Never Been Bitten (13 page)

The walk from the conservatory to Cain’s guest quarters might not have taken half so long, were it not for his inability to refrain from sidelong glances that led directly to stolen kisses. With her curls crushed between her back and the wall, and her hands wound tight about his neck as she eagerly met each kiss with her own, a single passerby would have spelled ruin if she were at all concerned about guarding her reputation. She was not. Her legs were all but twined about him as he spun with her across the threshold and into the dark stillness of his bedchamber at last.

She half-expected him to tumble directly upon the bed and divest her of these confining layers. Rather, that was precisely what she hoped he was about.

But, first, he kissed her soundly before stepping a few feet away to coax the dwindling embers in his fireplace into a softly burning blaze.

The dancing light fell upon a sumptuous master bed, with matching mahogany nightstands on either side. Upon one stood a vase with a single pink camellia. On the other rested a life-size marble bust of what was undoubtedly one of the Breckenridge forebears. Ellie focused her gaze back on the single flower, preferring its natural beauty to the profile carved in stone. The bust’s very presence made the general sense of inferiority Ellie had always endured even starker. Not only wasn’t she remotely connected to aristocracy, she couldn’t even remember her own father, much less have mementos of cherished ancestors. She’d always just had Mama.

Ellie sat on the edge of the bed and tried to push all thoughts of her impending sojourn from her mind. She tugged her slippers from her feet and bent to smell the camellia. As lonely as she had been without a father, how much worse had it been for her mother to have loved and lost her husband? Would this moment shared with Cain bring Ellie years of remembered pleasure, or soul-wrenching dreams of what she had once tasted, but could never truly have?

She shook the foolishness from her head and turned to face Cain. She would have tonight ... and it would be perfect.

He rose to his feet. The fire’s welcome heat eased the chill from the air, and the crackling flames cast a warm glow upon his skin as he reached for Ellie’s hand. He stared at her as if
she
were the exotic flower. As if he, too, wanted to sear every touch, every taste, into his memory to relive again and again. Perhaps he did. Perhaps this moment seemed just as tender, just as fleeting, just as vital for him as it did her. He had been a hunter for centuries. Would no doubt continue to be. To him, honor meant upholding the values of his clan. For her, protecting her mother. Both of them put their respective families above all else. Conflicting goals, but shared ideals.

Cain pulled her to her feet, seated himself at the edge of the mattress, and nestled her between his thighs. He seemed content to spend hours thusly, hand in hand, his unreadable gaze never wavering from hers.

Ellie was having none of it.

With a raised brow, she tugged her hands from his. Slowly, she crisscrossed her arms behind her back, conscious of how the action lifted the swell of her breasts very nearly to his parted lips. Almost, but not quite. His gaze dipped. Although she doubted a full-blooded vampire had cause for breathing, Ellie could have sworn she heard a quick intake of breath.

She tugged loose the laces holding her gown together. The sleeves correspondingly relaxed, exposing first one shoulder, then the other. With nothing left to hold it in place, the lace fichu tumbled from her bodice. The triangle of lace slid across one of Cain’s parted thighs. He flinched as if the weightless scrap scalded his flesh through his calfskin breeches. His eyes closed as if he were willing himself to withstand pain caused by a wisp of material that had once rested across her breasts and against her nipples.

He opened his eyes. He was a man tortured. Intoxicated. Powerless.

Ellie returned her hands to her sides and brushed her fingertips across his leg where the fichu had fallen. Her shift and her corset supported her bosom, but did not cover it. Her nipples puckered deliciously beneath the heat of his gaze.

He licked his lips. Slowly, teasingly, as if what he desired most of all was to fasten his mouth upon her breast and suckle.

Ellie could hardly breathe for wanting him to hurry up and do so. She eased forward, inclining so slowly as for the motion to be nearly undetectable, were it not for her breasts’ trajectory ever nearer to his face.

He was definitely breathing. Hard.

Her right nipple grazed the hollow of his cheek. The side of his mouth. The firm contours of his lower lip. Her insides clenched in pleasure, pitching her forward, sending her trembling breast directly into his waiting mouth.

