Rites of Blood: Cora's Choice Bunble 4-6 (26 page)

He pulled back and looked at me for a long moment. I lay there, tugging futilely on the cords, aching to touch myself as the clamps continued to send shivering reactions through my body.

“Do something,” I pleaded.

And he did, though not what I had expected. His hand went down between my legs, two fingers pushing inside of me, finding that place again and pressing rhythmically into it as his mouth returned to my swollen nipples, his tongue and teeth teasing, rasping the exposed tips that stuck out above the metal bands.

It was terrible and wonderful, too much and yet not nearly enough as the place deep inside me ached with emptiness. But I peaked again, shattering, mindless, and I felt the throbbing of my blood against the clamps, in my head, down in my clit and in that place where his fingers pressed, pressed me onward, my pants still tangled around my knees, my arms yanking uselessly at the unforgiving cords.

And then he was tugging, pulling at the chain as I rocked with my orgasm, sending me deeper into it, whether with pain or pleasure, I couldn’t tell.

Finally, it receded, and I was almost weeping with the force of it, so much that my brain defied me to take it all in. The fingers inside of me withdrew, sliding over my aching clitoris, and he was kissing me again, softly now, across my arms and neck and belly and legs as I tried to regain my bearings.

He pushed down my pants, pulled them all the way off with the socks and shoes I hadn’t even noticed that I was still wearing. They joined my shirt on the floor, and his shirt followed.

“I’m ready now,” he said softly as I stared at the ceiling, half in a daze. The compression against my nipples still sent little slivers of sensation shivering through me, keeping me aroused even as my body ached with it. “Are you?”

“I think you could do it,” I said. My throat was raw.

“Do what?” he asked.

“Keep me coming all night long. But I don’t think you should,” I added.

“And why is that?” he asked, a dark humor in his rich voice.

“Because,” I said distinctly, “I don’t think I’d survive.”

He laughed then. “The grand finale, then?”

My blood was already heating again. “Yes,” I said. “Definitely, yes.”

He kissed me, avoiding my blood-touched mouth, his body over mine as he moved up my throat to the sensitive place just below my ear that made me gasp and grind my hips into him. He slid a hand between us, caught my clitoris and rolled it, teased it in his fingers until it was full and throbbing. Then there came a cold pressure, the third clamp bearing down. And the sensation of the others redoubled as that one joined it.

I whimpered, opening myself to him, needing him to fill me now,
now.

“Here I am, Cora,” he said, and I realized that I had said the last word aloud, a demand and a plea in one. He took my knees, pushed them apart, and my folds opened fully as he thrust into them with force enough to startle the breath from my lungs. My clit and nipples throbbed, and I shook.

“Go,” I demanded.

And he did, pushing my knees up almost into my chest as he thrust into me, relentlessly, again and again until I came apart so hard that I lost myself in the searing pleasure of it, a hard black edge that sent me crashing harder into the grip of the climax. I let my mind go, my sight, my hearing, everything except the screaming of my nerves that were overloaded with something like ecstasy and something very much like pain.

I didn’t even feel him come, so entrapped was I, and it was only his voice calling my name that brought me out of myself:

“Cora, Cora, oh, God, my Cora,” my name like a broken plea on his lips.

And I lay stunned as he stopped, pulled back, and I felt the sudden, tingling release as he removed the clamps from my body.

My vision focused upon him replacing them carefully in their box, and then he tugged for a moment at the knots at my wrists before tearing the cords with two deft movements. They dropped away, and my fingers tingled as the blood rushed back into my hands.

“Well,” I said, somewhat stupidly, rubbing my chafed wrists.

He shut the bedside table drawer and he kissed me again, slowly, lingeringly, as if he were trying to speak with his soul through his lips.

“How are you?” he asked when he broke away.

“Good,” I managed, as my brain battled to provide fitting superlatives: amazing, terrifying, awesome, mind-blowing, superb, petrifying.

He kissed me one more time, rested his forehead against mine for a long moment, just breathing, the echoes of pain in his eyes as he held me a little too tightly.

“Go to sleep, Cora,” he said finally, straightening. “We have a busy day tomorrow.”

“Of course,” I said. Impulsively, I slid under the covers. He hadn’t said whether he meant for me to take my bed or his, but I didn’t want to be alone.

He just smiled. “Good night, Cora.” He circled to the other side of the bed and reached next to it, flicking off the lights.

“Good night,” I said aloud.

I love you.

Oh, shit. My eyes were wide in the darkness. Where had that come from? Was it even true? I didn’t know.

I stiffened as I felt him get into the bed next to me. He reached out, found me, and pulled me against his body, his chin resting in my hair.

Did I love him? If so, what did it mean? Not that he gave me pleasure—not that alone. Until that night and his explanation about his struggles, his life, about his lonely vigil as Alys died...I would not have said that I loved him. Wanted him, certainly, needed him, even. But this was different. It was more. Was it really love? Did it matter?

