Escaping Exile Read online

  He glances over his shoulder. “How can I kill you?”

  A chuckle bubbles up inside me. “You can’t.”

  He spins around and sits. After drinking a hefty gulp of his precious rum, he starts talking as if we’re old friends. “Well. You say that, but I once got in a knife fight in Tortuga, and…”

  I don’t believe in a heavenly power, but I thank whoever is listening that this dazzling creature lived long enough to find me.

  Chapter Eight

  THE RUM MAKES him snore, but I fall asleep eventually, amused by the so very human sound. I wake to the sun, faced away from him, but don’t dare move because I feel him behind me. The crown of his head leans against my spine, and one of his hands curls over my hip.

  He sighs. “You’re awake.”

  “Yes.”

  He pulls his hand back. His whole body rolls away as he stretches. “God, my throat aches.”

  “You were snoring.”

  “I do that when I drink.” He yawns behind me. “Hope I didn’t keep you up.”

  I’m up all right. I want to laugh at how up I am, and all it took was the light touch of his hand on my hip. My control is slipping. Dangerous, dangerous.

  I remain in bed as he goes through his morning routine. As he pulls his shirt on and walks toward the water basin, I notice something I had not previously. “You have a scar.”

  “I have several.” He splashes water on his face and runs his fingers through his sleep-mussed hair.

  “The one on your back.” It’s long and angry and curved.

  “Electric eel.” He looks back at me, hair heavy and wet. “That was a bad day.”

  I follow him all morning as he checks his animal traps, all empty so far, and walks back to the quiet lagoon nearby. I don’t even pretend to look away when he removes his clothes for a swim, although I don’t join him, too tempting. He asks questions like bullets about my species…

  “I thought your kind were nocturnal.”

  “I enjoy the night as much as the day.”

  “How many of you are there?”

  “I really don’t know.”

  “Have you heard of two vampires being mated for life?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  He laughs at what I imagine is my horrified expression. “So you run around shtupping everything in sight?”

  “I do have some standards.”

  He floats on his back in the crystal-clear water, trim chest and stomach revealed. He closes his eyes and bobs up and down with his deep breaths. Then, he disappears below the surface. His feet kick once, hard, like a fish fin. A moment later, he’s ten feet away. Edmund swims like a merman, made for the sea.

  Later, he walks to the water’s edge and stands there, dripping, with no attempt at modesty. “So nothing can hurt you?”

  I try not to stare. “Not that I know of.”

  He steps out of the water and brushes water droplets from his skin. “Well, do you age?”

  I consider this and try not to consider the thatch of black hair between his legs surrounding an impressive cock. “I was thirty years old when I died. Do I look thirty now?”

  He tilts his head and studies me. “I suppose.”

  “You look even younger without clothes,” I say and would regret it if not for his bemused expression.

  “Do you have any, I don’t know, vampire friends?”

  I think of Michelle and even Felipe. “Used to, I guess.”

  He apparently waits for the sun to dry his skin as we continue talking, but I’m only half listening. I wonder how his trim waist would feel in the palms of my hands. I want to press my thumbs against his flesh where thigh meets hip.

  “Andrew?”

  I look up.

  “I asked you a question.”

  I suck a breath into my lungs and glance away. “Yes, what?”

  He steps into his borrowed breeches. “Do you think you’re damned?”

  “No. I think I’m gifted. All the things I’ve seen, the people I’ve known, even the blood I’ve tasted: it all feels like a gift.”

  He pulls his shirt on. “And being trapped on this island?”

  “It’s just another day in eternity. Granted, a very long day.”

  Edmund smiles as we walk back to the house, narrowly avoiding his cannibal traps. At one point, he grabs my arm and tugs me closer to him before gesturing to where I was about to step. “Don’t come out here without me,” he says, “although it would be amusing to have you hanging from a tree.”

  I shove at him playfully. I haven’t been playful in decades.

  Once inside, he tells me to strip.

  My entire upper body heats up. “What?”

