Bullet Page 0,168

me.

Her face was inches from mine, my hand in the back of all that silky hair. Her face was a mixture of fear and need. She’d been so lonely without another black tiger, so lonely. Others had their color, but she had no one. She drew in the scent of us, because we both smelled like home. We were what she had been mourning for more than a thousand years. That was the true strength of the ardeur, that it could see into your mind, your heart, your soul, to the thing you wanted most, and if I could I would give it to you, and it would be exactly what you wanted most. How many people can resist their heart’s desire?

Domino’s arms came around me so that we both held her, and drew her into me for a kiss. She whispered, “Master, help me.” My lips touched hers before I realized she wasn’t talking to me.

Her vampire master shoved his power into me, not like I was a necromancer, or another vampire, but as if I were just another black tiger to call, because that was his beast. Not just tiger, but this tiger. My tiger snarled at him, a huge, black beast, and he laughed at us. That laughter tried to spill out of her mouth and down my throat, but I kissed her. I kissed her because she was soft and fragile in my arms. I kissed her, because Domino was solid at my back, his strong arms folding over us both, so that he gave me not just the strength of his black tiger, but of his white, and the vampire on the other side of this tug-of-war wasn’t ready for that. He faltered, a metaphysical stumble, and my two tigers spilled into her mouth, and down the long, shining curve of power that connected him to the woman in my arms.

I had a moment to see his face, upraised, startled. He was close by; he’d sent her to us like a Trojan horse. No, he hadn’t believed that any of us could be a danger to the tie that bound them. His skin was both dark and pale; he looked as if he’d begun life as someone very dark, but vampires grow pale with age, as if the centuries try to lick them down to bone and blood. His eyes weren’t brown, they were black, his hair short and tightly curled, his lips full and soft. I kissed the woman in my arms, but I thought of him as I did it, and he raised fingers to his own mouth as if he felt that distant kiss.

Her arms traced over me and Domino, her mouth feeding at mine, until small, eager noises fell from her lips and into mine. I pressed her to the floor; she wrapped her legs around my waist, while the kiss grew between us and her bright red lipstick smeared across our faces like blood. Her dress was pushed up around her ass, which was pale and bare. She proved she was wearing nothing under the dress as she ground herself against my body and the extra friction of my dress.

Normally that would have freaked me out, but Jean-Claude was there, and so were Richard, Nathaniel, Damian, and Micah, and they liked girls just fine. They helped calm me, and the black tiger inside me already saw her as beautiful.

I was in more control than I’d ever been of the ardeur. It was a weapon at last. Then two things happened that I hadn’t expected. He drove his power into her so hard and sharp that it tore her mouth from mine, and spasmed her body underneath mine as if he meant to kill her if he could not keep her, but she was his animal to call; the death of one might mean the death of both. Then the power hit my black beast, and I realized he wasn’t trying to kill her, he was trying to tame her, and me, but he’d used pain and sheer force to tame her once before, long ago. I offered something so much better than violence.

I ground my hips against hers, pinned her to the floor underneath me, thrust my beast into her not to harm, but to pleasure. Even then I think I would have kept control, but I wasn’t used to other women. I didn’t understand that some of them were easier to bring than I was. One moment I was