MacNachton Vampires: Born To Bite Part 27

He trapped her nipple with his teeth, biting lightly. Ellie's head jerked upright as she gasped, unsure whether she should push his head away or beg him to do it again.

As if reading her mind, he performed the same sweet torture on the other breast, suckling the nipple to diamond hardness and sc.r.a.ping ever so gently with his teeth as he pulled his mouth away. She nearly flew off the bed.

His hips rising, he bent lower and lower, pressing a trail of hot, slow kisses from the valley between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s to the sensitive skin just beneath. He continued lower, along her stomach, over to the swell of her hip, down the impossibly tense muscle of her thighs.

He began to lick. First the quivering flesh of her inner thigh, then just a little higher, and a little higher still, until finally, finally, his tongue reached where his fingers had not.

Her hands shot out to grab fistfuls of his hair, holding him in place. His tongue drew endless lazy circles, as if he had all the time in the world to torture her until she fractured from the inside out. She slid one hand from his hair, gliding her palm up her stomach to hover just above her breast, as if wanting to touch it, to touch herself, but daring not. Her nipple tightened, and the aching tip brushed against the edge of her palm.

As if he sensed what she was doing and sought to tempt her even more, Cain dragged his thumb over her wet core, circling, pressing, until the pad slipped within her as his mouth and tongue returned their attentions to her nub.

Ellie cried out, arching into his face, into his finger, her head tossed backward as her hands found her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, rolled her nipples beneath her fingers as she writhed against the climbing pressure in her core.

"C-Cain." The word came out an incomprehensible moan. "I-"

Then his mouth was on hers, drinking every gasp as his shaft filled her. Her fingernails dug into his back as she lifted her legs higher, wrapped him tighter, forced him deeper, faster, faster.

He ducked his head to her shoulder and pressed his open mouth to her skin. As the first contraction of her climax hit, she lifted her head until his shoulder was close enough to taste. With the tip of her tongue, she traced the hard, salty curve. Her inner muscles squeezed tighter with every thrust.

As he gave a shudder indicating his own imminent surrender, the pressure of his kiss increased against her skin. She kissed his neck, his chest, ran her tongue along the bare strength of his shoulder. Their bodies joined faster. He moaned against her skin as another shudder wracked his body. Her release was instantaneous. Twin points painlessly punctured her skin, doubling her pleasure.

Instinctively, she bit down and did the same.

Chapter Eleven.

"Liar," Cain choked out, retracting both fangs and shaft from the woman writhing deliciously beneath him as soon as his pa.s.sion-drunk brain registered the twin points piercing the sensitive skin of his shoulder in exactly the same way his own fangs had fastened upon hers.

He was furious. At her, for having deceived him. At himself, for having let down his guard. At fate, for having gifted him the greatest pleasure of his life with a woman he couldn't help but love and want to protect-only for every facet to have been a lie. She was no innocent human girl in want of a warrior's compa.s.sion or protection. She wasn't innocent-or human-at all.

Had she known who and what he was from the beginning? Been mocking him, managing him, from the first step of their dance?

Cain flung himself from the warmth of her naked body and off the bed. His every limb trembled in rage. His face twisting, he backed steadily away, even as Ellie's arms reached out to him.

A puzzled frown marred the contentedness of Ellie's expression. A soft, fang-tipped smile marred the humanity of her face. "What is it?"

He turned his head. Despite his fury at having been cozened, despite his self-disgust at having been too distracted to discern the truth on his own, he longed to lick the red smear from her lips while taking her again and again and again. Ignoring the yearning of his traitorous body, Cain refocused on the inescapable evidence before him: The innocent human was actually a vampire.

"Don't even try to play the ingenue," he growled. "Not with my blood still fresh upon your tongue."

Guilt flashed across Ellie's face before she dropped her gaze. "I-"

"Why didn't you tell me?" His hands curled into fists at his sides. He had never felt so foolish, so exposed. So vengeful.

Ellie's glare was defiant. "Why do you suppose?"

"Oh, I don't know," he said as he fastened a b.u.t.ton. "Because you're a duplicitous manipulator?"

She shot upright. "That's rich, when you're the specter of death come to hunt us and take us captive!"

