The Rousing: A Celtic in the Blood Novella (12 page)

One bra strap, then the other fell victim to his fingertips. A skilful tug, and the cups dropped away from my breasts. I felt my nipples tighten in the rush of cool air. Reflex had my hands going up to cover myself, but slowly, masterfully, he reached from behind me to close his fingers around my wrists.

“Please don’t cover yourself, Darcy,” he said, his voice like a purr in my ear, “I want to see you.” He eased my arms down, extending them behind my back until my wrists were crossed at the hollow of my spine. I wondered for a moment if he was going to tie them there. Just the thought of being trussed up and at this man’s mercy sent an unexpected punch of lust arrowing between my thighs, but there was no need for bindings. I was already at the mercy of Jack Pembroke’s commanding seduction. I would be a good girl, for him. I would keep my hands exactly where he’d placed them and await my reward.

His arms encircled me, his large palms taking the weight of my aching breasts as he kissed an erogenous path up the column of my throat. His lips at my neck made every inch of my exposed skin tingle with a low-level electrical charge that sparked at the slightest touch of his hands. Through his jeans, I felt the hard swell of his erection pressing against the heel of my hand, and when he groaned at the contact, I stroked up that long, pulsing ridge. My head fell back against his chest as he worked my nipples, rolling and flicking them to hard, sensitive peaks.

“You are beautiful, Darcy,” he said.

I risked a glance in the mirror. Flushed with arousal and with his hands touching me, I was beautiful, if only because he made me feel that way.

“You are wicked,” I replied huskily.

“Yes I am, and you love it, don’t you?” He traced my lower lip with one index finger and I took the bait eagerly, sucking it into the wet, warm heat of my mouth, riding my lips up and down its length until he rewarded me with a low moan and his hips rocked against my hands, seeking friction where I knew he really wanted my mouth to be.

“So wet,” he growled, circling the peak of my nipple with his moistened finger tip and sending another shower of erotic sparks across my skin. “Where else are you wet for me?” he demanded, tugging on my earlobe with his teeth. His hand skimmed my sensitive rib cage to the round of my ass, where he gripped my flesh and squeezed. Then he slipped that hand down the back of my panties, following the cleft of my backside to where I felt the hot rush of arousal pooling between my thighs. Instinctively, my pelvis tilted, my legs parting just enough to allow him access to where I so badly needed him to be. His fingers found the slippery seam of my intimate flesh on a groan that vibrated right through to my core. His wet fingertips grazed my clit and I cried out, thighs trembling with the effort of remaining upright. He entered me roughly, two fingers pushing past the tight threshold of my sex, and it was all I could do not to come at that first penetration. My inner muscles clenched as I rode his hand, throbbing around his fingers. Perhaps sensing my instability, he pressed the palm of his free hand firmly to my lower belly, cradling my pelvis between his strong hands, even as he pumped his fingers inside me from behind and teased my clit from the front.

“Oh God Jack, I can’t take any more,” I cried. I was shaking, poised on a hair-trigger, ready to detonate.

“Come for me,” he demanded. Once again, I felt the thrust of his hot tongue in my ear and the wet sensation sent me careening over the edge. Who could have known that the tongue equivalent of a wet willy would get me off so hard? He did, apparently. He played me like I was a Stradivarius, and he a great virtuoso. My entire body tensed and shuddered with the force of the orgasm rocking through me. I fell forward, bracing the desk with my hands, breathing in ragged pants.

“I’m not done with you yet,” I heard him say, and what do you know? Just the erotic threat in those words had my body already gearing-up for another round.

Holding my position, bent over the desk, I lifted my head and stared at him in the mirror through glazed eyes, devouring the very male flex of muscles as he peeled the sweater off his gorgeously toned body. Last time we’d done this I’d been tipsy on wine. Now I had the benefit of experiencing the raw animal masculinity of Jack Pembroke in the full of my senses, and it was almost overwhelming. Even the way he unbuckled his belt and snapped open the buttons of his jeans was erotic. By the time he was rolling the condom down his long, thick shaft, confidently and in full view, I was drooling with anticipation.

He took me from behind, shimmying my panties down my legs, lifting and separating the cheeks of my bottom until the head of his cock was positioned right at the slick entrance of my sex, and then he gripped my ass in both hands and thrust, balls-deep. I whimpered as he filled me, almost to the point of pain, tipping that sensitive target inside me that had my hips kicking back for more. He gave me exactly what I needed, slapping my ass with the backs of his thighs as his hips beat a punishing rhythm that had my body simultaneously gripping onto that desk for dear life and climbing the walls of insane ecstasy. Whimpering with every powerful thrust, I watched him through the mirror, the corded flex of his muscular body as he pumped inside me, the passion carved in the intensity of his expression. He was truly a magnificent specimen.

"Do you trust me, Darcy?" He said in a gravelled voice that told me he was as close to the break-point as I was.

"Yes," I cried.

"Do you trust that I would never do anything to harm you?" he demanded.

"Yes, Jack, I trust you," I cried, and I meant it. I did trust him. This was the man who put himself on the line for my brother and me, the man who'd shown me all my prejudices for what they were, the man I should have trusted earlier, the man I was dangerously close to falling hopelessly in love with. If I hadn't already fallen.

"Look at me," he said, still moving inside me as he coiled a fist in my hair and jerked my head up until I was looking right into his eyes.

His eyes, oh my God. Their green had always been intense, but now? Now they glowed, literally, two pinpoints of green phosphorescence shining back at me through the mirror.

