Angel Reborn, page 30
I quivered at the sight of his tongue lapping at my skin, and then I bit down on my lip, breathless with anticipation of where his oral journey might take him next.
His hands caressed my hips and moved to cup my rear, and then he hooked his thumbs inside the waistband and tugged the panties down.
Settling onto his knees, he lifted first one foot and then the other to remove them as I held onto his shoulders for balance.
He tortured me with kisses along the inside of each calf and the back of each knee, and the whole time his hands were gently guiding me closer to the bed. When I could go no further, I fell back upon it, and his mouth’s exploration continued up my inner thighs as his shoulders nudged my legs farther apart.
I let them fall open with no resistance at all, eager to give him full access to do as he pleased, and his pleasure quickly became my pleasure.
There was no room for any other thoughts in my head as Nick’s mouth possessed me.
The steady rhythm of his tongue made me feel like I was going to come undone and shatter into a million pieces, but it was the teasing scrape of a fang dragging across the most sensitive part of me that ultimately pushed me over the edge and left me pounding the bed with my fists as I screamed his name.
He rose with a grin and stood staring down at me as he unbuttoned his shirt and removed it.
I didn’t think I’d ever get used to the way Nick’s natural vampiric state had sculpted his body to perfection. I drank in the sight of chiseled abs, muscular pecs, and the broad expanse of his shoulders.
But as my gaze moved over the dark waves of silky hair that had been tousled by my hands and the dark eyes hungry with desire, I was most transfixed by the sight of his fangs fully extended between his parted and still glistening lips.
Nick looked deadly. Dangerous. Lethal.
Unbelievably sexy, and undeniably handsome.
And he was all mine.
I reached for him once he’d shucked his pants to the floor, and he came to me so quickly that I didn’t see him move before I felt him upon me—kissing me, caressing me, and cradling my body to his.
“God, I love you,” he whispered against my mouth, and then his lips left mine and moved along my jaw and down the side of my neck.
I attempted to answer his declaration of love with my own, but my words cut off with a moan when his mouth sucked at the tender spot where he’d most recently fed.
The puncture wounds had closed over completely by the next morning, and there wasn’t even a hint of a scar left behind. But the area beneath those phantom wounds remained hyper-sensitive, and I was damned near on the brink of another orgasm just from the pressure of his tongue prodding where his fangs had been.
There was something so erotic and so intimate about the thought of Nick taking my blood for his sustenance. I wanted him to feed from me just as desperately as I wanted him moving inside me, and I wrapped my legs around his hips and craned my neck to the side in a plea for both.
But he’d moved on from the erogenous zone beneath my jaw in search of another.
He kissed his way along my collarbone and then across the swell of my breast before closing his mouth over my nipple and tugging it ever so gently between his teeth.
His phone rang on the floor in the pocket of his jeans, and I shook my head in protest.
“No! No way! Nick, don’t you dare answer that!”
Grinning, he circled my nipple with his tongue, his breath hot on my skin as he said, “I wasn’t planning to.”
He made one more tantalizing circle, and then he squeezed his hand around my breast and drew it into his mouth, suckling more forcefully this time, but still with no fangs involved.
It felt incredible, but I was greedy. I wanted more.
I whimpered in frustration, twisting my fingers into his hair as I arched up into him.
He chuckled in response, and then with no warning at all, he struck, piercing the soft flesh.
I’d been desperate to feel the fire, and then suddenly, in an instant, I was consumed by it.
It tore through my veins like flames following a trail of gunpowder, and I tensed every muscle as I waited for the pain to subside so the pleasure could flood me. And flood me, it did.
I was riding a euphoric high with every draw Nick pulled, delirious with ecstasy even before he rocked his hips back to seat himself deep inside me.
Pressing my heels into his back, I clung to him and held on tightly, matching Nick’s pace as he thrust into me and drew life from me.
This was no slow and sensual act. It was fast and hard, rough and primal, and by the time we’d both reached our crests, we were covered in sweat, our breaths ragged.
For a glorious but brief period of time, I’d forgotten that the world existed. But as my heart rate slowed and my breathing calmed, the stresses began to creep back in.
“We should probably get going,” I said after a while.
“I suppose you’re right.” Nick lifted himself from me and stood, and then he reached to wipe a bead of blood from my breast with his thumb. Sucking it clean with a grin, he said, “I swear you taste sweeter every time I drink from you. Your blood is like an intoxicating nectar, and I don’t think I’ll ever get enough.”
I took the hand he offered and let him pull me up to standing. “Not even if you fed every day?”
“I still would want more!” He leaned to plant a kiss on my lips, and then he bent to pick up my clothes and hand them to me. “I wouldn’t do that every day though. I’d never want my feeding to cause you to feel weak or ill.”
“But I wouldn’t, would I? Now that I’m some sort of supernatural and I can self-heal, wouldn’t you be able to feed as much as you wanted as often as you wanted? My body would just make more, right?”
“Your body would make more, yes, but even with supernaturals, if you take too much blood, we’ll weaken.”
