Oycher (24 page)

“No sex involved?”

“No sex involved,” he confirmed.

“Yes.”

He took his hand from hers, wrapping it around the back of her neck to pull her in nice and tight. “Do you vow to become stronger for the Commanding Vojak of North America?”

“Yes.”

He whispered silkily, “By transforming into a vampiress.”

“Yes, I’ll take the risk.”

His leaned his forehead on hers. “You see. It would be a risk, if I were not involved. I have the power to keep your Donor blood rushing your veins, just as I have the power to transform you into a vampiress. I am asking you, if you accept all of these terms for your partial freedom.”

So the transformation was going to happen without the benefit of changing from Donor, if she wanted Oycher. “He’s mine.” Isla lifted her chin in full understanding they could scent her anxiety. “I’ll do whatever it takes to claim him and keep him.”

“Prove it.” He started gliding away, allowing them privacy.

But even when Oycher had misted her, he had stared at her throat with hungry eyes afterwards. What if Oycher lost control during feeding? Her blood was extraordinary to his species.

“Having faith in your male is a good place to start,” Oycher whispered.

“What do I have to do to have a private thought?” She balanced herself on the marble slab. How was he comfortable on such a thing?

Oycher’s voice was raw with promises unspoken when he said, “I don’t want to give up a single part of you, particularly your beautiful mind. So If I’m also sharing my heart with you, why can’t you share your thoughts?”

She flattened her palms on either side of his torso, stretching her arms as she stared down at him “So…you …”

“Love you?” His fingers sifted through her fall of damp hair, brushing it over one shoulder. “Of course, I love you.”

“And you know I love you,” she breathed.

“Yes.” He pulled her head down for a kiss, but his lips were sandpaper on hers.

She leaned back and angled her neck in offering. “You need blood.”

“Yet you’re afraid I will lose control.”

He touched her necklace, brushing the rubies with a possessive fingertip.

Instead of trying to block that thought from her mind, she reached around her neck, digging beneath the rubies, and gripped the clasp on her dainty gold chain with her fingertips. After unfastening it, she slid off the locket and refastened the star at her throat.

“This,” she explained, holding the beaten locket up between her thumb and forefinger, “is not sentimental, but merely a piece I found at a thrift store.” She flicked it open with her thumb. It took a few tries, since it had been closed for nearly half a year. “What’s inside” - she unfolded the tiny paper “is my security. My knowledge that I have an anonymous someone out there I can call in the direst of emergencies. A mercenary who would take me away from any situation at the risk of his life.”

“A mercenary actually gave you a number?” He said in disbelief. “But you didn’t call it last night or this morning, after Volos brought you to his miasma.” He studied her, his sunset eyes dull but clearly focused on her.

“No…I was trying to figure out a way to handle this dire situation myself,” she said proudly. “But, also, I was counting on you.” His eyes flared, pinpricks of orange light illuminating his irises. “I don’t need to depend on anyone other than you and Terje.” She opened his hand and pressed the paper inside, closing his long fingers around what she’d long considered her backup.

“I will never lose your faith.” He slid the paper in his cloak pocket.

“I will never lose yours.” She patted his star as it dangled over the rubies, smiling though she wanted to cry over his horrific injuries. “I offer you my blood.”

His unblinking gaze locked onto hers, his fangs slipping lower, lubricating with endorphins to keep his prey still and satiated while he fed. “Krv z mojej krvi sme sa vzali na vecnost,” he whispered, pulling her down on his chest.

Oycher groaned when his mouth touched her throat, just above the line of rubies. Her pulse point burned beneath his lips, beckoning a predator to partake. His scent of danger, sky, and male filled her lungs and his chest started vibrating like a tuning fork against hers. He slid his lips up and down, flicking his tongue, coaxing the vein beneath the surface of her skin. His hands coming tighter around her, one at her waist, the other locked onto her nape. She sensed, rather than felt, his claws protract as his movements became more predatory. She shivered, welcoming his primal touch, arching as his tongue shimmied in a calculated manner, precisely over a thundering vein.

He slid his fangs deeply into her throat, and they groaned in unison. “Ah,” she whispered, her thighs trembling. She clutched her hands with the next drawl, feeling the pull all the way to her womb. “Ah, Oycher.”

