Dark Desires_A Novel of the Dark Ones Read online

  So colorful, Ava thought, briefly distracted.

  “Look at me,” the hypnotic voice commanded.

  Ava felt as if she had no choice but to obey. She’d probably follow that voice to the ends of the earth.

  It took some effort to raise her eyes, as they traveled across the magnificent terrain of a wide, leanly defined chest, all hard planes and unyielding lines, over broad shoulders unburdened by bulk, up a long, smooth neck where a prominent Adam’s apple bobbed on a swallow, to a pointed chin and angular jaw…her eyes started to lower again for a second pass.

  “See me,” the voice insisted, and Ava reluctantly raised her eyes all the way to stare into large, double-lidded almond-shaped orbs, black and bottomless.

  She saw a raw hunger there, a savagery and animalism, almost overwhelming in its intensity.

  But beyond that she also saw a deep, unknowable pain, a sadness and self-loathing that made her ache with sympathy.

  “Is this what you want?”

  Her eyes shifted involuntarily to sculpted lips peeled back to display twin dagger-like fangs amongst a row of straight white teeth.

  Those looked familiar, Ava thought drowsily. They seemed as if they were straining to penetrate something, veritably quivering with need.

  The thought triggered memories that bloomed hotly within Ava’s mind and body.

  Those fangs had sunk into the vein at her wrist. The penetration had been a strange alchemy of pain and pleasure, but the pain had been infinitesimal. It was the pleasure that stayed, expanding throughout her system, reaching every cell, every molecule, until she was subsumed in ecstasy, triggering the most amazing orgasm she’d ever had in her life.

  Right before she passed out.

  She was wide awake now, her attention focused like lasers on the male who still held her slightly aloft.

  She looked into Ryu Takamura’s soulful black eyes and answered clearly:

  “Yes. I want this.”

  She put one hand on each side of his face as she gazed deeply into his eyes.

  “I want you. Whoever you are. Whatever you are. Always you.”

  She lowered her forehead to his and sighed.

  “Ryu.”

  His face contorted for a split second in anguish before a shutter came crashing down to wipe his expression devoid of emotion.

  The hands holding her underneath her arms fell away. His legs widened on either side of hers to give her more access to his body.

  Those beautiful lips tilted at one corner as he invited, “Then take me however you want me. It’s the least I can do to repay you for the life-giving blood.”

  Ava stilled.

  She was sharply aware of her body’s burning desire for his, and she could feel a reciprocal fire within him. But something went missing in the last couple of seconds. It was as if Ryu had disengaged his spirit from his body.

  His words strummed her libido until she was literally vibrating with need. But what he offered was the use of his body for the blood he took. He was treating the incredible attraction between them as a kind of currency. Didn’t that make him a…

  Ava’s mind skittered away from the ugly word.

  Wherever the real Ryu had gone, she wanted him back.

  All of him.

  She settled her still clothed torso on his chest, her bare lower body resting relaxed on his stomach, and laid her head beside his, facing him, one hand still holding his cheek.

  “Thank you for saving me,” she murmured as she caressed his face with gentle fingers. “If drinking from me helped heal the wounds I caused, then I’d say we’re more than even on that score.”

  She elevated her head on the other hand so she could look into his eyes again, though they didn’t quite meet hers when she sought his gaze.

  “Right now, I want to make love to you,” she continued in the same soft murmur, the kind of voice one used to soothe someone wounded and afraid.

  He swallowed and turned his face away from hers, his jaw clenching hard.

  “I want to love you,” she said softly, shyly, but with absolute certainty.

  A shudder racked his body, his chest rising and falling on gulps of breath. But he continued to look away from her.

  A sign of rejection?

  No, Ava thought. He seemed to be holding back something. She didn’t want him to hold back.

  Tenderly, she turned his face toward her and waited for him to look back at her.

  His eyes remained lowered, his eyelashes fluttering with a fragility and vulnerability that broke her heart.

  So much pain in him. She could feel it radiating from his every pore. She wished she could take his anguish inside herself and help him bear its weight.

  She waited for him to look at her. She’d wait forever if she needed to. Nothing was more important than his trust.

  At last, her patience was rewarded, and he slowly raised his eyes. The mask was lifted, allowing her to see the male within, stripped entirely bare.

  What he exposed inside was raw and bleeding.

  She held his tortured gaze and spoke very clearly, an unknown strength infusing her voice.

  “I promised myself if I ever saw you again that I would never let you go,” she whispered, solemn and still as if she were making a vow.

  He flinched but didn’t look away, his nostrils flaring slightly.

  “May I kiss you, Ryu?” she asked gently. “May I hold you close?”

  He released a shuddering breath on a long exhale, and for a terrifying instant, she thought he was going to push her away.

  But then he answered her with his body, arching up to meet her mouth with his, his long-fingered hands enveloping her face on each side.

  This kiss was different.

  He wasn’t sure and smooth like before. He didn’t coax and tease and devour.

  If he were to be believed, he’d only kissed on two occasions, and he’d only ever kissed her. But for all that, he’d never lacked confidence, and certainly didn’t need any practice.

