Chapter 7
She came awake fast and hard, heart already thundering and a scream in her throat that never made it out.
There was a hand over her mouth and pain in her hair, her head dragged back and her body arched up to accommodate the strain. In the near darkness of the bedroom, she knew Candy was still in the bed beside her and still asleep.
She looked up into the face of her attacker and saw the dark gold eyes of Alek. Her terror surged at the fact of the vampire and at the same time, there was the slightest relief. This wasn't a stranger. This wasn't Alek's brother Pan.
Next instant her heart kicked into overdrive.
Her eyes traveled over his face, to his bare arms, down to his waist and she writhed, trying to free herself from him.
Alek Tybolt stood over her bed, naked and hard and holding her by the hair.
She almost started to thrash, to try and free herself, but if she woke Candy, that might put her friend at risk.
She held herself still, trying to breathe through her panic, and Alek leaned down quite close to her and said directly into her ear, "Stay silent and get out of the bed and follow me."
She nodded, the smallest movement she could make, and he relaxed his hold on her mouth but not on her hair.
Mindy raised both hands to her head as she stood, pressing down on her hair to stop the pull.
The gesture made the nightgown she'd found in the closet ride up, exposing her long lean legs.
Her breasts jiggled. She saw his attention focus there and took that instant to look at his cock.
Hard, beaded with moisture, rampant and ready and huge.
She swallowed hard, terror filling her, then sucked in a breath.
She'd been holding her breath the entire time she rose and moved with him, trying not to move in a way that would result in her hair being pulled out.
Or to wake Candy. Or to scream her terror.
Now she sucked in air and found that something around her smelled like cinnamon. Or oranges. Or sunlight, the way her skin always smelled spicy when she'd been in the sun long enough the natural oils came up under her skin.
She licked her lips. The scent was pleasant.
It filled her with longing for something.
Holidays at the ocean. Cookies at Christmas.
No. Something else. The boyfriend she'd last had, someone she'd dated only a couple times, they'd never even slept together before he disappeared in the wake of the first ships and there were no more texts back from him even before cell phones became useful as time pieces but not to call people.
Sex. That was it. It smelled like sex in the room, like want and need.
Her body was responding even as her mind identified what she was sensing.
Her nipples tightened, hard and tingling under the lacy scrap of fabric she wore.
The tops of her thighs felt dewy, she was growing wet, slick, swollen and throbbing with want.
Some part of her mind reeled in alarm. This wasn't what she should be feeling. He was here as an invader, as alien who was taking her world and harming her people and she couldn't stop, she was wet and wanting, her mouth filling with saliva so she swallowed over and over and licked her lips.
When he let go of her hair, she turned and reached for him. Too late it occurred to her he might have something in mind she didn't want. By then his teeth were brushing her neck, his lips moving over her skin, his tongue leaving trails across her throat.
Pointless to panic, she thought. He was so much bigger and stronger than she was, nearly more than a foot taller, several times stronger. He'd have no compunction about being violent with her. Whatever had driven him to her bedside, it wasn't feelings for Mindy herself.
At the same time, the lust clouded her brain.
Yes, she could feel his teeth on her throat, the sharp touch of fangs but nothing digging in, but she couldn't think past it.
There was no biological imperative telling her to fight or run or do both.
There was nothing telling her to scream the entire harem awake.
It wasn't even the fact that this could happen every night for all she knew, maybe he roamed the harem nightly, maybe he would only be the first of many.
Maybe a girl died every night or maybe they only took blood, fed, and moved on.
Whatever it was, her heart hammered in fear but a second pulse throbbed between her legs.
Wrapping her fingers around his wrist, she tugged him to follow her. Everything she'd observed or heard about with the invaders, that should have gotten her nowhere, but he followed, as if he wanted to.
In the suite's living room, he stopped moving, pulling her back with no effort. Mindy realized neither of them had spoken yet.
He didn't speak now. His eyes blazed at her, the dark gold of them a fire that chilled her. The danger of him washed over her. There was no way she could stop, even if she thought he'd allow it. The ache in her was too great.
