She was close. He could feel it in the way she moved against him, he could hear it in every breath she took, and he could smell it. It was heady and intoxicating beyond anything he had ever experienced.
Do it, Sam. He pulled against her neck, drawing more of her sweet, sweet blood into himself, letting it burn its way down his throat and fill his entire body with the magic of what she was. His arm slid free of her waist so he could grasp her legs, his grip bruising and possessive.
“Jack…” she moaned again as his deft fingers moved up her creamy thighs, inching their determined way to her moist, waiting core. It was radiating heat. His mind swore in color, his body ached relentlessly, and when he brushed his thumbs along her slick outer lips and she quivered beneath his touch, he couldn’t hold back the growl that rose in his throat. It shook against her neck, low and long and mean.
“Jack!” she finally cried out as he pressed two fingers inward, and she squeezed him back, tight and hot as hell. Oh Christ, he thought mindlessly. He was losing it. He couldn’t wait for her any longer.
Her blood burned in his veins, setting him on fire. His cock throbbed, his head felt light, and sweat broke out along his body. Jack used his free hand to rip the front of his pants open, freeing his dick from its confines. Then he grasped Sam around the waist, pulled more of her blood into his mouth, and lined himself up.
One hard thrust, and he was spearing into her, long and thick and rock-hard, filling her to the point of delirious pain. Sam cried out as her slick tightness was invaded, her scream filling the night and goading the monster predator within him. He sank deep, sliding his thick hardness into her, and animal sounds escaped him at the painful bliss of the experience.
And that was her ultimate undoing. At last, Sam’s body took control, her head dropped to his neck, and she bared her fangs. Jack smiled in victory against her throat as she shook in his arms – and then sank her teeth in deep.
Stars exploded in Jack’s mind, a kaleidoscope of agonized bliss. She drew his life force into her body, and it was the most wonderful surrender he had ever given. That’s it, he thought recklessly. That’s my Firebird.
Down below, she squeezed the life out of him, so small and sweet. It was madness. And he was only getting started. He steeled himself, his nerve endings screaming for mercy and more at the same time, and he pulled ever so slowly back, gaining ground. Sam stiffened; she knew what was coming. And he didn’t disappoint.
Again, he thrust forward, this time harder than the last – and he sank deeper. She cried out against his throat, and her teeth followed suit, sinking further into his neck. I deserved that, he thought with a killer grin against her vein as she drank him up and he claimed what was his.
The glove of her core pressed in on him, crushing him like a dream, her rings of muscles reacting to his presence with innocence and need. Jack ran his hand up her waist and curled his fingers around the pool of scarlet material that was her dress. One swift motion, and he tore it from her body as he again pulled out of her and thrust back in.
She was bared before him, exposed to the world, a pure goddess of curves and glory, and she was all his. He proved as much as he pressed his hand to her back, holding her still against his body and plowed into her again, drawing from her another beautiful, strangled cry.
He was heading into delirium. Blood streamed from the half-moon wounds her nails had carved into his shoulders, staining the black shirt and suit coat that sweat plastered to his form. The night was spinning around them. The ocean crashed into the wall beneath them. They moved in time with it.
He was savage, and so was she, both souls given in to the unnatural nature that ruled them with brutal insistence. Little by little, she opened further for him, allowing him access to her inner most being. And when he felt his resolve weakening and knew the end was coming, he pulled his teeth from her neck and took her head in his hands.
Sam pulled her own teeth from the wound they’d made in his throat, and very slowly looked up at him. Heavy lidded eyes of glowing yellow speared through Jack’s consciousness. He was stunned, thoroughly and irrevocably, as he lowered his lips to hers. There, he pried Samantha’s dangerous teeth apart and gently tempted her tongue with his own.
Sam trembled, shaking uncontrollably as his pace quickened, fierce and unrestrained. He was climbing a peak he hadn’t even known existed. His fingers brushed through Sam’s hair, curling around her thick, glorious waves, then fisting tight as he deepened his kiss, drinking her in. He tasted his own blood in her mouth. It had a primal effect on him, more fuel on the infernal blaze already consuming him.
Then he dropped his hands to her waist, wrapping his fingers around its narrow softness before sliding up to cup her glorious, perfect breasts. Tenderly but relentlessly, he brushed his thumbs across her taut, no doubt aching nipples. She moaned into his mouth, and he felt her tighten around his cock. For half a second, he felt so much ungodly pleasure, he literally feared he would lose his mind.
And then he was reaching the top of that heavenly hellish precipice, and Sam’s sounds against his lips became guttural and desperate. Jack’s hands dropped to her round, tight ass, grasping it hard. With a growl of primal resolve, he lifted her up, pulled her hard against him, drove into her with all of his inhuman strength – and exploded.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Sam pulled away from Jack, breaking their kiss, and her all-out scream pierced the sanctity of the night. She couldn’t get it out fast enough, there was too much – too much! She’d never felt anything like it, could not have even imagined it, the pleasure was so intense it was painful to the brim, overflowing, and she was drowning in it. Her body tightened, clutching at Jack, grasping and constricting around him. She cried out as he drove into her again and again, pushing her further and further beyond human sanity.
