Stay the Night (20 page)

He nodded. “Knights would fight one another for the chance to win her favor and wear her colors on their sleeves.”

“Blanche's face is gone. There's nothing left but scar tissue. There aren't any photos of her, so I don't know what she looked like.”

“I will draw a sketch of her for you,” Michael promised.

“Then there's Gideon, the warrior who pulled Blanche out of the flames. If he survives the copper poisoning from getting shot in the back, he's going to need a double amputation. He's so out of it he doesn't know. Blanche asks about him every night.” She caught a sob and forced it back down her throat. “I was kind of hoping he'd die so I wouldn't have to tell her that he burned his hands off saving her.”

He rubbed his cheek against her hair. “If I could take away your burdens, I would. I would take them all,
chérie
.”

Sitting naked on Michael's lap and sobbing into his shoulder was all Alex could manage for a time. When she had gotten most of the immediate misery out of her system, she lifted her face and kissed him. Any other night he would have turned her around and jumped on top of her, but he remained uncharacteristically passive, giving her only what she wanted.

Alex shifted, wrapping her legs around him, and reached down. His long, thick penis slid against her palm, hard and ready for her, as it always was whenever she touched him. The warmth inside her flared into life, driving out the shadows in her heart. Suddenly she needed to feel him stroking the emptiness inside her. She rose up, guiding him into place, and sank down, taking him in, filling the ache, bringing them together in the most basic way of man and woman.

The pupils of his eyes contracted to vertical slits, while the thin band of amber on the outside of the irises expanded, swallowing up the brilliant turquoise. A muscle along the side of his jaw twitched, but Michael didn't move. Not when she placed her hands on his shoulders for leverage, and not when she lifted up, caressing the length of his cock an inch at a time. His scent burned all around them, unseen roses set ablaze, and his arms locked as he dug his hands into the coverlet.

Alex bent her knees, pushing him on his back as she impaled herself on him again, working the rigid shaft deeper. She hunched over, pressing her breasts against his chest, moving subtly from side to side so she could feel his skin abrade the stiff tips. She kept his cock inside her and squeezed the length of it with steady, rhythmic contractions of her vagina, something that usually drove him insane with lust.

Michael muttered something in French, and the coverlet under them tore, but he still didn't touch her.

“The only time I feel safe,” Alex told him, “is when you're inside me. All the way in, like this.” She rocked a little, rubbing the folds of her sex against the base of his penis. “I could keep you right here forever.”

He uttered a tight laugh. “You have seriously overestimated my endurance, my lady. At most I may last another minute.”

“A minute, huh?” She bent down to kiss his chin as she clamped down on him. “Then what are you going to do? Take it out? Come all over me?”

His fangs stretched to full length, long and white and sharp. “You know what I want.”

“That I do.” Alex pushed her hair away from her neck. “You want a taste of me before I make you come. Here?” She traced a slow, winding path with her fingers down to her left breast. “Or maybe here. No,” she added when he reached for her. “You're a big, strong, immortal guy. You can hold on another minute, can't you?”

“With you, like this? Ten seconds.” He watched her laugh, his eyes slits. “Five.”

“Michael.” Absurdly touched, she caressed his cheek.

“Three.”

Alex covered his body with hers. “I love you.”

“Enough.”

The room flipped around them as he toppled her over onto the floor. Alex didn't have time to brace herself, and the slam of his hips into hers as he shoved himself into her pushed her over the edge. As she shuddered through the orgasm, she felt him bite into her throat and fasten his mouth on her. She held on, riding the furious speed of his powerful, hammering penetration, but it was the exquisite suction of his mouth that held her suspended in the pleasure, ensnared by the climax until she thought it would never end.

His white-streaked black hair dragged over her breast as he moved and sucked at her there, while his big body tensed, coiling above her as he worked his cock in and out of her. He moved back, pulling out of her and grabbing her hand to wrap her fingers around the slick skin covering the swollen shaft.

“Finish it,” he told her, bracing his arms on either side of her.

Alex pressed him to the top of her sex, cradling him with her labia and moving her hips so that her hand and her clit stroked him on either side. She felt the trembling first and then the stiffening just before he began to ejaculate, and she pumped him harder, working him mercilessly through his own pleasure and coming herself again as his semen spilled across her belly.

Michael looked down at their bodies and put one hand over hers.

“You are everything to me.” He guided her to touch the creamy white rivulets of his ejaculate. “My heart, my soul, all that I am is yours. And you are mine.” He used her palm and fingers to rub it in a wide circle around her navel. “There will never be another woman for me, Alexandra. You are my eternity.”

 

Robin found himself alone in the dark with a woman in his arms. On one level he knew he was on the plane, and that he had fallen into the strange sleep of his kind.

This place did not exist, but belonged to the strange realm of the place the Kyn called the dreamlands. He could see nothing, but he didn't have to. The taste of her soft, silky mouth, the clean, simple smell of her skin, and the feel of her half-naked body pressed to his were enough for him.

She branded his chest with her mouth, scattering kisses across his skin.
You didn't want me to leave
.

No
. He buried his hands in her hair and wove his fingers through the bright, red-gold silk of it.
I lied to you
.

She lifted her head.
Why?

If you stay,
he said, pausing to kiss her mouth,
I might never let you go
.

The darkness lightened, becoming a blurry place of rosy light and magenta shadows. He knew the woman he held and kissed. She would not tell him her name, but she smelled of gingerbread and tasted of cherries. He had brought her here, intending to take his pleasure of her before he sent her away as he had all the others. That no longer seemed possible. He would not let this end so swiftly, not for slumber or sunrise or even sanity. He needed more than a meaningless interlude. He needed to understand what she was to him.

