Pn1 (8 page)

take charge and control everything and everyone around you, living

behind a mask that now is shattered. You can have it all, sex, power,

eternity." He got through the last button and let his shirt slip down his

back and fall behind him, the v of his waist dipping down below his

pants where her eyes could not follow.

Helena pulled on the rope with both hands, contorting the metal

tracks hugging the hook. She watched the buckle form, the hook

barely on the tracks. "So what do you think?" She nodded to the hook

grappling to stay connected to the ceiling rails.

"I think you could get yourself loose without much effort."

Constantine hooked two fingers in his waistband and pulled, his

stomach sucked in so a hand could be slipped inside.

Metal screeched and clanged. The hook lost the task of staying on

the ceiling, falling to the ground in a thud that nicked the cement.

"Appears there is nothing holding me back from breaking you next."

She started to prowl. They both circled keeping a body length

between them, eyes on each other and backs curled to jump.

"Not in your interest to destroy me. The offer for endless power

necessitates me being semi-alive." Constantine mirrored her moves,

slinking sideways. "Sorry if that disappoints you."

47

She stopped the dance and folded her arms over her chest. "You

kidnapped me."

"Yes and no." Constantine folded his arms behind his head and

jutted his groin forward. He looked down at his waist then up at her.

"I stopped an idiot from kidnapping you and used his own ploy to get

you away from humans. It was a win-win situation. If I hadn't

pretended to work for him some nitwit with ideas of grandeur would

have you chained up for an idiotic ransom demand."

"Really?" Helena narrowed her eyes and looked straight into his

pupils.

"Test me if you want." Constantine widened his stance creasing the

leather along his thighs.

Helena decreased the distance between them, stopping when a

human man's breath would have ruffled her hair. She slipped her

hand between his stomach and pants, her fingers reaching down until

she could scrape nails against balls and hold one in her hand as a

squeeze toy. "You tried to kill me." She kneaded his ball until his

stomach clenched and his pants cut into the back of her hand.

"Succeeded actually, but you're putting the wrong spin on it." His

ball squirmed in her hand, trying to slip out through her fingers.

Helena forced a second hand in and caught the other ball trying to

burrow inside him. She tugged them both towards her, making him

lean into her. "And what spin is that? You could have killed me dead-

dead."

"Not likely. I smelled you all the way back when you travelled to

Rome on business. I tracked you by your smell. Only a soul mate

could smell that good, and your blood screamed to be released, to

surge up and take over control of the weak human invading the skin

and brain.

"I gave you your birthright, what you knew you wanted down in the

dark recesses of your subconscious but never explored. Now you are

the living dead, and the very creature of power you drooled over from

fantasy books, except this is far better than fiction could ever

encompass." His hips stretched down to curve his pelvis into her and

lessen the space she could yank.

48

Helena pressed his chin to the side with her cheek and smelled his

hair and neck.

"You smell it don't you? The smell that tells you everything you

thought was wrong and what you want is so close. You want me,

even if you don't want to. That's what's killing you, not me."

Constantine sniffed her, a grunt rolling out of the chest that pressed

into her.

"You think you know me. That's a dangerous thing to claim to the

person that can snip the manhood off you with a sneeze. I'd hate to

lose control, but there is mildew and maybe I'm allergic." Helena head

butted him away from her, but kept his sack. She looked up and down

his gold dusted chest and sighed angrily. Bending her head forward,

she bit off a few strands and swirled them around in her mouth before

swallowing the hair and the smile together, trying to keep her face

free of emotion.

"You can't lie to me anymore. You're already under my skin. I've

felt you during sex, seen you lose control. Now all that remains is the

last step." He reached his arms around her back and tore off what

clothes remained.

Helena pierced his balls, releasing blood into the air; she spasmed

from the smell, her teeth skimmed his neck and she growled.

"Your body can only deny so long. I can make you happier than

you've ever known." Constantine walked her backwards towards the

pillows. "You can feel what destiny is, what it feels like to be whole

and get your dreams handed to you."

She released his balls and clamped onto his cock, using her wrists

to split open the leather.

Constantine swelled in her hands, and squirmed, toppling them both

over onto the pillows. He fell hard onto her, his cock bending up

between them, her fists still keeping some air between them as she

held on.

"So you think that much of your prowess?" She raised her hips to

get her fists closer to his intestines and show his cock who remained

in control.

49

"Yes, and I think that much of what I can offer you." Constantine

pushed down, fighting her hips and stretching her legs apart so he was

between her, his pants shredded and scrunched down at his knees.

Helena clenched her legs around him. "And what is that?"

Constantine pressed their knees together, forcing her further open.

"The council is unseating the Roman Vampire Lord. I'm a contender,

but once I show a soul mate when no others have succeeded, the seat

is mine, ours. All of Europe under you, and with my knowledge of

vampires and yours of humans the Roman Empire will loom again.

Isn't that the kind of power you want?" He got hold of her fists and

pried her fingers open, pulling her arms out to the side then over her

head where he clasped them together at the wrists.

