The Darkling's Surrender Read online

  Though she hated the loss of the restraints, she needed her hands—and her eyes—for what she was about to do. Rolling and maneuvering until she had moved Gavin to the floor of the van, she picked up the rocking where he’d left off.

  The pleasure began to spiral in her, and she knew that this time there was no holding it back. His movements told her that he, too, was on the cusp.

  Throwing back her head, letting her hair fall down her back, she let both her desires take over. She slowly lowered her incisors until they were fully extended, then dipped her head back down until her face was right in front of Gavin’s.

  Lost in his impending orgasm, he opened his eyes hazily only when her lips brushed his. He took in the sight of her new teeth slowly, as if the vision was filtering through a dream.

  Then she placed her lips just under his left ear and took her first bite of live flesh.

  Beneath her he jerked. With the first taste of red chocolate on her tongue, she licked her lips and moaned. She moved back until she could see his face, and intended to try to use some of her allure to make it pleasurable for him, too.

  But though he looked stunned, he also looked as if he was still as aroused as he’d been before she’d bitten. She felt his cock jerk inside her, and he groaned, and it seemed like a sound of pleasure.

  He liked it. He was scared, but the fear was mixed with desire.

  It undid her.

  Lowering her lips, she again sank her extended teeth into his neck. Sealing her lips around the bite, she suckled his neck as she would have his cock.

  She felt his life force enter her body, surging through her veins and restoring her vitality. She felt alive in a way she never had after drinking from one of the sealed plastic bags that Malcolm had brought her.

  This was magical. This was life.

  As her belly filled, pleasure spilled over. She released Gavin’s neck, arched her back and rode them both into climax. She stayed silent, but drank up the noises of shock and pleasure that Gavin let spill from his lips. When he was finally silent, she ceased movement and revelled in the sensation.

  When she again opened her eyes, she saw Gavin staring up at her with that same shock and pleasure, but also with something that she couldn’t quite read.

  Was it fear? It should have been fear.

  “Thank you.” Though it had been easier than she’d ever imagined to stop drinking from him before she took too much, what she had to do next wasn’t at all.

  She had to wipe his memory. She knew she had to. She couldn’t let him remember that she’d bitten him, that she was no longer the girl he’d known.

  She was remarkably sad that he wouldn’t remember the girl she now was, though. Placing a hand on either side of his head, she caught him in her stare, hoping that she was doing it right. Without breaking eye contact, she willed from the bottom of her soul that he not remember anything from tonight. His muscles tensed against the invasion into his mind, and when he relaxed she knew that she’d done it.

  Easing back, she quickly slid back into her jeans and tied her torn bra between her breasts. She shoved her torn panties in her pocket.

  He’d be confused when he came to, and would surely wonder why he was naked in the back of his van.

  But he wouldn’t know, wouldn’t have a clue. He’d have bite marks, marks that looked like a vamp bite, but the average human didn’t believe in vampires. He’d find something in the ordinary workings of the world to explain it away.

  As Aubrey slid from the van and eased the door shut behind her, her veins were full of new life, her thirst slaked and her limbs weak from sex.

  But as the coolness of the night air stole Gavin’s heat away from her skin, it was harder than she could have imagined to walk away.

  Malcolm had been right. She should have chosen someone she didn’t know. Her feelings were now invested in something that the other person would never remember.

  Damn it.

  Chapter Three

  The pounding on the door sounded like an entire army practicing drills in her head. Aubrey surfaced slowly from the depths of her sleep, as if floating gradually to the top of a pond after being submerged for hours.

  Vampire sleep was far deeper than that of a human. It took time to rouse a vampire out of it, particularly when rays of light were still shining in the sky, though the clock on her bedside table told her that they were about to fade again.

  She’d slept the entire day.

  As Aubrey blinked to clear the cobwebs of lingering dreams—and yes, she’d discovered that vampires did dream—from her mind she thought grumpily that the person thumping at the door must have been a giant if they were able to wake her from a sound sleep.

  She padded quietly on her bare feet to peep through the Judas hole.

  She’d hadn’t yet learned not to question her sharpened eyesight, so she blinked deliberately to get a second look at what she saw through the glass. Gavin stood on the other side of her door, and she was at a loss about what to do.

  “Um… just a minute.” He would be here to discuss her residency, she knew, because he wouldn’t remember anything of their encounter the night before. No, he wouldn’t remember a thing, never mind that it was burned into her mind forever.

  She remembered at the last minute to grab some pants before she opened the door. It seemed silly, since he’d seen all of her the night before—tasted all of her, too—but again, he wouldn’t remember.

  The door screeched as she wrenched it open. After the initial tug to get it past its swollen frame she swung the heavy wooden slab back, revealing herself to Gavin slowly.

  “Yes?” She attempted a smile, attempted to look normal. And sick, since that was her story.

  The scent of his blood hit her again, and it was all the more potent because she now knew what it tasted like. She could hear it rushing through his veins, and was happier than she should have been to make out his pulse picking up at the sight of her.

