Page 35 of Cursed Lifeline (Eternal Love)

Thirty Four

Talon

Song: Touch Myself | Genitorturers

Salem, Massachusetts

Treats and tricks, I remind myself, as I stare at Celeste across the carriage a few days after our meeting in Felix’s study and think about fucking her to get whatever the hell she’s doing to my cursed soul out of my damn system.

The travel to Ember’s now not-so-secret dwelling place is bound to take a little while longer. Long enough for me to have her skirt pulled up to her chin and her ankles resting on my shoulders as I make her scream out in sweet, agonizing pain, punishing us both for the inescapable way we’re so drawn to one another.

Having to take a carriage to Salem Village when we’re now in the twentieth century wasn’t ideal, but it was necessary, seeing as no car could make the journey through the rural farmland. It could work to my advantage as the ricochet of the wheels against the rough terrain promises to add the perfect amount of bounce as I thrust inside her like I desperately crave.

As if sensing my thoughts, the slayer’s head turns. Our eyes lock in a determined, feverish standoff. She cocks a challenging brow my way, which only makes me fantasize about shoving my cock down her throat until the only face she can make is a startled, tearful expression as she’s forced to take me between her hot lips until I unload down the back of her insubordinate mouth.

“The only fucking I do with the immortals involves running a stake through their heart,” she sighs heavily, crossing her arms over her chest and glancing back out the window of the carriage.

Confused by her outburst, I’m momentarily rendered speechless. The horses' hooves clopping against cobblestone echo through the night as she peers out at the countryside and couldn’t care less for my response.

“Fucking?” I taunt with a mischievous grin. “What tells you I’d even consider fucking a slayer?”

Her eyes flicker back my way and then drop south of my waist. My cock throbs as it painfully hardens for a woman I have no business fantasizing about. Adjusting myself, not to hide her effect on me, but so she can take in the full girth of my goods, I grin, “A petite little thing like you couldn’t take fucking anyways.”

She gives me a condescending, challenging look but doesn’t speak.

“I’ll take a wild guess,” I tease, “Vanilla?”

Her brows pinch, her lips purse, and she waits for me to explain.

“Am I right?”

“Vanilla?” she questions with a sarcastic chuckle.

Silence builds between us as the carriage runs over a rough patch in the road. Her petite frame forcibly bobs back and forth in her seat. Uncrossing her arms, she braces her hands on either side of her tiny figure and tries to maintain her position on the bench across from me. But all I can think about as she bobs back and forth is how beautiful she’d look riding my cock.

Drowning in the thought of staring into her wild eyes as I thrust up inside her sweet, wet pussy from underneath, I absentmindedly start to fist my length.

It’s been a long time since I was inside a woman.

Three. Fucking. Centuries. To be exact.

Since the last time I failed to keep one safe.

If Celeste makes it out of this alive, maybe I’ll have to give her a consolation prize and fuck her like she craves until we’re both seeing stars and satisfied from having scratched whatever itch this is growing stronger between us.

Celeste’s eyes travel to where I’m pleasuring myself. Her cheeks flush. Her eyes widen. Her breasts heave. Drugged, I breathe in the heavenly scent of her arousal and groan, “Lights off. Missionary. While neither of you make a sound.”

Her eyes flash up to meet mine. Annoyance fills her heated stare.

“Let me guess,” I taunt, as I work my thickening shaft, “afterward, you expect to cuddle?”

The carriage hits a large pothole, and Celeste flies off her seat, landing on her knees between my legs. Looking down into her eyes, I have half a mind to grab the back of her head and force myself on her. That is until the vixen opens her mouth and says, “If I remember correctly, I once told you to bite me.”

Fuck, she did, didn’t she? And it was so fucking hot. Almost as hot as the sight of her kneeling between my legs like a cat ready to pounce on its prey.

“Vanilla?” she scoffs with a roll of her eyes. “Please.”

She takes one last look at my hard length, rises, then sits back on her seat and glances out the window. After a moment, she rolls her eyes. “There’s nothing you could show me I haven’t already seen.”

Always up for a challenge, my phantom hands reach under the hem of her skirt as a warm breeze blows through the carriage. Trailing up the inside of her calf towards her inner thigh, I wait for her legs to part before continuing my ascent. My grin grows when Celeste widens her legs and allows my shadows room to play in places my mouth wishes it could taste.

“Nothing?” I smirk. “Are you sure about that?”

Her cheeks flush as she stares out the window, and I trail a ghostly fingertip across her lace-covered slit.

She stifles a moan, then attempts to close her legs. But it’s too late. She’s already allowed me entrance, and so I caress her velvet lips with a whispered touch that has her hips slightly rising. She bites her lip and attempts to hide a desperate moan that has me groaning in matching misery as we continue to deny the way we feel toward each other.