  He drinks a gulp of water from the pitcher and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “I want to do a physical examination. Nothing serious. I won’t cut your finger off or anything.” He lowers his brows at my hesitation. “Wouldn’t have pegged a New Orleans guy as shy. I hear things get wild up there.”

  “You have no idea.” I take off my shirt, and he respectfully averts his gaze when I remove my breeches. The breeze from outside feels warm and welcome against my most sensitive spots. Then, Edmund’s sudden nearness takes me off guard as he grabs my shoulders and presses his ear against my chest. His hair tickles my nipple.

  “Silence,” he says. “That is so bloody odd.” He stands up straight and puts his palm on my chest as if trying to will my dead body back to life. He squints at his own hand like a magician who’s flubbed a trick. “Yet, you breathe.”

  In some salute to my long-lost mortal days, I’m breathing quite quickly, in fact, and only belatedly realize my body is doing something else entirely human and male.

  When he drops his hand, his fingers dance across my stomach, which is when he notices. “Oh. So that works then. You’re not all dead.”

  I move to cover myself but groan when his hand wraps around my ever-hardening length. “Edmu—Jesus.” His fingers squeeze not quite enough, and his cheek presses against mine when he whispers in my ear.

  “I thought it was my blood you wanted, but that’s not true. It’s me you long for. Hmm? Tell me you want to touch me.”

  “Yes,” I hiss as his hand moves, dizzy with his caress.

  “Last night, I could almost see you picturing it, picturing us.”

  I shiver when his lip touches my earlobe.

  “The expression on your face was so hungry, I turned away to hide my own excitement. Imagine my surprise: trapped on an island with a creature of similar taste.”

  I’m going to come from just his hand and his voice if I don’t put a stop to it.

  “Did you enjoy my show today? Waking to my touch? Watching me bathe? I thought I might drive you mad with lust.”

  “Oh, God…” I press my nose against his neck. Then, I open my mouth and suck his skin. “I want you. God, I want you.”

  “You can have me.” He pulls back enough for me to see his smirk. “As many times as you can manage.”

  My cock feels cold with the absence of his touch. “I won’t stop if I start.”

  “Promise?” He smiles.

  I lunge forward and kiss him as if he’s a ripe peach. I’m sucking and biting and licking as my hands reach beneath the material of his breeches, cup his ass, and shove the fabric down. Then I tear his shirt open and drag the offending item from his shoulders. We’re both naked when I shove him on the bed and immediately press our cocks together. He about bucks off the bed as I start rutting. This will be over much too fast, but damned if I care. I need this. I need him, his sputtering and begging, reaching to grab me—but I trap his wrists and pin his arms above his head as I continue to grind against his hot skin.

  Beneath me, his eyes are shut, his mouth wide as he groans. I suck on the side of his jaw. “Fuck, you’re beautiful,” I mutter. “So fucking beautiful…”

  He comes, his seed wet and warm between us. I let go of his wrists and hold tight to his hips. I thrust once, twice, and I’m coming,
too, in a way that halfway makes me think I’m indeed alive again. I can’t hear, can barely see, when I fall forward and crush him beneath me. He gasps when I force my arms beneath his body and squeeze him tightly against my chest. He wraps his legs around my waist and rocks his hips until I wince with oversensitivity.

  “Stop,” I say.

  He’s completely out of breath. “You’ll find that’s rather…hard to make me do.”

  I let go only long enough to lean down and lick at the white stripes on his stomach. I taste the difference between us. He is salty-sweet, an orchestra of flavor, while I am a single, sullen note. His muscles twitch beneath my tongue as I keep licking.

  “That’s bloody gorgeous.”

  I look up, and he’s leaned on his elbows, staring at me. Beads of sweat shine within the curls of his sparse chest hair, and his cheeks are a shade of pink I’ve never seen before. His bottom lip is red and puffy as if he’s been bitten—by his own doing or mine, I’m not sure.

  He curls his fingers in my hair. “Smother me again.”

  I wrap my arms around him as his legs surround me. We bury our faces in each other’s shoulders, and I hear nothing but his pulse.

