Demon of Mine (29 page)

He returned it
with passion, full of the energy that nighttime brought. All traces
of the tiredness he’d shown when he’d walked through the bedroom
door were gone, and his cock was rigid. She arched against him,
writhing until his erection ground against her sex, teasing it
through the too-many layers of clothing she wore.

“
This isn’t one of your new dresses, is it?” he asked half a
moment after breaking their kiss.

She shook her
head, her nipples stiffening in anticipation as he tucked his
fingers into the neckline of her gown.

“
Good. If it’s one of Lucy’s, tell her I’m sorry I ruined it.”
He took handfuls of fabric and began to tear, neatly splitting her
dress, short stays and shift as easily as if they’d been made of
paper. “If I’m going to do anything slowly, it will be after I’m
inside you.” Her breasts tumbled free of their muslin cover. He
sucked in a breath as he split her skirts in one easy movement and
spread the material across the mattress, leaving her naked save for
the short sleeves that capped her shoulders.

“
You’re beautiful,” he said simply, keeping his gaze on her
body as he slipped out of her hold and quickly undressed, tossing
his clothing aside.

The evening
light flattered his already flawless body, casting his fair skin in
cool tones that complimented the midnight sheen of his hair. The
contrast between the dark curls at his loins and the hard length of
flesh that stretched from them was mouth-watering. She meant to
pull her arms out of the useless sleeves, but he laid his body on
top of hers before she could move, wrapping her in a tight
embrace.

She moaned as
his flesh met hers, firm and smooth. Her entire body tingled and
warmed, molding to his. She buried her fingers in his hair,
relishing his scent as he bit her neck teasingly, causing her skin
to pebble and her nipples to prick against his chest. When the
blunt tip of his cock touched her damp folds, her core clenched in
anticipation. She gripped his hips snugly between her thighs and
hooked her legs behind his back, urging him to enter
her.

He buried his
cock inside her without hesitation, growling as he stretched her
hot, wet flesh to its limit in one bold stroke. Her core tightened
in response, holding his cock as tightly as he was holding her,
cradling her between his arms as he pulled back, groaning, and
pushed into her again, somehow managing to sink even deeper into
her than before. As he continued to thrust, her body managed to
accommodate his increasing intensity, if barely, as she grew used
to the size of him again. Her channel grew tighter and more
sensitive as an exquisite pressure mounted inside it. He bit her
neck again, letting his teeth scrape across her flesh in a way that
would have made her pulse race, if she’d had one. She gasped and
writhed beneath him, but he wrapped a strong arm all the way around
her and held her tight against his chest.

Despite their
first wild night in the rose garden and the times they’d made love
since, his intensity took her by surprise. Was this what he was
like when he knew he was going out to hunt, to make a kill? A voice
called out from somewhere in the back of her mind, telling her she
should be concerned for him. It was drowned out by her own wordless
cry as Damon continued to drive their tangled bodies closer and
closer, until the only part of him that felt distinctly separate
from her own body was his cock. Firm and unyielding, it couldn’t
have been more different from her own sex, which stretched and
conformed to the stiff length of his. Her last coherent thought
before she tipped over the brink of ecstasy and began to come was
that if he showed the killer half the intensity he was showing her,
the murderer didn’t stand a chance.

Chapter 17

Something cold
ran down Elsie’s spine, forcing the breath from her lungs in a gasp
of surprise. She opened her eyes, but all was dark, her
surroundings so black she couldn’t see anything. A terrible weight
pressed down on her as she flailed, limbs reeling through cold
nothingness. She tried to draw in a mouthful of air, but something
prevented her. She couldn’t breathe.

She forced
herself to stop struggling. She knew this dream. She was a seven
year old girl working in a textile manufactory again, being dunked
in the cistern for falling asleep on the job – or at least, that
was what the dream wanted her to think. She could even hear the
voice of the taskmaster echoing in the background, his curses
muffled and distant to her submerged ears. She wouldn’t give in to
it. She’d simply close her eyes and think of her bed, forcing
herself to wake.

Gradually the
soft feel of fine sheets replaced the dreamed-of watery embrace.
Still, something was wrong. There was still something cold pressing
against her back, and a strange voice uttering curses. She opened
her eyes and saw only blackness – she might as well have been back
in the cistern. But that wasn’t right. Not even night was black to
her now, thanks to her vampire’s vision, which allowed even the
tiniest bit of illumination – a crescent moon, or even starlight –
to let her see for miles. She blinked several times, but the
absolute darkness remained. A thousand frantic possibilities
tumbled through her sleepy mind. Had she gone blind after all – was
she still ill? Or perhaps she was still asleep, and the cistern
nightmare had been a dream within a dream.

The feel of
someone driving a knee into her back snapped her out of her
guessing game.

Rolling onto
her side, she nearly fell off the edge of the bed when her arms
failed to function. She’d meant to throw them out in front of her
body, to brace herself against the mattress, but they remained
behind her back. She struggled to move them, but they’d been bound.
The cold hardness that pressed against the small of her back and
the clinking that ensued made it clear that her bonds were
metallic. The chains were thick and heavy – too strong for her to
break.

Something – a
palm, it felt like – struck her cheek with a hard smack that was
muffled by a layer of material. So that was why she couldn’t see.
Her face had been covered – stuffed into a sack, it felt like. She
tried to cry out, but something had been forced into her mouth.
Finally, it occurred to her to use her feet.

Someone pulled
a length of chain tight around her ankles, stopping her before she
could aim a blind kick at her assailant. She grunted in
frustration, trying her best to wriggle her way over the edge of
the bed. Damon must still be out hunting, but if she could hit the
floor with enough force, perhaps the sound would wake
Lucinda.

