Blood Deep (28 page)

She should keep away from him, as Aunt Eugenia had demanded. But she wanted to know the truth. Had he lied to her, or were the words of history and journals the lie?

Perhaps she was mad, but she wanted to believe Zayan could open his heart to love, and that it could, somehow, redeem him.

And why was he insane enough to come to a castle that housed seven vampire slayers determined to destroy him? Could it really be for her?

Would she let him in?

Zayan circled in front of Miranda’s window. For long minutes, she stared at him through the streaked glass as he slowly beat his wings to hover where he could watch her. Moonlight poured on her, illuminating her oval face, her remarkable china-blue eyes. He witnessed the war of emotion on her face, and felt her turmoil as strongly as if it were his own. He sensed her heart demanded that she let him in, but her logic warned her not to be so mad—that letting him inside could mean her death or the deaths of others.

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No, Miranda,
he murmured into her mind.
I would never
hurt you.

Damn, he felt a spurt of guilt. He was lying to her. Tonight, he had to take her power. He had to absorb all of her energy to take it inside him and bargain with the red power.

Because once he had risen tonight, the voice of the red power had come to him. It had warned him that it was going to take Miranda’s power itself, if he didn’t do it for him. . . .

If you rebel, if you refuse to do my bidding, you will lose any
chance to ever have your children again.
The red power’s voice had purred to him, sounding eerily like Claudia, his former wife—the wife who hated him to the point of madness.

Zayan, I can subject your children to great torture in their
afterlife. I could condemn them to hell, if I wished.

What are you?
he had shouted to the dark sky in rage. Though he had searched for two thousand years for some clue to what this red fog—this mystical entity—really was, he was still as ignorant as he had been when he had finally succumbed to its lure.

And fear welled up. He’d never known such horror.
Do not
punish them to hurt me. Punish me. Destroy me. Torture me. I
don’t care.

Serve me, and they will not be hurt at all. Serve me and I
will give you the man who killed them. He is immortal, just as
you are. He has lived also for two thousand years. You’ve hungered for vengeance for such a long time. I can give it to you. If
you give her to me . . .

What he should do was warn Miranda away from him. Tell her to run.

He couldn’t bear to hurt her. He had taken the magic force away from others—from angels and demons—without regret, without emotion at all. It should be as easy with Miranda. He had known her only a couple of days. She should not matter to him.

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But she did.

Miranda began to walk resolutely to the window to let him in. She was doing it on her own volition. He had tried to compel her but felt that power bounce off her, like dull arrows on armor.

No woman who knew what he was had ever willingly let him in before.

But if he spared her, if he didn’t drain her power, which would likely kill her, he would lose everything. His children . . .

It would be like losing them all over again. And the grief was just as unbearable, as agonizing, as it had been two thousand years ago.

Miranda ran the last few feet to the window. She darted to the lock as though determined to do it before she lost her nerve.

Her hands closed on the sash and threw it open. Open for him.

He swooped through the beckoning window and shifted shape in front of Miranda.

“What is wrong, Zayan? You look . . . haunted.” She reached out and traced the tight lines that ringed his mouth. “Are you in pain?” She frowned and looked to the door. “Why did you come? Are you mad? They’ll destroy you if they catch—”

He silenced her words by drawing her into his embrace. He didn’t want to speak. Slanting his lips over her warm, plump ones, he let himself sink into the heat of the kiss. Her fingers stroked his cheek lovingly. A woman’s caress—he’d never known one so gentle, that spoke so much of emotion and caring. The stroke of just her fingertips along the line of his cheekbone sent shivers of pleasure down his spine.

Why did you come? What do you want?
she asked.

You. This.
Her mouth was more intoxicating that any wine he’d drunk, sweeter than any plump grapes held to his lips by a beautiful slave, richer than any pleasure—

You’ve captured me.

He knew how she had tried to protect Lukos. How she had BLOOD DEEP / 231

risked her own life to save three children. It was true. She had captured him.

