Beautiful Danger

Chapter 10

An hour after she’d coiled Domingos into an embrace, Lark realized they lay on the floor, entangled in a loose clasp. And he slept.

From where she lay, she could see into the living room and the far wall where the weapons hung. The clock hands had moved beyond midnight.

Her leg tingled with sleep, and she tried to stretch it out with a twist of her foot. Domingos startled, yet she sensed his disorientation, so she carefully disentangled her arms from his and sat up.

He shoved the hair away from his face and looked about as if in a new environment. “I haven’t slept in months.”

“Seriously?”

He nodded, then clasped her hand within his strong grip, which was decorated with the fragile burned skin. “Thank you.”

The man had allowed her into the dark space inside him that he believed no longer burned with an ember of hope. She knew that ember still simmered, because she had touched it. Had held it sobbing and rocking in her arms. She could see it in his eyes, even the one that was completely black.

And she felt it, deep in her gut, the intense desire to connect with the spark she had sensed within him. To share her pain in the only way she believed they two could do so. She needed. Desperately.

“Let’s make love,” she cooed softly against his ear.

“You say so?”

She nodded.

Domingos stood and strode to the wall, not so quickly that she suspected he wanted the distance, but more a wandering pace. Confused, perhaps? No. He stopped and glanced toward the clock, then briefly back to her.

They both knew what should happen.

He turned away from her and bowed his head. Lark felt sure she’d said the wrong thing.

Making love? How dare she suggest something so simple, the easy answer to everything? Couples always crashed together in limbs and kisses when they wanted to avoid or even share. It was dramatic, and didn’t require a lot of thought. It wasn’t so much daring as a comfortable means to avoid talking. And they were not a couple, not even close.

And yet he’d asked the same of her earlier at her apartment.

What should happen was that she whip out the stake and end Domingos. Mission complete. On to number seventy-three.

Lark didn’t want that. She had not felt so close to a man since, well...since. And she didn’t want to lose that feeling because it was so rare. And really, she needed him right now. His touch and his regard. “I’m sorry—”

“No.” He turned and put up a foot on the wall behind him. Raking his hands through his hair, he offered a surprised smile. “I’d like to make love with you.”

So simple as that. Lark exhaled. She’d asked, and he had accepted. It felt freeing to her, and daring, and a little dangerous. But this danger appealed in an erotic way. It felt darkly forbidden and mysteriously alluring.

Shedding her Kevlar vest and dropping it to the floor, she approached the vampire. When he put down his foot and straightened, she pressed her palms to his shoulders and leaned in against his chest, breath to breath. She studied his eyes. The pupil of his brown eye grew large, aroused. His breathing increased and his lower lip fell slack, exposing the tips of his glinting white fangs.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

“Never,” she whispered, “and always.”

“Then kiss me, hunter, because you haven’t yet been the one to kiss first.”

“I do like challenges, but that one is easy.”

And she kissed him, tenderly marking his mouth with hers. He did not kiss her back, instead allowing her to do as she pleased, which Lark liked. She expected force and control from one such as him, so the connection was refreshing and renewed her confidence in this strange and slightly frightening descent into a darkness she had vowed to vanquish.

Taking her time, she lowered her lips from his mouth, moving her fingers down his chest. The room was mostly dark; the spare moonlight glimmered in his eyes, so she was learning him by touch. The man was lean, but muscled, a sinewy sculpture of flesh and bone.

She winced as her fingertips traced over scars. Vampires should not scar but heal instantly. That could only mean he’d endured something so treacherous even his supernatural makeup could not heal the surface wounds. She wondered how deep they went and if they could ever truly be healed.

And then the anger over the injustices served Domingos forged her desire to join him on his quest to slay the wolves. Nasty dogs.

But she set aside thoughts of vengeance. This quiet moment must be honored. And her insistent desire had not gone away, but rather, had increased by standing here before him, her body snug against his, feeding off his surprising warmth. In danger’s way. The risk of it upped the stakes.

The heat of Domingos’s flesh burned against her palm when she pressed it to his pectoral. He slid his hand over hers, holding it there, and tilted back his head, closing his eyes. He didn’t speak, but she felt his breath upon her face, his chest rising and falling more quickly.

The smoky cherry scent of him surrounded her and enticed her forward. Everything must be slow. Innately she knew it was the only way they could connect. A cautious approach to a delicate pairing. She pressed an ear to his chest, listening to his heartbeat.

