14
Soaring
Footsteps thundered on the stone steps of the corridor beyond her locked door.
You have to flee, Miranda cried in panic.
But calmly, as though they had all the time in the world, Zayan eased her up onto her knees, with her rear end facing him. She was on all fours, and he cradled her derriere, which jutted toward his face. Mmm. A delectable view.
For heaven’s sake, he was so caught up in lust, he would end up staked. I fear the lock won’t hold them long.
I am not going, because I don’t believe you are ready to leave with me, Miranda. He patted her rear. She shivered. What was he seeing of her in this position? Her hair tumbled over her shoulder, but more scandalously, her rump was almost open to him because her legs were parted on the bed. Her breasts hung down, and if she tried to look through her spread legs, her chin bumped her bosom. She suspected Zayan could see the lips of her quim from his vantage. And her nipples too.
“Then what are you going to do?” She asked it softly, but with more bold courage than she really felt. And she didn’t doubt he could hear her hammering heart, and knew she was rigid and icy cold with fear over his safety.
“Make love to you this way.” His fingers slid between her legs from behind and toyed with her nether lips. She could see her pubic curls glistening with the juices from her climax. He stroked her, making his fingers wet and sticky; then he caressed her clit with his slick fingertip. “Relax, love.” He made teasing circle that set up fireworks in her brain. “Let your body heat up for me.”
There isn’t—
He arched his hips forward, his cock filled her from behind and she couldn’t speak. Her passage was so juicy, he’d glided in with ease.
The door suddenly rattled against the lock. Fists slammed against it. Several voices shouted her name from the other side.
“Miranda?” “Miss Bond!” “Open the door!” A furious male voice demanded that.
“Think of what you are doing!” That was Serena’s voice.
Oh, Miranda wished she could think. But Zayan’s cock surged in and out of her. In to kiss her womb, out to reach the sensitive rim of her quim, and leave her trembling in need before he pushed in once more.
The slayers would break through the door. She would be caught. They would attack Zayan who was more than vulnerable right now. She would have to stop them from destroying him—
His hips slammed against her buttocks as he thrust, making her cheeks quiver. Even that was unbearably erotic. She pounded back against him, wildly slapping her arse to his groin.
Yes, he groaned. Be wild. Be the powerful woman you were meant to be.
I—I’m coming. She managed to shout it in her thoughts, hoping to share it only with Zayan.
He laughed behind her, rocking his hips to make her burst, and to keep the pleasure roaring through her, until she was sobbing with it, and had to rest her head on the bed as she swayed with each amazing wave.
You must go, she begged.
A wise man should. But a man falling in love? He is never wise.
Was he truly falling in love with her? He was risking his very existence to be with her. Instead of fleeing, he lifted up her derriere. “Do you trust me?” he whispered out loud.
She did. She believed him. And trusted him, just as she did with Lukos.
His cock nudged between the full cheeks of her rump, and trust or not, she froze. With a shiver of anticipation, she remembered Lukos’s game with the chain.
She knew what he was going to do. But the swollen head of his cock and the thick shaft that followed were so large. Could she do this?
The chain hadn’t hurt, it had been wonderfully stimulating.
She could do this. Her rump tingled in anticipation, her chest was tight with excitement, her mind swimming with arousal.
He stroked gently, making teasing circles with the wet head to her tight, furled opening. She tried to relax, wriggling against his cock as he stimulated her.
The banging on the door grew louder. “He’s used magic to prevent us from breaking through the lock.” Miranda recognized Drake Swift’s voice.
“There’s the window.”
“He’ll guard it with magic.”
“What does he want with her? I can hear them in there—he hasn’t taken her from here.”
Serena’s voice came through the door. “He must want her power—”
“Or he is intending to make her fall in love with him.”
Miranda could do nothing but moan. She could not shout any reassurances. Not with Zayan’s cock pressed to her rump, slowly, slowly, exquisitely making her anus open for him. Her fingers curled into the covers on the bed. Her toes had tightened. And she was fiercely gasping for breath and moaning.
With a pop, the head pushed inside, and her ring of muscle snapped tight around him. Dear heaven.
Good?
Amazing. It is more . . . more intense than magic. I feel on the very brink of my . . . Every part of me tingles with awareness.
Wait then, love, until I thrust.
And he did. She arched her head back with the shooting sensations of pleasure. It was so intense. Her feet felt like they were on fire. She moaned in sheer ecstasy. With long, easy thrusts, Zayan filled her bottom with his cock. She felt the brush of his nether curls against her rear. She was on all fours, splayed in front of him, with his hard cock inside her rear.
