Snapdragons Page 4

  “What will you do if I free you?”

  She was shocked to discover her own voice was rasping, breathless.

  He considered her for a second. He couldn’t have chosen his words any better. “I’ll make you forget.”

  Her wrist twisted, freeing him from his invisible bonds. He stumbled forward, stopping inches in front of her.

  “What you can do… it’s amazing, Rhea.”

  “I don’t want small talk. I want you to fuck me.”

  She knew what she could do. She remembered the past five years of training with Carol then on her own, and learning to focus her abilities without spell ingredients, then without words. She only needed gestures anymore, and at one time, she had worked on overcoming that necessity too. It didn’t matter anymore. Nothing did, except forgetting again, if only for a moment.

  “As you wish,” he said, his voice more neutral now. “Undress.”

  For the second time in as many minutes, she hesitated, this time at the prospect of undressing in front of him. She squashed the hesitation as it threatened to reawaken the memory of the last time she had shared a bed with Carlos. It had been about love, then. This… this was different, her schoolgirl crush be damned.

  Gritting her teeth, she pulled at the sides of her blouse, uncaring when a couple of buttons popped loose. The garment fell to the floor behind her, soon joined by her discarded shoes, jeans, and underwear. Peter’s gaze remained on her the whole time, even when he leaned down to remove his sweatpants, but she couldn’t read anything in his eyes other than cool calculation. She resisted the urge to cover herself and returned his gaze levelly. His cock was erect, thick and full, straining toward his taut abdomen, the head glistening with precome. His entire body seemed poised, the well-defined muscles of his arms and legs on the point of springing into action. To see him like this, handsome and ready to fuck, made her keenly aware of how cold she felt. She shivered.

  “Get on the bed, Rhea.”

  She cringed as she took in the rumpled sheets, reminded once more of the vampire who had been there earlier. Why was she doing this, a small, rebellious part of her asked. Why was she listening to him, obeying him, when she could have broken his neck with little more than a snap of her—

  Her fists closed tight enough that she could feel her nails sinking into her palms again, she climbed onto the bed and lay on her back. She did it, despite the little nagging voice, despite the fear and cold, because the alternative to this was falling back into the madness she had barely been able to stop the first time.

  She did it because he had promised to make her forget.

  At the touch of his fingers on her ankle—a little impatient, full of restrained force—she gave a small start. She soon understood what he wanted, and opened herself to him, her gaze firmly set on the ceiling, waiting for him to get on with it.

  She had not expected to feel his lips trail up her thigh. Her hands now fisted in the sheets, she closed her eyes tight, blocking out the image that had just appeared in her mind, Carlos’ lips grinning wickedly before they caressed the apex of her legs, the tip of his tongue flicking gently at her clit just like Peter was now doing—

  Her eyes blinked open, freeing two tears. Her right hand flew and gripped his hair, pulled his head up. She looked at him, burning into her mind who was touching her, then pushed him back between her legs more roughly than she had intended. If he objected to that treatment, he didn’t show it, and instead went right back to his task, caressing her with his lips and tongue.

  This is Peter, she chanted inside her head, her unseeing eyes back to the ceiling. Peter is using his mouth on me. Peter is licking my pussy and biting my clit. Peter… I wanted him for so long, and now he’s making love to me, now he’s—

  But it wasn’t love, was it?

  “Stop,” she managed to say through her tight throat.

  She wasn’t sure she had spoken loud enough, but Peter paused and looked up, catching her eye before he said: “Stop?”

  There was disappointment in his voice, enough so that she knew that he did want it too—he did want her, not just sex.

  “Just…just get inside me,” she muttered.

  He shook his head. “You’re not ready.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  She glared at him, her fists back to tearing at the sheets so she wouldn’t lash out at him. “I. Don’t. Care!”

  His eyes tightened for a second, and concern flickered through them. When he moved upward on the bed and reached over to the bedside table’s drawer, she looked up at the ceiling again. She heard foil being torn open and closed her mind to what Peter was doing.

  Then his cock pushed into her, hard, fast, too hard, too fast, just right, and she cried out. Peter stilled, his body poised over her, trembling.

  “Rhea? I’m sorry…”

  He started pulling back. Rhea stopped him by wrapping her legs around his hips. She took a ragged breath, tried to relax. She wanted this. She wanted to feel something other than cold.

  “Keep going.”

  His entire body was shaking by now, no doubt in need of continuing what he had started. Even so, Peter didn’t move, and merely looked at her through worried eyes, his hand stroking her hair gently. “You’re not—”

  “Peter, you were much more fun when you were all tied up against the wall, I think I’ll—”

  She ended up with a choked cry as he thrust his hips forward.

  Slowly, he pulled back and pushed in again, shallow slides that drew a moan from Rhea. Sweet, soothing words started falling from Peter’s lips, words that she would have welcomed hours earlier but that she refused to listen to now. She arched up to press her mouth to his, shushing him. He accepted her kiss but let his hand speak for him, skimming against her skin to the same tempo as that of his cock inside her, caressing her neck and breast, trailing fire everywhere he touched her. Rhea ended the kiss and turned her head into the pillow, but the moan she had tried to stifle came out anyway.

