Wings of Fire (45 page)

His pleasure exploded over her mind. She had thought she might take some time to explore his memories, but all that sensation brought her body into a tight state of readiness. Need filled her, his body on her, in her, any way she could get him. She hadn’t expected this. She rolled on her back then her side.

She was in agony.
Antony, help me. Oh, God.

Her body knotted up in about a hundred different ways.

Help me,
she sent, but he was already in her mind, she could feel him, which only further drew her into knot after knot.

I’m here. Look at me. Open your eyes and look at me.
She felt hands on her arms. He was pulling her up his body.

“Parisa,” he said aloud.

She opened her eyes. She was on top of him, face-to-face, but she was inside his head as well.

“I’m here. I know what you need.” He turned his head.

Her eyes bulged. He was offering his neck, and she knew this was exactly what she needed. Oh, God, she really was a vampire now, wasn’t she? Her heart pounded in her chest. Her fangs emerged. Saliva dripped in her mouth. All the knots relaxed.

She was panting and she was instantly addicted to being within his mind. She never wanted to be anywhere else, but her body was on fire.

She knew other things she should do first—like lick the vein and urge it forth—but she was too far gone. Some kind of cavewoman need had taken her over.

Yes, that’s it,
he sent.
Take me. Take me hard.

She struck quick, like lightning, and began sucking at his neck as though she’d been dying of thirst for about a decade. She pulled in deep draws, savoring the sage taste of him.

Her internal muscles spasmed again and again. She ground her hips against him and found him …
hard.

Antony, I need you.

I’m ready. I don’t know what you’ve done to me, but I’m ready again. Take me, Parisa. Take all of me.

He held her tight around the shoulders, anchoring her against his neck. He groaned as she sucked.

With his other hand, he dipped low and cradled her entire pelvis—yes, he had big hands. He lifted her up, positioned her over his cock, then impaled her in a single hard thrust. She was so wet for him, so tight, so ready.

She screamed around the seal on his neck, but kept her fangs buried and continued to pull. As soon as he’d pushed himself in, though, her hips began to work. Her body felt so strangely powerful—maybe it was Antony’s blood—but she rode him. She rode his cock hard and fast, his arm a vise around her shoulders, his free hand cradling the back of her head and keeping her pinned to his neck.

She drank and drank.

The orgasm began to build, like a huge tidal wave in the distance. She felt the pressure coming, coming. His hips suddenly took over. He moved the hand from the back of her head to her buttocks to hold her in place as he thrust deep, hitting the end of her and it hurt and it felt wonderful and hurt and the sensations got mixed up together until he was driving so fast, so very fast, hitting just that spot and suddenly the orgasm barreled down on her with the force of a tsunami.

She released his neck, arched her back, and screamed. She screamed and screamed as he stretched the orgasm out. Between her screams she heard his low grunting noises, spitting the sounds from behind clenched teeth.

The orgasm receded but it was like wave-sets at the ocean: The next one came and still Antony pumped into her, hard, grunting, animal, vampire.

Parisa. Oh, God, Parisa. I’m coming again and oh … shiiiiit.

A third orgasm pounded on her, rushing through her as he jerked inside her and pumped and jerked and filled her with his seed.

Then she saw stars, dozens of them, spinning and spinning, a full galaxy in motion, then they all winked out.

When she woke up, she was lying on something very soft, a bed, but she couldn’t quite make her eyes open. But she was smiling. Why? She was giggling. Why? Soft little things dotted her nose, her cheeks, her lips, her chin. Ah … kisses.

“Parisa? Parisa?”

She heard Antony’s voice from a great distance.

She giggled again. She was so happy. Was she on some kind of drug?

Oh, yes, Antony’s blood and his cock and his lips and his tongue and his massive pecs and the fine hairs between his pecs, and his muscled thighs and the way he walked like a tremendous thoroughbred stallion, all quivering muscles, and she had been inside his mind when he came and he had been inside hers.

“Parisa, Parisa.”

More soft little moist touches now, just on her lips again and again, then a delicate swipe of something wetter.

She parted her lips and she felt … Antony’s tongue.