“But that makes no sense. I thought your body could heal itself from pretty much any injury.”
“It can, but if I was reinjured every day or if I was consistently losing blood every day, then at some point, I’d begin to weaken, just as a human would with too much blood loss. Blood is the life force for descendants and humans. Without it, our physical bodies can’t survive. And if our physical bodies are weakened enough, our energy wanes. And when the energy wanes—”
“The descendants can’t use their powers effectively. Ah! Okay. So that’s how a Turpisi turns a supernatural against their will. If they drain them, the supernaturals become too weak to defend themselves. I’d wondered about that.”
“You had?” Nick paused in buttoning his shirt. “Why? Are you worried someone will try and turn you?”
“No. Just curious about how it all works, that’s all. I couldn’t understand how a supernatural would ever get turned without their consent since they’d be able to fight off the attack. But I guess not, if they’ve lost too much blood.” My stomach growled loud enough for both of us to hear, and we both laughed. “Wow. I guess I’m hungry, but I have no idea why it’s doing that when we’re talking about blood. That is not at all what I’m hungry for. No offense meant.”
“None taken. I was thinking that while we’re on this side of town, we should pick up Sage’s favorite spaghetti for take-out dinner.”
“That’s a good idea.” I pulled my shirt over my head and ran my fingers through my hair. “I definitely won’t want to cook by the time we get back home to Nyack.”
It struck me as odd that I had thought of Nyack as home when I was technically home now.
Nick picked up his pants and fished his phone out of the pocket.
“That was Graeco’s call I missed,” he said, frowning. “I should probably listen to the voicemail now in case it’s urgent. Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. Now, if you have taken that call when it came, then you would need to apologize. But now is fine. I already got my orgasm. Twice.”
He laughed as he bent to kiss me, and then he pressed play on Graeco’s voicemail and sat on the bed to put on his shoes.
“Nicolaas, you may have been right to suspect Lily’s involvement. We shifted our focus to finding surveillance video of her based on your suggestion, and while she never had an encounter with the server who escorted Aria to the elevator, we have footage of a conversation between her and a man who fits your description of the Vardiyati from the roof. I’d like for you to view the footage to confirm. Call me when you get this message.”
Nick’s eyes met mine, and we both stared at each other in shocked silence.
“Lily?” I finally managed to say. “Lily tried to have me killed? Are you kidding me?”
I wasn’t the only one struggling to comprehend the news.
Nick opened his mouth and closed it, then he shook his head slightly, and a muscle clenched in his jaw.
“I just can’t believe it,” he said, frowning. “I never would have thought she was capable of this, but after you mentioned it earlier—”
“In jest! I mentioned it in jest! I didn’t think the crazy bitch wanted me dead.”
“Nor did I, but the notion kept nagging in my head, so I went to see Graeco earlier and asked him to have the security team review all footage of Lily from the night of the ball.”
“I can’t believe this.” I sat cross-legged on our bed next to him. “I can’t believe your ex-girlfriend actually tried to kill me.”
“I think ex-girlfriend is inaccurate, and we don’t know for certain that she did anything of the sort. We still need to view the footage Graeco has to see if it’s the same guy who was on the roof.”
“Right. No. I get that. We shouldn’t jump to conclusions. When can you view that footage?”
Nick shrugged. “I mean, I could drive to Manhattan tonight after I drop you and Sage off in Nyack.”
“Um, hello, and welcome to the age of the internet. Are you telling me there’s no way Graeco can send you a video? You have to physically be in some official VCBI viewing room to see it?”
“Let me call him back and see what he has and what he can do.”
I flopped back to lay on the bed, twisting my hair into a makeshift knot on top of my head.
This was unreal.
I’d somehow assumed that a Vardiyati shot me because of an issue with Nick’s family that had nothing to do with me personally. I had reasoned that I was just collateral in some stupid supernatural battle rather than it being personal.
But if Lily was behind this, then it was extremely personal.
And I was extremely pissed.
The heat from the energy filling me felt like it was burning my skin from the inside out, but there was no way in hell I was going to allow Lily to make me lose control and destroy my own house.
I sat up and exhaled all the air from my lungs, rubbing my hands back and forth over my thighs as I drew in another breath and exhaled slowly again.
As I continued focusing on my breathing, I closed my eyes and pictured the iridescent glow I’d seen before in the mirror, and then I imagined it shrinking to become more manageable as I calmed myself down.
By the time Nick ended his call with Graeco, I was still angry and more than a little freaked out, but I was no longer in danger of exploding.
“He’s going to send some still shots,” Nick said. “Are you all right?”
“Yep. All good here. Just focusing on breathing in and out and trying not to lose my shit.”
“You’re doing great. Just don’t let yourself get overwhelmed by what you’re feeling.”
“Yeah, well, it’s a little overwhelming, don’t you think? Here I’ve been worried about my ex suing us and trying to get visitation with Sage, and your ex just went straight to the murder option.”
“We don’t know yet that she did, and would you please stop calling her my ex? I’ve explained already that we never dated.”