Until she was dangling over the edge of some kind of precipice, and all she wanted to do was jump. But she didn’t need to. Jack drove into her tight, slick sheath to its absolute hilt – and pushed them both off together. The night erupted into red and white behind her shut lids, and she lost track of sound, of scent, of reality. She was falling – floating…. I’m dying, she thought for half a second. Because this kind of feeling had to be wrong. It wasn’t allowed. Only death could feel as good as this.
Jack spent himself inside her, claiming her with his body as he had his teeth, and her orgasm painfully milked him for every last drop he had to give. His arms were wrapped tight around her, un-breathably close as they came down from that impossible high together.
It took forever. As Sam rested her head on Jack’s bleeding and tortured shoulder, the feeling came back to her toes and fingertips. Her skin began to notice the cold wind and salt air. Little by little, the world came blurrily back to her, unfocused but real.
It was then that she fully realized she was completely naked. And Jack was still completely clothed. Typical, she thought with a slight smile. It seemed like something so very Jack – and something about that turned her on again.
Just like that.
But turned-on or not, the world was becoming more and more solid by the second, and though Jack was holding her so tight, she was starting to ache, Sam was admittedly beginning to feel the cold of the city around her.
She turned her head, lifting slightly from Jack’s shoulder, and noticed Jack brush his fingers against the tattoo on his left forearm.
All at once, a familiar portal swirled to life around them. Jack stepped back, slid one arm under her knees, and the other around her back, and lifted her into his arms. Sam shuddered against him, once more laying her head against him. She felt light and empty, and in that moment, she didn’t want to think.
So as the portal whisked them from a back alley behind a dance club on the west coast to a destination only Jack was aware of, Sam closed her eyes and let it happen.
Time passed, short and indistinct, then Sam heard Jack’s shoes walking across a hardwood floor. She opened her eyes just as he placed o
ne knee on a bed she’d never seen before and laid her down atop cream colored satin sheets. She felt them cool and sensual against her naked flesh, and goose bumps flushed her skin.
Jack stood beside his bed and stared down at her. She gazed back up at him as well, in all of his dark, powerful beauty, and not for the first time, she felt a stab of guilt for what she’d done to him all those years ago. That black strip of leather over his eye….
Jack cocked his head slightly to the side and smiled a small, knowing smile. “I got used to it, Firebird,” he said. She realized he was talking about the eye patch – and the missing eye beneath it. He must have been able to see the emotion on her face, and he was that good at reading her. “You were only doing what you thought you had to do,” he said. And then he laughed softly and placed his knee on the bed again to lean over her.
His form shadowed her. His gaze slipped from her face to her body, raking over it as if he was trying to memorize it. His hand followed suit, its electric touch running up the length of her leg to curve over her hip, touching her like only a lover could. “I honestly should have known better than to underestimate you,” he finished.
Jack lingered on her hip bone and shook his head as if in wonder. “My only regret is that I can’t now behold this beauty with both eyes. And that’s the truth of it.”
A flush of new heat washed over Sam. His nearness, his words, his incredible touch and absolute magnitude were overwhelming. She was laid out before him on sheets of satin, not a strip of clothing to protect her… and her gums were aching once more, matching the slightly sore and intimate pulse between her legs.
Jack’s knowing smile turned dark, and that blue eye of his lit up from within once more. He leaned over her, capturing her chin with his hand and claiming her lips with his own.
In the back of Sam’s head, the very, very back, she knew they had things they needed to talk about. She knew shit was going down and the world was not going to wait for them. But it was a mess back there in the recesses of her thoughts, and she’d never been good at cleaning house. Right now, her body was lighting up, Jack Colton was once again taking control, and there was nothing else in the universe she cared about.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Sam lay on her side in the massive bed in the massive bedroom, and her mind spun spider webs of thought around her brain. Jack lay behind her, his strong body wrapped around her own with intimate and gentle ease. They fit perfectly together there, the yin and the yang in the lengthening shadows of his underground mansion.
She hadn’t recognized this room earlier because it was the master, and one of the few rooms she and Raven had decided against exploring when they’d first been brought here. The walls were carved stone as were the walls in the other rooms, the ceiling was tall, intricate, and painted, and this room, like so many of his rooms, had its own fireplace. A fire crackled merrily in the hearth, sending dancing shapes across the comforter.
Sam looked down at Jack’s arm where it rested over her waist and eyed the carefully drawn lines of his tattoo. Then she glanced at her own shoulder. There, matching similar marks on her right shoulder, Sam had a set of her own carefully drawn lines. Six straight scars, parallel to each other. Like she always did when she saw them, she experienced a flash of remorse.
The flash was just that, a there-one-instant and gone-the-next kind of thing that she’d trained herself to look past but that would always exist in the background, nonetheless. It was a mental scar. And it matched the physical ones.
But Jack’s tattoo was there because he was taught how to use magic marks by a man named William Solan. And William Solan was apparently one of the Thirteen Kings.
And apparently… so was Jack.
