23. Avery
AVERY
Dorian and I are walking to Harbor House in silence, the words from Helena circle my mind when a smoky fog begins surrounding us. It thickens across the lane ahead of us in a strip too clean to be normal. It's like a curtain pulled across the world.
Dorian stops. "Behind me."
I remember what he told me in the council passage: old vampires do not only kill with force. If they sever the bloodline thread at the heart, the body does not die like a body. It unravels.
I see the fear cross his face, but not fear for himself, fear for me. A crunch from a booth on gravel comes from inside the white-gray smoke. Then another. Edging closer to us. I see Dorian's eyes dart in every direction until they appear. Two figures. My stomach goes cold.
They are not like the thing at F-9, starved and animal-bright. These are cleaner. Coats buttoned. Faces ordinary enough to pass a person on the street and forget them. That makes them worse.
"Elder Valek," one says. "The human is ours."
Dorian moves before the last word finishes.
Without warning, and no dramatic lunge. One moment he is beside me.
The next, he is driving one into the gravel making the ground shake beneath my feet.
I stumble back as the second one hurls toward me.
I swing my bag to hit him, but he's moved before it catches him.
His arms reach. Before contact, Dorian is there.
His hand around the rogue's throat pulling him back. The rogue hisses. Teeth flash.
Dorian pushes him away and shouts. "She is neither yours nor the council's to correct. She's not even mine. Leave this place or face the consequences."
The first rogue is up again. Dorian puts himself between both of them and me.
They ignore his warning and hurl toward him.
His arms move quick. One is flung too far to get to me before he's finished with the other. His eyes go bright and terrible. He drives his hand into the rogue’s chest, not through flesh exactly, but through something older beneath it.
The rogue convulses once. Then his body unravels into ash. The other stares on.
"Tell the elder who opened the old door," he calls to Dorian, "that mercy has made your road very easy to read."
He flees, and Dorian returns to my side. Holds my hand, and checks I'm still standing. I can see he wants to pursue him, but he's more concerned with me.
"Are you hurt?"
"No. Are you?" I know the question is absurd.
"No."
The fog thins like it was never there. Harbor House sits three streets away, warm-windowed and breakable. My room. My notes. Mabel asleep under a roof that suddenly feels made of paper.
"You can't go back there tonight," he says.
I glance at him knowing that's the truth. He tugs slightly and I follow him, hand in hand.
His house waits above the cliffs, behind a gate and old gray stone. Crimson Harbor is gothic, yet beautiful in every single way. It sits like it's daring the ocean to take it. Tall windows facing out to the horizon, the glass thick, throwing light across the path.
I glance down at his hand. Cool skin. Long fingers. A monster's hand, if I'm simple about it. A man's hand, if I'm honest.
Dorian unlocks the door, extends his arm into his home, and I walk in gazing at the tall ceilings and architecture.
"That was a great walk home," I say.
His mouth almost moves.
Inside, I read it like a site. Shelves of old books, spines uncracked at the bindings, everything in a careful, maybe specific order.
Marble floors. A curved staircase. He watches me admire its beauty, but doesn't say anything.
He pauses at the threshold after I step in, fingers still on the door, and for one second the house feels less like a house than a rib cage he has opened.
"Kitchen's the only warm room," he says. "This way."
A long island runs down the center of the kitchen, stone-topped, the surface worn smooth at one corner where a hand has rested for a century. I set my bag down. Then, because I'm tired of standing where people put me, I push myself up onto the island and sit.
Dorian comes to stand near me. Close. Not overpowering. I sense the weight between us. The sensation rumbles inside me. The bond.
"They knew my route," I say. "Not guessed. Knew.."
"Yes."
"So I'm protected." The word tastes wrong. "Conditionally. Tolerated. Watched. I spent today being argued about by a room of people deciding whether my memory was a problem they could afford. I feel like a problem."
"You're not."
"I'm a liability you're answerable for though. Helena said it to your face."
He's quiet a moment. "We will deal with whatever comes at us. I am concerned that the rogues know you matter to us. To me. You've become leverage."
"And your instinct is to lock me up somewhere like Rapunzel?"
"My instinct," he says, "is to control every risk between you and the world. I'm trying to choose something else."
"Choose what?"
"Trusting in myself. In you. It's kinda new."
I don't laugh, but something in me unclenches. "Partnership means I share the danger. The problems. The worries. You don't need to have me seeing the view from behind, we can see it beside each other instead."
"It's hard. New. I'm working on it."
I breathe. "I'm here anyway. I can't stop myself. That's what matters."
There's a silence that doesn't feel awkward. Just relaxed, and I've been wanting to ask something about the bond for a while.
