Carnal Sacrifice (3 page)

Chapter Four

Delaney was even more beautiful than he remembered.

She was dizzy and disoriented, of course. After all, they were in a sacred space. When the sun set and the Hungering Ones stirred, mortals felt the change too. Some grew dizzy; others fainted. Val used to say there was enough mystical energy in this one spot to reanimate all the witches of Salem. But then, Val used to say a lot of things.

Most of them were on the subject of his love for this mortal. Shameful and unnatural was what she called it. Now, that love may very well prove to be his salvation.

“Jaden.” Delaney’s dark eyes widened in apparent shock. She took a few steps toward him, and then toppled bonelessly. Jaden caught her in three strides.

The warm scent of her intoxicated him. She was in his arms again, where he could protect her, where she belonged. Her masses of dark hair spilled over him, as soft and inviting as a drowsing animal. He feasted his eyes on her patrician nose, the fuller bottom lip, the delicate gold hoops that rimmed her lobes. His heart pounded in excitement, pain, rapture at her nearness.
Delaney, why did you leave me…?

Memories came rushing back—Delaney at sixteen, equal parts bold, awkward, smug, self-doubting.

He lived on those memories, lived inside them even, trapped there with the stage lights and paparazzi flashbulbs and the silent yearning for that one thing that wasn’t there, the thing that was real. That was her.

Her eyes flickered open again, and then bore deep into his. “You’re not well. You shouldn’t be walking. The altitude.”

“I’m fine. You’ll be fine too. In a few minutes, the dizziness will pass. It’s stronger here because we’re inside the temple.”

“Your mother.” Her voice fell to a whisper. “Do you know what happened?”

His mother—even why he’d arrived here—was a complicated subject. Too much to go into now. How would he convey that no matter what might have happened on that bus, his mother wasn’t dead in the way Delaney understood death?

He decided on the truth. At least, the truth that he could tell her. The rest… He would need courage for that. And if she accepted her role in the sacred rite, she would need courage too, along with strength, stamina, and a willingness to throw herself into an abyss of such raw carnal pleasure, few mortal women could survive it.
“Not all trials are by fire,”
Val had once said.
“Some require that which burns far hotter than flame.”

“I didn’t come here because of Val,” he said. “I came here because of you.”

The surprise of it registered on her face. “But the bus…”

“Went over the cliff. I know.”

“Jaden, you realize she didn’t make it, right? We couldn’t recover the bus. I’m so sorry. There was an earthquake—”

“Please, Delaney. I can explain it all later. No questions now.”

With visible effort, she went silent. He set her on her feet. She gazed up at him, half her face illuminated by the light of the lantern, the other half in darkness. The air itself seemed to vibrate with increasing awareness as his excitement mounted, and his life in LA receded. All that celebrity bullshit. All those tawdry substitutes. The only thing he’d ever truly wanted was here.

He trailed his fingers down her cheek and saw her eyes flicker. A man could drown in those eyes, that mouth, the sweetness of it. He could tell she remembered their last moments together, remembered and yearned as he had yearned. New strength surged through his body. Now that night had come, he came alive.

It was Delaney whose lips he touched, whose blood he craved. He’d tasted her moon blood but never drunk from her. If she accepted her mission, she would be the only thing that kept him and others like him from turning completely demon and ravaging the earth.

But now it was his cock that was stiffening with blood. He could feel it lengthening inside his jeans. Tentatively, she skimmed it with her fingers, butterfly soft. Her gaze met his again, unflinching. Under the cotton tee she wore beneath her camp shirt, her nipples stood out sharply. He wanted to circle them with his tongue, then pinch and roll them the way she liked. He’d made her come like that once while she rubbed against his thigh. The memory made him harder.

“Delaney,” he said. Her lips were moist and pink and near enough to taste. With ruthless impatience, he kissed her.

Desire coursed through him. He’d meant to talk to her first, to explain. But the urgency of his need overruled everything else. She was crying softly as he kissed her. He could feel her body trembling against his. Frustration and longing surged out of the place where he’d locked them for two long years. They flooded his senses with the mindless need to fuck, to possess, and in the possessing, destroy the walls that held him in check. The other truth of what he was, what he would become without her, lay in wait like a beast in chains. He could feel the savagery of it tearing at him beneath the skin. It told him to drink her, to find release, to seek salvation. But he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t because he loved her.