He swallowed against her throat, his endorphins twining with her body, stroking her from the inside out. He swallowed again and again and again. And instead of worrying that he wouldn’t stop, she worried that he would. “Don’t…stop. He inhaled deeply, shivering on a half-groan, but he withdrew, flicking his tongue expertly over the wound he’d caused.

He cupped her face and kissed her wildly, the taste of her blood sliding over her tongue. She felt the rush of power flow through him as he knitted back together - her warrior, her hero, her male who’d taken skin-flaying lashings in the presence of his peerage for her.

He put a few inches between them. “I need to connect with my Bride.”

She understood. “You heard me tell Volos I would marry you.” Isla smiled, tasting copper and salt on her tongue. “I meant it.”

“You will walk into his lair on your own violation.” A faint line formed between his eyebrows. “Only when I see your unwavering offering, will I bind myself with you in eternal matrimony.”

“Okay.” She looked down at her robe. “What does a girl wear to her vampiric wedding ceremony?”

His lip curled. “My rubies.”

Oycher stretched out his limbs, his Nevesta’s blood still rapidly repairing his injuries. Her flavor was nothing short of incredible, but her taste wasn’t the draw. She was his, his Bride, and he took nourishment from her, sharing something his parents once had. To know they would do this for an eternity was a fantasy come to life. 

He glided to his brother-n-arms, the young male who was more than a fellow Vojak. He was the closest male he had to a brother in this country, and the fact that Oycher nearly lost Sage shook him deeply. “How you holding up?”

“Heart’s taking longer to…regenerate.”

Oycher nodded. “Yes.” It had taken most of the night and several pints of blood for Oycher’s to knit, after Renaldo’s poisoned claws ravaged his chest. Considering Oycher’s age, he was still more powerful than Sage, so Sage would take considerably longer to heal.

“Isladora,” Sage whispered on a shaking cough.

“Finally offered me nourishment,” he said proudly.

“Ah,” Sage groaned, “is that what… I smell on your breath? Send…her here.”

“Plenty wait to feed you.” Oycher nodded at an attendant, motioning that Sage needed another feeding.

“Not like her.”

And he knew that Sage wasn’t referring to Isla’s blood, but the woman who housed it. “Someday your female will come,” he misquoted human fairytales.

“She’s turned you into…a damned sissy.”

"Never." A lovely brunette stepped forward, waiting just outside Sage’s partition. “Lunch is served. The next time I check on you, I will be a mated male.”

He glided out of the partition, the paper burning a hole in his pocket. He pulled it out, torn between what was right and what was wrong. He'd never had so many mixed feelings since after he’d become commanding Vojak. If he called the number, would it ring the phone of a mercenary Renaldo had killed for saving Isladora? If the mercenary actually answered, would Oycher do his duty and uphold vampire law by misting to the mercenary’s ping and apprehending him in the name of the Coven of North America? He tossed his hair back, stretching out the paper between his fingers and studying it. He frowned. Although he used speed dial on his cellphone, the number looked oddly familiar. He reached for his phone, but thought better of it. Moving to a side table, he lifted an in-house phone and dialed. Ringing, ringing, ringing…the sound was coming…from inside the infirmary.

Oycher whirled.

His eyes zeroing in on a black leather duster filled with Vojak weapons, hanging over the back of a chair next to a feeding Sage, his phone ringing inside. With a shaky hand, he hung up the phone and gripped the paper in a tight fist.

A duplicitous Sage had saved his Bride.

Oycher couldn’t begin to work this through with his mind, not today, not on a day he would devote only to Isladora. He dropped the paper in a small dish and zapped it with immortal fire, watching the note burn to an unidentifiable crisp. Dissolving into mist, he flowed through Volos’ castle and reached the heavy-planked door leading to his lair. He could already sense his Nevesta there. The call of his Bride was triple-fold with her blood running through his veins. When he descended halfway down the stone steps, his breath caught at the sight of her positioned next to a hulking werewolf completely shrouded in an ice-blue cloak displaying the crest of the Norwegian Pack, as she awaited her groom. Her robe was still on, her shyness endearing.

But he would break her of that.