"This bond. The mate thing." I tilt my head. "Does it come with a handbook? A warning label? Is there a customer service line I can call?"
He laughs. "No handbook."
"Returns policy?"
"None."
"Figures."
Our mouths reach ear to ear as my last word leaves. His look changes into admiration, and mine changes into wanting.
He steps between my knees, slow, staring into my soul as he moves. He lifts one hand and holds my cheek like I'm fragile. His skin is cool. It always is. I feel it even more now that I'm aware of his vampirism.
"Can I?" he asks.
I nod. He kisses me softly, and the restraint in him is loud around us.
It isn't hesitation. It's him knowing I'm human and he could harm me if he fully lets go.
He wants me to feel the strain of it in the steadiness of his hands, in the stillness that isn't calm but leashed.
His lips are plump against mine, calmly moving, our tongues collide and caress each others.
My arms wrap around his neck, and my breasts lean into him.
I move one hand to his shirt unbuttoning each one with a tease.
I move my tongue to his neck and nibble a little, amused that he could just drain me of blood, but horny enough that I don't care.
I feel him give a little with a small groan and his fingers thread through my hair.
I glance up to see his teeth slightly showing, but I don't scare.
I touch his lip and he gazes down to me.
His eyes are so striking that the color seems to run through the white.
Something rushes through me that is unexplainable, it seems to happen to him too. I swear there are bright speckles of light around us, but our eyes are fixed until he can't wait any longer.
He grabs my waist and pulls me toward him.
His cock already bulging through his pants.
I feel the pulse in my pussy that is stronger than before.
His thumb traces the line of my jaw, deliberate, and he kisses me deeper.
This time I feel the quiet hunger of him.
The strength in him. It doesn't hurt. I want more. I want the predator in him to take me.
He slides a hand to the bottom of my top, and lifts it.
Freeing my breasts into the cold air. My nipples immediately turn hard.
He cups one breast and puts his tongue around my nipple, licking, and sucking.
I brace a hand behind me, slightly arching as he does.
A moan leaves me. His other hand slides between my thighs, and he caresses them making the wetness become visible.
Stopping, he puts both hands under my knees and draws me to the edge of the island.
I undo his trousers and allow his cock free.
Placing my hand around the thickness. Squeezing and pulling back and forth just once before he stops me.
He kneels down, grabbing my ass cheeks, and his mouth finds my clitoris.
He teases it, and I move with him. Each stroke makes me gasp.
I shudder and grab his head, pushing him. I'm close.
His long cold fingers enter me, and I moan.
The heat rushes through me. The shudder gets worse, and the wetness is loud.
I tip my head back as I squirt into his mouth and vocally let him know I am.
My hips thrust upward and he holds me in place.
My muscles relax and he rises to me. A grin across his face.
I kiss him, tasting myself in his saliva. I guide his cock into me, and his arm bands my lower back, drawing me flush, cool and unyielding. My pussy parts as he enters, and we groan in unison. I arch into him, and he thrusts deeper each time.
Everything falls away that we've been dealing with. I don't go quiet. "I want harder. Take me Dorian. Take me."
He pulls out and takes me off the island, bending me over. Quickly thrusting his cock back inside, he puts his fingers through my hair, and tugs my head back. It's deeper now, deep as it can go. My mouth is wide, and the sounds are louder.
He murmurs, "Ave. Mmmm. Ave."
It undoes me, and I scream in pleasure. He doesn't stop.
He's not ready. I've come again and his hand instantly finds my clit again.
Flicking the sensitivity, he's not finished with me yet.
The contradiction of him trying not hurt me but able to give me this spectacular sex is the most powerful thing I've ever felt.
I have been here before with him, but it was never this. The other time was heat with a lie folded inside it. This is heat with nothing folded anywhere. No secret under his stillness. No part of him I'm pretending. He is exactly what he is.
I reach back and grab his hip. He leans down and kisses my neck, my head still pulled back. "I'm going to come again."
"Yes, do."
As my body trembles for a third time, my legs crumble slightly. I can no longer feel them. He holds me up as he thrusts to the deepest I've ever felt, and my moan doesn't feel human. His cock explodes inside me, his come traveling through me and I see speckles of light as my whole body erupts.
My legs give way and we both drop to the floor. I lay on top of him with my forehead against his collarbone. My breath fast, but slowing in segments. I'm shaken, yet feel rearranged. Closer to him than anyone could ever measure.
"That is a little bit of the bond," He says.
I don't speak. I'm in the midst of seeing all there is to see. Our future. Our love. Our dreams coming to life. The mate bond isn't as scary as I thought it may be. This is the beginning of something I won't let go of.