Devil at Midnight (37 page)

“Grace,” he cried. “Can you ever forgive me?”

Grace opened her mouth but couldn’t speak. Christian didn’t mean could she forgive him for killing his father. He didn’t even mean for becoming a vampire. Her heart contracted as she finally understood what he was asking her pardon for. Nim Wei’s mark was on him. Grace could see it with her spectral vision. The minstrel’s dark energy twined through his like vines.

He had slept with the other woman. He had touched her and she had touched him. If Grace squinted, she could see the glowing prints of the minstrel’s hands. They were all over him, too many to count. From their placement, she could not doubt how extremely intimate they’d been, nor did she have to be told that Christian had enjoyed it.

His look of shame made that obvious.

“Grace,” he pleaded, his eyes too bright within their frame of spiky black lashes. “I feared you were gone for good.”

Her hand was fisted against her breastbone, pressed tight to the hot, hard ache that was swelling there. Why would he think she wouldn’t come back when she always had before? What he’d done was inexcusable. This, of all betrayals, couldn’t be overlooked. Grace had trusted him. She’d loved him, as she hadn’t any other living being. She’d relinquished heaven to be with him.

She waited for her angel’s voice to come, to counsel mercy and compassion. She was fully prepared to curse it back to its cloud if it tried.

But her heart was the only voice beating in her ears, like the sea inside a seashell. Tears spilled over her lower eyelids, hot and then cool against her skin. What was a friend if a friend would not forgive a weakness? What was love if it could be destroyed so quickly or turned to hate? Grace knew those answers now. Maybe she always had.

Christian was not a person she could abandon.

The breath she pulled into her lungs was shaky but welcome.

“There’s nothing to forgive,” she said.

 

 

G
race’s mercy pulled Christian to his feet. Could it be true? Could she pardon him? Her face was tear-streaked but not angry, as lovely as a Madonna’s in the candlelight. An odd sensation crawled across his skin. When he glanced down, an invisible wind seemed to be peeling the blood off him. His old brown doublet was clean again, its cloth as smooth as if the tailor had only then fitted it. Suddenly, he understood why Nim Wei had always appeared so tidy. He turned his spotless hands back and forth.

This was part of his nature now.

“Christian,” Grace breathed. “You’re lit up as white as snow.”

Her voice drew his gaze to her, and he saw what he had never been able to tell before. She was solid. He knew it in a single blink. The shadows her body cast were different, the feel of her vibration against the currents of the air.

Hope rose painfully inside him as he crossed the room to her. She did not look away from him, did not retreat as he came nearer. With motions that should have been jerky, considering how frayed he felt, he took her warm face in his cool hands.

He could have stared into her eyes all night, not just the emotions they held but them. Their pale, clear green was more beautiful than ever, living gems made magical by his vampire sight. The delicate skin around her eyelids crinkled as she smiled at him.

“I’m here,” she said.

Heat rose in him like a tide. He kissed her, deeply, slowly, loving the way she melted as his weight pressed her gently into the wall. He wanted to make kissing her a prayer, but in moments, his arousal pounded between them, so hard, so long, he did not know how he would wait to plunge it inside of her. As her arms slid around his waist, every nerve she brushed screamed with bliss. He felt so much when she touched him-too much, truly. It was impossible not to desire more. His hips surged closer, and he speared her lush red lips with his tongue. She was what he had been craving, the succor he could not live without. He moaned at how wonderful she tasted, and again when her palms smoothed soothingly up his back. Her hands slid apart when she reached his shoulders, as if she liked measuring their width.

“Grace,” he groaned against her mouth. “Never leave me again.”

“Never,” she promised, and began gathering up her gown.

Quicker than she was, he helped her, pulling all that sheer linen to her waist. He trembled at the feel of her silken legs, then at the bump of her digging hand. She was freeing him from his underclothes, her fingers fire on his rock-hard prick.

The way
that
felt was enough to make every hair he had stand on end.

‟Grace,
” he gasped.

