One With the Darkness (21 page)

“I am yours,” he whispered before he was aware what he was saying. He wished he could catch his words back. He wasn’t hers anymore. He was a free man.

And yet perhaps she held him more securely now than if she owned him. Had he not committed to stay with her, at least through the completion of her plot? He could not abandon her when she needed him. The answer to the
question that was coming meant he should be running back to Centii as fast as he could go.

He wouldn’t think of that. Now she needed to know how to please a man with her mouth, and in spite of what she was, she didn’t know. He wondered if she would let him show her.

She sat up and drank him in with her eyes. Their brown was liquid heat. His cock strained against his belly, caressed by her hot gaze. She reached out a small, graceful hand and stroked it. His breathing faltered as she clasped it firmly with one hand and cradled his stones with the other, kneading gently. He was leaking a little clear fluid, a result of his restraint. Her breasts swayed as she bent and ran her tongue cautiously across the tip. She sat up, startled.

“Does it taste bad?” he asked, worried.

She ran the tip of her tongue over her upper lip, then raised her brows. “No,” she said. “Just surprising. It tastes salty. A muskiness different from mine. It reminds me of … of you.”

He smiled. “A good description.”

She bent again, licked her lips, and this time took the head into her mouth. She did not use her teeth. He had been worried about that. He didn’t want to have to correct her, but he didn’t want to risk emasculation, either. Her tongue swabbed him. He bit his lip. She tried a little gentle sucking. He could not help but lift his hips to her.

“I like that,” she said, sitting up.

“I also,” he managed.

“Can you tell me other things you would like?” She caressed his stones.

“If … if you insist.”

She smiled at him, and he saw mischief in her eyes. “It is your turn to give orders.”

He swallowed, mouth suddenly dry. “Very well. Uh … clasp me firmly at the root.” She did. “Rub your hand along my shaft as you put the tip in your mouth.” She bent and went him one better. She sucked as she slid her hand up and down. His breathing grew ragged. “The … the underside is very … sensitive. I mean the … the upper side to you.”

“That I know. Across this ridge here.” She flicked her tongue across it.

“Ahhhh, yes.” His hips began to move of their own accord. Her tongue swabbed the tip of his cock as she sucked.

“Do you have more instructions?” she paused to ask after a while. She returned to her task.

He writhed, his genitals fully controlled between her hands and her mouth.

She paused again.

“Jergan?”

“Don’t … stop to talk.”

He could feel her smile. She worked at him and he groaned. He was close to coming. With a great effort, he said, “Wait. I want to finish inside you.” She’d said she couldn’t be impregnated. He wanted to fill her. And he wanted to spare her his ejaculation, in case she found that distasteful. “Can you mount me?” He kept his hands behind his neck to make her feel safe. She grinned at him, knelt, and swung her white thigh over his hips. He was so close, so close. But he must stop the growing pressure from releasing. He tried to think of other things.

She made that difficult. She positioned his cock and sank down on it. Her slick softness surrounded him. They throbbed in unison. She raised herself and lowered, her palms on his chest. The curve under her breasts and the fact that her nipples were peaked with desire maddened
him. He thrust up in counterpoint and saw the mounting urgency in her eyes. She sat back, still moving her hips over his cock, ran her hands lightly over her breasts, and then tangled them in her hair. She pounded against him now, gasping for air. He must wait. Wait for her.

Then he felt it, even as she shrieked. Her womb contracted, milking his cock, commanding it to spurt its all into her. He refrained through three contractions; then his own orgasm took him and he strained against her, spurting, spurting.

They collapsed in a heap. The light sweat gleaming on her body mingled with his. He unclasped his hands from behind his neck and hugged her to his chest. They were still joined, groin to throbbing groin. He ran a hand through her hair. She groaned.

“Distasteful?” he asked, suddenly as uncertain as she had been earlier.

She raised her head and smiled up at him. “Delightful. How could the Romans, who love sensation, have denied themselves this?” A worried look washed through her eyes. “Did I perform adequately? You didn’t want to finish in my mouth.”

He chuffed a laugh. “Oh, more than adequately. I wanted to plunge myself into you.” Time enough for other ways in the lovemaking to come. He hoped to have many opportunities. “You were wonderful.” He rolled them to the side, being certain not to lose connection.

She had let him give her orders. This was, perhaps, the final proof that she was a generous person, a generous lover.

Something was happening here. Something that made him nervous. He hardly knew himself at this moment. It wasn’t that he’d chosen to stay for a few days when he could be on the road to Centii at this very moment. Delaying his
own desires he understood. A palisade needed men to build it even though it was hot and the river called. A family needed the deer he’d brought down more than he and his friends did. It was always something. Nor was it that he put his life in danger for her. He’d chosen to be a soldier even though he was a firstborn son. No. It was something else. Something that made him feel as though he’d stepped into a bog concealed by marsh grass.

Weak. That’s what he was. What business did he have with those kinds of thoughts? He should be thinking of what he wanted her to tell him. He had refrained from questioning her earlier, only to be certain she was properly prepared for openness. Well, if she didn’t trust him now, with him still inside her body, she never would.

“Livia,” he murmured into her hair. “It’s time to tell me about the healing.”

S
HE JERKED HER
gaze up to his face. She thought she had escaped his questions. And she felt betrayed. She pushed herself away from his chest. Their hips pulled apart and broke their union. “Is that the reason you came to my bed, so you could pounce upon me with your insinuations when I was so grateful to you for pleasuring me that I would … that I would just …” She sputtered to a stop, a confusion of emotions in her breast. She was a vampire with secrets she could trust to no one. He had ambushed her. But some part of her
did
trust him. Wholeheartedly.

