Blood Born: Cora's Choice #2 (6 page)

I walked past the
bed, which was already remade with all trace of medical equipment gone—doubtlessly the work of Worth or some other unseen member of the household staff. The door to the dressing room was standing open, as I’d left it. I went inside to find my jacket still folded neatly on the bench. I grabbed it hooked it over my arm.

Done, then.
All I needed to do now was get out of the room, go downstairs, and get in the car. How hard could that be?

But my footsteps dragged even as I passed the section of clothes that Worth had selected for me
. Looking couldn’t hurt, could it? After all, I wasn’t ever coming back….

You’re not even good at lying to yourself,
I thought, but I stopped anyway, just for a moment, to take a peek.

There was, I discovered, a little bit of everything, from blue jeans to ball gowns.
Surreptitiously, I checked a label—and blanched. One pair of pants was probably worth the sum total of my own wardrobe.

“
They are all yours.”

I turned to see Dorian lounging in his effortlessly graceful way in t
he doorframe. My heart hitched ever so slightly. Damn him.

“
I’m not for sale,” I said.

“
They’re a gift, not a bribe, Cora,” he said, amusement twitching at the corner of his lips.

I dropped the sleeve of the sweater that I had been admiring as if it had stung me.
“I still don’t want them.”

“
Are you going to tell me that you’re above worldly riches?” His tone was gently mocking.

“
Puh-lease.” I went up to him with the intention of pushing past into the bedroom. But when I got close, I lost my nerve and stopped. His body still hummed with that alien energy, and I didn’t trust myself this far from him. God only knew what I’d do if I actually touched him. “Who doesn’t want to be rich? This—all this, it doesn’t even seem real to me. But if it did...it still wouldn’t be mine. Not really.”

“
It is now.”

His eyes burned into mine, and my breath quickened.
Go now,
part of me urged, but I couldn’t listen to it anymore.

I shook my head to clear it, clinging to what I knew from my old life.
“You don’t even know me. And I don’t know you. All I know is how you make me feel. That’s not a good enough reason for any of this.”

He caught my wrist in his hand, and I gasped as my senses came alive to his touch, heat spiraling out of my
center. He raised my hand, turned so that the teardrop was visible against my pale skin.

“
That
is reason for anything. Your human ceremonies in all their pomp and circumstance are not as real as this.”

I swayed in his grip, wanting him, believing him even as I rebelled against it.

“
I can’t,” I said. It came out as a plea. “I can’t give up my life.”

“
I will never ask you to.”

“
You won’t have to,” I whispered.

He lifted the mark to his lips and kissed it, softly.
And I knew I would not leave that room as I had gone in.

T
he touch of his lips sent a hot surge through my brain, my skin prickling with acute sensitivity. A soft sound escaped me, and he lifted his head.

Dorian’
s hands slid around me, one catching the small of my back, the other tangling in my hair and tilting my head back as he pulled me hard against his body, crushing the jacket between us.

I couldn’t resist
him. I didn’t want to.

“You should have gone the first tim
e.” His voice had a ragged edge. “I shouldn’t have come up here with you.”

“I k
now.” Oh, God, how I knew—and how little it mattered now.

My head felt light, and t
he room seemed to lose its substance, wavering around me, around him. His chest was the only solid thing in the world. My gaze was locked in his as he bent toward me, his mouth coming down towards mine. My blood roared in my ears, my lips already parting in anticipation of his kiss.

I gasped against his mouth as it met mine,
lurching against him as something in my center twisted hard. His lips were cool, but they set me on fire. I opened for him, frightened at my own need for him to be inside of me. And he was, taking me with his tongue, pushing me to a rhythm that shook my body with its force.

Dorian
pulled back, and I clung to him harder. His blue eyes were shadowed with his need as he looked down at me.

“
Too long,” he said softly, as if to himself.

“Dorian
— ” I stopped, helpless. I didn’t even know what I wanted to say.

He gave a short laugh.
It had a hard, ugly sound, but his next kiss was tender, even gentle, setting my head to spinning with heady abandon and sending a liquid response deep into my core.

Dorian
loosened his hold on me long enough to shed his jacket, tossing it aside. He pulled me through the doorway into the bedroom, his hands on my shoulders pushing my back against the wall next to the door. My coat dropped to the ground between our feet.

“You want this,” he said.
It wasn’t a question. “You want me.”

“Because you want me to,” I protested, but it didn’t make it any less true.

“Because of the bond,” he corrected.

“I wanted you before that.”

“I know. If you hadn’t, you wouldn’t have passed the blood test,” he said.

I shook my head.
It was too hard to think with him holding me like that. The need was growing in me, minute by minute. I knew what I wanted was reckless, insane, even. It wasn’t the kind of thing I’d done—it wasn’t something I’d ever done before, with anyone. But that didn’t make me want it any less.

“Shut up,” I said
, as much to myself as to him. “Just shut up and kiss me again.”

And he did, his mouth hard on mine, sending a wave of reaction shuddering through me and down into my groin.
His thigh was between mine, so close to the aching need there. Whimpering, I pushed my hips into his leg, and he lifted his knee so that I could grind against him.

But there was no relief there, only more need.
My skin was burning with him, the touch of clothing on my flesh unbearable. All I wanted was him, his body against mine.

Inside of mine.

