Lucinda, Darkly Read online

  His hands moved up to glide over the delicate ridges of my ribs, coming to rest beneath my full mounds, stroking there softly. Cupping me with his hands, squeezing lightly, testing my weight before gliding up to brush over the peaks.

  His light, searching strokes and the rough pads of his fingers scraping over my sensitive tips closed my eyes, arched my back. Pressed me more fully into his wonderful hands. His fingers closed around my jutting points and pinched me lightly.

  “Oh!” My eyes opened to see his face lower to my rosy tips, pebbled tight like jagged mountain peaks. Almost too late, I found my voice, my reason. “You must not bite me. All else you may do, but do not take my blood or you shall die. Do you understand?”

  Stefan nodded. “Yes,” he said, his voice a husky rasp. He opened his lips and took my nipple into his mouth. I don’t know which burned me more, his eyes or the feel of me in that wet cavern. Moisture and surprising warmth. Silky lips, luscious red, the color of blood, engulfing me. The rough hard rasp of his tongue across my tender nipple. His hair falling forward in a black silky wash, stroking over my skin like a thousand tiny caresses.

  A hot jolt of pleasure arrowed down from my nipple, shooting straight to my groin, clenching another part of me deep inside, making me suddenly feel so empty. Aching.

  My thighs pressed together, my hips moving restlessly as his hand squeezed my other nipple. He feasted upon me, sucking hard, pressing my ripe tip up against the roof of his mouth with his tongue. Tugging with his mouth, making me cry out, arc up against him.

  My hands reached up blindly to hold him. Almost touched him before I remembered my nails. He’d made me forget. Another tug, another pinch almost painfully hard. Another hot wash of pleasure flooding me, making me writhe. I plunged my hands deep into the comforter, piercing down to the mattress beneath, anchored myself safely there. Then I yielded myself fully to the pleasure. Let myself go mindless, becoming nothing more but a creature of sensation, wave upon wave of sensation. Giving up total control.

  He milked and squeezed my breasts, feasted upon my nipples, then moved down greedily to where my hot fragrance filled the air. He spread my thighs with his strong hands and held me open to him as he licked me.

  I gasped. I moaned. I writhed beneath him, opened my legs wider to him. He rewarded me by spearing his tongue in deep, a sharp hard probe, filling me for one blissful moment. Then pulling out, making me cry out at the loss.

  “So warm here.” He swirled his tongue up and over my hidden pearl, drawing another cry from me. “So sweet,” he marveled, and sank a long slender finger into me, making me groan with aching pleasure.

  “Oh, Stefan!”

  “So wet, so soft, so warm. Are you ready for me?” he husked, his breath fanning across my curls.

  “Yes . . . Oh Goddess, yes.”

  He rose above me, his skin shimmering with a soft luminescent light, his inner glow starting to come forth. A shiny perfection marred only by the two dark holes where the bullets had pierced him.

  “Your wounds.”

  He lifted up my hips, pulled me to him. Poised himself there for one suspended moment with his tip nudging my portal. Then he began to enter me.

  “I’m fine,” he said, his voice taut and groaning as he found me snuggly tight. Teeth gritted, he pushed gently but insistently forward, moving into me with small incremental surges. His head pushed through.

  “I’m good,” he grated, sliding in another inch, shuddering at the feel of me swallowing him up while I shuddered at the sight and feel of him, his glowing light, his hardness entering me.

  “I’m bloody wonderful . . . Ah, Goddess!” He shoved in all the way until he was fully hilted, and held himself there trembling, gasping, muscles straining in imposed stillness.

  “You hold me so sweetly,” he panted, lowering down over me, sinking onto my chest, caressing me with his body while bracing the bulk of his weight on his elbows “Are you well? Am I hurting you?”

  My nails flexed, pierced deeper into the mattress. “Only by not moving. Move!”

