Chapter Eight

Fletch

When she’d taken him into her mouth, the entire world—the dust, the filth, the clean wood, the harsh soap, the light, the darkness—had disappeared. His entire existence had narrowed to the sensation of the supple, strong, wet silk of her tongue undulating against him and the smooth glide of her teeth along the sides of his shaft, stimulating places he hadn’t known he had with feelings he hadn’t thought were possible.

Is this what being with a woman is like, or is it because she’s a vampire? He hadn’t been able to think well enough to ask the question, much less attempt to answer it.

Coming down her throat had barely relieved the pressure of pleasure that had overtaken him, but he had then been able to move of his own volition. He’d pulled her off him and off the bed to see her in the light—to see her in a position where he didn’t want to hold her down and fuck her.

He’d tried to see the monster.

He knew what his father would have seen. A demon of the pit to be eradicated before it spread its foul blot upon God’s chosen.

But all Fletch had seen was a woman.

Not quite like other women. She would burn in the sun and her heartbeat wouldn’t keep a fakir alive. Her eyes glowed red in bloodlust, and her fangs dented the swollen cushion of her lips. But she was still a woman, her body soft and lovely and inviting to him, an instrument and receptacle to his pleasure and hers.

Of all the talk Fletch had heard about Ivory among the men of the town, none of them spoke of monstrous things. Those who had taken what Ivory offered had nothing but a few scratches, personal trophies of conquest. The eight men she’d made him put in the ground and consecrate were the only ones he’d ever done that for, besides his father, which supported that she’d intended their deaths weren’t a trend for her.

She could have killed him, knowing that he had been fully prepared to kill her. She’d had multiple opportunities to do so in the midst of his confusion and weakness. But she hadn’t.

In spite of her appearance and fighting spirit, she was nothing like what his father had taught him to fear and fight, and now Fletch was beginning to think that the body buried in his family plot might have been the true monstrosity, clothed in the wool of purity and certainty and words of God—as misguided as the Reverend at his pulpit.

He’d kissed her fangs and shivered at the slight sensation it inspired, then licked and called his blood to the surface of his tongue as a kind of peace offering. The numbing effect of her bite had kept it from hurting too much as she’d kissed him back, acquiescing as he’d brought her to bed. The small part of him that still doubted Ivory had disappeared when the feed had not overcome her. Instead of ripping his tongue out of his mouth to drink from him, she’d bitten her own wrist to savor her own blood rather than his.

He’d almost asked her whether vampires drank from each other as they did humans and whether it benefited them in the same way. Then she’d stopped teasing his poor cock and surrounded it in a tight grip, and words failed him. Fletch gasped, clutching at her hips—a suffocating man grasping for purchase on the very one denying him air.

As she seated her cunt over his cock, her head fell back against his shoulder, pillowed by her hair, and she dropped her arm from her mouth with a groan. Her lips were stained, but instead of blood, she looked like she’d been eating pomegranates.

“Was it worth the wait, Fletch?” she asked breathlessly, in spite of the fact she didn’t need to breathe. She rose again, then sank down. He met her with a thrust of his hips. Their flesh made a satisfying slap against each other.

“Waiting for you, Miss Ivory,” he murmured. He pitched them forward on the bed, covering her as she braced herself on her hands and knees. He shoved his cock into her. Her breasts swung and her thighs rippled in time with his thrusts. But as good as it felt to have his erection inside her and as hard as it was to form a coherent sentence, he wanted more.

“Turn over,” he growled, pulling out of her and making her squeal at his absence, but he flipped her over easily, and oh, yes, that was what he wanted—to see her, all of her, to remember who he was fucking so that he couldn’t fool even himself. Ivory was a vampire and his woman. The last thing he wanted was an anonymous encounter. And maybe part of him wanted to insure that she remembered she was fucking him, too, not just any of the men she’d been with at that brothel.

Ivory lay splayed, wanton and smiling on his bed. Her eyes were half-lidded and sultry with desire, cautiously kittenish as she traced patterns on her inner thighs and spread her legs to reveal the glistening lips of her cunt.

He grasped the base of his cock and pushed back in. She latched her legs around his hips, spurring him faster with her heels. Her matte skin had never known the shine of sweat, but beads formed on his forehead and along his back from the work and the heat building up inside him.

So this was the way of the flesh. Fletch could get used to it.

In fact, he wasn’t sure he could get enough of it.

Ivory moaned the deeper he went, the harder he slammed himself in, but it was like he couldn’t get far enough into her. Their lips met in open-mouthed kisses, each stroke of her fangs sending dynamite sparks of desire through his body. That’s when he realized what was missing.

It wasn’t just that he wanted to see her and that he wanted to be inside her.

He wanted her inside him.

Fletch tangled his fingers in her hair again and paused in his thrusts, practically quivering with restraint. He exposed the congealed wound on his neck to her and commanded, “Bite me again.”

He didn’t have to tell her twice. She lunged and sank her teeth in to the base almost exactly where she had bitten him before. A shout tore from his throat, and he drove his cock into her hard enough to make the bed creak in splintering protest.

They used each other shamelessly. Her body heated from his blood and made her cunt even more torturous around his erection. After every pull of blood from his throat, her muscles tightened around him. Mini-orgasms seemed to go off through his entire body from the delight of her vampire kiss.

Any remnants of his father were invisible spider webs drifting away in the wind. Even the very concept of Fletch—as a gravedigger, as a man, as a human being—dissolved. Their world turned into nothing but their violent rocking motions over and under each other, a mutual ride until Ivory ripped her mouth away and screamed at the ceiling in ecstasy. Fletch’s hot blood flowed and smeared and lubricated their coupling with indecent wet sounds. Fletch couldn’t take it anymore. He grabbed the headboard and grunted his release, his hips jerking off-rhythm.

Still holding the wooden headboard, Fletch slumped, not quite dead weight on top of Ivory. She painted his slowly cooling flesh with his own blood and lapped lazily at his shoulder.