The studio apartment only had one bed, a prop used to maintain the illusion of Nick’s human status. But when Damian emerged from the bathroom wrapped in a silk robe, his hair wet and tangled about his shoulders, he glanced at it. “I would not use it without his leave, nor would I have you in it beside me.” He grimaced. “These things do not leave me as easily as other human customs did.”
“Nick…won’t be back?” Riley packed away the last of her meal.
“Not tonight.”
She wiped her hands on a towel. “You made me choose anyway, Damian. Now Nick is kept out of his own home by us, and we hurt him tonight. I saw it. I don’t know if it was because of you or me. But it hardly matters.”
He crossed his arms. “It does not bother you that I was Nick’s lover for many, many years before I became yours?”
Riley shook her head. “Should it?”
“You want him. Badly.”
She could feel the need to yank the conversation back to where she had wanted it to go, where she needed it to be, but tamped down the desire. This was, she suspected, part of the idea of total trust that Damian had spoken of. Letting go of the need to control everything. Trusting the other.
Instead, she answered Damian’s question as truthfully as she could. “Yes, I want Nicholas. Badly. But you know that. You can sense it every time he arouses me. He did it deliberately tonight.”
Damian’s smile was warm and made his eyes glow. “Well done,” he said, and she knew that he had recognized her struggle to give up trying to control the conversation. “In fact, he did it twice,” he added. “Not the actions of someone who truly believes you have made your choice, hmmm?” He moved slowly toward her.
“Are you revealing your strategies to me, Damian? That’s not a good idea, is it? I might blow the game for you.”
“Perhaps I’m placing my trust in you.” He picked up her hand and drew her back into the lounge area, where the big black leather sofas sat at right angles to each other, bracketing a beautiful Bokhara rug about eight feet square, that featured reds, greens, and other beautiful jewel colors. From a closet, he pulled out some thick quilts, which he laid over the rug, and threw down pillows and cushions from the sofas.
Riley settled herself on the quilts, her heart pattering. She had showered earlier, before she ate, and now wore her robe, just like Damian. She had spent a little time doing her make-up and primping in the bathroom, feeling absurdly like she was preparing for date, even though she slipped into her bathrobe to step out of the bathroom, and wore no shoes.
He settled cross-legged in front of her and picked up her hand. “Nicholas is conflicted about you,” he said simply. “He wants you, but he wants me to be happy. He will not have an easy night tonight.”
She tilted her head. “Why does he not simply seduce you himself? It’s plain he still cares about you. There’s all this history between the two of you. For that matter, why do you not seduce him?”
Damian reached for the tie on her robe and tugged. “Then I could not have you.”
Her heart jumped. “Greedy.”
“In this case, yes.” The bow unraveled and he pulled the tie aside. “I think that is what is stopping Nicholas, too. For the first time in centuries, he honestly cannot choose.” His fingers stroked her flesh where the robe rested against her upper breast, the edges not quite closed.
“The…breech between you two, over my mother. You stayed apart for nearly thirty years. That’s a lifetime for some people, Damian.”
“There have been times even when we were still together when we were a continent apart for much longer than that. Time is different for us, Riley.” His hands separated the edges of her robe, but she caught at his wrists and looked him in the eyes.
“Have you ever been apart this long because of an argument?” she asked.
His chest lifted and rose. “No.”
She cupped his cheek. “It damaged your relationship,” she said softly. “Whether you want to admit that or not. You can’t just walk back in without repairing that damage.”
“I came back. I’m trusting Nicholas to protect you,” Damian said, his voice harsh. “Is that not extending the olive branch?”
“Maybe,” she said. “Now Nicholas must take the branch back.”
His fingers curled into fists around the front of her robe, and she could feel the tendons and muscles in his wrists under her own hands stretch and flex. “You’re making me feel very…young. How do you propose that Nick take back the branch, Riley?”
She shook her head. “I don’t have all the answers,” she admitted. “It’s a pity you can’t bamboozle him the way you did me, tonight. If you could make Nick feel the way I did, looking down at your body with my knife in your gut, he’d know exactly how he felt about you.” Tears pricked in her eyes as she remembered. “I don’t ever want to go through that again, Damian. Not for real.”
