Viola grace saguinary.., p.3
Viola Grace - Saguinary Seduction, page 3
He inclined his head.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
He smiled gently. “A man must always have secrets from his woman.”
“By your own admission, I am no longer your woman.” She paused. “Cristóbal…”
He put a finger to her lips. “Don’t. When you speak my name, I’m powerless.”
“Then I’ll hold you prisoner. Come here.” She tugged him and they fell onto the bed in a tangle of arms and legs. He plunged into her, a sudden and deep fuck, of need. Flesh taken and being taken—no gentle lover’s caress. No, this was for possession, to each claim the other. To bring pleasure amid the pain.
Even as she kissed and fondled him, hers a desperate loving, the resolve hardened within her. She would show this bastard what he was rejecting. He had taught her so much, but now the student would become the teacher.
He had entered her life as master, demanding, making the rules, but she knew his game, knew how to make her own rules, play her own game, make him suffer.
“On your back, Cristóbal.”
19
eXtasy’s Collective Mind
“When you take that tone with me, it is so exquisite!”
Laughing gently, he acquiesced and lay with his arms and thighs widespread, his hair fanning around him like a black silk cape.
“I aim for beyond exquisite.” She knelt between his legs and lay over him.
“Ah… Madre Dios!”
She nipped his sensitive flesh, scrolling her tongue around his navel. A gentle kiss above his pubic bone, then deeper, her teeth grazing. She rubbed her cheek against his cock, feeling his heat, smelling the pungent scent of spice and man, and vampire. His redolence intoxicated. She flicked the cock tip with her tongue, teasing into the slit and went to take him into her mouth.
“No!” He reared up and flipped her onto her back, gazing down as he loomed over her, his knees and hands holding his weight. He shook his head and his hair swept across her face.
She caught his hair between her teeth, sucked the strands, tasting, smelling the exotic perfume—male musk, vampire-spice, cloying. Utterly addictive.
She burned. She trembled. Her heart raced, her blood surging through her veins, reaching a terrible aching apex at her thighs.
He lowered down into her, again possessing her with a deep commanding thrust. His mouth fastened on her breast, traveling inexorably upward. His teeth probed, tongue scraping across her jaw. He poised at her throat, to heighten the drama, the moment and bit.
The pressure was intense, the pleasure unbearable. She groaned, she wept. The blood slowed in her veins, heavy like molasses as he drank deeper, faster. His hardness within her anchored her as she writhed beneath him, biting him in return.
“Ah, my Deeanne,” he whispered, moving against her.
She grasped his hair and pulled his head back. “Damn you!
I’m tired of being bitten.”
His face hardened, his eyes turned cold. “You want me to stop?”
20
Sanguinary Seductions
“Yes.”
“A lie I think,” he purred. “Your body…your scent tells me otherwise.”
“If you continue, it is against my will.” The lie flowed easily from her lips.
“I have never raped.”
“You are now.”
“You bitch.”
“You bastard.”
Cristóbal rolled away and flung himself from the bed. He glared down at her as she raised herself on her elbows. His heated gaze lingered upon her body. She tossed her head, flicking back her hair. This is what you leave…she mind-challenged him.
“Is this how it ends, querida?” he demanded.
“Yes.” On my terms. For once.
“Then farewell.” He bowed theatrically and left her—god damn him—without so much as a backward glance.
She swallowed her tears. Cristóbal had made her strong and she would survive. Because revenge was a dish best served cold.
* * * *
Cristóbal was seven days gone. Dee had always appreciated the extent of their apartment. It allowed each of them to pursue their own interests, but now its size was oppressive, weighing down upon her. As silent as a vampire’s tomb.
Where was he? For a week, her tentative mind-probes had remained unanswered. There had not even been a vibration of him, no matter how long and hard she sought his ether-spirit.
He had probably left the country, or perhaps gone to Sanctuary—the created home, a limbo between dimensions when the world of humans became too much to bear for one of the Blood.
Or was he with his new love, the new virgin-initiate 21
eXtasy’s Collective Mind
introduced to his ways?
Deeanne broke the mirror in the bedroom. The glass shattered along with her memories and her hopes. She collapsed on the bed and cried until exhaustion carried her to oblivion.
When she awakened, she felt his mind-touch, the faintest whisper.
Cara?
