Unleash (Vampire Erotic Theatre Romance Series Book 6) (8 page)

When a glimmer of sanity returned, the angel was standing at the head of the bed on his right, pity back in her eyes again. He snapped at her with his fangs and cursed her. She glared at him and struck him hard, the slap burning his left cheek.

“You dare speak to me that way again and I will leave.”

Good. He wanted her to leave. Snow cursed her again, blacker and fouler this time, calling her names that would have shamed his mother if she had heard them. The foolish wench had tried to raise him to be a placid, gentle man. Snow chuckled darkly. Placid. Gentle. Stupid bitch. He was vicious. Evil. Twisted.

The angel struck him again, hard enough this time that pain splintered across his skull like a spider web, driving him towards darkness. God damn it. Snow wanted another one of those blows. He wanted oblivion and unconsciousness.

Her eyes flicked to the thick steel chain attached to his headboard and the collar at the end of it.

“I will not put that on you.” She sounded resolute but the fear in her eyes said he could probably convince her to go through with it.

He tried to grab her, twisting his body towards hers, and she moved back a step.

“Collar,” he snarled.

“No,” she whispered, shaking her head, her beautiful eyes imploring him not to ask her again. “It feels wrong to do such a thing to a man.”

Snow snapped at her. “I am not a man. Collar me.”

He threw his head back and snarled again as a fresh wave of fire burned through him and his stomach cramped harder than ever, his insides feeling as though they were trying to tie themselves into knots.

Snow lurched forwards and in that moment, cold steel brushed the back of his neck and then closed over the front. Mercy. She had done it, and while he had been lost to his dark urges too. Foolish female.

He collapsed onto the bed and breathed hard, trying to edge himself through a coming episode without it hitting him fully.

Her soft warm fingers brushed a line across his throat, the action soothing him even as it stoked his hunger to a dangerous new level. She smelled so good this close. He could scent her blood flowing beneath her creamy skin. Saliva pooled in his mouth. His fangs itched for a taste of her.

Snow managed to turn his face away from her.

“You have marks that say you wear this collar often.” There was pity in her voice. “Why is it so necessary?”

Snow looked up at her and smirked. “I have a little drinking problem.”

As if prompted by his words, the thirst attacked him. He gasped and bucked, straining against the cuffs that barely gave him room to move a few inches. They ground into his wrists and ankles, digging into bone and blood vessels, making his hands and feet throb in pain.

Snow panted hard, fighting a losing battle against the consuming tide of his bloodlust, desperate to retain a shred of his sanity and fearing that if he didn’t, he would somehow harm the angel.

He screwed his eyes shut, not wanting to see her pitying look as he struggled like a snared beast against the bonds, fighting them with every shred of his immense power but failing to break them. He spat curses at them, foul words that a sliver of him hoped that the angel didn’t take as an insult to her. He wanted the bonds off him. He ached to be free.

Couldn’t.

He would rip the angel to shreds if he were free.

A blistering wave of fire burned up his blood, setting every molecule in his body aflame, and he rolled his eyes open and arched off the bed, his mouth opening in a silent scream. Couldn’t roar. If he did, Antoine would come. Antoine would see the angel. Antoine would harm her.

Snow growled low in his throat at that thought.

He would kill any who touched her.

His claws extended at the same time as his fangs, and the apartment brightened as his eyes changed, burning red around his cat-like pupils.

Snow fought harder than ever to break the restraints, driven by a mindless need to free himself so he could protect the female and by a dark hunger to drain her dry at the same time.

She rushed forwards as the collar sliced into his throat, spilling a thick stream of his blood down his neck.

“You must calm yourself,” she whispered softly, those words laced with emotions that were beyond his grasp as the bloodlust seized hold of him again and her proximity drove him mad with a need to taste her. “You are hurting yourself.”

The note in her melodic voice told him more than she was willing to say. She couldn’t bear the sight of him hurting himself. The scent of blood filled his room and, even though it was his own tainted life force, it sent him back over the edge.