His hands slid down over silk. She wore a nightdress, a thin creation of silk that clung to her round, high breasts, and fell sinuously from her hips to hint at the long curves of her legs.

Shimmering white, the gown threw off light like the moon, and she called to him the way the moon did.

Miranda.
Zayan moaned her name in need and hunger—

something he had not done since he had been a general, but still a young man, and had first kissed Claudia, his wife.

Zayan’s tongue was playing with hers, doing delicious things to the inside of her mouth, making her melt, and Miranda drove her fingers into his broad, naked shoulders to keep from puddling at his feet.

She wanted him. As much as she had wanted Lukos. It seemed sinful and wanton, but as she surged into Zayan’s kisses, hungrily savoring his mouth, she knew she couldn’t deny her desire for him.

Teasing gently, his long hair fell against her cheek as he devoured her mouth. What had he looked like as a mortal man?

Strangely, she wanted to know.

Stop.
She shouted it into his thoughts.
You lied to me, and I
want the truth. When I asked you why you gave up your soul,
you made me believe it was because you had lost your children.

His hands skimmed down her back, ruthlessly igniting her need.
That is the truth,
he murmured, his voice husky even in her thoughts.

Lady Brookshire told me that you became a vampire before
your children were killed.

Lady Brookshire was not there.
With a push on her shoulders, he drew back from the kiss and faced her. “What I told you is the truth. When I was a general, once when I was facing a huge defeat, a voice came to me—a voice that came out of the sky around me. It promised me great victories in return for my 232 /
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soul—and ultimately, my servitude. I refused. I won the battle using my own wits, the courage of my men, and perhaps some mad and ruthless moves. I was taken prisoner once, and the rumor was that I survived by becoming a demon. But those were stories spread by my enemy. By another general, Gaius, my wife’s lover—”

“And the man who murdered your children. I saw him.”

She impetuously gripped his biceps. “I’ve had visions of the man who did it. And in the last one, I saw his face reflected in the water of a bath.”

His hands tightened on her arms and she almost squeaked with fear. It was as though he would snap her arms in his anguish and anger. “Tell me. Please tell me what he looked like, Miranda.”

Straining to remember every detail of the face she had seen in the pool of water, she told him. All the while, he stroked her shoulders, and his touch made it easier to see that face again.

“It was Mucius Gaius. He did it himself. I assumed he sent someone else to carry out the crime—”

“No.” She could barely speak; her throat seemed to be closing tight and she could not breathe. “He killed them with his own hands. I saw it—I saw what he did—”

“By the gods, Miranda, at least I was spared that.”

“I—It—” No words. There was none she could give him. It had been horrific, but it would not help Zayan to be told that.

Her eyes itched and burned and she blinked at him. “I am so very sorry.”

“Those stories about me—about drinking the blood of children, about becoming a demon and serving Lucifer. They were not true. I was brutal. Yes, I cannot deny that. I took human lives to satisfy my hunger. But I want you to see—” He broke off. And time stood still as he bent to her neck and she forgot to breathe.

Perhaps she was foolish, but she tipped her head to the side BLOOD DEEP / 233

to expose her skin. For her, it was like shouting to him that she trusted him. That she believed him. Tensing, she waited . . .

He kissed her there. That was all. His lips touched hers with the softness she remembered from her mother, long ago. The touch of someone who loved her.

“Did you summon this fog?” she asked. “Are you controlling it?”

“It came to me, but I didn’t summon it. It controls me.

Don’t ask me what it is, love, because I don’t know. I cannot tell you. But it made me into a demon, two thousand years ago, and has haunted me ever since.”

His mouth traced the scooped neckline of her silky nightgown. Her most beautiful one. He reached the swell of her right breast and she giggled, then sighed in desire. His mouth made her feel like she was floating, without any magic lights or stars or spells.

“I’ve never shared as much with any woman as you, Miranda,” he murmured before tracing a circle around her puckered right nipple. Through her nightdress. With his fangs.