Unbuttoning the top of her blouse, Celeste starts to fan herself as she fidgets in her seat, and my phantom fingertips caress her clit. Licking her lips, she eyes me curiously. Dirty, distressed thoughts hang in her eyes as I rotate my palm around my crown.

“Will you please stop that?” she pants.

Damn, she’s adorable when she’s flustered. But just for her outburst, her denial, my shadowed fingertips press into the lace at her entrance. She purrs as my dark touch is immediately soaked with her unladylike desire.

The improper thoughts running through her mind tell me she’s thought of this before. She imagined my touch and pleasured herself to the thought of me between her legs.

The images running through her mind fuel me.

Slipping her panties to the side, I gently press one shadowed finger inside her soaking, throbbing entrance. She grabs a hold of the window sill. Her tits heave out of her unbuttoned blouse. Fisting my cock harder, my magic slowly presses further inside her. Panting, she opens her mouth to speak, but I cut her off.

“What’s the matter, Celeste? Never watched a man pleasure himself to the thought of you?”

Her eyes grow wide as my ghostly touch slowly rises and I rub her tender bundle of nerves in slow circles.

“Stop…” she heaves.

Though she says the words, her mind tells me she wants this more than me.

“Why?” I grin.

Panting, she throws her head back against the seat and groans as I place another shadowed touch at her opening. Her body responds by opening her legs wider. Fucking her slowly with two ghostly fingers, my name falls in a breathless whisper from her lips and digs its eternal claws into my damned heart.

“Celeste, look at me,” I demand.

To my surprise, her lust-filled eyes fall forward and lock on mine.

My heavy breathing matches hers as I continue to pleasure us both, and I growl, “You don’t want me to stop.”

“Even if I don’t, we can’t…” her voice trails off. She stifles a moan and bites her lip.

Unbuttoning my slacks, I slowly lower my zipper and pull myself free. A light gasp falls from Celeste’s lips before a deep crimson blush adorns her cheeks. Her stare stays locked below my waist as she licks her lips, and I groan, “Fuck, I can’t stop now.”

Looking back up into my eyes, she whispers, “We shouldn’t be doing this.”

“I need to,” I beg as her scent fills the carriage. “You need to, too.”

She eyes me with forlorn understanding.

Maybe if we do this we could both think straight.

It’s worth a shot.

Although, the smell of her nectar as I run my shadowed fingers along her slit and slowly press back inside her pussy tells me I’ll never get enough.

As if sensing the same thing, she tightens her thighs. My touch slows.

I could force this. Constrain her. Coerce her legs apart and take what I need.

I may be a prick from time to time, but I’ll never be one for taking women against their will. Celeste will give me her consent, or I won’t take another thing from her, no matter how much my body craves it.

“Open your legs,” I demand.

“No!”

Visions of forcing her to comply fill my head, tangling with the salacious desires running rampant through her thoughts, and I jack off faster.

My head falls back against the seat; I close my eyes and growl, “Celeste, please.”

A throaty purr falls from her lips forcing my gaze back forward. Breathless, she watches me pleasure myself to obscene thoughts of her. Her body denies what she wants, but her mind screams for me to take her.

“Tell me you don’t want this, and I’ll stop.”

Her eyes lift to mine, and she whispers, “I don’t want this.”

“Liar.”

“Even if I do, it still doesn’t change the fact that…”

“I haven’t needed anyone in three fucking centuries, Celeste.” I hold her gaze as the carriage nears our destination and I approach release. “Three hundred fucking years,” I groan. “Then you come along and fuck,” my hips buck off the seat, and Celeste cries out in ecstasy, anticipating my climax. “I need you to let me have this. Have you. Just once.”

“Why?” she demands angrily as my shadows play with the v between her thighs, caressing and tempting her to open up and let me back in.

“I thought it was obvious,” I laugh. When she doesn’t respond, I snap, “Because then maybe I could fucking think straight.”

She doesn’t speak, only continues to stare me down, and I beg, “Please, let me play.”

My phantom touch caresses just above her clit.

Her jaw sets tight. She shakes her head no.

“I haven’t been with anyone since I lost the woman I loved, Celeste. I haven’t touched anyone since…”

“And what, just because I was the first to come along and make you,” she looks down at my enlarged cock, and seethes, “ feel , you thought I’d just let you fuck with me to get me out of your system?”

“I don’t do feelings ,” I groan as my climax approaches. “Not since then. But I need…”

“Fuck what you need, Talon,” she snaps.