He was nearby, that much she could tell. They had often argued, and one or the other occasionally departed the house, to lick wounds, but the link was always there—a teasing touch they used to entice and to punish. She often wondered if Cristóbal regretted showing her how to use that psychic bond as a means to torment.
Come to me! Dee summoned him, loud, clear and sharp. So sharp it was like a dagger piercing her mind. Cristóbal. You are expected. Tonight.
She sent an image of his reward, what she would do to him if he obeyed and what she would do to him if he did not.
Cristóbal’s perverse nature might see him decline her invitation, to have her inflict more hurt, until he returned of his own accord. She spiced her summons with her scent: the redolence and the promise, an irresistible bait to lure her vampire.
* * * *
Dee sat at the candlelit table dressed in a strapless red silk gown that defied gravity solely by her curves. Around her neck was a black ribbon decorated with a single ruby. Her hair was freshly hennaed and piled upon her crown and held in place by a ruby and diamond clasp. She drummed her fingers on the mahogany table, absently studying her long red nails, the ruby and diamond ring on her small finger. It caught the light, and her memories stirred.
Memories long forgotten, of a lifetime ago…
Then she was a homeless runaway whom he had found in 22
Sanguinary Seductions
the backstreets, eking out a living, through thieving, not prostitution—she had not been that desperate.
She, with the others, had watched him enter their domain from the shattered tenement, their home. They had stalked him, a stranger obviously lost, his Armani suit and Ray Bands acting as a magnet to every lowlife in the neighborhood. He had eluded them all, a shadow slipping away into the night.
He returned the next night and the night thereafter. She followed and cornered him in the alley, her knife at his gut. He had laughed at her. Laughed. She had lunged and he had deflected her blade with a swipe of his hand and brought her protesting, cursing into his embrace. His first kiss ensnared her. He bid her follow and she obeyed.
The street had vanished, her world left far behind as he brought her to his Sanctuary. His Sanctuary, but her prison, this place between dimensions where those of his kind made their homes on a world that was not their own, when they did not want to assume a human persona. When they had an initiate to school to their tastes, their needs.
She was then sixteen years of age, illiterate, a spitting wildcat virgin, eventually tamed, but not bedded until she was ripe, ready.
In four years, he had made her ripe, ready, eager for him, his ways and then he fucked her and that had truly been her end and her beginning.
In that first bedding, he had revealed to her what he was, but by that time she did not care. She wanted him, had to have him, or go mad. He gave her the vampire’s kiss, biting her and she bit him back, scratching him, blooding him. He had merely laughed and bedded her again and again, taking her in all ways imaginable, and unimaginable, such was the vampire’s way.
Over time she had learnt to become her own mistress, to shrug aside his summons, his demands, but no matter what was said or done, their bed was always a place to assuage mutual need, to forget pain, never a place to inflict hurt. Until tonight.
Dee felt his presence and it drew her back to the present, to 23
eXtasy’s Collective Mind
the thudding of the blood in her veins, the pounding of her secret woman’s flesh.
“Good evening, cara.” Cristóbal bowed. “You smell delicious; you look good enough to eat. And I will.”
“In my good time.”
“Of course.”
“Will you sit and dine?”
“I would rather bed and dine.”
“Later.” She waved him to the chair at the opposite end of the antique table, watching him. He wore a black suit and crisp white shirt, an intricately tied black silk cravat, with a single ruby pin at its center. His long hair was held back in a neat, severe tail and at his lobe a single ruby glittered.
Alike…so alike; so attune, the thought made her heart ache.
They ate in silence, their gazes feasting.
Dee drank the burgundy, running her tongue over the rim of the crystal goblet, taking another sip, carefully swirling it around her mouth, before swallowing. He watched her amused. He sampled his own wine, mimicking her actions.
She saw the violet tinge in his eyes—he was ripe for the picking. Pushing up from the chair, she strode from the room without a backward glance.
Moments later he joined her in the bedroom. She saw him take in the transformation, the bed hung with black curtains, the black sheets covered with red rose petals. Seven black candles set in a silver candelabrum sat in the center of the chamber. One candle for each year she had been with him.
He smiled at her. “You are a Goth at heart.”
“I have to be, wouldn’t I, to live with a vampire?”
“Will you forgive me?”
“You have to earn redemption, Cristóbal.”
“Too late for that, cara—centuries late! Too much blood has been spilt for me to be saved.”
“Insufferable melancholy!” she hissed. “You are so Spanish!”
“Thank you for the compliment.”
