Chasing Shadows (A Shadow Chronicles Novel) (16 page)

“Bite me,” he whispered huskily.

I shook my head. “No. I don’t want to risk it,” I replied, my own voice breathy as I came ever closer to release.

He lifted the wrist I had bitten the night before and held it in front of my face. “You want to, Saphrona—I know you do. And I want to give you that pleasure again. Let me do this for you.”

He was right, I
did
want to. I wanted the taste of his blood in my mouth as the feel of him pushing inside me sent me over the edge; I wanted those two pleasures to combine as they had the night before so that I would feel that same mind-blowing ecstasy.

I moaned as his thrusts continued to push me toward orgasm. I started to gasp again. “Mark, you don’t…you don’t get anything out of it. Why would you…?”

He leaned closer and flicked his tongue across my lips. “On the contrary, love. Giving you pleasure is what gives me pleasure.”

With his eyes on me, I let go of his head and took hold of his wrist, bringing it to my mouth as my canines dropped and biting down…and then my world exploded.

Mark cried out his own release as I began to drink, and I closed my eyes as I fed, my hips jerking against his as we carried each other over into that place of mindless oblivion. The taste of him was heaven; my body felt warm and alive and powerful, and I never wanted it to end.

But somehow I remembered that it had to. I had to stop or I would do irreparable harm to Mark—if I didn’t stop drinking his blood he could die, and that was something I couldn’t live with. As I reluctantly lowered his arm I opened my eyes to find him staring at me with a glassy, far off look in his. Concern flooded my veins and I grabbed his head in my hands.

“Mark?!
Talk to me.
Please say something,” I pleaded.

Mark sagged against me, laying his head on my shoulder. “Wow,” he whispered, his breathing labored.

I raised an eyebrow. “Wow?” I queried.

“That was incredible.”

“What do you mean?” I pressed. “I thought you didn’t…”

Slowly, carefully, he leaned back, holding himself up by bracing his hands on the edge of the sink on either side of me. “I don’t know if what I felt is what you felt. I just know that seeing that look of pure bliss on your face as you fed and climaxed at the
same time made me feel like the most powerful man in the world. Definitely rocked my world, that’s for sure—I’ve never come so hard in my life.”

I smiled slowly,
then
picked up the hand I had fed from. Once again the wounds were already closed, but there was still blood there, and so I brought the wrist to my lips and licked, cleaning it away. I felt Mark tremble, felt the residual waves of my own orgasm flutter through me, and abruptly laughed.

Back to Top

Because we were already in the bathroom, Mark and I took a shower together, which led to other fun pursuits, and by the time we were through he had a second bite mark on his shoulder. Although he admitted to feeling woozy, he said he was otherwise fine and feeling great.

Still, I was concerned. “I shouldn’t do that every time we make love, it makes you too weak,” I said as we dressed. “And you may want to start taking an iron supplement as well, and some B-12, to avoid becoming anemic.”

He stopped buttoning his shirt and stood at attention, saluting smartly. “Yes ma’am,” he said with a grin.

“And protein,” I went on, pulling on socks and slipping my sneakers on my feet. “You may want to add more protein to your diet—eggs and red meat, that sort of thing.”

“Well, I have recently moved to a farm where there are hens that lay eggs every day. And my girlfriend makes a mean omelet,” Mark told me lightly.

I had to grin at that. I liked that he had called me his girlfriend, and I liked the sudden feeling that I was loved unconditionally.

“Not that I’m complaining or anything,” Mark said, drawing me back to the here and now, “but are you as curious as I am about the fact that we’ve had so much sex?”

Unprepared for such a question, I froze when I stood. Cocking my head to the side as I considered it, I realized he was right—six times in less than 24 hours did seem a bit excessive.

“It’s the bond,” I explained after another moment’s thought. “I might not know everything I
should
know about being a vampire, but I do know that pair-bonding amplifies things.”

“Like what?” he queried.

I led us out of the bedroom and started downstairs.
“Well, our emotions for one thing—our feelings for each other.
Our concern for each other’s safety is another. We’ll be even more aware of each other’s presence. Also, my drinking your blood means I can find you anywhere, for as long as the blood is in my system.”

Mark’s expression showed his interest.
“And the sex thing?”

I smiled. “Our bond also increases our desire for one another and subconsciously drives us to mate, though the intensity of our need is supposed to abate after some time. Shapeshifters must go through the same thing, because even Juliette knew we’d have a hard time keeping our hands off of each other.”

I paused as I was pouring a cup of food into Moe and Cissy’s bowl, which the two little dogs dove at immediately. Standing, I turned to Mark, who was pulling the basket of eggs from yesterday out of the refrigerator. “Speaking of your sister, where is she? What, um, what happened last night after I stormed out of here?”

He put the eggs on the counter and turned to me. “I told Juliette that my life was my own, and that if she wanted to continue being a part of it she needed to stop interfering,” he said. “I also told her the accusations needed to stop, and that she
needed to apologize to you, because I trusted you. And I do trust you, honey, but I really do wish you had told me about your father’s request sooner. I want to help you, if I can.”

I nodded. “You’re right, I should have. And I’ll be honest—I have no clue what I’m going to do just yet, but I do know I’ve got to find a way of making Vivian Drake and her source of information less of a target on Diarmid’s radar, before the truth gets out. He might still love me despite the fact that I have none for him, but even I couldn’t say whether or not that love is stronger than his ambition to join the Council of Ancients.”

“You said the Ancients are the vampire version of Congress?”

I nodded. “Something
like
that. They make and enforce all the rules of vampire society. Now that you know about me, if you were a normal human I’d have to have you turned or killed, according to the law.”