  Gavin swept his gaze very obviously up her body and down, lingering on the peaks of her nipples, evident through the thin cotton of her shirt.

  He shifted a bit, his pulse skipping a beat, and Aubrey was startled that she was having any kind of effect on him. As far as he was concerned, she was still the mousy little resident.

  She hadn’t known he’d been attracted to her then.

  “After last night, I don’t think I count as company.” Without waiting for an invitation, Gavin pushed past her, letting himself into her apartment.

  She stared after him, confused.

  He remembered last night?

  “I…I’m not sure what you mean.” Gone was the confidence of the night before. In the light of day, and with the brusqueness in his tone, Aubrey again felt like a resident with her preceptor.

  Except that she wanted to impale him with her fangs while he thrust into her with his cock.

  She shook her head to clear it of that memory as she followed him quickly to a tiny living area, where he began pacing.

  “I think you do.” He wheeled around to glare at her when she approached him from behind. The marks she’d made in his neck were virulent red, and made her thirsty.

  With no idea how she should respond, she decided to be cautious and play dumb.

  “Why don’t you just ask instead of hinting?” she asked once she’d sat down.

  Gavin snorted, and she realized that, instead of being scared of his sarcasm and temper the way she’s once been, she was turned on by his contrariness, and also by the way he looked with his dark hair all rumpled from sleep.

  “That’s how we’re going to play it, then? Fine.” He approached her—stalked her might have been the better word—placing an arm on either side of her and leaning in, effectively caging her in place.

  “Last night we had the best se
x that, to my surprise, I’ve ever had. Then I blacked out and woke up naked in the back of my van, with two nasty puncture wounds on my neck.”

  Aubrey squirmed at his words. When he put it that way, it sounded as if only an idiot wouldn’t figure out what had happened. Though she still wasn’t sure why he would have remembered the sex.

  Though it had been pretty memorable, and she was more pleased that he’d thought so, too, than upset that her mojo hadn’t worked.

  “And then. And then!” Gavin moved forward until his nose was nearly pressed against her own. “After I stumbled home, confused and disoriented, I discovered a little something extra that you’d left me. I spent the entire night and day in disbelief, but it’s real. And you are the common denominator in it all.”

  Aubrey licked her lips. He was so close, and she could see the pulse throbbing in his neck faster than usual because of his agitation.

  “Are you listening?” He sounded every bit like her preceptor and nothing like the lover who had bound her hands and caressed her body.

  “How could I not be?” Aubrey tried to sound flippant, but she was focused on his neck. She wanted to lick it, to kiss it. To drink from it.

  “Don’t you want to know what that little something extra is?” His lips were now just a whisper away from her own. She wanted to close the distance, but didn’t think that he would respond too kindly to it, not in his current mood.

  “Do tell.” She hoped her words didn’t sound nearly as unsure as she felt.

  His lips brushed her own, just a whispering tease before he backed a full five paces away. She nearly groaned aloud at the tiny taste, which she knew he’d done just to be cruel.

  “What is this?” With her vision on his face, it took her a minute to notice what he was talking about. But he’d thrust his hands away from his body, holding them palms up, and when she finally looked at them she felt her jaw drop.

  They were glowing. Blue light, sapphire blue, deep-sea blue, emanated from his flesh, tinting the air around him the color of the sky.

  “What? What?” Aubrey moved to her feet in a movement so swift she saw Gavin blink.

  “Oh, that’s not all, sweetheart.” She ground her teeth together at the endearment, which she knew was not used because he felt like being sweet. But her irritation was forgotten in the next minute.

  Pulling a small blade from the pocket of his jeans, Gavin slashed a shallow cut across the underside of his forearm. Aubrey couldn’t help the moan from escaping her lips when the scent of the hot, fresh red blood hit her nostrils.

  She watched, mesmerized, as a fat drop trickled over Gavin’s pale skin and fell wetly to the ground, where it tinted her carpet carmine.

  Gavin took his free hand and passed it slowly over the cut, an inch above it.

  When his arm again came into view, the skin was smooth and unblemished. There was no cut.

  “How did you do that?” She nearly forgot about his blood as she stared in wonderment. She looked up into his face, forgetting that she was now supernatural herself. “What are you?”

  He was in her face again before she could blink. How had he moved that fast? He cupped his hands under her elbows and lifted her until their faces were level.

  “That’s what you need to tell me, Aubrey.” His stare was fierce. “I was a normal man last night. Just a normal man. Then you came along, and now I don’t know what has happened to me.”

  “I…” Her voice trailed off. She’d been about to repeat her story, that she’d just been sick, but the look on her face told her that he wasn’t going to buy in, no way.

  And she wanted to tell him the truth. If she’d done this, though she had no idea how she could have, then she owed him at least that much.

  “You’d better sit down. Which involves, ah, putting me down.” He did, slowly, and she had no question that he was in control of the moment.

  How was it that she was now a vampire, was now stronger than ever before, and still she acquiesced to him?

  He stalked past her and sat, slowly, on the couch. Resting his elbows on his knees, he leaned forward and stared at the floor. “Talk.”

