Chapter 1
CHAPTER 1
At the sight of Ursula’s pale neck, Oliver felt a shiver race down his spine and shoot into his balls like a lance. It was a pleasurable kind of pain that he experienced: intense, yet at the same time he didn’t want it to stop.
His fingers elongated, and his fingernails turned into sharp barbs. They were the claws of a beast because that’s what he still was inside, what he would always be, despite his refined exterior and the gentle shell he wore for everybody.
Ursula was the only one who knew better because she saw it every day and every night: the hunger that still simmered so closely under the surface. The insatiable hunger for blood. But it was different now.
Right after his turning, he’d sunk his fangs into any neck that was unfortunate enough to cross his path. Now, over half a year later, his taste had become much more sophisticated. Still, there was nothing refined about it. Nothing gentle or sweet. Nor civilized.
Only one thing had changed. He cared about the woman who offered her neck night after night more than he’d ever cared about anybody. He’d fallen in love with her before ever tasting her blood, before he even truly knew her, and he wouldn’t hesitate to sacrifice his own life in order to save hers.
They hadn’t been apart since the night he’d first bitten her, when she’d freely offered him her vein, despite the ordeal she’d been through for three long years. Despite the disgust she’d associated with the act until then. But Ursula had pushed her fears aside and given herself to him, trusted him and put the nightmare she’d experienced at the blood brothel aside.
For him.
Because she trusted him not to hurt her.
“What’s wrong?” Ursula’s voice came from the closet from which she removed her clothes and packed them into several large boxes.
“This!” He pointed to the moving boxes.
She tilted her head to the side and sighed heavily, her almond-shaped eyes begging for understanding. When she pushed a strand of her straight, raven-black hair behind her shoulder, the gesture reminded him of what it felt like when he buried his face in her hair and smelled her unique scent, a scent that came from her special blood. Blood that had the power to drug a vampire. Blood so addictive that his friends and colleagues at Scanguards had tried to keep him from her when they’d first found out.
“But we agreed,” she said softly.
Oliver took a step toward her, the beast inside him howling and demanding to be let out of its cage. “I know we agreed, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
“It’s not easy for me either,” she replied, dropping a stack of T-shirts into a box and moving toward him with cat-like grace.
He’d always found her beautiful, ever since the first night she’d literally fallen into his arms in one of the dingiest parts of San Francisco. He realized that he’d never had a chance at resisting her, not even if her blood had been ordinary. Not even then would he have been able to disentangle himself from the Asian beauty who made his heart race whenever he looked at her.
Though his heart wasn’t the only organ that coveted her.
How he was supposed to survive without her, he couldn’t fathom.
“Please,” she whispered when she reached him, placing her palm on his cheek. “Don’t make this any harder than it is.”
At her choice of words, he took her hand and slipped it to the front of his jeans, pressing it against the bulge that had formed there. The bulge that was ever present when he was near her.
“Harder?” he echoed. “I don’t think it can get any harder.”
Ursula chuckled. “Is that all you think of?”
Oliver slid his hand on her nape, pulling her to him. “No. I also think of not being able to do this.”
He brought his lips to hers, gently pressing against her mouth. When he licked against the seam of her lips, she parted them lightly, and her breath rushed toward him.
“Hmm,” she hummed.
“Won’t you reconsider?” he coaxed her.
“I can’t.”
But he didn’t want to accept her answer. “Imagine what you’ll be missing.” He captured her mouth fully and slid his tongue between her parted lips, exploring her warmth, dancing with her tongue.
Ursula severed her lips from his. “Oliver, we don’t have time.”
“Just one last time,” he insisted and busied himself with tugging on her T-shirt, sliding it up her torso.
“But—”
He silenced her protest with a kiss and slid his hands underneath her shirt, caressing her soft skin. When his hands moved high up and encountered her bra, he stopped for a brief moment. Why she bothered to wear one, he wasn’t sure. Her young breasts were perfectly firm and round and needed no support. Besides, she never wore it for long, because he always found a way of stripping her of it so he could caress her boobs whenever he wanted to—which was frequently.
It took Oliver all of two seconds to find the clasp of her bra and open it. Immediately, he slid his hands under her bra and cupped her breasts, squeezing them lightly.
