Chapter Twenty-Three 9 page

I licked my lips, considering. Renata had never shared me with anyone before. It was never something we’d had cause to discuss, as we’d never put on a show for another woman, let alone one of the Dracule.

I couldn’t decide. Would it excite me or make me uncomfortable? Would being touched by Renata in front of the Dracule make me feel a little safer? I honestly had no idea.

“That is up to you, my Queen.”

Renata was silent a moment. I think she was allowing me more time to give it some thought.

When she realized that I was leaving the decision up to her, she made it.

“Agreed,” she said, “it has been long since I have tasted the blood of the Dracule. It is very heady stuff.”

“It isss.”

I didn’t disagree with her decision, mainly because the pangs of hunger were beginning to tighten my stomach. I was beginning to feel hollow and empty, easily distracted. I felt tired, and that alone was warning I needed to feed. We did not feel tired, not truly, but we did begin to feel a kind of physical and mental lethargy that had to do with having gone too long without feeding.

Renata went to the wall, pulling aside a plum colored curtain that hid two double doors. The two doors opened into a decent-sized sitting room that connected to one of the back halls. When she emerged, she was carrying two crystal wine glasses. She held the glasses out to the Dracule. The Dracule’s black eyelids blinked.

“You will not take my blood with your mouth?”

“The Dracule have two shapes,” she said, offering a cutting smile. “If you are unwilling to change your form then I think this way best.”

The Dracule took the glasses and flexed her hand. Those tiny claws shot out and she drove them into the artery at her wrist, holding it steadily above the wine glass. The smell of blood made my nostrils flare. It smelled more strongly metallic, higher and richer in iron than mortal blood.

“Two forms?” I asked, resisting the urge to rise and jerk the Dracule’s wrist to my mouth.

“Yes,” Renata said. “What she did not tell you is that she has a form that is…less intimidating.”

The Dracule handed Renata the first glass. Renata’s long, tapered fingers wrapped daintily around the stem.

“And isss your vampire sssome human I have to pretend to be lesss frightening for?”

Renata took a sip of the blood, her eyes closing. When they opened, her pupils had constricted to tiny specks.

“My Epiphany does not scare easily, Dracule.”

The Dracule offered the second glass to me and I stood in order to retrieve it. Her clawed fingers brushed my hand and I gave pause, but not out of fear. No, I was strangely calm. If the Dracule had meant me harm, wouldn’t a being such as she have already caused it? Her fingers touched mine, light and gentle. Her black eyes held a thread of uncertainty.

She withdrew her hand, claws tickling along my skin.

“Ssso I sssee.”

Her fur had been as soft as it seemed. I couldn’t help but wonder, no matter how much I tried not to, what that furred body would feel like sliding against mine. I attempted to ignore the shiver that shimmied down my spine and distracted myself by pressing my lips against the rounded edge of the glass, draining the blood.

The Dracule reached out, brushing a curl out of my face with the back of her fingers. I felt Renata move up behind me. Caught between the two of them, I shut my eyes, as if that would stop desire’s heat from building between my legs.

“Isss it your Queen or isss it me that you crave?”

“Both.”

The emotions that flowed through the Dracule’s being were like tiny streams, veins of emotion. There was eagerness and anticipation, but also sorrow and a cavernous well of longing. I was about to raise my hand to touch the Dracule’s cheek when I felt Renata’s fingers at my neck. She guided my hair to spill down my back.

“The Dracule must wait her turn,” she whispered, her breath warm at my ear. Her tongue traced the curve of my earlobe, making my skin prickle.

“Disrobe, Epiphany.”

I did, taking the hand she offered and allowing her to guide me to the bed. She used her body to encourage me to crawl toward the head of it, raising the black velvet of her skirts and straddling me.

She kissed me and I swayed back against the pillows, offering my mouth and forgetting all about the presence of the Dracule. Renata’s lips burned against mine, her tongue filled me. Her hands swept across my waist and spilled over my breasts.

She drove her fangs into the sensitive skin of my breast until I made a sound for her.

Renata used her hands and mouth to tease me. The tresses of her waist-length hair slid across my body and I writhed at the sensation of it. She kissed my hips, licked my navel, nipped at the skin in the bend of my elbow. Her fingers stroked the dampened lips between my legs enticingly.