“Is there a heart in there?” he asked on a throaty tone.

“Yes, and it’s strong.”

“Wanting,” he added. “Your touch is like fire, Lark.”

“I don’t want to burn you.”

“It’s a good fire. Bold and fast.”

Not like the fire he had raced into last night. He’d not brought up his heroic act, and she would honor his modesty.

Domingos skated a hand over her hair, pulling the dark strands to his mouth, so she nudged her nose above his ear, into his hair. Smoky sweet, the scent was uniquely him.

He took her hand and placed her fingers at his mouth, kissing them one by one. There, she dared to tap the pearly fang that was permanently down. Domingos moaned.

“Does that hurt?”

“Never. It’s...erotic, Lark, you touching my fangs. Feels like a touch much lower.”

“I see.” Interesting. The Order had never taught her that. She stroked the other fang, delighting in his surrender to the pleasure she could give him, and grasping fully the control the simple motion granted her. “They’re pretty and deadly.”

“I can’t promise I won’t use them on you. Being what you are, you must know about us vampires. Blood and sex...it goes together.”

She exhaled, rolling that one around in her thoughts. Training had briefly addressed the compulsion for vampires to desire sex along with blood, but hadn’t focused on it, because what knight would ever get embroiled so deeply with the enemy that it would matter?

She didn’t want his bite.

Or did she?

No. A knight who willingly took a vampire bite would be not only ousted from the Order, but thrown out in such a manner that his or her last breath would be witnessed by the entire Order. Live to serve. Serve until death...

You’re not a knight right now, Lark. You left the knight at the threshold to the enemy’s lair. Stop thinking like one.

Domingos’s fingers traced along her sides, upward, slowly moving over the thin T-shirt, exploring her slight curves. The soft tickle scurried through her veins and lingered at her breasts. She leaned into him so he could feel her hard nipples against his bare skin.

A fang grazed her finger but did not break skin. Were he to steal a drink of blood, it would not kill her, and if he properly sealed the wound she would not risk transformation. The Order might never know....

But again, she let her mind race swiftly beyond that minute worry. There were better things to concentrate on.

Putting her mouth right before his, she danced within his gaze, and to the tune of his rapid breaths. Already she could imagine him thrusting his erection inside her. She longed to know that intimate surrender—and would.

Dipping her forefinger into Domingos’s mouth, she wet it on his tongue and traced his lips. His moan pleased her. He stepped from foot to foot, anxious, or perhaps eager. Another dash across his tongue and then she trailed her finger over one of his nipples, a hard jewel that tightened even more.

“No music,” he moaned.

She caught his hand before he could pound a fist aside his head, knowing he heard the music in his head that he so despised. “Concentrate on me, Domingos.”

He twisted his head to the side and nodded. “Want to. Need to.”

“Feel me,” she said, and pulled off her shirt, exposing her sheer, black lace bra. She pressed her breasts to his chest and glided her leg up along his, nudging his erection with her hip. “Want me?”

He nodded, voiceless yet gasping, for she wagered he fought between madness and pleasure right now. She wasn’t about to let the torture win. If she couldn’t slay the vampire, then she could surely take down the madness or, at the very least, tame it.

“Touch me,” she whispered, and drew back her arm to allow him to slide his hand up her waist and to her bra. “Touch me how you please. Focus on what you desire, not what desires to end you.”

His palm rubbed over the sheer fabric, bringing all sensation to her breast. Falling into the heady feeling, Lark arched her back and dug her fingernails into his shoulder, then reneged, reminding herself that she did not want him to feel any pain or madness.

His fingers moved swiftly up to her left shoulder, stroking over the raised brand that depicted four stakes in a cross form surrounded by a circle.

“Must have hurt,” he whispered.

She nodded, not wanting to detail the pain of taking the red-hot brand as part of her initiation into the Order. It would only spoil the mood.

He snapped the plastic bra clasp open and she shrugged the lacy straps from her arms. “You’ve done that before,” she murmured as the garment hit the floor.

“Just because I’m a nutcase doesn’t mean I don’t know my way around a woman. I am going to enjoy navigating you.”

The vampire growled with pleasure and bent to glide his tongue over her breast, like a paintbrush stroking a canvas. His heat made her shudder and squirm against him. She wanted to rub herself all over him, and in turn feel every part of him. The cool sensation of sharp fang skimming her breast every so often only heightened that want. It was a danger play on her part, and she was fine with that because, even though she’d tucked away the hunter, Lark liked it a little daring.