He crossed his arms and gave her a look powerful enough to send warriors scurrying for cover. She didn't even change expression.

"Judge me for honoring my blood-sworn duty," he said at last. "But I never lied to you about who or what I was."

"I never said I wasn't a vampire," she mumbled halfheartedly, then glanced away as if no longer able to meet his gaze.

He didn't even try to hide his disappointment. "Let's not prevaricate, shall we? I think we're a bit beyond that stage."

Rather than reply, Ellie slid off the bed and to her feet. She s.n.a.t.c.hed up her discarded gown as if she could hide behind the rumpled silk. She would quickly learn there was nowhere to hide. No matter how furious she made him, he would never let her go.

"How did you manage to conceal the truth?" he asked at last. "You seem-seemed-so convincingly human."

"I am human," she insisted, tugging at her laces. "Sort of."

Cain couldn't believe his ears. "You are a vampire!"

"Well, how was I supposed to know?" she burst out, staring up at him beseechingly.

"I don't know," he said sarcastically. "Perchance the fangs and the bloodl.u.s.t might have been clues?"

Ellie backed into the bedside table. "That just started yesterday."

"Yester-" Cain stared at her in disbelief. "How old are you? Truly?"

Her lower lip wobbled. "I don't know."

"You don't know?"

She lifted a shoulder as if this were a mundane detail only a pedant would concern himself with, but her eyes shone as if battling tears. "Mother ... Mother says I was born sometime last century."

"Sometime last ..." Cain gaped at her. "Are you saying Aggie Munro is your birth mother?"

Ellie's chin rose. "I've never said otherwise."

"You've never said anything, confound it!" He tried to reconcile what he thought he knew with what he saw before him. "But if that's true, your father ..."

"Was human." She ran a finger over the marble bust of one of the Breckenridge ancestors. "I would appear to be half-blood."

He rocked backward as if gut-punched. No wonder she'd smelled human, sounded human, acted human. That side of her heritage would always be part of her. As would that of vampire. It was amazing. She was amazing.

"Mixed-blood offspring," Cain breathed, unable to fathom being in the presence of something so rare as to be legendary, yet unable to dispute the truth of it. If the Elders had commanded Aggie's capture for having broken a political betrothal, Cain could scarcely fathom their reaction once they discovered the result of her forbidden liaison with a human.

He hurried forward, reaching out for her in his excitement. "When the Elders find out-"

She moved so quickly, he didn't even have a chance to process the trajectory of the marble bust slamming into his head.

Blackness.

Chapter Twelve.

"Mama!"

Ellie crashed through the guest chamber door and skidded to a stop in front of her mother, who had apparently been standing within arm's reach of the threshold, awaiting her daughter's return. If Mama were nervous now, her panic would double once she learned that a very large, very determined, very angry vampire warrior would be bursting into the room at any moment to carry them off to a Scottish dungeon. He'd gone down when she'd brained him with the marble bust, certainly, but how long could one expect someone like Cain to stay down? Minutes? Seconds? He was most likely already after them-and this time, there would be no getting away.

Ellie grabbed her mother's hand. "We have to go. Now."

Forehead wrinkling, Mama squinted at her as if her daughter had grown horns as well as fangs over the past few hours.

"He's coming," Ellie explained impatiently. "Martainn Macane is-"

But Mama was already on the move, galvanized from the first syllable. "Grab your pelisse. I'll get the jewels."

Nodding, Ellie turned toward her bedchamber. "Our trunk-"

"-will stay here," Mama interrupted. "If Mac Eoin knows, then we have no time."

Well, he definitely knew. The lovemaking had been heavenly-until the end, when it had turned h.e.l.lish. Ellie hated to leave without trying to explain, without telling him that for her, at least, the lovemaking had not been in body alone. She would never surrender her freedom, though he had already stolen her heart. She'd planned to confess, to compromise, to find a solution to everything.... But as soon as he'd spoken the word "Elders," she had known there was no changing Cain's mind. There had been no choice. Just as now, they had no choice but to run.

In the scant seconds it took Ellie to sprint to the wardrobe and shrug on her pelisse, her mother was already at the door, a leather satchel clutched to her breast amid the folds of her cloak.

