02 Blood Roses - Blackthorn (17 page)

She was working him with perfection. Or the serryn in her was. The clearly deadly serryn based on that sensuality. He needed to stop her. He needed to retract. He needed to withdraw, leave her there on her knees.

But he kept wanting more. Just like the static that had held him to her wrists the first time, his body wouldn’t listen to him. His body needed release and relief. His body wanted her.

He needed to leave her and get down to the club. Take a female into the VIP area. Have his pleasure, be it as hard, fast and cruel as he liked, but he didn’t want some other female. He knew he couldn’t get the satisfaction he needed right then screwing some stranger. He needed Leila. She was the one he needed to dominate and consume, but right now she was the one playing the upper hand.

He withdrew himself from her mouth. Taking her by the upper arms, he pulled her to her feet, pinned her back against the wall as he stared deep into her eyes.

She looked at him bewildered but he also knew he saw a glimmer of disappointment. She’d wanted to keep going. She almost looked panicked he’d stopped her.

❄ ❄ ❄

She wasn’t any good. It was the first thought that crossed her mind. He’d stopped her because she wasn’t good enough.

Or she was too good and he wanted to reclaim control again.

She was back where she started, staring into eyes that had almost seemed to harden slightly.

‘As enticing as your mouth is, I need deeper.’

Her stomach flipped at his bluntness, a stirring deep in her abdomen telling her she wasn’t as unnerved by it as she thought she should be. ‘Once was a mistake,’ she said. ‘Twice is unforgiveable.’

He slid his hands up under her dress and tugged down her knickers, making her stomach somersault as he leaned into her neck. ‘Then don’t forgive me,’ he said, his kiss hard and hungry against her sensitive flesh, his hand coiling tight around the nape of her neck.

She swallowed hard. ‘I don’t intend to.’

And she wouldn’t. And if she didn’t act now it would be unforgiveable. Because she knew she was on the brink of succumbing to him again – despite all her promises to herself, all her vehement denial, whatever it was that Caleb did her, her reaction to him was instinctive.

She had to overcome the agonising sinking feeling in her heart, screaming at her not to do it. She had to let her head win. She had to believe there was no other way.

After fumbling behind her as discreetly as she could, she slipped the syringe from the book,
grasping it as steadily as her trembling hands would allow.

As soon as it saw air, she knew she needed to act. She pressed her thumb on the plunger, drew back her hand ready to stab him with it when, despite his seeming distraction, he grabbed her wrist with precision.

She flinched but froze.

He pulled back, his eyes a mixture of annoyance and amusement – anything but surprise.

Eyes that screamed of more entrapment.

Her heart pounded.

He stretched out her arm to expose the developing bruising as he stared deep into her eyes. ‘One tip, serryn. If you’re going to extract your own blood, try not to leave a bruise to give it away.’

Chapter Seventeen

C
aleb squeezed her wrist. ‘Drop it.’

She glowered back at him and clenched the syringe tighter. She had not come that far to give up. Not now.

‘I said, drop it,’ he repeated, his tone unnervingly calm.

Still Leila wouldn’t.

He tugged her away from the bookcase, turned her away from him, pinned her against him, her syringe-holding hand held away from them both as he all but carried her across the room to the fireplace. He kicked the fireguard aside and forced her to her knees, his chest forming a solid wall behind her as he stretched her hand out towards the dying flames, his vice-like grip unrelenting on the wrist of her syringe-holding hand.

‘Defy me all you want,’ he warned in her ear as he edged her hand closer to the flames. ‘You will drop it.’

The heat immediately encompassed her, but despite clutching on to the syringe for sheer belligerence, her brain forced her reflexes to respond to the heat. She dropped it into the flames, the syringe, her blood contents, simmering and crackling in protest.

He pulled her back from the heat, Leila almost in tears from the anger, the fear.

‘Just when I started to believe you might be different,’ he said as he held her back against him, ‘you go and prove yourself to be just as devious as the rest of your kind.’

‘I had no choice.’

He rose to his feet, pulling her up with him. He wrapped her arms around her waist, holding her back against him as he carried her across to the threshold.

Leila kicked at his shins to no avail. ‘Let me go!’ she warned. But with both her arms trapped, struggling was futile.

Crossing the bedroom, he carried her over to the chair by the en-suite door. He cast the shirt on it aside and opened the syringe wrap.

He turned her around to face him and pinned her against the wall, her wrists either side of her head. ‘Tell me where the other one is.’

‘Scared I’ll catch you off guard?’

‘Tell me.’

‘Or what? You’ll torture me like the others? That’s so your style, isn’t it?’

‘Don’t tempt me.’

‘No, because you’re not quite as good at avoiding temptation as you thought you were, are you?’

‘Neither are you apparently,’ he said, his eyes sparkling darkly. ‘So that could be a problem for us both if this escalates. Especially if I’ve decided it’s time I unleash that serryn in you once and for all.’

‘No,’ she said, trying to buck against him to no avail.

