Dead After Dark (Companion #6.5)(61)

One hand moved over his hip, the other slid over his biceps, as all the while she stared into his eyes. She glanced down. He knew what she would see. He was fully erect—almost painfully so. He had been saving himself for Emily for months. He couldn’t be held accountable for his reaction to being touched by a beautiful ghost or trespasser, or whatever she was, while he was naked. Maybe the reason he couldn’t move was because somewhere deep inside he didn’t want to move.

She pushed him gently backward, his head on the pillows that still smelled slightly musty. She made a very unghostly dent on the bed as she sat beside him. One hand cupped the nape of his neck under his hair, the other still moved over his bare chest. Her palm across his nipples made him feel like jam inside. The hand moved lower. Was she going to . . . ?

It brushed across his cock. He arched involuntarily. Lord, in a few moments she had him in such a state he was like to spill his seed right on his belly as though this were a wet dream when he was fourteen.

Maybe this was a wet dream. How else could he explain the red eyes? But his wet dreams had been the usual male expressions of his burgeoning strength and power, noticeably lacking in this one. Still, the very thought that she could do anything to him while he was in this state was exhilarating as well as horrifying. He must tell her that he was saving himself for Emily. He made several ineffective grunting sounds before she touched her finger to his lips.

“Shush now,” she whispered in that very attractive accent, “I won’t hurt you.”

That was a very strange thing for a ghost to say, even a ghost in a dream.



Why was she trying to comfort him? She wanted to frighten him. But the pounding of his heart against her palm could not help but bring a morsel of remorse. All the pain she and her sisters had given Aspirants, all the torment of raising their capacity for arousal and then suppressing their release, had become too much for her at the end. She didn’t think what they did was right. So the last thing she wanted was to feel the thumping of his heart in fear or see the very pronounced erection she had caused. He was definitely aroused.

As was she, if truth be told. She was unable to resist touching his body. How long since she had felt the warmth of a strong male form, its miracle of soft skin covering the hard muscle beneath? And this was a very attractive specimen. Actually it wasn’t just that he was attractive. This man had written that letter. She trailed a hand across his hip again, so near the delightful erection she had just caressed so lightly . . .

She must not succumb to her desire. Under compulsion, any kind of sexual dalliance with him was nothing short of rape.

She’d just take his blood and let him go. He had to be frightened enough to keep others away. There was no way around that. But she didn’t want him having some sort of apoplexy.

He was staring up at her as though he was the one who was hungry. But he wasn’t of course, not for the same thing she needed. She turned his chin gently to the side, baring the big artery under his jaw. She felt his heart gallop a little irregularly as she leaned down, pressing her breasts against his chest. She kissed his neck, gently. His skin was salty from the heat, though the breeze had dried him. His smell, unique to each human male, filled her nostrils. His hips rose, his body arching as she murmured reassurances.

She let the power coursing through her veins run out her canines. She cradled his head in the crook of her arm and sank them carefully into the artery. He jerked against her, once. The twin circular wounds leaked sweet, copper-tasting life into her mouth, thick and satisfying. Her Companion practically purred. She let her canines retract and now there was only licking and sucking, making soothing sounds at him while she lapped. He did not relax as they sometimes did, though. Instead, his hips began to move against her in rhythm with her sucking. She could feel the hard rod of his erection pressing into her hip. How sexual this act was, for both the donor and the receiver of the blood, though normally she managed to control its effects. Not now. She fairly hummed with arousal.

The blood is the life, she thought. It had been so for millennia, tied as her kind was to humans in this most intimate of bonding. They lived one to a city, so that humans would not know vampires lived among them. It was a lonely existence. The only place her kind could congregate was Mirso Monastery, for most of them a last resort when ennui or the insanity of eternal life had made them unfit for the world. She and her sisters had been born at Mirso, and lived out their lives making Harriers there. She had never lived in the human world until now.

She raised her head when she had taken enough. He watched her steadily as she licked her lips. “Thank you,” she said, sitting up. “For your generosity.” Even though he had no choice.

His eyes were big, dark blue in the moonlight, but they were no longer afraid. They were . . . speculative. That was not good. Was he wondering if she was real? If he told people there was a real woman at Ashland who drank blood, they’d be up with torches to burn her out. He had to believe the place was haunted and there was nothing he could do about it except leave.

She rose. “You have been touched by the spirit world,” she intoned, and let her Companion make her voice echo. “You will go from this place immediately.”

She called for even more power from her Companion. The familiar whirling darkness started at her feet and began to rise up over her knees. He sat up now that she had released him. He was still erect. Two tiny rivulets of blood coursed down his neck. He stared in fascinated horror as the darkness engulfed her. His bedroom disappeared around her. One moment of familiar pain, and she popped into her own room. She hurried across the hall to look out the windows of a dank room whose ceiling was collapsed in one corner. It looked out to the stables. He was a brave man, and he wouldn’t leave a horse like that behind.