Secret Mate: Night Circus Series

Never Ending Love 10

Thana

He wanted to talk.

I didn’t.

He wanted me to welcome him into my body like I had been close to doing.

I couldn’t think of anything I wanted less.

And he was hungry.

I could tell that as well.

I didn’t know when the last time he had fed was and I didn’t really care. Five days had passed since he had refused to save us all by killing his sire, and I hadn’t said one word to him. I couldn’t bring myself to. A dead woman couldn’t talk, anyway. And that’s what I was.

A dead woman walking.

Not that my silent treatment stopped him from talking to me. He was trying to make me understand. Telling me stories of his life since he had first taken mine. He was doing it to make me understand, but I didn’t. I couldn’t.

He stated that he loved me. That he had always loved me. But he wasn’t willing to do what was needed to keep me safe.

“The bond.” His fingers moved the hair away from my neck so he could rub the cool cloth over my skin. I hadn’t washed since that day either, and I stank. Even to my own nose, I smelt bad, so I knew he could smell it as well. Not that it stopped him trying to hold me at every possible moment. I didn’t stop him, but I didn’t return his embraces either.

I turned my face towards him, trapping his hand and the washcloth between my hand and my shoulder. My anger flared up, and it took everything I had not to open my mouth and tell him where he could stick his bond.

He smiled, a slow curve of his sinfully full mouth. “I am starting to love this fiery Thana just as much as I did the quiet Thana from years gone past.” Dropping the cloth, he cupped my cheek. Bringing his face down to me, his lips brushed against mine. I didn’t kiss him back. The time for me being weak was over. I had to be strong now. I had to stick to my guns.

“Talk to me, Thana.” Another brush of his lips against mine. “Tell me what you are thinking.”

My lips closed. He already knew what I was thinking. I had made my position on this matter clear and it hadn’t changed.

He was going to get me killed.

And not just me, either.

“You hate me.” He flopped back onto the bed, sounding distraught. It was a funny combination. Caradoch was a vampire. A murderous blood sucker that was immortal. But at that moment, he sounded like a normal man who had just had his heart broken.

It hurt to hear him sound that way, but not enough for me to reach for him.

Suddenly, he was back. The mattress dipped as he leant heavily into the pillows on either side of my head.

“I will keep you safe, Thana. And I will keep you as mine.” His eyes blazed, like a fire was lighting them up from within. It was a crazy look. A dangerous look. “You are mine.”

Something crackled in the room; the hair on my arms stood up on end. It was like a storm had suddenly appeared around us. That’s what it felt like. Being in the middle of an electrical storm.

“I will never give up what is mine, Thana. Never again.” Grabbing up the cloth, he brought it dripping wet into the valley between my breasts. “I would prefer you to love me back, for you to talk to me and walk at my side as an equal, but…”

Of course there was a but. There was always a but. Especially with men like Caradoch.

He was a man who took what he wanted without permission. Hell, he had kidnapped me from the middle of a crowded club in front of witnesses. He hadn’t cared.

“But I’ll keep you even if you hate me.” Forgetting the cloth, the tips of his fingers dipped under the v of my shirt. I trembled, my body betraying me.

Caradoch’s eyes never left my face as he teased at the very edge of my n****e. Neither one of us spoke.

“I don’t hate you.” The words ripped their way out of my mouth. My voice was croaky from not speaking for so long.

Caradoch smiled. “I am glad.”

“I hate myself.” I watched as his smile faded. “I hate myself for being bonded to you. You are weak. I hate myself for letting the love I felt for you in a previous life colour how I feel about you now. You touch me and my body reacts, but I feel nothing but revulsion for you.” I took a deep breath, gathering my courage about me. Caradoch was looking at me like he could quite happily rip my throat out. I didn’t want to die, but it would be better to die here and now than wither away like I was.

Or be killed screaming by some crazy ancient vampire who had killed me at least a dozen times before.

“You have always been weak.” I sucked in a breath as his hand curled around my throat. His fingers flexed. He kept me pinned to the bed with that hand as the other curved around my breast and squeezed.

Tears sprung up into my eyes. My heart slammed erratically in my chest.

“I am not weak,” Caradoch growled. The sound of material tearing filled the room and cold air flowed across my now naked breasts. His mouth, icy cold and so hot all at the same time, closed around my n****e and sucked hard. His fangs grazed against my skin.