You are beautiful, Miranda. I can explore everything with you.
Her quim pulsed with the pleasure as he began to withdraw, as he drew his cock back until the head was ready to pop out; then he surged in again. After a few thrusts, she was pushing her rump back to him to make his thrusts even deeper.
It was so intense. As intense as the play with the gold chains had been with Lukos.
Zayan leaned over her, now giving her fast, hard thrusts. She was thrown forward with them, but he had one hand on her left breast, and that kept her from being pushed away from him. He fondled her nipple.
And kept banging relentlessly against her arse.
Pleasure built and built.
Oh, even like this, I’m going—going to come—
Ah, but your arse is so sensitive, angel, of course you are going to come.
She tried to hang on, to draw out the pleasure, but he gave one thrust that lifted her legs off the bed, and she screamed in delight. It was the trigger, the one thrust that threw her over the edge. Her climax pulsed in her rump, in her pussy, made her nipples stand up hard, and made her brain burst into flames.
She saw shooting colors, like fireworks and rockets, on the inside of her lids. She wailed his name. Zayan. Zayan.
Oh, she loved him. Loved him for giving her this pleasure, for seeing the wanton woman she was made to be.
But he was not done. He did not even let her rest before thrusting again. Her third orgasm took her almost at once. He took her to a fourth, a fifth, until the climaxes came in one long wave and her feet were so sensitive that just the brush of air made her scream.
Then he plowed into her one last time and embraced her tightly as his body pressed against her back. I’m coming, angel. Like never before.
He moaned harshly after that, his body bucking against her.
He withdrew, slowly, to make it easier for her, and she was touched by his tenderness. And then she gave a weak giggle.
She felt formless now, so ravaged by orgasms.
And she knew what she had just experienced.
A lesson to prepare her for a love shared between three. She had been stunned by what Althea and Serena had told her.
She’d known she’d felt the pull in the carriage, when Zayan and Lukos had played erotic games in front of her and she had been hot enough to burst into flames.
But to think it could always be that way . . .
She could be like Althea and Serena, with two devoted men to make love to her. Imagine what it would be like to be filled by them both—one pumping into her wet, steamy cunny, the other pounding fiercely into her sensitive bottom.
No. Lukos believed Zayan had taken his sister to be the devil’s prisoner. Zayan had sneeringly referred to Lukos as “wolf.”
Lukos hated Zayan, and Zayan, in turn, appeared to despise Lukos. It could never be.
Miranda lay down on her bed, exaggerating her ragged breathing because it gave her time to think. Zayan wanted her to leave with him. But she was not certain if she could choose Zayan and forget Lukos. Not yet. Perhaps not ever.
She loved them both—desired them both, cared for them both, wanted to heal both their wounded souls, their broken hearts.
They might be vampires, but to her, they both possessed souls.
“If we all work in unison, we might be able to defeat his magic,” Althea said, from the other side of the locked door.
Weakly, Miranda realized that while Zayan had been making love to her, the vampire slayers had been trying to rescue her.
She didn’t want to be rescued. But he needed to be protected from them.
“Come with me,” Zayan urged. He rose from the bed.
“You could leave without me—” But his expression became instantly stubborn and she knew he would not. “I will go with you because you must escape the slayers. But how are we going to escape? Can you fly without shifting shape, as Lukos can?”
Zayan scowled at the mention of Lukos’s name. “No, I intend to teach you to shift.”
“Shift shape?”
He nodded as though it were the obvious solution. “You have all this magic inside you. I believe you can.”
Miranda spread her wings and caught the current of air. Her entire body hummed and sizzled. She had not been able to control her power and shape-shift, but Zayan had transformed her with his magic. She had changed into a shape like a large bat. How it had happened, she was not entirely certain. He had thrown a strange spell at her—a brownish black swirling light that had surrounded her.
Outside of her bedroom door, Aunt Eugenia had joined the slayers and they had all been trying to break into her room. It had been heartbreaking to ignore the plea in her aunt’s voice.
Then the light had engulfed her and she’d felt intense heat, just as she did when she used her magic. Her body had changed—it had become molten and pliable, and she’d known one second of extreme pain. But then the pain vanished, and she had spread wide wings and had thrown herself out into the night, trusting Zayan.
Follow me, he urged.
It was tempting to play in the sky. She had watched birds swoop, had even thought of what it must be like, had dreamed of it sometimes in her childhood but had always known it was impossible. And here she was, flying.
Perhaps nothing was impossible.
