Fury Calls (11 page)

“Possibly,” she admitted with a smile, unable to resist his charm.

At that he grinned, took hold of her hand and led her into his apartment.

 

Lee watched Foley as he made his nightly rounds at the Blood Bank. He had to give Foley credit for his efficiency and inventiveness. When he had won the run-down building in the early sixties during a mah-jongg game in Chinatown, he hadn't known what to do with the space. It had been Foley who had perceived the need for a place where humans clamoring for a walk on the wild side could go. It had been an added benefit that those drugged-up, sex-crazed humans were perfect prey for the vampires.

In the nearly forty years since then, Foley had kept the place profitable. Lee had to say that this new Goth crowd was just as easy to ensnare as the hippies and yuppies before them. The vampires appreciated their easy availability, and up until recently all had been good.

It occurred to Lee, as he watched one vampire corral
and lead a human to one of the back rooms, that it was only a small group of vampires who were giving them problems. Wannabes, he thought, recalling the exchange earlier that night with Meghan and her friend. They seemed to have no fear of him or if they did, they hid it well.

He didn't like their spirit or the human way they seemed to care for each other. So unlike the immortal credo he ascribed to of taking what he wanted when he wanted.

Of course, that had been his credo all his life, not just during his undead existence. It was why as he lay dying on the battlefield, he had been cursed by his opponents and paraded around for all to see his defeat. Their hatred of him was why they had chosen to further dishonor him by refusing to bury him.

Even his own family had not claimed his body, ashamed as they were of the reputation he had built with his merciless attacks and slow punishment of those who had defied him. As his corpse lay rotting and alone, the evil within him had sprung back within his body, intending to seek vengeance on all who had defied him.

He would not be defied in this life, either, he thought. His hand clenched on the tabletop as he considered how he might punish Meghan and her little man. Chastise the circle of friends and the followers who disdained the vampire way for the stench of humanity. The more he thought about all that they believed in and cherished, all the goodness he had despised all his life, the greater his anger grew, until he had devised just the plan for his revenge.

A plan that would deliver his message to the human wannabes who had been busily spreading their sickening sweetness through the Manhattan underworld.

For now, however, he would have to satisfy his anger with someone else. As Foley came into view again, Lee smiled and rose.

He knew just the thing to bring some contentment to his soul.

“S
o your pom-poms were purple?” Blake teased her and rubbed his hand up and down her arm, which was resting against his chest.

They were sprawled together on some kind of lounger, long and with a slight dip in the center. He had covered whatever was beneath with a chenille bedspread in a deep maroon hue that complemented the colors in the rest of the space. The lounger was surprisingly comfortable as they'd lain there for hours, talking and finding out all kinds of things about one another.

Like the color of her pom-poms in her past life.

“Not purple. Violet. And it's ‘G-o-o Bobcats!'” she said, mimicking one of the cheers she'd had to perform as a cheerleader at NYU.

He didn't say anything else; he just kept up the slow
caress on her arm. After long minutes had passed, she said, “It's getting very late.”

He nodded. “Dawn is in a couple of hours. I can feel it coming.”

As she could. It was one of those weird vampire traits that served as an early warning system, like being able to sense Lee's peculiar power or Stacia's elder strength.

“I guess I should be going.” She made a halfhearted motion to rise and immediately regretted the loss of contact with him. “Or maybe not,” she said, and plopped back down next to him.

“It's okay if you stay. We never did get to the part about doing something else with our lips.”

She looked up at him. That sexy grin that caused her heart to do something funky in the middle of her chest was back, along with a wickedly inviting gleam in his crystal-blue eyes.

“You seem fixated on the lip thing.”

His grin broadened. He placed his index finger beneath her chin, then applied gentle pressure to urge her upward until their lips were nearly touching.

“I guess that's what you would call an oral fixation?” He brought his lips to hers and rubbed them back and forth, inviting her to respond, reminding her that she had a choice about what would happen next.

Only Meghan suspected she had made that choice long before this moment.

She closed the distance between them and sampled his mouth, placing kiss after kiss along his top lip and then moving downward to the fullness of his lower lip.
He gently snagged her bottom lip with his teeth and playfully tugged on it before soothing that spot with a lick.

Heat flared within her as she imagined him licking elsewhere. As she remembered the feel of that sexy mouth on other parts of her body. With a shaky sigh, she snuggled closer to him, throwing her thigh over his lower body and feeling the hard jut of his erection against her inner thigh.