  He smiled, burning brightly, a radiant creature surrounding me with that cool shimmering light, making my skin glitter like gold dust beneath his shine. I looked down and saw my womb glowing with his light where he filled me, where he lay buried deep inside me. And I watched with awe and wonder that dance of iridescent light play upon my dusky skin, lighting me from within and without as he began to move. Then I could only feel him, sliding within me. Filling me, stretching me. Rubbing, gliding, sliding. A sweet rhythmic surging like the relentless tide washing upon the shore. A natural force of nature, a building tempo. A tightening crescendo within me as pleasure wound me higher and higher until I could no longer contain it. It spilled out of me in a powerful convulsive release that bowed my spine, lifting us both up, throwing back my head, tearing a harsh raw cry from me as I spasmed around him, my inner muscles clenching him tight as he continued to drive within me.

  I knew he’d been holding back only when he stopped doing so. When he suddenly started thrusting with full stabbing force and building momentum, going deep, so deep inside of me. A long relentless plunging of his hips, a strong steady pounding into me.

  “Come for me again,” he urged, his eyes locked with mine, glowing almost blindingly bright as I continued to shake and quiver beneath him.

  “No.” I shook my head, still helplessly caught up in the last ebbing washes of my release. “I can’t.”

  “You can.” He drove deep into me, rocking me with his force. “Again. Come for me again.” Face hard and intense, determined, he adjusted his hips and thrust, eyes fixed upon me, catching every little nuance that crossed my face. He made another incremental adjustment, plunged into me at a slightly different angle, and my eyes widened in surprise at the new wash of sensations.

  “Oh, Goddess,” I breathed as he hit a spot that threw back my head and opened my mouth wide on a soundless cry. That caused my inner muscles, already tight and clingy, to squeeze even tighter about his surging hardness that drove into me in a steady unhurried rhythm now that he had found his spot. Patiently, ruthlessly, he lifted me higher, wound me tighter, taking me somewhere I did not want to go again. Taking me up there whether I willed it or not with that steady thrusting and coiled driving of his body in and out of mine.

  “Please,” he gritted, pressing heated kisses against my opened lips. “Let yourself go. Give yourself to me.”

  Was it the sweet yearning in his voice, the need burning in his eyes, or the hot filling friction of him moving within me? Perhaps all of it combined. Whatever the reason, I found myself suddenly flung up high again, shattering once more. So completely this time that I was blinded by the light, by the overwhelming onslaught of bursting rapture. So that I became only a creature of the senses, ripped apart and put together again by an explosion of pleasure so intense that it bordered on pain.

  I felt him drive one last deep time into me. Felt him finally give himself over to his own release, shuddering and spurting within me, a convulsive burst of wetness. Saw the brilliant light ebb, slowly recede. And smelled the fresh scent of newly drawn blood.

  I couldn’t move. Could barely speak. “Blood . . . what did you do?”

  His hands stroked over me with lazy languor as he lay sprawled atop me, soothing caresses down my side and over my hips. “I couldn’t bite you,” he said, breath coming fast and ragged. “So I bit myself.”

  A love bite left upon one’s partner. A sign of a most wondrous lover. He’d felt the urge to mark me, but had marked himself instead because I had told him he could not taste my blood. It was the highest of compliments among the Monère to be so marked. And so dangerous. So terribly dangerous. But he had heeded my words. Kept us both safe. While I’d totally forgotten, caught up in the throes of my own pleasure.

  Sweet Mother, what he had made me feel . . . Was this what it was like for those I fed upon? Had they felt like this afterward? Shaken, unsure of their own bodies?

  When I stiffened b
eneath him, Stefan lifted himself off, moving carefully, gingerly. His wounds. I started to roll off the bed but was stopped by his hand upon my arm. “Lucinda, wait. What’s wrong?”

  I shook my head, my face turned away. I didn’t even know, myself, how could I answer him? All I felt was a terrible need to get away. But I didn’t break free as I could have so easily done because I didn’t want to jar him with unnecessary force. I was trapped by my own desire of not wanting to hurt him. A constraint I had never felt before. Shit.