She rose, moving to lay beside me, touching a lock of my hair with a libidinous smile.

The Dracule came to us then, crawling across the bed. She crouched above me and I saw myself reflected in the strange pools of her eyes.

Her wings unfolded and she lowered, pressing her sleek furred body against mine.

“Silk,” I breathed the word, rubbing the side of my face against her chest. “You are like drowning in silk.”

The Dracule said nothing while she used her knee to part my legs. I yielded, opening to her. Her satiny hands moved at my waist. She looked at me with an expression of tender surprise and yearning. She raised that inhuman face, revealing the rawness of her want.

She put her hand between my legs and it was like being caressed by a woman wearing silk gloves. The creature that had been so frightening was amazingly gentle as she moved her hips and angled the flesh of her groin against mine.

That mound of silken flesh brushed my clit and I gasped, raising my hands unthinkingly. I touched the furred softness of her shoulders, the only thing I could reach, and buried my fingers in her fur. That mound of flesh moved again, summoning a wave of pleasure from within me. I lowered my gaze to find that her hips moved ever so slightly, but not enough to cause such a sensation.

“How?”

“I told you, it isss like yoursss, only more.”

She pressed her lower body against mine, raising enough that with her height, I could no longer hold her shoulders. Her genitalia pressed more solidly against me and I wrapped my legs around her hips. A moment later, she drew back, and as she drew away, that soft flesh clung to me, clung like it had suctioned to my skin. Her hips moved again, enough to tug lightly, but that light tug was an immensely pleasurable gesture that bowed my spine.

I cried out as her body clung to mine like a mouth, the pleasure almost unbearable. Almost.

She bent, her red tongue flicking out against my breast in a way that caused my hips to buck unwittingly. I turned my head and met Renata’s amused expression.

“Mmm,” she said silkily, “who’d have thought you’d have a penchant for the Dracule’s particular brand of pleasure.” She reached out, idly touching my brow.

The Dracule chose that moment to nip my breast, hard enough to bring my attention back to her.

I stroked the tip of her elongated ear. Her pace quickened and the pressure between my legs ignited, sending my head back against the pillows. The heat built, making my thighs clench tight.

The Dracule spoke with an effort. “Sssoon.”

The muscles in my stomach went rigid. “Very soon.”

Before the orgasm took me body and mind, the Dracule’s body arched like a bow. She threw her head back, exposing the line of her silky throat. Her wings stretched out behind her, casting a terribly beautiful shadow in the dancing candlelight. A cry like nothing I had ever heard before spilled from her mouth, a woman’s cry of ecstasy mingled with a screech that was too low and raspy to be that of a bird. I saw as much, before I too became the victim of pleasure and echoed her.

The Dracule collapsed on top of me, wings spread out across the bed. Her spaded tail rose, swaying from side to side. The movement shifted her hips, making me very aware that her groin was still connected to mine. I rubbed against her and she groaned, grabbing a handful of my hair. Her sharp claws threatened to pierce my scalp. For fear of injuring myself, I stilled.

“Ssstop.” The Dracule used her grip to raise me up on my knees. She moved to lay on a bed of those leathery wings. “Ssstraddle me.”

I climbed her legs and reached down. I couldn’t help it. I wanted to touch it. I wanted to feel her sex in my hands. I wanted to investigate it, to know what it was, what it felt like…to see how it reacted to my touch.

I cupped her in my hand, feeling her slick skin stiffening against my palm.

“This,” I asked, massaging her, “what do you call it?”

I squeezed, watching her eyes shudder closed.

“Nod Dragoste.”

I let her roll out of my hand, dipping my fingers lower in exploration.

I found her opening, easing my fingers inside.

There we were very much alike.

“What does that mean?” I said, fingers curling.

“In Englisssh?” she asked, her body tight around me. “It would transsslate to sssomething like, ah—” She shuddered again, spasming as I pushed deeper. “Love knot.”

She caught my wrist and pulled my hand away from her groin.

“Ssstraddle. Put your sssex againssst mine. I want to feel you sssliding over me. I want to watch you dancing above me.”