He laved the nipple once, twice, then began to suckle. He tugged the sleeves from her arms, shoved her gown to her hips, to the floor. His hands slid from the backs of her knees to the backs of her thighs, simultaneously lifting her shift and guiding her forward so that she straddled his hips, the hard length of his encaged manhood pressing against the moist surface of her bare—

“Ellie.” His eyes hot on hers, he lifted his mouth from her breast ever so slowly, dragging her nipple along his tongue and across his lower lip to glisten wetly before his parted mouth. “Are you certain you want to—”

Her hands were at his shoulders before she consciously gave them the order to do so, shoving him backward onto the bed. She covered his mouth with hers, stopping his questions with her teeth, with her tongue. She closed her fists over his shirt, rending the fine linen as she exposed his chest to her wanton fingers, to the sensitive nubs of her breasts as she pressed them against him.

His hands fastened about her waist, rocking her hips, slowly grinding her against him until she caught the rhythm with a gasp of ignited desire. Without breaking rhythm, without tearing his mouth from hers, he slid his hands up her spine to her corset. One by one, he loosened the ribbon from the hooks, until the whalebone prison fell away, and with it, what was left of her chemise.

One hand pressed to the base of her spine to hold her in place. He leaned up from the bed just enough to allow her to whip free his jacket, his waistcoat, his shirtsleeves, until nothing was left but his boots and his breeches.

She slid down his body until she knelt on the floor before him. She tugged free one boot, then the other. Her deliberate slowness in doing so must have exhausted the last of his preternatural patience, for he had his fall unbuttoned and his breeches discarded before she had even taken a breath.

He pulled her up, gently, sweetly. Holding her close, he rolled so that she was no longer atop him. He had one arm propped on either side of her ribs, and the naked length of him was hot against her belly. She was now the prisoner and he the captor. But the look on his face indicated she still very much held all the power.

“Kiss my breast,” she whispered, arching toward his mouth. “Touch me as I long to touch you.”

“With pleasure.”

He bent his head to her breast. The knuckles of one hand brushed against the plump curve, then slid to her side, her hip, the inside of her thigh. Once again, her insides clenched with need as he stroked closer and closer to her core, never quite touching the center where she ached for him.

His other hand left her cheek. He splayed both across her thighs, as if preparing to force them apart. No need. Ellie was beyond ready. If he didn’t give them both release soon, she was going to scream.

He trapped her nipple with his teeth, biting lightly. Ellie’s head jerked upright as she gasped, unsure whether she should push his head away or beg him to do it again.

As if reading her mind, he performed the same sweet torture on the other breast, suckling the nipple to diamond hardness and scraping ever so gently with his teeth as he pulled his mouth away. She nearly flew off the bed.

His hips rising, he bent lower and lower, pressing a trail of hot, slow kisses from the valley between her breasts to the sensitive skin just beneath. He continued lower, along her stomach, over to the swell of her hip, down the impossibly tense muscle of her thighs.

He began to lick. First the quivering flesh of her inner thigh, then just a little higher, and a little higher still, until finally, finally, his tongue reached where his fingers had not.

Her hands shot out to grab fistfuls of his hair, holding him in place. His tongue drew endless lazy circles, as if he had all the time in the world to torture her until she fractured from the inside out. She slid one hand from his hair, gliding her palm up her stomach to hover just above her breast, as if wanting to touch it, to touch herself, but daring not. Her nipple tightened, and the aching tip brushed against the edge of her palm.

As if he sensed what she was doing and sought to tempt her even more, Cain dragged his thumb over her wet core, circling, pressing, until the pad slipped within her as his mouth and tongue returned their attentions to her nub.

Ellie cried out, arching into his face, into his finger, her head tossed backward as her hands found her breasts, rolled her nipples beneath her fingers as she writhed against the climbing pressure in her core.

“C-Cain.” The word came out an incomprehensible moan. “I—”

Then his mouth was on hers, drinking every gasp as his shaft filled her. Her fingernails dug into his back as she lifted her legs higher, wrapped him tighter, forced him deeper, faster, faster.