“I am unsure how to help you.” She hovered close to him and he managed to get his eyes to focus on her for a brief second, long enough to see the frustration that darkened her innocent features.

Snow growled, rolled his eyes back and snarled as he pulled harder on the chains. The steel bedposts creaked under the pressure. Agony shredded his insides, liquefying his bones and stealing his strength away, leaving him helpless. He still fought like a wild thing, ferocious and vicious as he battled his restraints, hungry to escape and taste the female.

“So much pain and suffering,” she whispered and he cursed at her again, telling her in the old language to leave him alone, hoping she would listen this time.

The need for blood became too much and he sank his fangs into his own lower lip and sucked furiously on it, ravenous and unable to stop himself.

The angel left his side and he couldn’t track her. The bloodlust dulled his senses. He opened his eyes again and followed her as she paced around the room, studying her every move.

If she came close enough, he would bite her. He sucked harder on his own foul blood, imagining it was the sweet nectar that flowed in her veins. He ached for her blood even as he ached to leave her unspoiled.

She searched his room, her air desperate, small hands clenching and unclenching in front of her stomach. “You must have some blood here somewhere. Where do you keep it?”

Snow released his lip and wheezed, “No use… like ashes… empty of life.”

She gave him another pitying look and then her dark eyebrows rose high on her forehead, something dawning in her incredible eyes, and she approached him.

She stood beside his bed with a calm and decided expression on her face and held her arm out to him.

Snow stared at her in shock and then turned his face away. “Do not touch me… I will taint you. You are pure… I am not.”

She huffed. “I am not as pure as you believe.”

She leaned over him and brought her wrist right up to his lips.

Snow swallowed hard and his gaze slid to the soft flesh on the underside of her forearm. He told himself to resist even as another part of him demanded he take what she offered so freely. No. It wouldn’t help him. It wouldn’t free him of his bloodlust. It would only make it worse. He had to abstain from blood until he was weak and then begin again with smaller quantities.

He had to drink.

He couldn’t deny that dark urge.

Snow struck hard, burying his fangs deep into her soft body. She cried out and slapped her free hand over her mouth to stifle the rest of it, the sound distant to his ears as her blood rushed into him.

It was warm and tasted incredible, like nothing he had ever taken before, sweet and bitter at the same time, imbued with power that shot through his system like a drug, giving him what should be an illegal high.

He drank greedily, powerless to stop himself from taking all that he could, desperate for more of her. His cock hardened painfully, his body coming alive with sensation that left him dizzy and hazy, lost on a warm sea of bliss.

“Enough!” She tore her arm away from him and stumbled backwards. She blindly grabbed the metal post at the foot of his bed for support and slid down it to land on the floor with a harsh thud.

Snow opened his eyes, craned his neck as much as he could and stared down at her, shocked by what she had done and how she had tasted. Tears streaked her cheeks and there were red marks on them where she had pressed her fingers into them when covering her mouth to stop herself from crying out in pain. She held her wrist to her chest, clutching it tightly, her knuckles blazing white. Blood already spotted her pristine pale dress, marring the pure fabric.

He had hurt her.

He cursed himself this time, guilt riding him hard and chasing him down from his high. He had tainted her and harmed her. He had made her cry with his vicious attack on her and his greed.

He should have eased his fangs in gently and sipped from her with the reverence she deserved. He should have made it pleasurable for her.

“Do you often starve yourself to the point of insanity?” She snapped the words at him like a whip, her innocence evaporating as she scowled, her eyes dark with the pain and fury she emanated.

Snow was quiet for a few long seconds, unsure what to say in response to that or how to make things better. Would she accept an apology? He had told her not to offer her wrist. She had seen him at his worst. She should have known he would hurt her.

“I had blood a short while ago,” he confessed, “but it tastes like death to me these days. But you… you taste like life. How?”

He hadn’t missed the little fact that drinking her blood had driven him right through the other side of his bloodlust and into the clear too. The way he felt right now, he knew he wouldn’t suffer another attack for at least a day, if not more. He had never felt this normal, not since before his bloodlust had first emerged.