His hands came up and she thought he meant to caress her face but both hands settled on her shoulders and pressed her down to her knees. She knelt willingly, a part of her mind crying out that she needed release too.
She had to stay kneeling up to reach him, and took the time to look up into his face before she moved to him. In that instant he wrapped her hair around his hand again and pulled her head back hard.
Mindy made a sound, something sharp followed by a moan. The way he held her, her head back, her body bowed, her neck was offered up to him, her breasts, her entire body. Her hands flailed at her sides. She wanted to touch him. She wanted to stop the pain in her scalp.
She wanted to touch herself. Their eyes met. Shock coursed through her. His eyes on her, he was aware of her. She wasn't another nameless body and maybe this was nothing more than some bizarre alien initiation, welcome to the harem, this is going to be your life, give it up or lose it all.
Maybe. But it didn't matter. In that moment, he saw her.
In that moment, she wanted him to see her. She wanted him to see all of her, to know how badly she wanted him.
Without changing her gaze, she wet her lips, tongue snaking out along her mouth, her eyes challenging him. By now she'd have expected to be thrown over the back of the sofa, raped by him.
She was not. The strangeness of it had her growing more flushed and feverish. When he continued to watch her, she swallowed painfully against the pressure he exerted but didn't try to fight to get her head back into a more tenable position.
Instead, she ran her hands down her own body, starting on the slope of pectoral muscle beneath her collarbone, stroking so slowly she wanted to scream her own frustration into the night-dark hotel suite.
Her fingers glided, slick on her skin. She realized she was sweating, that it was hot in the suite and hotter now Alek had her by the hair.
An experiment, then. She tugged her head a little, just enough to make his grasp on her hair really pull.
Her eyes watered at the sharp pain at the same time she found herself groaning.
Her lashes fluttered. Between their beats she saw him watching her, eyes nearly glazed with lust.
Her hands continued their downward slide. She hadn't yet cupped her own breasts when he gave her hair another hard pull and this time she moaned out "Yes, oh, god."
Her hands slipped. Suddenly she had her nipples between her own fingers and she was twisting, pinching, her fingers under her breasts so he could clearly see the way she pinched and pulled and twisted the hard berries there.
The pain sang in her. She had never touched herself like this, never opened herself to anyone this way.
"More," he said. His voice was a desert wind. His eyes looked mad.
"Slow," she said in response, her brain so fogged she couldn't come up with more and when he grabbed another handful of her hair and pulled, said, "More," she slowed even farther and saw the cruel smile on his face.
Her hands dropped. Along her ribcage. That had never been erogenous but now the soft slick skin beneath her breasts felt like the most delicate and needy space. She ran her thumbs there, making her large, firm breasts bounce.
God, that felt good.
And then slowly, watching his face, licking her lips, watching his cock as it jerked toward her like something with a mind of its own, she let her hands travel down her body, slow, slow, moving inside the curl of her jutting hipbones and along the ridge of her pelvic bone, feeling where the last waxing she'd done out of boredom as much as anything else still held.
She was smooth. She was slick. There was sweat. There was –
Her hands went lower. Her clit was hard as his cock, engorged, desperate for contact. She wanted to not touch it. She wanted him to be the one to brush his hands over it, his mouth, his tongue, his cock, whatever he wanted, just touch her, but she sensed it would be some time now.
He was enjoying watching. This wasn't something she thought Vampyren females would do.
And if they did, she suspected they'd rip the male limb from limb when they finished.
She let her hands slide lower. There, god, she was soaking wet, slick and swollen and she moved her fingers down, slid one inside herself, feeling her lips sucking at her, her mind blanking for just a second.
"No."
He said it so sharp, so sudden, she came to herself instantly, cold and wet and scared.
"No," he said again, and his eyes were blazing, no less lost to the lust but full of awareness.
"Not without me."
Close. She was so close. Another second and there'd be no way she could stop.
"Suck me."