He took one of her breasts into his mouth, holding the areola

between his teeth and licking until her body stuttered under him. Her

nipples pebbled, refusing to play at charades, and he drove himself

inside her, letting her warmth and wetness guide him towards her

darkest need.

Helena tried to knee him in the ribs, but that made him thrust harder

and faster until he had buried himself up to the hilt of his sword, his

balls pressed flat against her pussy. She screamed bloody murder and

between blasts of cussing hissed and mewled to the ceiling, seething

over with anger tinged ecstasy.

She swore his cock grew barbs, which sunk into her walls,

anchoring deep into her nerves and arteries until she wasn't sure

whose sensations blared through her senses. The sounds of fury in her

head had his tone, but echoed in her ears and came out of her mouth in

howls.

Constantine let go of her breast and went for the abandoned one,

sucking it into his mouth as deep as he could. Helena felt like he was

sucking her dry, her nerves springing to life under the ministrations of

his tongue as he nibbled, his love bites sinking past skin and making

her bleed straight down his throat.

She moaned, spine arching to squeeze more of her breast into him,

not caring if his sounds muted into a gagging reflex. She slipped

more of her mound into him, until his teeth pierced her through.

50

Constantine impaled her, refusing to slip out to thrust again, and

forced her ass to contort the pillows into a cocoon that left her trapped

with him on top. He lashed at her breast with the tip of his tongue,

popping it out of his mouth and making her whimper. Yanking her

wrists, her boobs sprung up and hit him in the face, and he snapped

the tip of his tongue back and forth between them.

Helena bucked, her breasts trying to get away from the slaughter

and her hips aimed for his balls.

Constantine released her hands and stroked down her face, thumb

nails landing on either side of her jugular and his hands wrapped

around her shoulder. He pressed in enough to immobilize her. "I like

you this way, quiet and still."

"And I like me this way." Helena raked her nails down his spine,

leaving bloody trails with each nail.

He sliced a line on either side of her jugular and licked up his mess.

Helena shifted under his tongue, forgetting to remove her nails

from residing in his flesh and dug in to feel his tail bone, nail against

bone.

Constantine bent into her nails then barged back into her pussy,

tickling her clit with his hair then burnishing it raw with his thrust.

Helena's hand flew out and clutched his hair, pulling his head hard

into her breasts where any living man would have been smothered.

"Say it," Constantine ordered by withdrawing to the tip of his cock

then boring a new diameter into her pussy.

"Not yet," she squealed, thrashing into him in an undulating wave

of hair and body.

"I can't hold out much longer. You're driving me crazy."

Constantine rode in and out of her, the shank of his cock contorting to

stroke her before the brunt of his balls rubbed over her clit in friction.

Helena felt the heat start in her clit then spread out, washing over

her in a sweat drenching wave that whited out her mind and tuned her

in to her blood. Redness blotted out her sight and her body shook as

she slipped over into screaming ecstasy that rattled her bones and

nearly cracked her jaw and she clenched between yells, holding onto

his cock with tightened muscles until he started to ejaculate in her.

51

Bouncing her hips into him until she wasn't sure whose skin was

whose; she pounded the back of his head.

Constantine inhaled her screams and echoed them back at her as he

fought her back into the pillow, sending her cresting over a second

wave of orgasms as he came inside her.

She clutched his chest by the pecks and twisted her neck to the said

as he pumped himself dry. "Bite me."

Constantine opened his mouth and bit into her neck. The strength

of his orgasm exploded in her, sending her out of her body and into

his where they shared his last shudder together and fell onto her, his

knowledge of what was about to happen when they returned to Rome

now moving through her mind and becoming her own.

Years of mergers, acquisitions, plans, and manipulations

culminated with his semen bursting into her. Together, Rome

wouldn't know what had hit them, she felt the peons gathering before

her already, giving allegiance to them as one, not a couple, but one

towering entity. Different smiles vied for her lips, and she grabbed

his neck, sinking her nails in to keep him locked onto her for as long

as possible.

52

A SECRET TO KEEP

53

Clarity came from topaz points of light. Grey fog layered over

obsidian night and turned rosy where fog met lights, separating water

from sky. A piece of the black stood out as darker than the rest and

shifted, moving in the brush that crept up on the boardwalk and grew

through piercings in the wood.

If movement caused sound, the creaking of piers on the shore

erased proof of living restlessness. Sprinkled in the sighs of wood and

water, a lone seagull made a plea for survival, an incantation for fish

to float up into the murky waves and follow the pathway down its

throat.

Out in the harbor, humans and wares ferried along demarcated

lines, keeping bow lights on full blast to light up the city skyline and

proclaim existence from wet dark that enshrouded everything it

touched. The city's lights held on tenaciously to the distant shore,

never invading the lapping waters tossing sand into dunes beneath the

elevated path.

Gillian tightened the collar of her jacket. The early winter air was

too heavy to be cold, but she snapped the collar shut anyway and

wished she had a scarf to wind around her face so only her eyes were

exposed.

She squeezed her thumbs tight in her fists and willed her head to

point straight forward, eyes locked on where the boardwalk ended and

the pavement started that would lead her to the warehouse and office.

Every time she glanced towards the water, night peeled back and shed