  Chapter Nine

  IT’S NOT LONG before he begs for more, which makes me again consider the youth of my new lover. Men of a certain maturity don’t have this kind of stamina—even I have yet to recuperate from our first harried go—and although I am still uncertain as to Edmund’s actual age, I have to conclude young.

  “I want to take you in my mouth,” I whisper against his lips.

  His heart gives a jump. I actually feel its lovely beating when I kiss his chest. He tastes of sweat and the sea.

  I’m halfway down his stomach when he says, “Wait.” The sun is still high, streaming through the windows, so his face is a mishmash of light and dark.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “Your teeth,” he says. “In order to eat the way you eat, they must be sharp. Or am I mistaken?”

  I think of his scars. My Edmund is reckless but not dumb. I can’t help but grin up at him, not only because of the nervous wrinkle between his eyes but also because I’m incapable of anything but joy with his body beneath me.

  “Do not look at me like that.” The quirk of his lips belies the seriousness of his words.

  “Like what?”

  “As if I’m a curious child. A man’s cock and balls are no laughing matter. Show me your teeth.”

  I laugh with my mouth against his hip, but he tugs at my hair until I shift up and rest by his side. It doesn’t take much for my teeth to change. When I was a young vampire, centuries ago, I had little control over them. If I was hungry, they happened. If I was angry, they were there. Now, my true teeth only show when I choose, so I choose to show Edmund.

  I smile at him.

  “Christ.” He reaches his hand out between us and stops. “How sharp are they?”

  “Sharp.” I’ve torn throats out before. Several, in fact, but I don’t feel the need to share such details.

  He still looks nervous.

  “I can control them.” I kiss him. To prove my control, I suck his bottom lip into my mouth, fangs once again hidden.

  He makes a sound like a lion’s purr.

  “You love danger, Edmund. Admit it.”

  “Yes, well, not around my dick,” he says, but he doesn’t stop me when I kneel between his spread legs and kiss his inner thighs. His fingertips play across my bare shoulders. “Promise you won’t hurt me.”

  I might be lying, but I make the promise anyway.

  I admire his anatomy. His cock is like the rest of him: long and lean, although darker in shade. I lick up the underside of his shaft before wrapping my lips around the head of his cock.

  He grunts, and I glance up to find him staring at me, lips pressed together tight.

  I push the foreskin back and lick his slit. “Make as much noise as you want. In fact, if you even try to stay quiet, I will make this go on forever.” I flick my tongue out and tease his tip, which makes his abdomen leap. The breath vacates his lungs.

  I envelop the entire length of him in my mouth until his cock presses against the back of my throat, and a deep, drawn-out moan fills the room like pipe smoke. He squeezes my shoulders and then the sheets as a fountain of cuss words erupts from his throat.

  “You’re going to be the death of me,” he says.

  I bob my head up and down a few times before stopping. I press my open tongue on the underside of his dick, just below the head, and move it in waves.

  “Oh, fucking fuck…”

  He quickly comes undone. All of his muscles—an extensive array—seem to clench at the same time as he shouts my name and comes down my throat. Oh, this is better: drinking right from the source. It’s not his blood, but it might as well be, the way I lap up every last drop. I run my hand up the center of his sweaty chest and to his throat. I tickle his Adam’s apple with my thumb as he twitches beneath me. He presses his palms against his eyes.

  “Jesus.” It’s almost a prayer.

  He’s too wrecked to reciprocate right away, so I feed him small slices of salted pork and sips of water as we rest together into late afternoon.

  “Have you had many lovers?” I ask.

  “Dunno. What constitutes many?”

  I have no answer to that, so instead of speaking, I gobble up the sight of him naked and half wrapped in bedclothes.

  “I suppose I’ve had my share. I was very popular as a society boy in London, but I always preferred the more…exotic.” His smile doesn’t lighten his eyes as usual. “Like Samuel.”

  “The African on the ship was your lover?”

