Chapter Ten #2
Because I know you. The bedroom in her apartment had been blue. The bedroom in her dorm room had been blue. Dammit, Salvatore was right. He was a freaking stalker. “The green blouses and dresses match your eyes. Just like the emerald jewelry. Everything was purchased for you, not for anyone else.”
She turned and frowned up at him.
“I was counting down the days until your birthday. I wanted to have everything you’d need.
” He cleared his throat. “And, um, just so you know, no other woman has been in that room. It’s been saved, for you.
” The first time she’d been in his home, he’d had her put in a different room because he’d been trying to ease her into his world.
He’d thought immediately showing her the room he’d prepared just for her might have been overkill.
Perhaps it still was overkill. Fuck. How many mistakes was he going to make with her?
Lark didn’t speak.
He blundered on, saying, “I have several large corporations. Vamps can’t live on blood alone, you know.” He tried a smile.
Her lips pressed together.
Shit. “I have advertising departments,” he tossed out. “Tons of them.” Dammit. It sounded like he was bragging. He wasn’t. He was trying to offer her something she might want. “I have too many of them. You got your degree in advertising, so I thought you’d like to run them.”
“Run your advertising departments?” Her brows rose. “But I could be the worst advertiser in the world.”
“Doubtful.” He shook his head. “You graduated at the top of your class. You were the advertising student of the year during your senior year! You were—”
“How do you know all of this stuff about me?”
“Because I watched over you when you were younger. I liked to make sure that you were okay.” His hand rubbed over his jaw. “I may have popped in and out of your life. From a distance. I didn’t want to intrude or scare you, or…”
He should shut the fuck up because he probably was terrifying her.
“Sonofabitch.” Lark tipped back her head. “Darklight Industries. That’s you, isn’t it? You were the firm who paid for my college?”
Guilty. He gave a grim nod. “I lost you over the last year. You vanished and…” And he’d had to deal with a mini-rebellion on his hands.
Courtesy of her father. A story he had to find a careful way of sharing with her.
Devereaux cleared his throat. “I sent vamps to find you. That dick Charles just got to you first.” Charles should have reported her location to Devereaux.
Instead, the bastard had tried to take Lark for himself.
Speaking of Charles…the guy was in the basement. In a cell. Chained and getting ready for a very painful death.
You don’t touch what’s mine. You sure as shit don’t put your fangs into her.
“I changed my last name,” Lark revealed to him. “I wanted a fresh start. Nothing that would tie me to a monster hunting past. I wanted to put that all behind me.” A sad laugh spilled from her. “Guess that didn’t happen, huh?”
“Anything can happen. You can make your life what you want it to be.” He exhaled slowly and tried to sound charming. “If you want to run the advertising arm of Darklight, it’s yours. If you want to start your own company, fine, you can do that, too. I’ll give you whatever you want.”
Yeah, it sounded like he was trying to buy her. If Salvatore heard, he’d laugh his head off. But…I have nothing to give her but my money.
She wouldn’t want his broken past.
And he doubted she’d care that she held a vamp’s cold heart in the palm of her hand.
“All of your clothes are being brought over,” he told her quickly. “You don’t have to wear the ones in your closet here. You can wear whatever the fuck you want and throw out the rest.”
She winced. “Uh, yeah, how about we donate the things I don’t want? Throwing it out is just wasteful. People out there need help.”
He smiled at her.
“Why are you doing that?”
He wiped his smile away. “Because I like you.”
Now she was staring suspiciously at him.
And he shouldn’t ask, but… “Lark, do you, ah, do you think you could ever like me?” Fucking hell. What was he? Two? Instead of over a thousand years?
He’d just been alone for so long. He’d dreamed of having a mate. No, of her. Someone good inside. Not tainted and dark the way he was.
“Like?” Lark seemed to taste the word. Then she surprised him because she moved so close to him that her body brushed against his. “That’s a really tame way of describing something. I like my jeans. I like my shoes. I like starry skies.”
Her lavender scent was driving him crazy. And had she meant for her breasts to push against his chest?
“I like all kinds of things, but, no, I don’t think I could ever like you.”
His chest hurt. His back teeth ground together as Devereaux started to step back.
Her hand rose and pressed to his cheek. “My feelings for you are far deeper and more complex than some mild like. You drive me crazy, yet somehow make me always feel incredibly safe. I want you more than I’ve ever wanted any other man, and I also…
God, this is going to sound crazy because you’re the big, bad vamp prince…
but I swear, I feel like you hurt inside, and I want to take your pain away.
I want to make you flash that dimpled smile at me because I love your smile.
And that’s why I asked why you were smiling.
Because I wanted to know what I’d done to make you smile.
Just so I could get you to do it again.”
He smiled again, felt the smile slip right across his face. He hadn’t exactly had a ton to smile about in the many long years of his life. Those early centuries had been pure hell. So many bloodbaths. So much violence. So many trying to rip power from him.
As for the last two and a half decades, he’d been so fucking worried. He’d been close to having everything he wanted, and the thing he feared was that someone would rip it all away from him.
“Why do I feel this way about you?” Lark whispered. “Is it because I had your blood? Did it make some kind of link between us?”
“What way?” Devereaux asked instead of answering.
“When I’m close to you, I want you.” Her hand slid down his chest, to rest above his heart. “I yearn. I ache. I want to just strip off my clothes and jump you, and that is not my usual style.”
“Good to know,” Devereaux growled because he’d hate to have to go on a killing spree with her exes.
