Dark Pleasures_A Novel of the Dark Ones Read online

  “Not… not between you and me. Not given the way we feel.”

  Her adorable bushy brows furrowed a bit. “What do you mean? Isn’t it like two little stabs? Your teeth are bigger than needles, smaller than knives, so the pain is somewhere in between the kind caused by one or the other?”

  He closed the couple of inches of distance between their bodies and surrounded her with his much larger frame.

  “Let me show you,” he whispered and bent his head down to brush his lips against the tender skin of her neck.

  But instead of striking, he simply nuzzled her as he enfolded her in his arms loosely, almost protectively, bringing her stomach flush against his hard, pulsing sex.

  “Show me,” she couldn’t help but to urge when he still didn’t bite her. Instead of lacing her with fear or doubt, the anticipation was making her unbearably aroused.

  “I want to feed you.”

  Where were these words coming from, Grace was distantly amazed at herself.

  She wanted to be someone’s food?

  She wanted it so badly, in fact, she was ready to slice open a vein herself and make him take it! It was a biological imperative to give him her blood, her body, her—everything.

  It didn’t make any sense, but Grace couldn’t fight it. Not with cold logic, not with all the reason in her formidable, computer-like brain. For once, some other part of her was calling the shots. It wasn’t her libido either, though she was hyper sexed up; it was something primitive and unconscious, involuntary and undeniable.

  Just when she thought she’d self-combust with this white hot need to be his, she felt the slow burning sting of his penetration.

  *** *** *** ***

  The long, loud, vibrating moan Grace uttered as Devlin sank his fangs into her throat spiked his bloodlust even further.

  Lust for blood. Lust for sex. Lust for her.

  He’d tasted her sweetness before, when she’d purposely pricked her finger against his fangs the first night of their acquaintance. He knew that her blood had the power to enslave him, make him weak even as it filled him with vigor. It was unlike any other he’d tasted over the two centuries he’d been a Dark One.

  Tangy like raspberries. Thick and sweet like honey. Salty like caramel. So indescribably potent. Addictive.

  As her blood blossomed on his tongue, bursting with the unique flavors and essence of Grace, Devlin knew he was changed forever.

  No other’s blood would satisfy him now. Perhaps his basic needs for survival, but not the needs of his heart, body, mind and soul. Her blood changed him, as surely as if her red blood cells carrying the unique coding of her DNA had infused and combined and metamorphosed with his, awakening a part of him that had always lain dormant, a part that clamored to claim her as: Mine.

  He crushed her into his body more forcefully as he fed, no longer gentle, or in the least gentlemanly. The engorged head of his sex prodded demandingly at her belly, frustrated to be trapped between their bodies rather than squeezed within her hot, wet cunny, weeping with its own ravenous hunger, straining for release.

  He backed her into the wall of the shower and lifted her. When she obligingly wrapped her arms tightly around his neck, he grasped her hips and brought them flush against his groin, his long, thick, pulsing penis sliding slowly through her swollen nether lips from tip to base.

  “Please,” she urged in her low, sultry voice, her fingernails digging into the muscles of his upper back, breaking the skin with her ferocity.

  “Now, Devlin. Please.”

  He hesitated only for a split second, pausing on the edge of a precipice, knowing that in choosing to fall into the unknown abyss he’d be taking a leap of faith. He’d be giving a part of himself up. To her.

  To Grace.

  Slowly, painstakingly, he pulled her hips back and positioned himself at her entrance. His draws on her vein slowed as well, but deepened at the same time.

  And then he began to push into her, inch by voluptuous inch, making her feel every magnified sensation of his hot, satiny cock grinding through her tight, throbbing tunnel, the drag of their most sensitive flesh against one another igniting incendiary sparks of pleasure that harkened explosive fireworks to come.

  “Oh my God,” she groaned helplessly as he was finally, finally, seated within her to the hilt, the head of his penis rubbing fully against the hard ball of her pleasure deep inside. The exquisite, perfect pressure he created within her set off the first of her orgasms, like the split of lightning before a long roll of thunder.

