Unleash (Vampire Erotic Theatre Romance Series Book 6) (22 page)

“It happens because I’m experiencing strong emotions.” She ran her fingertip over his lower lip, painting it with colour that soon faded.

“Do all angels possess this trait?” He caught her hand and pressed a kiss to her knuckles.

“No.” She shook her head. “Many angels can’t experience emotion at all. Few of us experience them strongly… I have experienced many that are foreign to all angels… because of you.”

He smiled at her, charming and boyish, as though that knowledge pleased him deeply. She glanced away and her cheeks heated. She hoped he wouldn’t ask what had prompted her to experience emotions that were foreign to angels. She wasn’t sure how he would react if she confessed it was his bite that had awoken them in her.

“I need a shower.” Snow pressed a kiss to her lips and slipped from the bed, coming to stand before her.

He wrapped his fingers around her wrist and pulled her up into his arms, holding her by her bottom. Her feet didn’t reach the floor. She didn’t care, especially when he kissed her again, the softness of it chasing away her dire thoughts.

He set her down and gave her a saucy smile. “Want to join me?”

She did but she shook her head, knowing that if she went to shower with him this time that they would end up making out again. As much as she wanted to make love with him under the warm spray of water, she wanted to figure out a way of saving him even more.

“Next time,” she said, hoping there would be one.

He was so handsome as he smiled at her, blue eyes glittering with warmth. He made his way across the room and she allowed herself the time to watch him, gaining pleasure from how sexy his backside was as he walked.

He disappeared into the bathroom and she heard the shower switch on.

Her blood would be almost gone from his system by now and her time was running out.

It was now or never. She had to do something to prove to her master that Snow was worthy of a second chance at life, and after her conversation with him earlier, she knew that first she needed to make him feel and make him learn to accept the things he had done. She had to make him see that it was all in his past now and that he couldn’t let it colour his future anymore.

She only knew of one way to do that.

And she knew he would hate her for it.

But it was the only way to save him now.

S
now dressed in a pair of black jeans and a black t-shirt. He tugged a thin black sweater on over the top and was tying his boots when Aurora came out of the bathroom.

He had to stop to watch her.

She was beautiful, radiant with the lingering blush of passion on her cheeks and her white dress clinging to her curves. She paused midway through combing her fingers through her fall of black hair and glanced at him. A touch of nerves coloured her striking eyes, darkening the green and blue, and he frowned. Something was up.

Was she still awkward about the fact she had given herself to him?

Twice.

He grinned at that, finished with his laces, and straightened. She stopped again as he approached her, his long strides eating up the distance between them, and then gasped as he gathered her into his arms and kissed her.

The air turned frigid around him.

Snow frowned and his senses reached out, screaming a warning that they were no longer in his apartment, or anywhere in Vampirerotique. He pulled back and scoured the dark landscape surrounding him. Mountains pierced the sky beyond a stone wall.

A sliver of dread snaked down his spine.

She hadn’t.

He swiftly turned to face her and looked beyond her.

Snow clawed his hair back and growled, his heart pounding and vision swimming as he took in the stone chateau with its towers tipped by dark conical roofs.

He stumbled backwards and his knees gave out, the impact with the gravel path jarring his spine. He hunched over, pressing his claws into his scalp, fighting the darkness that descended upon him, throwing terrifying images into his head, ones he didn’t have the strength to shut out.

The speed of the assault on him was so swift that he couldn’t guard against it. His bloodlust rose in the space of a heartbeat to swamp his mind and drive him right to the edge.

He didn’t think he could win his fight against it this time, when he was unprepared and it had come on so strongly and fiercely.

It was only a matter of minutes, if not seconds, before it claimed him completely and seized control. He couldn’t let that happen, even when it felt inevitable. He had to fight it somehow.

He tried to claw back some control but it only caused more memories to surface. They played out in his mind and terrorized him.

