Saved By Blood (The By Blood Vampire Series Book 3) (6 page)

Usually, he would have avoided that at all costs, but not now.  Now he felt like a kid on Christmas getting to show off his new and best toy.  That’s what his house was to him; his toy, his pride and joy, the one he kept close. 

He walked her through room after room after room, so many rooms that he knew without asking that she would never know just exactly how many rooms the sprawling home contained.  Not that it mattered.  She was utterly delighted with the place, believing each room to be more beautiful than the last.

He knew that without having to ask as well.  So many rich and luxurious things, such an overload for the senses.  She wanted to touch everything, to pick it up and put it up against the skin of her cheek.  She wanted to experience it, all of it.  He saw that and was pleased.

“What about back there?  You haven’t shown me that part yet.  Right?  I mean I don’t think you have.  Unless I’m just completely turned around, which is definitely possible.”

“No,” he said smoothly, no emotion showing in his voice in one direction or another, “you aren’t completely turned around.  We haven’t seen that area.  Those are my chambers.”

“Are they?”

“Yes, they are.”

“And are we going to see those as well?”

“Would you like to see those as well?”

Megan’s eyes grew brighter still and she took a demure sip of her almost empty cocktail, her eyes never leaving his.  They were caught in the middle of a standoff, neither one at all willing to back down.  But were they really on opposing sides, when it was all said and done?

He would not ask her to come to bed with him, that he would not do.  He had already done far more than he was likely to do.  He had invited her here for this rather ostentatious showing of his home, had done his best to dazzle her in his own way. 

And did she want to see his chambers?  He thought that she did.  She struck him as a smart girl and she must have noticed that she had seen everything but his bedroom by now.  By asking what was back there, she was all but asking for an invitation but by God, he was not going to extend it.

He would not lower himself to something one step above begging, he wouldn’t, but she only continued to look at him with those wide, strange eyes and after some unknown amount of time had passed, he could stand it no longer. 

He took her by the hand, seeing her wince at the feel of his ice cold skin, and couldn’t have cared less.  Good.  Let her be afraid -- at least a little bit afraid.  She was too sure of herself here in his presence.  He knew that she sensed the otherness in him, just as he felt the brokenness in her.

They saw each other in some deep, primordial way that he could not explain and, frankly, did not care to.  He was tired of looking for explanations for things, at least at the moment.  He was tired of waiting for her. 

Let her be afraid!  He did not care.  It would only serve to stoke the fires of their desire for one another because yes, that desire was there, too, so thick he felt that he could have reached out and plucked it out of the air. 

He took her by the hand and strode through the massive mahogany room that had once served as the home’s grand ballroom, many years ago.  As he walked, he could see the ghosts of his past moving around him, unconscious of the fact that their time had passed and they weren’t really there at all. 

He saw balls he had attended when he was young and still believed there was a future ahead of him.  He saw balls he had hosted himself as the owner of the property, after his turning was complete.  He could still hear the sound of horse’s hooves clomping skittishly in the wet cobblestone streets outside of his gardens. 

He could hear the tinkle of laughter from countless numbers of breathless ladies, smell the smoke of many lifetime’s worth of pricey cigars.  Those ghosts could be suffocating if he thought about them too much, but on this evening, thinking about them was the last thing on his mind.  It was only her and the feeling of her too thin, slightly trembling hand wrapped up inside of his own. 

Tripping down a long hallway with a thick plush carpet that still to this day made Philip wonder if this was what it would feel like to actually walk on air, her heartbeat was thumping so hard in her slender wrist, involuntarily, his unusually sharp incisors extended themselves.  It was such soft flesh, so supple, so easy to sink his teeth…

“No!” he hissed to himself, so softly under his breath that Megan didn’t hear it at all (or if she did, she made no mention of it which to Philip amounted to pretty much the same thing), “No, not her.  She’s not for that purpose.  Not to be devoured, at least not like that.”

And of course he wouldn’t, not ever.  He would never sink his teeth into that flesh unless she asked him to, and maybe not even then.  That hummingbird beat of her heart was not for the eating.  It was for the bedroom, which was where he was now taking her.

“It’s so dark” she said breathlessly, stopping short in the front sitting room. 

She looked around her in frank astonishment, her eyes hungry for as much detail as she could possibly absorb.  He let her hands go then and stepped deeper inside of his chambers.  He looked around him, trying to see things the way that she might be seeing them, but he couldn’t concentrate.  Being in here seemed to have removed all pretense that they had spent this evening together for any reason other than to experience every part of each other’s bodies.

The massive ebony carved bed front and center served as an excellent reminder, had either one of them been inclined to forget.

“Philip?”

That’s all she got out, only that one word, before he was once again upon her.  This time it was not just her hand he held.  He wrapped his arms around the lithe length of her body, letting his hands run along the small of her back, daring her to ask him to stop.  She looked up at him defiantly, her chin lifted in a girlish ‘you can’t scare me’ sort of a way, and did not move.  She hardly seemed to be breathing anymore she was so still. 

He understood the feeling.  It felt like a dream.  He couldn’t remember the last time he had actually had a dream, but this felt the way he remembered them, so fragile and slick that it might slip away for any stupid kind of feeling at all.