“Oh,” she said, “how clumsy of me. I meant to accuse.”
24
Sanguinary Seductions
He laughed and reached out a finger to stroke the swell of her breasts. “Cara—”
She stepped back. “Strip, Cristóbal. Go to the bed. Now.”
“I enjoy your games.”
“You mightn’t enjoy this one.”
He quirked a brow, then slowly, deliberately, like an exotic stripper, removed every item of clothing, pausing as he stood before her dressed only in his black silk shorts. He put his fingers to the waistband and halted. Moved it a fraction lower.
Her gaze followed and she ran a tongue over her dry lips, savoring the spectacle of the taut plain of his stomach covered with the dark hair and lower, the darker curls, then the tip of his cock. He paused, allowing her to enjoy the moment, the glimpse, until all was revealed. He dropped the shorts to the floor, letting them pool around his ankles. He lifted the silk, kicking it and it flew past her, like a fluttering bird, caressing her bare shoulder.
He held his arms akimbo. “Well?”
“The bed.”
Laughing, he lay down upon the silk and his weight crushed the rose petals, his warmth releasing their perfume. Rose and vampire musk…intoxicating, irresistible. But she had to resist, for her sake.
For her life.
For her revenge.
She stepped forward and halted at the edge of the bed, bending over so that she was certain he would see her cleavage.
She took his ankles and flung his legs apart.
“You want it rough tonight, cara?” he asked.
She slapped his thigh. “Speak only when I command. You must remain silent, or else redemption will elude you. Put your hands behind your head. Remain so until I grant you permission to move.”
“Dios!”
She slapped him again and he watched her with heavy eyes, somnolent, but she was not deceived. He was lurking, ready to pounce, if she allowed it. “Now, lie still. Be a good boy.”
25
eXtasy’s Collective Mind
“You know I have never been a good boy!”
She climbed upon him, her gown bunched around her waist. She took him inside her, all the while her gaze holding his. They watched one another, felt one another as they danced a dance that was older than time.
Their scents mingled, spice and rose and the cloying vampire musk invaded her awareness. She wet her lips with her tongue, her heart shivering in her chest as her flesh shivered and wept and shuddered over him, around him.
He groaned.
“Did I give you permission to speak?”
His eyes blazed furiously, anger and passion combined.
“You learn. Here is your reward.” She varied the speed and the depth of his penetration until it was he who thrashed upon the bed in sex-delirium, when so often, it was she. Tonight, she was mistress.
His torment would continue. She pulled away.
Please! His mind touched hers.
She slapped his thigh. “You aren’t to speak.”
Sweet love, my mouth did not.
“No speaking whatsoever—mind or mouth.”
“Fuck you,” he snarled, baring his fangs.
“Rather I thought I’d fuck you.” She slapped his cheek. “Be quiet, querido, or do you want more punishment?”
He remained silent, but she saw the hunter in his eyes, stalking her. He was wise enough to know that if he waited long enough, all would be his—punishment and pleasure—but in what order? Tonight it would be Dee to dictate the sequence and the severity.
She allowed him to kiss her from head to toe. She held her pleasure, holding desire, holding release as she had learned—
the lessons from the Indus, the art of Tantra. The ripple grew into a deluge until she rocked against him, bathing him with her release.
“Forgive me, my one, my only love.” She leaned over him, hiding her intent, and dragged the heavy, cold gun from beneath the pillow. “Now we won’t be parted.”
26
Sanguinary Seductions
And fired into his temple.
Deeeeee!
His mind-scream was the last thing he gave her as he died.
She hadn’t expected so much blood; the horror-sight of his shattered face… Blood and flesh spattered across the bed, across her. Even in death, he clung to her.
Dee staggered away, her gut heaving. The Colt pistol, she had been assured, would blow out his brains. She needed that certainty, to kill a vampire. She didn’t want to maim. He had to die from the first and only bullet in the gun.
The pistol tore at her fingers. She dropped the weapon and it thudded against the floor, the only sound amid her sobs.
Dee wept until she was ill and then dragging herself forward, a tottering step at a time, she returned to him and gently straightened the body, smoothing out limbs, trying not to look at the mangled flesh, trying to remember him how he was…
She lay beside him and, with swift strokes of her knife, slit her own wrists. Her betrayal of him, a throbbing hurt inside, made her immune to other pain, she didn’t feel the cuts. The blood flowed from her and she smiled, pressing her cheek against his now still breast.