He could hear her whimpering now. It thrilled him. Straitlaced Delaney Jones, captain of her lacrosse team and the chess club, pushing his jeans down and then kneeling in submission in front of him. With palpable need, she took his cock in her mouth, swirling her tongue around the head, and then letting him slide in and out of her mouth, going deeper with every stroke. Already his balls ached to empty themselves in her hot, willing mouth. He loved that she wanted it. But he wanted things too.

With effort, he pulled out of her mouth and lifted her up to undress her. He put his tongue where his cock had been, felt her soft lips part to receive him. Still kissing, he drew her T-shirt up, pleased she wore no bra, and then brushed his thumbs against her nipples, teasing them, making her squirm.

“You know what I’m going to do to you, right?”

She shook her head, clearly too aroused to speak. He peeled the T-shirt off, then her shorts. The warm scent of her spiraled up like an exotic perfume, making the swollen head of his cock bob in acknowledgment. Her beauty held him spellbound. The long tapering waist had voluptuous appeal. Her breasts jutted between skeins of silky hair. At some point, she’d kicked her shoes off and now stood barefoot. Delaney must have known what she was giving him. He knew what he was receiving.

He grabbed her bottom and lifted her onto him. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and her legs around his waist. With exquisite slowness, he penetrated her, inch by inch, watching her eyes grow dark and liquid, listening to her shuddering breaths. She was so wet and hot and tight, he thought he might pop right there. Not a night had passed that he didn’t crave her. Not a woman had graced his bed that could eclipse the nights he spent with her, nights like this one, nights that felt like dying. But then he’d learned long ago, sometimes you had to die in order to live.

With her ankles crossed behind his back, he could feel her heels tapping him as he intensified his thrusts. She made urgent, pleading sounds that only increased his frenzy. He knew she was close to climaxing. He knew what it would take to keep her cresting that wave over and over until she forgot everything but that, everything but him.

Still impaling her, he strode over to the sacrificial altar and leaned her against the steps. One hand he used to cup her bottom. With the other, he parted her labia and lightly rubbed her swollen clit, continuing to ease in and out, feeling her come almost instantly. She spasmed around him even before crying out with a curious mixture of ecstasy and loss.

The minute her first peak subsided, he sent her on a second, a third, a fourth. She gave up all pretense of keeping her legs locked around him and just yielded to the overpowering urgency of her own need, her own pleasure. He watched her, his heart aflame, humbled by her willingness to give herself so utterly to him. Still she kept coming, her knees pulled up, her throat bared. He forced himself deep and held it there, administering light pinches to her clit that threw her spinning into yet another racking orgasm. Her sex gripped him like a fist. All he wanted to do was lose what was left of his mind inside her, but he couldn’t. Not yet.

Blindly, he lifted her the rest of the way so she lay faceup on the altar. In two seconds, he was over her. She trembled beneath him, hands flexing and closing, her black hair cascading across the stone like a river at midnight. With a growl, he slid himself against the hard nub of her sex, and then squeezed inside, hearing her gasp, feeling the full depth of her in this position. Now he could sheathe himself completely, down to the base, and ride the back wall where he knew she came the hardest.

She arched her back, and he could feel her peaking again. When he opened his eyes to enjoy the pleasure of watching her, blood boiled up from the pores of the stone. It bathed them in red and filled his nostrils with the scent of wet pennies. It was hard to form a coherent thought, but he dimly realized it had to be part of the sacred rite—blood perhaps, from the Inca maidens who’d been sacrificed there. But blood was his call to transformation. Already he could feel it stirring the beast within. Desperately, he fought back. Delaney didn’t fully know his true nature. Yet he could feel the ache of his incisors growing, the heat that gathered behind his eyes that gave them their preternatural glow. There were other changes too, less subtle ones. Vampires fed on blood; cocks were engorged with blood. His swelled and lengthened and filled her to the breaking point. She cried out in pain and in pleasure.

But this was no way for her to confirm what she’d probably suspected. Her eyes flashed open in surprise then, and he knew that she knew. Tears streamed down her blood-smeared face even as he brought her to orgasm, itself an act of surrender. He could feel her delirious pleasure as though it were his own, the thick dark heat of it. Delaney trusted him. The realization awed Jaden and made him even more determined to be worthy of that trust. When she reached up to touch his face, his demon face, he thought his heart might burst.

