Eva's Last Dance Read online

  “You have an advantage over humans, Eva,” he crooned. “This canal can be used only for play.” As he spoke, he stretched her with his fingers, working the entrance wider, preparing her for him. “I can’t wait to fuck you here, too. My cock is throbbing at the idea.”

  His cock, slick with more lube, nudged her anus. Pressed harder, demanding entrance. She felt Ryan’s hands on her hips, steadying her. “Relax, Eva. Let me in. You’ll love it.”

  She took a breath and tried to obey. And abruptly, he was in. She felt herself open up and it was delicious. She gasped at the strange sensation, so filling and so widening. She had never understood how sensitive her ass was before now. Her clit began to beg for attention.

  “Oh, Ryan!” she gasped.

  “I know,” he replied. He was sliding his cock inside her one painful inch at a time.

  “Harder!” she begged.

  “Not this time, Eva. Trust me.”

  “I’m dying. Please, harder.”

  “Oh, there’s more to come, my rutty little one. Just wait.”

  “Now,” she pleaded.

  Finally, he was buried to the root. She could feel his balls against her pussy and wriggled at the sensation.

  “For the love of…spare me, Eva,” he said, grabbing her hips.

  “More,” she begged, looking over her shoulder at him.

  “I’ve created a monster,” he said, with a grin.

  “I am a monster. Haven’t they told you that?” She smiled at him. “More.”

  He picked up the vibrator. “More you will have.”

  She purred. “Mmmm…..”

  He withdrew from her ass enough to give him room to move and carefully slid the vibrator into her pussy. She gasped as it pushed into her, for she was already filled with Ryan’s cock and the vibrator was wide too. She breathed evenly, adjusting to the sensation of fullness, of completeness and closed her eyes.

  Ryan withdrew almost his full length, then pushed back into her, a full thrust. “Fuck. I’m not going to last,” he muttered. “You’re too tight.”

  But his single thrust told her she was going to come as quickly as he was. Quicker, if she reached for her clitoris. If she dared. She wanted to. The urge was overpowering. But before she could respond to the impulse, Ryan’s hand slipped between her thighs and curled on either side of her clit and began to milk it in easy motions that matched his thrusts.

  Eva clutched at the antique counterpane. There was no doubt this time that her orgasm was going to disintegrate her mind, if not her body. She could feel it building from her toes, rushing at her, a howling tornado.

  She screamed. She could feel her throat burning as she gave vent to the power of the climax as it tore through her and locked her body in a series of orgasmic waves so strong she stopped breathing.

  Ryan came with her. She heard his shout and felt the spill of his cum inside her.

  But the lack of breathing had grayed out her world and she closed her eyes, her arms unable to hold her up anymore.

  Chapter Three

  “That’s it. Focus, now. C’mon Eva. I know you can hear me. Open your eyes, honey. Please. For me. C’mon.”

  She screwed her eyes shut harder, for they hurt.

  “No, open them. Come on, Eva, open your eyes.” It was Ryan’s voice. She could feel his arms around her. And his voice. Insisting. He sounded worried.

  She was tired. So tired.

  It took her a moment to focus on that, to sort it out.

  When did vampires get tired?

  Her eyes snapped open. Ryan was watching her. His eyes closed briefly in relief. “Hi there,” he said. “Welcome back.”

  She shook her head. “It’s all muzzy in my head.”

  “I know.” He wrapped her arms more firmly around his neck and moved her gently, a slow circle.

  “We’re dancing?” she asked, really scrambling to pull it together now.

  “Yes.” He grinned. “You, not so well. But it’s dancing of a sort.”

  She glanced around. It was her apartment, but there were subtle differences. A big sofa in front of a television that she had never owned, more props in the kitchenette than she had ever bothered to buy and what looked like real food there. There were far more books on the shelves than she remembered. But Ryan was moving her in the slow circles of a waltz and she couldn’t enumerate the changes fast enough.

  “Wait,” she said. “What’s happening? I don’t understand.”