She tried to tip her wings to follow Zayan. She went wide of him, then too far to the other side. It was hard to master her wings.
He circled back for her, patiently, as she tried to get accustomed to flying. He was the larger winged creature and he would glide close to her, beat his wings around her as though controlling the currents of air to make her journey easier.
Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw tendrils of the red fog starting to weave up the hillside toward the castle.
We have to hurry, Zayan commanded. Follow me and do exactly what I do. He dove down into a tight grove of tall trees.
Miranda swallowed hard. She couldn’t do that. She would hit the trees and be killed. There was nothing so certain—
A stream of blue light came to her. It wrapped around her like a cocoon and dragged her behind Zayan. The light moved her to and fro, taking her safely between the tall trunks and through the gaps between branches. She was brought to a small circle of stones in a clearing.
Moonlight darted between the trees to touch this spot, but the light was tinged with red. The instant her feet settled on the ground, Miranda groaned in relief. It had been exhilarating to fly, but terrifying to think she might die that way.
Zayan transformed before her eyes and she tensed, but the return to her normal form was quick, and the pain did not seem as intense. The ground chilled her feet and her skin pebbled in the breeze. Of course, she was naked.
Easy, love. Zayan pulled her into his embrace. A wave of his hand created cloaks of velvet, and Miranda snuggled into hers.
She had no idea what was going to happen now. Zayan released her and walked over to one of the stones, a flat one that was like the seat of a chair. Miranda looked around. The grass in the circle was lush and a darker ring followed the line of the stones.
She remembered pointing out a ring of darker grass on the lawn of their country house to her mother, when she had been eight.
Her mother had called it a “faery ring,” and Miranda had slipped out at night to spy on the faeries as they’d danced.
But she’d waited and waited, and had fallen asleep. Simon had followed her; he had been the one to lift her up and carry her back to bed. She’d lost her mother the next year. But she’d had Simon, her father, and Aunt Eugenia. And strangely, she already felt as close to Zayan.
This ring felt as though faeries did dance here. A gentle humming came from within it. It felt like a place of magic.
Zayan was now pacing with long, angry strides across the circle, watching the sky. He’d created boats for them.
Zayan could hear the red power’s gentle, triumphant laughter on the murmur of the wind. He also sensed fear and anger rolling off Miranda as she stalked up behind him. “What is it?” she demanded. “What are you looking for? The red mist? Are you bringing it to us?”
Strong and determined, her blue eyes held his. The woman was fearless. He had always admired Claudia’s strength, but he saw now that hers had been more ruthlessness and selfishness than strength. Miranda had a bravery that felled him. He knew she had risked her life to save children whose very lives had been sucked out of them by the red power.
Facing Miranda, Zayan realized that, for once, he could not hide behind superior power or strategic lies. Needing time to create an explanation that spared him from giving her the truth, he averted his eyes from her and turned away.
Miranda marched in front of him, her cloak flapping around her bare legs. She slid her hands beneath his and embraced his waist. “The truth. Why did you bring me here? What do you want of me? I do not believe it is love. There’s something in your face—an emotion that I do not entirely understand.”
It was a blend of pure fury and self-loathing, he suspected.
“You deserve to know. Everything. I told you a voice came out of the sky to tempt me with immortality. When it came to me again and I accepted, it appeared as a heavy red-colored fog that surrounded me. In return for making me into a demon with increased strength, magic, and eternal life, it demanded that I gather power for it. I have sucked the power from other demons, even from fallen angels.”
“How?”
“Blood and sex, my love.”
Understanding dawned. “It wants my magic power. And you are going to give it away. Is that why you made love to me?”
He shook his head, his long hair rippling over his shoulders.
“No, I refuse to take your magic, to hurt you in any way.”
He told her more then. He told her that the “red power”— as he called it because he had never known if it had a true name— had promised to return his lost children to life, if he drained her magic. Her eyes went wide with astonishment, and her shock lanced him through his heart. For all Miranda had known he was a demon, she’d expected him to be noble and good. Once, he would have coldheartedly thought it nothing more than her foolish error. But with Miranda, it made him feel like garbage.
“I didn’t trust it,” he admitted, his voice raw and hoarse. “But the truth is that I had originally planned to take your power and use your magic as bait. I believed the red power would betray me and not give me my children, and I intended to use your magic as blackmail.”
Her color drained away. He stepped forward, intending to grasp her and pull her into a kiss, but he suddenly found he didn’t dare touch her. “I would never do that now, Miranda.
And that is the truth.”
The wind gathered strength and it threw her long, loose blond hair around her pale face. “But what of your children?”
