onto his side and flitted his hand over my belly. My muscles spasmed, telling me that
I
was hardly done for the night.

“I guess,” he said with a smile in his voice, “that’s the risk I run when I’m with a woman who wears boots ruled by white magic. It could be worse.”

“Why?”

“You could have a pair of evil boots instead.”

Trivia told me that some would have called the magic Amari practiced “voodoo,” which wasn’t right since that was a structured religion. Even “vodoun”—Louisiana voodoo—wasn’t proper, since that involved religion, as well. Philippe’s shop was actually more vodoun than voodoo. No, Amari was a hoodoo woman, a practitioner of folk magic, where individual rituals could vary depending on who was practicing it.

“Amari,” I said, “isn’t evil at all.”

“You were lucky to find her.”

“And for me to find you.”

He laughed. “True enough.”

He walked his fingers up my body, traveling them between my breasts. I raised my arms over my head, loving the sinful shivers he created. He flattened his hand above my left breast.

“Huh,” he said.

All right. Not the most romantic word a girl cared to hear in the afterglow. “What?”

“You don’t have a heartbeat.”

Now I laughed. I switched his hand to a spot above my other breast. “That’s because it’s over here.”

He paused, the air thick with something I didn’t quite understand yet.

“Is something wrong?” I asked.

“No. Well, it’s just that this isn’t the side your heart’s supposed to be on.”

My boots gripped me, and flashes of information lit my brain.

Meratoliages…hearts on the wrong side of our bodies…genetically engineered by dark magic…mutations…

As I gasped, one more tidbit snaked after the rest, as if the boots hadn’t meant to include it.

Interbreeding…brothers and sisters together to keep the bloodlines pure…

I sat up, clutching at my chest—at my wrong-sided heart. Then, as if taking pity on me, the boots plunged one last thing into my memories.

Not Lilly…not the rebel…wouldn’t let them touch me…I wouldn’t be simply a breeder like the rest of the women…had a chance to be the dragon’s keeper like all the males in the family and took it…then failed…yes,
failed
…

Philippe had sat up, his arm round me. “Are you all right?”

No. Yes? Because I had escaped the Meratoliages, and I was here with Philippe, getting a new lease on life. But the rest of what I had just experienced felt so wrong.

I nestled into his embrace, and he held me all the harder while I told him what I had gleaned from the boots. Actually, I skipped my family’s interbreeding—some matters never needed to see the light of day—but I reckoned the other information wasn’t too terrible. When I finished, he hauled me onto his lap.

“Darlin’,” he murmured. “My sweet darlin’. What the hell did you go through?”

“Amari said—”

“Sometimes it’s good to forget. I know.” I could hear him swallow. “Believe me, I know.”

I framed his face in my hands, looking at him, letting him know that there was no one else who would ever see him as I did—with truth and acceptance and understanding. We were alike in many ways, a team that worked.

Surely we could be even more. Perhaps the boots would let me remember him when I awakened. Perhaps there was a way…

He embraced me as if he couldn’t bear to let any part of me go, and I realized there was so much more for us to make our way through.

“What have
you
been trying to forget, Philippe?” I asked softly.

Was it the afterglow that swayed him? The feel of my skin against his, warm and comforting? Or it could’ve been the knowledge that I was bound to forget the story soon anyway. Whatever it was, he brought his forehead to mine.

“Loss,” he said. “That’s what I’m trying to forget.”

“Who was it?” I asked. It wasn’t merely his mum, because St. John had mentioned Philippe’s ghosts had set in early. “Your father?”

“No. He died young, before I knew him. It was about my first love.” He kissed me, held me tighter. “Maybe this isn’t the time to talk about it…”

“When, then?”

He must have remembered that I was the safest person to tell. A
tabula rasa
who worked on a need-to-know basis, thanks to the boots.

He sighed against me, and I didn’t know if it was in resignation or sadness.