  “I know. What do you remember, Eva?”

  “Edward…the incubus. And you. On the roof. Then later, in the apartment.” She frowned, trying hard to pull it together. How had she got from the bed to here in Ryan’s arms? Why were they dancing once more? Why did she remember the apartment differently?

  “That’s all you remember?” He seemed disappointed.

  She looked at him. “Why? What else is there? What am I missing?”

  He came to a halt and plucked her left hand from around his neck, with his own left hand. There were two identical bands on their ring fingers. “We’ve been married for three years, Eva. I was hoping the gargoyle hadn’t taken that much from you but I guess I’m out of luck.” He put her arm back around his neck and moved back into the rhythm of the waltz. “You have to keep moving,” he said softly, his voice hoarse. He kept his head averted.

  The pain in his voice made her heart clamp hard. “What happened?” she whispered. “Please tell me.”

  “I went hunting a gargoyle tonight. I got careless, or he got lucky. Who knows?” Ryan spoke with his head against her cheek. “He got in a mortal blow but you finished him off for me. I didn’t even know you were there. You must have known something was going to happen tonight. Over the years, you’ve grown this sixth sense for knowing when I was going to need backup and have just been there. But he bit you before he died. And instead of expelling the poison, you spent your time making sure I was okay, first. So by the time we could do something about you, it was too late.”

  She could feel his heartbeat accelerate despite the dry recitation of facts. By the time he finished the monologue, his arms had tightened around her and she could feel the hard tension singing in him.

  There was so much unspoken in what he’d just said, she’d need a month to sort it out. Eva took a breath to dispel some of the tension in her that he’d communicated. “You’re still hunting?” she asked. It was one fact she did remember. She could start from there.

  “The world thinks I’m in the army. Black ops.” He finally lifted his head. “That was your idea. It was brilliant. Gave us an excuse for weapons and odd hours and trips away from home at short notice and not being able to talk about my work.”

  “I’m still a freelance graphic artist?”

  “In fact, rather than as cover. You’re doing very well.” He spun her in a half circle and pointed to a computer in the corner. “God, I wish you could remember, Eva. We’ve been so fucking happy the last three years.” He brushed her hair from her face. “It took me six months to convince you it would work in the first place, a human and a vampire. But it was all your idea in the beginning. You took me in, almost like a stray dog. A night here, a weekend there. Then I found I couldn’t stay away.”

  Something was nudging her mind. Tapping at it. Persistent, like an errand she needed to remember. But it wouldn’t come to her.

  So she turned to another point. “The…gargoyle, tonight. You said it bit me.”

  “Remember anything about them?”

  “Not as a hunter.”

  “Their bite is fatal to everyone but vampires, who seem to be immune to practically every bug, disease and toxin on the planet. But even vampires are vulnerable to gargoyle toxin if they don’t expel it fast enough. You didn’t act quickly enough tonight. By the time I could do anything about it, it was already starting to act on you, to petrify you.”

  She shivered. “Why don’t I remember any of this?”

  “The mind is just as affected as the body. Maybe later, thi
s will come back. You’re still moving sluggishly, Eva. We have to get what passes for your metabolism back up and firing.”

  She realized that Ryan was still mostly supporting her as they moved around in their dance circles. She tried to take some of her own weight and felt the creak of muscles and the ache of her bones. She forced herself to it, even though it hurt.

  “Yes, the more you can move, the faster you’ll recover,” he said, clearly sensing her effort.

  “You brought me back here?”

  “As fast as I could,” he replied. “I’d heard a street rumor about a cure…that the mind is actually the last thing to petrify and that the victim’s hearing is the last sense to shut off. So if you can keep the metabolism up and talk to them, keep their mind moving, you can bring them out of the petrified state. Literally walk them through the poisoning.”

  “Walk them through it, or dance them through it?” she asked.

  “You love dancing,” he said simply. “It had to make a connection for you. So, we’ve been dancing.”

  “For how long?”

