He stared at her strong, beautiful face ... and lingered on her lips. "I have an idea."
"Whatever would you like?" The innocence in her stare gave him pause. And lit up his libido like a bonfire.
Not like it needed the help.
"How old are you?" he asked abruptly. He might be a letch, but he didn't do underage anything. She was sure as hell built like an adult, but who knew what their maturity rate was - "
I am three hundred and five years of age."
Blink. Blink. Annnnnnd one more for good measure. Sure as shit that had to be of age, he thought. "So you're marriageable?"
"I am. I am not with a male, however."
So there was a God. "I know what I want, then." Her. Naked. All over him. But he'd settle for a hell of a lot less.
"What?"
"A kiss." He held up his hands. "Doesn't have to be all hot and heavy. Just ... a kiss."
When she didn't reply, he wanted to kick his own ass. And thought seriously of turning himself in to that brother of hers for the beating he deserved.
"Show me how?" she whispered.
"Does your kind not ... kiss?" God only knew what they did. But if any parts of the legend held true, sex was in the repertoire big-time.
"They do. I just never have before - Are you ill?" She reached out with her hand. "Healer?"
He opened his eyes ... which evidently had slammed shut. "Let me ask you something. Have you ever been with a man?"
"Never with a human man. And ... not with a male, either."
Manny's c**k just about blew its top off. Which was nuts. It had never mattered to him before whether a woman had been with someone ... or not. Actually, the kind of chicks he usually went for had lost their virginity in their early teens - and never looked back.
Payne's clear, pale eyes stared up at him. "Your scent is even stronger."
Probably because he'd broken out in a sweat trying not to orgasm.
"I like it," she added in a deeper voice.
There was an electric moment between them, one that he could not believe would be erased by any mind-over-gray-matter parlor trick. And then her lips parted and her pink tongue came out to wet her mouth ... as if she were imagining something that made her thirsty.
"I think I want to taste you," she said.
Right. Fuck kissing. If she wanted to eat him raw he was down for it. And that was before he watched the tips of her white fangs drop even farther from her upper jaw.
Manny could feel himself panting, but he couldn't hear a thing as the blood roared in his ears. Goddamn it, he was on the verge of losing control - and not in a metaphoric sense. He was literally a heartbeat away from stripping the blankets off her body and mounting her. Even though she was in traction. And had never been with anyone before. And wasn't his kind.
It took all he had in him to stand up and step back.
Manny cleared his throat. Twice. "I think I'd better take a rain check."
"Rain check?"
"Later."
Instantly, her face changed, the lovely lines tightening up and hiding the fragile passion that had bled through her features. "But ... of course. Indeed."
He hated hurting her, but there was no way to explain how badly he wanted her without making it p**n ographic. And she was a virgin, for God's sake. Who deserved better than him.
He took one last lingering look at her and told his brain to remember it. Somehow, he needed to not lose her. "Do what you have to. Now."
Her eyes drifted down the length of him and lingered at his hips. When he realized she was looking at his sex, which was standing at attention and then some, he discreetly hid what was going on beneath his scrubs with his hands.
His voice got hoarse. "You're killing me here. I can't be trusted with you right now. So you've got to do it. Please. God, just do - "
Chapter Eleven
Ravasz. Sbarduno. Grilletto. Trekker.
The word trigger banged around V's skull in all the languages he could put it into, his brain spicin' his vocabulary up for shits and giggles - because it was either that or the thing would cannibalize itself.
As he rocked his Google Translate, his feet took him through his penthouse at the Commodore over and over again, his relentless pacing turning the place into a multimillion-dollar hamster-wheel equivalent.
Black walls. Black ceiling. Black floor. Night view of Caldwell that was never what he came here for.
Through the kitchen, through the living room, through the bedroom and back.
Again. And again.
In the light of black candles.
He'd bought the condo about five years ago, when the building was still under construction. As soon as the skeleton had risen down by the river, he'd been determined to own one-half of the top of the skyscraper. But not as some kind of home - he'd always had a place away from where he slept. Even before Wrath had consolidated the Brotherhood into Darius's old mansion, V had been in the habit of keeping where he crashed and stashed his weapons separate from his ... other activities.
On this night, feeling as he did, the fact that he had come here was both logical and ludicrous.
Over the decades and centuries, he'd developed not only a reputation in the race, but a stable of males and females who needed what he had to give. And as soon as he'd taken possession of this unit, he'd brought them here to this black hole for a very specific kind of sex.
Here, he'd shed their blood.
And he'd made them scream and cry out.
And he'd f**ked them or had them f**ked.
V paused by his worktable, the old wood battered and marked not just from the tools of his trade, but from blood and orgasms and wax.
God, sometimes the only way to know how far you'd come was to return to where you once had been.
Reaching forward with his gloved hand, he took hold of the thick leather bindings he used to keep his subs where he wanted them.
Had used, he corrected himself. As in past tense. Now that he had Jane, he didn't do those things anymore - hadn't had the impulse.
Glancing over at the wall, he measured his collection of toys: Whips and chains and barbed wire. Clamps and ball gags and razor blades. Floggers. Lengths of chain.
The games he played - had played - were not for the faint of heart or the beginners or the casually curious. For hard-core subs, there was such a fine line between sexual release and death - both got you off, but the latter was your last shot. Literally. And he was the ultimate master, capable of taking others where they needed to go ... and one thin inch past that.
Which was why they all came for him.
Had come for him -
To him, he corrected.
Fuck.
And that was why his relationship with Jane had been a revelation. With her in his life, he hadn't felt the burning need for any of this. Not for the relative anonymity, not for the control he exerted over his subs, not for the pain he enjoyed inflicting on himself, not for that sense of power or the pounding releases.
After all this time, he'd thought he'd been transformed.
Wrong.
That internal switch was still with him, and it had been flipped to the "on" position.
Then again, the urge to commit matricide was stressful as shit - when you couldn't act on it.
V leaned in and fingered a leather flogger that had stainless-steel balls tied on its ends. As the lengths filtered through the fingers of his ungloved hand, he wanted to throw up ... because standing here, he would have given anything for a slice of what he'd had before -
No, wait. As he stared at his table, he revised that. He wanted to be what he once had had. Before Jane, he'd had sex as a Dom because it was the only way he'd felt safe enough to get through the act - and part of him had always wondered, especially as he was cracking the whip, so to speak, why his subs had wanted what he'd given them.
Now he had a pretty good idea: What was banging around his inner skin was so toxic and violent, it needed a release valve that was cut from its own cloth....
He walked over to one of his black candles without being aware that his shitkickers were crossing the floor.
And then the thing was against his palm before he even knew he was gripping it.
His craving brought the flame upward ... and then he tipped the lit tip toward his chest, hot black wax hitting his collarbone and rivering down to streak under his muscle shirt.
Closing his eyes, he let his head fall back as a hiss sucked through his fangs.
More wax on his bare skin. More sting.
As he got hard, half of him was on board and the other half felt like a total skeez. His gloved hand had no problems with a split personality, however. It went for the button fly on his leathers and sprang his cock.