He pulled her to him and kissed her. “You realize that most of what you were feeling was guilt and remorse, my lover?”
His lips stole her breath and her response. She wound her arms around his neck, her fingers tangling in his damp hair. Her body pressed up against his and she realized that he had separated the front of her robe after all, for she felt her flesh press against silk.
His hands, the long fingers, circled under her robe, across the skin over the back of her hip, making her hip jut forward and her back arch. Smoothly, his palm slid down to cup her bottom, and he found the lace of her thong.
Gently, he pushed her back so that he could see what the robe had hidden. He pulled the garment from her shoulders and tossed it aside. “Ah…women, I do love their ways.” He let his fingers slide along the edge of her demi-bra, teasing the lace and her flesh at the same time. “That purple looks good on you. It makes your eyes look very green.” His arm curled around her waist, drawing her back against his lean length. “I could inhale you in one breath.” He nuzzled her throat. His tongue swiped her flesh, making her nerves sizzle.
He made her feel so small and delicate with his arm around her that way. She wasn’t petite, but she may as well have been, pulled up against him like that. Damian was a big man. Tall, with shoulders and chest in proportion to his height. She was quite powerless with her breasts crushed against his chest, and the maelstrom of sensations his mouth was setting off made sure she wasn’t about to try anything else. She melted against him. Her pussy was on fire, pressed against him as it was, and the pressure on her clit was making it ache with need.
His lips lifted to her ear. “Do you trust me, Riley? Will you try, tonight?”
She swallowed. “I’ll try,” she agreed, the best she could truthfully give him.
He turned her in his arm so that her back was pressed against him, and his fingers spread out over her abdomen, like they were tasting her flesh. She drew in a shaky breath. He had moved her like she was a doll and weighed nothing. “You could snap my neck any time you wanted, couldn’t you?” she breathed.
“I would prefer you forget that,” Damian murmured. “I don’t want you afraid of me.” He stroked, sending ripples across her abs as her nerves responded.
Riley let her eyes close. “I don’t fear you, Damian. I wouldn’t be here if I did.”
His fingers brushed across her cheekbone. “Then there’s trust there, after all.”
She opened her eyes again and turned her head to look at him. He was smiling.
Riley shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
“Nick was wrong tonight. One hundred and eighty degrees wrong about you.” He put her back on the quilt, on her knees, and caught her face in his hands and kissed her. It was no simple smack on the lips. It was a deeply emotional, heartfelt wordless expression that still left her confused.
He rested his hands on her shoulders, his thumbs stroking her jaw. “Apart from hunters and humans who have lived and walked in the underworld for years, there are two sorts of humans, Riley. One type, when they learn of vampires, when they meet us, blank out the knowledge and treat us as just another type of human. So we stay human as much as we can around them and don’t call attention to our vampiric qualities, because to do so tends to make that type of person jittery, or just plain afraid of us. The other type of person, the very rare person, can truly accept us for what we are. That sort of human actually sees us as different when they look at us. But not as freaks, or something to fear, but they never forget that we are not really human, either.”
His thumb touched her lips. “That’s you, Riley. Nicholas assumed you were the normal sort, the type that could not grasp my age, who would hate that Nick and I had lived so long and had known your mother as a child. But you understand. You accept it all, don’t you?”
“Of course I do.” Riley frowned. “I’m not even sure why you’re surprised about it. Nick said ‘deal with it,’ so I did. I didn’t realize that…” she wrinkled her nose over the bad grammar, “not-dealing-with-it was so common.”
Damian laughed, a carefree sound, and spoke a sentence that was not English.
“What was that?”
“My birth language,” he said. “The Greek that was spoken in Sparta. Historians would have me locked up inside a language laboratory for years if they heard it.” He grinned. “I’ve forgotten more than I’ve retained, now, it has been that long—and there are none now who speak it, other than me.” He touched his forehead to hers. “I said that you are the sort of treasure men, once they have seen you for what you are, go mad and die for need of you.”
“Mortal men,” she corrected. “But that’s not you,” she added as his lips came against hers.