  He flicked his thumb against her right nipple, back and forth, to the rhythm of his slow slides inside her. She arched again beneath him, unconsciously raising her left breast almost up to his mouth. He took the invitation and caught the taut nipple between his lips, laving it with his tongue then sucking gently. Rhea moaned again, and he sucked a little harder. Switching to the other side, he repeated the process. Beneath him, Rhea raised her hips so that he slipped a little deeper on his next slide. It was his turn to moan, the sound muffled against her breast.

  The pain had faded despite Rhea’s efforts to cling to it. She tried to refuse the wave of warmth and pleasure that was creeping through her with every touch of Peter’s tongue, fingers or cock. She cursed her body for betraying her so, but each time he moved, it became harder to remember why she had wanted to hurt. His thrusting remained slow but it was stronger now, and she could feel his cock even more acutely, piercing her more deeply every time, it seemed. Her breasts felt so sensitive, she didn’t know whether she was arching to intensify the pressure of his mouth enclosing her nipples or to escape it. She wanted so much, but at the same time was so afraid to want…

  She tried to speak—to urge him on or stop him, she wasn’t sure—but the words refused to pass her throat. Instead, she started moving with him, her hips joining his rhythm in what was all at once a familiar and completely new dance. She let go of the sheet to clutch at his shoulders and back, and couldn’t help being satisfied when he grunted at the feel of her nails digging into his skin. His movements accelerated at the same time as he guided her legs up, one after the other, until they were wrapped around him. With the change of angle he began to grind against her clit with each entry, rough and hard, and she had the fleeting thought that it was very different from how Carlos used to touch her. Different and yet—

  She pushed the thought away, as far away as she could to the very back of her mind. No memories, now. All she wanted was to feel, and live. It was Peter,
in her arms, in her body, the same Peter she had thought of, every few days, for the past five years. The same Peter she had never really been able to let go.

  “Peter…”

  She didn’t realize she had said his name aloud until he raised his head and looked at her, his thrusts faltering for an instant.

  “Kiss me,” she asked before she even knew she was speaking.

  Peter didn’t hesitate. He leaned in gently, and pressed his mouth to hers. She parted her lips first, inviting his tongue into her mouth as she had invited him into her body. The two of them started moving to the same pace, slow and languid, the pace of things that last and endure beyond the first light of morning. The pace of love, or so Rhea could almost have fooled herself into believing. It would have been so easy to believe. But did she really want to fool herself again, after the way things had ended last time?

  She couldn’t have said what clued her in to the fact that they were being watched, the awareness like a prickling at the base of her skull. She turned her head to one side, breaking the kiss. Peter’s mouth latched onto her neck, sucking hard as he had on her breast earlier, his cock slowly picking up in speed. He didn’t notice the woman standing by the bedroom door, her arms wrapped around herself and her eyes so full of pain. Unable to keep watching her, Rhea closed her eyes. Peter would go back to Kaelin, when this was over, and then what would happen to her?

  * * * *

  Rhea was trembling under Peter, clutching at him, pulling him closer, yet her eyes were closed again, tightly shut. Peter wondered what she was seeing in her mind’s eyes. She was close to her orgasm—or at least he believed she was—and he tried his best to push her over the edge before he fell himself.

  She finally came with a choked up, wordless cry, and he let himself go at last, allowing the bittersweet pleasure to wash over him.

  Reality didn’t take long to right itself again, hastened by the realization that Rhea was crying.

  He pulled back and watched her for a few numb instants, saw her curl in on herself, heard her breathless sobs, and didn’t know what to do or say. Tentatively, he stroked her back; senseless words fell from his lips. She turned toward him and clung to him as though to life itself. He continued to run his hand over her shoulder, wishing that he knew how to help her, afraid he had only made things worse.

  “It’s all right, Rhea. I’m here. Everything will be all right.”

  She never answered, only held on to him and cried. After what felt like a lifetime, she fell asleep. Peter watched her. He would let her sleep, he decided, and then they would talk. Surely, talking about what had happened to her couldn’t be worse than trying to forget it.

  He hated to leave Rhea alone, but he doubted she would wake up before he returned. He had to go talk to Kaelin. He had felt her presence, earlier. He might have surrendered his Special Enforcer badge years before but his instincts were still the same, honed by almost two decades spent around her.

  His eyes coming back, again and again, to the sleeping form of Rhea, he put back on his sweats and t-shirt. Just in case she did wake up, he scribbled out a note on a piece of paper and left it next to her on the bed, promising to be back quickly and asking her to wait for him.

  Barefoot, he went up two floors and stood in front of Kaelin’s door. He had done the same thing countless times since the night she had joined him in Miami, three weeks after his arrival. He had been so sure, then, that she had come because she had stopped killing at last. So sure that he would finally be able to let her turn him, as he had promised. So sure, when she had proved him wrong, that one day…

  “One day,” he murmured, shaking his head. He had believed for so long…

  He finally knocked. The door opened by itself at this small pressure of his hand.