  “Lucinda, what did I do?” His arm slid tentatively around me, drew me back against him, holding me, cradling me. “Please tell me what I did wrong?”

  What could I say? You made me feel too much. You sought my pleasure first, not your own. You asked me to belong to you . . .

  His words had pierced my heart like an arrow striking its target true.

  “Did I hurt you?”

  Yes. Yes, you did. But not the way you mean. “No,” I said, choosing to answer his meaning, not his words.

  His hand stroked up and down my arm with a tenderness that pained me even more. “I’m sorry.” His voice was soft and unsure. “It has been so long for me. Forgive me for my clumsiness.”

  I laughed raggedly. “You were far from clumsy. And you pleased me greatly.”

  “Then why do you wish to leave me?”

  “Why did you want to please me so?”

  Stefan took a deep breath, released it. “I had hoped that you would want to stay with me.”

  His answer shocked me, so unexpected it was. “You wish me to be your lover?”

  He turned me gently in his arms and looked into my eyes. “I want you to be my lady. I want to please you. I want to serve you. I want to belong to you, and have you belong to me.”

  I shook my head. “I cannot be what I once was. I cannot be your Monère Queen.”

  “Not my queen, no. But you can be my lady. I have been alone for so long, and better than most rogues, with Jonnie to care for. But I was dying slowly inside in exile, dying in spirit if not in flesh. All Monère males have that great need and desire to serve a powerful female, to be in her presence. Being with you fills that terrible hollow emptiness in me, an emptiness almost worse than death. You make me feel more alive than I have felt in over two decades.”

  “I am demon dead.” My voice was flat and dry. And if there was an echo of pain, only I heard it. “How can something dead make you feel more alive?”

  “I don’t know. But you do. Let me feed you, let me please you. Let me be with you. Let me be what I was born to be.”

  His plea quivered in the air.

  “So you would donate your blood and your body for my pleasure. But what would you gain in return? I cannot Bask. I cannot draw down the renewing rays of the moon to prolong your life as a queen can. You cannot even gain power by mating with me. There is nothing, nothing to your benefit.”

  “I would gain your company, a purpose and fulfillment to my life.” He smiled, his teeth white. “And the sex is spectacular. You cannot argue that.”

  Unwillingly, my own lips curved up. “Yes, the sex was wondrous. Would that be enough for you?”

  “Oh, yes. I don’t know how to explain it, but being with you not only soothes me, it gives me great joy. Something I have not felt for decades far longer than my exile.”

  “That is such a human outlook, Stefan. Not Monère.”

  He shrugged. “I have lived for over twenty years among the humans. There is some wisdom to be learned from them.”

  Oh, the yearning in his eyes. It could not be greater than my own. I wanted. Oh, how I wanted what he offered. But . . . “You have not fed me. I have not truly taken your blood yet. You may not like it.”

  “Drink from me now. Let us see,” he said eagerly.

  “No. I explained why before. Do not press me on this. You do not really know what I am.”

  “You are demon dead.”

  “But you do not fear me when you should. You do not truly know what I am.” I drew away from him and started to dress.

  “I know you are kind,” Stefan said. “That you are strong. Stronger than I.”

  “I am not kind. Nor will I always restrain my strength or power.” With a thought, a bare flexing of will, I let power flow from me and gave him a taste of what I had withheld. He froze, unable to move, his limbs bound by the force of my invisible bonds. His muscles strained and trembled. But they were chains he could not break, restraints he could not even see.

  “And that is but a small taste,” I said, tucking my shirt into my pants. I allowed the power to trickle into my voice, to coat it with a thin layer of darkness and touch him with it. “There are reasons why we are feared.”

  He shivered as my voice stroked him, feathered over his skin.

  “You are what we prey upon. That is our nature.”

  “Then I would be your willing prey,” Stefan answered calmly, no longer fighting the bonds.

  “Why?” I snapped and released him with a thought. He staggered, suddenly free. “That is not natural.”

