Blood of the Dead, page 6
I curled forward, nodding against him, fitting myself to his chest beneath his chin. “Yeah.”
He wrapped one arm around me, and held my hips steady with his other hand. “I don’t want to hurt you, Luna,” he murmured, into my hair.
I shook my head against his chest. What I wanted to say was You can’t, because there was no possible way he could understand even a tenth of what I’d been through in my life. Or It’s okay, everyone else does, because that was also, often, the truth. But what came out instead was a long sigh as the creature that owned me made a trail down my back, cupped my ass, and pulled me open. “It’s going to be all right,” I told Nilesh, because I dearly wanted that to be true. “No matter what happens. Just keep going,” and then I wrapped my arms around his neck and hung on.
When you’ve made yourself beholden to a spectral presence, you didn’t need lube, and you didn’t always get asked for permission. But for all that my Master scared me, and he did, and as frustrated as I was that he hadn’t let me get bitten earlier in the night, which I so was—he’d never left me unsatisfied. He had to make me come to feed, so I knew where things were going.
Nilesh thrust into my pussy again, as my Master took my ass. I whimpered without meaning to, in surprise.
“Luna,” Nilesh whispered, holding himself still deep inside me. My Master had no such compunction though, and started riding in and out. I was so full of cock I could barely breathe. “Fuck, Luna, you’re so,” he started, but he didn’t get the chance to finish as I moaned. He exhaled roughly and started thrusting again, only this time full of purpose.
I clung to his chest, taken by him, and taken behind, dizzy with sensations. I couldn’t have formed words if I wanted to, all I could do was let myself be rocked between them, as they each took their fill of me. I started making low wild sounds, my cheek against Nilesh’s chest, my thigh over his hips, with my Master’s presence pressed close behind.
“Luna,” Nilesh said, this time making it a grunt, as he thrust himself inside me.
“Yes,” my Master purred, just to me. “My Luna. Who always does exactly as she’s told, so that I give her what she wants.”
I nodded into Nilesh, whining, so that my Master would know I had heard him. “Always,” I whispered out, and then groaned again. They were working at odds, taking turns almost, which meant that there was always someone pushing in or pulling out and it felt like I was the main piece of some engine, their cocks two pistons literally trying to fuck me up. I writhed against Nilesh, moaning, not sure how much more sensation I could take.
Nilesh bent his head over mine to whisper hoarsely in my ear. “I can’t believe how good your pussy feels.”
I couldn’t manage to speak, but I was getting close, and I wanted to let him know—so I bit him. Right where Paco had bitten me, not that long ago, on his chest, over his heart. He made a growling sound at that and then my Master changed his thrusts so that inside of working opposite they were taking me simultaneously, filling me at the same time.
I started to cry out, I couldn’t help myself, everything felt so obscenely good, every piece of me stretched and owned.
“Oh—God—Luna—please—come,” Nilesh begged me, in time with his thrusts.
“Yes, bloodslave,” my Master whispered in my ear. “Do as you are bidden.”
And then Nilesh caught my mouth with his and kissed me hard, which muffled the sounds of my screaming as my body grabbed both of them with my orgasm’s first wave. I felt my pussy wrap Nilesh’s thick cock tight at the same time as my ass squeezed my Master’s, and I rocked back and forth between them, helplessly, hopelessly, coming.
“God—fuck,” Nilesh snarled and started pumping, and I knew he was emptying himself inside me, thrust after thrust. I kept moaning, hit by fresh waves, and I heard my Master’s satisfied grunts, as he accepted all our energies as sacrifice.
My Master suddenly departed then, as he so often did, after having left me wrung out. I sagged against Nilesh, and he held me, breathing hard, stroking my hair and back tenderly. “That was so good,” he whispered, with his cock still inside me.
I tried to gather myself up without much luck. “Don’t get used to it.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
I closed my eyes and sank against him, feeling his skin against mine and breathing his scent in deep. I had been kidding when I’d said it but . . . there was really no way to make things work. I was either going to die horribly or join the living dead, and neither of those left room for anything between us. I raised my head up and gave him a look, trying to describe the gulf between us with my eyes, and then I shifted and he slid out. “Sorry. It’s been a long night. I’ve got to get back to my car.”
