4. Emmanuel

CHAPTER FOUR

EMMANUEL

My mother was gone.

There was a man in my house who fell to his knees like he was meant to be there.

He stared up at me through a dark fan of lashes. Had anyone ever been so beautiful?

The angles of his face were sharp, his skin rough with stubble. His eyes were deep pools, full of a sadness that spoke to my own. My breath hitched.

He was here . I had to be dreaming, except there was no musty smell of centuries-old coffin lining or that haze that accompanied dreams.

There was just a man, his pulse ringing in my ears, drawing me in. I’d been so hungry, so needy, for so long, I hardly knew where to start with him.

“Master?” Knox echoed, his voice rough.

I nodded. “That’s right. You belong to me now.”

I bit the edges of my tongue. What did I do with him? How did I?—

Admittedly, all the things I wanted were built on dreams spun around and around in long hours alone, locked in my coffin, safe from the world and all its temptations.

“Please me,” I said, hoping he would—he would know. He would do what I wanted, even if I couldn’t put words to it.

He swallowed hard, the sound of his throat clicking in my ears before he reached for my waist.

I froze, stunned as he ran his hands down to my thighs, up again. The cloth of my trousers tugged against my skin, my cock swelling at just the simple touch. He was close, but it was—it was more than that. A man in front of me, on his knees . I’d imagined this, but I’d never thought I’d live to see my desires realized.

Knox reached for the buttons of my trousers, and I couldn’t breathe. I watched as he undid them one after the other. He tugged the fabric by my knees and they slithered down my legs to pool around my ankles.

When he traced his fingertips up my bare skin, my whole body shook. The touch of another—it wasn’t like my own. A pleasant tingle rushed through me and I bit my tongue hard, sure that if I opened my mouth, nothing would come out but a moan that’d let him know he had the better of me.

He eased my small clothes down, and there was—there was something dark in his eyes when he watched my cock spring free, standing straight out in front of me. I stopped breathing, caught as he leaned in.

His first lick was quick, like a kitten. The next, he laved the flat of his tongue beneath the head.

My hand stretched over the back of his skull, urging him on. “Like that,” I rasped, flexing my hips, thrusting into the hot wet cavern of his mouth.

It was sloppy—my fault, no doubt, as I was overeager and untried, but it was—it was so good that I would weep for joy if not for infinitely more pleasurable occupations.

My breath rasped, my hands quivered, and I gripped him tight. The crest of a wave broke over me all at once and I clutched him close, shoving against the back of his throat. He gagged, but his throat flexed as I pumped down it.

I’d—

Another person.

I’d come with another person.

I dragged him to his feet at once. He was panting, his lips slick and swollen, his pupils blown wide. And I dove in, thrusting my tongue into his mouth, determined to taste my bitter spend and prove that it was real. This was real.

The taste made me groan.

With my fingers twisted in the front of his shirt, I held him close. “Now, I’ll taste you,” I hissed, shoving him back onto the couch—velvet upholstered with large buttons, well stuffed. I’d always been afraid to sit on the couch, to leave an imprint or a mark on it.

Now, it was mine, and I was going to ruin it.

I tore at his trousers impatiently. Buttons, zippers, all of it was ridiculous and impossible and—fuck, finally. I shimmied them down his hips, and long, bare legs stretched out before me. When he shifted, the muscles of thighs moved beneath his skin, round and well-formed and so perfect.

I didn’t have the patience to strip him bare, but his shoes, I yanked off. His pants followed. And his shirt, I pushed up to the gratifying sight of his stomach, rising and falling quick with his panted breaths.

“Gorgeous, darling,” I whispered, leaning down to kiss beneath his bellybutton.

His pulse raced, and I could smell his blood just beneath the fragile skin of his inner thigh—so soft, so delicate, it’d hardly take any pressure at all to pierce it.

I dragged my teeth across his thigh, high, so near his balls that they brushed my cheek when he jerked. Then, I slipped my fangs in.

Blood filled my mouth, rushing hot and fast. I groaned, sucking it deep, my hand wrapped around his rigid cock.

I stroked him while I fed, and he squirmed beneath me, alive and wonderful. I’d never felt so full, so excited. Was this what it would’ve been like, to be alive? Even when I had been, I’d never really known.

His racing heart began to slow, and I flinched back. I—I could drain him dry. Wanted to. Wanted to kill him and keep him for myself.

But then he’d be like me. Empty. Dead.

No, no it was better to leave him like this, that I could come back and taste him again. Have him. Feel alive.

I bit the tip of my tongue and smeared a drop of my blood across his puncture wounds. Vampires didn’t scar—our blood healed our bodies, so even when I bit my own arm, desperate and hungry, locked away in the dark, it had never left a mark.

When I looked up at Knox, he was shivering, but his cock in my hand sported a slick red tip. He still wanted, and a thrill rushed through me to think that he might be trapped in this beside me—it wasn’t just me that was wrong and wicked.

I licked a stripe from the base of his dick to the tip, and Knox whined, thrusting toward my mouth, dazed and mindless and oh so pretty.

I paused to suck my fingers into my mouth, spit and blood mixing sticky and wet. When I pulled back, circled the pad of my middle finger around his hole, Knox’s breath caught. His eyes fluttered open, and I watched his neck go rigid, his back arch, as I worked my finger inside him.

His groan was deep, guttural. If I could just?—

There. A few strokes, hooking my finger just so, the way I liked when I fucked myself, hidden away in my coffin, terrified Mother would know, and his legs spasmed, flexing tight around my shoulders before spreading wide. He rolled his hips, and his flushed cock bobbed against his lower belly, dribbling against his skin.

My hunger for blood sated, I dove in to take his dick in my mouth. I may have taken too much blood from him, because it wasn’t as hard as it’d been, not silk-wrapped steel, but fleshier. Still, he whined, and the bitter taste of precome spread across my tongue.

His hands spasmed on the couch, like he searched for something to cling to and hesitated to reach for me. Something in that ached, but I swallowed the feeling down with the head of his cock, stretching my throat, choking me in a way that felt all too real, despite knowing I didn’t have to breathe.

The sound Knox made went from a whimper around gasped breaths to a constant whine. He curled his toes, slipping them beneath my shins. I put another finger beside the first, and the two of them thrusting inside Knox’s tight ass made a wet, sucking noise. His hole softened, so fucking warm around my fingers.

His face screwed up, and with a shout, a bitter flood burst across my tongue, his dick twitching between my lips, the veins plump and soft and fuck , I scarcely remembered the softness of a ripe peach, but that’s what I thought of—something decadent and juicy and mine .

I pulled off him, and he gasped, sinking down into the couch, his stomach heaving beneath his shirt, rucked up around his waist. He looked down at me, dazed and dizzy. A little pale.

His heartbeat was hard, but slower than it should’ve been. Oops.

I touched his throat, felt the pulse beneath my fingers. He’d—he’d recover. I just had to give him time.

“What a good pet you’ve been,” I whispered, stroking the corner of his jaw. Gently, I tipped him back onto the couch. He made a strangled little sound, flinching as if he expected harm to follow, but when he was tucked onto his side and I pulled a blanket over him, he sighed and his eyes slipped shut. “Rest now, love.”

I bit my thumb and smeared the crimson blood across his lips, beneath the bottom one, against his tongue. He’d be mine. I’d have him. Keep him. Use him.

For the first damn time, I could have what I wanted. And him? I’d see he had what he wanted too.

His sister’s debts paid. Hell, they could have everything in the safe, for all I cared. What was money to me?

Nothing, next to freedom.