“Which makes it even more bizarre than if you did. This whack job was willing to have me killed—”
“Possibly.”
“Yes. Possibly willing to have me killed, and she wasn’t even your girlfriend. Or fiancée, as she introduced herself to me. If this does turn out to be true, she’s certifiable, and she needs to be put in a padded cell with a straitjacket.”
“I’ve never known Lily to do anything like this.”
His phone beeped, and he opened Graeco’s text message and moved closer to me as we waited for the photos to download and come into view.
“Damn,” Nick said beneath his breath when the image loaded. “That’s him. That’s the bastard I chased on the roof.”
I bent to stare more closely at the man who had tried to take my life and the beautiful blonde who was talking with him in the photo.
Nick swiped right to see the next photo, in which Lily was handing the man a piece of paper. Unfortunately, the angle of the camera prevented us from seeing what was on the paper.
“That’s the guy.” Nick spread his thumbs over the screen to zoom in on the man’s face. “We got him. We have a face shot. Now, we can run the recognition software and hopefully find out who he is.”
“For Lily’s part, I’m assuming she tried to get rid of me to improve her chances of living out her fairy tale with you. But why would this guy want to kill me?”
“I don’t know,” he said as he texted Graeco to confirm it was the shooter. “But I damned sure intend to find out.”
Thirty-Two
Nick
The next day, I joined Graeco and my mother in the conference room of her office suite for him to show the two of us the footage of Lily.
“She visited both parties throughout the night,” Graeco said as he clicked on different camera angles, all showing Lily at various places in both ballrooms. “And then after you and Aria arrived, she stepped out to the lobby to make a phone call. Here.”
He pointed to the screen where Lily could be seen standing near the windows at the front entrance of VCBI’s main building. She held her phone to her ear with one hand, occasionally making dramatic motions with the other as she talked.
“We have no audio, right?” I asked. “Nothing to tell us what she’s saying?”
Graeco shook his head. “No.”
He clicked the mouse again and the footage switched to an overhead of the downstairs ballroom.
“After the call ended, she went back inside the party, flitting here and there around the room, but this seems to be her most significant encounter.”
Zooming in, he brought me, Aria, and Lily into view where we stood outside the ladies’ room, which I now knew was after their physical confrontation.
“There seems to be some tension in the air there,” Mam said, leaning forward to take a closer look and then cutting her eyes toward me. “Care to share any insight into what happened?”
“Yes.” I sighed in frustration, “Lily confronted Aria in the bathroom with more of her delusional ideas. Aria asked her to step aside so she could exit, and when Lily refused, there was a bit of a physical interaction.”
Graeco and Mam exchanged a look, and then she turned back to me.
“You never mentioned that before.”
“Why would I? It didn’t seem significant. It was a blip in the night, and then we were on the roof, and everything went to hell. I haven’t really thought about it again until Aria mentioned Lily during a conversation with Zeck.”
“Did you speak with Lily after this confrontation?” Mam asked.
“No. I didn’t see her again the rest of the night.”
Mam frowned and nodded toward the screen with a flip of her hand, signaling for Graeco to continue.
He clicked to switch back to the lobby camera.
“She left the party immediately after that confrontation,” he said as Lily came into view, holding her phone to her ear again as she made her way across the lobby and out the main entrance doors.
“She’s clearly distraught,” Mam said.
“She had no cause to be,” I replied. “She never should have cornered Aria, and Aria had every right to defend herself.”
“I never said she didn’t. Continue.”
Graeco did as she commanded. “We have footage from the outside cameras that take her to the far street corner, and then she left the compound’s view. But we have access to other cameras in the surrounding vicinity, and we picked her back up two blocks away…here.”
The sequined evening gown made her easy to spot in the street footage. Of course, Lily always stood out in a crowd.
After waiting at the crosswalk for the light to change, she crossed at a diagonal with her phone still to her ear, and then she slid it into her evening bag and entered a coffee shop.
“The owner was gracious enough to share interior footage, which is where I got the stills we sent you,” Graeco said.
“Gracious?” Mam scoffed. “It was extortion. I can’t believe you agreed to pay that fool such an exorbitant amount. I’m half of a mind to go down there myself to teach him proper respect. That never would have happened in the old days. We’ve grown soft in this modern era.”
“Do we have any idea what she hands him here?” I asked, pointing to the piece of paper Lily pulled from her evening bag and gave to the shooter. “Is it a photo? An address?”
“The angle doesn’t reveal it, and that’s the only camera,” Graeco said. “After that, Lily returned to the party, and the gentleman left the coffee shop immediately after she did. He went in the opposite direction, and we lost him to the shadows of the city. He likely shifted and took to the air. It was a little less than a half hour later that the server approached Aria and led her to the roof, where this gentleman was waiting, if your recognition of him is accurate.”
“Oh, it’s him. I’m sure of it. Any leads on who he might be?”
“Not yet, but once we received your confirmation, I instructed our team to breach the city’s facial recognition software to see what we can find.”
My rage was barely contained, and I couldn’t wait to get my hands on this asshole and tear him apart limb by limb.