“No,” he muttered and clutched his head, screwing his eyes shut. He rocked, his big body tight with tension, control slipping through his grasp. Blood coloured his vision, staining the memories playing out in his mind, sending him falling deeper into the black abyss. “Didn’t. Wasn’t. Was. Me.”

“Snow?” Her fearful voice called to his darker hungers and he snarled and sprang at her, grabbing her before she could move a muscle. He roared at her, his enormous fangs punching long from his gums, dripping with saliva at the thought of tearing into her soft flesh and tasting her blood.

No. He couldn’t do this. He wouldn’t do this. Not again.

He threw her aside, turning at the same time, and grappled with himself.

Not again. Please. Not again.

Terrible needs assaulted him, whispering insidious words, taunting him into surrendering to his bloodlust and slaking his wicked thirsts.

He couldn’t.

Snow clung to the edge of the abyss, nails digging in, refusing to succumb to it this time. He hated it. He despised how he felt as it seized control of him, trapping him within his own body, leaving him powerless and unable to stop himself from doing the horrific things that forever haunted him.

He roared, dropped back to his knees and slammed his fists against the unyielding ground, bloodying his knuckles, hoping the pain would satisfy his dark needs.

It didn’t.

His focus kept reverting to Aurora where she stood only metres away, her eyes on him, drawing his attention to her. He snarled and clawed at his chest. His blunted nails did nothing, unable to cut through the material and score his flesh, giving him the pain he deserved.

“Snow?”

He snarled at her and held his hand out behind him, trying to warn her to keep her distance, afraid that if she came any closer, he would lose his head. He would kill her.

He would kill himself a heartbeat later, unable to live with himself and unable to keep his promise to Antoine.

Why?

His brow furrowed and tears filled his eyes before he could do anything to hold them back. He clawed at the gravel, bloodying his fingertips, and looked over his shoulder at Aurora. Sharp lances cut his heart to pieces, until he was bleeding inside, feeling the pain he had desired but hating it because it stemmed not from himself but from her. Undeserved.

Why had she done this to him?

She reached out to him and a terrible hunger to destroy her, to spill her blood in retribution and satisfy his need for vengeance by drinking her dry, spiralled through him. Another tattered thread holding his bloodlust at bay twisted and snapped.

Snow growled at her.

She would pay for hurting him like this.

Snow shook his head and rubbed his eyes with the bloodstained heels of his palms, pressing them deep enough to cause pain. She wouldn’t. He couldn’t hurt her. Not Aurora.

The urge came upon him again, stronger this time, and he almost launched himself back at her.

Snow growled in agony and smashed his head against the ground instead. He had to knock himself out. It was the only way to save her.

“Snow, no!” Aurora raced forwards and he was on her in a split-second, his hand wrapped around her throat and holding her high off the ground.

Sharp splinters ricocheted around his skull, distorting his vision, and darkness encroached, sucking more of his control into the abyss, pulling him down to a place he didn’t want to go. Not again.

Aurora grasped his wrist with both hands, her legs flailing and her panic rushing through his body like a sweet intoxicating drug. He began to squeeze.

Snow pushed back against the consuming darkness, clawing his way to the surface and holding on for dear life.

Not his. Hers.

He stared into her eyes, witnessing her emotions. Not only fear. Hope. Affection. Faith. Concern.

Snow closed his eyes, dropped his head and dug the knuckles of his free hand into his left eye. He had to stop this. He wouldn’t let it control him, not as it had that terrible night two centuries ago.

He dropped Aurora and loped away from her, desperate for some space. The gravel behind him crunched, warning she intended to follow him, and he roared over his shoulder at her. She froze, her heartbeat off the scale, the wild pounding satisfying his darkest desires.

Snow breathed hard, battling his bloodlust. He forced himself to look at his surroundings, to see the snow-capped mountains that were bright even in the darkness, the full moon illuminating the cragged peaks. He swept his gaze over the plains and down towards the lake in the distance, and then back to the chateau.

The sight of it threatened to send him into another frenzy but he held it together this time, refusing to succumb to the crushing force of his bloodstained memories of this place.