“I’m right here.”

“You are,” she gasped, the sound of her heart pounding in his ears, “and how did you move so fast?  It looked like you were over there and then I blinked and you were right here in front of me.  How?”

“Don’t ask a question you already know the answer to.  Isn’t that what you said to me?  It goes both ways.”

Had that been too much?  Had he finally said too much, pushed her too far?  Because some part of her
did
already know the answer and that part of her was afraid.  In fact, she thought that maybe more of her knew what he was, then didn’t know.  Something in her wasn’t entirely normal either (whatever normal was) or that was the part of her who saw what he was.  For
what
he was.

“You’re right,” she said softly, one hand moving tentatively up to touch his face, “it does go both ways. No more questions.  No more talking.”

Gripped by an impressive amount of initiative, something he didn’t often find in the women he dealt with, Megan pressed her body more fully against his own.  She slid her other hand up to cup his face and then rose up on the tips of her toes and kissed him with a quivering mouth.  For the briefest flash of time, the two of them remained in that state of questioning, and then it was like wildfire. 

He had wanted so badly to know what Megan tasted like and the reality of it was so much better than anything he had imagined.  She tasted like all of the life he had been missing.  She tasted like strawberries that had been left out in the warm summer’s sun, like a lazy day on the beach that stretched out for miles and miles into forever. 

Even though he knew well enough that it was a place he would never be permitted to go, she tasted like heaven.  She was like the light, the broken light, and he was the dark and they somehow fit together perfectly, like two pieces of a puzzle meant to be linked together.

“God, what is that?”

Megan pulled back slightly, her face full of wonder while her body continued to slide against his as if of its own accord.

“That’s chemistry, my dear.”

“Jesus, that was beyond corny, you know that?”

But she was laughing with a flushed face and when he picked her up she wrapped her legs around his waist, tugging at his shirt as he carried her to the bed.  It was like their bodies bled together and when he threw her back on his plush mattress, he could smell her excitement coming off of her in waves.

The little black sundress she was wearing had hiked itself up around her waist in the commotion and Philip saw with satisfaction that she was wearing nothing underneath.  She saw him looking and instead of being embarrassed or ashamed, she bit her lip again. 

So she did know.  She was teasing him, daring him to come and do something about it.  He was entirely unaccustomed to being dared by anyone to do anything at all and he was taken back enough to give pause.

“What’s wrong?  Having second thoughts?”

His only response was a low, animal growl emitted from deep in the back of his throat.  He moved onto the bed with a speed that would have scared any other girl and pulled her legs further apart, his thumbs running teasingly along her inner thighs, his eyes glued to her face as she began to pant. 

Her head snapped back and her eyes slipped shut, the promise of the pleasure to come vibrating throughout her whole body.  Still watching her face, his hands moved further, further, circling around the part of her that was the epicenter of pleasure.  When his finger slid inside of her, first one, then another one, she moaned, her hips bucking up to meet him. 

There was no trace of self-consciousness, only her need to feel more of him, more, and always more.  He could read it in her flesh and it took his breath away.  He wasn’t sure that saying even applied to him anymore, but it was the best thing he could think of to describe what he was feeling.

He could feel his erection throbbing against his leg, aching for her, his whole body burning for her in a way it hadn’t done in a long time.  He wanted to feel her, all of her, but not until he brought her to the strongest climax she had ever felt.  His fingers worked slowly at first, so slowly it must have been like torture for her, and her body bucked harder, her moans becoming more pronounced.

Each moan spurned him on, his fingers moving faster, faster, faster until he felt her body clench around him, spasming with her pleasure.  Her cry was loud enough to have woken the whole house, provided that there was anybody there to wake, and he felt his incisors make their way back out again.  This time he didn’t bother to call them back up again.  Let her see him.  He
wanted
her to see him for what he was and from there they could let the chips fall where they may.

“Please,” she gasped, seeing the teeth and seeming not to care, “please, I have to feel you.  I want to feel you inside of me.”

She propped herself up on her elbows, tugging for his shirt and then tugging some more, ripping at it until the buttons burst clean off.  He couldn’t have cared less.  He had a thousand shirts and none of them were halfway as interesting as this girl.

He felt like a teenage boy, couldn’t get his pants off fast enough, and when they were, when he finally felt her fingers wrap around his shaft, his whole body tensed with expectation.  She clutched at him and he moved on top of her, allowed her to guide him inside of her with a blinding warmth.

It was like they were made to do this with each other.  He started to move his hips, thrusting once, twice, and as he did her legs wrapped themselves around his, hooking around his ankles for better leverage. 

Each one of his thrusts was met by one from her hips as well, perfectly synchronized.  He reared back onto his knees, letting out a guttural groaning noise, and grabbing those delicate ankles in his hands to throw them up over his shoulders. 

But first, first, he had to taste her.  Just once, just the smallest bit, and he grazed that skin with one of his sharpest teeth, licked the blood when it arose.  If he had thought that had been heaven before, this was something even better.  This was Nirvana and he knew that he wouldn’t be able to hold on for much longer.