He leaned up on one arm beside me quickly. “You can stay.”
“I can’t.” I rolled to the side of the bed and started looking for my clothes. He watched me, his confusion clearly written on his face.
“Luna, I meant what I said earlier.”
In the elevator. When I’d as much as told him I could handle this, and more. I got dressed quickly. “I know you did. But that doesn’t change things,” I said, tugging on my boots. “I’m sorry for leading you on.”
“Luna,” he protested.
I picked up my backpack and slung it up. “I’ve got a phone. I’ll call a ride.”
He sat up fully, starting to stand. “There’s no way I’m not at least driving you back to your car.”
“No,” I said firmly. “I’ll see you tomorrow, at work, if you’re on.” He hesitated, and his muscles rippled defiantly. “I mean it,” I threatened. “Stay here.”
His eyes studied me, like I’d caught him doing earlier in the night, this time trying to weigh out my intent. “Fuck,” he cursed, coming up with an answer he didn’t like, as he collapsed back on his bed.
I quickly headed for his door.
Chapter Ten
Jack
I raced home from Dark Ink, trying to outrun my fears—that somehow the one man that meant the most to me in the world had decided to give me up.
I had learned in my years as a vampire that hunger and anger were two sides of the same coin, mostly because anger could lead to blood, and because of this the siren song of what kind of mayhem I could get into on the Strip rang loudly in my ears as I drove along. I could go and whammy an entire bachelorette party into sleeping with me all night, doing things they’d never dreamed of—or I could go to the bad part of town and beat up someone deserving until they bled . . . but neither of those things were fully like me.
I still watched TV and read books occasionally. There were still nights when I had to do something to pass the time, and it always made me roll my eyes when the people in macho stories puffed their chests and talked loudly about “having codes,” like there wasn’t a threshold of pain they could reach where they wouldn’t piece out their own mother for her organs.
I knew it was true, because I’d seen people in pain—I’d hurt people before, for Rosalie.
And she had, in turn, hurt me.
So I knew codes were bullshit, things writers used just to make a story’s engine run, and I sure as fuck didn’t have one. And I knew that somewhere inside me was my own seething pit of black, as dark as whatever shadow had tried to eat Sam, if not so cold. I’d been within a hairsbreadth of losing whatever humanity I had left before, and only love and luck had saved me.
But I had neither tonight—which is why I knew I needed to get home and lock myself up, someplace safe, where I couldn’t make bad decisions out of pain and a desire to make others hurt with me.
I parked Betty in the parking lot, trotting up to my front door, intending to do just that, when I saw Zach there, sitting in front of it with his elbows on his knees. He looked up, hearing my approach, and his whole face lit up with a nervous smile. “Hey.”
“Hey yourself,” I said, stopping a safe distance away. I needed to get him to go, now, for his own safety. I was full enough for tonight my hunger shouldn’t bother me, but at seeing him, it perked back up.
How the hell was he still so tan, working nightshifts?
“Long time no see,” he said, pretending to be casual.
“Yeah, about that,” I started, because I needed to—avoiding him was not enough. I needed to cut him off.
“Can we talk inside?” he said as he stood, before I had a chance to break up with him in the hallway.
And once again, whatever sense of self-preservation I possessed took a dive.
Because he shone so brightly to me.
I took a deep inhale and exhale, then said “Sure,” unable to help myself.
I unlocked my door and let us both in, and Sugar came out, to wind around Zach’s ankles. “Oh, look, someone remembers me,” he said.
I moved past him to set my wallet and keys down on the counter. “I remember you too, Zach,” I said, turning back.
“Huh?” he asked, looking up.
I realized he’d actually been talking to my cat, without sarcasm. I closed my eyes. This was going to feel like kicking a puppy.