The scene of his worst crime.

He had hoped he would never set eyes on this place again and now Aurora had brought him here, endangering everyone in the area, triggering an onslaught of memories that threatened to send him into his darkest bout of bloodlust yet.

Even darker than the one he had suffered the night he had slaughtered everyone he loved in these grounds and this very mansion.

“Why?” Snow gritted out, barely keeping a leash on his bloodlust, constantly fighting it. He would lose the battle at some point. He had never managed to hold out for long when struggling against a strong attack and they had never come stronger than this.

Aurora stood in the middle of the gravel path down the slope from him, closer to the house, her back to it and her hand wrapped around her throat. He had hurt her. He would do far worse if he lost his head to his affliction.

She didn’t answer. Had he damaged her voice box? Could angels heal as rapidly as vampires could?

Concern overshadowed his agony and he ventured a step towards her, needing to see that he hadn’t done any permanent damage in the midst of his rage. He couldn’t live with himself if he had harmed her.

“Aurora?” he whispered, on the edge again, driven there by the thought that he had hurt her.

He breathed hard, focusing on it just as he had practiced so many times over the years. Antoine had taught him how to breathe through the times when his bloodlust surfaced but it wasn’t very strong.

He didn’t think he could breathe through this one, not when she wasn’t speaking to him, and her backdrop was the place he had lovingly called home until he had butchered most of his family in it and then attempted to kill his only brother.

God help him.

Snow snarled and clawed his hair back, squeezing the sides of his head with his palms, trying to get a grip on himself again as a new wave of darkness threatened to pull him under.

He needed something to focus on, something positive, anything. If he lost it, he would kill Aurora and then rampage through the chateau, no doubt killing its inhabitants, repeating the sins of his past.

He didn’t want to go back there. He didn’t want to see himself do those terrible things again, witnessing them as though through another’s eyes, seeing his familiar claws gouge flesh and hands smash bones to fragments, unable to stop himself even when he desperately wanted it to end.

He hadn’t wanted to kill them.

Tears slipped down his cheeks, the frigid air freezing them against his skin. Aurora gave him a pitying look that cut him to his marrow. He looked away from her, not wanting her to see how weak he was, how afraid. He wanted her to think he was strong, just as she desired him to believe she was.

He hated her seeing him like this.

Weak. Pathetic. Scared.

Vulnerable.

Snow focused on the area around him, keeping his field of vision narrowed so he didn’t see the house, hoping it would help him regain a sliver of control that he could build on.

The grass around him was long, plants growing in it that resembled weeds, and there were scraggly bushes too, and even trees at the edges of his vision. Patches of grass had swallowed sections of the path.

Snow realised they had never had a path. There had been a drive. It had been wide, at least ten metres across. Nature had reclaimed most of it, leaving only a strip three feet in width visible.

Snow frowned. “Does no one live here now?”

“Antoine never sold it.” Relief that she sounded unharmed was overshadowed by what she had revealed.

He could and could not understand why.

He knew his brother loved this place but also knew that Antoine would never return here because it would hurt him too much. He would never be ready to face that night and this place, and neither was Snow.

His brother was clinging to this place because it tied him to the family he had lost. He couldn’t let go of the past.

They were the same in that respect.

Aurora turned away, her pale dress bright in the moonlight, and her black wings grew from her back.

Snow hesitated, afraid of following her and hating himself because of it. He was stronger than this. He would discover why she had brought him to this place and then he would force her to take him back to Vampirerotique and never do this to him again.

He swallowed, drew in a deep breath, and took his first step towards the dark chateau, his gaze bravely drifting over the towers that reached up to the sky. His bloodlust began to rise again, gaining ground with each step, and he struggled against it. Aurora was way ahead of him now, close to the doors of the elegant gothic building.

Snow’s steps turned laboured, each one a struggle, his legs weakening as he was forced to use all of his strength to keep his bloodlust under control.