Her captor was
too fast for her. Before she managed to tumble over the edge, a
pair of arms seized her, hefting her as if she weighed no more than
a sack of flour. Her chains jingled as she was carried across the
room, and then a subtle screeching sound broke the relative quiet –
the window was being opened.

The sack over
Elsie’s head prevented the cool night air from reaching her face,
but not her body. Clad only in the shift she’d pulled on after she
and Damon had finished making love, her skin pebbled as if she were
naked.

Elsie’s
kidnapper shifted her, securing a tighter hold on her bound body.
Elsie braced herself as her captor lifted a leg, climbing, by the
feel of it, onto the window sill. Cradled in the crouching
stranger’s arms, Elsie barely had time to despair before they were
airborne, rushing toward the ground, which lay two stories
below.

****

A woman’s
scream sounded from somewhere nearby, high and clear with terror.
It was just what Damon had been waiting for. He turned on his heel
and quickly retraced his steps through the narrow alleyway,
careless of the filth that squished beneath his boots. When he
emerged onto the street, which was only a little wider than the
alley, he broke into a sprint, heading in the direction the scream
had come from. As always, he was careful to keep to the shadows –
not that there were many lights illuminating this shabby section of
the city. If anyone caught a glimpse of him, he’d look like a
fleeting shadow, and they’d probably decide that their eyes had
tricked them.

A
low moan came from the left, guttural and distinctly male. Damon’s
stomach twisted in disgust. He recognized the groan – it was the
sound of man taking pleasure in violating an innocent person. He
would stop the sick bastard, would rescue the woman he could hear
sobbing in the very next alley. But would the criminal he found
be
the
killer – the one he’d
given up a night in his wife’s arms to search for?

He could only
hope.

“
You can keep strugglin’ darlin’,” the man growled, “but ye
won’t be gettin’ away, now will ye?”

A high-pitched
shriek was the only reply the woman gave as he shoved her roughly
against a wall, yanking a fistful of her hair. No doubt the grimy,
balding man thought he was carrying out his crime in the relative
secrecy of darkness, safe in a part of the city where no sensible
person ventured outside their home at night, and those that dared
to were likely to be criminals themselves. That was what made
Damon’s job so easy – perverts and criminals like this man never
expected him. They’d probably be less surprised by summertime snow
than the fact that someone cared enough to stop their twisted
deeds.

“
Let me go!” The woman had finally found her voice, though it
trembled as she cried out. Her petticoats churned around her ankles
as she kicked at her captor’s shins, but her efforts were futile.
He was far too drunk to care about the pain.

“
Ha
ha!” he barked a wheezing laugh, his face alight with malice and
amusement.

The woman’s
eyes widened as she realized how little affect her furious kicks
had. Her face was a perfect picture of terror, every line and
contour clear to Damon despite the thick shadows. Heavy rouge and
garishly ruby lips marked her as a prostitute, but that didn’t
matter. Choosing to sell her body didn’t give the man the right to
take it against her will. Damon had stopped enough of these crimes
to know that the disgusting excuse for a man was probably raping
her for the thrill of it rather than out of cheapness.

“
Let me go!” she shrieked, her voice even higher this
time.

The man pawed
the front of her dress in response, ripping the bodice in a brutal,
drunken motion. The woman began to sob. Her assailant still had a
thick handful of her hair wrapped around his fist and was pulling
harder as his excitement mounted. He looked to be close to yanking
her hair out in chunks.

Damon said
nothing, making hardly a sound as he moved quickly forward, hidden
in the deep shadows that permeated the narrow passage. Drunk and
distracted as he was, the fiend probably wouldn’t have noticed
Damon if he’d waltzed down the alley, but he preferred to remain as
invisible as possible.

The would-be
rapist never saw Damon. The smallest of sounds escaped his throat,
along with a cloud of liquor-scented breath, as Damon stood behind
him and settled his hands on either side of his face, twisting
until his efforts were rewarded by the crunch of breaking bone and
cartilage. It was a move that he’d perfected over the years; one
that made it easy for him to kill instantly and with minimal
effort.

“
Get out of here,” Damon growled, keeping to the shadows as the
woman gaped at him. She wouldn’t be able to see his face in the
darkness. He never allowed the people he rescued see him if he
could help it. “Go!”

She stared
wordlessly for a moment longer before finally picking up her skirts
and darting from the alleyway, still sobbing faintly as she
fled.

Finally alone,
Damon knelt over the rapist’s lifeless body. Taking out the small
knife he carried in his pocket, he drew it across one of the man’s
wrists, opening a deep gash in the warm-as-life flesh. It was what
he always did when he didn’t have time to dispose of a bite-marked
body. Lifting the man’s arm, he pressed his lips to the wound and
let the blood rush in, soothing his dry throat. It tasted better
than anything coming from such a disgusting body had a right to. He
drank until his thirst was slaked and then dropped the limp wrist,
glad to leave the corpse behind. As he stepped back out into the
street, he felt hollow inside despite the feeding. He would feel
the bone-deep emptiness until he found the murderer and snuffed out
his wretched life. Until then, the entire city was in
danger.

“
No! Damn it.” He sighed as he barely missed stepping on a
gimlet-eyed rat. The shadows were beginning to fade, along with the
purple nighttime light. The city was just starting to turn bright
and washed out again as the sun rose. The darkness was fleeing, and
he’d failed to find any sign of the killer. The night had passed in
a blur of thieves, rapists and dead-ends. He ground his teeth,
worrying his inner lip with the point of a fang. Soon the tooth
would be blunt and useless again. He had little choice but to hurry
home before anyone caught sight of him prowling the streets in
blood-stained clothing, but he hated himself for every step he
took. Somewhere out there, a victim might be lying dead with their
heart cut out, waiting to be discovered by someone who would be too
late to make a difference.

****