She moaned into his mouth, and at the same time he heard her heartbeat accelerate. Touching her breasts and fondling her nipples never failed to arouse her. Even though they didn’t have the time for this now, she responded to him as if her body couldn’t help itself.
“There you go, baby,” he murmured, releasing her lips for a brief moment. “You want this too.” He inhaled her heady scent. “You can’t wait to feel me inside you.”
“Oliver, this is crazy. We have to get to the airport.” Despite her protest, she didn’t push him away but pressed her pelvis against his rigid cock.
“We have a few minutes.”
And he was going to take advantage of the time they had left. Without allowing her any further protest, he pulled her T-shirt over her head and slipped the bra off her shoulders, dropping it carelessly to the floor.
“Undress me,” he ordered while he gazed at her beautiful breasts that were topped with dark nipples. Hard nipples. Yes, there was no denying that she was as aroused as he.
Ursula let out a sigh.
“You know I’ll make it worth your while. I always do,” he whispered, pressing a kiss to her neck and grazing her skin with the sharp fangs that had already descended.
She shivered under the contact. “Oh God.”
No more protests came over her lips. Instead, her hands went to work, freeing him of his shirt, then opening the button and zipper of his pants. When she pushed them over his hips, he helped her and stepped out of them. Before she could free him of his boxer briefs, he helped her take off her own pants.
She wore only a tiny G-string that barely covered any of her enticing flesh. On top of it, the material was practically see-through and hid nothing from his vampire vision.
Oliver licked his lips in anticipation of what would happen now. He loved satisfying two of his greatest cravings at once. Two birds with one stone. Not only was it utterly thrilling to take her blood while he was inside her, in his and Ursula’s case it was also necessary. Only after she achieved an orgasm would the drugging effect of her blood be muted for a short while so that imbibing on it wouldn’t turn him into a crazed addict. Less than an hour after her orgasm, her blood would be just as dangerous as before and therefore off-limits to him.
Oliver slipped his hand into her panties, combing through the neatly trimmed triangle of curls that guarded her sex, and headed farther south. Warmth and wetness greeted his foraging fingers. Instantly, his cock began to jerk, wanting to feel what his fingers felt.
“Take my cock out,” he ground out, impatient for her touch because no matter how often he’d made love to her in the last few months, every time was different and new. And more thrilling than the last time.
Moments later, he felt her hands push down his boxer briefs, sliding them down his legs. Then one hand wrapped around him.
“Like that?” Ursula asked with a provocative tone in her voice.
“Yes, just like that, as if you didn’t know it.”
She squeezed his cock in her hand, making his heart pound into his throat.
“Fuck, baby!”
He groaned loudly and threw his head back, for a moment reveling in her tender touch. Then his fingers moved, bathing themselves in her wetness before sliding higher again to where her center of pleasure resided. When he slid one finger over it, pressing lightly, her eyelids fluttered and her throat released an audible gasp. He knew her body so well, knew exactly how to make her purr like a kitten, how to make her writhe underneath him in ecstasy, and how to make her shudder in his arms. And he couldn’t get enough of it, of seeing her lips curl into a sensual smile, her eyes darken with passion, and her body tremble with desire.
Because in turn it caused a reaction in him: his entire body began to burn with need, the need to possess her, to make her his forever. Desire scorched him from the inside. The smoldering embers of his love for her ignited anew every time he looked at her sinful body, every time he kissed her sensual lips and touched her silken skin. It was as if she’d bewitched him by looking at him with her almond-shaped eyes as if he were the only man who mattered to her.
Just as she looked at him now.
“Take me,” she murmured, her lips barely moving. “I need to feel you.”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
Within seconds he’d placed her on the bed, stripped her of her panties, and spread her legs. He’d taken her every way possible in the last few months, but what he still liked best was Ursula underneath him and looking into her eyes when he drove into her. He loved seeing her reaction when he plunged into her tight pussy and stretched her. Loved the way her breath rushed out of her lungs when he drove deeper than she thought he could. Loved the way her breasts bounced from side to side and up and down with each thrust.
“Don’t make me wait,” Ursula begged now.
A smile built on Oliver’s lips. He hadn’t even noticed that he’d been simply staring at her, feasting his eyes on her beauty. “No, my love, I’ll never make you wait.”
