His Captive Mortal (16 page)

Before she furthered that thought, Charlie brought her back to reality, pulling out. “There’s very little appeal for me in this.”

Her eyes flew open. “I’m sorry.”

He gave his usual smirk. “Turn over so I don’t have to see how much you are not enjoying this.”

She rolled to her belly, looking over her shoulder. “I’m really sorry.”

“Hush,” he said, kissing her temple. “I love you for doing this.”

She turned her face into the sheets, not wanting him to see the effect of his words on her. He didn’t say I love you, period, she told herself. He said I love you for doing this. Not the same thing. Conditional. He loved her in this one instance. And she was supposed to be concentrating on removing the curse right now.

He entered her from behind, the sweet sensation of being filled by him making her moan.

She followed the directions in the book, summoning her higher self and imagining it like a ball of light surrounding her.

Charlie hissed.

She whipped her head to look over her shoulder.

“I’m okay. Go on. It’s just a little hot.”

Well, at least she knew something had happened.

Please help me release this spell, she entreated the ball of light.

Instantly, Anka appeared in her consciousness, the anger closing her chest. And yet she sensed at the same time, the higher self beaming light into her, thinning the density of the darkness.

Do you wish to feel this way? her higher self asked Anka.

But he—

Do you wish to feel this way?

No, Sasha screamed in her head.

No, Anka answered at last.

Release it, their higher self urged.

Something loosened in Sasha’s chest. She drew a shaky breath.

Charlie pulled out of her again.

She rolled over, feeling horrible. “I know this is awful,” she said.

He shrugged. “I wouldn’t call it awful,” he said, although she saw by his expression he was running out of patience.

“Let me suck your cock?”

He shrugged. “Be my guest,” he said, settling beside her.

She crawled over him, taking him into her mouth, tasting the tang of her own juices as she swirled her tongue around the head of his dick. She closed her eyes and returned to the boudoir. Anka took over, working his cock with an expertise she’d never dreamed of.

Charlie gave a groan of pleasure and satisfaction rose—not just hers but Anka’s too.

Let it go.

She sensed Anka waver, torn between feeling good and the power of the blackness, caught between pleasure and pain. Sasha tried to stay in the background, knowing this was Anka’s choice, not hers.

Anka seemed to flitter between good and evil, as if testing each one.

Something overcame her past life self. Tears began to stream down Sasha’s face, but they weren’t out of suffering. More like relief. Anka took Charlie’s cock deep in her throat in a shocking move she didn’t know was physically possible.

She sucked hard and Sasha realized Anka had made her decision. She was drawing the curse out of him.

Charlie began to roll his hips, making little grunts of pain. Or was it passion?

All at once something terrible—something black and heavy—flew out into her mouth and she fell back with a sickening thud.

Charlie cried out in pain, his body convulsing with the power of it.

Send it to the light, she heard and she began to cough, the darkness pouring out of her mouth in bursts of bruise-colored shapeless forms. They swirled up toward the light, dark plumes of smoke floating up and away.

Trembling, moving with an urgency to see things through to the finish, Sasha returned her attention to Charlie’s cock, licking from balls to tip, flicking her tongue around the head. A drop of pre-cum emerged. Her heart leapt and this time the tears were her own. Charlie had been healed—Anka had released him from her vengeance.

Her lover’s head jerked up and he propped himself on his elbows, staring in shock, as if he didn’t dare believe it.

“Yes,” she whispered, lifting her mouth from his beautiful cock. “Yes,” she repeated, fresh tears coursing down her cheeks. “Come for me, Charlie.”

As she took him into her mouth, she experienced an incredible surge of power—not the dark evil power of before, but a light, joyful one.

Charlie felt the cum move down his shaft in surges. Normally, a sharp pain would block it from leaving his throbbing length, but after feeling as though the very head of his cock had been wrenched from his body, he now experienced an incredible rushing sensation, as if the pathway had opened.

“Come for me, Charlie.” Sasha’s face glistened with tears, a golden light surrounding her body.