Seven years together in life, now together in death for eternity. She smiled and closed her eyes.
She remembered a history lesson from the many lessons Cris had taught her. The Romans made a ceremony of suicide, inviting friends to a sumptuous feast and entertainments, reading a statement as they severed their arteries. They died to the sound of music. She would have no such rite of passage.
She would die in silence, in the utter knowledge of love’s betrayal. His. Hers. Knowing that to live alone was worse than death.
Time passed and her body drained. Her heart slowed. How difficult it was to breathe. Darkness descended.
Then she saw the light.
Wait a moment! Light?
One who was a murderer and a suicide didn’t go toward the 27
eXtasy’s Collective Mind
light…no, she was destined for darkness, hell in another name.
“Hell, my dearest love? There’s no such place, except of our own making.”
Dee opened her eyelids, her gaze at first refusing to focus.
She was so tired, but beneath the exhaustion was a life, an energy ready to burst forth. Her skin pulsed with it.
Cristóbal was naked, draped in a chair, his cheek resting on his palm. His casual repose was at odds with the intensity of his wine-dark gaze, the tight line of his lips.
She studied him, then the room. Built of stone, she had the impression of age, height, but beyond the boundary of the candelabra on the bedside table and on the table next to him, all was darkness. She lay upon a massive four-poster bed, hung with diaphanous red silk curtains.
The furniture was sparse, she smelt rosewood and cedar.
How could she identify the wood from their scents?
What was this place?
It was not his Sanctuary. It did not bear his spirit. It was not a hologram, because the stones whispered, possessed of a primal essence. What is this place?
“Welcome back,” he said, standing.
“Where am I?”
“My home.” He bent down to the small round table beside his chair and lifted a crystal carafe, pouring the wine into a long stemmed flute. He strode to her side. “Here, you must drink.
You’ve had a long journey, querida.”
The bed lurched as he sat beside her. As she struggled to sit up, he shoved the glass toward her. She reached out and only then saw the bandages around her wrists and felt the dull ache of her wounds. “Oh!”
“Drink. It will revive you. Then I will revive you as a vampire may.”
“But I’m dead! And…and that means. Oh. Oh, my God.”
“No god has anything to do with this, darling. Please, drink.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
He smiled gently. “A man must always have secrets from his woman.”
“By your own admission, I am no longer your woman.” She paused. “Cristóbal…”
He put a finger to her lips. “Don’t. When you speak my name, I’m powerless.”
“Then I’ll hold you prisoner. Come here.” She tugged him and they fell onto the bed in a tangle of arms and legs. He plunged into her, a sudden and deep fuck, of need. Flesh taken and being taken—no gentle lover’s caress. No, this was for possession, to each claim the other. To bring pleasure amid the pain.
Even as she kissed and fondled him, hers a desperate loving, the resolve hardened within her. She would show this bastard what he was rejecting. He had taught her so much, but now the student would become the teacher.
He had entered her life as master, demanding, making the rules, but she knew his game, knew how to make her own rules, play her own game, make him suffer.
“On your back, Cristóbal.”
19
eXtasy’s Collective Mind
“When you take that tone with me, it is so exquisite!”
Laughing gently, he acquiesced and lay with his arms and thighs widespread, his hair fanning around him like a black silk cape.
“I aim for beyond exquisite.” She knelt between his legs and lay over him.
“Ah… Madre Dios!”
She nipped his sensitive flesh, scrolling her tongue around his navel. A gentle kiss above his pubic bone, then deeper, her teeth grazing. She rubbed her cheek against his cock, feeling his heat, smelling the pungent scent of spice and man, and vampire. His redolence intoxicated. She flicked the cock tip with her tongue, teasing into the slit and went to take him into her mouth.
“No!” He reared up and flipped her onto her back, gazing down as he loomed over her, his knees and hands holding his weight. He shook his head and his hair swept across her face.
She caught his hair between her teeth, sucked the strands, tasting, smelling the exotic perfume—male musk, vampire-spice, cloying. Utterly addictive.
She burned. She trembled. Her heart raced, her blood surging through her veins, reaching a terrible aching apex at her thighs.
He lowered down into her, again possessing her with a deep commanding thrust. His mouth fastened on her breast, traveling inexorably upward. His teeth probed, tongue scraping across her jaw. He poised at her throat, to heighten the drama, the moment and bit.