Sensation streaked from her breast to her quim. “Oh!” Her nipple stood harder, her breast seemed to swell and lift toward him in her pleasure.

“If you want me, lie back on the bed, Miranda. Let me make love to you.”

“In my bed? You’re surrounded by vampire slayers—”

“Then you must be quiet, angel.”

To save him, she should not fall back. But he began suckling her nipples—one to the other, a quick, hard suck, a flick or two of his tongue, a brush with his fangs, and she was on fire. Throbbing with need between her thighs. She felt so empty, wanting to be filled.

She was falling back—

He moved on top, and her world became the sight of his straight, wide shoulders—perfect and bronzed, without a scar 234 /
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or a flaw. And the taut muscles of his pectorals. And the squared line of his strong jaw. His muscled throat.

Her legs had opened wide in welcome, and she moaned as he entered her. Thick, thick, so wonderfully thick, his shaft spread her open and she clutched his arms.
A quick orgasm first
, he promised. Each thrust teased her tight, erect clitoris. Each thrust made her see stars.

His hand slid beneath her bottom, as he slid in and out of her on a cushion of her creamy juices. His mouth played with her breasts and she was bouncing up to him, clinging to him.

Driving him . . .

Fingers parted the cheeks of her derriere as his erection filled her to the brim. Then his thumb pushed lightly against her entrance. He arched his hips to push his cock impossibly farther, and his thumb went inside her.

As though he’d snapped his fingers and commanded it, she exploded in orgasm. Pleasure swamped her. She felt as though floating in ecstasy. She dragged in desperate breaths. Inside her, he was still rigid.

And now . . .
He grinned.
Some other delicious positions, love.

But she realized what she had done. She had cried out. Her shout of ecstasy must have been heard by every vampire—vampire slayer—in the castle.

14

Soaring

Footsteps thundered on the stone steps of the corridor beyond her locked door.

You have to flee,
Miranda cried in panic.

But calmly, as though they had all the time in the world, Zayan eased her up onto her knees, with her rear end facing him. She was on all fours, and he cradled her derriere, which jutted toward his face.
Mmm. A delectable view.

For heaven’s sake, he was so caught up in lust, he would end up staked.
I fear the lock won’t hold them long.

I am not going, because I don’t believe you are ready to leave
with me, Miranda.
He patted her rear. She shivered. What was he seeing of her in this position? Her hair tumbled over her shoulder, but more scandalously, her rump was almost open to him because her legs were parted on the bed. Her breasts hung down, and if she tried to look through her spread legs, her chin bumped her bosom. She suspected Zayan could see the lips of her quim from his vantage. And her nipples too.

“Then what are you going to do?” She asked it softly, but with more bold courage than she really felt. And she didn’t 236 /
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doubt he could hear her hammering heart, and knew she was rigid and icy cold with fear over his safety.

“Make love to you this way.” His fingers slid between her legs from behind and toyed with her nether lips. She could see her pubic curls glistening with the juices from her climax. He stroked her, making his fingers wet and sticky; then he caressed her clit with his slick fingertip. “Relax, love.” He made teasing circle that set up fireworks in her brain. “Let your body heat up for me.”

There isn’t—

He arched his hips forward, his cock filled her from behind and she couldn’t speak. Her passage was so juicy, he’d glided in with ease.

The door suddenly rattled against the lock. Fists slammed against it. Several voices shouted her name from the other side.

“Miranda?” “Miss Bond!” “Open the door!” A furious male voice demanded that.

“Think of what you are doing!” That was Serena’s voice.

Oh, Miranda wished she could think. But Zayan’s cock surged in and out of her. In to kiss her womb, out to reach the sensitive rim of her quim, and leave her trembling in need before he pushed in once more.

The slayers would break through the door. She would be caught. They would attack Zayan who was more than vulnerable right now. She would have to stop them from destroying him—

His hips slammed against her buttocks as he thrust, making her cheeks quiver. Even that was unbearably erotic. She pounded back against him, wildly slapping her arse to his groin.