Domingos suckled at her nipple, greedily laving and then focusing an intentness there that deepened her murmurs to moans.

Suddenly he lifted her so Lark could wrap her legs about his hips. Holding her with his arms braced across her back, she let her head fall back, lifting her breasts to his ministrations. Her body shivered as each lash of his tongue sweetened the pleasure-pain. She ground her mons against his erection, seeking to massage her sweet spot and heighten the telling orgasmic tingle that grew stronger with every lick of his tongue.

Carrying her across the room, still tending to her breasts with his hot, wet kisses, Domingos quickly moved down the hall and into a dark, cool bedroom. The black sheers blew softly thanks to an open window. Lark couldn’t make out much else in the room. It was after midnight. Darkness would be theirs for a while.

Domingos tapped the copper shade on the small lamp near the bed, and it blinked to a soft glow. He laid her on an ancient half tester bed that sported dark damask draperies overhead. Medieval gothic at its finest. The mattress was so high, her hips were level with his waist, and she hooked her heels around behind his hips and coaxed him forward to land on top of her.

He tugged at the fly hooks on her pants and then shoved them down. She toed off her boots and wiggled her legs to allow him to drag the pants off and drop them onto the floor. He glided a hand aside her groin but did not touch.

Lark bit her lip at the frustration of missing a touch she craved. Already she was wet for him. She wanted him to put his fingers inside her, to stroke her and find the humming pinnacle that desired a soft yet firm touch.

He found the elastic at the top of her thigh-high stockings, which she wore because they made her feel sexy, and slid a finger under it.

“These are so hot,” he muttered. “Makes it easy to concentrate.”

Good. She didn’t want a raging madman in bed with her. Sex would go well. It had to, or she’d never be able to look at him again without wondering if she had done something to bring on the torment.

His long, feathery hair swept her skin, and she clutched it across her breasts, stroking her nipples with the slick, cherry darkness. Tenderly, he dotted kisses below each breast, and then strolled down the center of her stomach, dashing his tongue into her belly button and declaring it “Cute,” while his fingers slid one stocking down her thigh to billow at her ankle.

He lifted her leg along his shoulder and kissed her ankle, then slipped off the stocking. He did the same with the other leg.

Lark spread her arms across the bed, gripping the counterpane. Her heart raced. Her veins sang a composition she’d never learned on the violin. Her skin begged for Domingos’s mouth—everywhere. She was ready to invite the vampire beyond her threshold and into her very being.

So you’ve gone mad, as well?

If it was insanity to crave intimate connection with another being, then bring it on.

He straddled her hips, his leather pants cool against her feverish skin, and kissed her deeply. Every move devastated and claimed. She no longer minded the tease of his fangs. It was easy enough to trust when he was the first anchor she’d been able to grasp since free-falling into the realm of the impossible and dangerous.

“Now me,” he whispered. “Take off my pants.”

“You don’t have to tell me twice.”

Lark flicked open the button and unzipped his fly. A satisfied growl rumbled in his throat as she shoved the supple leather down his hips and then claimed his heavy erection as if it were a titanium stake she had been trained to expertly manipulate.

She stroked him slowly, tenderly, taking time to trace the length of him with her fingers and learn his shape. No damage here, not that she could feel. Yet, rigid and hot, he possessed a slight curve that she traced again and again, each time her action teasing the thick rod to bounce and play against her fingers. At the head of him he was swollen and moist, hot as forged steel. She cupped her palm and it filled her hand. She couldn’t wait longer.

“Inside me,” she whispered. “Please?”

“Soon.” Kissing her breasts, he slid a finger into her folds and slicked her wetness high against her clit. “I want to learn you first.”

Lark moaned and pumped up her hips, seeking his exploration, but not wanting to be denied. Inside her with his molten hot shaft was what she wanted. The thickness of him, the—

“Ohh...” She lost her train of thought. The slick tease of his finger over her clit hummed all through her body, up and down her arms, swirling in her head and tightening at her belly.

Perhaps she could wait a bit.

Domingos moved down and traced his tongue over her, giving her pussy as much attention as he’d given her breasts. Lark gripped the fabric, pressing her shoulders into the mattress, stretching the gorgeous shimmer throughout her muscles. She put a leg up over his shoulder but stopped herself from heeling his back. The skin there was too ravaged for such pressure.