She giggled and woke up the rest of the way, her eyes opening. He was over her now, kissing her. She was in his bed in the villa. He’d brought her back.

She was still connected to his mind. She leaned up and kissed him.
Did I pass out?

He smiled and nodded.

“It was … unbelievable. We have to do it again only this time … oh, Antony, I didn’t know it could be like that.”

“I’m a little worried.”

She smiled. “You ought to be pleased. You made a woman faint with pleasure.” His neck was bloody and a little torn up from her efforts. “Are you okay?” Well, that was the first time she’d asked him that. He was always asking her if she was okay, but this time she’d asked him.

But he just smiled again and kissed her. “I’ll heal.”

He was a vampire, of course he’d heal, and fast.

She touched his neck. “Well, now there are
two
things I need to work at.”

***

After getting both of them cleaned up in the shower, Antony took Parisa back to his bed and held her against him, his arm around her shoulders.

He’d come close to asking her to complete the
breh-hedden,
which required that each of them take blood, during intercourse, with a full exchange of deep-mind engagement.

What had stopped him? The sex had been mind-blowing, but sex was … well, it was just sex except that he’d been inside her mind. He’d picked up this memory, then that one. He’d lived much of her time in captivity, seen her despair, watched her watching him stroke himself morning after morning. He’d felt the depth of her feeling for him. She was in love with him, but how much in love with him? How far gone was she?

He knew that feeling. He’d had that same one thirteen centuries ago. He couldn’t go through it again. He couldn’t. If he completed the
breh-hedden,
if he went the distance with her, if he fell that far in love with her, what happened if she died … no, not if she died, but
when
?

He couldn’t go through it again.

Her voice cut into the tangle of his thoughts. “Do you really think taking the warrior training is a bad idea?” Her fingers tugged at the hairs on his arms.

How did he answer that?

He wanted to shout and rail, to tell her to stay away from the camps, to stay in the villa, to hide here with him. They would hide together, forever, live like hermits.

But he didn’t want to lose her. “You should take the training if that’s what you want to do. Become a warrior.”

He stared up at the ceiling, the words of his wife’s poem running through his mind.
Love rises on wings of fire …

She shifted in his arms so that she could look at him. She leaned up on her elbow. “You sang a very different tune before the sex.” She smiled, but it dimmed. “What’s wrong?”

His gaze was still fixed on the coffered beams overhead, the ceiling like a chessboard. “Everything. Nothing. The hell if I know what to do.”

She turned and followed his gaze, dropping back down on the bed, setting her head into the well of his shoulder. “Tell me what it says.”

He pointed straight up. He took his time and translated each line for her.

“That’s beautiful and it does, doesn’t it? Love rising like that, like wings of fire?”

“I can’t do this,” he whispered.

She didn’t even tense. “I know. That’s why I’m going to train as a warrior. What chance does love have between us so long as there is a Rith, a Greaves, and a war? We’ve already been separated once.”

He turned into her until he was on his side. She faced him on her side as well. “I’m already in love with you, maybe not all the way, but almost,” he said. “But I can’t go any farther. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

She traced his lips with her finger. “I know. It’s okay.”

She looked as serious as he felt, her brow puckered slightly. “How do the others do it? Havily and Marcus? Alison and Kerrick?”

“I don’t know.” He leaned forward and kissed her.

“I love you, too, you know, as much as I can.”

“I know.”

“I want to go back to the guest room tonight. Tomorrow, I’ll talk to Endelle about the training camps.”

“Good.” He expected her to pull away, to draw out of his arms, to make good on her word. Instead, she snuggled closer.

Just a little longer,
she whispered through his mind.

Yes.

But after maybe only a minute, he felt her sigh and begin to rise up. She leaned over to kiss him, a soft press against his lips.

His head slid against his pillow, pulling on his hair. He watched her leave. He worked to keep his arms immobile. He wanted to reach for her, grab her, drag her back down to the bed, but what good would that do?

This was for the best.

Really.

The lesson ignored twice then thrice,

Creates chaos in the lives of many.

—
Collected Proverbs,
Beatrice of Fourth

CHAPTER 21

Parisa stood on one side of Fiona’s hospital bed and Havily on the other.