“I’m not afraid,”
she said, mind to mind.
“Don’t hold back.”

He couldn’t. Not now. Blood was all around him, a sea of blood. It created a kind of scalding friction between them. It was smeared over her face, her breasts. It intoxicated his senses. His cock was so hugely engorged, he could barely move. She let him feel how it stretched her open, drove her up and up and up until she cried out, writhing beneath him. And still more blood came flooding across the sacrificial stone where they fucked, a primal orgy of lust and redemption. As tempting as it was to drink, he wanted her more than blood. But there was no turning back at this point. He drove his massive cock into the wet tight sleeve of her sex and convulsed, flooding her, spurt after spurt, emptying himself inside her. Never had he felt anything like this release. It possessed him and washed him clean again. When the last eddies subsided, he was spent.

There was so much he needed to tell her. And she wasn’t going to like everything he had to say.

Chapter Five

Delaney lay panting on the sacrificial altar. Her hair streamed with blood. Her body quivered from Jaden’s assault. The dreaminess of the sexually sated stole over her, mingled with the dread of acknowledging something she had somehow known but refused to accept as true.

Jaden was a Hungering One. They were real.

Jaden was a vampire.

Being able to mind-link with him was the least of it. But for the rest, who he was…

“You came to me, didn’t you?” she said. “In dreams. You’ve been trying to tell me for the past two years.”

He brushed the backs of his fingers against her cheek. “I was afraid to show you what I was. What if you’d hated me for it?”

“I could never hate you.”

“I’m a vampire, Delaney. You’ve dedicated your life to helping people. Vampires aren’t known for their humanitarian causes.”

She pushed that thought aside. Had to. Otherwise, she might have run screaming. “The blood. It
is
blood, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“How…?”

“I don’t know. A portent, maybe.”

She didn’t want to know about any portents, not yet. There were still so many questions. “You didn’t have altitude sickness, did you?”

“No.”

In movies, vampires slept by day and roamed by night. Was that what happened? Growing up, she’d just assumed that Jaden and Val were night owls. With a start, she realized that not once had she seen Jaden actually go to school. He was older, and she’d just assumed he went to school later than she did, or skipped a lot. Her head spun. “Your mother. Is…is she one of you?”

“Yes.”

“Before today, I didn’t think vampires even existed.” The word
vampire
sounded strange to her, as though might have hit her head and was hallucinating. “Then Val isn’t dead.”

“No.”

Jaden’s fangs had receded, and his eyes looked human again, but his monosyllabic answers were maddening. He must have sensed her frustration because he added, “I don’t know what happened on that bus. Truly, I don’t. But a bus accident wouldn’t be enough to kill a vampire. We have to be staked or beheaded.”

“When you’re like that, you can read my mind.”

“Yes.”

“But not now? I thought it was something special. Something unique to us.”

“Delaney,
it
is unique. We can… I can only link with the one I love.”

Knowing that was enough to bring her back down again, away from the part of her that wanted to run. But she still had to swallow hard before asking, “Do you feed on people?”

“No. I drink animal blood. Without it, I die.”

The guinea pigs,
she thought. “But not all vampires are like you, are they?”

He shook his head. “That’s why the ones who are, the ones who don’t want to turn fully demon, are here.”

“Here. Why? How many others?”

The smile he gave her was oddly tender, despite the blood that had splattered on his face. “Val and I were never human. We weren’t made vampires. We weren’t forced into being what we are. We were born into it. You could say it’s our lineage.”

“I don’t understand… Well, much of anything right now.”

“I will explain it later. I promise. I have a few questions of my own, you know. But just for now, will you trust me?”

She gazed up at him. Minutes ago, he’d brought her the most ecstatic sexual experience of her life. She’d trusted him then. Could she trust him now? Exhaustion swept over her in waves. Maybe she was too tired to think clearly, or at all. Maybe this was all one of her vivid dreams, but in super-realistic 3-D.

Still naked, he rose and went down the steps. She watched the power and grace of his long legs, the triangular symmetry of his broad shoulders and small hips. Were all vampires this beautiful? He picked up one of the big earthenware jars as though it weighed nothing at all and went outside with it. Huenu had told her there was a watershed nearby—

The village.
Delaney pushed herself up, heart pounding. Since Jaden wasn’t ill, they could leave immediately. She scrambled to her feet, still a little light-headed, and hunted for her clothes. Just then, Jaden came in toting the jar on his shoulder.

