Dark Embrace (Principatus) (15 page)

Before she could roll her eyes again—
roll your eyes? Aren’t you meant to be turning him to dust?
—he threw himself off the table in a graceful flip and landed directly in front of her. “But I bet I’m also the most impressive.”

He grabbed her wrist and yanked her against his body. His cool chest crushed her breasts. His mouth silenced her indignant shout, his kiss quick and cheeky.

Inari froze, her breath catching in her throat seconds before she drove her right knee up into his balls.

Or would have, if the bastard hadn’t leapt away in a backward arc so fast she felt the very air suck past her.

He grinned at her again, this time sitting atop her low chest of drawers on the other side of the room. “Now, did you try to do that so you’d have an excuse to kiss them better later?”

The laugh bubbled up Inari’s throat and she pressed her hand to her mouth, her stake cold against her lips. Laughing? Laughing? Was she insane?

Of course you’re insane, Inari. You speak to the ghost of your dead sister, you hunt demons for a living, you’re an ex-succubus who hasn’t had intercourse in over twenty years, and no matter how hard you try to deny it, you
are
enjoying yourself in Ezryn’s presence.

The realization punched into her like a heavy fist, and she let out a groan of dismay, gazing at him over her knuckles. Oh, no. This wasn’t the way it was meant to go. This wasn’t…

“At this point,” Ezryn murmured, stepping down from the piece of furniture with fluid ease, “a true gentleman would say something pithy like ‘It’s okay, sweetheart, I don’t bite’.” His face grew serious, his nostrils flaring. “But as we both know, I do.”

He was in front of her again in a split second, his thighs brushing hers, his chest skimming her nipples. She looked up at him, her pulse thumping in her neck.
Oh, Inari, do something. Don’t let him win. Don’t let him…

His stare slid to the base of her throat, and she saw his Adam’s apple jerk up and down. “I do bite, Inari.” He lifted his hand and feathered the back of one knuckle over the fine muscle above her collarbone, a brilliant red shimmer filling his eyes. “But only when you give me permission.”

She shook her head, her blood roaring in her ears. “I won’t.”

His gaze returned to her face and he smiled, a languid, crooked smile she felt all the way to the center of her soul. “Yes, you will. Trust me.”

“Trust a bloodsucker?” She snorted, trying to force the constricting heat in her core away. This was too surreal. She was turned on more than ever, and despite herself she was enjoying every second of their conversation. “Step out in the sun and I’ll trust you to turn to ash.”

He chuckled, brushing the back of his knuckles along her jaw line. “Where are you from?” he asked unexpectedly, that crooked smile still playing with his lips. “You don’t have an Australian accent, and I know of only one Principatus here in Sydney.”

Inari’s belly knotted. She never talked about her demonic heritage. Nor her past, and that included her connection to the supreme Principatus residing in the city. She gave Ezryn a pointed stare. “You don’t exactly sound like Russell Crowe yourself, vampire.”

He laughed again as the tips of his fingers skimmed the length of her throat. “I was born in Denmark over seven centuries ago, Inari, but have been in Australia for almost fifty years now. I thought I’d mastered the art of the Aussie vernacular quite well.” His grin widened. “G’day, mate.”

Before she could stop herself, Inari burst out laughing. “That was atrocious.”

He shrugged. “Perhaps I need to work on it more. I’m usually much better with my tongue.”

She swallowed, the thought of Ezryn’s masterful tongue turning her throat thick. Why was she still standing so close to him? She still held her stake—why wasn’t she trying to turn him to dust?

Why was she enjoying herself so much?

“What are you doing in Australia?” she blurted out, the confusing notion of enjoyment and Ezryn like a jarring blow. “It’s a long way from Denmark, and much more sunny.”

A flash of fangs followed her statement, and he took a slight step closer, pressing his chest to her breasts, brushing her hips with his. “Hunting,” he murmured.

Inari’s mouth went dry. She looked up into his dark eyes, her pulse thumping in her neck. “Hunting what?”

Dark eyes glinting, he lowered his head. “At this very moment, Inari?”