The pressure was intense, the pleasure unbearable. She groaned, she wept. The blood slowed in her veins, heavy like molasses as he drank deeper, faster. His hardness within her anchored her as she writhed beneath him, biting him in return.
“Ah, my Deeanne,” he whispered, moving against her.
She grasped his hair and pulled his head back. “Damn you!
I’m tired of being bitten.”
His face hardened, his eyes turned cold. “You want me to stop?”
20
Sanguinary Seductions
“Yes.”
“A lie I think,” he purred. “Your body…your scent tells me otherwise.”
“If you continue, it is against my will.” The lie flowed easily from her lips.
“I have never raped.”
“You are now.”
“You bitch.”
“You bastard.”
Cristóbal rolled away and flung himself from the bed. He glared down at her as she raised herself on her elbows. His heated gaze lingered upon her body. She tossed her head, flicking back her hair. This is what you leave…she mind-challenged him.
“Is this how it ends, querida?” he demanded.
“Yes.” On my terms. For once.
“Then farewell.” He bowed theatrically and left her—god damn him—without so much as a backward glance.
She swallowed her tears. Cristóbal had made her strong and she would survive. Because revenge was a dish best served cold.
* * * *
Cristóbal was seven days gone. Dee had always appreciated the extent of their apartment. It allowed each of them to pursue their own interests, but now its size was oppressive, weighing down upon her. As silent as a vampire’s tomb.
Where was he? For a week, her tentative mind-probes had remained unanswered. There had not even been a vibration of him, no matter how long and hard she sought his ether-spirit.
He had probably left the country, or perhaps gone to Sanctuary—the created home, a limbo between dimensions when the world of humans became too much to bear for one of the Blood.
Or was he with his new love, the new virgin-initiate 21
eXtasy’s Collective Mind
introduced to his ways?
Deeanne broke the mirror in the bedroom. The glass shattered along with her memories and her hopes. She collapsed on the bed and cried until exhaustion carried her to oblivion.
When she awakened, she felt his mind-touch, the faintest whisper.
Cara?
He was nearby, that much she could tell. They had often argued, and one or the other occasionally departed the house, to lick wounds, but the link was always there—a teasing touch they used to entice and to punish. She often wondered if Cristóbal regretted showing her how to use that psychic bond as a means to torment.
Come to me! Dee summoned him, loud, clear and sharp. So sharp it was like a dagger piercing her mind. Cristóbal. You are expected. Tonight.
She sent an image of his reward, what she would do to him if he obeyed and what she would do to him if he did not.
Cristóbal’s perverse nature might see him decline her invitation, to have her inflict more hurt, until he returned of his own accord. She spiced her summons with her scent: the redolence and the promise, an irresistible bait to lure her vampire.
* * * *
Dee sat at the candlelit table dressed in a strapless red silk gown that defied gravity solely by her curves. Around her neck was a black ribbon decorated with a single ruby. Her hair was freshly hennaed and piled upon her crown and held in place by a ruby and diamond clasp. She drummed her fingers on the mahogany table, absently studying her long red nails, the ruby and diamond ring on her small finger. It caught the light, and her memories stirred.
Memories long forgotten, of a lifetime ago…
Then she was a homeless runaway whom he had found in 22
Sanguinary Seductions
the backstreets, eking out a living, through thieving, not prostitution—she had not been that desperate.
She, with the others, had watched him enter their domain from the shattered tenement, their home. They had stalked him, a stranger obviously lost, his Armani suit and Ray Bands acting as a magnet to every lowlife in the neighborhood. He had eluded them all, a shadow slipping away into the night.
He returned the next night and the night thereafter. She followed and cornered him in the alley, her knife at his gut. He had laughed at her. Laughed. She had lunged and he had deflected her blade with a swipe of his hand and brought her protesting, cursing into his embrace. His first kiss ensnared her. He bid her follow and she obeyed.
The street had vanished, her world left far behind as he brought her to his Sanctuary. His Sanctuary, but her prison, this place between dimensions where those of his kind made their homes on a world that was not their own, when they did not want to assume a human persona. When they had an initiate to school to their tastes, their needs.
She was then sixteen years of age, illiterate, a spitting wildcat virgin, eventually tamed, but not bedded until she was ripe, ready.
In four years, he had made her ripe, ready, eager for him, his ways and then he fucked her and that had truly been her end and her beginning.