I wasn’t sure. I was just afraid that he had ruined me—ruined me for anyone else by driving me further into the dark world of his pleasure that no mortal man could give to me. He was marking me as his alone with his body as surely as he had marked me with his blood the day the bond-mark had been made.

Where did it end, this darkness? What were its limits? And did I dare to find out? Did I even want to, or was that a foolish game of moth and flame?

And what about Geoff and my old life—my real life? I didn’t want to let them go, either one. I felt the cage door closing; the arms that gently held me might as well have been iron bands. But I didn’t know if I had the strength or will to leave.

Before it was too late.

The story continues in...

Blood Price

Aethereal Bonds

On Sale August 2014

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Saved from death by the billionaire vampire Dorian Thorne, Cora Shaw is bound to him, body, mind, and soul. She can free herself from his eternal demands—but only by breaking everything that is between them, forever. Never again will she feel what only he can do to her, never again touch him, speak to him, be with him—and never again must she give her blood or fear her will being overcome by his.

It is a decision that can be made only once. Does she want her old life enough to give up Dorian and his new world? Or is the cost of losing him too high?

Even while she hesitates, there are those who wish to take her choices away all over again....

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, the first installment in the a biker werewolf series—for free!

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Author’s Note

I hope you enjoyed this book! If you want to keep up with me, you can find me on my
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The Alpha’s Captive is a novelette serial that comes out on the first
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. When the serial finishes, it will be collected into an omnibus/boxed set edition. If you like this book and want to try out my other serial (with installments that run about twice as long), try
Life Blood
, the first in the Cora’s Choice serial. It comes out on the third Tuesday of every month.

I’m currently working exclusively in the Aethereal Bonds world, which I’ve mapped out to be big enough to let me tell all the different kinds of stories I want to share with readers. It’s got vampires, demons, weres, faes and more—all sorts of creatures that are great fun to play with.

I live near Washington, D.C., with my family. A proud geek, I love fantasy, romance, science fiction, and historical fiction.

Blood Price

Cora’s Choice – Book 6

by V. M. Black

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Aethereal Bonds

AetherealBonds.com

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Swift River Media Group

Washington, D.C.

A
ll characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2014 V. M. Black

All Rights Reserved

No part of this book may be distributed, posted, or reproduced in any form by digital or mechanical means without prior written permission of the publisher.

B
lood Rites

Blood Bond

Blood Price

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Afterword

I
woke to the sound of the door shutting, and my questing fingers reached for the indentation next to me before my eyes even opened.

Empty. He was gone.

I was still grappling with the sudden, almost panicky pain of that when a voice cut through my thoughts.

“Good morning, Cora. Mr. Thorne sent me up.”

I struggled out of the drift of pillows, pulling the blanket up with me as I straightened. Jane Worth was carrying a covered tray, and my stomach rumbled at the smells coming out from under it. She pretended not to notice that I was quite clearly naked, but she had a robe over one arm.

“Morning, Jane,” I said, scrubbing sleep out of my eyes with my free hand. I was disoriented for the briefest moment by the navy and crimson room with the cold, impersonal decor that might have been in any exquisitely decorated hotel. Then I remembered that I was in Dorian’s bedroom, not mine, and I remembered all that we had done the night before.

All that I had thought....

I love you.
I’d almost said those words aloud. To him. A vampire that I thought I’d do anything to escape. The vampire I still hoped to escape.

Didn’t I?

What was wrong with me?

“Where’s Dorian?” I asked instead.

“Mr. Thorne is working this morning but will join you this afternoon.”

I suppressed a twinge of...something. Fear? Relief? Disappointment?

I had hoped that after the night before....

I didn’t really know what I had hoped, except that I wished I had woken with him again.

“Is he here? In the house?” I asked.

“I couldn’t say,” Jane replied, carrying the tray across the room.

Of course, whatever he said that I meant to him, I was only a small part of his full life, one that was crowded with demands far more important than any merely personal claim. He had his businesses to manage and his research to oversee, never mind his role among the machinations of the various vampire factions, against the Kyrioi who believed they should rule men and in support of the Adelphoi who believed vampires should live alongside them.

I had a full life, too—one waiting for me back at campus. I was only a semester away from my economics degree, and I’d just received the acceptance to my top pick of grad schools. And I had a boyfriend, an honest-to-goodness human boyfriend, who was funny and sweet and respectful and pretty much everything I should have wanted.

And yet here I was, waking up in a vampire’s bed, in his world, where my life must, by necessity, revolve around him. All because I had been among the small minority of humans to survive the blood-kiss of a vampire. The transformation that had followed had both cured my terminal leukemia and bonded me to him for life. I rubbed my inner wrist where the mark of our bond stood out, scarlet against my pale flesh, as if there were an answer there, imprinted on my skin.