She suddenly wanted more and shifted her body until she was covering him, the hard ridge of him nestled between her legs as she straddled him. Leaning over him, she braced her hands on either side of his shoulders as she brought her mouth back to his and dragged herself across his erection. He groaned into her mouth and it vibrated throughout her body, spreading need through every cell of her being.

“Blake, I know this is crazy…” she whispered against his lips, not wanting to lose contact with them for even a moment.

“Crazy, but right,” he murmured, and grasped her hips with his hands, stilling the motion of them.

Meghan didn't know if it was right or wrong. All she knew was that he stirred something inside of her that she hadn't been able to forget in nearly four years, try as she might. Maybe it was time to finally explore that feeling and find out if it was one meant to last or if it was truly the worst mistake of both her mortal and undead lives.

“Touch me, Blake,” she said urging her lips upward, but Blake was clearly in no hurry. He slowly trailed his
hands up her sides, caressing each inch he traveled until he arrived at her breasts.

She sighed as he finally cupped them and began a gentle caress, squeezing tenderly before running his thumbs over their hardened tips.

He raised himself off the bed, bringing his mouth to her breast. He grasped the tip in his mouth through the thin fabric of her top and teethed it until she ached for more. She yanked the tank top up and over her head while he made quick work of her bra.

When she was bared to his gaze, he once again resumed his tarried loving, caressing her breasts, playing with her nipples, until with a bump of her hips against his she once again urged him to taste her.

Blake thought he would explode from the sensations buffeting his body. The feel of her along the length of him. The silk of her skin, soft to the palms of his hands. The hard tips of her breasts, a caramel color against the peach of her skin.

When she urged him on with the grind of her hips, he rose off the lounger once again, eager for a taste. Closing his mouth over one tight nub, he suckled the tip, and she held his head close and urged him on with a soft cry. He shifted his mouth to the other breast but continued the sure caress of his fingers on the breast he had just left. The tip was wet and slick from his mouth.

In response to his ministrations, she dragged herself across his length again in invitation. Considering how long he had been waiting, he wasn't about to refuse.

With tender pressure, he reversed their positions until she was the one lying on the surface of the lounger, her
upper body bare to his gaze to just below her navel, thanks to her low-riding jeans. He just loved those jeans, he thought, as he dipped his head down and planted a kiss right on the sweet indentation of her navel before placing a string of kisses along the softness of her skin above the waistband.

As she had before, she cupped the back of his head and lifted her hips, wanting more.

Blake wasn't about to disappoint.

He undid the snap on her jeans and dragged the zipper open, kissing each bit of flesh that he exposed. When the jeans were fully undone, he eased them off, revealing the darker blonde whorls at her center and her long, toned legs.

He shot only a quick glance at her, hesitant until she parted her legs, making her desire clear.

But he wasn't about to rush the moment he had been anticipating for such a long time.

Leaning against the edge of the lounger, he began with a kiss and nibble on the inside of her ankle, discovering the tattoo of a small heart with an intricate scrollwork of barbed wire.

It suited her, he thought. Meghan had shut off her heart to him for way too long. It had made any of his overtures at apology fall painfully short of reaching her until recently.

He slowly moved upward, trailing his lips and tongue along the inside of her calf, up to her knees. He paused there to glance at her once again and realized she was watching him, her gaze expectant but conflicted. The emerald of her eyes had darkened, reminding him of the
shadows in the pine trees behind the cottage of his old home in Wales.

It occurred to him then that there were so many things about her that brought the comforting memories of home. He only hoped that whatever he could offer would bring such solace to her. That it would be enough to fend off the anger she'd felt.

But even as she lay before him, he could see that she was still reluctant, that the barbed wire still guarded her heart. Her hands were at her sides, clenched into tight fists, as if to keep from reaching for him and finally giving herself over to what was happening.

He intended to break through that reserve. To find a way past the barriers she had put up around her heart.

With greater caution he moved upward, past the tender flesh of her inner thighs and to the center of her. The musky smell of her arousal called to the demon who wanted a taste as well, but Blake drove him back. The demon had already had his fill of Meghan on more than one occasion.

This time the human wanted his share.

He nudged the curls at her center with his nose before finding the nub beneath with the tip of his tongue.

