a vampire or two in my day, but he'd described my eyes with power in them. It had only happened a time or two, but it was my power and tonight I needed it. Tonight it didn't frighten me. He stared, mesmerized, into the dark diamonds of my eyes as his body went in and out of mine, and my hips rose and fell with his movements. His rhythm became more frantic, and I ground my hips into him, helped him fuck me as hard and deep as he could. It felt so good, so good, so good.
I breathed his name over and over, as that warm pleasure built deep in my body. "Nicky, Nicky, Nicky, Nicky, Nicky." One last thrust and he spilled me over the edge, bowed my spine, and made me scream my orgasm to the sky. But my pleasure didn't let me feed; it was only as his body released inside mine that the ardeur fed. And then that was when I truly fucked him. I fucked him in every sense of the word. I fucked him until he brought me screaming again and his body shoved itself one last deep thrust, and the ardeur did what it did best, brought him again, made him mine as he cried out my name.
I felt his power, his beast, his essence, his everything offered up in that moment, and the darkest of thoughts came to me. That I could take all he had and leave him dead underneath me in one massive feeding. I fought the urge, because killing him wouldn't help me save the others. Then a thought, not so dark, came-that he could be ours. Ours not just for this moment but for as long as we wanted to keep him. The ardeur had accidentally bound men to me before, but I'd never done it on purpose, until now.
I'd meant to make him my lion to call, but in that moment the ardeur of the vampire in me understood there was another option, an option that would make him my slave. Animals to call had free will to a point, they had choices. I needed Nicky's choices gone. I needed his choices to truly be mine. I did to Nicky what I'd had vampires do to me when I was just beginning to hunt them. I did to him what I'd seen vampires do to police officers and other executioners. I chose my free will over his. I chose the lives of the men I loved over Nick's freedom. I chose my life over his, and I took him. I took his body, his mind, the heat of his beast, and all the power that gave him. I drank him down through the sweat of his body, the release of him inside me. I drank him down. But there in the dark there was his need. A need to belong, to be held, a need for gentler things than Jacob had ever allowed him. Belle Morte's line deals in sex, love, and power. I was still too new at it to guard myself from the one weakness. We could only control as much as we were willing to be controlled. Only love as much as we were willing to love. Satisfy lust only as much as we were willing to be satisfied. If I had been thinking better, I would have kept to the sex. I knew how to do that now, but I needed him to risk his life for me. I needed him to maybe kill his king, his friend. Men don't do that just for sex, but for love... for love people will do terrible things. I needed Nicky to be willing to do anything I asked, and for that I was willing to damn us both.
When it was done, we got dressed. Nicky said, "Jacob will kill me before he lets me go."
"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," I said.
"I can't love you," he said.
"Do you mean you aren't capable of loving me, or that you can't possibly love me yet?"
"The second one."
I held my hand out to him. "Take my hand, Nicky."
He put his hand out immediately and took mine. "I can't refuse you?"
"I don't think so," I said.
He frowned. "Why doesn't that scare me? It should scare me." He sounded afraid, but he kept my hand in his, rubbing his thumb over my knuckles like an idle gesture of long practice. I doubted he even knew he