“Do you suffer like this every night?” Her expression softened to reveal the innocence that he was coming to like about her. Her wide luminous eyes still sparkled with the tears that were drying on her pale cheeks, but they no longer held anger and darkness. They were soft and bright, inquisitive again. He nodded. Her fine black eyebrows puckered into a small frown. “There is no cure?”

“Only death.” Something he had long desired but had always been denied.

She swallowed and closed her eyes, her frown hardening. She released her wrist and pressed her bloodied hand to her head, smudging red across it.

“You are unwell?” he said, his guilt returning with a vengeance.

“I feel dizzy… and a little weak.” Her eyes opened and fixed on him, the brightness in them gone.

Snow frowned. How much had he taken from her? She was slender and delicate. He had drunk greedily. He had taken too much. If she had been a normal weak human, he probably would have killed her. The black wings curling around her shoulders were a constant reminder that she was anything but weak. An angel.

And she had given him blood.

That couldn’t be a good thing for her to have done.

“Come to me. Let me seal the wound.” He jerked his chin, trying to coax her into doing as he asked.

She grasped the bedpost and slowly pulled herself up off the floor, and then stumbled forwards and collapsed onto the mattress beside him, her breathing rapid and shallow. She shook as she bravely offered her right wrist to him.

Snow gently licked it, cleaning away the blood. His tongue on her flesh felt so good and he liked the way she stared at him, watching him intently.

Her skin was hot, her taste delectable.

He ached to feel her body against his, soft against hard, warm against cool. He hadn’t touched a female in centuries, hadn’t wanted to either, but he longed to lay his hands on her and learn her curves, her fragrance, and her sweetest spots.

It was wrong of him to desire her, an angel, one pure and untainted while he was wretched, but she brought out the devil in him. She made him want to taint her and ruin her.

Possess her.

He shifted his focus back to her wrist, taking care to ensure that the bleeding had stopped before he leaned his head back on the black pillows.

His gentleness seemed to please her and she offered him a small smile as she drew her arm back to her.

“I had feared you would begin drinking again,” she whispered and ran her thumb over the marks on her wrist, her gaze on them now. “They tell our kind that vampires are foul.”

Her gaze flickered over his face to settle on his hair and she reached out and lifted one of the long strands, drawing it out of his eyes.

“Snow,” she murmured and his vivid scarlet eyes shifted to meet hers and narrowed. “Your hair is like snow. It is pure and beautiful.”

Snow turned his face away. “You of all people should know how impure I am.”

She sighed and even that sounded melodic and soothing to him. Her hand left his hair and she shifted on the bed. When he realised what she intended, he snapped his head around to face her, catching her reaching for the cuff that secured his right wrist.

“Don’t!” he barked and she ignored him.

“You are safe now, satisfied. You will not hurt me.” She sounded so positive that he almost smiled and couldn’t resist pointing out something that would contradict her belief and most likely have her blushing again.

“I am not so sure,” he said and she paused to look at him. “My bloodlust is under control, but you are still not safe from me. I am not sure you ever will be.”

She looked confused at first and then her cheeks darkened to the deepest shade of red so far and her eyes widened, and he knew she had understood him and was now aware of the danger she was in. His bloodlust was sated, but he still felt an undeniable and consuming lust for her.

Snow smiled at the way her eyes edged downwards, towards his hips, as though she was unaware of what she was doing before it was too late and her gaze settled on his groin. Her cheeks darkened another shade. She swallowed and her heart fluttered wildly. Why?

Were her thoughts running along the same line as his were? He wanted to feel her hands on his flesh, touching and stroking him, pleasuring him and bringing him to climax. Did she desire the feel of his hands on her, using his strength and dominating her as they made love?

The angel hid her nerves well but she left the bed and he was sure that she would keep her distance now, afraid that he might pounce on her and ruin her.

She surprised him by locating the key to his restraints on the dressing table and coming back to him. She unlocked his ankles first, frowning and muttering soothing things about his wounds, things that left him feeling she truly did care about his wellbeing.