He pinned her harder against the wall, his body holding her there with ease. ‘Then tell me where the other syringe is.’

‘You like games,’ she said with a glower. ‘You go find it.’

❄ ❄ ❄

Leila stared at him with such defiance in her eyes that he felt something snap.

He released her wrists to lift her with ease, parting her thighs around him, pressing her against the wall. ‘Tell me,’ he hissed.

She gasped, but kept her glare locked on his, her lips sealed.

Pulling her from the wall, he carried her to the bed and slammed her down onto it as he braced himself over her.

He pinned her wrists to the bed and looked deep into her hazel eyes. The lethal combination of anxiety and yearning stunned him, incited him, her nubile body pinned beneath him vulnerably exposed to his desires and needs, igniting the vampire inside him.

‘Don’t push me,’ he warned.

‘Why?’ she asked, her tone laced with belligerence. ‘What are you going to do?’

He looked at the soft, upward mounds of her breasts still contained in their clothing, up to her exposed collarbone, to the soft, warm flesh of her penetrable neck.

He’d find out just how hot and sweet and delicious her blood was; that was what he’d do. He’d push deep inside her whilst his incisors pierced deep into her exposed throat. And he’d come as he drank, as she spilled into him, he’d spill into her.

He tightened his grip on her wrists, lowered his head to calm himself. But all he could hear was her pulse racing, the thump of her heart, her shallow breaths, her arousal clearly pressing her own self-destruct button as well as his.

Retract.

He had to retract.

She wasn’t serryn enough – nowhere near serryn enough to take that kind of onslaught.

‘You’re skirting too close to the edge, serryn,’ he warned, his lust-filled gaze snapping back to hers.

She almost smiled. Behind the anger and indignation in her eyes, she was goading him. She was daring to goad
him
. ‘I’m not the one who’s at risk of falling, vampire.’

He exhaled curtly. Damn her potential. Damn that she had saved Jake’s life. If not he might have been tempted to end hers then before he ended his own. No serryn had forced him to that point. No serryn had unleashed that suicidal darkness.

He couldn’t bite her. Fuck her, but not bite. Take her. Consume her. But keep the most instinctive part of him deep inside, just like she kept the serryn deep inside herself. If she could do it, then so could he. She was not stronger than him. She was not in more control than him.
He
was in charge, not her.

He knew only too well that with how he was feeling then, the only way he could contain his need to feed and sate himself in the sexual act alone was by upping the force, the pace, the intensity.

He released her wrists for fear of breaking them, ripped open the buttons on her dress to expose the soft flesh of the upward curves of her firm breasts that he could so easily pierce. He slid his hand down to grab her hip, to press his thumb into her hip bone, to keep her firmly in place.

He looked back into her eyes. ‘Tell me to stop,’ he said.

‘You stop
yourself
,’ she said.

But the look in her eyes, her swollen lips, her flushed cheeks were telling him anything but.

She didn’t know what she was asking, he was convinced of it. But those eyes echoed a different message. Eyes that locked squarely on his.

‘Is this how you want it?’ he asked.

‘Is it how
you
want it?’

She was messing with his head. Daring to toy with him. He couldn’t look at her. He couldn’t risk her hypnotising him with those fatal eyes.

He couldn’t face the feelings she was stirring inside him.

He flipped her onto her front and kneed her legs apart before yanking down his trousers and shorts. He didn’t hesitate as he found the heat of her sex, pushed his way deep inside her, wrapping himself in liquid fire he knew could so easily drown him.

He snarled under his breath and dug his nails into the duvet at the sensation that enveloped him.

She gasped, clutched the duvet too, her body rising against his.

He felt her shudder, clearly feeling the sensation of the new position as much as he did. As soon as her body relented, he picked up the pace in his penetration, her short, sharp gasps only inciting him further.

He interlaced his fingers with hers as he clutched the back of her right hand. He slid his free hand through her hair to expose the side of her face, tightening his grip on her hair as he maintained his weight on his elbow.

‘You’re toxic, you know that?’ he said in her ear. ‘What you do to me.’

He closed his eyes and thrust harder, losing himself in the sensation, in the heat of her body. He felt his excitement peak, his whole body aching.

He was feeling pleasure. He was actually feeling pleasure. But not from the force of the act – from the intimacy. Because in those moments, it was as if they’d shared an understanding.

For one moment, it felt like she’d actually let him in.

He opened his eyes to look at her. Was stunned to see a tear trickle from the corner of her eye. His heart inexplicably hitched.

He stopped.

He waited a moment, composing himself before gently withdrawing, turning her over to face him.

She rubbed her tear away in irritation, but she avoided looking at him until he forced her to do so with the pressure and direction of his thumb under her chin.

He wiped the tears from her cheek with his thumb, placing it in his mouth to taste their saltiness.

‘You’re the one that’s toxic,’ she said, her eyes brimming with resentment.

He’d been right. She wasn’t serryn enough for this. The fact her tears were real proved that.

He’d never seen a serryn cry, even during their dying breath, no matter what he put them through, they’d never shed a tear.