She was stroking him, was pulling his aching hardness up from his groin. Fireworks spangled everywhere she rubbed, from his throbbing root to his drum-tight crest. He had not been this sensitive before, not even for Nim Wei. His prick was leaking in little gushes, fluid spurting in pre-orgasmic spasms from its slit. His head fell back as the contractions rolled up him with her strokes. This was like coming, only he knew it would get better. He wanted it to, despite the near painful intensity of the sensations. Grace’s thumb drew a maddening circle through his wetness, spreading it to his flare. That felt so good, he could barely stop himself from shoving her through the wall.

He had less luck holding back his growl.

“You’re bigger now,” Grace murmured.

She was looking down at him, female awe in every line of her face. He could not bear it an instant longer. He lifted her, so strong it took no effort whatsoever to grip and spread the back of her thighs. With her feet dangling off the floor, she was utterly reliant on him for support, but he did not wrap her legs around him. He had an image in his head of what he wanted: the length of her, the heat of her, impaled and held up by the massive potency of his cock.

If this was being a monster, maybe it would suit him.

Her fingers tightened on his shoulders, nails digging in as he worked the head of his prick slowly into her. Her throat released a sound, alarmed and longing at the same time. She was dripping down him, but he was almost too thick for her. Knowing what she wanted, he grunted and kept pushing. The walls of her queinte clung to him, molding, pressing those insanely sharpened nerves until he feared his knees would buckle. The feeling of her tightness, of her muscles flickering in reaction was overwhelmingly pleasurable.

She must not have known how close he was to losing all control—or must have been content with the dependence of her position. She slapped the soles of her feet onto the muscles at the back of his thighs, enabling her hips to move in a strong undulating roll. The extra bit of effort on her part drove him to his hilt inside her.

“Christian,” she groaned. Her squirms around his very full penetration were a fresh torture. “Oh ... my ...
God.
”

He could not speak. He felt like he had not come in a century, and that he would die if he did not do so in two heartbeats. God save him, but his balls were going to explode from the pressure building inside them. With a curse that was half prayer, he ground his teeth and held on.

He wanted to feel her coming around him more than he wanted to come himself.

“I am going to move,” he gritted out. “I am stronger now, but I shall try not to thrust too hard.”

She mewled and clutched him as he began. Bit by bit, stroke by stroke, he eased her tightness. Simple as the motion was, sliding in and out of her was heaven—made new by his new body. Her thighs tightened on his hips, and her hands tangled in his hair. He buried his face in the bend of her neck and shoulder, wanting to weep for how good she smelled. His fangs pulsed with his urge to bite her, but he would not give in.

He was determined to keep this sweet for her.

“Christian,” she pleaded, clearly having her own ideas. “Please go faster.”

His hands gripped her firm little bottom, curbing the way she was trying to thrash on him. The temptation to squeeze her was too strong to resist. She was so ripe, so hot, the petals of her vulva wet and soft around him. Those beastlike growls were coming from his chest again. Still, he did not—
would
not—lose all reason. He shifted her hips’ angle, taking care to hit the swollen pearl of her clitoris with each calculated stroke. Though he was proud of himself for being able to do so, this was not wholly a blessing. She cried out at the change in target, her exclamation so purely carnal it drew an answering cry from him.

In one decisive tear, his lust ripped from his restraints. He took her faster, farther, flesh beginning to smack flesh with the surrender. He did not know how to stop. This new body had become his master.

“Grace,” he cried. “I am sorry. I cannot help doing this.”

She did not seem to want him to stop. She seemed to relish his ferocity. Her inner muscles clenched like a fist as he hitched her weight up and drove deeper. Like a beacon that was shining only inside his head, he could sense the energy of her desire: where it focused, where she wanted to be pummeled, the extra moment she was wishing he would linger on that deep sweet spot.