  She sat beside him gingerly, not just because he was in a volatile mood but because she wanted so very badly to taste him.

  “When I said I’d been sick, it wasn’t a lie.” This seemed like the safest place to start. “But it wasn’t anything…it wasn’t a human sickness.”

  “You’re a vampire.” His words were flat, and though somehow she knew that he’d guessed, she still felt compelled to ask him how he’d known.

  “The marks on my neck were my first clue.” His laugh had no trace of humour. “And I’ve always wondered if they were real. We get a lot of victims into emergency with trauma to the neck, the wrist. The inner thigh. All places with major arteries.”

  Arteries. Veins. Blood. She was thirsty. She wondered if Malcolm had caved and left any plastic bags of it in the fridge. The bags of congealed liquid were revolting, especially now that she’d tasted it hot and from the vein, but it would satisfy her hunger.

  “Yes. I’m a vampire. I was sick because I’d been turned.” She held out her hands, which were pale and cool, the skin nearly translucent.

  “Did you turn me?” Gavin’s voice was quiet.

  “No!” She turned to look at him then, but he kept his gaze fastened to the floor. “No. I couldn’t have. You can only turn someone if you drink too much. And I didn’t. I’m sure of it.”

  “Why did I pass out then? And why am I so thirsty?” His voice was flat, but she heard in it the undercurrents of his turmoil.

  “You’re thirsty?” She swallowed past her own dry lump. “You can’t be. I know I didn’t turn you. You passed out because I wiped your memory. At least, I thought I did. I don’t know why you still remember everything.”

  “Did you do it right?”

  Aubrey was insulted for a moment. Who was he to question if she was doing her vampiric things properly? But she supposed, after a moment, that he had a right to ask.

  “I’m pretty sure.” Her words were soft, for she wasn’t actually all that sure. “I have no idea why you’re thirsty. And I don’t know why you can…why you can do whatever it is you just did. I can’t do that.”

  “Are you sure? Have you tried?”

  Aubrey was taken aback. No, she hadn’t tried, but surely Malcolm would have told her about any fancy powers that came along with vampirism.

  Then again, Malcolm wasn’t the most reliable of guys in general.

  “Give me your knife.” When he failed to produce it, she snaked her fingers into his hip pocket and pulled it out for herself. She felt the jut of his hipbone as she did so, and it made her mouth water.

  Palming the blade, she took a deep breath—not that she needed it—and dragged the point of the knife across her own forearm. Blood welled up just as it had in Gavin’s, though hers was thicker, darker and sluggish.

  Narrowing her eyes, she focused on the cut. Not entirely sure of what she was supposed to do, she tried to will it to heal. But no light shone from her fingers, and the cut continued to ooze blood.

  “Am I doing it right?” She turned to Gavin, brow furrowed, and found him transfixed by the sight of the blood welling from her sliced arm.

  He dragged his gaze from her arm to her face with difficulty, and swallowed thickly.

  “You’re thirsty.” He nodded after a long pause. “Thirsty…for blood?”

  He nodded again. “It repulses me. It’s disgusting. But…I can smell it. Smell you. And I want it so bad.”

  Aubrey sat still, her mind frantically working. This was new territory for her. But she accepted her gut reaction and held out her arm.

  “Here.” She saw his pupils dilate as the blood drew close to his nose. “Bite.”

  Gavin took her
wrist, encircled it with his fingers. Eyeing her warily, he moved the tender skin of her wrist to his lips.

  She melted a bit when he brushed those lips over the flutter of her pulse before moving down the length of her arm to where her skin had been sliced open.

  He opened his mouth and then bit.

  Nothing happened. He didn’t have fangs; he couldn’t break her skin.

  “I don’t understand.” He narrowed his eyes at her. “How did you bite me?”

  Aubrey closed her eyes slowly, then forced her teeth to extend. It wasn’t hard to do, not when she was so thirsty and his delicious smell so close. Lifting her upper lip, she showed him her teeth, the teeth of a predator.

  To his credit, he didn’t appear frightened, or even fazed. He merely cocked his head and then bared his own teeth. She assumed he was trying to make his teeth do the same.

  “Anything?” He sounded hopeful, and from the look in his eyes she could tell that it was because the thirst had hit him.

  She shook her head. Frustration painted his features.

  Without thinking, she drew a finger through the blood on her arm, then lifted it to his lips. His tongue flicked out, tasting, then licking her finger clean.

  He moaned as the taste hit his tongue.

  “I need more.” A shiver shimmied down Aubrey’s spine. He was asking, but she had no doubt that he could take if he wanted to, even with her new strength.

  She was confused, so confused about the whole situation. But the bloodlust needed no explanation. They each had a thirst, and they each had the means to quench it.

  “Here.” She squeezed the cut, and more blood welled up. He slid his fingers down to clasp her elbow, inhaled the scent, then licked down the stripe of the cut.

  “What do I smell like to you?” The feel of his tongue on her skin, tasting her blood, sent her shooting to heights of sensation that rivaled those she’d felt when his mouth had been between her legs the night before.