I held myself above her on hands and knees, rubbing the side of my face against her stomach. I wanted to bite her. I wanted to lick her. But though the fur was as soft as silk, there was no flesh to lick and bite. If the Dracule shed as much as any cat I’d ever known, I was not going to make the mistake of biting her.

“Show me your other shape,” I said, brushing my cheek across the curve of her hip. “Show me your other form, Dracule, and I’ll grant your request.”

I would have never said such a thing to Renata. I would have never spoken such bold words laced with demand to her, my lover and my Queen. But the Dracule was not my Queen, and though we made love, she was neither friend nor lover.

Though Renata had broken my heart, something in me wanted to trust her again. Yes, even at the risk of being broken again. In love, there were always risks. I was not blind. I had no doubts of the risk I took. But if I were honest with myself, I found my longing far outweighed those doubts. Whether that was the deep soul binding of Siren and vampire at play, or the years of engrained servitude, I did not know. Then again, perhaps it was simply my nature.

Love had a strange way of discombobulating the self and breaking any preconceived notions. The Dracule was not my Siren. She had not earned my complete and utter surrender, let alone the submission of my body and heart. I was not bound to her through magic, passion, and politics in the way that I was with Renata.

The Dracule sat up and moved toward me. I realized she was about to kiss me and had a moment to fear, to think that the mouth in which she was about to kiss me with was not a mouth made for kissing, when the silk of her fur brushed my lips. Her maw opened and the ribbon of her tongue tickled my bottom lip.

“Kisss me, vampire.” Her voice was a whisper of a hiss that sent her breath tickling against my mouth almost as much as her tongue had. “Kisss me and I will change for you.”

Her tongue danced against my mouth and this time, I opened to her. Her tongue slipped past my lips like some long and thin piece of candy. It flattened alongside my tongue, dancing a wet ballet in my mouth. I pressed my lips to her furred mouth and found it was too large for me to do what I wanted to do. I was not capable of returning her kiss. So instead, when she withdrew, I traced the black line of her lips with the tip of my tongue.

The Dracule growled, deep and rumbling. It was a sound far more animal than the serpentine hiss of her voice.

She pressed her mouth roughly against mine. I did not feel her change. One moment, a mouth too large to kiss was pushing against me and the next I felt the soft fullness of human lips. Her tongue spilled into me, velvety and warm. I opened to her, kissing her back.

The Dracule spoke with a woman’s sensuous mouth. “Is that better, vampire?” The blackness of her eyes receded to reveal gold irises slashed with branches of onyx lightning. Although her face was that of a beautiful woman, the long spaded tail that swayed behind her and the leathery wings stretching from her back were not. I leaned back to fully see the pale body against mine. A dusting of obsidian fur covered the mound at her groin.

We knelt on the bed in front of each other. She looked down at me, craning her neck slightly. I pressed my stomach against the slight bulge between her legs, rubbing against her. “Yes.”

The Dracule turned away and I touched her cheek.

“Show me your fangs.”

Slowly, she opened her mouth. Her fangs were not so very different from a vampire’s. The only difference was that she had elongated canines on both her upper and lower jaw.

She closed her mouth with an unhappy snap.

“Satisfied?” Without the long, thin tongue, it seemed easier for her to speak.

I gave her shoulder a light push and said, “I will be.”

She sank back on a bed of her incredibly long black hair and wings. I straddled her, brushing my groin over hers. That node of furred flesh hardened slightly. I spread my legs wider, sinking lower on my knees until her sex was nestled against mine.

The Dracule watched me with unnerving intensity.

I skimmed her sex with mine, shuddering as her flesh swelled between my legs, gliding through my wetness. I felt her against me and wondered if the flesh was large enough, sturdy enough.

A shudder rippled through the Dracule’s alabaster form.

“Will you fit?” I asked, circling my hips, dancing my flesh over hers.

The Dracule gave a breathy reply, “A little.”

“Do you want me to take you inside me?”

Her eyes fell from my face to our touching groins.

Her hands found my hips, nails digging lightly into my skin. That one touch was sufficient. I shuddered, sheathing her engorged clitoral knot inside me, taking in as much of her as I could. I sat back on my heels and used the muscles between my legs to cinch like a snare around her. It would not work for long, for she was female and not a thing meant to be sheathed and cinched. But for foreplay, it worked considerably well.

