Bloodlines (Demons of Oblivion) (33 page)

I bit down.

The blood rushed into my mouth, past my lips. Teeth longer, sharper than before, I bit deeper, harder. More skin tore, veins broke. Welcome fire rushed through me, my body warming.

He didn’t pull away. Didn’t struggle. He stiffened as I bit, then his arms wrapped around me, holding on. Hand caught a fistful of my hair and clutched the back of my head. He went through the motions I was so familiar with: violently tensing when I bit deeper, his heart thumping wildly, his breathing growing more and more uneven as I sucked the life from his body. But he didn’t let go.

Nate lost his balance; I didn’t care. We fell back against the pillows.

Somewhere in my mind I was faintly conscious of his hand slipping from my back and slumping to the floor. His breathing slowed, but I
just
needed a little more. Just a little.

Pain shot through my scalp as his other hand fell, still tangled in my hair.

My eyes shot open.
Oh, fuck...

I tore away from his throat. Blood leaked from the ugly gashes on his neck, soaking the pillow beneath him. I snatched the hunting knife and put a slice in my hand, then pressed it over the bite in his neck—

Too late. His eyes were closed, his chest didn’t rise and fall with the intake of breath, and I couldn’t hear his heart beating.

Oh
god
...
I
killed
him
.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Don’t Say “I Told You So”

Don’t be dead, don’t be dead...

“Nate!” I grabbed his wrist and felt for a pulse, my fingers trembling. Christ, he was pure ashen. This couldn’t be happening...
don’t
be
dead,
don’t
be
dead, please
...

What the hell should I do
? Phone an ambulance? Call Heaven and Peter for help? I didn’t even know if the cabin
had
a telephone. And even if I got a hold of someone, they couldn’t get there in time.

I dropped his wrist again. He was so fucking
stupid
. My hands clenched into fists and I wanted to hit him, hard—wanted to scream at him, to remind him I
told him
I wouldn’t be able to stop, that I would end up draining him...

His fingers smoothed my hair, breath touched my temple as he spoke. “I trust you.”

You stupid, stupid human. You idiot.
I was the last fucking person he ever should have trusted.
Ever
. I was weak and selfish and I killed him.

My eyes fell to my own hand, which was once again smooth and glowing with health. No more cracking bones or seizures. No more cold. I was alive, saved from becoming what Dragomir was.

But alone.

I crumpled. Doubled over. My head hit his chest and I let out a sudden, wrenching sob. Emotion swelled in me and it
terrified
me because I’d never felt this before—this stupid, useless hurting and rage that I couldn’t take out on anyone. “Please don’t be dead.”

A hand touched the back of my head.

I leapt back with an unflattering yelp.

Nate’s eyes opened gradually and he blinked a few times as if just waking up.

Oh shit. SHIT
. I stared at him, lips parted and trembling. “Fuck, are you a zombie?”

He started to sit up, then slumped back down again and sighed. “Feel like one, but nope.”

I blinked. He was still there, still awake. “You’re not dead?”

“No.” He fought his way up again until he sat propped up on one hand. “Neither are you.” He checked his neck with his free hand, flattening his palm over the wound, then withdrew it again and glanced at the blood. “It’s healing.”

“But I drained you—”

“No, you left enough for me to get by on, and a bit of magic-induced rapid blood cell production prior to this ensured that I would probably be okay.”

Magic-induced...what?

Shit, that guard of Heaven’s—the one bleeding out that he’d been trying to resuscitate. The one he insisted would make it. He never did bleed out
’cause of Nate
. Holy fuck.

He sat up straighter, wincing. “I didn’t expect to pass out, though...Zara? What’s wrong?”

I stood and stumbled away from the fireplace.

I thought I’d killed him. Fucking killed him dead. And I should be joyous, yet I was crying even more now that I knew he was alive. I rubbed at my face but couldn’t stop the tears. And I couldn’t handle it. He shouldn’t have
mattered
to me. I should never have even hesitated—should never have considered letting myself die instead of him. What the fuck was wrong with me? The intense relief I felt when I saw him open his eyes was the scariest goddamn thing I’d ever felt—scarier than thinking I’d killed him.