She swayed toward him, her breath caught in her throat, her sex heavy with want, and blinked when George Thorogood started singing “Bad To The Bone” from Ezryn’s discarded jeans on the floor.

He turned his head, rolling his eyes. “Perfect timing, Jake,” he muttered.

Inari raised her eyebrows, unsettled relief fluttering in her belly. Why did she feel like she’d just been saved? And why was a part of her so angry about it? “Shouldn’t you get that?”

He returned his gaze to her face as his phone fell silent. “My general can wait.”

“Your general?” What kind of master vampire had a general?

The kind who has vampires called Eliah Bartowski swearing loyalty to him in the street?

He nodded. “My general. You however, cannot.”

She frowned, even as her pulse quickened. “And what am I so impatient for, bloodsucker?”

He lowered his head closer to hers once more and his lips almost brushed hers. “Being caught by me.”

The statement sent a shard of cold shock into her heart.
Stake him. Now.
She slammed the heel of her palm into the center of his chest, driving him backward. “God, what am I doing?” she ground out, watching him stagger backward, her confusion growing to churning disbelief.

Ezryn’s lips pulled away from his fangs in an ambiguous grin. “Playing hard to get?”

“Fuck you.”

“Isn’t that what we’ve been trying to do?”

He leapt at her, hitting her in a dark streak of solid speed. She tumbled back onto the mattress, and his weight pinned her to her bed before she could react, his left hand snatching the stake from her hand.

“See?” His eyes glowed red heat as he pressed the stake’s needle-sharp point to the base of her throat. “Told you I would win.”

She jackknifed her legs up, twisting as she did so to wrap them around his neck and fling him off her body before he could react.

He crashed against the vermeil mirror leaning in the corner, and shards of glass showered down on him as he hit the floor with a solid thud.

Inari propelled herself off the bed and leapt at him, a part of her mind screaming at her to stop. She didn’t listen. She couldn’t. She was a Principatus, not some bloodsucker groupie.

She slammed her foot against his chest just as he was rising to his feet, driving him backward into the wall again. He let out a choked
oof,
his arms slapping the wall as his face contorted in pain.

Or was it shock?

Inari didn’t wait to see. She whipped out her leg, smacking her instep into his jaw. The turning kick sent him spinning, his feet stumbling beneath him. He fell forward, but before he could hit the floor, he flipped himself into a roll.

Eyes blazing red, fangs glinting in her bedroom’s muted light, he spun to face her, waggling the point of her stake at her. “That hurt.”

“It was meant to.”

Her blood roaring in her ears, Inari charged at him, throwing herself into a flying roundhouse kick. This was it. Take him down. Take back her stake. Take him out.

Game over.

Her heel smashed into the wall half a second before Ezryn snaked his arms around her waist and thighs. “Gotcha.”

Her stare snapped to his. Just as he kissed her, a quick, cheeky kiss like his previous one. And just as it had before, her pussy flooded with tight heat. It didn’t matter he held her captive. It didn’t matter she was trying to kill him.

No, you’re not. Admit it.

“Let me go.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Okay.”

Without even a grunt, he threw her across her room.

She landed on her bed, her breath bursting from her in a violent gush. By the Powers, how had he—

He slammed into her, driving her flat onto the mattress, his hands snaring her wrists. “Can I say gotcha again?”

A wave of insidious lust surged through her, and she sucked in a sharp hiss. “Get off me.”

In a blurring move, he straddled her, his thighs hugging her hips, his groin resting on the curve of her sex. His cock jutted up between them, long, thick and rigid. “Why would I do that, Inari?” He placed one hand beside her head and bent closer to her, sliding the tip of her stake over her chest to the swell of her left breast. “When we both remember what happens now.”

“You will surrender your body to me…let me do with it what I will…”

Ezryn’s earlier promise whispered through her mind. Her heart leapt into her throat.
No. You can’t. You can’t let him.

Yes, you can.

“You will, Principatus,” he murmured, finishing her duplicitous thought. “And you will beg me to never stop.”