“Nay, Livia,” he protested. “I wanted you to know that you could trust me, that was all.”

He was siding with that part of her that seemed to whisper in the corner of her mind,
Tell him. It is imperative that you tell him all.

But why should she open herself to this man or any other? The part of her that whispered did not answer. Was
it because she could not hear the answer, or because there was none?

Tell him.

He looked at her seriously. “Do you want me to guess? I had some hours to think about it while you were sleeping.”

Fear flashed through her. Could he know? The two halves of her, arguing over what she should do, froze her lips.

“I think,” he said firmly, looking her straight in the eye, “the healing could mean that you are very old. If you can heal burns and wounds like the one on your arm the other night, why not the ravages of time?”

He had guessed it. One part of her was horrified, the other part relieved. She chewed her lip. Finally she nodded. What use to deny it?

“How old?” He was holding his breath.

“More than seven … seven hundred years,” she whispered.

His eyes widened. He swallowed. Twice. “Well, it’s no wonder you are wise. Are you … immortal, like your gods?”

She couldn’t let him think she was a goddess. “I can be killed.” She saw him trying to digest that. She was a fool to tell him the next part.

Tell him.

“Decapitation. I can be killed by decapitation. I can heal anything else. Poisons are nothing to me, or sickness.” There. She had told him her secrets. Now he would know how to kill her if he wanted to do that.

“So, unless you are decapitated, you will live forever.”

“A gift with drawbacks. Some of us go mad from boredom. Some get drunk on immortality and do unspeakable things. At the very least one becomes a cynic, inured to the repetition of man’s weakness and cruelty.”

“You don’t seem any of those things.” His eyes were … tender? After what she had just told him? He seemed to actually accept what she said. He didn’t pull away.

So she might as well tell him the rest. “It’s something in our blood. We call it the Companion. It’s another form of life, too small to see with the naked eye, that swims in our veins. It has power, Jergan. And we can use that power. The Companion rebuilds our bodies and we don’t age. And of course it gives us all those things you know about, strength, acute senses. It makes us … easily aroused.”

“I like that part,” he said, and held her to him. But she could feel a sadness in his voice. He felt the differences between them now, as she did. “Strange to think you are invincible.”

“Not invincible. Drugs suppress its power. Poppies and decapitation. Hardly invincible.” In her desire to seem more like him, she had given him dangerous knowledge. How could she be so sure he wouldn’t use it? But she was.

“Are there many of you?”

She shook her head against his chest. “Perhaps seven score. A hundred are at Mirso Monastery, a refuge for those too wearied or maddened by time. The Rules dictate that the rest live one to a city, so no one notices our presence. My city is Rome, though I cannot stay forever. People will begin to notice that I don’t age.”

“One to a city. … That must make it difficult to … marry.”

She snorted. “We do not marry. Harder to take vows when they really mean forever. And then you wouldn’t be allowed to live with your mate anyway.”

“So … an endless string of lovers like me?” He was holding himself tightly in check.

“I haven’t had a lover in many years,” she whispered. “A hundred? Perhaps.”

There was a long pause as he considered that. “It sounds lonely,” he finally said.

She was just beginning to realize how lonely it was. “Do you have a wife, Jergan?” How had she never asked? Perhaps she didn’t want to know that he had a life beyond being her slave.

“Nay. When I chose to be a soldier, I left getting heirs to my younger brother.”

“But you don’t need to be a soldier now. You could return to … to whomever you left behind.” She couldn’t believe she was practically convincing him to go. But she had to know if he was tied to another.

“I left no woman there.”

Something in her dared to hope … She shook her head. It did not matter. She would live and he would grow old. Who could bear that? Still, a few years … when her task with the Roman emperor was over. If Jergan didn’t go home immediately. If he was not appalled by what she was. She couldn’t ask him about that. Men did not like commitments. He had told her he would stay until the plot was over. That would have to be enough. She raised her head and looked up at him. He didn’t look appalled. He looked … sad. She lifted her lips to his. Her confession hadn’t made either of them feel better, in spite of the fact that he seemed to accept her.

But living was not just for sweetness and light. He kissed her, tenderly. She put her hands on his chest and piqued his nipples with her thumbs. She felt him rise again. She had had her pleasure twice already this night, he only once. The sun rose outside the dim room. She must keep the dark of the future at bay, and live in the moment. It might be all they had.

She was dreaming. She knew it was a dream, but she couldn’t wake herself. She didn’t want to have another premonition. She was looking into a mirror. But no, there was no mirror. Another her stared back at her. “Let me out,” the other her said. “I know what you must do.”

“Who are you?”

“I am your future self.”

That was absurd. Unless … “Is it you who give me premonitions?”

“I know your future.” A shadow crossed the face that was her face. “But perhaps the future I know is changing even now. Perhaps I made a mistake in coming. I hadn’t counted on us becoming one. Or that you would be the one in charge. We must hurry.”

“Hurry and do what?”

“Let me out. Give me control. To do what you must do.”

“What will happen to me if I let you out?” she asked. This whole conversation was ridiculous.

“I don’t know,” the other her said. She was receding, though she did not move in any way. The dream was fading.

Livia woke with a start to pounding on the door to her courtyard. Outside, metal and boots clattered in the street. Even Jergan could hear the noise. He jumped to his feet and grabbed his sword, crouching naked in a fighting stance. He looked over to her. But she couldn’t reassure him. Caligula might have sent the Praetorian Guard for her at last. In which case, her only alternative was to go with them or transport herself away, leaving Jergan and the servants to bear the brunt of their wrath. She ran her
fingers through her hair. She had been dreaming. It was a strange dream, important somehow, but she couldn’t remember it now. It was about the sense of urgency she’d been feeling lately, but … the memory wafted away.