His muscles jerked and he stared as she engulfed his cock in her hot, wet mouth, sucking it, making love to it.

The cum surged forward again.

“Sasha,” he choked.

She took him deeper and made a humming sound, the added vibration like a love song to his cock.

“Sasha,” he tried again to warn her, but it was too late. He ejaculated with an explosion of pleasure, lifting his hips into the air, shouting with surprised ecstasy.

He came and he came, the pleasure rocking his body off the bed.

Sasha had pulled off and took his seed across her tits, her face glowing, her mouth stretched in a wide smile.

He reached for her, pulling her down on top of him, nuzzling for the vein at her neck.

“Forgive me, Charles.” It was Sasha’s voice, but the words came out in Romani-accented French.

His body convulsed with shock. What in the hell? A hundred years’ worth of rage surged forth and he sprang to sitting, lifting a palm to strike her face. Even if he’d been sure she was Anka, he couldn’t slap her. Rushes of hot and cold rolled through his body and as he blinked, he thought he saw the black glitter of Anka’s eyes gazing from Sasha’s face.

He traced away before he did something he’d regret. He didn’t have a destination in mind and found himself on the top of a parking garage overlooking downtown. He drew in several deep breaths to calm himself.

What just happened?

He blew his breath out slowly, willing himself to relax. Had Sasha somehow channeled Anka’s ghost? Realizing he needed to find out, he traced back.

Sasha was pulling a t-shirt over her head. The heartbroken look he saw on her face ripped open his chest, but he held himself back from offering anything to her, not certain he could trust her. “What just happened?”

He sensed her guilt and his body turned to ice.

“I-I...I don’t know. I think I must be Anka. Reincarnated.”

He stared for three full seconds in shocked disbelief. “No,” he roared, shoving her dresser and causing it to flip upside down and slam against the wall. “No,” he repeated, as if by insisting, he could make it untrue.

She didn’t speak, just beseeched him with her eyes, her lips trembling.

“How long have you known?”

Her eyes filled with tears. “About a week. I’d been putting pieces together. I didn’t know it all. I was trying to fix it, Charlie,” she pleaded.

Hot anger made him flex his fingers. Before he had even formed the thought, he had traced. This time he arrived in the shower of his bathroom.

Sasha. The stricken look on her face the moment before he had traced burned in his mind. But she was Anka. His heart felt leaden.

You always just disappear and I’m left trying to figure out what I did wrong and how to fix it.

He drew a breath, returning once more to her bedroom.

She stood in the middle of the floor, looking lost.

He picked her up by her armpits, lifting until her face arrived level with his. “I need to leave, Sasha. I need to be alone.”

“Are you coming back?” she whispered.

He stared at her, his gut clenched like a fist. He couldn’t speak. “I don’t know,” he said at last. The pain in her eyes closed his throat. He lowered her gently to the floor. “I have to go.”

She nodded mutely.

“Don’t follow me.”

Her eyes glittered with tears.

He stood there like an idiot. There was nothing more to say. He didn’t want to be there, and yet he couldn’t leave.

A tear spilled from the center of her eye down her cheek.

He closed his eyes and traced to his place, then downtown, then back to the parking garage. He looked out over the city, fighting the urge to hunt and kill like a newly turned vampire. He craved violence, the taste of blood taken without consent. He held very still as the animal within him raged.

Tracing again, he returned to his bedroom and opened the safe in the wall, taking out the wooden box he’d been keeping since 1865. Inside lay the ruby necklace he’d bought for Anka, the one he’d meant to give her the night he found her with another man. He’d kept it all these years—a symbol of why women could not be trusted. Why no one should be trusted.

He took it out of the box, holding it up to the light. He remembered how pleased with himself he’d been, knowing how much Anka loved jewels. He closed his fist around the gemstones, the pain of her betrayal so fresh he still smelled her scent, felt the satin of her bedding.

She couldn’t be Sasha. She just couldn’t be. They had nothing in common, except for their power. Sasha was not driven by ambition or pride. She gave her heart openly. She gave without asking in return.