He stepped back, toward the direction the red power was coming from. “I can’t hurt you, even to save them.”
She came to him. He, a vampire, was transfixed as she lifted her hand. She smoothed the tense lines around his mouth. “You loved them very much. I see it in your eyes, I see the love there, even as your face reveals the pain you also felt.”
He grimaced again. “I wish to the gods that they had not had to suffer for me—”
“It was not your fault,” she cried. “Althea—Lady Brookshire told me about your past. I can understand, after you were betrayed by Gaius, by your emperor, by your wife, why you would want to become a vampire.” She gave him a level gaze.
“But Althea told me history claims you drank the blood of your victims before you became a vampire. And that you accepted the red power’s offer before your children were killed.”
“The red fog came to me before my children were killed, but I was not ready to serve evil.” He felt his lips kick up in a cold smile. “Strangely, I believed I was on the side of right.”
“I know Lady Brookshire hunted you, because you were supposed to be one of the most evil vampires in existence.”
“So says a vampire slayer. But the truth was, I was as evil as any vampire. I created more vampires, but only out of the dying.
And Althea Yates—Lady Brookshire—has a personal reason to despise me. I used her as bait in a plan to destroy her husbands, the Demon Twins, who planned to destroy me. I hoped to pit the two men—Bastien and his brother—against each other, using her as the reason for them to tear each other apart.”
“That plan failed. Instead, they found a love shared between three.”
He stared. “What do you mean?”
“A threesome—a sexual and loving one—apparently makes magic stronger. It was what defeated you.”
“And sent me to imprisonment. Bastien asked for my life to be spared, and one of the vampire queens had me banished to paradise.” A gust of wind threw his hair about his face. He should stop talking and start inventing a plan of protection. But it felt strangely good to pour out his tale.
“Was it really paradise?” she asked, concerned, her eyes revealing her doubts.
He shrugged. “In one sense. But then, roses have thorns.”
She did not need to know the details. It had been a place as beautiful as paradise, yet he’d had no food for months on end.
Lukos had tried to destroy him numerous times, over his supposed capture of Lukos’s sister. And the damned wolf had been too stubborn to listen to the truth.
He looked down at her. “Do you believe my story? Do you believe it is true?”
“Should I doubt it?” she threw back, and as he inclined his head at her question, she frowned. “Althea told me that your wife knew your children were to be killed, but that she did nothing to stop it. Is that true? How could it be? What sort of woman would do such a thing to her children?”
One obsessed with herself, and seeing her youth and beauty fading. A woman willing to sacrifice anything to be an empress, who saw one fleeting chance to grasp that goal. “It was true of Claudia,” he said softly, for keeping his voice low could hide the pain. “I could say she did it because she was selfish. Or she did it to brutally hurt me.” He twined his fingers through hers and led her to one of the stones that ringed the circle of grass, a stone touched by the red glow of the mist and the silvery blue moonlight.
“Did you love her very much?”
He sat, spread his legs, and drew her between. But she crawled over his thighs, holding up her cloak with one hand, balancing with the other. She perched on the rock at his side.
“I was infatuated with Claudia.” He looked to her, then off toward the trees, where the shadows were black as pitch. “She was exquisite, with an oval face and large dark brown eyes, full lips of the most unusual pink—a color that was earthy and tempting. Her lips almost shone as though moistened by a man’s kisses. She was more beautiful than the goddesses who graced the statues of her palatial home. I became obsessed with her.
She was the reason I waged battle, the reason I took the risks that made me a hero, and brought me great wealth. I was determined to prove myself to her, to win her, to become the powerful man that I believed she yearned for.”
“Are you really certain it was because of her that you did those things? Or perhaps she represented just another prize for your ambitions.”
He sat in silence for minutes, then bent to her neck. Gently nuzzled there. “You are a very wise woman, Miranda. When I look into my heart, I could believe what you say to be true. But I was obsessed with Claudia, and she was shallow, vain, and selfish. She had no true capacity to love—” He stopped. “Or perhaps she hated me so much that, while being my wife, she lost any ability to open her heart. She closed it to me, and closed it to our innocent children.”
“I still cannot understand why she would let innocent children be . . . be hurt. Are you certain it was true? Perhaps your enemy made up that as well.”
“I wanted to believe that, Miranda. After my children died, after I saw the coldness in Claudia’s eyes and knew that she did not care about them, I vowed never to love again. My heart became a lump of ice in my chest. I never thought I would open my heart again. And all I wanted was revenge . . .”
“What happened to Claudia?”