I had to get
out
.

“Zar?” He circled the couch before I could reach the door. “What—?”

“Get away from me.”
Get away, get away
. I could...lock him in the bathroom or something. While I stole his car. Shit, where’d he put the keys?

Ordinarily, I wouldn’t care about draining a mere human, but he’d done something to me. Made me care, made me worry about him, made me into a fool sitting there sobbing when I thought he—some stupid mortal—was dead. He wasn’t just stupid:
I
was fucking stupid. An idiot. Zara didn’t cry over humans. Zara didn’t cry over
men
of any kind. Zara wasn’t...wasn’t so fucking
weak
.

I bolted in the opposite direction from Nate. If he wasn’t going to let me leave, I’d just lock myself in one of the rooms so I could give myself time to think. The rooms had windows. I could get out before he realized I’d slipped away. That’s how I survived, always: I ran. This would be no different.
Brilliant
plan.

Fingers clasped mine as he caught up with me in the doorway to one of the bedrooms. I twisted away; he snatched my arm, yanked me back. As I spun to face him, his mouth captured mine.

My brain swirled. Nate was kissing me. Nate didn’t like me
and he was kissing me.
Uncontrolled, ravenous—even when I’d unsuccessfully tried to seduce him before, I never imagined it would feel like
this
. Like he actually wanted me, like I was the only thing in the world to him in that moment. Heat snaked through my body; my lips parted against his, letting him in.

His breathing was ragged as he pulled back. Read my eyes. I waited for him to say something about it being a mistake, about how maybe the magic made him lose his mind. For the sting of rejection to hit.

But the words never came, so I just stared. Stared back as the seconds passed—five, ten, twenty—trying to think rationally but failing. Utterly.

Rationality, much like perspective and that pesky modesty-thing, is highly overrated in my books.

I reached for him then I was slammed against the wall, kissing him, arching against him. Hands molded over my thighs, lifting me. I wrapped my legs around his waist, locking my ankles at his back.

This
is
wrong
. My mind piped up. He’d said shitty things to me. Made it abundantly clear, repeatedly, that I wasn’t his type. That he’d never want me. But he was hard and hot and digging into me and fuck what he said before. Actions louder than words and all that.

Hands snatched the hem of my tank top, dragged it up, and I shifted to help him. My fingers slipped through his hair, down his neck as his lips feasted on my throat. I came to his shirt; its buttons put up a struggle, so I yanked the whole garment off of him. I rolled my hips; he growled. Thoughts spun through my head, brain still processing everything. To me, only a day had passed; for him four months. His hands cupped my breasts, mouth drew in a nipple, and oh my
god
, it was like I’d been asleep a century and awoke in a whole new world.

He came back for me when I was lost. It didn’t make any sense—I didn’t know anyone who would do that for me. Didn’t understand
why
anyone would. From the moment I awoke in my own coffin, I had to rescue myself.

But something told me he’d never been rescued either. A kid who grew up in a place where no one protected him, he learned to take care of himself. For a fleeting, terrifying moment I thought of him bleeding on the floor of Peter’s home, bullet in his gut. I almost left him, almost abandoned him, and I would’ve been one more person in a long line of them who betrayed his trust.

I touched the back of his neck again, scooped up his silky hair, and leaned forward. My lips found the scar there, near his hairline, and I brushed a kiss against his flesh.

“You looked for me,” I whispered before I could stop myself, before I remembered I’d already said it once, dumbfounded, and he simply gave me, “Of course,” like I’d asked the stupidest question in the world.

He shifted to meet my eyes, noses touching, breath warm and moist on my lips. Fingers brushed black waves of hair from my face. “Every day.”

I swallowed back emotion as he tucked a strand of hair behind my ear; my gaze darted between his eyes. “Why?”

A wicked little smile curved his lips. “I seem to recall something about being ridden to exhaustion?”

“Even though I’m self-absorbed, childish, and arrogant?”

“You are those things,” he agreed. “And have many other qualities as well.”

