Waiting for Darkness (Blood Martyr) (7 page)

Once fully inside me, w
e sighed.

“
We...we fit,” I managed to say, my throat dry, as if I hadn’t drank anything for ages. He pulsed inside me, and every time he throbbed, I clenched around him.
Did he notice that?
No matter,
I
noticed, and I grew wetter still.

He swallowed.

“Whatever made you think that we wouldn’t fit?” He groaned the slightest bit, and just the sound of it made me hotter, tighter. “And if you keep on doing that, you’re going to really regret it.”

A grin curling my lips, I squeezed myself around him again, this t
ime harder, drawing a deeper, louder cry from him. “Do what? Regret what?”

He sucked in a breath and shook. “
That. And you’ll regret it, because if you do that again, I’m going to come. You sure you want it to end like that?”

I stopped squeezing, and he la
ughed, although none too steady. “That’s more like it.”

How long did we lay like that, connecting in the oldest way known to man? I don
’t know, but he started to move, and I moved with him, my hips rolling.
Can sex feel this natural? Can it feel this right?
I tried to think back to the other men I’d fucked, but they didn’t come to mind; I couldn’t bring them to mind. Gone, dissipated into a thick cloud of smoke; the only person there was this man.

Has fucking always felt this...right?

Even the term ‘fucking’ seemed a crude and outright unnatural word for what we engaged in. There had to be a different way to phrase this.

Sex? Too scientific. Making love? Too romantic. Screwing? Too juvenile. Copulation? Too...religious.

But whatever it was, it had taken me by the neck—no going back.

Not anymore.

The pace increased, a staccato of thrusts, and my skin grew hotter and hotter, as if tiny fires had been lit under the surface and burned their way through. I long since abandoned any efforts to quiet myself and I didn’t care if the neighbors complained about the noise. If they only knew what I was getting, they’d weep with envy.

Over and over and over again he pushed into me, and all I could do was hang on.

The wave inside me rose higher and higher from the place it had subsided when Roane had gone down on me. This time, the tide seemed subtler, quieter, but no less urgent, no less tumultuous. His hips ground against me in languid circles that slowly killed me inside.

“
Wait. Roane. Please. Untie me...please,” I begged.

His hands slipped under my hips and angled me up, brought me closer to him.

His voice hoarse, strained, he said, “No. No. Not until we’re done.”

I struggled to think up a retort, but in that instant he lunged into me, and everything completely whitened as
he brought me over the edge, screaming.

Couldn
’t think.

Couldn
’t breathe.

Couldn
’t stop the noises coming from my mouth.

I convulsed around him, my muscles squeezing so violently that it hurt.

He cried out as if he’d been struck, and I spasmed; he came inside me, deep, with so much force his body shook, and I couldn’t stand it…couldn’t stand it anymore.

I tried to wrench my hands out of the satin bindings. Impossible, though. He used his magic to further strengthen the hold, and I lay weak as a newborn.

I wanted, no,
needed
to touch him. To see him curved over me, head thrown back, the moonlight turning his blonde hair into an angelic white.

“
Please...release me.” I tried not to sound as though I had been crying, for I had, the intensity of our coupling too much…too wonderful. “Please.”

He didn
’t answer, and after a while, I thought,
Has he passed out?

“
Roane?”

“
Wait. Just give me a minute. Goddamn, I feel like someone just sucked all the bones out of my body.”

I smiled, remembering just what I sucked out of
him.

A short time passed, and then his hands touched my wrists. He whispered a word under his breath, and the satin bindings fell away as though made out of spider webs.

I frantically tugged at the blindfold. He stopped me.

“
Hold on. Before you do that....”

I knew that voice.

I
recognized
that voice.

I jerked away the blindfold and immediately regretted doing so. A pair of mismatched eyes stared down at me, red hair glowing in the moonlight as though set afire.

Jamison.

CHAPTER SIX

“For I love you truly, truly dear, but you take this heart and dash it on the ground into a thousand…million pieces, and then you make me pick it up and do this all over again….”

Stupid, stupid, stupid…
!

I flicked a glance at the puncture wounds on his neck; locked
eyes with the malachite and amber jewels gleaming in the darkness.

“
Get the
hell
away from me.” My hands shook, but it wasn’t from passion. I told myself this was all just a bad dream and I’d wake up from it.

I didn
’t.
Shit.
What the hell am I supposed to do now?

I attempted to shove past him and get off the bed, but he held me in place, hands around my upper arms.

He shook, too, but unlike me, I doubted it was from my discovery.

You just drank from your best friend….

You just fucked your best friend….

How
stupid, how much more moronic could I have been?

All there, the clues that should
’ve told me Mister “Roane” was
not
the man he said he was. The sandalwood scent surrounding him. The way I thought I heard him speak with Jamison’s voice. The reason he blindfolded me. Blindfolded me because there was no way he could keep up the disguise while having an orgasm. Tied me up just to make sure I wouldn’t try to pull the blindfold off.

