Blood Deep (23 page)

What do you want me to do?
He asked it in her thoughts.

This is the power of a vampire—he can speak in your thoughts
while licking and sucking your sweet pussy.

Her laugh was like silver tempered with sunlight. It shivered over him.
I like this,
she whispered, shy and uncertain.
What
are your fantasies? What were your fantasies when mortal?

I don’t ever think of being mortal, love. Wouldn’t you want
to know what a demon fantasizes about?

Yes.

Not raping and pillaging and taking blood. My fantasies are
either highly naughty and erotic, or richly drenched in the love
I can’t have. Which do you want to know?

She hesitated and he suckled gently on her clit. She leapt against him with a little cry.
Which do you wish to reveal?
she asked tentatively.

A clever woman.
Right now? The naughty ones. I imagine
taking you to your sexual limits. It arouses me to think of teaching you. I saw the whips and chains in the dungeon of Lord
Blackthorne—you were not really engaged to him, were you?

But I felt the depth of your shock and disappointment. I felt how
the truth of him lanced your heart. Tying you up is intriguing,
but my fantasy is to free you, not bind you.

She was looking down at him. Hanging free from her pins, her hair looked wild and sensual. With her slightly up-tilted eyes and full lips, she possessed a sensual face. A beautiful face, with cornflower-blue eyes and peach-tinted ivory skin.

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How do you mean?

Lukos heard her heart speed up. He suckled her labia, drinking her juices. He did not want to lick her clit again yet. He did not want her coming yet. But to create a carnal dream for her, he was going to have to show her, with his hands, his mouth, his hard cock—perhaps even his toes, if he had to be inventive . . .

I was imprisoned for a thousand years,
he murmured into her thoughts.
I had plenty of time to invent erotic dreams. And
one night—on each equinox and each solstice—I was allowed to
walk free. In your time, this time, I discovered brothels, where a
man could arrange any sexual pleasure he wanted.

What did you want? What would you want for me?

Even in his thoughts, her voice was breathless.

You must learn that every part of your body is sexual.

Lukos couldn’t resist cheating again, using magic to bring the few objects of the barn to him. A spell undressed her, and he sent her gown and petticoats whirling across the barn to lay neatly on a pile of straw.

He touched a length of chain he had summoned, and it became new, changing from old iron in his hand to clean, gleaming gold. The links became smaller and delicate.
I’ve had this
game played with me with strings of pearls.
He pressed the last link to her snug anus, stroking gently with the rounded, gold tip. She moaned and wriggled for him. Slowly, he felt her ass loosen for him. Gently, he pressed the first link inside her.

Her sky blue eyes were open wide.

Is it good?
He slid a second link inside her, pushing the first deeper, then a third. Her bottom clenched tight around the invading chain, and when he leaned back she had a spill of gold links from her rump like a fanciful leash.

She nodded. Her cheeks were pink with desire, her breath coming in rasps.
It is so . . . unbelievably erotic to have my derriere . . . filled, yet my quim is empty and waiting for you.

His cock reared against his belly.
You aren’t filled yet.
No, it BLOOD DEEP / 189

was his intention to fill her lovely ass with half the long, narrow chain . . .

And he did, link after link, while she moaned and panted and rocked in front of him. Twice she protested she couldn’t take more, but he suckled her clit until she melted again, and he filled her as he desired.

I’m stuffed,
she cried finally in his thoughts.
And I—I’m
going to come.

Magic, this time, though he’d said he wouldn’t. A small spell to hold off her orgasm. Then he stood in front of her and threaded the second half of the chain inside his own arse. With a quarter inside him, he had to bow his head. It was so good.

And each link disappearing inside him was joining them closer and closer together.

Finally, there was only a foot and a half of chain dangling between them. Miranda’s nipples were hard and blushing scarlet. She was clinging to his arm, her nails driving deep. He shoved brutally at his rigid cock, pushing it down. The head brushed along her belly, leaving a trail of his juice, and when he got it to her pussy lips, she was so wet and he so hard, that he sprang immediately inside.