But those weren’t tears of fear or pain. He knew the difference. Those were tears of confusion. Frustration.

And he did the last thing he knew he should have. He should have been just sex. He knew that. He also knew he had slipped too deep for it to be that simple.

‘As toxic as they come,’ he said, lowering his mouth to hers.

She fought at first, her hands slamming to his chest, but as he pushed them aside, she eventually relented. Reciprocated. Those same hands that had tried to forge some distance between them now sliding up his chest to his neck, one clutching his arm, her nails digging deep as she accepted his kiss, her warm mouth absorbing his tongue with the ease of familiar lovers.

❄ ❄ ❄

The hatred she felt towards herself at goading him the way she had, encouraging him the way she had, overwhelmed her. She’d wanted to punish herself for the feelings stirring inside. She’d wanted to punish him for making her feel that way.

But he’d stopped.

And the fact he’d stopped only confused those feelings more.

Every muscle in her body tensed as his cool, soft lips met hers, his moist mouth joining with hers with perfect pressure as he teased her lips apart. His kiss felt fresh, his tongue sliding to meet hers with an instinctive ease.

She felt a stirring in her lower abdomen, a cold heat rushing through her body. The intimacy of the act consumed her, the absence of aggression stunning her. Instinctively she closed her eyes, subjecting herself to him in the passing moments, her anxiety suppressed.

It was nothing like she expected. Not that she really knew what to expect. But tenderness was by far the least she had anticipated. But that’s just what his kiss was. Despite being cold, those lips were warm in a whole other way as he used them to smoothly and expertly part hers further, his strong hand subtly sliding around to the nape of her neck, her skin instantly breaking out in goosebumps.

A kiss that showed her something more, just like she’d seen in the way he’d pulled her between his legs out on the terrace. In the way he’d slid the sword down her body in the dungeon. How he’d held her against the winged-back chair in that very room. Caleb was capable of something other than brutality. And if he was capable of that kind of passion tempered with sensitivity, he was even more lethal. Lethal to her heart at least.

She was a fool to her heart not to keep fighting. But she was sick of fighting. The syringe lay too far away for to her reach and even if she could, she could no more plunge it deep into the vampire who now pushed his way back inside her than she could drive a stake through his heart.

Because he could have so easily kept going – that was what she realised. He could have left that stinging tear on her face and kept pushing inside her until the pain got intolerable, until she couldn’t take any more.

And what little she knew about him, she knew he had stopped out of concern. She had felt it in the way he had turned her over – not out of impatience or sadistic amusement. She knew that from the way he had assessed her eyes pensively. He’d almost seemed perplexed by her tears – by the confused turmoil that had instigated them.

And something in her didn’t want any of it – anything that would add to his already intoxicating appeal. She could ignore his good looks to see beyond that to the cruel heart beneath, but a heart equally capable of affection was a poisonous combination. Cruel, single-minded, powerful Caleb was tempting enough with those shocking green eyes and entrancing smile, but gentle, attentive and sensual Caleb was even more dangerous.

He
was
toxic. The worst kind of toxic.

‘I hate you,’ she whispered against his lips as he broke from their kiss.

‘No, you don’t,’ he whispered back.

He lay her hands either side of her before sliding down her body, his mouth trailing down her cleavage, down her stomach before pushing up her dress to find her sex.

She snatched back a breath, her nails digging into the duvet as his cool tongue slid slowly and coaxingly inside her, easing the throb, the ache that was already on the verge of release.

He held her hips tight, locked her into position as she instinctively arched her back, inviting him to delve deeper, to explore further. His tongue was excruciatingly taunting and purposeful compared with the onslaught of his previous thrusts, the full focus on pleasuring only her almost too much to bear.

She turned her head away, the sensation too intense, the ache in her stomach, the rush of blood, the tingling beneath his persistence making her light-headed and disorientated.

Leila closed her eyes tight as he licked and probed, tried to relax as his tongue pressed at her clitoris, encircling it before sliding inside her, pushing her to an oncoming climax, her whole mind shutting down, her body giving in to the sensations, losing her inhibitions.

And as his hunger increased, as he unashamedly consumed her without restraint, she bit deep into her bottom lip, pushed onto him further, the orgasm that was coiling its way through her the only thing she could focus on.

As it erupted, pulsated fiercely through her body, she grabbed the sheets. Feeling him pull away, she wanted to reach out to him. But he was instantly back on top of her, inside her. This time it was slower, more controlled, as if it would only take a little to bring him to his own climax.

She let him take her hands in his, let him interlace their fingers as he lowered his head to her throat.

And as she closed her eyes again, she prayed that he wouldn’t bite, that he wouldn’t be tempted.

The thought of losing him was just too painful.

And as she felt another orgasm ricochet through her, she dug her nails deep into his arm.

She was falling. She knew she was falling. Because even if she could get to the syringe, she knew she wouldn’t use it. Not then. Not there. Not when she was convinced this was more than just sex to him, those last few moments fracturing her resolve.