His hand held the back of her head. “Thank the fates for that, or I would not be here now, doing this to you,” he said against her mouth and thrust his tongue inside.
Riley moaned at the rush of hunger and need that pushed through her with the invasion of his tongue. Damian seemed suddenly eager and less controlled than before, as if the revelation that she really did understand his true nature was arousing to him. And perhaps it was. It would be exciting to find someone who accepted you for what you were. God knew she would be thrilled to discover someone wanted to fuck her because of what went on in her mind, rather than how she looked.
Riley gasped and pulled her mouth away from Damian, staring at him. She could feel her whole body trembling as she processed her own thoughts properly, once more. Damian did want her for her mind. He wanted her because she accepted him for what he was, because she wanted him, because she was a hunter—or would be once Nick trained her, and even because Nick wanted her, too. He wanted her for a lot of complicated reasons, including simply because she was a part of his world. But nowhere in there did he want her because she was a “beauty,” a sex object that he wanted to collect.
Damian stroked her jaw with his thumb. “Everything all right?”
“Everything’s just fine. Better than fine. Almost perfect,” she assured him. “Fuck me, Damian. Like there’s no tomorrow.”
“There’s always a tomorrow, my lover, and you will grow to appreciate that fact by and by.” He picked her up and put her on the quilts, farther away from him. “Don’t move.”
Her heart skittered. “Where are you going?” she asked as he stood up.
“Nowhere. Shhh.” He looked down at her, his black eyes smoldering with the pent-up arousal she had sensed a moment before. She had guessed right. Her total acceptance of his nature had unleashed a higher level of pleasure for him.
Damian untied the silk belt on his robe, shrugged the garment from his shoulders and tossed it onto the sofa next to hers. He was gloriously naked beneath the robe and his shoulders and chest gleamed in the low lights. For the first time, she saw all of his body at once. There were scars. Everywhere. Small ones, mostly, but they began on his upper thighs and stretched up to just below his heart. She counted a dozen before she gave up.
He had wanted her to see them and accept them. They were part of him, part of his heritage.
“Did you get those before you became vampire?” she asked.
“I was a warrior before I became a vampire. Now, if I am wounded, I heal cleanly.” He touched the place where her knife had slid into his stomach that evening. “There is no sign of the damage caused by your knife anymore.”
She moved forward and touched a puckered scar on his thigh. “I want the story of each and every one of them, eventually. Will you tell me?” Her fingers were mere inches from his cock, which was throbbing with rushing blood and arousal. She looked up at Damian’s face. His eyes had narrowed with a deceptively sleepy look as he watched what her fingers were doing.
“Yes,” he said after a perceptible pause and she heard him swallow.
Inspired by that purely human sound, she let her fingers drift over to his testicles and stroke and squeeze them. Damian sighed.
Encouraged, Riley drew one swollen sac into her mouth and stroked it with her tongue, while she toyed with the other with her hand. His hips thrust in response and she felt his hand rest lightly against her head.
“Dion, Riley, my lover, no one should do that to a man and leave him waiting, I beg you!”
Riley mentally rolled up her sleeves. Immortal he may be, and three thousand years old, but at his core Damian was still a man and she knew how to touch that core. He had just given her the key.
She stood up. “I’m just going to be a minute, okay? Don’t go anywhere.” She hurried over to the bathroom.
“I wish I had a video camera right now. You are the sexiest woman I’ve ever seen walking away from me in a long, long time, Riley Connors,” Damian called after her.
“Just how many women have walked away from you wearing a purple lace thong and not much else, lately?” Riley called as she shut the bathroom door. She opened the drawer she had explored earlier that evening, when she had made her minor discovery, withdrew the objects inside, made a few preparations and wrapped them in a towel.
When she returned to the quilts, Damian was standing exactly where she had left him. He eyed the towel in her hands. “You’re making mischief.”
“I don’t think there’s enough people in your life making mischief. You’re out of practice, big guy.” She put the bundle down on the edge of the quilts, by the foot of the sofa. “Lie down for me, up here, with your head by the sofa. Here, I’ll even put a pillow down for you.”