He saw that this might save him. With a groan, he did as she longed, his sharpest pleasure tied up in pleasing her. As her cries came closer together, as they became her own breed of growls, his skin began to tingle, her essence lapping over his. He hardly needed the extra excitation. He was too close to spilling as it was. He could have screamed when she tensed her muscles and rocked harder, but all that wrenched from him was a grunt. His fangs were cutting his lower lip, the taste of blood fiery on his tongue. Utterly beyond his controlling, his hips threw themselves back at her.

His prick seemed to think that it could feed from her, too.

“Please,” he urged, begging her to let go. If he hurt her, he believed he might die.

And then her queinte gushed heat and wetness all over him.

He came at the sign that she was coming, the release like lightning sizzling through his shaft. He thought the pleasure of it would blind him ... until her energy burst hugely with her next climax. That was oil thrown onto an already raging fire. He peaked again, helplessly, swamped by her sensations bleeding over his. The chain that held the lightning of his climax snapped. As long as she came, he would, and she did not seem likely to stop soon. Scarcely wanting her to, he pounded into her ever more savagely.

It was madness, pure and simple. He felt himself swiving her, felt her climaxes soaring to dizzying heights. His jaw began to widen, his breath to pant. He could not throttle that one last instinct, could not hold back his need to feed from her as he came. Groaning as if Death itself had seized him, he plunged his teeth deep into her neck.

Grace threw back her scarlet hair and screamed.

The sound could not alarm him. She was too obviously in the throes of ecstasy. What came for him then was different, though in its way no less extraordinary. It was not hunger he satisfied by drinking from her, but a lifelong need for closeness. The fire of his orgasm quieted. Warmth spread through him as he sipped from her-like being wrapped in a soft blanket. Her love was in her blood, the comfort she had been wishing she could give him. She did not question if he deserved it; she only wanted to cherish him. He felt accepted, as he never had in his life. Tears stung his eyes as he pulled his fangs slowly out.

He knew she could not stand without his aid, so he kept her wrapped snugly in his arms. She settled as he held her, every muscle in her body relaxing.

“Christian,” she murmured, her voice deliciously husky.

He was glowing. He could see the reflected radiance on her flushed face. He could also see the fissure his new strength had knocked from the wall behind her, straight down into the brick. He was fortunate he had not hurt her; his arms had shielded her from the worst of his aggression. He would have to be more careful in the future-a future they seemed to have, if he dared believe in this miracle.

He could bear almost anything, as long as he had her.

“Forever,” he said,
his
voice more stern than soft. “You shall stay with me forever.”

She stroked his eyebrows with gentle fingers, her beautiful lips curving. “Nothing could make me leave you. And now I want you to promise me something.”

She laughed when he grew wary.

“Show mercy,” she said. “At least to Oswald and Mace. I know it was—” She hesitated, shyness entering her expression. “I’m certain it was me forgiving you that let me be physical this time. It made me ... a little more like my angel.”

He smoothed a lock of her glorious hair from where it clung to her perspiring cheek. Grace was as close to an angel as he wanted to get. Nonetheless, her good opinion meant a great deal to him.

“We can have forever now,” she coaxed.

“As long as I am a monster,” he retorted with a dry snort.

“You are no more a monster than I am.”

He knew this was not true, but it did not matter. He leaned her into the wall, her legs coming up to hug him around the hips. He was still inside her, still hard enough to stretch her pliable limits. He loved how comfortable she seemed with this. His shy little Grace, grown into a woman. Smiling softly, she rubbed their noses together.

“Doesn’t it seem like heaven has taken pity on us? Couldn’t you find it in your heart to let those two off the hook?”

“They helped kill my friends.”

“I know.” Grace stroked his hair and kissed his forehead. “I know they did.”

She made no more argument, just gazed gravely into his eyes. While he made love to her, he had forgotten about his father’s corpse cooling on the floor. Now it became a presence behind him, unseen but all too easy to picture. What Christian had done to Gregori horrified him, though he knew his father deserved it. Would killing Mace and Oswald horrify him, too?

“I shall not release Lavaux,” he warned. “That son of a whore must die.”