Shadow of the Vampire (17 page)

         
He lifted his head and their gazes locked. Both of them were panting, trembling. Beneath her hands, his hard, hot body shuddered. She knew without asking that his body ached like hers. Everything about him, about them, felt familiar and yet new at the same time. Desperate and yet overwhelmingly calm.

         
Alexia reached up, palming a stubble-roughened cheek. His eyes dipped at her touch, a deep breath exhaling out of him. She rubbed her thumb over his lips, amazed at how smooth they were. A fierce desire to know how every inch of him felt beneath her hands clawed at her. Emboldened, she trailed her palm lower, over the ridge of his columned throat, eyeing the pulse leaping beneath the skin. Again her fangs twitched, begging for a taste of him.

         
Dipping her head to his neck, she let her lips follow the path her hand had made, feeling his body tense beneath her mouth. In expectation of her bite? she wondered. Slowly, she trailed the tip of her tongue along his throat.

         
Alexia closed her eyes and let her other senses take over, took in the salty, musky flavor of his flesh, the hard yet smooth feel of him beneath her hands. She flicked her tongue across one dark nipple before closing her mouth completely over the hard peak. A low groan rumbled deep in his chest and he wound a hand in her hair. Alexia smiled against his skin and did it again.

         
When her tongue swirled lower, skating over the ridges of his abdomen, the hand on her head flexed.

         
"Ah...gods...what are you..." he panted. His fingers tightened in strands of her hair, pinching her scalp. She winced, loving the way he clutched her, the fierce possessiveness of his embrace. It was born of nothing other than pure passion and want. The same want echoing through her aroused body. Unlike Lotharus, he did not desire to wield power over her, or establish dominance over her. He only wanted to pleasure her. And, Goddess, she wanted to let him.

         
Alexia ran her fingers over the flat plane of his abdomen, the hollow of his hips, which thrust forward. Reaching lower, she danced her fingers around the impressive shaft jutting up to meet her, relishing his quick intake of breath.

         
"Feeding makes me horny as hell." She recalled his words from before and couldn't help but note the evidence of those words extending up to greet her. Beneath her lips, his chest heaved. The hard length of him pulsed with each kiss, no doubt knowing where it would take her.

         
On her knees before him, her eyes came level with the target she'd been kissing her way down to meet. A rush of liquid coated her mouth at the sight. She remembered the way he felt in her palm. Smooth yet hard, and so thick she could barely get her fingers around him.

         
Like everything about this dragon lord, he was opposite of all she'd known, been told or experienced before. Her womb clenched in arousal, feeling his phantom girth spreading her, moving inside her. A shudder skated along her spine. Although her body may want to take him inside her, it was impossible with him caged like this. However, there was another way she could have him.

         
Licking her lips, she reached for him again. He hissed in a breath when her fingers encircled him. Slowly, she stroked the length of him, marveling at the sheer size of his velvety hardness. Closing her eyes, she drew in the intoxicating scent of him. Lust, the forbidden and the smell of the sea rippled off him. Peeking out her tongue, she dipped the tip into the slit at the top of his engorged cock. A deep tremble started in his toes, quaked up his muscular legs and shook up his body.

         
"Alex," he murmured in a harsh groan.

         
Blood rushed to her face. No one had ever shortened her name in affection before. She dared not look up and let him see how much his simple endearment affected her.

         
Instead, she would show him.

         
But first, she would taste him.

         
DECLAN ALMOST CAME the instant her sweet fangs sank into his hip. His vision blacked out and a shudder quaked through his body. When she began to feed, to taste, to drink from him, he kicked back his head, biting his lip hard to keep from crying out.

         
He'd never had a woman feed from him before. Ever. For it to be Alexia rivaled any erotic fantasy he'd ever had. Jets of heat left his body with each pull of her mouth. The tip of her tongue laved flat on his skin, a satiny ribbon stoking the burn, the hunger inside him.

         
Although he could have fed her for hours, days, until the life flowed out of his body, she dislodged her fangs from his skin. A tremble rolled through him and his pulse thundered in his skull. As weak as he suddenly felt, he realized it was a good thing one of them had the sense to pull away.

         
He'd barely finished the thought when Alexia's hot, wet mouth perched over the tip of his erection. Declan gritted his teeth as, inch by inch, she took him inside. His legs trembled, his buttocks clenched. When the sensitive end of his cock brushed the back of her angled throat he finally let out the breath he'd been holding. Stars peppered his vision. His eyes rolled in the back of his head as she slowly eased herself back. Declan watched the erotic sight of her cheeks concaving as she sucked up his length.

         
"Gods," he said on an exhale, tilting his hips toward her. Tension gripped his muscles from his groin to his toes with each bob of her mouth. He had to make this last, had to stop himself from coming too fast. But he couldn't, not when her mouth was sucking him oh, so perfectly.

         
A low, shuddering gasp flew from his lips as his cock spasmed, jetting out the first wave of his orgasm. Declan clutched the bars, fighting vertigo as his seed exploded into her mouth, coating her throat. Pulsing blackness clouded his vision, but he wouldn't look away for the world. Nothing he'd ever seen compared to the sight of his cock buried between Alexia's beautiful lips. The pulses of her throat, sucking and contracting around him, drove a primal groan from his lips.

         
Tunneling his hands in her hair, he slid his fingers through the silken strands until he cupped her head. It hit him how vulnerable she had made herself. Right now, her life was literally in his hands. They shook with the realization. Three days ago, he would have crushed her skull without a second thought. Yet now the only thought racing through his sated brain was figuring a way to tear the iron bars from the walls. Not to escape. But to take her in his arms, bury himself inside her and never come out.