His mouth worked down, across the line of my jaw to the sensitive place just under my ear. I arched my neck into his mouth.

He broke away for a second,
dropping his hands to my hips, and I made a strangled noise of protest.

“Your shirt,” he said.

I didn’t know whether it was an observation or an order, but without hesitation, I yanked my turtleneck off in one rough motion.

It was only when I looked up to see his gaze fixed on my body that a tremor of self-consciousness came over me.
I knew too well how I looked—sick and wasted, hollowed out by cancer. But Dorian’s expression betrayed only raw desire. And a hunger I didn’t dare to name.

This is a mistake,
I thought, but I couldn’t voice the words.
He eats people, for godssake, Cora!

He
’d eaten from me, and it had nearly killed me. He would have killed me, if it weren’t for variables beyond his control—he knew it, and he’d lured me in anyway. Knowing that I really had no choice. Knowing that I couldn’t resist.

N
ow here I was, half-naked with him. And I still couldn’t say no. His hold over me was so complete that I didn’t think I could refuse him even if I knew that this time I would die.

Some of my fear must have been betrayed in my expression because Dorian shook his head.

“No blood, Cora. Not today.”

No blood.
Only him. Only…sex. I put a name to it for the first time. It wasn’t that I was afraid of the act. I was afraid of him and what sex with him would do to me. I was afraid that I would never be the same.

I was afraid that I would never again
want anything so much.

Dorian hooked one arm behind me to pull me against him, and I could feel his
hardness beneath the fabric that separated us. He skimmed his other hand up the side of my body and cupped my breast though my bra. I moaned slightly at the pressure of his palm through the knit fabric, my nipple going hard against it. I knew he could feel it, what he did to me, and that only made my body twist tighter in need.

He dipped his mouth even with my ear, and my skin prickled at his breath.
“Tell me you want this,” he whispered. “Tell me it is your own free will.”

Was he asking for my benefit
or to reassure himself?

“
I do,” I breathed, unable to say anything else. “It is.”

But how c
ould it be? With him, I could be made to want anything….

Dorian made a noise that might have been a laugh, then pulled back my hair and kissed me just below my ear, sending a startled jolt of sensation straight into my groin.
He moved along my neck and down to my collarbone. His lips were soft and hard at once, kissing, sucking, nipping my skin until it was hot and flushed and I swayed with every caress.

His hand
behind me slid up my back, and with one swift twist, my bra hung free from my shoulders. The hand on my breast slid up under the wire, his bare palm a shock against my nipple that shot straight into my center and lower, between my legs.

As if
he could sense my reaction, he moved the arm behind me again, sliding downward to slip his hand into the rear waistband of my pants so it rested against my buttocks and urged me harder against his thigh. The hand on my breast shifted, his fingers splaying to capture my hard nipple between them.

I was panting already, rocking my hips into his leg with every movement of his mouth on my body, and a small whimper escaped as he slowly tightened his grip,
pincering my nipple between them. He slid his hand down, dragging at the hard knot until it reached his fingertips. Then began to roll it, tease it, slowly, sending small jolts of pleasure straight down into my swollen clitoris.

My breath was coming in short
, hissing gasps now, but he wasn’t satisfied. He dropped my bra on the floor and shifted me higher on his leg, so that my feet dangled, and then it was his mouth against my breast as his hand moved to tease the other nipple. He circled the areola slowly, provokingly, teasing at me with his lips and teeth until my head pounded from the need for fulfillment, my hands tightening into fists in his hair.

Then, without warning, he took it into his mouth, enveloping it, stroking my nipple with his tongue, and the heat in my center flared up into fire. He rocked his thigh against my clitoris though my
pants, and I arched my neck, pushing hard against the wall as I ground my hips into him.

And I came.
A teasing orgasm that rippled heat through me, not nearly enough, leaving my senses burning in its wake and promising more to come.

Dorian pulled me away from the wall, lifting me easily in his arms.
One shoe fell off, and I kicked the other free. He was taking me to the bed—my bed, his bed. I knew it, and I welcomed it even as I knew what was coming next could never be taken back.

He was a monster.
And in that moment, he was all I wanted.

Dorian
set me on the edge of the bed, my legs on either side of his hips. He pulled his tie off in two tugs and began to work the buttons of his shirt from the collar down.

My breath catching in my throat at my audacity, I
started at the bottom, my hands trembling as I tugged the buttons loose. He caught my hands when we met in the middle, capturing them in one hand and lifting them to his lips for a brief kiss as he pulled the last button free.

He pulled his shirt off, dropping it as his hand came up and caught the back of my neck.
He leaned down over me, taking my mouth in a long, deep kiss.

Then he was on me, over me,
pressing me back into the blankets, his mouth and body filling my world. The smooth touch of his skin against my bare flesh, against my damp breast, sent a jolt straight through me. And when his mouth came and claimed the other one, I arched hard into him, dampness blooming between my legs. I could feel the weight of his erection against my leg, and I longed for it to fill the emptiness inside me.

Then his hand was at the button of my pants, and in two deft movements, they were loose.
He shifted to lift up my hips, then hooked his thumbs down to slide against my skin and pull pants and panties off in one deft motion.

I was naked before him now, sunlight flooding through the windows over my body.
There was no place to hide. I’d never been naked in front of any man.

But Dorian wasn’t a man.