  “What is natural?” Stefan asked, hands spread. “Not my exile, not our meeting here in this sea of humans. Not having you restrain your hunger because I am hurt. But because it is not natural, not usual, can you not see that it is even more precious, what we have found between us?”

  Now it was I who trembled in his calm. He stood there naked while I was clothed, strong and sure in his belief. In what he wanted—me.

  “I have to go.” I turned to leave.

  “Will you return?”

  A breath of silence. “I don’t know.”

  “Think on what I have said.”

  “I doubt I shall be able to think upon anything other.”

  “I will wait for you here until Jonnie is better. A week, no longer. Then we will have to leave this place.”

  Without turning, I said, “I cannot be long away from my realm. I would have to return there often.”

  “I would not mind as long as you returned to me.”

  I left without making any promise, without glancing back. Afraid that if I did, I would not leave him at all.

  FOUR

  THE OTHER REALM, Hell, was a landscape of muted colors. Sweltering in heat that was dry and scorching. Only plants that bloomed in darkness grew here under the three moons that marked our days and nights. Three moons that nourished us, renewed us. No sun. But no full moon here, either.

  The most shocking and wondrous thing about roaming Earth was seeing once again the full moon in her round and brilliant glory. Walking the bright light of day. Sunlight did not burn the demon dead as it did the Monère. The children of the moon were not like vampyres of human legend, burning and bursting into ashes at the first touch of sunlight. But legends of old are usually based upon a kernel of truth. Monère skin burned after several hours under the sun’s direct rays.

  Becoming demon dead had some compensations—we didn’t burn. But we paid for wandering under the sun’s brightness. It weakened us greatly to spend hours in its unfiltered light. It softened our flesh, made it tender, overripe, as if ready to spill at the slightest touch if we dared its rays too long. It drained us of energy to the dangerous point where we might not be able to cross the portal back into Hell.

  That was what happened to Halcyon, my brother, the de facto ruler of Hell. Blaec, the High Lord of Hell, had ceded the reins to Halcyon long ago. Or rather, Blaec had fallen prey to the condition that oft afflicted those who existed too long—world weariness. Mixed in with betrayal, bitterness, and sorrow, it had led to apathy and withdrawal.

  One woman, my mother . . . or perhaps two, if you counted myself . . . had driven the High Lord into that state. It had taken another woman to bring him back out of it. Mona Lisa. Not the human painting, although she was human, in part. Mona Lisa was a new Mixed-Blood Monère Queen, the first ever. She had come down to Hell—another first, that something living could survive in our realm—accompanying my love-struck brother who had risked h
imself in the first place because of his foolish fascination with her.

  Halcyon had been greatly weakened by the sun before and after he had been captured by a cunning, evil Monère Queen—someone who had known far more than she should have about the demon dead. Mona Lisa had rescued him and brought him back to Hell to recover. And in doing so she had helped father as well as son. An encounter with her, a quick trip back to the human realm for satisfying blood-rendering vengeance, and the High Lord was said to be all perked up now. Men, as with women, I guess, had to be needed. To have a purpose.

  I thought yet again of the purpose that had just been offered me. I want to belong to you. Have you belong to me. Living words that had haunted this dead demon for the past four days since I returned. Ironic, wasn’t it? Our family seemed to have a penchant for those lily-white Monères living in that other realm. Unnatural . . . and yet I could no longer berate my brother for his foolish infatuation. I understood it now, I sadly realized as I raised my hand to knock on the front door of Hallowed Hall, my brother’s private residence. The perimeter wards would have warned of my approach. No surprise, then, when the tall door swung open before my hand even touched the carved wood. A dour-faced little demon stood before me, not much taller than I, her dark hair streaked with pure silver, keys jangling from her belt. The gouvernante, or house-keeper, of Halcyon’s remote castle residence. She still grumped about missing the two most talked about occurrences in Hell—a Mixed Blood walking this realm, not just a living creature but Halcyon’s sweetie, and the challenge Halcyon had accepted from another demon, and fought, because of her. The two thrilling events had happened during her annual ten-day leave from Hallowed Hall.