Page 23 of Peacemaker

He would not give up his secrets. Not yet. Maybe he really didn’t know what was going on, hiding in Willow-Wisp as he’d done. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t find out. “All right,” I said. “And before morning comes, I want to know what the hell happened in the city tonight.”

His eyes widened slightly and he hesitated, but only out of surprise, I was sure. Finally, he nodded.

I tilted my head, offering him my neck. “Drink.”

“Trinity,” he said, tenderly. He put his lips close to my ear, then pulled my earlobe into his warm mouth at the exact second he pressed his fingers against my upper thigh, where he’d fed from me in the woods.

My body stiffened and I arched my back, crying out as desire, overwhelming and extreme, exploded inside me. He lowered me to the ground while I was still lost in the throes of that lust filled memory, and when I sort of returned to myself, my lower body was bare and the master had his mouth between my legs.

He ate me fast and hard, and it was loud, messy, and incredible, and I orgasmed before I even realized I was about to.

My breath whooshed from my lungs and while the vibrations of my climax were still strong, Amias pierced my upper thigh with razor-sharp fangs and began to drink.

As he sucked, he thrust his fingers into me, not gently, but almost savagely, and I came again, and again, and again.

I realized dimly that I’d forgotten. I’d forgotten the hugeness of being loved, bitten, and taken by the vampire master. I was simply…devoured by it. By him.

After the blood filled him up—everywhere—he pulled his mouth from the tiny wounds in my thigh. They continued to throb with my heartbeat and my sex as he slid up my body and drove his engorged cock inside me.

I could do nothing—only take it. Only feel it. Even as somewhere deep inside my brain a tiny spark of resistance burned, I exulted in the master’s touch.

Unlike before, he didn’t flee when he’d finished. He cradled me on the mysterious ground of the graveyard and lay with his arms around me, waiting for me to come down from the dark heights to which he’d flung me.

Finally, I pulled away. I climbed almost drunkenly to my feet, searching for clothes I didn’t remember him removing. I pulled them on, not looking at him as he stood silently watching me.

“Every time I’m with you, it’s like an attack,” I told him, when I’d finished dressing and had gathered my thoughts. I folded my arms across my chest, holding myself, my stare on the ground. “It doesn’t feel right. Not after. It doesn’t feel good.”

He said nothing for the longest time, then finally he walked to me. He didn’t touch me, and when I looked up I saw something close to sorrow in his moonlit face. “I seem to have become more beast than man. When hunger grips me, I don’t think about anything other than how to make you…” He stopped and rubbed his face, and his voice was rough when he continued. “How to make you lie still for it. This is what I’ve become.”

Before the sun, he might not have cared so much. He stood there full of regret at his ugliness. He wanted to be something more than a soulless vampire. He wanted to be something more for me.

“You are everything,” he said, as though reading my thoughts. “And I have mistreated you from the beginning.” He stepped back, a hand to his chest. “Things will be different from this moment on. I swear it. I will…” He narrowed his eyes, searching for the word. “I will court you. And what you share with me will be freely given.” He gave me a strange little half bow. “I apologize for abusing you, Trinity.”

I peered at him. “The sun has changed you.”

“Yes. You are my sun. And you have changed me.”

I took the hand he offered me. “The next time will be different.” I smiled and squeezed his fingers, then released his hand. “You will lie still for it, and I’ll show you how much better it’ll be for both of us when you let me touch you.”

And I leaned forward to kiss him.

He didn’t move as I slid my lips across his, didn’t lift his hands to touch me, didn’t lean into me. But I felt his body tense. He shuddered as I explored his mouth, but he didn’t try to take control.

He gave an almost silent moan when I slipped my hand under his shirt and caressed his smooth skin. When I ran my thumb across his nipple, he shivered, and his body tightened a little more.

How long had it been since someone had touched him with desire? A lifetime, surely. He knew only how to force lust and hunger and rage upon a woman.

He had no idea how to make love.

But he was willing to learn.

That was the moment I softened toward the master. That was the moment I began to accept him. The moment I began to want him.

I withdrew, just enough so my lips brushed his when I spoke. “You’re mine, vampire.”

He gripped my upper arms then and cried out, as though my words were silver blades I’d thrust into his heart. Bloody tears brimmed in his eyes, and in the next second, he was gone and I was alone in Willow-Wisp.

I stood for a few minutes, unmoving, unsure what that moment meant for either of us. I was sure only that I’d fallen in love with a vampire. With that vampire.