  Now, this time, his mouth shook as if he’d never kissed before. His hands shook as if he’d never held before. His body beneath her shook as if he’d never touched before.

  For long, long moments, he simply lapped at her mouth with his, nuzzled and nipped, holding her close but loosely, as if he expected her to change her mind and leave him at any moment.

  “Show me,” he whispered against her mouth.

  Almost without breaking their kiss, he undulated his body so that her upper torso was lifted briefly off his chest, and pulled her blouse and bra off and over her head.

  Good Lord, the man had some serious skills when it came to undressing her, Ava thought appreciatively.

  Then his mouth was back beneath hers, sucking on her lower lip.

  “Hold me inside you,” he rasped into her mouth, undulating his body again so that his swollen sex slid right along the seam of her nether lips, stopping only when her exposed clit was pressed tightly against the base of the hot, satiny column of flesh.

  He rotated his hips and ground against her pearl, then pulled back slowly so that his sex slid along her groove again, dragging through the slit inch by excruciating inch, as if tattooing the knowledge forever in her memory of just how many. Long. Hard. Thick. Luscious inches there were.

  “Yes, please,” Ava begged, about to break down weeping if she didn’t have him soon.

  She rose up on her elbows and held his face in her hands just as he did with hers. She gazed into his eyes, baring her heart, letting him see straight into her soul.

  “I love you,” she said, as if declaring war, a pledge irrefutable.

  She wanted him to have no doubt about what was happening between them. They were going to make love. She was going to have all of him, and she would give all of herself in return.

  The tensing of his body showed her that he’d heard her loud and clear. There was no going back.

  She took the initiative to kiss him this time, no longer gentle, no longer patient.
Her mouth devoured his, her tongue plunging inside, their teeth clashing.

  He gave back as good as he got, arching up to meet her, growling into her mouth as his tongue surged over and over into her.

  His hands let go of her face to slide roughly down her sides, now shaking with urgency and passion rather than hesitation. He took hold of her hips, lifted her and brought her down hard at the exact moment he pushed himself up.

  Oh God, oh God, oh God!

  Ava could scarcely catch her breath when he finally filled her in one smooth surge, the head of his erection directly hitting her pleasure center deep inside, triggering an orgasm so intense she thought her heart had seized along with her lungs and every muscle in her body.

  Only to release in a torrent of pleasure so mind-boggling, she finally understood why the French called it “a little death.”

  Her vagina fisted his sex tightly and covetously, as her fingers dug into his hair and her mouth sucked hard on his tongue.

  With a groan so deep and guttural, his vocal chords hurt from the abrasion, Ryu’s release tore through his body entirely without his permission for the first time in his long existence. There was no stopping the tidal wave that surged from him and into her in long, continuous bursts of hot, milky fluid. It was all they could do to hold onto each other tightly as their bodies flew apart on wings of ecstasy.

  When the last of the shivers and quivers subsided, he rolled her onto her back and kissed her tenderly, while his hips kept working, moving lazily down below, rotating in slow, penetrating circles like a…

  “Guess that’s why they call it screwing,” Ava murmured into his mouth, her own spreading in a satisfied smile.

  He raised his head slightly to look at her, arching one brow in question.

  She showed him what she meant by clapping both hands onto his muscular posterior and squeezing hard, her hands following the motion of the flexing of his hips as he drove his still swollen sex deeply within her, grinding against her sweet spot with varying pressure, but always maintaining the delicious friction that was drawing out another long, sleepy orgasm from her core.

  Ava sighed, drifting dreamily on a cloud of euphoria.

  No super-duper deluxe rocket-sized Rabbit Habit with infinite turbo-charged batteries can ever compare to this, she thought, lying motionless beneath him, a happy recipient of the pleasure he wrought, I’m ruined for good.

  An abbreviated huff.

  Followed by a snort.

  Then a shaking throughout Ryu’s body that she felt everywhere as well, given that she was wrapped tightly like a starfish around him, a living extension of his body.

  Ava blew out a breath, more exasperated than embarrassed this time.

  “Did I say that out loud?”

  His answer was the continuous shaking, as if he were in the grips of a nervous breakdown.

  Ava took his face in her hands again so she could look at him. Surely it wasn’t all that funny.

  She gasped.

  His eyes were squeezed into crescent moons. His face scrunched full of boyish good humor. His cheeks were slightly puffed as if he were trying to contain the guffaws. His lips curled in the most innocent, light-hearted grin.

  Wow.

  Ava had never seen anything so beautiful.

  So this was what love looked like.

  This was what ultimate happiness tasted like.

  *** *** *** ***

  Sōsuke surveyed the crumbled ruins of the Biotech Center with a blackened blast radius of several hundred feet from behind the police tape that had been put up around the affected area, along with other Todai staff, students and passersby.

  This was a setback he hadn’t foreseen.

  “Did anyone get hurt?” he asked the investigator closest to him.

  “We haven’t finished our evaluations yet,” was the brusque response.

  Sōsuke nodded. “It’s just that I haven’t been able to reach the other members of my project team, and I’m worried. They tend to work very late at the Center. I think they might have been here on Friday night.”

