Blood Deep (29 page)

Yes,
he groaned.
Be wild. Be the powerful woman you were
meant to be.

I—I’m coming.
She managed to shout it in her thoughts, hoping to share it only with Zayan.

He laughed behind her, rocking his hips to make her burst, BLOOD DEEP / 237

and to keep the pleasure roaring through her, until she was sobbing with it, and had to rest her head on the bed as she swayed with each amazing wave.

You must go,
she begged.

A wise man should. But a man falling in love? He is never
wise.

Was he truly falling in love with her? He was risking his very existence to be with her. Instead of fleeing, he lifted up her derriere. “Do you trust me?” he whispered out loud.

She did. She believed him. And trusted him, just as she did with Lukos.

His cock nudged between the full cheeks of her rump, and trust or not, she froze. With a shiver of anticipation, she remembered Lukos’s game with the chain.

She knew what he was going to do. But the swollen head of his cock and the thick shaft that followed were so large. Could she do this?

The chain hadn’t hurt, it had been wonderfully stimulating.

She
could
do this. Her rump tingled in anticipation, her chest was tight with excitement, her mind swimming with arousal.

He stroked gently, making teasing circles with the wet head to her tight, furled opening. She tried to relax, wriggling against his cock as he stimulated her.

The banging on the door grew louder. “He’s used magic to prevent us from breaking through the lock.” Miranda recognized Drake Swift’s voice.

“There’s the window.”

“He’ll guard it with magic.”

“What does he want with her? I can hear them in there—he hasn’t taken her from here.”

Serena’s voice came through the door. “He must want her power—”

“Or he is intending to make her fall in love with him.”

Miranda could do nothing but moan. She could not shout 238 /
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any reassurances. Not with Zayan’s cock pressed to her rump, slowly, slowly, exquisitely making her anus open for him. Her fingers curled into the covers on the bed. Her toes had tightened. And she was fiercely gasping for breath and moaning.

With a pop, the head pushed inside, and her ring of muscle snapped tight around him. Dear heaven.

Good?

Amazing. It is more . . . more intense than magic. I feel on
the very brink of my . . . Every part of me tingles with awareness.

Wait then, love, until I thrust.

And he did. She arched her head back with the shooting sensations of pleasure. It was so intense. Her feet felt like they were on fire. She moaned in sheer ecstasy. With long, easy thrusts, Zayan filled her bottom with his cock. She felt the brush of his nether curls against her rear. She was on all fours, splayed in front of him, with his hard cock inside her rear.

You are beautiful, Miranda. I can explore everything with
you.

Her quim pulsed with the pleasure as he began to withdraw, as he drew his cock back until the head was ready to pop out; then he surged in again. After a few thrusts, she was pushing her rump back to him to make his thrusts even deeper.

It was so intense. As intense as the play with the gold chains had been with Lukos.

Zayan leaned over her, now giving her fast, hard thrusts. She was thrown forward with them, but he had one hand on her left breast, and that kept her from being pushed away from him. He fondled her nipple.

And kept banging relentlessly against her arse.

Pleasure built and built.

Oh, even like this, I’m going—going to come—

Ah, but your arse is so sensitive, angel, of course you are
going to come.

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She tried to hang on, to draw out the pleasure, but he gave one thrust that lifted her legs off the bed, and she screamed in delight. It was the trigger, the one thrust that threw her over the edge. Her climax pulsed in her rump, in her pussy, made her nipples stand up hard, and made her brain burst into flames.

She saw shooting colors, like fireworks and rockets, on the inside of her lids. She wailed his name.
Zayan. Zayan.

Oh, she loved him. Loved him for giving her this pleasure, for seeing the wanton woman she was made to be.

But he was not done. He did not even let her rest before thrusting again. Her third orgasm took her almost at once. He took her to a fourth, a fifth, until the climaxes came in one long wave and her feet were so sensitive that just the brush of air made her scream.