The Dracule’s nails dug in more roughly. I cried out, grinding myself into the pain. The move made her slip out of me and I gave my own version of a frustrated sound.

“Rub against me,” she said, removing her nails from my flesh. She left little tiny crescent imprints on my skin, but had not drawn blood.

Those magnificent eyes flicked over my shoulder and I turned to see what she was looking at.

Renata crawled in all of her pale, nude glory toward us.

“The Dracule makes a wondrous distraction,” she said. “Would you cast me from your bed?” she asked the Dracule.

“I did not bargain for you,” the Dracule said in a voice that was warm with agitation.

Renata’s hand swept across my ass and I shivered.

“I am not for you, Dracule,” she said, turning an icy stare on the Dracule beneath me. “Do you not want Epiphany to writhe betwixt us? To watch her, trapped, a prisoner between our bodies?”

The Dracule licked her lips.

“When you put it that way, half-breed, it does not sound so bad.”

I felt Renata move up behind me, felt the olisbos we had abandoned the night before pressing against my lower back. She buried her hand in my hair and jerked my head back, forcing an encouraging whimper from me.

Her breath at my ear made of my name a command, “Epiphany.”

I lowered myself, trying to hold the Dracule’s gold and black eyes while Renata sheathed herself inside me. Renata guided me upright, tickling her nails down my back. Her hands anchored at my hips and I lowered myself, guiding my sex over the Dracule’s mound. Renata followed, burying the olisbos inside me. The Dracule pressed against me, catching me by the shoulders and pulling me down on top of her. I caught myself and was about to suggest a better position when Renata took me by surprise. Withdrawing the olisbos, she thrust her hips, impaling me with it. I gave a startled cry, body arching.

The Dracule seemed to pick up on some unspoken command, for her flesh rubbed my clit and the pleasure was so intense that I squirmed.

Renata held me by the hips, held me still by turning her supernatural strength against mine.

Trapped between the two of them, one like a wave of the sea and the other like the wild night breeze, it was no gentle lovemaking. I am vampire. I do not see shame in the acts of love between women and what they desired, I gave eagerly. When they pushed, I yielded. What they demanded, I surrendered. With their bodies connected to mine, I gave every inch of myself in passionate abandon.

Renata found a rhythm, pounding between my legs as if she would leave her mark etched deep within the flesh of me. I tightened around her, full, so full. The orgasm felt as if it would burst, tearing me apart in a finale of bravura rapture.

The Dracule found her own rhythm, something slower and more sinuous than Renata’s exquisite force, but no less dominant, no less as claiming. Caught between their shining bodies, between the forces of them, I came screaming, body tightening like an arrow ready to fly free of its bow.

When the orgasm passed, I felt the Dracule writhing against me, beneath me, her pale and slender body stretching under my face and torso. I swept my hands across her ribs and cupped her breasts, driving my nails into her skin.

Her body went rigid as she cried out.

On the edges of her cries, Renata’s laughter followed, thrumming through me.

Chapter Seventeen

Afterward, we lay across the bed. Renata discarded the olisbos and climbed in to rest her body against the line of my back. The Dracule stretched out in front of me. She started to rise and I caught her wrist, pulling her back down. Her tail brushed my leg, curling around it. In human form, her tail was as white as her skin. Renata reached out, idly stroking that alabaster tail with her fingers.

“Whose deaths would you have me spare? We bargained the rules of the bedroom, but you’ve yet to give me the names of those lives you seek to protect,” the Dracule said at length.

“Did I please you so little as to only warrant the protection of three of our people?”

I raised my eyes and found the Dracule staring at me. Her expression was not a light one. I scooted forward, moving closer to her. I nestled my knee between her thighs, brushing the love knot between her legs.

Of course, she could’ve gotten angry with me for invading her personal space, especially after the bargain had been fulfilled. However, I did not think she would. There was more to the Dracule than anger and killing. So much more.

“If I ask the gender of the vampire who summoned you,” I said, “will you tell me?”