And I thought it an erotic game! I couldn
’t believe how completely I'd been duped.

A hundred years ago, I would never have fallen for the trick Jamison spun around me. But then again, back in those days I was someone far, far different than the person I am now. I didn
’t want to go back to the person I was…but in times like this I wished otherwise.

“
Let go of me now,” I whispered, not trusting myself to speak any louder. Any louder, and I feared I’d start screaming. And I wasn’t sure when I’d stop.

“
Look, just hear me out, will you?”

I should've kneed him in the groin. Maybe more than
once. “No. I don’t
want
to listen to your stupid fucking explanations. You fucking tricked me! You
tricked
me!”

Twice in one day.

First, completely hoodwinked by Kieran, and now bamboozled by Jamison. By my best friend!

Things could not get much worse th
an this.

“
Tell me something, Jamison. Do I have a goddamn
fucking
sign on my goddamn
fucking
forehead that says, Hey, I’m a dumb vampire! Come and have your fun with me while the night is still young? Huh? Do I have a fucking sign like that anywhere on my body, because this is the second time I’ve been used in
one
day, and let me tell you something, I’m getting
fucking
sick of it.”

Face blank, he said, “
I lost count at your fifth ‘fuck’ in less than two minutes. You really need to work on your language.”

“
You think this is
funny
? Do you? Because you know what? I don’t find this situation funny at all.” Gnashing my teeth didn’t do much to douse my ire, but it kept me from totally rearing up. I worked really hard on not doing that.

Witches like Jamison could b
low up a city block, but a vampire like me could wreck an entire city…if I so chose.

“
Tanith. I’m sorry. I….” He closed his eyes, and I was thankful for that. I could think better without having those addictive eyes focused on me. “I got sick,” he continued, “I was sick of waiting around, waiting for you to see I was the better man out of all the other men you took home.”

I wanted to shake him silly and then some. “
You idiot. Didn’t you know
that
was the reason why I never took anything from you? No sex, no blood, no nothing! Because you
are
the better man, you idiotic dipshit! Because you mean something more to me. Because I couldn’t stand the thought of ruining this!”

I wasn
’t mad at Jamison.

I was mad at me.

And I was so hopping angry I wanted to bust something up.

“
Ruining what?”

I tried not to sputter, but it
’s hard to be in control of your body when the only thing you see is red and the only thing you feel is a heat that grows hotter and hotter as the seconds pass by. I jerked out of his hands and clambered off the bed, shrugging into a robe.

“
This! This! You are my best friend, Jamison. I’ve never trusted anyone more than you. You saved my life, damn it! You know everything about me. You could make me, you could break me. You hold a part of my soul in your fucking stupid, incompetent hands! If you were to go away, where the hell would I be?”

I wanted to throw a chair into the enormous mirror set along the wall, wanted to ruin the image of the tall woman in a black silk robe.

I refrained. Breaking a mirror brings seven years of bad luck. That, and I didn’t think I’d be up to getting down on my hands and knees to pick up the mirror shards after I bashed it all to hell.

I needed something…
anything to get this anger out of my system.

He sat back on the bed,
not even bothering to cover himself, and I hated myself for staring a little too long at his chest. I knew Jamison was fit, knew he worked out five times a week, but I never once saw him nude.

“
You done?” he asked.

Forget the seven years of bad luck. Maybe
getting down on my hands and knees wouldn’t be such a bad thing….

After all, to a vampire, seven years is nothing.

Snatching a small ornament from the coffee table, I hurled it at the mirror. The sound of it breaking rang through the apartment like a gunshot. Shards collapsed one after another on the floor, leaving behind a distorted image of darkness and the lone person standing in it.

I felt better. Sort of.

I expected Jamison to get the hell out of the building, but he still sat there, still sat in the silver light that played over the concaves of his bare body.

“
Most people would do the smart thing and leave. But you’re too fucking stupid to do that.” My anger started to simmer down, but it still lingered, flickering through my body.

He shook his head,
the red of his hair glinting in the moonlight, like garnets spun into silk.

“
I’m not going to leave. I’m not going to leave you,” he said quietly.

I contemplated whether I could get away with throwing a chair through the window without attracting too muc
h attention.

“
Yeah, you say that now.” No, the chair-throwing would be a bit overboard. People were used to seeing vampires go a little crazy here in Centennial City, but even some things were frowned upon. "Goddamn it, Jamison."

I wasn
’t stupid enough to think we could pretend this hadn’t happened. Perhaps Jamison could, but I couldn’t. I prided myself on the fact I could differentiate between friend and prey. My friends never had to worry about me seeing  them as another source of nutrients. I worked hard to dispel the initial fear that all humans had around me.

But now, within the space of an hour, I broke my cardinal rule, my golden rule.

Your friends are sacred and should be treated as such. 

What the hell was I going to do?

I turned my back on him, wishing myself anywhere but here, wishing for any situation but this.

“
Can’t you see, Jamison? We can't just be friends anymore. We’ve crossed that line. You made me walk across it with your stupid stunt.”