Zach sat down on my couch, and I sat down on its far side, well out of arm’s reach. “Zach,” I said, trying to start again.
He looked so serious I stopped myself, and then he blurted out, “I know what you are.”
I figured there was almost no serious chance of that being true, and yet I couldn’t help myself. “You . . . do?” I asked him.
He nodded, his blonde bangs flopping against his forehead. “Yeah. Jack . . . clearly you’re some kind of . . . male prostitute. That’s why you always look like you just tumbled out of somebody’s bed—or like you’re heading for a new one.”
“Ah.” He wasn’t right, but he also wasn’t wrong. “Zach,” I began to try again.
“So you didn’t strike me as the jealous type,” he said quickly, cutting me off. “And when Luna and that guy came over, I thought . . . maybe this is my chance to show you that I can be like you.”
I blinked at his confession. “What guy?” I asked him, although I already knew.
Zach’s cheeks flushed red. “He said he was a friend of yours.”
“Uh-huh,” I said, slowly nodding. Luna had been passed out until earlier tonight, and Paco had left after Vermillion, so I hadn’t gotten a chance to ask either of them what the hell they’d gotten up to before the confrontation there.
Apparently, they’d gotten up to Zach.
His light green eyes pierced me, and then dropped. “It was a mistake, honestly. Because I know I’m not really like you. You probably think I am, because I am when it comes to you I try to play it cool . . . but I’m really not.”
“I know,” I said softly, and he frowned, then swallowed and gained strength.
“So if that’s why you’ve been avoiding me—I’m sorry, okay? I’m not going to do anything like that again. And I get that you’re you and you need to do your job and stuff and I can’t stop that, and I don’t want to—but would it be so bad if I were your man? The one who you did go out to dinners with?”
“Zach,” I started and he interrupted.
“Jack, I—”
“Please stop talking,” I asked, tempted to whammy him to make it happen, anything to stem the tide.
“Did I mean anything to you?” he asked. I watched his blood rush from the emotion of his question, as he watched me carefully, his eyes searching mine for answers.
You meant enough that I’ve been hiding from you, avoiding this. The words were on my tongue tip, but I couldn’t bring myself to say them.
“We can’t do this Zach. I’m sorry.” I did my best to sound final, and steeled myself to not give anything away.
He took a deep inhale, and I could scent his tears in the air. “Then . . . can you forget I said anything? And we just go back to the way things were?”
I shook my head. “We can’t do that either, Zach,” I told him. “It wouldn’t be fair.”
“To me, or you?” His lips drew into a thin pained line. “Was everything with you just all in my head, Jack? At least tell me that—was it just me, making stuff up?”
I inhaled to lie to him, like I ought to, to clear the decks and cut him loose. But I found I did have a stupid code after all, rattling around somewhere inside of me, like a ball dropped in a roulette wheel.
“No,” I said, and let my shoulders drop. “Zach—”
I heard Luna outside right before he heard her key in the lock. Zach looked over at the door as it opened, framing her, and the second she saw me, she blurted out: “Paco says he’s putting his life back together, without you.”
Her words hit me like stray bullets.
And that was why I knew I couldn’t let myself tell Zach I cared about him.
Because if I let myself, it might lead to this kind of pain again.
“Zach, I’m sorry,” I said, standing up. “You need to leave now. And don’t look back.”
He rose to stand in front of me, nostrils flaring. “No—that’s not what you were going to say, Jack. We both know it—”
“What I was going to say doesn’t matter. I’ve changed my mind,” I said, pointing at the door that Luna was quickly vacating. “Please. Don’t make this any harder on yourself. Go.”
He looked between the two of us, shaking his head like an unwilling horse, and Luna went to gather him up. “Not right now, Zach, come on,” she said, pulling him along. He shook her off of him, likely blaming her for her part in our “breakup,” and then he stomped out the door.
After that, she closed it and turned, to give me a look of infinite sorrow—perhaps the most true and kind emotion I’d ever gotten out of the girl. “I’m sorry,” she said.