“You need it, too,” I beg one last time. She licks her lips, stares down at me fisting my cock, and lets out a desperate purr, telling me it’s the truth. “Fuck, I know you do. Deny me. Deny the way you feel. Just know, after I get you out of my system and you’re still left wanting, I never denied anything.”

I circle my crown and fist my cock harder, faster, needing to release whatever kind of hold she somehow has on me. And if she’s intent to watch, then I hope she enjoys the damn show.

“Fuck, I’m close,” I groan as the carriage starts to slow.

“Don’t you dare,” Celeste warns. “I won’t have you…”

“Keep running that mouth, kitten. It’ll only make me cum harder.”

Eyes locked on mine in anger, I fist my shirt and pull it from my slacks. Baring my lower stomach, I chase my release as it builds quickly the longer she bitterly stares me in the eyes.

As I crest the edge, Celeste whispers, “Love is messy, Talon.”

Panting, thighs shaking, I manage, “Who said anything about love?”

Her eyes darken. My heart breaks.

“But if a mess is what you want, kitten, fuck, I’ll gladly let you watch as you make a mess of me.”

My cum squirts out in hot waves against my lower stomach as the carriage comes to a halt. Bucking my hips, I release in violent spurts as Celeste holds my gaze. The carriage wobbles slightly as the driver dismounts. The doorknob to the cab starts to turn. Celeste holds onto it tightly and refuses its opening.

Disappointment hangs in her stare.

As my pleasure subsides, she bitterly asks, “Better?”

I want to tell her, “Yes.” I want to tell her, “ Never better.” But as I tuck myself away and do my best to clean up the mess I made, a weight sits heavy on my heart, and I fall silent.

After a moment, Celeste angrily opens the cab. As she readies to step out into the dark of night, hurt hangs in her eyes as she looks at me over her shoulder and says, “Disposable.”

Confused, I button my slacks and continue to settle my breathing as I wait for her to continue.

“That’s how you just made me feel. You’re right, Talon. You don’t do feelings. You throw them away and never consider the emotions of those you’re affecting in the process.”

“Celeste, I …”

The carriage door slams as she refuses to listen to my plea.

But to finish whatever I was about to say next, I’d have to go against everything I just told her. Everything I just did.

I’d have to open up those feelings. Emotions. Demons I’ve kept locked away for three centuries.

Disposable?

No.

Celeste is anything but disposable.

In fact, I sense she’s the vital key I’ve been searching for for close to three centuries.

The key to opening the one thing I’ve never let anyone, not even the woman I loved before, into.

My heart.

Taking a deep, shuddering breath, I put myself back together and ease off my seat. With a tight grip, I open the door, take hold of either side of the carriage door frame, and step out after her.

Lit sconces adorn the rock walls of Ember’s estate. They illuminate the way to hell with their portentous glow. Two guards step from the shadows. Armed with medieval axes, their threatening approach has the bitter anger of the slayer that filled the carriage on our way here slowly diminishing. Her shoulders lightly shake with fear. Stepping up behind her, I yank her right wrist behind her back. She eyes me furiously over her shoulder. Wrenching her left wrist behind her just the same, I stare into her eyes and give her a wicked grin.

“Don’t make me regret this,” she hisses.

Leaning forward, I whisper in her ear, “My hands are coated with our sins.”

For emphasis, I run a slick ghostly touch down her neck as I finish shackling her hands in restraints. Her body trembles as the scent of our transgression melds and forms an intoxicating dependency that grows the longer she stares me down with a heated desire she’s intent on denying.

“Regret?” I chuckle. “Whatever penance we’re about to meet, I’ve made my peace. I have no shame. No regrets. Tell me, slayer, can you say the same?”

The guards come closer. Celeste tries to look away, but my shadows force her chin back in my direction. I hold her provoked gaze with wild, unhinged eyes and draw strength to do what I have to next from the displeased anger violently simmering just behind her hazel irises.

Her breath feathers against my lips as she sharply says, “Fuck this up, and I’ll make you pay for whatever stunt that was that you just pulled in the carriage.”

“Is that a promise?”

“It’s a fucking threat. You don’t believe me? Fuck around and find out.”

“Fuck around with you? With pleasure.”

Pushing her a step forward as the guards come within earshot, Celeste struggles to get out of my hold.

“I brought Ember a present,” I grin, tightening my grip on Celeste’s wrists and pulling a dagger from my hip.

Times may have changed, but weapons never go out of style. Who needs a gun when this dagger is the one thing I’ve always been able to count on to get me out of every impossible danger I’ve encountered in my immortal existence. Reaching around and holding it against Celeste’s throat, I pray its reputation has the same power to deliver us from the perilous course set before us now.