  “For about five hours now.”

  She stared at him. “Oh, Ryan…”

  He grinned, the cocky grin she’d first seen on the roof. “It worked. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”

  “And in all that time you’ve been talking to me?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “What about?”

  “Everything and anything. But mostly about us. About anything that is important to you. Anything that I thought would raise your heart rate. Anything that would get you excited.”

  “Like the night we met,” she said slowly.

  “Especially that,” he said, with an equally slow smile. “You’ve always told me how much you treasure that night. So I gave you a long replay of that night.”

  “With your side of it as highlights,” she said.

  He cocked his head to one side, puzzled. “Why do you say that?”

  “That’s where I’ve been,” she told him. “That’s where I was, while you were talking to me. But I was seeing your side of it too, because you were feeding it to me.” She could feel her limbs start to loosen as she moved around the floor with him. “You had such wicked thoughts about me, even then. And such…endearing ones.” She put her head to one side and looked up at him. “Am I really a china doll?”

  He threw his head back and laughed and the sound warmed her. Then he gathered her in his arms and tucked her under his chin. “Yeah, you’re a china doll when you aren’t driving me crazy, or to distraction with your sexy little pout.”

  She nestled there, utterly content, until the point she had been trying to remember slammed home with all the horror and despair it deserved. She pulled away from Ryan, staggering backward on her awkward legs, staring at him.

  “You said the gargoyle gave you a mortal blow.” She was trembling.

  He shook his head. “You didn’t miss it, did you? I was hoping to gloss over that for the moment.” His gaze was sad.

  “God, Ryan, no…I didn’t…please, tell me I didn’t turn you?”

  “You didn’t have a choice.”

  “There’s always a choice,” she cried. “There’s death.”

  “I chose this. I wanted to stay with you.” He said it evenly, in a way that made her narrow her eyes, studying his face for signs of a lie.

  “You’re lying,” she said at last. “Because you know I don’t remember what happened. Which means you didn’t chose at all. I must have forced it on you. Why would I do that? I would not dare make someone a vampire against their wishes. No one would. It goes against everything we have fought to become these last centuries.”

  “You didn’t force me,” he said softly. He gathered her into his arms. “You begged me.” His hand tangled in her hair as he pressed her head against his shoulder and began to dance again. “You could not bear to lose me. You lost Edward once, you said and that was a minor loss in comparison. To lose me would be to lose all meaning.”

  She lifted her head. “I didn’t threaten to suicide, did I? To let the gargoyle toxin take me if you would not let me turn you? Surely not?”

  He kissed her brow. “I didn’t even know until I woke a vampire that you had been bitten. You didn’t tell me. You must have been in agony but you didn’t breathe a word.” He closed his eyes. “God, the terror that hit me when I saw the bite. I’ve never heard of anyone recovering from a bite before.”

  They danced. In small circles and large, the waltz music in their heads and their bodies fitting together like well-worn gloves. Slowly, her muscles loosened and her mind eased. Images started forming. Memories. Ryan, coming in the door one hot summer night, dusty from travels, a gym bag in one hand, his favorite sawn-off shotgun in the other and dropping both in order to pick her up and wrap her legs around him and kiss her thoroughly.

  Ryan asleep on the couch, in front of a football game, an old dusty tome about demons open on his chest.

  Watching him cook in the kitchen.

  “We got married in city hall?” she murmured.

  “October 31,” he said. “Your friends insisted. Weirdest day of the year—I thought the judge was going to burst a blood vessel, with all those characters in his court. My hunter buddies are bad enough but vampires are strange at the best of times. Comes from all that long living. Personally, I liked the honeymoon better.”

  She reached for the memory and found a name. “Louisiana.”

  “My folk, what there are of them left. You remember now?”

  “It’s shadows. Snatches.”

  “It’ll come, then.” He spun her in a full circle, making her dizzy. “We need to get your metabolism up. It’s a pity you can’t eat food.”