Asking the gender would narrow down the possibilities. I wondered, in the back of my mind, if Lucrezia had done it. She was power-hungry and mentally unstable enough to pull such a stunt. The Donatore, though stronger than normal humans and somewhat immortal, did not have any magic by which to summon the Dracule. If it were not so, I would not suspect a vampire had done the summoning.

The Dracule seemed to consider it. Slowly, she dipped her head forward and said, “I will grant you that.”

I traced the line of her jaw with the tip of my index finger. “And will you still grant the protection to three of those I care about?”

She blinked. “Yes.”

I felt Renata’s body tense next to mine. Her fingers stopped idly petting the Dracule’s tail.

“Will you extend that protection to the clan?” I asked. “What do you gain by killing our people?”

The Dracule’s eyes flickered nervously, as if she wasn’t sure how to answer the question.

“I will spare all of your people…at a price.”

Renata gave an abrupt laugh. “At a price,” she said, “that comes as no surprise, Dracule.”

The Dracule shot her a displeased look.

I traced the slight swell of the Dracule’s shoulder, trying to distract her from her anger.

“What be the price?”

Ignoring the fact that Renata’s arm was draped across my waist, the Dracule snaked an arm around the base of my back, lower than Renata’s. She pulled me closer to her and whispered, “I will spare your people if you agree to bear my sigil.”

“Sigil?” I asked. I knew a sigil had somewhat to do with magic, but I did not know what it meant for the Dracule. “What does bearing your sigil entail?”

Renata’s cheek brushed my shoulder, her lips pleasantly and distractingly grazing the slope of my neck. “She is offering to bind herself to you. If you bear her sigil you will be able to call upon her whenever the whim strikes your fancy.” She was silent for several seconds. “The only reason a Dracule would offer to bind themselves to a vampire is out of love. Truly, you have not fallen in love with my Epiphany so soon?” The words themselves were serious, but her tone held a thread of light amusement.

The Dracule narrowed her eyes. The look on her face made me shiver to the core. “I am not blinded by love of your Epiphany,” she said in a voice gone low and rough. “I offer because she pleases me.”

Renata sat up, nude and glorious and boldly facing the Dracule’s look of challenge. “You think to take Epiphany away from me?”

“Your claim runs deep in this one, half-bred Queen or no.”

“If you think to win Epiphany’s favor by referring to either of us as half-breeds, you are mistaken.”

“I can speak for myself, Renata,” I said, albeit softly.

The Dracule offered a triumphant look.

“Don’t look so pleased with yourself,” I said to the Dracule, “as I haven’t agreed to anything yet, and my Queen speaks the truth. You will not gain my favor or my compliance by calling one I care for a derogatory name such as half-breed. I’ll not be wooed by petty insults.”

The Dracule didn’t look happy. I ignored it. “Why do you keep calling us half-breeds? She said that your kind were the beginning?”

“Would you like me to tell you a charming little tale?” the Dracule asked.

“If you wish.”

“Once, long ago, the leader of the Dracule fell in love with a mortal woman.”

“And?” I prompted.

“And the Dracule cannot love mortals,” she said. “We crave their blood, and to love them eventually leads to their death. Such is what happened with our King. He seduced his mortal lover and took her to his bed.”

“And killed her?” I asked.

“While they were making love the thirst for blood came over him. He bled her to death. When he realized what he had done, he wept. He tried to return the blood he had taken by slitting his wrist and holding it to his lover’s mouth.”

When Renata had taken my life and had given it back to me, she had offered her wrist. It was one of the major acts in the rite of death and rebirth, in the siring of a vampire.

The Dracule continued. “He tried to sacrifice his own life for hers, and when he did not die he screamed his fury and cursed God himself. Azrael, the Angel of Death, heard the King’s cries.”

“What happened?”

“Azrael took pity on him. He asked the King if he would give his immortal life for the mortal woman to rise again. The King agreed and Azrael took the King’s immortality and placed it inside the woman he so revered. Her name was Lilith. She was the mother of your kind.”

“The King of the Dracule gave his immortality to us?”

“Yes.”

It made me think better of the Dracule that once they had a king that had sacrificed his immortal life for a mortal woman he had loved and not meant to harm.

“That is why you call us half-breeds,” I said. “It upsets you that the youngest of us do not know our history and the eldest seem to forget. Your king sacrificed himself for our rebirth and none of us honor or acknowledge that, do we?”