  The investigator’s gaze sharpened, eyeing Sōsuke’s security badge. He flipped to some notes he had in his hand and asked, “Are you Dr. Sōsuke Matsumoto?”

  “Yes.”

  “Please come with me,” the investigator said, ushering him to a squadron car. “We need to ask you a few questions.”

  “I’ll cooperate, of course,” Sōsuke said, “whatever you need. But first, can you tell me whether my colleagues are all right?”

  “We will share that information when we have it,” the investigator maintained, then added, “No one who was inside the building at the time of the explosion could have survived.”

  “What about the secure corridor in the back on the second level? It’s made to withstand earthquakes and all kinds of—”

  “No one could have survived. Please, Doctor, get inside the car.”

  Sōsuke got in, his eyes unfocused as if in a daze.

  All their efforts—gone! All the years of preparation. They had been so close!

  As to the team members…

  Sōsuke mentally shrugged. He could always recruit another team with similar skills. There were many scientists in Northern Europe he could tap. They could easily be induced to work on the project. Nanao, that police infiltrator, was certainly no loss.

  Ava Monroe was the only one he felt a slight pang for. Hers was a truly brilliant mind. To make sure it was fully unleashed on the research they were conducting, he’d convinced his backers to leave her alone.

  The mind control used on the other researchers sometimes made them too rigid cognitively. They all had different ambitions that could be magnified to overpower their conscience and sense of morality, but Dr. Monroe, he had a feeling, would not easily be persuaded if they had tried that route. Which meant that they’d have to use more force, which would have then impaired her creativity of thought.

  Instead, he’d taken a gamble that she would want to join the team voluntarily because of her passion for the area of research and because of her father’s battle with Parkinson’s. He’d purposely paired himself with her to keep an eye on her and to absorb as much of her knowledge and expertise as possible in the event that she became a liability.

  He hadn’t expected to develop a fondness for her over the past two weeks. It was a shame she was gone, if indeed she was caught in the blast.

  On the other hand, they never intended to let her live anyway. And now that they’d advanced enough on the genetic engineering work stream, it was only a matter of time before GTI pulled the trigger.

  He just wished they could have had her for the development of the serum from the stem cell research. He could try to do it on his own or recruit new people to help him, but the lead time would be a few months at least, assuming they could replicate their success with Genesis to grow a viable embryo.

  And of course, GTI would have to deal with whatever or whoever caused the explosion.

  But that wasn’t Sōsuke’s concern. His job was to focus on the science.

  Another investigator walked over with a Ziploc bag in his gloved hand. He stopped to converse in muted tones with his colleague.

  Sōsuke didn’t know what made him look, but something in the plastic bag caught his attention.

  A cell phone. Screen cracked, case chipped.

  He recognized it. It belonged to Ava Monroe.

  Had she truly been on site when the explosion happened then? Or had she left her stuff behind when she left work rather early on Friday night?

  Sōsuke would do what he could to find out some more information from the police. GTI must have their own agents working on the force that could lend him a hand.

  Maybe even get him possession of that cell phone.

  *** *** *** ***

  Ryu checked his monitors for the third time to make sure every inch of the safe house’s perimeter was secured.

  The second sweep was probably sufficient, but he was stalling for t
ime.

  Ava sat cross-legged in the middle of the room munching on a sandwich he put together from whatever was left in the small fridge beneath the built-in desks. She didn’t seem to mind the dryness and strange combination of flavors as she chewed and swallowed efficiently, washing down each bite with sips of water.

  He checked the monitor clock. They’d been in this small, secure chamber for a day and a half, having slept through most of it, both their bodies recharging for the duration.

  Before she’d snuggled awake in his arms and made hot, slumberous love to him.

  Then she’d made him laugh.

  And that had felt even more intimate than the rhythm of his body inside hers.

  He’d quickly retreated back behind a stoic mask, getting up and taking care of their basic needs for food and water. He stored the samples from the lab in a safe, environment-controlled location, the canister he’d taken them in having kept them viable over this time.

  He’d pulled on a loose pair of black pants, the material thin and flowing, made for ease of movement, and had given her one of his black shirts of the same material, except it didn’t have any closure in the front. It was long enough to reach past her bottom. She kept it wrapped loosely about her middle, but it still gaped in the front, displaying a deep cleavage so that he could see the voluptuous curves of her breasts and pointed ends of her nipples.

  “May I ask a question?” she said, polishing off the last crumbs of her sandwich.

  Just one? he wondered. But he didn’t say it out loud; he didn’t want to encourage her, though he doubted she needed any encouragement.

  She had that concentrated look of avid curiosity on her face.

  He turned to face her on the swivel chair and determined to answer her questions as honestly as he could. Perhaps if she knew more about him and his Kind, she would abandon her illusions and what she thought she felt for him.

  They could never have anything permanent.

  For one thing, he would outlive her for hundreds, if not thousands of years, remaining forever as he was now while she aged with each passing day, relentlessly moving toward death.

  A vein throbbed in Ryu’s temple.

  He wouldn’t be able to survive watching her die.