Night Huntress 06 - Eternal Kiss of Darkness (20 page)

That was true. He might not have paid any notice to the sounds in the forest, but he could tell Kira every nuance of how her scent had changed as she walked alongside him. Or how many times her eyes had flared with emerald when she’d caught a glimpse of something with a beating heart in her vicinity.

Kira stopped walking, turning her face up toward the trees. “Fireflies. I haven’t seen them since I was a kid. Tina and I used to go into the woods by our old house to try and catch them…”

Mencheres stopped as well, following her gaze to the lighted insects interspersed throughout the air. Her voice held another wistful note of remembrance he could not relate to. Even if he could remember his childhood, he’d had no siblings close to his age, and his homeland had been bare of such creatures as these.

But these memories held value to Kira, tying her to something lost from her youth. He glanced at her profile. Her head was tilted back, full lips parted slightly, pale line of her neck in stark, tempting relief against the backdrop of the forest. She looked so beautiful. Almost ethereal. Despite knowing better, he could not force himself to glance away.

He might not be able to share her memory of chasing fireflies as a child, but he could give her a new memory of the woods. One that no one else could replicate.

Mencheres sent wisps of his power along the ground, curling them around the blooms from several nearby patches of wildflowers. One by one, he plucked those blooms, until he had hundreds of pale purple, blue, yellow, and white flowers floating above the brush. Kira didn’t notice. She was still staring at the fireflies.

Slowly, he drew his power back until the randomly interspersed blooms began to congregate into one large cloud.

Kira’s eyes widened as she saw the mist of flowers sweep toward her on the ground. A shiver rippled over her flesh. “I can feel the energy coming from you. What are you doing with them?”

She didn’t look at him as she asked. Mencheres didn’t reply, but he sent his power out in another wave, grouping the flowers into a trailing comet that dipped and swooped around the tops of the trees in an intricate ballet. Kira made a sound between a gasp and a laugh, her face suffused with wonder instead of the pain and trauma from the past two days.

Still she didn’t look at him, but kept watching the dancing flowers. Mencheres extended their former comet shape into one long swath. He sent that softly fragrant banner through a series of rising twirls before gathering the blooms into a circle several meters above Kira’s head. Then he gradually widened the circle and brought it down around her, encompassing her inside a sheath of flowers.

She stared at the rings of wildflowers encircling her, reaching out her hands but not touching them. Then she finally looked at Mencheres, her green eyes lit up with a shade not unlike the fireflies she’d been admiring before.

“Let them go.”

Her voice was lower, its melodic rustle twining around him with its own invisible pull. Mencheres let his power fall away, freeing the flowers to float down gently to the ground around her. Then something inside him clenched as Kira walked slowly toward him.

K
ira held his gaze as she closed the distance between them. She’d gone on this walk meaning to confront him about following her. To find out if Mencheres had been motivated by suspicion or by the desire to see her again, but that wasn’t necessary now. She could
feel
his craving for her. It seeped out from that wall he shielded himself with in ever-widening streams, until it was a tangible force, invisible but everywhere.

And it flared a hunger in her that almost brought her to her knees. She wanted to touch his skin, taste his mouth, and twist her hands in his long hair while he took her in his arms with something other than protectiveness. A throb took up cadence inside her as she came closer, almost within touching distance, impatient to feel him surrounding her with his body instead of just his power.

“Kira.”

His voice was low, and he breathed in after he said it, as if inhaling her name. She reached out, her hands almost aching to connect with his flesh. Mencheres caught them, but he held her away from him, his aura of need changing to frustration.

“You don’t really want this.”

She almost laughed at the absurdity of that statement. Couldn’t he sense the ache building in her, too strong to be called desire, too deep to be mere lust? If she could feel his emotion raging past his barriers, couldn’t he feel hers, too?

“I want this. You. All of it.”

She brought her body flush against his as she spoke, though he still held her hands away from him. The contact with his body, even covered in clothes, was enough to send a shock through Kira. She closed her eyes while a moan edged out of her throat. With his power sizzling into her everywhere they touched, he felt so good it almost hurt.

A harsh noise escaped him as well, so deep and primal, more heat flooded into her loins. Kira tried to free her hands from his grip with all of her uncontrollable strength, but Mencheres held her effortlessly, not even shifting his stance. His head dipped, his hair brushing her face and neck like sensual flicks of silk.

“This isn’t what
you
feel. It’s your new senses,” he said, his voice dropping to almost a growl. “They make you feel things that might not be real—”

“I felt this for you before,” Kira cut him off, need roughening her tone. “Even when you held me captive, but
especially
after you let me go. Don’t tell me what I’m feeling isn’t real, and don’t even pretend that you don’t want me, too.”

She didn’t care how challenging that sounded. With the same uninhibited, single-minded clarity she’d only felt before in dreams, all Kira knew was she wanted him and that he felt the same way about her. She tried to free her hands again. This time, Mencheres released her while his eyes turned from black to bright, blazing green.

Then he yanked her to him. Her nerve endings jumped in frantic response to the crush of his body against hers. She had time to wind her fingers into his hair before his mouth slanted over hers.

The jolt she felt at that contact seemed to go straight to her core, sending a ripple of shocks through her. His tongue raked past her lips to explore her mouth with blistering passion. He tasted like dark spices, rich and heady, exotic and intoxicating, filling her with heat. The erotic way he stroked his tongue along hers only increased when Kira’s fangs burst free, inadvertently drawing his blood. Instead of pulling back, Mencheres kissed her deeper, holding her tighter, lifting her until her feet were off the ground and it was just his arms keeping her upright.