         
She released him, and cold air kissed the heated flesh of his cock. Declan sucked in a breath. Alexia fluttered her gaze up to him. She visibly swallowed, tongue sweeping over her lips. Gods, how he wanted to taste them, lose himself in them. Another shudder moved down his spine and he collapsed to his knees before her. Her black eyes blinked, fluttering when he slid his hands to cup her face.

         
Up close he realized her eyes weren't completely black as he'd first thought them to be, but two different shades of onyx. The inner ring was a fiery coal, reminding him of cut black stone, the outer as lush and dark as a crow's belly. Set against her pale skin, her eyes seemed enormous and their depth infinite. Under his perusal, they darkened even more than he thought possible.

         
Then they flickered to his lips and before he could process a coherent thought, his mouth claimed hers, kissing her with hungry, fierce abandon. She met his passion, returning it. At the notion, a heady swell of desire surged inside him. The passion between them seemed almost natural, which made no sense. He could handle it, though, used to it now where she was concerned. However, the wave of protectiveness and tenderness that followed close behind threatened to engulf him, to swallow him whole.

         
Instead of dwelling on it, he embraced it, rode it. Let it carry him away as he lost himself in her mouth, her taste. The experience of giving in to his emotions was both intensely satisfying and agonizingly painful. What he was doing went against everything he'd ever been taught, ever preached, ever believed, but it felt too right to ignore.

         
"Alexia," he said with an exhale when they parted. Words flitted through his mind. Words he must be mad to think, much less consider saying. Closing his eyes, he rested his forehead on hers. Her hands cupped his face, her breaths came in soft pants against his skin. A shiver danced up his spine. "I..."

         
She sucked in a breath. "Oh, no."

         
Declan barely registered her whispered words before he heard the footsteps, heard the door swing open and felt a familiar coldness leak into the room. His heart stopped a second before Lotharus stepped into the dungeon.

         
"Well, well," Lotharus said. "What do we have here?"

         
Although Lotharus appeared calm on the outside, the tight line of his jaw and drastically narrowed eyes, one slightly twitching, gave away his fury. The same four soldiers who'd helped Lotharus beat Declan fanned out from behind him, like some kind of sinister cloak.

         
"Come now, Alexia. Take your scolding like a good girl."

         
The small hands around his neck fidgeted before they fell away and slipped back through the bars. Alexia made a move to stand, to protect herself, but Declan wound his arms around hers through the bars and pulled, holding her as tight as he could. His tail snaked between the irons, coiling around her ankle. A growing sense of dread sank like a stone in his stomach, as two of the soldiers headed toward her.

         
Alexia turned to face him, her eyes wide. "Remember what I told you."

         
Declan's mind raced. What had she told him? Then he remembered the hastily sketched map, the opening in the back of the dungeon wall that led to freedom.

         
A booted foot crashed down on her ankle, knocking his tail loose and pinning the tip to the ground. As much as his tail throbbed, he ignored it. He tightened his grip on her arm, his heart worried for her. Let them hew the damn appendage off, as long as they left her alone.

         
Instead, he sat caged and helpless as the soldiers ripped her out of his arms and wrestled her to Lotharus. Fear tightened like a noose around his neck. He clenched his fists around the bars tight, wishing they were Lotharus's throat. "What are you going to do to her?"

         
"Well, I can't very well have her healing you every time I almost kill you, now can I?" His clawed hand closed around her neck.

         
"How does this crown feel, Alexia, hmm? Do you still think you can turn me in, turn me into nothing? Do you?"

         
Alexia gasped. Her eyes wide with fear as she brought her hands to the one tightened around her throat in an attempt to pry his fingers loose. Her chest rose and fell in a frenzied, staccato beat, the muscles in her arms quivering.

         
Declan saw her losing the battle, noted her face flush and then turn a deep purple. He drew in a breath, his nostrils flaring in rage. "If you harm her..."

         
Lotharus let go and spun to face Declan. Alexia crumpled to the ground by his feet, coughing and wheezing. "You'll do what, exactly?" he sneered.

         
Declan heard his breath coming in deep, hard pants. Felt the collar already begin to steal whatever strength he'd gained feeding from her. He bit down on his jaw and looked away.

         
"That's right, Derkein. You'll sit here and do nothing," he said, taking a step closer. "Just like your father sat there and did nothing while I defiled that half-breed mother of yours."

         
The words hit Declan with the force of a brick wall. All the air was knocked out of his body and his head spun. Gripping the bars to keep himself anchored, Declan slammed his eyes shut, forcing out the images Lotharus had created in his mind. "Shut up," he murmured.

         
"By the time I was through with her, your father was practically begging me to end his miserable life."

         
"Shut up!" Declan leveled murderous eyes on Lotharus.

         
The vampire grinned. "You see." He slid his finger along one bar and then the next as he paced the length of the cell. "I know how to inflict the most pain, derive the most agony out of my prisoners. Call it a gift. And I enjoy every moment of it."

         
Lotharus turned, setting his attention back on Alexia. All Declan could think of as he walked toward her was what that monster had done to his parents. What he was going to do to her.

         
Alert, Alexia's eyes flitted from Declan to the door and back up to Lotharus. Then she hopped up and held out her handgun, pointing the barrel at Lotharus's chest. Declan held his breath. She paused for a heartbeat before shifting the weapon. In a flash of metal and roar of bullets, she dropped the soldier closest to the door and ran for the exit as fast as she could.