Robin needed her here, in his arms, in his bed. He thought she might be amenable to the idea.
When do you go to this work of yours?

Her mouth curved.
Sunrise
.

Today you shall be late
. He gathered her in.
Very, very late
.

She sighed her pleasure.
They can dock my pay
.

With agile eagerness she twined herself around him, hands inching up his back, one long leg wrapping around his. She rubbed her nose and mouth against his neck, marking him with a small love bite.

Light curved and melted and folded in on itself, darkening to a dusky rose and then deepening to violet. Armies of trees, some with trunks as wide as a shepherd's cottage, some as slender as a crook, shot up all around them. Silently they formed a forest enclosure, walls of rough brown bark, a dappled emerald roof.

Robin had to have her mouth again, and clamped his arms around her, lifting her to get at it. She poured so much heat into the kiss that he kept her there, holding her against his chest and cradling the back of her head with his hand to keep it from ending.

He wanted her in his bed, but surely now that lay on the other side of forever. He brought her down, dropping to his knees with her, adjusting her legs as he went down so that she straddled him. Beneath them the ground came alive, spreading a carpet of moss, decorating it with paisleys of brown leaves and bits of broken twigs.

She saddled herself over him and surveyed his features with an enigmatic expression.
Where are we?

Sherwood
. Here, at least, he could speak that name without a thousand demons howling in his head.
My land. My home
.

A shaft of light streamed down, gilding her eyes, brandy set alight.
I know that name
.

Good
. He ran his palm down the length of her thigh.
Then perhaps you will tell me the rest of yours
.

She laughed, and the sound tore at him. His self-restraint, which had never been in question around a human woman, was slipping badly. He could almost hear the groan of invisible chains forged long ago, as if the links of pain were stretching and thinning. The slumbering immortal demon they held bound and tethered, the thing he refused to ever let loose again, began to stir.

Robin reached up for the rope he knew would be there and wrapped it around his arm, securing her against him with the other. They soared up, ten feet, twenty, thirty, forty, until the mottled floor of moss and leaves vanished. He turned and with the ease of centuries of practice swung them over onto the sturdy platform he had built between three ancient black oaks.

He had never had much in the way of possessions, not after being stripped of his title and lands. Years of serving as a warrior priest had made him accustomed to having no more to call his own but his sword, his bow, and his mount. Yet here, high above the rest of the world, he had fashioned a place for himself. A bed of willow branches, a ewer of water, a basket of bread, and the birds to sing him to sleep.

She belonged here, with him. She had been the only thing missing, the one he had longed for during the endless decades of running and hiding and taking and giving.

What is your name?
he urged, wanting it as much as he wanted her.
Tell me
.

Chris
. She brushed her lips against the scar over his heart.
It rhymes with
this.

There is more
. He gripped her hips between his hands.

She undulated against him.
There always is
.

Before Robin knew it he had rolled with her, putting her under him, his weight pinning her to the bed that had never been in this place, a place where he had lain alone, night after night, unable to sleep, afraid to dream.

She made a low sound and went still, gazing up at him with the wide-eyed trust of an innocent.
Why are you looking at me like that?

I do not want to hurt you
. He hated that she was mortal and he would never be again. In that moment he felt the full weight of the curse God had flung upon his head.

You can't
. She rocked under him.
I came here for you
.

All around them, below them, above them, small animals woke from their sleep and crept out into the dark, calling to one another. They hunted and were chased; they fought and played. They lived in the moment, in that moment, with Robin. With her.

Robin was as much a creature of the shadows as they, but he remembered the pleasures and desires of his human life. He wanted to plant himself inside her and fill her with his seed over and over, so he could watch her belly grow round and heavy.
I wish I could give you a child
.

She reached up, touching his mouth with her fingers.
Maybe you'll have one someday
.

He thought of the daughter he had tried to save, the innocent he had corrupted, the woman he could never tell the truth. All of it lost to him forever now.
It can never happen
.

She nodded, understanding him in this as in everything else.
Then give me what you can
.

The demon awoke, ravenous with the old hunger. Robin's
dents acérées
slammed into his mouth, full-length, as hard and greedy for her as his cock. His scent poured from his skin and wrapped like a shroud around both of them. She could not possibly resist him in full shed, Robin knew. Now she would be his, all his, and he could drink from her and take her and fuck her until dawn.

Wet scarlet streams began trickling down the branches and trunks around them, as if the trees themselves were weeping blood.

There, in that surreal realm, blood thrall would hold her willing and eager while he fell into rapture over her. The rapture that would compel him to love her and feed on her until he drained the last pulse of life from her heart.

Concern replaced the anticipation in her smoky eyes.
Are you all right?

Give me a moment, love
. He ducked his head so that she wouldn't see his fangs.
I'm admiring you
.

No, he wasn't. He'd already spread her legs with his knees and held a handful of her chemise in his fist. Slowly he forced his fingers to uncurl and smooth the wrinkled satin. He needed blood, now, to assuage the beast, but only she was here. Only she could give it to him.

He couldn't drink from her, not here. Even if she was slipping into rapture and wouldn't care, he would not take her life. But he would, unless . . .

He reached for the whispery pink scarf she'd draped around his neck and twisted the ends around his fingers.

Close your eyes
. When she did, he used the scarf as a blindfold over them.

As soon as he had knotted the ends, she pushed the edge up over one eye to peek at him.
Do you call out Marco Polo now until I find you?

No, you stay right where you are
. He pulled the scarf back into place.
I won't be a moment, love
.