Chapter Nine
Penny shivered against him. “I’m gonna have to get you warm. Not hot, just toasty warm. Warm us both up. I’m ruining the temp of the water, you know.”
“Don’t care,” she grabbed his hair and held on, mouth finding his bite and dragging her teeth against it, sending his nerve endings into a pyrotechnic dance.
“You’re going to do things to me...”
“I’m already doing things to you,” she sassed back.
“And someday—I’ll do things to you. You wanna leave this town?
I’ll take you. Take you somewhere with the fancy suites and the big hot tubs.
You want bubbles, Pen? I’d give you bubbles.
Rose petals. Let’s do that, huh? Bubbles and champagne for New Year’s?
” He opened the drain to let out the cold and turned the tap on to full hot.
“Easy now, it’ll be warmer in a second.” If the damned plumbing holds when I need it.
What if the hot water heater went out? What if the pipes froze?
“Champagne and roses sound fancy, but I’m not so sure it’s my style. No one’s ever...”
“Well, now someone will. Take you somewhere warmer, someplace where the cold is just a memory,” Brax whispered.
“How’s about we head someplace tropical, baby, just you and me, where the moon is big and full, and even the nights are warm—but breezy.
Not sweltering.” He rested his head on top of hers.
“Where the rain is warm, and snow is just something you read about.”
Penny gasped as the water hit her, but then moaned as he began working his stiff, sore hands against her supple skin, still so much warmer than his.
“I know just the place—not that I’d ever need warming up with you around.
” Brax ran his hands down her back. You’re so good at it, baby.
Heat me up, even in a supernatural storm.
” Brax kept up the constant stream of conversation, fairly one-sided though it was.
He swished the water around her legs as he settled her into the shallows. “Hope I’m doin’ this right...”
His fingers burned on contact with the water, feeling returning.
“You say so many beautiful things for such a ‘bad guy,’” Penny whispered, looking up at him, her eyes losing their slightly hazy look.
“Well, if you don’t get better, baby, I don’t know that I’d stay on the straight and narrow. What good is savin’ the world if you’re not in it?” his voice was tender as his lips pressed to her forehead.
WORDS AND WATERFALLS. Penny heard them both, the whisper in her ears and the warm rain running over them. Clarity was returning in bits and pieces, but this time the pieces were building a picture she could recognize and understand.
Her throat didn’t hurt. Her hands didn’t hurt.
Her body ached, like it was made of rubber bands pulled too tight.
She was a ragdoll, flung and dropped and bumped and dropped again, onto something so cold on her already bare, cold body that had once been a hot, burning body.
Her system couldn’t keep up, and it had temporarily closed shop, but Brax kept bringing her back. Opening her up.
And it was her turn to do the same, restore the person who would believe her and change for her—even when her own blood relatives didn’t.
But this makes us some sort of family, maybe? Some sort of bond must be formed by blood, mine in him, and his in me...
The truce was “make warm.” But I’m cold now. And he’s cold. Something failed. “I always fail.” She broke off a kiss to blurt the fears that plagued her. Not the monsters. Not the monster in the man with her.
Failing to make things work. Parents to believe her, friends to see what she saw, people to understand—monsters to vanish.
Now, she wanted this one. And the other ones—the witches and vampires and the who-the-hell-knew-whats who had helped her and everyone else in town tonight.
“There’s a difference between being a failure and gettin’ beaten sometimes,” Brax said, staring at her as if trying to see through her skin and into her thoughts.
“The only ones who never take a hit are the lucky ones. The ones who get knocked down and get back up are fighters. You fought so hard tonight, even half out of your mind and burnin’ up.
Makes you a hero. My hero.” Brax gently ran his fingers through her hair, tenderly over her scalp, gently tracing the smooth lines of her profile until her eyes met his.
“And I don’t believe in heroes much anymore.
Guess I’m learning all kinds of things about myself tonight. ”
“It’s a miracle.”
“I hear Christmas is the time for them.”
“And for presents,” Penny whispered, moving his head from hers, aiming him lower. “It’s a gift. Just a gift.”
“I don’t know if I should try that. Even if you want it—”
“I want it.” Penny closed her eyes and just let the water wash away any inhibition. Let herself remember everything she could about that night.
He could have let me wander outside and freeze to death. Or burn.
Could have waited for me to die and drained me.
Could have done a thousand things—and so could I.
Oh, holy crap. Penis-cock.
Truces that sound like something out of the worst porno ever.
His lips were on her neck, slow and tantalizing, making her let out a shaky exhalation.
“You good, Pen?”
“You’re supposed to taste me and find out.”
His arms dropped, then he grabbed her back quickly. “I love how you taste.” He kissed her finger, the bleeding one that had never been wrapped, kissed her wrist and her palm. Hesitated. “I tasted you lower. Sweeter.”