Then he plowed into her one last time and embraced her tightly as his body pressed against her back.
I’m coming, angel. Like
never before.

He moaned harshly after that, his body bucking against her.

He withdrew, slowly, to make it easier for her, and she was touched by his tenderness. And then she gave a weak giggle.

She felt formless now, so ravaged by orgasms.

And she knew what she had just experienced.

A lesson to prepare her for a love shared between three. She had been stunned by what Althea and Serena had told her.

She’d known she’d felt the pull in the carriage, when Zayan and Lukos had played erotic games in front of her and she had been hot enough to burst into flames.

But to think it could always be that way . . .

She could be like Althea and Serena, with two devoted men to make love to her. Imagine what it would be like to be filled by them both—one pumping into her wet, steamy cunny, the other pounding fiercely into her sensitive bottom.

No. Lukos believed Zayan had taken his sister to be the devil’s prisoner. Zayan had sneeringly referred to Lukos as “wolf.”

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Lukos hated Zayan, and Zayan, in turn, appeared to despise Lukos. It could never be.

Miranda lay down on her bed, exaggerating her ragged breathing because it gave her time to think. Zayan wanted her to leave with him. But she was not certain if she could choose Zayan and forget Lukos. Not yet. Perhaps not ever.

She loved them both—desired them both, cared for them both, wanted to heal both their wounded souls, their broken hearts.

They might be vampires, but to her, they both possessed souls.

“If we all work in unison, we might be able to defeat his magic,” Althea said, from the other side of the locked door.

Weakly, Miranda realized that while Zayan had been making love to her, the vampire slayers had been trying to rescue her.

She didn’t want to be rescued. But he needed to be protected from them.

“Come with me,” Zayan urged. He rose from the bed.

“You could leave without me—” But his expression became instantly stubborn and she knew he would not. “I will go with you because you must escape the slayers. But how are we going to escape? Can you fly without shifting shape, as Lukos can?”

Zayan scowled at the mention of Lukos’s name. “No, I intend to teach you to shift.”

“Shift
shape
?”

He nodded as though it were the obvious solution. “You have all this magic inside you. I believe you can.”

Miranda spread her wings and caught the current of air. Her entire body hummed and sizzled. She had not been able to control her power and shape-shift, but Zayan had transformed her with his magic. She had changed into a shape like a large bat. How it had happened, she was not entirely certain. He had thrown a BLOOD DEEP / 241

strange spell at her—a brownish black swirling light that had surrounded her.

Outside of her bedroom door, Aunt Eugenia had joined the slayers and they had all been trying to break into her room. It had been heartbreaking to ignore the plea in her aunt’s voice.

Then the light had engulfed her and she’d felt intense heat, just as she did when she used her magic. Her body had changed—it had become molten and pliable, and she’d known one second of extreme pain. But then the pain vanished, and she had spread wide wings and had thrown herself out into the night, trusting Zayan.

Follow me,
he urged.

It was tempting to play in the sky. She had watched birds swoop, had even thought of what it must be like, had dreamed of it sometimes in her childhood but had always known it was impossible. And here she was, flying.

Perhaps nothing was impossible.

She tried to tip her wings to follow Zayan. She went wide of him, then too far to the other side. It was hard to master her wings.

He circled back for her, patiently, as she tried to get accustomed to flying. He was the larger winged creature and he would glide close to her, beat his wings around her as though controlling the currents of air to make her journey easier.

Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw tendrils of the red fog starting to weave up the hillside toward the castle.

We have to hurry,
Zayan commanded.
Follow me and do exactly what I do.
He dove down into a tight grove of tall trees.

Miranda swallowed hard. She couldn’t do that. She would hit the trees and be killed. There was nothing so certain—

A stream of blue light came to her. It wrapped around her like a cocoon and dragged her behind Zayan. The light moved her to and fro, taking her safely between the tall trunks and 242 /
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through the gaps between branches. She was brought to a small circle of stones in a clearing.