“I did get my vengeance on my wife, but it was by accident,”
Zayan said. “I thought I wanted her dead—I was driven by rage. And my rage summoned the red mist. I had confronted her, the mist wrapped around her and choked her to death.”
Miranda tried to sense Zayan’s emotions over his wife’s death, but she could feel nothing. It was as though she had stuck her hand into a pool of dark, icy water. It was unfathomable and cold.
Had Zayan commanded the red fog to kill her so he did not have to do it with his own hands? It was still murder—and how did that make anything right?
“I know you are wondering if I did it deliberately. But I didn’t.
Once the fog came, it was beyond my control. I was sorry it happened. Even after all she had done, I was a damned fool—I wanted to love her still. And as I realized that, the fog let out a shriek and attacked her.”
Miranda heard the agony behind his words. I wanted to love her still. Was that also behind Zayan’s pain? Not just that he felt responsible for his children’s murders, but also that he had still wanted to love their ruthless mother?
She could imagine how agonizing that must be. Did he love Claudia even now?
Zayan tipped up her chin. She saw the glint of his fangs, but they no longer mattered to her. What she cared about was the man inside the vampire.
“We have time, a while before I will have to confront the fog to protect you.”
Just as with Claudia, she realized. The fog was coming to him, because of him, and he knew he couldn’t control it. She saw it in his eyes, even as they threw the moonlight back at her. “You’re planning to sacrifice yourself to protect me, aren’t you?”
“I made a choice. I couldn’t hurt you, not even to bring my children back. Nor could I live with the guilt of that choice for eternity—knowing that I had cheated them of their chance to live again.”
Dear heaven, that was the choice he had made—for her. “There has to be another way,” Miranda insisted.
He clasped her hand and lifted it to his lips. Never had the gesture touched her heart more. “What worries me is that I don’t believe I have the strength to defeat it.”
“Lukos and I were able to force it to retreat.” She quickly told him of what they had done to combat the red fog when it had tried to invade the stable. She saw admiration in his eyes, but then any sign of hope drained out of them. “You got it to retreat, but you weren’t able to destroy it.”
She thought of what Althea and Serena had told her. “The vampire slayers told me that . . .” He was watching her intently and her courage almost failed her. “They told me threesomes enhance magic power.”
“Threesomes?”
“You and Lukos threatened to share me when you captured my carriage.”
“Indeed, we did.”
His eyes were mirrored planes of silver, telling her nothing.
Would he agree to it? Could she . . . do it? Even to save her life?
In the carriage, she had been shocked by her wanton side. She had realized she could not be the normal, proper woman she wanted to be, if she had such scandalous sexual desires.
Now, if she gave herself to a threesome, there was no turning back. She could never be Miss Miranda Bond, decent English lady again. But what would she be?
Miranda was suggesting a threesome.
If it were not for his powerful, preternatural hearing, Zayan would have believed he was mistaken. No, she had never looked more serious. Or more frightened. She looked more frightened of having an erotic, unusual sexual experience than she had of the red fog.
Did threesomes really enhance magic power? Lukos had told him how Serena Lark, the woman Lukos had believed was his destined mate, had used the power of a threesome to grow stronger. Zayan knew Althea Yates had used it.
But in both those cases, the joining of the three had been more than just sex. He believed the magic came from the power of two strong men who were devoted to one woman. And there had been deep, intense emotion between the two men. Yannick and Bastien had shared the bond of brotherhood. Sommersby and Swift had, it appeared, been vampire hunters together—they had saved each other’s lives. They trusted each other.
What was between he and Lukos but hatred? Lukos believed, stubbornly, that Zayan had delivered up Lukos’s mortal sister to Lucifer. He had not—he had never served the devil, only the red power.
The red power had controlled him just as Claudia had done.
He had done unspeakable things to please the feminine voice that spoke to him from the red mist. He had been a damned fool, just as he had been over his wife. It had enraged him that his wife had cuckolded him. He’d vowed never to let a woman break his heart that way, never to give a woman power over him by giving her his love.
But he would not be a damned fool and let Miranda be hurt.
To protect her, he would share her with Lukos. He would grit his teeth and do it willingly, damn it.
Wind whipped the trees. He turned to Miranda, shouting,
“Get down. Go behind the rocks, behind me.”
Miranda did, and he planted himself between her and the
wild, fierce gusts. One slammed into his chest, and shoved him back so he almost sprawled over the rocks. He drew on all his strength to straighten up, to forge forward again.
“No,” he shouted. “No, you cannot have her. I’m not going to let you take her.”
15