“We have to go,” she told him. “You can only travel after the sun goes down, right?”

“I don’t burst into flames, if that’s what you mean. Vampires just can’t stay awake during the day.”

“There was an earthquake,” she rushed to explain. “I need to get back to the village.”

Jaden averted his eyes in a way that piqued her suspicions, but then he set the jar on the floor and smiled. “You can’t go anywhere looking like that now, can you?”

She looked down and realized that was she covered in blood. It shocked her a little, what she’d done, what had happened. Had the blood come from the human sacrifices that occurred here? It felt real. It even smelled real. But the blood must have been mystical.

Grinning, Jaden told her to brace herself. He lifted the jar and poured gallons of cold water over her head. As a point of honor, she gritted her teeth and refused to yell.

When the jar was empty, he set it down, took his T-shirt, and dried her with it. Her teeth chattered, but she stood there docilely, permitting it. Despite the shock of cold water, her eyelids felt heavy. Her muscles throbbed and ached. Jaden’s hands with the shirt lingered at the small of her back, a spot she knew he particularly admired. He rubbed the backs of her legs, and then worked his way up. She could feel him growing erect behind her, bumping against her thigh, and despite the fatigue, her own passion stirred. How was he able to so soon?

“I’m still covered in blood,” he said regretfully. “There’s a blanket in my duffel. Why don’t you find it and warm up a bit?”

It was quilted and silky and smelled of him. She wrapped it around herself and settled down to watch him perform the same cleanup she had. Only this time, she’d be the one laughing. Within a minute, her eyes drifted shut.

She’d been sixteen, the boy one year older—Kenny, a drummer in Jaden’s band, lanky and blond. She might have liked him even if he hadn’t been the brother of a girl Jaden was dating. Delaney couldn’t bear to watch them, Jaden and the girl walking together, holding hands out to her car. Sometimes she thought he did it to spite her, to make her jealous. As though Delaney didn’t know what was going on out there, late at night with the windows steamed over and the faint creaking of the suspension. Kenny found her morosely wandering the garden one night. Amid crickets chirruping and the light pleasing music of a fountain, he kissed her.

At first she didn’t respond. Thoughts of Jaden and the girl oozed thickly through her brain. Then she was the girl instead of shy, intensely private Delaney Jones. And the girl put her lips up to receive Jaden’s kiss.

He’d pulled her into the gazebo then and, with the voracity of the very young, stripped off her T-shirt, her shorts, her panties, while she lay docile as a kitten. He tore a condom from its wrapper with clumsy hands, and then proceeded to deflower her with none of the preliminaries that even she, in her innocence, had reason to expect. She’d hung tight to the fantasy of Jaden rocking between her thighs, but reality hurt. And it wasn’t Jaden.

With a cry, Kenny stopped thrusting. Sweat sheeted his chest. Was this what all the songs were about? What Jaden’s girlfriend rushed him out to her car for?

Then she heard someone running. With a whimper of panic, she pushed Kenny away and clutched her T-shirt against her. Jaden stormed up the gazebo steps, his face a mask of rage.

Grabbing Kenny by the shoulder, he spun him around. “What the fuck are you doing to my sister?”

“Hey, man. Take it easy.”

“You take it easy!”

Kenny didn’t meet Jaden’s accusing eyes as he zipped up. “Seriously, dude. Calm down.”

“I told you, Kenny. I told you a thousand fucking times. Stay the hell away from my sister.”

“It’s not like she wasn’t into it, man. I didn’t, you know, force her.”

“Please, Jaden,” she begged.

Reason seemed to return to him, his rage hardening into something softer. “Get your shit,” he told Kenny. “Then get out.”

Without arguing, Kenny scrambled for his shirt before disappearing into the night.

She sat motionless. Somewhere in the darkness, an owl hooted. The moon hung pale in the Southern sky.

Jaden made no attempt to look away. Slowly, his gaze started at her legs and moved up to where the T-shirt barely covered her. He seemed unable to help it, angry, maybe at her, maybe at himself.

Delaney’s heart was pounding. She felt drugged somehow, waiting for him to awaken her. A warm breeze lifted strands of his hair. He was transfixed, harshly breathing, and without knowing what might happen, she dropped the T-shirt on the floor beside her and parted her knees. The scent of blood from her deflowering spiraled up.