  Steadily, slowly, he continued to draw at her vein, in the same unhurried, frustrating and devastating manner in which he pulled a few inches out of her and pushed deliberately back in. Deeper and deeper with every stroke, grinding unerringly against the hard knot of her pleasure.

  One roll of thunder led to another, punctuating the endless chain of orgasms he set off within her. Her voracious core pulled and squeezed at his sex, demanding more, demanding all of him. She wrapped her legs tightly around his hips, used them as leverage to move in counterpoint to his slow, measured thrusts, amplifying and multiplying the pressure and pleasure of his claiming of her and her possession of him.

  “Devlin,” she sighed, nearly overwhelmed by the incredible bliss of feeling him move so deeply and powerfully within her.

  “Come with me,” she urged, needing desperately to feel the flood of his seed against her womb.

  He was working her with a single-minded determination to maximize her pleasure and minimize his own. The achingly slow, shallow thrusts against her G-spot deep inside were driving her mad with ecstasy, so intense and so continuous she could barely breathe. But she wanted him to feel the same helpless surrender. She wanted him to release all of himself into her. Again and again and again.

  Pinned like a butterfly to the shower wall, she didn’t have much mobility. But fortunately, she knew a few secrets of his body to unleash the wildness within him.

  She took her hands from behind his neck to squeeze between their bodies and drag down his muscled chest. She pressed her thumbs against his hardened nipples and felt his breath hitch.

  Flattening her palms against his pectorals, she raked her fingernails gently and repeatedly across his areolas and their tight little buds, and used the leverage she gained with her hands to push herself farther away from his body, sliding him out almost to the tip. Then she gyrated her hips with a surge of power and forcefully impaled herself onto his staff again.

  Faster and faster her lower body pushed and pulled against him, creating a friction so raw, so blazing it bordered on pain. But her vagina was slick with juices from her countless orgasms and melted the pain into blinding, building pleasure.

  And as she reached the zenith and arched her back until it cracked, bending to ecstasy’s will, he too lost control and pulled away from her throat with a muted roar.

  Hot gushes of his semen flooded her core like tidal waves breaking against the cliff of her desire. Endlessly, he released into her, his painfully hard erection jerking and pulsing within the tight clasp of her sex, the strength of her blood exploding within him.

  In this moment, infinite and timeless, their bodies were one, their blood united. He experienced her climax as his own; she lived his release through her blood inside of him.

  When the gusts of his breathing subsided to a gentler breeze, Devlin licked the puncture wounds in Grace’s neck closed and lingered there to nuzzle.

  And partly to hide his face from her.

  He was afraid he might have tears in his eyes if she looked at him just now. Tears that wouldn’t be camouflaged completely by the ongoing shower.

  She wasn’t to know it, but everything had changed. At least for him. There was no turning back now.

  He loved her.

  This strange, awkward, brilliant, mysterious conundrum of a female. A woman who might not be able to return his feelings, perhaps inherently incapable of it. A human who would grow old with time while his youth was evergreen and eternal.
Even if she were willing to be Turned, Devlin, as a vampire made himself could not do the turning.

  Their bond seemed doomed before it truly began. How would he ever survive the loss of her?

  Still, there was no turning back. And even were it possible, he would choose no other but Grace.

  As if she somehow sensed his need for her, not just body, blood and sex, but something deeper, raw and undefinable, her hands cupped the sides of his face and brought his mouth to hers.

  Her eyes were indeed closed this time, Devlin saw as his own remained open. At first she simply rubbed her lips along his, plumping them, teasing them. And then she began to suck at his upper and lower lips separately, treating each one to the same amount of attention and ardor.

  Tasting his breath, lapping the water from the shower that mingled with his unique flavor. Minty and fresh. Spicy and bold.