Her eyes closed.

“Very few make the acknowledgement these days.”

“We did not withhold our history to shame your kind, Dracule. There are still those of your kind that regret your King’s sacrifice,” Renata said from behind me.

“But,” the Dracule said, “the vampires should know of their origins. Despite those of us who hold you in contempt, we are the beginning and deserve to be acknowledged as such. Your pretty little vampires would rather pretend they were not born of the King’s sacrifice than show lineage to us.” She gave a bitter laugh. “Monsters and demons, they call us. Did you know?”

Renata gracefully bowed her head. “I am not one of the vampires that agree with that, Dracule.”

“Neither am I,” I said. I placed my hand on the Dracule’s hip.

“Then will you bear my sigil?” she asked. “Will you honor my mark?”

I sat up, resting my back against the pillows. I started reaching for the gray coverlet and stopped myself, realizing why I was doing it. Surely it was not for modesty’s sake, for once you sleep with someone you lose some sense of that modesty. I had slept with both women, reaching for the coverlet was merely a thing to do to distract my mind and hide myself. I didn’t need to distract my mind or hide. I needed to consider my options and to comprehend what the Dracule was offering and what would happen if I declined that offer. It was obvious, looking back on their meeting in the hallway, the way that the Dracule had initially acted toward Renata and me, that there was bad blood between our kinds. I had not known then that the history of vampires was so tightly wedded with that of the Dracule. It was no small disrespect for the vampires to turn their backs on their true Sires.

“If what you say is true,” I said, “then should not the Dracule honor and respect the angel Azrael?”

Her expression told me plainly that she did not grasp why I would say such a thing.

“Azrael did not strip you of your immortality, no?”

She looked at me then, as if I were a spider weaving a cunning little web and she was wary of setting foot in it. “No, he did not strip us of our immortality, only the King.”

“Then should you not, as you expect our kind to honor and respect yours, honor and respect the angel Azrael?”

“What are you are saying, Epiphany?” Renata asked.

“I am saying only that the Dracule should pay their respects to Azrael, for he is the one who gave them, as well as our kind, the ability to bring mortal lovers over.”

“There is wisdom in your words,” the Dracule said. “You are saying that the vampires are not the only ones who have acted in slight and disrespect?”

“Yes,” I said, “that is what I am saying.”

I forced myself to hold her incisive gaze.

“You are avoiding answering my question.”

“You haven’t answered mine,” I said, “not fully.”

“And what question is that?”

“What does bearing your sigil entail?” I tilted my head to the side. “If you expect me to bear it, to allow you to mark me, then I need the details. I will be able to summon you, to contact you?”

“Yes.”

“Will it make me your slave?” I asked. “Will it take away my free will? Will you be able to hear my thoughts? Will you be able to communicate with me telepathically?”

Renata touched my thigh then, but not to distract me sexually, to warn me to tread cautiously.

The Dracule apparently caught the meaning of the gesture, for she said, “I know you have the death blade and I know that you are able to communicate telepathically with your Queen. I will not invade your thoughts unless you so wish me to. I will not take away your free will. I will not make you my slave.” Her dark brows furrowed thoughtfully. “Think of it as an alliance, if you will. If you bear my sigil and wear it with pride”—she placed her hand flat on my stomach—“and do not hide it from others of your kind, then I will not lay a hand on any of those you care for. I will spare them, Epiphany.”

“Is that all?” I asked.

“You will have my protection,” she said, the pupils of her eyes expanding and shrinking as a wave of frustration emitted off her.

“And what will you have?” I asked. It was imperative to state specifics when discussing such a matter.

“You,” she said.

“But you said you would not make me your slave. Am I to be at your beck and call, then?”

“No,” she said, lightly shaking her head, sending the dark tresses slithering about her waist. “We will merely have an agreement. I would prefer that you come to my bed and body willingly.” She cast that gold and black stare at Renata. “There has not been an alliance between our kinds in many years. Would you prefer that your pet reject my offer?”

Renata’s eyes were full of intellectual calculation. “I would advise her to at least consider it,” she said very carefully.

“You think I should take it?”

Date: 2015-12-24; view: 605