With pointed arrogance, he tossed her stake aside, the sound of its silver length striking the wall turning her mouth dry. He’d beaten her, he’d unarmed her and now he was going to use her any way he wanted.

Her pussy fluttered at the terrifying reality.

His eyes glowed red again. The hand with which he’d held her stake only seconds earlier came to rest on the column of her neck. “I will not hurt you, Inari.” He traced the pad of his thumb up her throat to the wildly beating pulse beneath her ear. “But I will make you moan.”

She shook her head, desperate to stem the mounting rush of base pleasure surging through her, to regain some semblance of control. “I won’t.”

He chuckled, the laugh of her dreams, and her heart quickened at the smug power in the sound. “Yes, you will.”

He smoothed his hand lower, over the upward thrust of her breasts, first one then the other, exploring their heavy form through the thin leather of her vest. Her nipples puckered into hard peaks, pushing at his palm.

“Your body can’t lie to me, Inari,” he whispered, watching his hand as he moved it over her right breast to cup its swollen weight. “No matter what your lips say, your body tells me the truth.”

She closed her eyes, rolling her head to the side in a woeful attempt to hide her telltale blush. He was correct. So very correct. He’d turned her into a being of lust and wanton hunger.

So what does that make you now? And what does that make him? Your master? Or your source of nourishment?

Before the ominous questions could chill the desire consuming her, he moved his hand lower, over her belly and under the waistline of her pants.

“Dark Ones, your skin is so soft.” His voice sounded strangled. Tormented. “How can you feel so soft, so beautifully warm? How am I to—”

He cut the question short and plunged his hand between her legs, dipping two fingers into her pussy at the same time that he claimed her neck with his mouth. He closed his lips over the exact spot where her pulse beat wildly beneath her skin and sucked hard.

Wicked pleasure tore through Inari—a traitorous response she could not control nor deny. She arched beneath him, grabbing at the duvet.
Oh, God, yes.
The pit of her belly knotted and her nipples pinched hard. By the Highest of Highest, what
was
she doing?

Enjoying yourself, Principatus. When was the last time you did that?

She didn’t know who the thought belonged to. Her? Ezryn? Her long-dead sister?

Does it matter?

A whimper escaped her and she caught her bottom lip with her teeth, pulling her hips higher to Ezryn’s body, driving her sodden sex farther onto his fingers. Her clit ached, swollen with blood and desire. The master vampire sucked harder on her neck and ground his hand against the tiny nub in her folds, sending tight ribbons of pleasure into her core. She whimpered again, the sound echoed by a low moan in Ezryn’s throat. He dragged his mouth down the column of her throat to her collarbone, his lips hotter than a vampire’s should be. They branded her flesh. Made her giddy. She thrust higher, wanting him to fill her. Wanting him to take her. Use her.

Inari closed her eyes, arching into his penetrations even as fresh shame flooded through her.

Ezryn’s dark head lifted from her neck, and he blew a fine stream of cool air over her freshly kissed flesh while he stroked his fingers inside her pussy with wicked attention. “You are very tight, Inari.”

Appreciation thrummed in his voice, any sign of his earlier torment gone. Inari’s body reacted to his words in ways she couldn’t believe possible. How could he almost make her come with just his voice? With just a few simple words? Surely it was just the twenty years of abstinence. What other explanation was there? Surely Ezryn wasn’t that good a lover.

“Your heat grips my fingers with such exquisite pressure,” he continued, lips brushing the base of her neck, tongue dipping into the shallow hollow in her throat. “So tight, so wet. As if you were made for me and me alone. What will it feel like to sink my cock into this hot, wet sheath?” He traced a line up to her ear with the tip of his tongue, all the while slowly moving his fingers deeper into her pussy. “To penetrate you completely?” He nipped her earlobe and flicked at the inner shell of her ear with his tongue. Twisting jolts of pleasure shot into Inari’s core, and a silent cry burst past her lips. A low chuckle vibrated in Ezryn’s chest and he pressed his mouth to her cheek. “Tell me how you think that will feel, Inari. Tell me what it will feel like to have my cock sink into your sweet, sweet pussy.”