He ducked his head to her shoulder and pressed his open mouth to her skin. As the first contraction of her climax hit, she lifted her head until his shoulder was close enough to taste. With the tip of her tongue, she traced the hard, salty curve. Her inner muscles squeezed tighter with every thrust.

As he gave a shudder indicating his own imminent surrender, the pressure of his kiss increased against her skin. She kissed his neck, his chest, ran her tongue along the bare strength of his shoulder. Their bodies joined faster. He moaned against her skin as another shudder wracked his body. Her release was instantaneous. Twin points painlessly punctured her skin, doubling her pleasure.

Instinctively, she bit down and did the same.

Chapter Eleven

“Liar,”
Cain choked out, retracting both fangs and shaft from the woman writhing deliciously beneath him as soon as his passion-drunk brain registered the twin points piercing the sensitive skin of his shoulder in exactly the same way his own fangs had fastened upon hers.

He was furious. At her, for having deceived him. At himself, for having let down his guard. At fate, for having gifted him the greatest pleasure of his life with a woman he couldn’t help but love and want to protect—only for every facet to have been a lie. She was no innocent human girl in want of a warrior’s compassion or protection. She wasn’t innocent—or human—at all.

Had she known who and what he was from the beginning? Been mocking him,
managing
him, from the first step of their dance?

Cain flung himself from the warmth of her naked body and off the bed. His every limb trembled in rage. His face twisting, he backed steadily away, even as Ellie’s arms reached out to him.

A puzzled frown marred the contentedness of Ellie’s expression. A soft, fang-tipped smile marred the humanity of her face. “What is it?”

He turned his head. Despite his fury at having been cozened, despite his self-disgust at having been too distracted to discern the truth on his own, he longed to lick the red smear from her lips while taking her again and again and again. Ignoring the yearning of his traitorous body, Cain refocused on the inescapable evidence before him: The innocent human was actually a vampire.

“Don’t even try to play the ingénue,” he growled. “Not with my blood still fresh upon your tongue.”

Guilt flashed across Ellie’s face before she dropped her gaze. “I—”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” His hands curled into fists at his sides. He had never felt so foolish, so exposed. So vengeful.

Ellie’s glare was defiant. “Why do you suppose?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said as he fastened a button. “Because you’re a duplicitous manipulator?”

She shot upright. “That’s rich, when
you’re
the specter of death come to hunt us and take us captive!”

He crossed his arms and gave her a look powerful enough to send warriors scurrying for cover. She didn’t even change expression.

“Judge me for honoring my blood-sworn duty,” he said at last. “But I never lied to you about who or what I was.”

“I never said I
wasn’t
a vampire,” she mumbled half-heartedly, then glanced away as if no longer able to meet his gaze.

He didn’t even try to hide his disappointment. “Let’s not prevaricate, shall we? I think we’re a bit beyond that stage.”

Rather than reply, Ellie slid off the bed and to her feet. She snatched up her discarded gown as if she could hide behind the rumpled silk. She would quickly learn there was nowhere to hide. No matter how furious she made him, he would never let her go.

“How did you manage to conceal the truth?” he asked at last. “You seem—
seemed
—so convincingly human.”

“I am human,” she insisted, tugging at her laces. “Sort of.”

Cain couldn’t believe his ears. “You are a
vampire!
”

“Well, how was I supposed to know?” she burst out, staring up at him beseechingly.

“I don’t know,” he said sarcastically. “Perchance the fangs and the bloodlust might have been clues?”

Ellie backed into the bedside table. “That just started yesterday.”

“Yester—” Cain stared at her in disbelief. “How old are you? Truly?”

Her lower lip wobbled. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

She lifted a shoulder as if this were a mundane detail only a pedant would concern himself with, but her eyes shone as if battling tears. “Mother . . . Mother says I was born sometime last century.”

“Sometime last . . .” Cain gaped at her. “Are you saying Aggie Munro is your birth mother?”

Ellie’s chin rose. “I’ve never said otherwise.”

“You’ve never said anything, confound it!” He tried to reconcile what he thought he knew with what he saw before him. “But if that’s true, your father . . .”