Her initial desire felt like only a vague whisper of longing. With Mencheres gripping her to him and his tongue ravening her mouth, she
burned
for him. Her hands left his hair to glide down his back, nails restlessly digging into him. Those hard muscles moved underneath her palms, taunting her with the rub of skin that was so close yet denied to her by their clothes.

Kira didn’t want fabric between them. She wanted to feel his skin on hers. The steady pulsing between her legs built into a throb that demanded to be sated. She tried to tell him that, but his mouth continued to dominate hers with hungry, sensual insistence. She couldn’t speak. She could barely even think.

Something soft brushed down her back and legs. Then, somehow, her sweater and jeans were gone, and Mencheres was on the ground with her on top of him. She didn’t pause to wonder at the buttons that popped off his shirt of their own accord before the fabric slithered away from him. All she cared about was the incredible surge she felt when their skin met. How hard, smooth, and tight his chest felt against her breasts, and how it seemed that he suddenly had a dozen hands, because she felt him stroking every part of her.

The sensations bombarding her were just as intense as when Kira first awoke as a vampire, only this time, they weren’t frightening. Her skin felt feverish, her body trembling with need and shuddering with ecstasy just from the feel of him. A loud moan broke free when Mencheres slid his mouth down from her lips to her throat, grazing her skin with his prominently extended fangs. Instead of biting her, he licked and sucked the highly sensitive spot where his fangs had pierced her two nights before.

The electric feel of his mouth shot a path of blind, aching need from her neck to her loins, making everything inside her tighten.

“I want you so much,” she gasped, grinding herself against him.

Mencheres tore away from her throat with a groan that seemed to echo all through him. She gripped his hair, desperate to have his mouth on her again, and then felt the aching bliss of him molding her to him before he kissed her once more.

Her desire rose to a painful level. Kira curled her fists in his hair, almost tearing it out in her impatience to bring his mouth closer. When his hand slid up her thigh, she let out a smothered groan at the tingling trail it left. Then he cupped her sex, his palm sensually grinding against her clitoris with firm, circular strokes, his fingers devastating her with their skill even through her panties.

Molten heat blasted through Kira as all her lower nerve endings felt like they’d been struck by lightning. The sensation was so intense, so fierce, it overwhelmed her. She cried out at the sudden convulsive tightening within her, ecstasy blasting through her in uncontrollable waves that rippled from her core and spread out to the rest of her body.

M
encheres reveled in the feel of Kira’s orgasm. The intoxicating sweetness of her mouth, the torturous ecstasy of her skin against his, her body shuddering on top of him while hoarse cries vibrated against his mouth—it was a memory he would replay many times in the future, however short that future might be.

But he’d already taken more than he should. If he were honorable, he’d have assuaged Kira’s need without laying hands on her. He’d used his power for those purposes in the past with other new vampires he sired, but always at a distance, where it was impersonal. All vampire urges were too overwhelming to control at first, and lust was no exception. But when Kira told him she wanted him, when she reached for him… Mencheres could not bring himself merely to satisfy her with his power. He had to have his hands and mouth on her, feel her next to him, no matter that it was as painful as it was magnificent.

With the greatest reluctance, he ended their kiss, licking his lips to savor Kira’s taste one last time. Then he sent his power out to gather up the sweater and pants that he’d hastily stripped from her before.

Her head dropped to his shoulder, those soft, full lips seeking out his flesh. A tremor went through him as her tongue flicked out, teasing and stroking his skin from his shoulder to the hollow of his throat.

Ah, gods, if only things were different.

“Kira. We must stop.”

Mencheres forced himself to sit up, to set her back until her lovely face was staring at him in confusion instead of being pressed to his flesh.

“What’s wrong?”

Everything about her was an enticement for him to forget his principles. Her breasts strained against her bra, her lace underwear was more alluring than concealing, and her lemony scent was both sweeter and muskier with her lust. He closed his eyes. If he even allowed himself to imagine that she tasted as good as she smelled…

“We cannot do this. You are impaired from your new senses. Later, you would rightly be angry at me for exploiting your condition if I took you.”

Kira let out a sound between a scoff and a disbelieving laugh. “You’re just intending to
stop
because you think I don’t know what I want?”

He tried to remember the things he’d said to other people he’d sired when he was in a similar scenario, but he’d never wanted them with the same fierce need that clawed at him now. It was hard to form logical words when his attention kept being distracted by Kira’s scent on his skin, how near she was to him, and how ravishing she looked in her miniscule undergarments.

“This isn’t what you would choose of your own uninfluenced will,” he managed to grit out. If this were any more difficult, he’d call it torture.

Kira jumped up in a single leap, grabbing her pants and sweater from the ground nearby.

“Unbelievable. Do you always do other people’s thinking for them? Or is this something you’ve reserved just for me?”

The acid in her tone was unexpected. Did she believe that he refused her out of lack of desire? The notion would have been laughable if he wasn’t suffering so strongly at the moment.

“I’ve had experience with new vampires. Right now, your new senses are directing your actions instead of your will. To assume you mean what you say under these circumstances is tantamount to—”

“You really
do
just make up other people’s minds for them,” Kira interrupted, yanking on her pants. “Wow, that must piss them off. It’s got me infuriated, too. Congratulations, you win. Now I
don’t
want you anymore.”

“You never offered yourself to me before this,” Mencheres snapped, his controlled façade cracking under the weight of his frustration. “You stayed under my roof for a week when we met, yet all that time, you only spoke of your desire to leave. Not of any longing for my attentions.”

She strode over, her jeans not all the way closed because she’d ripped them when she pulled them on.