In that first bedding, he had revealed to her what he was, but by that time she did not care. She wanted him, had to have him, or go mad. He gave her the vampire’s kiss, biting her and she bit him back, scratching him, blooding him. He had merely laughed and bedded her again and again, taking her in all ways imaginable, and unimaginable, such was the vampire’s way.
Over time she had learnt to become her own mistress, to shrug aside his summons, his demands, but no matter what was said or done, their bed was always a place to assuage mutual need, to forget pain, never a place to inflict hurt. Until tonight.
Dee felt his presence and it drew her back to the present, to 23
eXtasy’s Collective Mind
the thudding of the blood in her veins, the pounding of her secret woman’s flesh.
“Good evening, cara.” Cristóbal bowed. “You smell delicious; you look good enough to eat. And I will.”
“In my good time.”
“Of course.”
“Will you sit and dine?”
“I would rather bed and dine.”
“Later.” She waved him to the chair at the opposite end of the antique table, watching him. He wore a black suit and crisp white shirt, an intricately tied black silk cravat, with a single ruby pin at its center. His long hair was held back in a neat, severe tail and at his lobe a single ruby glittered.
Alike…so alike; so attune, the thought made her heart ache.
They ate in silence, their gazes feasting.
Dee drank the burgundy, running her tongue over the rim of the crystal goblet, taking another sip, carefully swirling it around her mouth, before swallowing. He watched her amused. He sampled his own wine, mimicking her actions.
She saw the violet tinge in his eyes—he was ripe for the picking. Pushing up from the chair, she strode from the room without a backward glance.
Moments later he joined her in the bedroom. She saw him take in the transformation, the bed hung with black curtains, the black sheets covered with red rose petals. Seven black candles set in a silver candelabrum sat in the center of the chamber. One candle for each year she had been with him.
He smiled at her. “You are a Goth at heart.”
“I have to be, wouldn’t I, to live with a vampire?”
“Will you forgive me?”
“You have to earn redemption, Cristóbal.”
“Too late for that, cara—centuries late! Too much blood has been spilt for me to be saved.”
“Insufferable melancholy!” she hissed. “You are so Spanish!”
“Thank you for the compliment.”
“Oh,” she said, “how clumsy of me. I meant to accuse.”
24
Sanguinary Seductions
He laughed and reached out a finger to stroke the swell of her breasts. “Cara—”
She stepped back. “Strip, Cristóbal. Go to the bed. Now.”
“I enjoy your games.”
“You mightn’t enjoy this one.”
He quirked a brow, then slowly, deliberately, like an exotic stripper, removed every item of clothing, pausing as he stood before her dressed only in his black silk shorts. He put his fingers to the waistband and halted. Moved it a fraction lower.
Her gaze followed and she ran a tongue over her dry lips, savoring the spectacle of the taut plain of his stomach covered with the dark hair and lower, the darker curls, then the tip of his cock. He paused, allowing her to enjoy the moment, the glimpse, until all was revealed. He dropped the shorts to the floor, letting them pool around his ankles. He lifted the silk, kicking it and it flew past her, like a fluttering bird, caressing her bare shoulder.
He held his arms akimbo. “Well?”
“The bed.”
Laughing, he lay down upon the silk and his weight crushed the rose petals, his warmth releasing their perfume. Rose and vampire musk…intoxicating, irresistible. But she had to resist, for her sake.
For her life.
For her revenge.
She stepped forward and halted at the edge of the bed, bending over so that she was certain he would see her cleavage.
She took his ankles and flung his legs apart.
“You want it rough tonight, cara?” he asked.
She slapped his thigh. “Speak only when I command. You must remain silent, or else redemption will elude you. Put your hands behind your head. Remain so until I grant you permission to move.”
“Dios!”
She slapped him again and he watched her with heavy eyes, somnolent, but she was not deceived. He was lurking, ready to pounce, if she allowed it. “Now, lie still. Be a good boy.”
25
eXtasy’s Collective Mind
“You know I have never been a good boy!”
She climbed upon him, her gown bunched around her waist. She took him inside her, all the while her gaze holding his. They watched one another, felt one another as they danced a dance that was older than time.
Their scents mingled, spice and rose and the cloying vampire musk invaded her awareness. She wet her lips with her tongue, her heart shivering in her chest as her flesh shivered and wept and shuddered over him, around him.
He groaned.
“Did I give you permission to speak?”
His eyes blazed furiously, anger and passion combined.
