Page 80 of Vampire's Choice

She shouldn’t have that ability. As she came closer, she shed the shoes and jeans, and stood before him in her bra and panties. Thin garments that showed curves and points, intimate crevices. Her toes curled against the ground. She kept her hands at her sides, not reaching for him.

She was offering herself as a submissive would. Waiting on his decision. She didn’t lower her eyes, though, letting him see the need, the desire, the belief that this would soothe the ache, the storm inside her. Inside them both.

She submitted and challenged him at once, a rare combination. An alpha female in certain circumstances, a submissive in others. Both for him, at least in this instance.

He knew how to read mindless desire, knew if the woman he faced was beyond sensible inhibition. Ruth was, and yet her sharp intelligence hadn’t abandoned her. She’d brought this up before, the offer to feed him fully. Since then, she’d been pondering it. It wasn’t a passing impulse.

He'd been pondering it, too.

He put a hand on her shoulder, thumb caressing her collar bone. He knew she could hear the rush of blood in his arteries. Did she know that sexual energy had a similar pulse? Even at rest, he could call it forth from any female within his range. She wouldn’t be able to resist its pull. She’d cling to him, beg him for more as he drank from her, until life slipped away, leaving the physical scent of her desires in his nose, the evidence of it bathing his cock.

Her hard, final shudder would find an echo inside him, rippling through his blood, muscles and something deeper. A soul-deep reaction to her giving him everything.

Hadn’t Ruth suggested the true drug might not be her death, but the female’s full surrender to him? An incubus delighted in taking every drop of life energy, the kill. But was Merc seeking something deeper?

He didn’t have to use compulsion with Ruth. He could feed until he was sated while she stayed fully conscious of how deeply he was drinking. She wouldn’t fear it. Which would prove if fear really was the drug it had once been to him.

The homeless man’s blood, as well as his own, was restoring her. She hadn’t lied about that. Her trauma wouldn’t make her weaker than normal. Sensing it, feeling the strength of her heartbeat, seeing the color in her skin, the determination in her eyes, peeled away his final resistance.

He removed his jeans. Her eyes were lowered, and her lips pressed together as he revealed his erection.

“Lift your chin.”

As she did, he felt her gaze on the shift of muscle across his upper torso. He leaned in, putting his mouth to her throat. The skin was tender and pink, but able to receive his ministrations. He tasted the blood that had stained her skin, and felt her reaction.

From her, he’d learned how sensitive the area was to vampires. He explored that, tracing the veins and soft female flesh with his tongue, the edge of his teeth. Whenever he scraped her, she shuddered, but she held still, fighting back the obvious desire to sway toward him.

“Try to get away from me, Ruth. Do your best to fight me.”

He wove the magic around her, drawing out her arousal. A woman’s body was a sexual instrument from head to toe, and he’d played every note, explored every melody and arrangement. When he’d had to learn to feed without killing, he’d forced himself to focus on the same tedious pattern, so the lure of something new and wondrous didn’t pull him in and risk his food’s life.

He’d stopped looking for a new song to hear, but this vampire female was offering one. Hadn’t she played her own music for him, through the earbuds? Sharing it with him.

Ruth broke away and made it several steps. He grabbed her around the waist, and she turned in his grip, sinuous as a snake. Her feet found his thigh, kicked the corded muscle, shoved off. She landed on her back with a thud, and he let her scramble up and take a fighting stance again. He circled her, dove in, spun her around, took her punches, her kicks, slid away from them, caressing her body as he did it. Testing her strength, how restored she actually was. Not as much as she claimed, of course. But enough.

He brought her to the ground, putting her on her knees, his body pressed behind her.

“Spread your thighs for me.”

When she resisted, he knocked them apart and took her all the way to the ground, pinning her down, his wings spread over them. “Fight me,” he said harshly. “Don’t accept.”

She did fight. Not as tactically well as she normally would have, but she made up for it in persistence. She fought and fought, until tears were on her face and breath sobbed in her throat. It did things to him, seeing those tears, feeling that pain.

He leaned in, put his mouth to her cheek, sliding along to her ear, her neck. Then down, between her shoulder blades, where her wings would be, if she was like him. He pressed his cock against her ass, played in the seam, reached under her and found her damp cunt. She whimpered as he slid his fingers into her, caressing her perineum with a thumb, an easy stroke that had her struggling even more, the sensations rolling over her.

“You can’t get away from me, can you?”

She shook her head.

“I’m completely in control. Aren’t I?”

A pause. Then slowly, a nod.

“That’s something they couldn’t do, those two vampires. For them to be completely in control, you had to want them to be. Even if they overpowered you, put you in chains, what you are giving me…it is a giving. It can’t be taken. Lift your hips. Rub yourself against me.”

She complied, her fingers curled into the earth on either side of her. She still had anger. But he had an outlet for that.

“Push yourself down on me. You’ll have to work for your pleasure. For your request. You serve me. I don’t serve you.”