“Is it because I’m…different now? A vamp?” Sadness came and went in her beautiful eyes. “Will I always crave—”
“You are not different. Not inside. Yes, there are physical changes.” They needed to be clear on this. “But at your core, you’re the same person. You didn’t suddenly turn into the biggest evil in the world because you grew fangs.”
Her lips curled. “No matter what my mother said.”
Her mother… “Lark, your father lied to her. She didn’t know he was a vampire. Not until she was already pregnant with you. She hated what he was. And she took you and ran.” Tell her. “He’s…he didn’t have the best reputation back then. She probably wanted to protect you.”
She was silent a long moment, then Lark said, “I don’t want you to lie to me.
Not ever again, understand? I don’t want us to wind up like them.
If I were to get pregnant, I wouldn’t want to take the baby and run.
I’d want to stay with you. I’d want a different life for the child than the one I had. ”
A baby—with Lark? A family. The dream he’d held close for so long. “I want to kiss you.”
“Then why are you just standing there?” Lark murmured back, voice a perfect, husky temptation. “Because I just told you that every time I’m near you, I want. I want you right now.”
He took her mouth. Leaned down and kissed her with every single bit of tenderness that he could manage. Family. If he was careful, if he was charming, maybe he could have it all.
Maybe he could have her.
“I’m not made of glass. I’m not going to shatter.” Her nails raked down his chest as she slid her hand over his shirt. “I like rough, and I like wild, and I like what we do together.”
Dark desire pulsed in his veins. “Keep talking like that, and I’ll want to take you right here.”
She shrugged. Stepped back. And yanked her shirt over her head. It fluttered to the floor. “Is it against royal rules to fuck in the study?”
“I make the rules.” His voice had grown guttural. In a blink, he rushed to the door, locked it, and then was back in front of her.
Lark smiled at him. “Good. It is still my birthday. I was hoping I could get anything I wanted for my birthday. The first thing I want—it’s you.”
His hands fisted at his sides. If he touched her, he wouldn’t be stopping. “I won’t bite you. I will keep my fangs—”
“Oh, I want them in me. In my neck. Because when you bite me and I come, I go a little crazy.”
His cock surged toward her. “Baby?”
“But if I bite you, nothing is going to happen to me, is it?” Worry flashed in the depths of her green eyes. “Because I am not in the mood to die again.”
“You will not die.” Not ever, not on his watch.
“Then kiss me, vamp. Kiss me like you need me more than blood. Kiss me, then bite me, and don’t make me wait.”
He wouldn’t make her wait. He kissed her again, a wild, ferocious kiss, even as he lifted her into his arms. He took her to his desk, perched her on the edge, and made short work of stripping her.
Lark’s sweet moans were the best sounds that he’d ever heard in his life.
Her sighs were music. And when she stroked him…
Fuck, yes.
He pushed his fingers between her legs. Caressed her clit with long strokes.
When her head tipped back, he sank his teeth into her throat.
Kept working her clit and taking her sweet blood, and as her body tensed, as she surged toward her orgasm, he yanked his hand away and drove his cock deep into her.
“Dev!” She came around his cock, her sex gripping him tightly with her contractions.
He nearly went out of his damn mind. He withdrew, thrust deep. Again. His tongue licked over her neck, and then—then it was her turn. Her nails scraped over his chest, and she arched up. Lark bit him right at the curve of his neck and shoulder.
Devereaux growled out her name as pleasure flooded from her bite straight to his dick.
Pleasure so intense that his whole body shuddered.
But he wanted her coming again with him.
His fingers slid back to her clit. He knew she’d be extra sensitive now, and he pressed his fingers over her, squeezed, stroked.
She came again with a hard buck of her hips against him. Yes, yes! This was what he wanted. The pleasure erupted through every cell in his body, and he held her as tightly as he could.
The pounding of his heartbeat filled his ears. She licked the small wound she’d made, and even though he’d just come, his over-eager cock swelled again.
One of the good things about being a vamp. Endless stamina.
His hands curled under her hips, and he lifted her up. Her legs wrapped around him as Lark stretched her body. Her arms twined around his neck. “I want you again.” She squeezed him with her delicate, inner muscles. “How do I already want you again?”
He carried her to the big, leather chair that sat near the fire. He lowered into it, making sure to keep her in his lap and on his cock. Exactly where he wanted her to stay.
His hands tightened around her hips. “You’re a vamp now. Physical changes, remember? You recover faster.”
She lifted her hips. Pushed up on her knees.
The leather gave a soft creak.
Lark slid back down, taking him in balls deep.
Fucking perfection. The flames flickered behind her. “You are so beautiful.”
“And you’re the sexiest man I’ve ever seen.” Up. Down. Up. Her breath came faster.
She stopped talking.
So did he. Mostly because he was about to go out of his freaking mind.
Her body was a wet, slick heat. Her sex so tight—absolute paradise. He wanted to fuck and bite and never stop. He wanted to devour her. Own her.
And he wanted her to own him. To be bound with him forever.
He didn’t want to have a night when he woke and she wasn’t there. He wanted to always be with her.
Lark leaned forward. Her teeth scored his neck.
Pleasure surged through him.
Devereaux pumped his hips against her. Moved faster and harder as the climax bore down on him. He drove as deeply into her as he could go.
And then they were both crying out as the release hit them. A surge of white-hot pleasure that seemed to consume them. Devereaux held her tight, locked her against him, and knew that he would do anything in order to keep her with him.
Fuck the world. No one would ever take her from him.