Isladora watched Oycher descend the curving steps. In a glossy midnight robe, his head was covered with his cowl, his sunset eyes flames in the shadows of his face. Though she’d been with him, wanted him for all time, a menacing air surrounded her Commander, and she fought not to run.

He waved a hand and Terje gently tugged open her robe, baring her pink-tipped breasts where Oycher’s rubies glittered above her  mounds, and dropped it to the ground. Her face burned. She didn’t want this group watching, Prince Volos and six Dynasty Vampyrs sitting high in a balcony overlooking the strange but beautiful dais, but the prince of vampires and his accomplices were going to uphold the monarchy’s end of the deal. Isla would remain a Donor and transform into a vampiress by their magic melding with Oycher’s. So Isla tried hard not to think about roaming butterscotch eyes following her every move and focused on her males.

“Are you prepared to live in the world you truly hate,” Oycher asked formally, “Isladora?”

It took a couple of swallows to get her mouth working right. “Yes.”

His hand disappeared into his cloak and pulled out his cock, the heavy weight smacking the palm of his hand. She lowered in front of him, kneeling before her groom, and touched the tip with her wet tongue.

“Sinful little, Nevesta,” he hissed on a long moan, closing his eyes and lifting his chin toward the hanging chandelier filled with scarlet candles, the wax resembling flowing blood dropped down and drizzled onto his cloak. Not a drop hit her, but she didn’t have time to contemplate why. She licked all around his circlet, running her tongue underneath the metal. His hands clenched at his sides, his body stiffening with every wiggle of her tongue.

Terje lowered behind her, squeezing his hand between her thighs and cupping her lower stomach. He held her weight, positioning her on her knees as she continued to worship her groom with her mouth. “I am starved for you,” Terje whispered against her ass, scraping his teeth straight down the center.

“Oh, hell,” Oycher hissed.

“Hmmm.” Isla could sense his cock throbbing on her tongue, the pressure mounting in his tightening balls. He gripped her by the back of her head, pulling her fractionally closer, still careful of her taking on too much of him though he was nearly lost on the waves of lust.

Terje moved over the mouth of her sex, circling his fingertips across the hungry skin. Then he rubbed his nose in her musky liquid as she whimpered around Oycher’s cock. He licked every inch but ignored her clit. She tried to sit on his face, but he held her at bay. Isla stared up at Oycher, when he released his grip, the thick crown of his cock popping from her swollen lips. His cheeks were flushed, whether from her feeding him or from her mouth, she didn’t know. But he appeared vibrant as he walked adoring eyes all over her.

The prince of vampires stood, gripping the balcony above, and released his essence. A dark dance of shadows suddenly filled the air as Terje pulled away from her, scooped her up, and lifted her upon the dais that appeared to be made from smooth onyx. But she didn’t slide off as she thought she would.

Oycher opened his cloak. The crimson wings etched across his chest were definitely moving this time, almost as though they were going to fly off his chest and come straight to her. He dropped the robe where he stood and stepped out of it. His erection was so thick his circlet strained to contain it, the bulging flesh shelving over the metal. She could see her saliva glistening over the tip.

Opening his mouth, he snapped down his fangs and breathed deeply through them. His sunset irises bled into the whites, tiny rivers at first, then widening and flowing out until there was nothing looking back at her but orbits filled with fire. Tossing his hair back, he circled her. His body expanded, nearly tripling, his cock becoming impossibly thicker and longer. A crystalline stream tinged with blood dripped from the tip, streaming to the floor.

He stepped forward and lifted a marble bowl next the dais. “On your back, knees and heels apart.” She obeyed quietly. Terje dipped his hand into the bowl, gathering a small handful of the clear, oily substance and trickled it over her right breast. Isla’s nipple tightened as the tingling warmth tickled her. He gathered another small handful and trickled it over her left breast, immediately awarded with the same effect.

Oycher’s fangs dripped, his tongue curling out to wrap around one. Since she understood the pleasure of his bite, she turned her head to the side, exposing her throat. His gaze heated even more, when he spotted her gesture.

“You will feed from me next,” he murmured, his eyes dropping to her stomach, when Terje drizzled droplets into her navel and over her scars. She closed her eyes a minute, pushing back the horrific memories those scars stoked. Oycher’s lips came down on hers, soft at first. But they grew in ferocity when Terje smeared oil down one thigh.