“You learn. Here is your reward.” She varied the speed and the depth of his penetration until it was he who thrashed upon the bed in sex-delirium, when so often, it was she. Tonight, she was mistress.
His torment would continue. She pulled away.
Please! His mind touched hers.
She slapped his thigh. “You aren’t to speak.”
Sweet love, my mouth did not.
“No speaking whatsoever—mind or mouth.”
“Fuck you,” he snarled, baring his fangs.
“Rather I thought I’d fuck you.” She slapped his cheek. “Be quiet, querido, or do you want more punishment?”
He remained silent, but she saw the hunter in his eyes, stalking her. He was wise enough to know that if he waited long enough, all would be his—punishment and pleasure—but in what order? Tonight it would be Dee to dictate the sequence and the severity.
She allowed him to kiss her from head to toe. She held her pleasure, holding desire, holding release as she had learned—
the lessons from the Indus, the art of Tantra. The ripple grew into a deluge until she rocked against him, bathing him with her release.
“Forgive me, my one, my only love.” She leaned over him, hiding her intent, and dragged the heavy, cold gun from beneath the pillow. “Now we won’t be parted.”
26
Sanguinary Seductions
And fired into his temple.
Deeeeee!
His mind-scream was the last thing he gave her as he died.
She hadn’t expected so much blood; the horror-sight of his shattered face… Blood and flesh spattered across the bed, across her. Even in death, he clung to her.
Dee staggered away, her gut heaving. The Colt pistol, she had been assured, would blow out his brains. She needed that certainty, to kill a vampire. She didn’t want to maim. He had to die from the first and only bullet in the gun.
The pistol tore at her fingers. She dropped the weapon and it thudded against the floor, the only sound amid her sobs.
Dee wept until she was ill and then dragging herself forward, a tottering step at a time, she returned to him and gently straightened the body, smoothing out limbs, trying not to look at the mangled flesh, trying to remember him how he was…
She lay beside him and, with swift strokes of her knife, slit her own wrists. Her betrayal of him, a throbbing hurt inside, made her immune to other pain, she didn’t feel the cuts. The blood flowed from her and she smiled, pressing her cheek against his now still breast.
Seven years together in life, now together in death for eternity. She smiled and closed her eyes.
She remembered a history lesson from the many lessons Cris had taught her. The Romans made a ceremony of suicide, inviting friends to a sumptuous feast and entertainments, reading a statement as they severed their arteries. They died to the sound of music. She would have no such rite of passage.
She would die in silence, in the utter knowledge of love’s betrayal. His. Hers. Knowing that to live alone was worse than death.
Time passed and her body drained. Her heart slowed. How difficult it was to breathe. Darkness descended.
Then she saw the light.
Wait a moment! Light?
One who was a murderer and a suicide didn’t go toward the 27
eXtasy’s Collective Mind
light…no, she was destined for darkness, hell in another name.
“Hell, my dearest love? There’s no such place, except of our own making.”
Dee opened her eyelids, her gaze at first refusing to focus.
She was so tired, but beneath the exhaustion was a life, an energy ready to burst forth. Her skin pulsed with it.
Cristóbal was naked, draped in a chair, his cheek resting on his palm. His casual repose was at odds with the intensity of his wine-dark gaze, the tight line of his lips.
She studied him, then the room. Built of stone, she had the impression of age, height, but beyond the boundary of the candelabra on the bedside table and on the table next to him, all was darkness. She lay upon a massive four-poster bed, hung with diaphanous red silk curtains.
The furniture was sparse, she smelt rosewood and cedar.
How could she identify the wood from their scents?
What was this place?
It was not his Sanctuary. It did not bear his spirit. It was not a hologram, because the stones whispered, possessed of a primal essence. What is this place?
“Welcome back,” he said, standing.
“Where am I?”
“My home.” He bent down to the small round table beside his chair and lifted a crystal carafe, pouring the wine into a long stemmed flute. He strode to her side. “Here, you must drink.
You’ve had a long journey, querida.”
The bed lurched as he sat beside her. As she struggled to sit up, he shoved the glass toward her. She reached out and only then saw the bandages around her wrists and felt the dull ache of her wounds. “Oh!”
“Drink. It will revive you. Then I will revive you as a vampire may.”
“But I’m dead! And…and that means. Oh. Oh, my God.”
“No god has anything to do with this, darling. Please, drink.