Let us be closer.
Lukos twitched his fingers, and the last of the chain pushed inside his rear and hers at the same time, pulling them together, and drawing his cock into her to the hilt.

“I’m coming!” she shouted, aloud—up to the roof of their barn. He held her tight as she bucked and writhed on his cock, exploding for him.

Then he cradled her afterward, as she gasped his name again and again, then waved his finger and their chain disappeared.

Gently, he lowered Miranda to the hay.

She looked at him breathlessly, intently, as though her ingenuously honest blue eyes could see into his mind. He had one moment of fear that she could—that she could see how deeply he wanted this.

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Coaxing her to lift her leg, he clasped it, and buried his cock inside her again. Velvety, creamy, hot, and tight, her cunny embraced him.

He began thrusting into her, trying to penetrate her eyes as his cock plunged into her body. Her gaze held him. Miranda looked at him as no woman had ever done—not as a lover, but as a beloved. It made him thrust deeper—half wanting to erase the precious look, and half wanting to keep it forever, stoke it, savor it.

Her arms wrapped around his neck, and she moaned for him. They moved together, and he knew with every awkward collision and half-giggle she gave him, that he was her first.

She skimmed her hands over his shoulders and back. The scars there had healed when he’d become a demon. He was thankful his skin was smooth beneath her touch.

He usually teased his lovers, he liked blunt sexual talk, but he was almost afraid to speak as he thrust into Miranda. He felt like a callow youth. Vulnerable even as he was feeling such unbelievable pleasure.

Miranda bewitched him—there was no other explanation for it. She touched her hands to his cheeks and held him with tenderness he had never known. And she arched beneath him, suddenly a slave to another climax. She cried out, the sound ringing on the rafters. Her hips lifted, her nails raked his skin; then her hands flung away, clenched into fists. Her eyes shut, her lips parted in breathless wonder; and at the sight of her pleasure, his orgasm slammed into him, hotter and more dangerous than the fires of hell.

Even coming, he was never totally vulnerable. At least not before this. He surrendered everything to Miranda. His brain flared like Lucifer’s torches, his heart expanded in his chest, and his muscles seemed to turn to liquid.

“Miranda.” Her name came out in a rasp, a whisper, a softly spoken prayer. He almost collapsed on her as his body seemed BLOOD DEEP / 191

to dissolve with the pleasure. And beneath him, straining to him as she came once more, she seemed to glow like the sun.

He bent and kissed her, and the magic surged between them and hit his still-climaxing body like a wave of light.

Lukos.

Then he was falling, and he had enough presence of mind to lever off her, so he tumbled to the hay at her side. At once, he flung his arm around Miranda, to hold her to him. But he was thankful that she nestled against him on her side, her face turned away.

He felt as though he had been singed by the sun, smoldering everywhere and struggling to survive. But at the same time, he could feel a renewed magic crackling inside him, something far stronger than he’d known before.

Sparks danced before his eyes when he shut his lids. His entire body hummed and sizzled.

He’d never felt more powerful. But he opened his eyes and saw Miranda’s aura as she lay slumped at his side, beneath the span of his arm. It did not glow as fiercely gold as it had before.

By making love to her, he’d given her his seed and she had given him some of her power in return. It had been what he’d wanted, but it shocked him now. If he kept fucking her, he could take most, if not all of her magic, and become strong—

likely strong enough to destroy Lucifer. But what would he do to her?

He’d thought he could take her power without hurting her.

Was he wrong? Would draining her kill her?

But if he were not going to find his mate, in days he would be destroyed. On the spring equinox. He did not have long to carry out his vengeance and destroy Lucifer for taking his sister.

“Straw is not entirely comfortable,” Miranda whispered softly, drawing his focus back away from his anger to her. But Lukos saw her teasing smile. “What were you like, when you were mortal? You never spoke of the torture I saw.”

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“I don’t want you to know of that.”

“I’ve given you my innocence. I’ve given you . . . everything I had to give.”