Celeste sucks in a shaky breath as the cold metal grazes her skin.

“Breathe, kitten,” I whisper as I push her a step forward.

“If I do,” she hisses, “All I smell. Is. You.”

She glances at me out of the corner of her eye. Her gaze flashes down to my hand at her throat.

Chuckling I growl, “I taste better than I smell. I bet you do, too. A fact I could’ve confirmed if you just would’ve let me…”

“Ember isn’t entertaining visitors,” one of the guards cuts off my whispered rambling.

He eyes Celeste with disgust.

“Trust me, she’ll want to entertain me.”

“Haven’t been with anyone, huh?” Celeste laughs under her breath, refusing to believe the truth I told her in confidence in the carriage.

I tighten my grip and hold the blade harshly against her delicate skin.

“Watch your mouth, kitten,” I warn. “Or do I need to remind you what happens when you continue to run it?”

Celeste's breathing increases. Blood rushes through her veins, making me lick my lips as my head rests against her neck and I breathe in the perfumed scent of her forbidden liquor.

Sniffing the air, the guard says, “She’s in heat.” Taking a step forward, he gestures to his friend and grins. “We’ll take her off your hands. Deliver her to Ember. You’re free to go.”

Yanking Celeste back a step, a possessive jealousy courses through my veins. “She stays with me,” I demand.

Celeste softens in my arms and leans back into my embrace for protection. The gesture tempts my heart to life. Defending her honor and keeping her safe instantly becomes my number one priority. But even more shocking than the realization of my sudden response is the fact that it doesn’t pain me to admit it—at least not to myself, where I’ll keep these growing feelings, emotions, and hopeful sentiments hidden for eternity.

The guards eye us both bitterly. The one on the right speaks again, “I told you. Ember is not…”

“She’ll want to meet the slayer who knows where Esme is hiding,” I reveal, since it seems there is no other way we will be granted entrance to Ember’s lair.

The guard's eyes grow wide.

“Slayer,” the one on the left asks, astonished.

“Esme?” The one on the right tightens his grip around his axe as the name leaves his lips.

They step forward eagerly. I take another step back, dragging Celeste with me. Her feet trip in the gravel. As she stumbles, the blade against her neck nicks a small cut into her porcelain skin. Blood rises to the surface. A small trickle slips temptingly down her delectable nape.

The guards rush us. Holding my breath, my body shakes with the need to taste as large bat wings erupt from my spine and I fly Celeste up into the air.

A shrill gasp falls from Celeste’s lips as we coast just out of reach.

“I didn’t know you could…”

Shaking my head as it dawns on us what I’ve just done, I growl, “Neither did I.”

Tightening my grip around her waist, we eye the guards below our feet, and I growl, “If I was desperate before, I’m fucking feral now with the need to taste you, kitten.”

My nose brushes against the cut on her throat. Celeste bites her lip and leans her head to the side, allowing me access to do as I please as I eye the guards over her shoulder.

“If you’re going to fuck with my life, might as well do it now,” she snaps. My hands tremble as I hold her tight against my frame, and it takes all my restraint not to take what she’s so eagerly offering as the guards yell for us to come down.

“What’s stopping you, Talon?” Celeste taunts as the angle at which she bends her neck causes more blood to pool out of the small cut just below her jugular vein.

Fuck.

What is stopping me?

I’ve never cared before.

She’s a slayer.

I’m a vampire.

By design, I should want nothing more than to eliminate any threat to my kind.

The trouble is, doing so would leave me in ruin.

With that devastation in mind, I stash my dagger at my hip, tighten my grip around her neck, and growl, “Stop. Fucking. Bleeding.”

Instantly, her wound heals.

She sucks in a sharp breath just as I tighten my hand around her throat and cut off her air supply. “Tempt me like that again, kitten, and I won’t be so kind.”

Easing us back down to the gravel as the scent of her blood is washed away on a conjured breeze, I demand, “Take us to Ember, or I’ll fly her away and send a letter to your mistress telling her we were denied entrance.” They eye me curiously, debating the outcome of my threat. “I doubt she’ll show you mercy when she discovers you turned the key to her happiness away.”

Celeste stiffens in my arms, unsure of my words' meaning. The guards eye me curiously.

“Happiness?” one of the guards questions.

“Felix recently discovered there was more to the curse,” I reveal, remembering what was written on the letter on his desk. “Esme is a living sacrifice. Under the right ritual, her death holds the power to bring Draven back from the dead.”

“Impossible,” the guards say in unison.

I grin.

“Like I said, tell Ember I brought her a present. If that doesn’t work, give her a name I have a feeling she knows well. Evangeline.”