Then he brought his cock to her nether lips and plunged forward, seating himself balls-deep. A shudder ran down his spine and shot into his balls, threatening to unman him. It was always like that with her. The first thrust into her tight, silken sheath always did that to him because it was the moment he remembered what he missed most when she wasn’t lying in his arms, panting. He missed the way she imprisoned him within her. The way she chained him to her body and her soul with only the tiniest squeeze of her interior muscles that she was probably not even aware of.
Whenever he felt her squeeze him like that, it felt as if his heart were being squeezed in the same way. As if she held his heart in her hand. Because she did. Because his heart belonged to her.
When he felt Ursula’s hands on his hips, urging him to move, he complied with her wishes, falling into a rhythm that she dictated. Slowly, he drove in and out of her, shifting his angle so that with each descent his pelvis rocked against her clit. At the beginning of their relationship, she’d had problems letting herself go, but they’d overcome that obstacle and Ursula now responded to him freely and without inhibitions, her body pushing against him to increase the pressure on her clit. He reacted to her sign and started moving faster while he tried to stave off his own need to climax, a task which became more and more difficult by the second.
He tried to distract himself, but as he looked down at her, he saw how small rivulets of sweat ran from her neck through the valley of her breasts. It made her skin glow even more intensely and her scent more powerful, drawing him to her even more.
“Oh, God, baby!” he ground out, all too aware that his fangs were at full length and itching for a bite. “I need you to come!” Only then could he plunge his fangs into her lovely neck and find his own release.
“So close,” she whispered between pants.
“What do you need, baby? Tell me!”
“Please.”
Her back arched off the bed, her breasts thrusting toward him. Oliver dipped his head and captured one nipple, sucked on it greedily, his fangs grazing the sensitive peak. Underneath him, Ursula shivered, her body trembling now.
He moved to the other breast, repeating the same action, while he continued driving his cock deeper into her tight pussy. His hips worked at a rapid tempo, thrusting and withdrawing in quick succession. Another few thrusts and he would be unable to hold back his need to plunge his fangs into her flesh; another few thrusts and he would take her blood and allow it to drug him despite the disaster this would spell for both of them. Despite the fact it would destroy him.
His entire body began to tremble, and he knew he’d lost. This was his doom. Ursula was his doom, just like they’d all predicted. He wasn’t strong enough to resist the temptation her blood represented.
His lips widened as he set his fangs to either side of her nipple and took a last breath. He pierced her skin and closed his eyes, knowing he’d failed, when a shudder went through Ursula’s body as her orgasm washed over her.
Relief flooded him at the same time as warm blood rushed into his mouth and down his throat. Had he been able to speak, he would have thanked her for having saved him once more, but he couldn’t let go of the breast he was sucking on. Her blood tasted rich and sweet. Perfect. And to take it from her breast had become one of his favorite places to drink. Right along with her inner thigh, where he could soak in her arousal at the same time as he fed from her.
“Oh, yes.” She encouraged him now, her hand sliding to his nape to press him closer to her breast.
Oliver knew how much she loved feeding him like this because it was something only he did. None of the leeches at the blood brothel she’d been imprisoned at for three long years had ever been allowed to take her blood from anywhere else than her neck or wrist.
With one last thrust, he came and flooded her tight channel with his seed. His entire body shook from the intensity of his climax. It took long moments before he could think clearly again and was able to retract his fangs from her breast. Gently he licked over the two small incisions, sealing them instantly. There would be no scars. His saliva guaranteed it.
Oliver dropped his head next to hers, breathing heavily.
“Wow. I love it when you do it like that.”
He lifted his head to look at her. “How?”
“All out of control.”
He shook his head. “It was close. I almost bit you before you climaxed. But I?—”
She put a finger to his lips, stopping him from continuing. “Almost. I’ll make sure it won’t happen.”
Oliver dropped his forehead to hers. “I thought it had gotten easier, but it hasn’t. What if one day you won’t come in time?”
“Then we’ll deal with it. Together.” She gave him a soft slap on his backside. “Besides, you can always make me come.”
He chuckled. “That’s what a guy likes to hear.” He pressed a gentle kiss on her lips.
“It’s time to go,” she murmured back.
“I know.”