She reached for his robe lying on the sofa as he slowly moved to do as she asked. His eyes were narrowed again, but there was little arousal there. Just curiosity and suspicion. That was fine. She pulled the sash from his robe and picked up his big wrist as he settled himself on the quilt and pulled his arm up above his head, stretching it out. She wrapped the sash around his wrist and anchored it on the leg of the sofa.
“So that’s the wicked game you have in mind,” Damian murmured. He tugged at the sash around his wrist. “You realize I could snap this very easily, of course?”
“But you won’t,” she said, picking up his other wrist and pulling the sash from her own robe out of its carriers. She wound it quickly around his wrist and tied it to the other sofa leg, spreading his arms out. She leaned over and kissed him. “Just behave yourself for a change.”
He laughed, but there was a glint of deep arousal in his eyes. He was already loving this in a way that he hadn’t enjoyed himself in a long time, she could tell.
She trailed her lips over his chin and down his throat, taking her time to nibble and torture the stretched muscles over his shoulders and pecs, as she straddled his hips and rubbed herself over him. She made sure her breasts brushed against him. As she kissed and slid her tongue over his flesh, she slipped the clip of the bra undone. When she sat up, she let the bra fall down her arms.
Damian watched every move, his gaze devouring her.
Riley pushed her soaking, hot mons into his abs, grinding herself into him, genuinely aroused and hungry to have him. She cupped her breasts for him, keeping her eyes locked on his, and tweaked the nipples with her forefingers and thumbs.
Damian made sounds that were purely human, purely male. Hungry sounds. Beneath her ass she could feel his cock like a rod of iron, beating with a pulse that was as human as any other man’s.
Riley slid her hand down her stomach, heading for her pussy. As her fingertips slipped below the lace of her panties and closed around her own swollen, heated vulva, she couldn’t stop the moan that escaped her lips. She was desperately excited by this teasing display, by torturing a man so much more powerful than her. She was shaking with it.
Damian groaned, mirroring her. “More,” he demanded thickly, his accent strong.
Riley stood quickly to strip herself of the soaked panties and to spread Damian’s thighs and kneel between them. He drew in a breath as she leaned over him, her breasts brushing his body, and his cock lurched. “You will receive yours for this,” he muttered darkly.
“We’ve barely begun, lover,” she told him softly.
His eyes snapped open wide and he looked at her sharply.
“Does the threat or the name scare you?” Riley asked.
“It isn’t fear you see,” he said. “Just surprise at your adaptability.”
“You’re a liar of the first order, Damian.”
“Live only a thousand years and you’ll be one, too,” he told her, closing his eyes.
The closed eyes suited her. Riley reached for the towel-wrapped bundle and placed it by her knees, then unrolled it. Working quickly, she prepared the first item.
Then she returned to where she had left off before. She drew one of Damian’s testicles into her mouth, and stroked it with her tongue. She did it without warning and Damian’s eyes snapped open again and his head lifted from the pillow in a jerk. The tendons in his neck strained as he reacted. “All things holy!” he breathed.
She cupped and rolled the other sac gently in her hand and Damian sighed.
Riley slid her tongue upward, along the shaft of his quivering, steel-hard cock, and this time Damian drew utterly still. Even his breath stopped, until her tongue swirled over the tip of the head.
He groaned.
Riley curled her fingers around the shaft. They covered less than half of it, and didn’t reach around the width. She lifted it so that she could slide the head into her mouth, stretching her lips to take it all in. She caressed the head with her tongue, feeling the satiny ridge flare. With a moan, she sucked him in as deep as she could take him, feeling a wave of excitement build in the pit of her stomach. She wriggled her hips as she fed on him hungrily.
Damian bucked beneath her. The breathless and desperate sounds he was making were very human and music to her ears.
When she sat up, he clenched his fists, straining at the ties. “No!” he cried. “Riley, for pity’s sake!”
She smiled. “I told you, I’ve only just started.”
Damian clawed back his dignity, his control. “I will have you screaming my name for this, my lover,” he said silkily, but it took two breaths for him to speak the words.
“So you say,” Riley replied coolly. She picked up the dildo from the towel in front of her knees and stroked the flesh of his scrotum with it. She saw his breath catch again. “Know what this is?”
He licked his lips. “I can guess.”