Damnation. And for that, she believed she had the right to delve into the soul he didn’t have. She stroked his cheek. “Tell me.”

“I was apprenticed to Lucifer.” There. No couching in gentle words, no preparation, no qualifications to dim the shock.

She wished for the truth and now she had it. She had given her innocence to a beast, a demon, a thing created by the devil.

Her brows drew together, not in horror but in anger. “Apprenticed to the
devil
? By whom?”

Astonished, he saw she was not angered at him. She was not pulling away. If anything, she looked more deeply into his eyes.

He, a powerful demon, wanted to flinch away from her perceptive gaze. “My father.”

“You mean you were not taken—”

“My father gave me willingly. And he had to convince me to go of my own free will.”

“Why would he do such a thing to you?” Miranda cried, indignant and shocked. “How unspeakably cruel. A parent should protect a child—not give a young man away to Lucifer.” Then she paused. “I did not know Lucifer actually existed.”

“He does. I have lived in his hell.” Lukos touched her cheek as softly as she was touching his. “What you saw must have been my initiation.”

“That torture was an initiation?”

“I was being taken into hell, love.”

“But how did you survive it?”

“I didn’t. My throat was cut and I was raised from the dead to serve the devil.”

He had never once spoken to another person—or demon—

of what had happened to him. But he gently drew spirals just BLOOD DEEP / 193

above Miranda’s soft, pale breasts. “Have you ever heard of the Scholomance, love?”

He’d assumed she would not have, but to his surprise, she nodded. “It was a story that my aunt told me. I thought it was a legend—something that may or may not be true.”

He had to smile softly at that. “It is true. It still exists today.”

Lying with a woman in his embrace while he revealed his past was completely foreign to him. “Who is your aunt?”

“A woman who wished to be a scholar but could not be.”

Lukos wondered. It was not all of the truth, and when he probed her mind he caught a fleeting word.
Slayer.
“What did she tell you about it?” he asked cautiously.

“That the name came from the School of the Dragon. Lucifer would allow ten mortal men to enter a labyrinth of underground caves that led to his Underworld. They made a pact with the devil to acquire occult knowledge—alchemy, magic spells, and the secrets of nature and animals. She told me they would learn to control the weather—winds, rain, and storms—and that nine men would graduate after . . .” Her voice broke. “After they had undergone horrific ordeals . . . Were those worse than what I saw?”

He gave her a grim smile in place of an answer. “I was a tenth apprentice. Did she tell you what that meant?”

Miranda gasped. “She told me that the tenth would be retained by Lucifer as payment and would serve at the devil’s side. You were kept by Satan?”

“Until he imprisoned me.”

Stretched on her back at his side, she was all sinuous curves—

a flat plane of belly, rounded hips, and two plump breasts on top, tempting his mouth to suck. Just looking at her made his cock rise again.

But as he bent his head, she stopped him by putting her palm to his chin. “Why?”

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“Why lock me into the earth, into rock, keeping me alive but trapped for one thousand years?” He shifted, so he was lying on top of her, bracing his weight on his arms, and she parted her legs so he and his awakening cock could snuggle between.

“Yes, why?” She frowned. “How old are you, Lukos?”

“I was born in 854, so I am close to fifty times your age, my sweet.” He did not see shock. Zayan was two thousand years old, after all—even in that, the bloody Roman general liked to crow that he was superior. Damned Zayan who had been the one to capture his sister and take her to Lucifer.

“Where are you from?” she asked. “Tell me everything about you.”

That stunned him. She sounded so earnest. And she looked at him with complete fascination. As though she cared . . . “I was born in England, angel. In Wessex, during the reign of Alfred, our king. Alfred became, after he held back the Vikings, the King of the Angles and Saxons. Alfred had embraced Christianity. In those days, there were many kings—of Mercia, Kent, Sussex, and Wessex. Alfred knew the Danes wanted to destroy him. After plundering the country, they decided to become conquerors instead of raiders. Soon only Wessex still stood with an English king.”

She was watching him, hanging upon his words.