He gripped her thighs and spread her legs wider, licking her deeper, and then up to slick across her clit. He commanded her body with his expertise. She needed him, wanted his hardness inside her, but couldn’t argue against the pulsing orgasm that stirred at the edge of her muscles.

“Come for me,” he said. “Give me that trust, Lark.”

He knew well that it required a certain trust for such a release. No woman could fly without some modicum of trust, of feeling safe with the man. He had followed her, as she had followed him. He’d fought her, and let her walk away. He’d given her the shirt off his back, and agreed to silly bargains when he could have as easily broken her neck and sucked her dry.

He had given her every ounce of trust she suspected he had. The man had only given to her.

Tonight she had walked over the threshold to freedom. Take it.

And Lark released her last thread of apprehension and soared into the bliss of release. She cried out loudly, clutching at his hair and grinding her mons up against his masterful kiss. And then her body sank into the mattress, lax and panting, her laughter spilling boldly into the room.

“Mercy, Lark, your pleasure is the most gorgeous sound I’ve heard,” he said. “No symphony can match it.”

Gasping, she pulled at his hair, directing him up along her body. “Inside me now. Feel me, Domingos. Take me.”

“Yes. I have to feel your music surround me.” The intrusion of his thick shaft was accompanied by his throaty growl. “You’re so hot. Christ, Lark. Oh...”

Still feeling her muscles squeeze from the orgasm, she clasped her legs about his hips and followed his rapid, pistoning thrusts. And then he slammed his palm to the bed beside her head and cried out. His body tensed above her, his jaw clenching, and he shuddered, caught in the sweet, sinful darkness the two of them had alchemized.

* * *

Lark woke and sat up on the edge of the high bed. She always liked to come awake stretching out her toes and arms to greet the morning sun. The curtains were drawn, though, and she couldn’t be sure it was morning. Had to be. They’d made love for hours.

Hell. She wasn’t using birth control. The thought to do so hadn’t occurred because she’d not used it since before her marriage. Could a vampire get a mortal woman pregnant?

Yes. And the child could be vampire or mortal. The parents never knew until that child reached puberty.

Lark squeezed her eyes tight. She would never call having sex with Domingos a mistake. And she did crave a family. Someday. With a man she loved. Could she even carry a baby to term?

She didn’t want to think about the miscarriage. It had been the beginning to the end of her marriage. She’d be careful next time. She had birth control pills in her closet at home. Time to check their expiration date.

She noticed a flashing LED and jumped from the bed to grab her cell phone, which had fallen from her pants pocket and now lay under the bedside table. One text message. It was from Rook.

Time is up. You’ve been removed from the job. I will speak to you this afternoon at your home.

Damn. Well, it wasn’t as if she hadn’t expected that result.

She glanced over her shoulder to the sleeping vampire, tangled in a wrap of black sheets. So peaceful. She could stake him right now. The ash would scatter over the sheets and fall into a shapeless heap. On to number seventy-three.

Lark shook her head.

That scenario had become a mad fantasy. She no longer wanted to harm this man. He was not a danger to her or mortals. He might be dangerous to werewolves, but the dogs could go screw themselves. This was not a mission she wished to complete.

And really, when had the Order started working for werewolves? It felt...more wrong than a hunter making love with a vampire.

Sighing, she put Rook’s message out of her mind. No way to start a morning. There would be plenty of time later to deal with the fallout of her decision.

Tiptoeing to the window, she pulled the heavy drapery aside. Gorgeous sunlight flooded her skin. After the rain they’d been having—

A man yelled and she heard a thud.

Lark scrambled around the foot of the bed to find Domingos crouched on the floor, the side opposite the window, shuddering. The skin on the back of his shoulder smoked and he covered his eyes with his palms.

“Oh, hell, Domingos, I’m so sorry.”

She bent down by him but remembered the sunlight. Closing the curtains, she then rushed around to hug him, but he resisted her efforts and even growled when she accidentally touched his smoking shoulder.

How could she have been so cruel? “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I’m...” So not equipped for this kind of relationship.

It wasn’t a relationship. Couldn’t be. Why? She had no idea. She’d figure that out later, as well.

Domingos tucked his head against the side of the mattress. She thought to brush away his hair and touch his skin, which had stopped smoking, but she couldn’t bring herself to cause him more pain. After they had shared such tenderness last night, this must truly be a slap in the face to him.