Fiona had the bed raised in a full-sitting position. “I want to get out of here. I’m not sick. Just drained.”

Parisa smiled. “Was that a joke?”

Fiona glanced at her, arched her brown eyebrows as if in question, then smiled. She even chuckled softly. “Yes, I guess it was.” She sighed. “I slept well last night, and no drugs in my system anymore.”

She wore a gold locket around her neck, the one Jean-Pierre had given her. Apparently, he’d found it in Toulouse behind an armoire but how he’d found it, Parisa couldn’t imagine. Didn’t matter. Fiona was safe.

Havily turned away from the bed and drew a chair forward. She sat down. “So, we’re actually here for a reason, not just to pay a social call. We’ve been talking about the D and R refugees, for want of a better word. I hate using the word
slave.
”

“But
slave
is accurate, believe me. Even though we had daily exercise and a healthy diet, full of iron, naturally.”

Parisa didn’t leave her post by the bed. She had an uneasy sensation about Fiona. The woman had an aura of dry brittle leaves. “This must be so disorienting for you,” she said.

“Yes, I suppose it must seem that way.” She lowered her gaze to stare at her clasped hands. The thumbs touched, rolled against each other. “I’m glad to be here. Let me at least say that. I am glad to be alive and to no longer be in that place or under Rith’s command.”

Parisa glanced at the doorway. The hospital was buzzing with activity. Antony was talking with Colonel Seriffe, and several of the Warriors of the Blood were here. She had seen Alison pass by once or twice as well.

Outside the building, a number of Militia Warriors could be seen through the street-side window, patrolling the hospital grounds.

Parisa had felt uneasy all morning. She had slept in the guest room, alone, the bed cool after Antony’s warm presence. As tall as he was, as muscled, the man created a lot of heat. She had awakened more than once, forgetting where she was, reaching across the bed and patting cold sheets.

She would get used to it. She had to. They’d decided together that this was for the best.

Earlier, they’d met with Endelle, and she’d agreed to permit Parisa to enter the Female Warrior Training Camps. It seemed strange to have settled on that course, but of everything she’d been through in the past year and a half, warrior training was the one thing that felt completely right to her.

“So, what’s going on?” Fiona asked.

Parisa glanced at Havily. “Well,” Havily began, “it may be early in the process here, but the bottom line is that we’ve learned there are twenty-one other D and R facilities around the world.”

“Yes,” Fiona said her clasped hands coming loose. “Yes.”

“Yes, what?” Parisa asked.

Fiona looked up at her. “I want to help get them out, all of them. Whatever it takes. But I’m not sure how we’re going to do that and not cause even more problems. Even if we break up the D and R program, what happens next? Greaves will want to set up more of them, and in the meantime where will all the death vampires get their blood?”

Havily met Parisa’s gaze. “She’s right,” Havily said. “If we disturb all twenty-one nests at once, two things will happen. More mortals will be abducted to replace them, and a lot more women will die. She’s absolutely right. We have to battle this more extensively.”

“How?” Parisa asked.

“Well, I’ve been thinking,” Havily said, staring hard at Parisa. She shifted her gaze to Fiona. “The three of us have one thing in common. We’ve all been abducted. We all know what it feels like to be helpless, in the grip of someone more powerful. And the reason this hospital is crawling with Militia Warriors is because we are all still in danger. Rith will want his slaves back as well.” She glanced at Parisa. “So, are you headed to the camps?”

She nodded. “Medichi’s here talking with Colonel Seriffe about security at the training camps for me. No one really knows what to do, but I’m determined to go.”

“What are the camps?” Fiona asked.

“Warrior training. I’m becoming a warrior.” She laughed. “It feels so strange to say that out loud.”

Havily rose from the chair. “Did you know that Endelle wanted Alison to go the camps, to train as a warrior, when she first ascended?”

“No, I didn’t,” Parisa said. “Do you mean Alison didn’t want to be trained?”

Havily shook her head. “You know what she is … a healer. She couldn’t even kill her opponent in the arena battle and it was supposed to be a battle to the death. The warrior was intent on killing her, but Alison … you won’t believe this … cut off his arm then reversed a pocket of time so that he got his arm back.”