  When her tongue plunged between his swollen lips and into his mouth, Devlin’s eyes involuntarily slid shut, as if the sensations of her possession were too much to bear.

  It was she who laid claim to him this time, as poignantly as his still throbbing, aching, swollen cock buried deep inside her core.

  She thrust her tongue languorously, voluptuously into his mouth, at times demanding, at times teasing. She held his face immobile as she plundered, as she feasted upon him like a starving woman at an all-you-can-eat buffet.

  “You taste so good,” she groaned into his mouth. “I can’t get enough…”

  More, her lips demanded as they abraded his. More, her teeth commanded, biting into his full lower lip and drawing blood. More, her tongue insisted, as it swept across the sensitive inner flesh of his mouth from roof to sides to tangle with his.

  More, her body urged, as her hips gyrated against him, screwing his erection tighter and tighter within her, as if to lock him there forever.

  More, an unnamed part of her clamored, blowing past her fear at the overwhelming feelings he evoked within her, past all logic, sense and sanity.

  It was no longer pleasure she was after. Unlike any sexual congress she’d ever engaged in, there was no distance between her mind, her body and her unconscious desires with Devlin. They were all melded into one hot mess.

  All she wanted was to devour him, brand him, own him.

  There was no more finesse in the way she kissed, clanging her teeth against his, biting, sucking with her mouth, scratching, clawing with her hands, losing all rhythm and control below. Simply driving herself into him, onto him, all around him.

  With a gasp, he staggered, then braced both arms against the wall beside her shoulders to steady them both.

  She was the one in control now, or out of control, depending how one looked at it, using the strength of her limbs and back muscles to pump powerfully against him, at the same time as she consumed his mouth.

  Her orgasm was raw and explosive, her strong inner muscles milking his sex in a velvet vice, savagely pulling the answering climax out of him.

  He moaned helplessly into her mouth, their lips still sealed together, their tongues still dueling. She took it all inside of her—his sigh of surrender, the harsh, battering beat of his heart, the jerking and shuddering of his tortured sex, the hot, thick flood of his seed. If only she had fangs of her own. She’d take his blood too.

  She’d take all of him.

  As their breathing slowed and their pulses calmed, he stepped further into her, pinning her with the full weight and heat of his body against the wall.

  She reluctantly released his mouth, but couldn’t resist peppering butterfly kisses against his lips, at the corners where his dimples rested in slight grooves, along his chiseled jawline and over his perfect cheekbones.

  Her gentleness now was almost an apology for the ferocity with which she’d ridden him and taken him just moments before.

  Not that he seemed to mind.

  “I thought you don’t like kissing me,” he rasped when he recovered enough breath to speak.

  “I never said that,” she argued, ever a stickler to details. “I said ‘I don’t like the way you kiss.’ Because you made me… feel things I wasn’t ready to feel.”

  “And now you’re ready?” he whispered, gazing into her eyes, searching.

  She shook her head, staring back at him solemnly.

  “They overwhelm me, the feelings. But I don’t think I care anymore.”

  A huff of breath left his chest like an abbreviated laugh or a release of tension. He reached beside her to turn off the shower and dropped his forehead to hers, closing his eyes.

  “Grace.”

  It was all he said, just her name. It sounded like an endearment, a vow, a fervent prayer.

  So she returned the sentiment with equal gravity.

  “Devlin.”

  It wasn’t a declaration of love, he knew, but it was close enough to soothe his vulnerable, aching heart.

  Chapter Thirteen

  He’s disappeared.

  The Creature communicated telepathically with its Mistress through their special connection.

  It didn’t know whether this connection also existed between her and others she commanded, and once upon a time it might have cared, enough to be jealous even, of her bond with the rest of her minions. But now it felt weary and numb.

  Prolonged pain and violence could do that to a soul, especially when it dragged on for years.

  Millennia.

  She offered no response through the link between their minds. It supposed that she already knew, then, that Enlil Naram-Anu could not be found.