"Swiftly." Mama led the way through what appeared to be servant corridors. "We cannot call attention to ourselves by ringing for our carriage at this hour."

They arrived at an unmarked door at the far side of the manor, which opened toward the mews. s.h.i.+vering against the wicked night wind, they raced across the lawn to the stables. Once inside, Mama Compelled the sleepy stable hands to fetch their horses as quickly as possible.

When Ellie was younger, she'd thought their well-worn curricle a foolhardy expenditure for a twosome as poor as they. Now that she knew exactly why they ran, she had a new appreciation for the high speeds possible in the small, light chaise, as well as the wisdom behind owning a carriage that did not require liverymen or a driver.

In short order, Ellie and her mother were settled on the perch, the reins in Ellie's capable hands. With a flick of her wrist, they were off.

The wind was bitterly cold and razor sharp against their cheeks as the curricle sped recklessly into the night, but Ellie barely registered the chapping of her cheeks or the chafing of the leather straps wound about her bare hands. She'd forgotten her gloves. She'd lost her marbles. And now that the initial panic had begun to fade, a sharp twist of guilt chilled her flesh far more effectively than the winter wind.

She'd wounded Cain and left.

She hadn't checked his pulse (presuming he had one) or the blood seeping from his temple, or felt along his scalp to see if she'd shattered his skull. She'd simply dropped the red-stained bust where she'd stood and ran.

What if he was dead? What if she'd killed him? Could one even kill a vampire?

He was big and strong and a seasoned warrior, but the mere existence of his clan's death decree meant that none of them were truly immortal. Could a vampire live through a cracked skull? Could he heal without help? Without blood? Without her?

Mama snapped to attention as if she'd been goosed. She grabbed Ellie's leg. "Faster!"

Ellie cracked the whip without question. Seeing the look of pure terror on her mother's face was somehow the most frightening sight of all.

"What is it?" she finally asked, her voice hoa.r.s.e above the dust kicked up by the horses.

"Hoofbeats," Mama whispered, her ashen face even paler than usual. She gripped the edge of the carriage and bent to peer around the side. With a gasp, she flung herself back inside, slamming the back of her head against the rear panel. "It's him."

Ellie was so startled, she nearly dropped the reins. "It is?"

"Halt!" came the familiar voice from just behind the carriage.

Fear at what he might do and foolish, unadulterated joy at Cain's continued well-being collided in Ellie's midsection. She flicked the whip without a conscious decision to spur the horses, as if she were an automaton instructed to do so.

Cain was here. Cain was alive. And lovesick or not, she could not allow her mother to be captured.

She leaned forward, urging the geldings faster and faster. But horses pulling a carriage could never match the speed of a single horse and rider.

Bringing his mount abreast of the carriage, Cain leaped from his saddle to their curricle, landing hard on the squab beside Ellie.

"Good evening."

"Good evening," she echoed automatically, then slammed her elbow into his ribs. "Get out!"

He smiled. "No."

Mother closed her eyes and groaned as if suddenly motion sick.

Ellie's own nerves grew more and more tense as Cain's hulking presence continued to tower beside her without further comment or any attempt to wrest the ribbons from her trembling hands.

When she could stand it no longer, Ellie blurted, "What the devil are you about?"

"I thought it obvious." He arranged himself more comfortably. "I'm coming with you."

She tightened her grip on the reins with one hand and sent the other arm flying protectively across her mother. "We are not going meekly to some archaic punishment."

"I should hope not."

She sent him a ferocious scowl. "Nor shall we succ.u.mb to being imprisoned against our will."

"Very well."

Ellie regarded him uncertainly. "Nor will we return to Scotland, now or ever, until and unless all threats have been revoked."

He lifted a shoulder as if none of those possibilities caused the slightest concern, leaned his head back against the panel, and peacefully closed his eyes. "As you wish."

Just as Ellie found herself utterly and maddeningly at a complete loss for words, Mama pushed away Ellie's protective arm, leaned forward to poke Cain in the leg, and demanded, "What is the meaning of this, Mac Eoin?"

"It means," he responded without opening his eyes, "I'm in love with your daughter."