  “Kay?”

  “In here.”

  He followed her voice to her bedroom, and found her in front of her dresser. A suitcase lay open on her bed, already half full with her things.

  “You’re leaving?” he asked, taken aback.

  She rolled her eyes at him. “Of course I’m leaving. You didn’t expect me to wait for you forever, did you?”

  Peter felt stung at first, then realized how red her eyes were. He wasn’t the only one who had realized something, tonight. He wasn’t the only one who had understood that things were over between Kaelin and him, and had been over for a long time. They had continued the game because they were both too stubborn to admit they had failed. She had told him, long before, that he would ask her to turn him. He had replied she would stop killing for him. Neither thing had happened. Neither thing ever would.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice low.

  “Sorry about what?” She turned toward the dresser again and he couldn’t see her face anymore. “Sorry you touched that child the way you used to touch me, back when we met? Sorry you made love to her the way you haven’t made love to me in so long?”

  He had to stop himself from going to her. He hated to hear such pain in her voice. “I never wanted to hurt you.” Not any more than she had wanted to hurt him, he was sure. The facts, though, were different.

  She turned back toward him, her lips stretched in a thin, fake smile. “Hurt me?” She forced out a chuckle. “Don’t flatter yourself, honey. I had dozens of lovers before you were even born. I will have twice as many before you die.”

  Despite the façade she put on, she was heartbroken—and deep down, so was he. She had understood that things had changed when she had seen him with Rhea, but for him it had started a week earlier, when Rhea had hugged him out of the blue. He had realized how much he had missed simple touches that had no other purpose than to demonstrate affection. Everything was planned, with Kaelin, part of a game in which he was, at the same time, her opponent and prize.

  Unable to resist, he went to her and kissed her cheek. “Don’t forget me too fast.”

  She rolled her eyes at him again, but he could tell she was close to tears.

  “Go,” she said, shooing him away with a half-hearted gesture. “Go back to your little witch and leave this vamp in peace.”

  With a last pained smile, he left her bedroom and her apartment, mentally wishing her to be safe, wherever she went, and thanking her for making things easier for him. Slow steps took him down the stairs and back to his place. As soon as he entered, he knew something was different. There was a smell in the air, a faint smell of smoke and…

  His chest tight, he crossed the living room and approached the coffee table. The map and spell ingredients were still there, but something was different. Right on the edge of the rough circle he had managed to delimit in the ocean, a red dot glowed softly. Next to it, numbers and letters had been branded into the paper, leaving it black. They were a latitude and longitude, he realized at once. And below that, a few words had also been written in fire.

  Boca de Dragón. Snapdragon. It used to be Rhea’s favorite flower.

  His mind didn’t even register that this was it, that the galleon and its riches were finally within his reach. All he could see was that sentence and its past tense. His heart was pounding wildly in his chest and he could hardly breathe. If she had hurt herself—

  He refused to even think about it. Frantic, he searched the apartment, calling for Rhea. It didn’t take him long to find her, curled behind the armchair. Draped in his bathrobe, much too large on her small frame, she looked at him with big, frightened eyes.

  “Who are you?” she asked, on the edge of tears, before adding almost hysterically: “Who am I?”

  Peter dropped to his knees and drew her into his arms. After a second of hesitation, she clung to him the same way she had earlier, as though her life depended on it. Maybe it did, now.

  “You’re safe,” he murmured against the top of her head, and, because he didn’t know what else to say, he held her a little tighter.

  The End

  About the Author:

  Kallysten’s most exciting accomplishment to date was to cross a few thousand
miles and an ocean to pursue (and catch!) the love of her life. She has been writing for fifteen years, and always enjoyed sharing her stories and listening to the readers' reactions. After playing with science fiction, short stories and poetry, she is now trying her hand, heart and words at paranormal romance novels.

  To see her other stories, including free short stories and sample chapters, visit http://original.kallysten.net

  Also available from Kallysten:

  On The Edge

  Brett Andrews thought he had it all.

  His new club, On The Edge, catering to vampires and humans, is a smashing success, and the beautiful vampire Lisa is everything he could have dreamed of.

  When an old lover of hers, Leo, shows up at the club, Brett's immediate fear is that he will lose Lisa. But if he just stops thinking long enough to follow Lisa's lead, he might gain a lover instead of losing one.

  Forget Ever After

  Seven months ago, Lena’s fiancé disappeared without a trace. She spent those months burying herself into textbooks and lecture notes, but never quite lost the hope that, somewhere, Liam was all right, and that he would come back to her.

  When fate allows them to meet again, Lena is overjoyed and ready to welcome him back into her life. Even the shocking discovery of how much he has changed does not deter her because, he admits it with some difficulty, he still loves her.

  But what future can Lena and Liam have together, when she wants nothing more than to save lives and he is a newly turned vampire?

  Out of the Box

  When she walked into the club, all Virginia wanted was to satisfy her curiosity about vampires - and about being bitten. But when Anando reached out to her and asked her what games she wanted to play, he opened the Pandora box and Virginia found answers to questions she had never thought to ask.

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