“Her name was Rosa,” he said, “and I met her in grade school. Even back then, I was considered ‘different.’ The kids could sniff it out in me, and I can’t tell you how many fights I got into, protecting myself, showing them that I wouldn’t tolerate their teasing. The good thing about my weirdness was that I could predict some of those fights, so there was that.” He smiled against my skin. “Rosa was new at school, and she didn’t know any better than to befriend me.”

“That’s a pretty name, Rosa.”

“She looked rosy, too. Red hair, slender, pretty and fresh.”

His voice was thick with the pull of memory, but I couldn’t be envious of this Rosa. Not yet.

He went on. “She turned out to be a little different, too.”

“Psychic, like you?”

“Yeah. But she felt more keenly than I did. It was like she took on the pain of others and didn’t know how to stop it. Back then, I couldn’t identify that about her—not until I met St. John’s mother…”

“He’s a childhood friend, too?”

“Not until high school. But, before then, I didn’t have anyone to guide me or Rosa.” He used his thumb to caress my jaw. “Would it be wrong of me to admit here and now that I loved her and was completely devoted? In that young, dumb love way, of course.”

“I’m the one who asked.”

He paused, kissing me, passionately and thoroughly enough to make me rise slightly off his lap until he pulled away.

“Does that help you to know that you’re my present?” he asked.

For the time being
.

“You just feel free to do that whenever you see the need,” I whispered. He had whipped me up once again, my nethers vibrating.

He traced my hip negligently. “She got to be a real mess as we got older. She would cut her skin, telling me that it released some of the mental pain. Even with St. John’s mother’s advice, she wouldn’t stop. I tried to get her help, told my
maman
what was happening, hinted to the teachers, and when Rosa found out…” Philippe gripped me. “She ran off.”

“Did you ever find her?”

Silence bit at the room. Then, “
I
didn’t. And no matter how hard I tried to conjure visions about her, they wouldn’t come. Not over the years, not ever.” More silence. “But someone did find her. And it was in a bad part of town. From what I was told, she had drunk herself into a stupor and never came out of it. There was nothing I could do.”

“And you oughtn’t suffer for that.”

“But I do, and not only with Rosa. With everyone, including…you.”

I turned his face toward me, and even in the dimness, I could see how years of frustration and disappointment had marked him. He had never forgotten how he had failed Rosa and then his mum…and even me tonight, when Etienne had “gotten to” me and Philippe hadn’t foreseen it.

The rain methodically beat on the window, and even as I looked at Philippe, my eyes suddenly went drowsy.

It was happening, even in the middle of one of the most profound conversations I had probably ever had.

No, not now
, I thought. I was going under more quickly than I had ever anticipated. Surely I could have just a few more minutes before sunrise sent me under, before my boots started to draw energy from me in order to survive.

I wanted to say so much to him, stay with him…

I held to him, fighting my nature. “You, Philippe Angier, need to know that you couldn’t lose me even if you…”

I yawned so abruptly that it took me over. My eyelids were heavy, my limbs weighted. I could feel the boots singing against me like a bayou lullaby.

Frogs, crickets, all round me as I sank into the swampy water…

“Lilly?” I heard him say, his voice fading. “Lilly, don’t you go anywhere. Stay and tell me what you were going to say…”

When his tone became tortured, I reached through my mental thickness, toward him, but I couldn’t reach him.

“Lilly! Don’t—”

The lullaby closed over me like warm, comforting water, and I gave in to the black emptiness.

Shadows Till Sunrise: Chapter Ten

When I awakened in a bed in a room with rustic art on the walls and dusk pouring through an uncurtained window, I had no recollection of anything.

Not even my name.

“Lilly?” was the first word I heard, and I glanced to the side, where a man was standing, unfolding his arms from where they had been crossed over his broad chest. His dark eyebrows furrowed as he watched me.

I took a long, puzzled look at him: he was dressed in a dark shirt, jeans, and silver-tipped black boots, wearing a necklace with an all-seeing eye pendant from a cord round his neck. My hormones leapt.
Scoundrel
, I thought, because he seemed like a veritable pirate with his dark hair tied away from his face and gray eyes that burned against the rosy-tan of his skin. Unexpectedly, the danger in him was tamed by lips that seemed soft enough to kiss.