He’d told her everything. As they lay there together, tangled in sheets and wonderfully spent, Jack Colton had come completely clean. He’d told her how shifter kings were born into their role. But when Jack was approached by the last shifter king to be handed the crown, he’d turned it down and asked Darius Walker to do it instead. He’d been too young. And he hadn’t wanted to take the throne without his queen beside him.
Walker had been made famous by his successful attacks against the Hunters. He’d agreed to take the job on one condition – that when the time came, Jack didn’t give him any shit about taking it back.
Jack then began searching for his queen. He found her within the year, and Jack felt it was the fate of their two souls that drew them together so quickly. But Sam wasn’t ready, and she too was far too young.
For the next twenty years, Jack followed her and protected her. Sam had thought he was hunting her. She couldn’t have been further from the truth.
“I’m so sorry,” he told her suddenly, pulling her from her thoughts. Sam glanced over her shoulder and met his gaze. He ran his hand up her side until he was touching her shoulder. There, he gently touched her scars. “I made your life hell.”
Sam blinked. Her brow furrowed, and very real concern unraveled inside her. She turned in his arms until she was facing him and looked him dead in the eye. “No,” she said firmly. Then she shook her head and said it again with more finality. “No.”
She took a deep breath and measured her words. “Jack, being young is so hard. You knew that instinctively and that’s why you chose to wait. I’ve seen men and women in their sixties, in wheel chairs or in physical therapy who state flat-out that they would never again wish to be in their teens. Because it’s just too painful. It’s all about learning from mistakes, and that is never a comfortable thing. It’s all trial and error. Sometimes, the error part leaves scars.” She raised her hand and, just as gently as he’d touched her scars, she touched his eye patch. “We left a few on each other, but we learned from them. And we grew.”
Jack seemed to process that, and very slowly he smiled. It was a proud smile – and genuinely happy. It was the first time she’d ever seen such a beautiful thing on his face. It made him look like an angel. “Have you… given any thought to it?” he asked careful.
She knew what he meant. He meant had she given any thought to being queen. It was all she’d been able to think about for the last two hours. And in those two hours, she’d realized that it simply wasn’t a decision that could be made within two hours.
“Yes,” she said. “I need more time.” It seemed a ridiculous thing to say after having waited twenty years. But this was different. This was new. And it was too important.
Jack chuckled. “I knew you would say that.”
“You did?”
“Oh yes,” he said, brushing a lock of her hair from her cheek. “You were born for this. And anyone who jumps headlong into a chance to lead an entire nation isn’t worthy of that leadership. You’re taking this seriously. It’s a good sign.”
Sam thought for a moment. “How… will it happen? What will I have to do if I decide to take the step?”
“You will simply decide it,” he said, “in here.” He touched her temple. “And in here.” He touched her chest where her heart beat strong and steady. “And it will happen. You will know it, your body will know it, and your people will know it. Just like you knew to use your teeth when the time was right,” he said with a grin before he kissed her forehead.
Yeah, she thought. That was a trip. She’d known vampires did that. And werewolves were known to bite during sex too. But she hadn’t realized shifters were so tied to it as well. She wondered who else used their teeth while mating….
“Why is that?” she asked aloud, not really meaning to, but not sorry that she did. “Why do so many species bite during….” She blushed and looked down. “During sex,” she finished bravely.
“Blood is primal,” Jack told her. “You’ve heard of blood being used in stronger magic spells, I’m sure. Sometimes the sacrifice is necessary. That’s because there is magic in blood. There is life in blood. Life is the strongest magic of all.”
Sometimes the sacrifice is necessary…. His words echoed in her head, and she experienced a sudden s
pike of panic as an image of Darius Walker flashed through her mind’s eye. He’d been brave enough to take the job of king for two decades while Jack searched for his queen. That couldn’t have been easy. His unfair payment had been to be taken hostage by genocidal maniacs.
“Do you have a plan?” she asked, changing the subject. “For Walker?”
“We’re working on one.” He fell quiet for long enough that Sam looked up at him. He took a deep breath, one she felt against her own chest because of their closeness. His expression became grim. “I’m afraid, Firebird, that you’re a very big part of it.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Roman D’Angelo took a deep breath and peered past the chess pieces on the table in front of him to that space where the eyes went when the mind was no longer directing them. He stared at nothing, and his mind spun.
At this time of day on a normal Thursday afternoon, Lalura Chantelle would have been sitting across from him, playing her side of the board. She always won. Every single time. It would have been a lot harder on his self esteem as a man, no less as a king, if it hadn’t been for two things. One, he had learned long ago that women were smarter than men. And two, Lalura Chantelle was the smartest of all.
Now Roman’s eyes refocused, and he lifted his chin to gaze at the empty wooden chair across from him. Every Thursday for decades, that very chair had been forced to undergo a transformation. It would grow cushions or it would grow feathers, or its legs would suddenly be attached to the sleds of a rocker – or all three. He’d seen it change colors. He’d seen it grow and shrink. And all to the whims of one amazing, magical, very much missed old woman.
The study around him was quiet. There was no fire in the hearth; what flames the Vampire King used in his home were electric, and at the moment, there was no one to please with their perceived warmth. He was alone.