And yet...how could he be with her, knowing she was Anka? What if Anka spoke to him through her again? He couldn’t trust himself not to hurt her. His hand had twitched to reach for her throat and squeeze.

He was free of the curse, he should be celebrating. What a bitter irony to be healed only to discover the one woman he wanted to make love to was his worst enemy.

No. He didn’t see how he could ever be with her without hating her for what she’d done. For who she was.

Three days passed and Charlie did not return. Caught in a nameless hell of hope and mourning, Sasha moved through her days numbly, trying not to think. Which, of course, was impossible.

She saw Charlie everywhere she looked: in her boarded up windows, the overturned dresser, the bed, the sofa, the kitchen. At work, she remembered how he’d calmed Tommy. How she’d been wrong to mistrust him. She thought of the cool way he would regard her, the sardonic twist of his lips, the arrogance which had been more of an act than anything.

Anka did not return, and yet something in Sasha had changed. She seemed to know French, for one thing. And she felt wiser, as if she’d absorbed Anka’s life experience to become more of an “old soul”.

She read the rest of the books Charlie had bought for her and found her magic had grown even more powerful, perhaps from Anka’s integration as well. She worked in her garden, using the light from her hands to support the growth of her new plants and watched them respond, doubling in size in just two days.

On the fourth night after Charlie had left, a terrible anxiety twisted inside her. She needed to see him. She needed to convince him Anka was gone, and that she’d never hurt him. She could not take it if Charlie never came back. She needed to fight for him, even though she had no idea how she would manage a relationship with a vampire.

She walked downtown, looking in The Black Cat but seeing no sign of him or the other vampires. She walked down 18th street, wondering if there was any way she could find his place, having only been on the inside.

Her skin prickled as if he was close. She slowed, retracing her steps up and down the block.

There. A set of stairs going down, to a basement door. Unusual for Tucson. She crossed the street and looked down the stairs, surprised to see the door ajar.

She jogged down the stairs. “Charlie?” She pushed the door open and gasped.

The three vampires from the fight in the alleyway were gathered in the living room, holding Charlie down. One of them wore a leather glove and held some sort of silver cup in his hand, which he thrust against Charlie’s bare belly.

Charlie hissed and she heard the sound of sizzling skin as the silver burned his flesh.

“We can go on all night. Hell, we can go all week. Eventually, you’re going to tell us where your pretty little fairy is.”

“Fuck. You.”

The vampire struck Charlie across the face with the silver cup, leaving another terrible burn.

She covered her mouth to hold back her scream.

Charlie caught sight of her and his eyes widened. Before she understood what was happening, her belly lurched sideways, as if he were hypnotizing her. He did not complete it, however, because in the next instant, his torturers also saw her and the leader flashed directly in front of her.

She kept her eyes away from his, hitting him with a ball of light. Her powers had increased; this time her weapon knocked him back on his ass.

Charlie was roaring, struggling against his two captors. “Sasha, get out,” he yelled. “Leave me!”

She sent another flash of light at one of the vampires holding Charlie, and all four vampires in the room bellowed in pain.

An idea occurred to her, but before she could move, the gloved vampire had traced behind her and picked her up by the neck, slamming her face up against the wall and pinning her there.

Pain exploded in her cheek and nose.

Charlie roared with anger.

She tried to cast another ball of light, but the radiating throb in her face consumed too much of her energy.

The vampire twisted her arms behind her back, holding both her wrists in one of his, the other hand still pressed against her nape.

“Sasha!” The anguish in Charlie’s voice brought her back. He cared. And she’d come here to fight for him. The ape holding her thought she needed her hands for magic, but she didn’t. She pictured Charlie and surrounded him in a black bubble, its walls too dense to penetrate.

“Sasha, what are you doing?” he shouted.

She flashed the brightest light she could imagine into the room—light as bright as the sun.

Terrible screams filled the air and her skin grew hot where the vampire had been holding her. She squeezed her eyes closed, her own vision blinded by the intensity of the flash. She spun around, but couldn’t move, her retinas burning from the light.