“Can I get you a cool towel? Will that make it better? You should have some ointment, something for the burn?”

“Nothing stops the hurt.”

Biting her lip, she looked aside. They had spent an amazing night together. And a wrong night together. A knight of the Order sleeping with a vampire? If any knight learned about this and went to Rook with the information, she’d be ostracized, if not terminated in the most final way possible.

You weren’t going to think about it, remember?

“I’ll get some cool water.” She stood, but he clasped her hand and pulled her down beside him.

“I don’t need anything but you. It was good,” he said wincingly. In so much pain, yet trying to be strong for her. “Last night?”

He needed reassurance.

“Making love with you was amazing, Domingos.” She kissed his forehead, then touched her lips to each of his eyelids. Finding his mouth, she burnished a slow and lazy kiss there, tasting his tongue and quickly dashing each fang. “The curtains—forgive me?”

“You didn’t know. The pain has already subsided. Just—” He pounded his head against the mattress, and that horrible laughter burst out.

“The noises in your head?”

He nodded, squeezing his eyelids shut, and pounded again. Fingers clutching the sheets, he growled and shook his head.

“I wish I could take away whatever it is that torments you. I mean that. I’d do anything to make life better for you, Domingos. You deserve better.”

“I have better.” He slid his hand into hers and, even as he fought against the voices, held her tenderly.

It was difficult to watch. Helpless, without a means to stop his interior foe, Lark stood and swept his hair into her hands. Like molten hematite it flowed over her fingers, too dark, beyond blackness, but so soft and comforting when splayed across her skin.

“You got a phone call?” he asked.

“A text message from my superior.” She stood and plucked one of her stockings from the end of the bed. “He wants to see me.”

“And then it’s back to slaying?”

She smirked as she pulled up her hose, followed by the leather pants, then sought her abandoned shoes. “I’m not sure anymore. I received an ultimatum yesterday. If you weren’t dead by midnight, then I would be taken off the job. It’s close to noon now, so you can guess what that means.”

“You are no longer my death?”

“I don’t think I ever was.”

A wistful glance to her lover confirmed what she’d guessed—that she could never have harmed him. The man had gotten inside her, perhaps brushed her soul. She liked the feeling, and didn’t want it to end.

But she couldn’t ignore the real world or the vows she had made to the Order.

“I should probably head home.” To find those birth control pills. “And please, don’t follow me today, Domingos. My superior is meeting me at my apartment. The last thing either of us needs is for him to discover our liaison. Such information could prove deadly to us both.”

He nodded and smiled up at her. “You made me whole again last night. For a few blissful hours the madness receded.”

She stroked the side of his face and he rubbed into her palm as if he were a purring cat. “You helped me forget the bad things, too. Thank you for sharing you with me. All of you, even this stuff that haunts you now.”

“It’s not bad when I’m in your arms. It’s become background noise again. Your voice wins against the screaming cats.”

Lark managed a chuffing smile, then tapped his skull. “I’d like to know how cats got in there.”

“Me, too. Why couldn’t it have been owls? I like to listen to owls hooting in the night.”

“Now, that would be plain spooky. I’ll be in touch.”

He made a reluctant, silent nod, which she felt wasn’t so much agreeing as accepting. They stood on opposite sides, yet last night the line between them had been peeled away, only to be placed back on the ground in a circle that encompassed them. It felt right.

And yet Lark had betrayed not only her husband’s memory, but Rook, pack Levallois and the entire order of men who had vowed to protect the world from evil.

Domingos wasn’t evil, but she would have a tough time convincing any in the Order of that.

“I do like a challenge,” she whispered as she tugged on her shirt and left her lover sitting beside the bed.

* * *

As the hunter walked out of the bedroom, Domingos listened to her boot heels sound with dull thuds across the wood floor, stop at the front door, then exit. The door closed with a click, and the mansion was so silent he thought to hear the falling dust particles in the vicious sunbeam that entered in a thin slice down the center where Lark had not drawn the draperies tightly closed.

He stared up at the tin-tiled ceiling, painted black because he preferred the dark—needed it. For a few blissful hours while he was wrapped in Lark’s embrace, the madness had retreated. He had felt whole. Lost in a place in which he never wanted to get found.

And now she was gone. The wholeness shimmered away into the shadows that controlled his life.

And the torturous music began.