  “I knew he’d been banished from his village, but I didn’t realize why.” He brushes his fingers against my arm. “At first, he wanted to teach me basic things—ways to stay alive, find food in the wilderness. Then, it became more. Small touches, innocent innuendo.” He smiles a true smile now. “It was almost laughable, watching him test my limits. I think he was waiting for me to shove him away, but I never did. Do you want to hear about this?”

  “Yes.” Something about the thought of my sailor with another man makes me angry—but incredibly hard.

  “After months of Samuel’s fumbling, he snuck into my room one night. He had me on my stomach before I could even speak.” Edmund presses a kiss to my cheek as he tickles below, finds my excitement. “We fucked with my face against the pillow to stifle my screams. I could have woken the whole ship.”

  My mouth drops open as he strokes me.

  “That’s how he always was. He called me his pet. Some nights, I wouldn’t even hear him sneak in. I would simply wake with his fingers inside me.” He licks his tongue between my parted lips, and my hips thrust forward.

  “I think I could come just from listening to you say filthy things.”

  His pace increases on my aching cock. “I had two men at once in China. Two huge brutes tossing me around. They treated me like their possession, passing me back and forth all night. I was limp with pleasure, sore for days. I think they even loved me by the end.”

  “I want to murder all of them.”

  As I come, I hear him say, “I believe you.”

  Chapter Ten

  FELIPE WAS MY friend in New Orleans—at least, I thought he was—and we used to share humans. Well, “share” is not the correct word. More so, we used to battle over them.

  Felipe and I were of a different ilk. Both ancient immortals, he was a bit of a ponce, and although he was quite pretty, he enjoyed pretty men just as much as me. Most of the time, he inhabited Michelle’s bed as her devoted lover, but on occasion, he came out with me to high-class New Orleans soirees. There, our battles would begin.

  I remember in particular one night at the birthday of a famed barrister’s wife, Mrs. June. We arrived to wish her a “bon anniversaire.” Oh, it was prime hunting. Felipe, as usual, wore too much lace, his hair falling free around his pointed face. I stayed by his side as
we sauntered to and fro with champagne and admiring smiles.

  He stopped and grabbed my arm. “My God, look at that one.”

  I knew immediately to which man he referred: a tall, slim gent with auburn hair and lips the shape of a heart. He spoke to the lady of the house, but as soon as he noticed us watching, his attention lingered before looking away and feigning interest in whatever the aging birthday femme had to say.

  Felipe tugged on his cuffs and adjusted his hair. “I would eat him alive.”

  “Wouldn’t you just?” I sipped my bubbly.

  “Come now, don’t pretend you don’t want to have that fantastic creature in bed. Jesus, his mouth alone is sin incarnate.”

  I glanced down at Felipe before looking back up at said stranger whose pale cheeks had turned a delightful shade of pink—although he was doing a winning job of pretending to listen to Mrs. June.

  Felipe turned his back on the enchanting young man and faced me. “Let’s make a wager.”

  No one made my eyes roll like Felipe with his silly games.

  “It will be entertaining.”

  “I’m sure,” I muttered.

  “First to touch his cock is the winner.”

  “Jesus…”

  Felipe offered that dark-eyed smile of his—half charm, a quarter mischief, and another quarter murderous. Of all the vampires I’d known, he was least trustworthy, which is why I never should have been surprised that spending time with him aided in my exile.

  “So,” he continued. “Will you accept my wager?”

  “What’s the prize?”

  “You mean beyond touching his prick?” He shrugged. “Pride.”

  Thanks to the unending funds of our coven, saved for centuries, we had no need for making money. Felipe knew my belongings were sparse, beyond my extensive wardrobe, too big for Felipe anyway. Pride was all we had to offer each other anymore.

  I nodded my assent, and I swear Felipe’s eyes flashed red.

  To talk to our prize, we moved ever closer to the belle of the ball. As usual, Mrs. June wore a low-cut gown that almost flashed her bosom in an effort to appear sensual and young. Her age, though, was made all the more apparent, standing beside the youthful red-haired man who didn’t have a line on his face. His green gaze darted from us and back to her.