"If this is a joke, Jack Pembroke, then your timing really and truly sucks," I said, laughing huskily through another groan of pleasure as his hips collided with my ass. I mean, those had to be some glow-in-the-dark contacts, and he was taking the whole fantasy fulfilment thing to a new level entirely. I could have told him it wasn't necessary. He was already kinky enough to fill the pages of a lifetime's fantasies, and I could tell I'd only scratched the surface with him sexually.

His rhythm slowed and he stalled. I could feel him, thick and pulsing inside me as my inner muscles clamped down in protest at the sudden deceleration.

"I'm not joking," he said gravely, "Something happened to me that night, when she bit me, and then you brought me back from the brink of death. He opened his mouth and I saw his canines, long and white, sharp as needles.

My heart took up a drumbeat behind my ribs, fear spiking through the lust in my veins.

"But I'm not like her," he said. "I promise you, I will never do anything to hurt you or your family. It's just that, like this, with you, I can't control it. I'm sorry, Darcy, I have to -"

He yanked my hair, pulling my throat into a taut, pulsing column. In that split second, I saw my own heartbeat, a living thing, a target, fluttering beneath the skin. His glowing eyes fixated on it just as mine did, and then his jaws snapped around my jugular.

I cried out in surprise.

There was pain at the beginning, just a momentary stab as his fangs punctured my skin, but then he started sucking at me with hard, greedy pulls that tugged at something deep and visceral inside me. Perhaps I should have been horrified, disgusted, and fighting to get away from him so I could sign myself into the funny farm, but the truth was I felt none of those things. What I did feel was incredibly, inexplicably turned-on.

"Oh God Jack, don't stop," I pleaded. "I need you to move inside me now."

Through the haze of his bloodlust he obliged, driving his cock so deep I all but lost my hold on the desk. I went up on my toes as they curled involuntarily, my tensed thighs shaking with the need to come. With my spine arched in his fisted grip, he sucked and thrust again, nailing me from behind, and I watched our reflections come apart in the mirror. He moaned through the seal of his lips, his muscles seizing in rhythmic jerks as he drove his release deep inside me. I came harder than I ever had before, the kind of mind-bending, head-blown orgasm that leaves you unable to think straight, never mind walk straight for weeks afterwards.

Jack was a vampire. That alone was enough to short out my brain circuitry. A goddamn bloodsucking ancient myth brought to life - or should that be death? I watched him through the mirror, drinking from my neck in the most incredibly intimate way, and all I could think was that the old wive’s tale about vampires not casting a reflection was so much cock and bull.

I was still riding the aftershocks that pulsed around his cock when he finally withdrew his fangs from my throat and licked at the puncture wounds. They were surprisingly neat, nothing like the Dearg-Due's ragged mutilations, and I was far from drained. On the contrary, I'd never felt more alive.

Reluctantly I shifted, turning to face the man who'd just sucked my blood and at the same time rocked my entire world.

"You've got some serious explaining to do, Jack Pembroke," I said, sliding my ass up on the desk.

"I'm still learning myself," he said, and the look he gave me was a smouldering half-smile, somewhere between sheepish and cat-who-got-the-cream smug. "I have an issue with sunlight, hence the gloom and candles, but that’s the first time I’ve ever, well, bitten anybody.”

“I liked it,” I admitted.

You're not afraid of me?" he asked, tucking a stray curl behind my ear.

"No," I said, looking deep into his eyes, "I'm not afraid. I said I trusted you, and I meant it."

"Good, because I love you, Darcy McShane, and I mean to make you love me too," he said. "If you still want me, that is?"

"I've wanted you since the moment I laid eyes on you, Jack Pembroke" I replied. "At this point you could tell me you were Frankenstein's monster and I think I'd still want you."

A boyish grin spread across Jack's beautiful face. His eyes had returned to their normal green and his fangs were nowhere in evidence when he framed my jaw in his hands and claimed my mouth in a savagely passionate kiss. When we finally came up for air, he kissed me again, tenderly this time.

"Stay with me here, in Bronach, my love, and we will have a lifetime of learning and explanations, together."

"Yes." I breathed the word against his lips, feeling like I'd been lost and was finally finding my way home. "A lifetime, my love, together."

THE END

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THE BECOMING TRILOGY

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Irish myths, never sexier. A paranormal romance/ urban fantasy series with wolf shifters. Set in modern-day Ireland, The Becoming weaves a dark world in which ancient Irish myths are larger than life and roaming the streets of Dublin.

Ash DeMorgan has long since consigned the fairytale nightmares of a troubled childhood to the realm of fantastical childish imagination. Now, lured back to Dublin, the scene of her tragic past, Ash encounters a city pulsing under the dangerous sexual influence of a new street drug the locals call Rave. Nothing is as it seems. Ash is about to discover that her nightmares are real, and she has become the prey in their erotic hunt. A step back into her past is about to become a high adrenaline race for survival.

Connal Savage, outcast, assassin, and living, breathing hunk of ancient mythology, has lived a thousand years servicing a debt of revenge. Dead inside. Until he encounters his boss's granddaughter, an infuriating woman who threatens to lead him to hell with all his good intentions, who manages to chip away at the hard encrusted defenses of a lifetime spent at war and burrow herself deep into a part of him that hasn't breathed for centuries. He is about to discover that when it comes down to the wire, when you're bargaining with the Grim Reaper for the life of the one you love, you will do anything.

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Front cover image: Copyright Tomasz Matuszewski,

2012

All images used under license from 123rf.com