A Very Alpha Christmas Read online

  It was his waistcoat.

  “Either I earned that just now,” I said. “Or you did. I’m not really clear about that anymore.”

  I pushed myself up into a seated position. The terrycloth of the bathrobe was suddenly irritating on my flushed skin, and I shrugged it off. Then, with a mischievous grin at Dorian, I slipped the waistcoat on, letting hang open. “How do I look?” I asked, standing.

  He raised his eyebrows. “I think I like you better naked.”

  “What about what I like?” I shot back.

  He treated me to a slow, lazy smile. “Don’t worry, Cora. You’ll like whatever I do.”

  6

  That hit a little too close to home. I had no easy retort for that, not after what had passed between us before. The last orgasm had been what I would have called mind-blowing before. Before he’d shown me what the bond could do. Now I knew that there was more. Always, there would be more than anything we’d shared. But I’d known that from the beginning, hadn’t I? It was what I’d felt in the dance between the moth and the flame. I now had a more definite sense of what it was that I wasn’t feeling—at least to a point, a point that was, for that one time, safe.

  Would that make it easier to pull myself back from the edge later? Or would knowing make it all the more tempting, like the first hit of some addictive drug?

  I didn’t know. I was afraid to know. So to cover all that, I just said, “Speaking of wearing too many clothes, I still have your shirt, pants, and underwear left.”

  “And my belt,” Dorian added. “That’s twice now that you’ve skipped over it.”

  “I’m trying not to think of that,” I said.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “After tonight, you’ll never forget.”

  He turned away from me, and I took the brief reprieve to sit again—on one of the high-backed chairs, this time, not the chaise—and I hugged myself.

  Always, there would be this dance, this game with him. Always, the edge of danger. I never knew quite where I was, and if I ever did actually find out, I was afraid that I wouldn’t want to know.

  “Would you care for some more champagne?” Dorian asked from the cabinet where he had left it with the ice bucket.

  “We don’t have any glasses anymore, remember?” I said. “Unless you want to get the ones from the deck.”

  He shrugged and lifted his hand. It had a wine glass in it already, and I hazily remembered that he’d pressed it to my lips after he’d…done the thing…with the bond. Where had he gotten that from?

  “Don’t think that I’m so unprepared,” he said.

  He opened a little door on the brushed steel cabinet, and I realized that it was actually a kind of mini bar.

  “You really do like your booze,” I observed as he plucked out another glass from the array there and set it beside the one from his hand on the cabinet top. It wasn’t quite as narrow as the champagne flutes had been, but it would hold the wine well enough.

  “Habit,” he replied. “After a few millennia in which no celebration nor even private dinner was complete without alcohol, one becomes used to its presence.”

  “Hmm,” I said. I didn’t want to talk about Dorian’s past. Not tonight.

  “But we have cause enough for celebration tonight, don’t we?” he continued, swiftly switching gears as he crossed the room with a wine glass in each hand.

  It took a moment for me to follow.

  “Our wedding,” I said. It was still incredible to me that it was happening—incredible that I was here with him, incredible that he had proposed, and most incredible of all that I had accepted.

  All I had wanted for the last two weeks was to escape Dorian and his impossible demands. Or at least, that was what I’d told myself. But when the moment came and everything that I had with him was about to be wrenched away, I fought like I’d never fought for anything in my life…to keep him.

  Even if keeping him meant losing myself.

  Dorian snagged the ottoman with his foot and pulled it up so that it was directly across from my chair, his knees when he sat straddling mine. He leaned forward and pressed one of the wine glasses against my lips, as he had when I was in the hot tub. I closed my hands over his, and I drank slowly, my gaze captive in his.

  He lifted it away and then freed his hand, leaving me holding the glass as he raised his own. I watched the beautiful length of his neck tip back as he swallowed.

  “You should never wear a tie,” I said. “It’s a sin against the natural order of things.”

  A corner of his lip quirked upward. “And why is that?”

  “Because it hides this.” I reached out and traced two fingers down the line of his powerful throat, stopping at the button just below his collar, which was still fastened tight. “This should never be hidden.”

  “And what if I wanted you to go about like a bare-breasted Valkyrie?” he returned.