She held it up so that he could see it. “I found it in the bathroom, shiny new and still in the store wrapper. I’m sure Nicholas won’t mind and I’ll replace it tomorrow. Guess what I’m going to do with this, hmm?”
Damian’s breath was coming faster. “How do you even…Jesus, Riley, you’re a slip of a girl!”
“I know pleasure, Damian. I’ve had men chasing me for a decade and I’ve learned—sometimes the hard way.” She ran the tip of the dildo over the length of his cock, which jerked hard, then back against his scrotum. His hips jerked again. “I know you know a version of this game,” she said. “You and Nicholas were lovers for years, so you can take it. You like it.”
He was breathing very hard indeed. “But do you, hmmm?” His tone was dark, thick with arousal, shadowed by all sorts of implications and overtones. And there was hope there. She heard that above all.
Riley lifted her gaze to meet his eyes. “I accept all of you Damian. Not just bits of you.”
“You like it.” It was a statement this time.
She locked gazes with him and let herself smile, as in her mind she thought of Nicholas and Damian together. “Yes, I like it,” she said, as her clitoris throbbed in response and her pussy clenched hard.
“Sweet Dion…such a wicked smile,” Damian breathed.
Riley lubricated the dildo, letting Damian watch her do it. She knew it would add to his tension, to the suspense. Then she poured more of the lubricant she had found in the same bathroom drawer as the dildo into her hand and looked Damian in the eye once more. “I may look sweet, Damian, but looks are deceiving. Once you peel off the wrapper, well…” She teased his thighs and the flesh of his ass, separating the cheeks, sliding her fingers up against his anus and the highly sensitive ring of muscle surrounding it, spreading the lubricant.
Damian groaned, his eyes drifting half-closed in sensual delight.
Gradually, she worked the lubricant deeper, as Damian strained and panted on the quilt. With each sound and movement he made, her own pleasure rose. She clenched her thighs together, feeling the excess cream squeeze from her pussy and run between them. Her nipples were aching with the need for attention.
Instead, she picked up the dildo again and nudged it up against the tight ring of muscle around his anus. Damian drew in a shuddering, barely controlled breath and his neglected cock jerked where it lay against his stomach. He closed his eyes. His knuckles were white.
Carefully, she eased the dildo inside him, letting the muscles stretch and ease before pushing nearly the full length of the dildo in.
Damian’s body trembled. “Kiss me,” he whispered.
Riley pressed her lips to his and his tongue thrust into her mouth. “I will deliver such pleasure to you, you will think you have died from it,” he told her.
“Shhhh…I’m not done yet,” she told him.
He groaned and closed his eyes.
Riley settled herself back between his thighs. “I happen to know that a climax for a man, when he has pressure on the prostate, is the most powerful experience in the world. I’m betting it isn’t any different for you, despite being undead for nearly three thousand years.” She caressed the base of the dildo, which made Damian catch his breath. “Pressure,” she said with a smile. “And now, the climax.”
She leaned over him, and ran her tongue from the base of his cock to the tip, and was rewarded by his gasp. Her whole body was throbbing with excitement. She was incredibly aroused by having such a powerful man as Damian under her control, even though that control was nominal at best. She curled her hand around his cock once more and her mouth over the tip, opening her lips to accommodate the girth.
Damian’s hips shifted in response to her mouth on his cock, but then he felt the dildo in him and stilled himself with a breathless groan. The muscles of his abdomen rippled and quivered as she worked on his cock and he fought not to shift or thrust too hard. If he had been human he would have been sweating.
“Riley…” he said, his voice hoarse. “I will not be able to withstand much of this…torture.”
She smiled to herself and fluttered the tip of her tongue on the underside of the head of his cock, where the seam ran, and heard his helpless choking breath wheeze out. It shortened to a pant and his hips began to shift in little thrusts.
She felt his cock bloom and swell and the balls beneath pulse.
Abruptly, Damian stilled in a tight, hard arch, his back bowed, as his cock erupted in her mouth, shooting streams of cum. He cried out, words she did not know. She heard the ties on his wrists tear.
His hands slid into her hair as she fed on the last of his cum. He lifted her head up from his cock. “Look at me,” he commanded.