I let out a warble. A cry of longing that was mixed in equal measures with a shout of protest. I didn’t want him touching me, but at the same time, I did.

I needed it.

“And I will have you forever.” He squeezed my throat cruelly, cutting off my breath completely, but only for a second. His mouth bit down around my n****e and I felt the blood flow. Caradoch gave one long suck and then licked the blood away. I’d been expecting him to feed off me again. To take it too far like he had before, but he didn’t. Instead, he lifted his face to mine.

“A weak man would take you now, Thana. I could feed off you. Take the blood I need from your veins and the pleasure I so desperately want from your body.” To prove his point, his hand moved downwards. My legs opened of their own accord, my knees falling to the mattress to give him easy access. “A weak man would give in to his urges around you. But I have never been a weak man.” He cupped me, the heel of his hand grinding deliciously against my clit.

I felt my body start to liquify.

“Caradoch.” I closed my eyes tight and tried to fight against what I was feeling. It was bad enough that my body wanted and reacted to him. But the flood of affection I felt for him was worse. He was keeping me prisoner. He had fed from me. And now he was touching my body like it belonged to him. I should not be feeling love and adoration for him.

I should hate him with everything I had.

Maybe I was just as weak as he was.

“No.” Moving his hand quicker over me, his fingers dipping and pushing the material that barely covered me into my body. “I will not stop, Thana. I will never stop loving you.”

Grabbing hold of his wrist, I tried to rip his hand away from me.

“I hate you.” My nails raked across his skin, leaving thin red marks on his pale flesh.

“I know you do.” The elastic waist of my bottoms was pulled away and down my legs, and just like my t-shirt, the material tore and ripped. “You hate me, but you want me more, don’t you?”

Two fingers plunged into me. No longer able to bite back my cries, I screamed.

“Tell me you love me, Thana. Tell me and…” He f****d me with his fingers, roughly and thoroughly. My juices eased the way, but there was still pain as he forced another finger in and then another. I felt stretched, more full than I had ever imagined I could be.

Pain and pleasure morphed into something I couldn’t describe. I clung to him, even as I fought to push him away from me.

“Tell me you love me and I’ll stop. I’ll let you go.”

His thumb brushed against my clit, and fireworks exploded behind my eyelids. “I hate you, Caradoch.”

Withdrawing his hand, he slapped my aching flesh. And then I was on top of him. My fingers clawed his chest as he thrust upwards and filled me with his c**k. He slammed up into me. His hands were as cruel as his rocking movements, but that just made it hotter.

“I hate you.” I threw my head back.

“I know.” Grabbing hold of the back of my head, he forced my head down to his. His kiss was as punishing as the d**k he forced into my body. He held me to him, his thrusts hard and deep.

I bit his lips and blood flowed down his chin, but it didn’t stop him from kissing me.

Laughing, he forced his tongue into my mouth. An invasion that I wanted no matter what I said to the contrary.

My brain might have hated him. But my soul didn’t, and he knew that.

“I’ll hate you forever.” My body tensed and I knew what was coming. It had been building since the first moment he had curled his hand around my throat. I had known then what was going to happen.

Where all of this anger would lead.

He slammed into my body once more and then held still. From deep inside of me, I felt him throb and spill. It seemed to go on forever. But I knew it was only seconds.

Finally, my body relaxed, becoming more liquid than anything else, as I flopped to my side and tried to catch my breath.

“Still hate you,” I managed to sigh as my heart finally settled into a more regular pattern.

“Don’t care.” Catching hold of me under one knee, Caradoch slithered down until his face was pressed against my sore, aching flesh. He pressed his fingers back into me, more gently this time but with just enough pressure that the rapid build-up started again. My body moved against him greedily.

“You can’t hate me forever, Thana.” Tongue replacing his fingers, he used it to lap the leaking s*x that was seeping from me. Both mine and his mixed together, and he didn’t miss a single drop,

It was like the night he had fed from me all over again, except this time it wasn’t blood he was feeding on but our mingled release.

“Want to bet?” I tangled my fingers in his hair and rode against his tongue.

“Yeah, I want to bet. I’ll prove to you that I am not weak and that I will do anything to keep you.” He thrust his tongue into me, stiffening it to a hard point. When he drew back, his words were a whispered promise. “No one will ever take you away from me again, Thana. Not ever again.”