“I kept trying to tell you: I
have
layers.”

Warm fingers slid down my sides and one hand delved under the waistband of my pants. “There’s one layer you can do without at the moment.”

Yeah, who needed clothes anyway? “Your memory might be hazy,
but
—” I gasped, arched, as his hand slid down, pressed into my slick heat, exploring. Thumb hit
just
the right spot and—oh, wow.

“You were saying?” His breath brushed my throat, voice vibrating against my skin.

“Just thought I’d point out”—I swallowed, tried to regain some semblance of composure even as my hips undulated in a slow, steady rhythm, and my nails gripped his shoulders hard enough to draw blood—“I’m not
quite
begging yet. Really curious what bringing magic into it might entail, though...”

“Hmm.” It sounded like he was smiling. “Pick a spot.”

His hand was still doing
very
interesting things between my legs and it took a moment to process. “Where?”

“On you.”

Oh boy. Lots of possibilities there but, being a vamp, I went with the obvious one. “My throat.”

Eyes a dark, murky blue, like stormy clouds moving over an evening sky, he tilted his head, spoke words I couldn’t hear, and pressed a hot, open mouthed kiss to my throat, just over my pulse.

Pure rapture rushed through my body. It started over my throat where his tongue flicked and poured through the rest of me; electricity tickled my skin, pleasure surged through my veins. I barked my head on the wood panelling behind me as my back arched. Didn’t care. Waves rolled through me, building, building, gathering and ready to—

His lips left my throat and all at once it ceased. My head spun as I gazed back at him. Blinked hard. “What the...?”

“Sex magic. Non-traditional studies, remember? One semester I skipped out on
Construction of Faith and Exploration of Demonology in the Late Byzantine Period
and took up with the Cult of Aphrodite.”

Forget my firemen fetish. Had I known warlocks could do
that
, I would’ve been sleeping with one
years
ago.

“Begging yet?” he whispered and another kiss landed on my collar bone.

The babbling voice echoing in my ears was my own, delirious as I shuddered and twisted. He broke off again, leaving me panting and wanting. Fuck—I might have to kill him after all if he kept stopping.

I thrust my hand between us, popping the button of his jeans and sliding fingers into his boxers. I arched a brow and grinned as he let out a gasp. “I don’t beg.”

Moving almost as fast as me, Nate snatched my wrists and pinned both of my arms next to my head. Met my eyes. Daring.

My body quivered, nearly doing the begging for me. I gave him my sweetest smile. “I will, however, rip your fucking head off in a minute if you keep teasing.”

He hoisted me up, wrapped his arms around me, and deposited us both on the bed. The mattress sank beneath me, comforter soft and smelling of freshly washed laundry. His fingers skimmed my sides, folded around the waistband of my stolen yoga pants, and tugged them off. I opened my mouth to issue another warning, possibly involving decapitation, when he lifted my hips, threw my thighs over his shoulders, and—

Lights flashed over my eyes. I flailed, grabbed for
anything
, and heard the dull crack of the headboard when I yanked on it. My belly quivered, lips parted in a cry; bliss danced over my skin, twisted through my veins, lit every molecule on fire, and for a long, rapturous moment that could’ve been minutes or hours, I exploded and swore I might be flying.

I collapsed when the waves subsided, sated. Blinked until I could see straight at last. Nate trailed kisses back up my body, lips still skillful but tongue no longer doing that sex magic thing.

“We shoulda been doing that
months
ago,” I mumbled. “Skipped the secret government conspiracies and trying to save people—you, me, and a beach in Bermuda. At night, of course. My days would be spent out of the sun, in a spa.” My limbs were still tingly with after effects, but I managed to reach down and shove down his jeans and boxers. I’d promised to ride him to exhaustion and I fully intended to deliver on that.

I instinctively lifted my hips to meet his, yearning, craving him, yet he paused just outside of me. Stared down into my eyes.

I wanted to speak—to say anything—but no words came to my lips. He looked not just at me but
into
me, like he really, really saw
me
. Self-absorption, arrogance, childishness, and all. And didn’t flinch.