She sat up and licked her lips.
Damian rid himself of the dildo then sat up and caught her face in his hand, forcing her to look him in the eye. His black eyes gazed deeply into hers.
For a moment, Riley wasn’t certain what it was he wanted. Then she understood with a rush. Looking a vampire in the eye is a challenge…subsumed sexually. He was rousing himself after one climax by staring her in the eye, so he would be instantly ready for the next. Was a vampire roused this way more aroused? More heated? She didn’t know enough about vampires to know.
“Damian…”
“Shhh,” he murmured, his hand coming around the back of her head. His gaze was still locked onto hers.
“I can wait.”
“I can’t.” His teeth had descended. “You have provoked me too much, Riley Carson. I must take you now before the blood boils in me.”
She pressed her hands against his chest, suddenly just a little bit frightened. This was the beast she had released by tormenting such a powerful creature. She had made the mistake of treating him like a man when he wasn’t.
His hands came up faster than she could follow and grabbed her wrists. They were pulled behind her. “Don’t fight me, Riley.” His eyes seemed very dark and were all she could see in her range of vision.
She wriggled against him. She couldn’t help it. The charge she was getting from being held against him like that, with her own aroused and naked body rubbing his, while Damian threatened erotic treats was too much. Riley moaned.
Damian’s lips seared a path down her throat and hovered over her carotid pulse. “You’re not afraid. You’re…aroused.”
She broke free of his loosened grip on her hands, shoved at him and ran.
With a growl, he came after her. She knew he would be able to catch her within three or four paces, he was that fast. He was a vampire and moving at vampire speed.
But she made it to the table before his arm snaked around her waist and she realized that he was trying to avoid hurting her, and that was the reason why he was so slow.
She was picked up and held against him and even though she struggled, she was so highly aroused, she knew she would climax with only a few quick slight touches to the right parts of her anatomy. Her breathing was fast and shallow.
Damian held her easily despite her struggles, turned her and laid her on the table. He held down one shoulder and his cock impaled her, making her cry out with the fierce satisfaction of having him inside her.
He lifted her legs to his shoulders, as he rammed his cock back into her again. “Fight me if you wish,” he said. “I will take you any way.”
“All ways,” she whispered, feeling her climax building deep inside her.
“If you wish it.” His cock was thick inside her, filling her and he laid his hand on her pelvis in a curiously possessive way. “Come for me, Riley,” he coaxed. His thumb separated the lips of her vulva and pressed against her sensitive and ready clitoris. She gasped at the contact and her climax gathered and leapt forward. Her hips lifted.
“Yes, come for me,” Damian urged. “Let go. Trust me and let go. Let yourself fall.”
His thumb stroked in hard, knowing brushes against her clit and Riley could feel the orgasm beating at her, stealing her senses, building up like a gigantic wave.
Fright tore through her. She opened her eyes and looked at Damian. He was watching her.
“I’ve got you,” he breathed. “Let go.”
Her breath hitched in her chest as the orgasm beat at her.
“Damian.” Nicholas’ voice, harsh and low.
Damian’s head snapped to the right and suddenly, Riley felt herself pushed backward and Damian was abruptly not there.
She was lying a lot farther along the table than she was two seconds ago. Her legs were supported. Her climax was ebbing and dying.
Sounds to her right. Murmurs.
Riley rolled slowly onto her side, feeling a chill settled around her. She curled her leg over and her arm over her breasts, covering herself up, although Nick must already have seen enough, anyway.
Damian and Nicholas were standing in the little-used kitchen area, talking. Damian seemed completely unaware that he was naked, or that Nicholas had interrupted them in a most intimate moment.
Nicholas glanced at Riley where she lay on the table before turning his attention back to Damian. Damian was tugging at Nicholas’ coat, pulling it from him despite Nick’s protests and sluggish attempts to stop him. The coat dropped away from his shoulder and Riley sat up, alarmed.
His shirt was ripped from shoulder to elbow and two red gashes gored his arm. They dripped blood as she watched, the blood splattering the clean white kitchen tiles.
Nick looked at her. “I would have stayed away if I could,” he said apologetically.