I didn’t bother to ask about which part. “Me too.” I went over to retrieve my wallet. “Did Paco look well, at least?”
“Yeah,” she said, dropping her backpack down. She smelled of sex, and I figured it wasn’t worth asking with who or why. “And he was kinda prepared to fight someone if he had to, about things, like . . .” She took a deep inhale and sighed. “I’m used to reading both vampires and men, Jack, it’s been part of my job description for a really long time. I don’t want to give you false hope, but I don’t really think he meant it.”
I opened up my wallet and fished the tickets out. “I hope not,” I said, but Paco had pride. A lot of it. And I while I had managed to “save” his life . . . I’d also gone and wrecked it. He’d had a boyfriend, a real human one, like he should’ve, and a business he’d built from the ground up, and loving me had taken all of that away from him.
“At least you both have the benefit of time,” she said, trying to cheer me up. I snorted, and tried to hand her the pair of tickets Sam had given me earlier in the night.
“Take your new friend.”
She stared at them in my hand and her shoulders slumped. “I can’t.”
I kept holding them out regardless. “Don’t do this to yourself, Luna. Leave me.” I waved the tickets at her. “Go be normal. Please. I’ll figure out a way to pay you enough to make rent, just don’t be like me.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Too late,” she said, and stepped forward, plucking just one of the tickets up to read. “A performance of Mayerling? Tomorrow night?” Her jaw dropped open as she looked up at me. “Can we go?”
The name meant nothing to me, but it was clear she was excited on our behalf. I blew air through pursed lips. “Assuming it starts after sundown, and ends before my shift at work.”
“Yes!” She pumped her fist, then started sidling past me down the hall. “Dibs on the shower!” she shouted when she was halfway there.
“Good, ’cause you smell like sin,” I muttered.
I shook my head at our situation, but I couldn’t deny some small part of me was relived she was here—and that I wasn’t totally alone in the world again.
Luna:
* * *
I’d gone to most of the shows in Vegas before—Rosalie had sent me out to influence or sleep with men and women on “dates” often enough to get her way.
But this was different. A true ballet, just like the ones I’d used to dance in and go to when I was a child.
I went to sleep on Jack’s couch looking forward to waking up for once, and went shopping before I headed into Dark Ink. The artists there waved or nodded, and Nilesh wasn’t there, hooray for me. I caught up on phone calls and emails, then worked up an online calendar everyone could put their interests in shifts in, sent that out, collected chair fees, and ordered more supplies. All of that kept me fairly busy until nightfall, but once I noticed it was dark, I begged off, kicking my boots off in the office and then hopping into the bathroom—that I had personally cleaned, earlier in the day, because I currently had no choice but to be fucking full service, and I didn’t think anyone else would do it—to squirm into the dress I’d bought for the evening. It was light blue, like my eyes, and shimmery, with a bit of a swing around the hem. I pulled on newly purchased heels, too, and switched up my makeup a bit, lightening things with a hint of glitter. All in all, I was feeling quite presentable by the time I stepped out.
I should’ve known my luck wouldn’t hold—the second I opened the door, I saw Nilesh, waiting. He was leaning against the chair at his station, and giving me a soulfully hurt look.
It was really fucking sexy.
Goddammit.
I angled to go hide in the office again, but he got up and blocked me. “Can I take you out tonight?” he asked, looking down, his voice low enough that no one else could hear him.
“No,” I said, quickly shaking my head.
One of his eyebrows quirked up. “Can we talk?”
“Also no,” I repeated, and then the front door chimed as Jack walked in. He’d dressed himself up for the evening as well, with maybe the first long-sleeved shirt I’d ever seen him in. It was a crisply ironed deep blue number that made both his pale skin and the tattoos across his knuckles pop. He was still in jeans, but he might have actually polished his boots, and his dark brown hair was slicked back, though a rogue piece of it wanted to fall over one eye. And while somewhere in the few weeks of knowing him, my brain had slotted him firmly into an older-brother category rather than a potential conquest, I had to admit he was hot, especially when he saw me and gave me a cocksure smile.