  “The dancing is slowly working but I know a sure-fire guarantee,” she said.

  “And that is?”

  “Make love to me.”

  Ryan’s smile softened and his eyes turned smoky. “Trust you to come up with that one.” His lips touched hers gently, as they turned an elegant arc around their living room floor, the one they had deliberately kept clear of furniture and carpets, so they could dance when the mood struck them.

  I remember that, Eva thought to herself. She lifted her hand to the back of Ryan’s head. “More,” she coaxed. “I won’t break.”

  “You forget. I saw you lying there tonight, Eva.” His voice was rich with unspoken emotions.

  She understood suddenly that Ryan was afraid of hurting her again. He had seen her vulnerable and weakened, something that never happened to a vampire and it had shaken him. She had to overcome his hesitation.

  She lifted her leg and wrapped it around his waist, then quickly twined the other to match. Ryan instinctively shifted his arms to take her weight, his hands cupping her ass. “What are you doing?” he murmured.

  She slid her hands into his hair and yanked his head toward her. “Fuck me,” she growled and kissed him, thrusting her tongue into his mouth. For a moment he hesitated. But just a moment. His hand steadied her head and his mouth came alive. His tongue tangled with hers and stroked her lips and teeth in slow, deliberate sweeps.

  She could feel her mouth tingling in response. When he let her go, she clutched at him. “More,” she said. “It’s working.”

  His eyes were obsidian black with arousal. “You’re not the only one it’s working on, Eva.” He pressed her ass hard, so that her pelvis pushed against him and she could feel his cock rearing between them, a hard, thick rod. It fitted against her crotch, pulsing with heat that radiated through their clothes.

  “God, I could come in three seconds,” he said thickly.

  “The bed,” she said. The bed was behind him. A quick turn and he could drop her on the mattress. But he was bearing her backward. She felt the wall against her back, as he pressed her up hard against it, driving the air from her lungs in his hurry.

  Dim chords of pleasure plucked at her. This, she remembered from their first night and the delight she had taken from it. “I let
you put my hands up above my head,” she whispered.

  “Let me?” he husked. He grabbed her wrists and yanked them above her head and pinned them against the wall and stared into her eyes. “Fight me now, Eva.”

  She pulled her hands away from his grip…or tried. It should have been easy. Then reality caught up with her memories of Ryan making love to her. He was a vampire now. His strength at least equaled her own. She yanked at his grip on her wrists and her hands didn’t budge.

  The corners of his mouth curled in a smile that smoked with lust. “Now I can truly do what I want with you.” It was an echo of their first night together and her body seemed to crackle with sudden energy, as she realized that this time Ryan spoke a more profound truth than either of them had understood that first night. Her breath came more quickly and her heart began to beat faster as she stared at him. “What will you do?” she asked.

  “For a start…” He pressed her hips to the wall and stepped back so that her legs were unwound from his waist, forcing her feet to the floor. He took a fistful of the black stretch denim shirt she wore and yanked. The shirt tore away from her with a tired sigh of stressed cotton, proving that his strength was indeed at least equal to hers. He hooked his finger over the centre of her lace bra and pulled and the bra also disintegrated.

  She was wearing black jeans and there was a rip in the lower left leg. With a start, she realized that this was where the gargoyle had bitten her. Ryan’s fingers dipped into the space behind the jeans and leather belt and her abdomen, caused by the rise of her hips. The touch of his fingers sliding down her flesh, so close to her labia, sent a feather of pleasure through her, where once she would have moaned with wanting. She was not fully restored yet.

  His fingers curled over the belt and the band of her jeans and with a flex of his shoulder, he tore the garment from her body. It gave way at the back and whipped through her legs, brushing across her genitals with a rough stroke that seemed to bring the soft saddle of flesh awake.

  The back of her legs tingled where the denim parted and gave way, sliding past her flesh and caressing it.

  Cool air bathed her. Normally she was immune to cold and heat but now she enjoyed the feel of the air on her flesh in a new and novel way.