Moonlight darted between the trees to touch this spot, but the light was tinged with red. The instant her feet settled on the ground, Miranda groaned in relief. It had been exhilarating to fly, but terrifying to think she might die that way.

Zayan transformed before her eyes and she tensed, but the return to her normal form was quick, and the pain did not seem as intense. The ground chilled her feet and her skin pebbled in the breeze. Of course, she was
naked
.

Easy, love.
Zayan pulled her into his embrace. A wave of his hand created cloaks of velvet, and Miranda snuggled into hers.

She had no idea what was going to happen now. Zayan released her and walked over to one of the stones, a flat one that was like the seat of a chair. Miranda looked around. The grass in the circle was lush and a darker ring followed the line of the stones.

She remembered pointing out a ring of darker grass on the lawn of their country house to her mother, when she had been eight.

Her mother had called it a “faery ring,” and Miranda had slipped out at night to spy on the faeries as they’d danced.

But she’d waited and waited, and had fallen asleep. Simon had followed her; he had been the one to lift her up and carry her back to bed. She’d lost her mother the next year. But she’d had Simon, her father, and Aunt Eugenia. And strangely, she already felt as close to Zayan.

This ring felt as though faeries did dance here. A gentle humming came from within it. It felt like a place of magic.

Zayan was now pacing with long, angry strides across the circle, watching the sky. He’d created boats for them.

Zayan could hear the red power’s gentle, triumphant laughter on the murmur of the wind. He also sensed fear and anger rolling off Miranda as she stalked up behind him. “What is it?”

she demanded. “What are you looking for? The red mist? Are you bringing it to us?”

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Strong and determined, her blue eyes held his. The woman was fearless. He had always admired Claudia’s strength, but he saw now that hers had been more ruthlessness and selfishness than strength. Miranda had a bravery that felled him. He knew she had risked her life to save children whose very lives had been sucked out of them by the red power.

Facing Miranda, Zayan realized that, for once, he could not hide behind superior power or strategic lies. Needing time to create an explanation that spared him from giving her the truth, he averted his eyes from her and turned away.

Miranda marched in front of him, her cloak flapping around her bare legs. She slid her hands beneath his and embraced his waist. “The truth. Why did you bring me here? What do you want of me? I do not believe it is love. There’s something in your face—an emotion that I do not entirely understand.”

It was a blend of pure fury and self-loathing, he suspected.

“You deserve to know. Everything. I told you a voice came out of the sky to tempt me with immortality. When it came to me again and I accepted, it appeared as a heavy red-colored fog that surrounded me. In return for making me into a demon with increased strength, magic, and eternal life, it demanded that I gather power for it. I have sucked the power from other demons, even from fallen angels.”

“How?”

“Blood and sex, my love.”

Understanding dawned. “It wants my magic power. And you are going to give it away. Is that why you made love to me?”

He shook his head, his long hair rippling over his shoulders.

“No, I refuse to take your magic, to hurt you in any way.”

He told her more then. He told her that the “red power”—

as he called it because he had never known if it had a true name—

had promised to return his lost children to life, if he drained her magic. Her eyes went wide with astonishment, and her shock lanced him through his heart. For all Miranda had known he 244 /
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was a demon, she’d expected him to be noble and good. Once, he would have coldheartedly thought it nothing more than her foolish error. But with Miranda, it made him feel like garbage.

“I didn’t trust it,” he admitted, his voice raw and hoarse. “But the truth is that I had originally planned to take your power and use your magic as bait. I believed the red power would betray me and not give me my children, and I intended to use your magic as blackmail.”

Her color drained away. He stepped forward, intending to grasp her and pull her into a kiss, but he suddenly found he didn’t dare touch her. “I would never do that now, Miranda.

And that is the truth.”

The wind gathered strength and it threw her long, loose blond hair around her pale face. “But what of your children?”