She could almost feel his eyes burning into her. He made an anguished sound deep in his throat.

“Damn you,” he whispered.

Tears sprang up behind her lids. Fiercely, she slid all the way down to the gazebo floor in clear invitation. She didn’t care what happened, didn’t care that it was wrong. All the passion and thwarted longing of the last two years made caring impossible.

He dropped to his knees in front of her, peeling off his shirt, unbuckling his belt. That she’d just been with Kenny didn’t matter. It was as though Kenny had never existed. It was all Jaden. It had always been Jaden.

He took his jeans off, and then kissed her outstretched foot. His hands traveled the length of her leg, searing a trail where they went. He sighed heavily and closed his eyes like a priest capitulating to sin. She was the one who wrapped her hand around his straining erection, who positioned him, who arched her back when he entered her. Jaden was easily twice Kenny’s size. The pain took her breath away, but it was also unbearably erotic.

He lengthened his strokes, watching her with single-minded intensity. She marveled that it was Jaden who held her, who made her whole again. It was as though everything made sense now—why she was here, what she was made for.

Heat gathered deep, friction and heat. It seemed he could tell to the second when pleasure outweighed her pain, when she gave herself over to him. He kept driving her relentlessly toward a precipice, somewhere she’d never been before, not even in her dreams. And she knew no part of her would be the same.

“I love you,” he murmured against her throat. “I know it’s wrong, but I love you.”

She tried to say she loved him too, wanted to say it, but everything ignited all at once, every sensation collided—the scent of Jaden’s sweat-slicked skin, the size and hardness of his cock, the rough urgency of his voice. She was drunk with it, crying out for him, rolling her hips to ride out the last eddies. Then she felt his body go rigid as he came, each contraction pulsing, each cry wrenched from him.

Gradually, the water sounds of the fountain reached her, along with a playful wind sifting through the trees. The shock of what she’d just done hit her all at once. It felt as though she’d never known herself, who she was, what she was capable of. She’d invited Jaden to seduce her. She’d slept with two men in one night—not just one night, but consecutively. It wasn’t possible. Delaney Jones volunteered at Habitat for Humanity. She weeded and hoed at Sustainable Harvest. Just last week, she braved the eye-rolling contempt of her stepmother and the fond indulgence of her father by telling them she planned to devote herself to helping the less fortunate. “Rich white guilt,” Val said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “At some point, you’ll come to your senses.”

And now she would suffer the consequences of her shameful desire. Not pregnancy—she was on birth control to help regulate her periods. But something far more costly: her self-respect.

When Jaden kissed her, she could tell he was still high with passion. Already his cock was stiffening, lengthening.

From a distance, she heard Jaden’s girlfriend calling his name. He heard it too, because with the mad scrambling of the conscience-stricken, he grabbed his clothes even before Delaney grabbed hers. He yanked up his zipper, swearing, while she pulled on her shorts. Her T-shirt dropped over her head just before Jaden’s girlfriend appeared on the walkway leading to the gazebo. Had she seen them? Delaney could hardly breathe.

“Didn’t you hear me yelling for you?” the girl said irritably. Delaney sat on the gazebo bench, making an elaborate attempt to look casual. Jaden sat beside her with his legs crossed.

“Sorry,” he said. “We were talking.”

The girl slid her eyes toward Delaney. The hostility was unmistakable, despite her saccharine smile. “How sweet.”

Delaney heard the sarcasm, but there was no double meaning to the statement. She allowed herself a shaky exhale.

The girl sat between them, then sidled over to Jaden. She smelled of cigarettes and Chanel. Her hair was curlier than Delaney’s, dark like hers, but it tumbled over breasts twice her size. Delaney felt a stab of jealousy, and then told herself how wrong it was to feel that way. Everything about it was wrong. She herself was wrong. The Delaney she knew wouldn’t have dreamt of sleeping with another girl’s boyfriend, even if that boyfriend was Jaden.

He and the girl made small talk while Delaney sat in silent misery. Her head ached. Everything between her thighs ached. Jaden cast her searching looks. He was worried about her, she could tell, worried and bewildered and as desperately afraid and in love as she was. But he had a girlfriend. And he was her stepbrother.

“I’ve got to go,” Delaney said suddenly. She stood, horribly self-conscious, convinced the girl could tell what she’d been up to just by looking at her.