“If I were a normal human, I would
want
to be turned if it meant being with you forever,” Mark said in reply.

Inordinately pleased by that declaration, I started to smile, but then was startled by a knock at the door.

“That’s probably Juliette,” Mark said, and walked over to the door to open it.

Indeed, Juliette was standing on the other side, and I realized she had spent the night in the apartment over the barn despite the fact that I had thrown her off the property. She came inside slowly, a wary look on her face. “Are…are you guys all right?”

Since I didn’t think she was referring to our physical health, I said simply, “We’re good.”

Juliette
came
further inside and Mark shut the door. “I’m sorry,” she told me. “And not just because Mark told me to apologize to you—I really am sorry. I talked to my mother last night after the big blow-up, and she has a theory as to my reactions.”

Mark scoffed.
“Oh really?
And what did Mom have to say?”

She glanced at him. “Apparently, I’m jealous. I don’t see it because I’m right in the middle and can’t be objective, she says, but I’m supposedly jealous because there is a new woman in your life. I’ve had you mostly to myself for all this time, and now I am being forced to share. Oh, and apparently I don’t think any woman is good enough to deserve you.”

Her brother chuckled. “You never did like any of my girlfriends,” he mused.

Juliette looked at me again. “I told you that I believed you when you said Mark was your bondmate, and I did—I could see it in your eyes that you were telling me the truth. Because of that I should not have accused you of intending to hurt my brother.”

I stared openly for a moment before replying. “I think,” I began slowly, “that you are just worried about your brother’s safety, especially after having personally been his guardian for the last year. I understand that, because the truth is that he
is
at risk from vampires because of what he is. But he is not at risk from me, and I do not know any other way that I can convince you of that except to say that I love him.”

She nodded. “Intellectually, the fact that I believe what you’re saying should be enough, but I cannot help being afraid on his behalf that he’s going to come to harm. Especially after you told us that psychic said you’d be meeting each other at a time
when you needed one another he most.”

“I do need Mark right now,” I said. “If you think about it, I needed him to come into my life so I could learn that
dhunphyr
blood is a narcotic to vampires, something I didn’t know before you told me—and I wouldn’t have met you were it not for him. I also need him to help me figure out what to do about keeping Vivian Drake’s source—that is, me—safe from being persecuted by my own kind for telling the truth about us even if it was through writing fiction. Maybe that’s something you can help with too.”

I sighed then. “I want us to get along, Juliette. We both love Mark and we both want what’s best for him. There shouldn’t be any enmity between us.”

Juliette nodded her agreement and offered me a small smile.

After that, the three of us settled quietly into making breakfast, and I was happy that the camaraderie seemed to have returned. The only thing that came close breaking our newly-negotiated peace was when Juliette noticed the fading bite mark on her brother’s wrist. She grabbed it and hissed, “What the hell is this?”

Mark pulled his hand away and carried the large bowl of scrambled eggs (we’d used the entire dozen) to the table. “Looks like a bite mark,” he said casually.

Juliette looked at me as I sat a heaping plate of bacon next to the bowl of eggs. “You bit him?”

I felt heat coloring my face and neck, but nodded. “I didn’t mean to, it just…happened.”

“The first time, anyway,” Mark pointed out. “The second and third I do believe I clearly told you to do.”

“Mark!” his sister and I exclaimed at the same time.

I noticed Juliette was making an effort not to get angry. “I thought you said he wasn’t at risk from you,” she said in a carefully controlled voice.

“I’m not,” he replied firmly, speaking for me, “although the fear that I am is something the two of you now have in common.”

He sat in the chair he had occupied the night before. “Look,” he began, addressing his sister, “I know you’re going to think I’m nuts for letting her do it, because she’s half vampire and there is the possibility the addictive nature of my blood will one day make her so crazed she won’t be able to stop. But I trust her, Juliette. And we both know what we’re doing.”

She looked at me again. “Is he going to become a vampire now?” she wanted to know.

I shook my head. “No,” I said, to which she sighed with relief. “Draculin is only produced by full vampires. Just like my pineal gland, I got my salivary glands from my mother. I don’t know if that’s a female trait or if it’s true for all hybrids, because I’m the only one I know. But all the stories I heard as a child said both male and female hybrids were the same in that regard.”

“But you don’t know for sure?”

“Juliette, if I had the ability to create a vampire Mark would be paralyzed and in agony right now. But as you can clearly see, he’s fine. That mark on his wrist will be gone before you know it.” I sat down in the chair to Mark’s right. “When I see my brother later today, I’m going to be asking him some questions. He’s more than three
hundred years old, so I’ve no doubt he’ll have the answers.”

At long last, Juliette sat down as well. “But will he tell you the truth? Seems to me that—even if you did give up most of the vampire life—you should know more than you do, and you’ve been kept in the dark about a lot of things.”

I shrugged. “Or maybe there were just some questions I was too afraid to ask. But Lochlan and I are pretty close. I have to believe that if I ask him a direct question, he’ll give me an honest answer—otherwise I will have been a trusting fool my entire life. And that is a frightening thought indeed, because if there is no one person in my family that I can count on, then who can I trust?”

Mark reached for my hand and brought it to his lips. “You can trust me.”

I smiled, feeling full of joy and warmth at his surety. We were both of us surprised, though, when Juliette declared, “We’re family now. You can trust me, too.”

*****

After breakfast was over and the dishes were done, Mark and I set about the morning farm work, while Juliette borrowed his truck to go into town and get her own things. As we were leading the cattle out to their pasture, I suddenly stopped in mid-stride as something dawned on me.