  Was he dead? The Creature wondered. Perhaps the Mistress knew the answer already. It wouldn’t ask her, however, it didn’t want to show any curiosity.

  Curiosity implied that it cared about the answer. It really didn’t.

  Care, that was. About anything.

  What do you want to do about Grace Darling? Now that she seems to recall parts of her past?

  A long silence on the brainwaves. The Creature thought she just wasn’t in a conversing mood today.

  And then she gave it the message, Keep watching her. Tell me what she’s doing and where she’s going.

  She’s under the protection of Jade Cicada now, the creature noted, strongly implying that it would be very tricky to know her actions. The Cove was a fortress they had yet to find a way to break through, even when they had a traitor planted on the inside.

  She will come out of hiding soon enough, the Mistress shot back. She will come looking for answers. She will want to know what exactly happened to her parents the day they died. And we will be ready for her when she comes.

  And the prisoner? the Creature reminded her.

  Well, it supposed the correct term would be “ex-prisoner” since Tal-Telal was no longer in the Mistress’s possession.

  A dark portentous silence bloomed between them like the mushroom cloud of an atomic bomb. In retrospect, the Creature realized it probably shouldn’t have brought up the Akkadian General. The Mistress’s moods were extremely volatile when she thought of him.

  He will return to me in the end, she finally hissed across the unknown distance between them. Else he stands to lose everything he holds dear. He knows that I always keep my promises.

  The creature quickly switched topics, not wanting to linger on her venom for the General.

  This tentative truce between the Pure Ones and the New England Dark Queen is erecting obstacles in the way of our progress, it communicated. The Asian fight clubs have all but fizzled out and the expansion in Eastern Europe and Latin America has been slow at best.

  You trouble me with trifles, the Mistress deplored. Have you not the most cunning of minds? Wield it accordingly. Drive a wedge into the alliance. Jade Cicada is not without weakness.

  Indeed she was not, the Creature knew. The traitor had shared quite a few juicy details with it before she met her mortal reward.

  It knew just what to do.

  *** *** *** ***

  As Devlin slept deeply in his bed, a white
cotton sheet twisted haphazardly around his hips, Grace climbed the ladder to his library alcove with Miu-Miu and her red notebook tucked in one arm, which had been delivered along with all the other items she’d requested through a built-in lift beside the bedroom door.

  Her pets had already been fed, it seemed, and Antony and Cleopatra were now swimming contentedly in their borrowed new bowl. It even had a little castle and some pretty seashells on the bottom for decor.

  Whoever her host was, Grace thought, the Great Beauty was most considerate of details.

  She didn’t know what time it was, and for the first time since her parents died, she didn’t particularly care.

  Maybe if she didn’t measure it, her time with Devlin could stretch forever.

  She let Miu-Miu snuffle around the cozy enclosure, surrounded on three sides with shelves of books, the fourth side open to the room below with a glass railing that was so clear and fine it was all but invisible.

  There was a half-moon arrangement of cushions and pillows at one end and a low round table sandwiched between two large, plush bean-bag chairs on the other. All on top of a weave of thick, fluffy sheepskin rugs that covered the entire floor of the alcove.

  Grace slowly wandered from one corner of the built-in library to the other, perusing Devlin’s private collection. The shelves of books stretched from floor to ceiling, but downstairs the volumes were all related to IT, programming, gaming, mathematics, statistics and even business accounting. She’d glimpsed a couple of thick tomes on the random walk of stock markets and financial derivatives.

  Up here, the collection was much more personal. On one side, there were history books for every ancient civilization. On the other side were legacies by famous British novelists and poets, including the complete works of Shakespeare. Grace even recognized some of the others they were so renowned: Wordsworth, Dickens, Austen, Bronte, Byron, Milton, Keats, Blake, to name a few.

  But by far, the works of Shakespeare dominated the library. One book in particular protruded slightly outwards from the shelf, as if it were often read or extending an invitation to be read.