“If you could live on that particular fluid, I’d let you. Man, I’d be your three meals a day. Plus snacks.”
“That’s still an option. Make me the offer,” he winked, kissing her shoulder now. Only to get her hand smacked against his mouth. “Here now, what’s that for?”
“You need something else. You can’t live on that, right?”
“No, but...”
Penny scratched the side of her throat with the side of her nail, gouging hard, bringing blood to the surface. “Taste. You need it.”
Brax’s eyes narrowed. His head pulled back—and kept on going, along with the rest of him.
Penny gasped as he skidded down the slick wall and careened back with a splash.
With her recently acquired lack of inhibition, she followed, nimbly straddling him, eyes locked on his.
“It’s going to get washed away if you don’t.
Just a waste. Unless you don’t think it’s safe.
I wouldn’t be pushy. Oh, my God. I’m being totally pushy.
But you’re a vampire, and you’re hungry, and you saved me, and, so.
.. Guh! Brax, if you seriously make me beg you to—oh. Ooooh.”
His tongue lathed up her scratches. “I don’t need much. Feeling better. You taste strong. Sweet and strong. Your insides match your outsides.”
“Liar.”
“Vampire’s honor—whatever that is. Ah, Pine Ridge vampire’s honor! You’re sweet and strong and—”
“I meant that you don’t need much. You need a lot—and I’m trusting you to take just enough—and make me sound the way you did when I bit you. Is that possible?”
“It is sometimes.” Brax’s hands traveled to the soft swells of her breasts, massaging, making her moan. “But Marietta’s curse...”
“If only it rebounded pleasure as well as pain. You would have been pretty happy earlier.”
Brax locked eyes with her. “I didn’t need any magical enhancements. You were the best. Incredible, giving, clinging, warm, and wet. Soft in all the right places, but with muscles that’d pop a champagne cork.”
Penny giggled and slid forward, slowly. Her hips hitched up over his, and then she pushed herself back, pussy slipping and sliding against his reawakening cock. Shouldn’t ask how he did it before. What it was like.
I bet it was bad. Dark. Violent. People died. Are you really going to trust him to bite you? Open up that door?
“Did you bite Marietta?”
“Not often. My demon didn’t like the taste of hers.”
“Demon?” She knew that’s what made him live, or pass for living; it was just an unsettling reminder, trust or not.
“He doesn’t run the show these days. I suppose we have a truce, him and I.” Brax thumbed her nipples and moaned softly as her wetness mixed with the warm water in the tub, coating his cock in silky slickness.
“You’re good at truces.” Penny swallowed. “So, you know it doesn’t have to hurt. With other women—”
Brax pushed himself up with a growl, eyes flickering red for a split second, a burst of color in a white face that was made all the whiter under his waterfall of raven hair.
“No. There were no other women like this. There were women I tricked, and the bite ended that treachery. They knew just what I was, then. They didn’t before.
I haven’t ever bitten someone to make them feel good, to give them pleasure.
.. But I think I can, for you. For you, I can do anything,” he hissed.
Penny let out a little scream when some hidden reserve of strength fueled him to grab her hips and seat her on his hardness. He panted out a curse when she sheathed him in herself, one long, fast rush of cold cock in her hot, wet pussy.
“Fuck,” she whimpered, rocking on him, ignoring the splashes lapping at their hips, sloshing over the edge of the tub. “So full.”
“So tight. That’s right, Penny, fuck me as hard as you want. Get yourself to that sweet spot and tell me when, precious,” Brax insisted, the tinge of ruby in his eyes now replaced by a bright ring of crimson that filled his entire iris.
Penny watched his face shift. Something more than human, or less, perhaps, peeked out in red eyes, in a feline sleekness in his cheekbones, and finally—in fangs. Close up fangs.
Inches from my skin. My wet, naked, vulnerable skin.
Why was it making her move harder, one hand now rubbing her clit to push her closer, faster?
Wanna feed him.
He’s still Brax, in any form.
He struggled to sit up more fully, head now against her shoulder, back against the tub.
His neck drooped, and his mouth locked around her nipple.
Penny could feel the sharp prickle of his vampire teeth on her hard, crinkled peak, tongue brushing the most sensitive part.
He dragged his head from side to side, letting the fangs scrape across her nipple, and her eyes blacked out as her pussy bit down on him, locking his cock deep inside her.
“Okay?” he asked.
Eyes closed, she ordered before she could think more. “Bite me. And be in me. And love me. And warm me up.”
“Oh, Pen...” A harsh hiss, and his hips bucked up.
But he didn’t bite.
Wait, was that rude? Does consensual biting mean you ask? Or is he afraid it’s going to hurt him? Then I’d have hurt him, which, again, would suck. “Please? If you want to? Was that too many things to do at once?”
“I’ll be the master of multitasking for you, Penny, if that’s the kind of list you give. Always and as often as you want, and never more than you want.”