She bucked up then, clearly surprised by the feel of his mouth there, but then he deepened his caress, kissing that swollen nub, licking until she surged off the lounger again.

“Easy, Meghan,” he urged. “I won't leave you wanting.”

He tugged at her again with his mouth before bringing his thumb to the nub and applying gentle
pressure. While he did so, he dipped his head a fraction lower, licked along her nether lips, moist with desire and blushed with the sweet blood that the demon wanted to sample, but which he ignored.

Easing his tongue into her, he mimicked how he intended to love her and then brought his mouth back to her nub while he drew her to the edge with his fingers.

Meghan moved her hips upward, straining, her body awake to every caress. To every movement he made, only she needed more from him. She wanted to feel all of him and share the pleasure he was bringing her with the wonderful touch of his mouth and hands.

Grabbing hold of his shoulders, she sat up and he took advantage of that short break in their connection to rip off the black T-shirt he had been wearing.

When he stepped back within the vee of her legs, his sculpted midsection was directly in front of her face and she laid her lips along the ridges of muscle there. As she worked on freeing him of his jeans, she trailed her mouth down to his navel and licked it, causing a shiver to dance across his body.

She chuckled wantonly and he groaned, bent and tossed away his jeans, leaving him naked before her.

Her insides clenched at the sight of him, magnificent as he was with all the hard muscle and the long, thick length of him that would fill her fully while he caressed her with his able hands and brought a smile to her face with his sinful charm.

As she met his gaze, he seemed to realize she didn't want another second to go by before his possession, and so she made the final invitation.

Lying down, she inched her hips along the lounger until he was poised at her entrance. He lingered there, the head of his penis just barely making contact, and her body responded, growing wet and vibrating with demand for his entry.

He forced a smile. She could see he was near the end of his control, but somehow he managed some semblance of restraint and entered her slowly until he was completely sheathed within her. Contractions she couldn't control milked him, but he surprised her by remaining immobile, gritting his teeth as if his control was paining him.

“Blake?” she asked, and wrapped her legs around his hips, almost fearing that he would leave her now when they had finally made the first step in this dance.

He sucked in a shaky breath and grasped her hands with his to keep her from any motion. “I've no need for heaven now, Meghan. I've found it here with you.”

The burden of such a confession was almost too great for her to bear until she met his gaze and realized that maybe she had found a part of heaven here as well. She placed her hands over his and gently urged them from her waist and to her breasts.

“Make me believe heaven is possible for us, Blake.”

Whatever fragile control Blake had mustered disappeared like dew beneath the morning sun.

He caressed her breasts, tweaking the taut tips with his fingers before soothing them with his mouth. All the while, however, he remained immobile inside of her, savoring the motion of her muscles and the slickness surrounding him. Only when she arched into him, de
manding a fulfillment that he couldn't refuse, did he finally allow himself to move. He shifted in and out of her slowly at first, but then lost any and all restraint as her soft cries and the clutch of her hands on his shoulders drove him on.

She came loudly, calling his name in a soft scream. He followed her, murmuring her name and dropping down onto her, his body depleted of strength.

Somehow he shifted them upward on the lounger while remaining inside of her long after pleasure had sated them and the holding and joining had become about more.

As he cuddled her close, still buried deep within, she slowly relaxed and eventually fell asleep.

But he was awake long after. As he finally softened and slipped from her body, he worried that it might be just as easy to slip from her life again unless he made good on his promise to be a better man.

As he lay next to her, their bodies close, Blake worried and planned for what he would do next. For what it would take to fully recapture the trust he had lost the night he had turned her.

He worried about whether when the time came, he could be the man she needed. If he failed her this time, he suspected that her fury would return with even greater vigor and drive him from her life forever.

Forever without Meghan would be an existence he didn't want to contemplate.

 

Meghan didn't know how she came to be the one brokering a meeting between two scary women—Stacia and Diana.

She suspected that it was because none of the men wanted to risk the wrath of either of the two and hoped Meghan would be a calming influence.

Not that she was feeling calm. She was feeling dazed ever since her interlude with Blake days ago. And confused because she had found comfort in his arms. Not to mention jealous when faced with the prospect of talking to Stacia.

She didn't want to be jealous because that implied she cared for Blake. He had asked her to believe in possibilities, only she wasn't ready to consider that possibility right now.