Chapter 14
Lovely to see the evidence of damage fade, to bathe a heavy-lidded leman and gently chafe languid, beautiful limbs to dryness.
To carry her to the bed, arrange her in its precise center, to sample a velvet mouth freighted with the taste of his own blood.
The Gift was rising swiftly in her now, urged along by a Maker’s initial feeding; the memory of her drawing against his veins was pleasurable torment, the rising thrall a prickling goad only salved by pushing her legs apart and driving himself into her hot, slick center once more.
Her back arched, starry eyes half-opening.
Maximus froze, an unwelcome awareness of how a mortal female might interpret this act sending cold trickles down his back.
Glacial ice meeting the volcanic heat of her core, his own existence steel caught between the two; he was helpless to withdraw, yet could not advance.
“Christ,” she whispered. “You could just find a regular girlfriend, you know.”
“No.” His teeth—both true and camouflage—ached desperately.
So did the rest of him, held in precisely painful equipoise.
He needed to move, had to, but what would that cost?
She had already been battered and terrorized well past mortal bearing, and now he was doing…
this. He could barely find words in her modern language, struggling against a sea of contradictory imperatives.
“Sanguinant, we need… I need this. You.”
“Nobody needs me.” Achingly quiet, resigned to the idea, as her heavy charcoal lashes drifted down.
The statement was so utterly, incredibly bizarre. Had her mortal companions been blind to the miracle living among them, unaware of a divine gift burning golden amid the piled trash of their warren?
“Then I am nobody,” he murmured, and was tempted to laugh. A good soldier must be wily as Odysseus if he expected to become a general, and now he must not only keep what he had found but become a patricide as well.
Nemesis’s orders had been to murder the sanguinant elder who held this territory. There was no reason for one of his fellow senior legionnaires to be sent so closely afterward… unless Father intended to discard an elder son.
Eldest son, as a matter of fact. Primus inter pares, once, but none of Maximus’s coevals had survived so long, nor been sent upon so many sensitive, complex missions. William had been a good pupil, the finest among his crop, being groomed for a command of his own.
No more. And he had to wonder why William had acted so oddly, appearing in the parking structure. Certain aspects of that fight were worrisome.
His leman’s hips shifted, a wall of pleasure swamping her enthralled sanguinant, returning him to the immediate, vivid, overwhelming present moment.
“Oh,” she breathed. “Okay.”
For a long, breathless moment he thought she accepted necessity, accepted him, and his chest expanded with intense, murderous relief before he realized it was merely mortal fatigue and the narcotic effect of feeding from a Maker. Were that lacking, she would no doubt struggle as she had before.
He had his praenomen again. Unfortunately it was the title of a traitor, a patricide in the making, a beast assaulting a defenseless nymph.
Worst of all, he had no intention of stopping.
His body tensed, shaft driven to the hilt.
He battered the gates of Elysium itself, as her soft hands rose to grip his shoulders, as she moved with dreamy slowness.
Cast into phrenzy, he nevertheless grimly held his own release at bay until her pleasure was unmistakable, tiny gasping cries lost in his mouth battening upon hers, the hot satin of her innermost sanctum clamping rhythmically.
Then he was lost as well, spinning, drowning, his only anchor shuddering below and around him.
Damned and driven, chained and liberated at once, he pressed a kiss to her humming pulse before driving his teeth in, and the taste of his salvation bore the smoke-laced edge of his very own, his only fledgling.
The world halted. He collapsed onto her, merciful blackness covering every sense for a brief eternity, and even in that abyss a single word beat in time to his old, ruthless heart.
Leila. Leila. Leila.
A tiny, experimental wriggle, setting off another cascade of pleasure. He raised his head, and she went still. Was it fear, or discomfort?
“Shh.” Maximus stiffened, propping himself on elbows. Had he crushed her; could she breathe? “Don’t.”
“Huh?” Another tentative shift, her hips twitching. “There’s… it’s… Is that normal?”
Of course there were distinct differences in physical structure, though all sanguinant had been mortal once.
“The shape changes.” Groping for words to explain was a constant difficulty, but one he could be grateful for.
If she were disposed to listen, it meant at least a measure of resignation to her new status.
“Barbed, as an arrowhead. I am fastened for some short while. Try to relax.”
“Sure, relax. Uh-huh.” Finally, her legs wrapped about his waist, slim pretty ankles hooking together. She let out a long, drowsy sigh sounding suspiciously like relief. “Oh, thank God. That’s better.”
His heart, pierced and soothed at once, gave an incredible leap. “I will remember as much.”
She paid no attention, lost in the blur of feeding. “Monster blood.” A singsong whisper. “High on monster blood. Wow, what a trip.”
Very little matched the opiate pleasure of your Maker’s ichor, given initially to strengthen the Gift and afterward as a reward for good behavior or marked success in carrying out orders.
A leman’s presence overpowered even that rapture; could she understand her own importance, that a few meager drops of her breathing presence outweighed centuries spent fighting the slow rise of ossification?
“Hey. Max.” She bumped his shoulder with her palm, perhaps used to requesting attention from her former companions in blunt manner. “You’re making me a biter, right? Is that what this is?”
Biter. It wasn’t the worst word, he decided.
“Sanguinant.” A pedantic correction, and he risked brushing her cheek with his own.
She did not retreat from the caress, nor did she attempt escaping his weight.
All in all, he could be cringingly grateful for such grace.
“Yes. You are given the Dark Gift, little Leila.”
“So I’m… ugh.” Even her soft disgust was attractive. “I’m gonna have to suck blood?”
“Only mine.” If he must pay with his own veins for her grudging compliance, it was only right.
He would give much more for far less—and if she ever gifted another creature the touch of her fangs, he would wait for her to finish draining the prey before tearing it to shreds.
The certainty was immediate, instinctive, and overwhelming.
“I will hunt for us both. You will learn what it means to be leman.”
He waited for some response, but there was none.
She had sunk into unconsciousness; he realized dawn was well past. Soon she would suffer Sol’s advent as a fledgling always did, rendered helplessly somnolent until dusk loosened daylight’s bonds.
Full transition would be swift for one so sensitive, especially with frequent feeding.
The thought was extremely pleasing.
Maximus lay still, breathing her in, and even while cursing himself for what he had just done, he knew he would never take another road.