  “Valkyrie,” I said. “Aren’t those the singing women in horned helmets? I don’t think they’re bare-breasted. And anyhow, it’s not the same.”

  He chuckled, and I felt the rumble of it against my fingertips. “Close enough.”

  I leaned forward and kissed his lips gently to silence them. “Close doesn’t cut it,” I whispered against his mouth. I’d forgotten exactly what it was we were talking about, but I didn’t really care. I lowered my kisses to that delicious throat, moving down as I twisted the top button loose with my fingertips.

  He put his hand over mine. “You haven’t earned that yet.”

  “What do you think that I’m doing now?” I murmured, tugging my hand free and moving to the next one.

  He dropped his hand, allowing me to continue. As I got lower, I giggled at my increasingly contorted position—and my difficulty in keeping my champagne level in one hand as I worked. By the time I’d reached his belt, I’d had to wriggle my knees over one of his so that I could bend down so far. He stopped my fingers at the buckle.

  “No, you’re not earning that now,” he said.

  “I could, you know.” I tried to waggle my eyebrows suggestively.

  From the amusement on his face, my attempt had not been successful. I supposed that my hunched-over position probably wasn’t the sexiest, either. “In a moment. You still don’t have the shirt.”

  I straightened as I tugged his shirttails out of his waistband, working on the very last buttons. “I will soon.”

  “And that’s all you expect to do for it?” he asked. “A few kisses?”

  “Well, I could do more,” I suggested, hooking one leg across his lap to straddle him. “But you won’t let me have your belt.”

  I lifted my wine glass to my lips, took a sip, and tilted it toward his. He looked at me for a long moment, his blue eyes as cold and clear as a winter sky, before he took the last swallow.

  “Are you trying to get me drunk, Cora Shaw?” he asked lightly when I pulled it away.

  I snorted. “I don’t think I could.”

  “It would take a lot more than a bottle of wine,” he admitted.

  “Maybe,” I said, reaching down to set the empty glass under the edge of the ottoman, “I’m just trying to get you to stop talking.”

  I straightened and kissed him, my hands in his hair as I tasted the champagne on his lips, his tongue. The feeling of his skin against mine where the waistcoat hung open was delicious, and I worked his shirt off his shoulders as I tasted his skin all over, all the parts that had been denied to me by the layers of cloth that had separated him from me. Finally, I could feel against my lips the tautness of his skin as his muscles moved under it, the inhuman strength of his impossibly perfect body, the heady taste of his cool skin.

  I tugged the shirt all the way off one arm, and I captured his wine glass and emptied the last of the champagne in a single swallow before pulling the other sleeve free. I dropped the shirt triumphantly to the side—and winced at the distinct sound as it caught at the wine glass I hadn’t pushed far enough under the ottoman and knocked it over.


  I scrambled off Dorian’s lap. “Maybe I should put these up, to be safe.” I took the wine glass from the floor and the one in my hand quickly over to the brushed steel cabinet and set them on top.

  “All safe now,” I said, and I turned—and froze, because Dorian had gotten up, too, and now he stood between me and the fire with his belt in one hand.

  I cleared my throat. Or at least I tried to, but my mouth was suddenly too dry. He walked toward me. No, stalked toward me slowly, and I felt more naked in his waistcoat than I had in the hot tub when I had been wearing nothing at all.

  He stopped only a breath away from my body. But I was the one who reached out to close that distance, skimming my fingers along one perfect, aristocratic cheekbone and down to his hard jaw.

  “You are always afraid,” he said softly, his free hand coming up to cover mine.

  “I am,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. We should both fear the day that yours is gone.” He pushed the waistcoat from my shoulders, and it fell onto the floor behind me as he gathered me into his arms.

  I was ready for his kiss. More than that: I was made for it. His arms around me, his lips on mine, his mouth demanding—and mine obeying. What else could I possibly do? He was my Dorian, my vampire, and I had become his twice, first by blood and then by choice.

  He scooped me into his arms again, and my naked flesh rejoiced to be against his. This time, he mounted the steps of the platform, where the bed overlooked the ocean, and he set me on the duvet, the down of the bedding ballooning out around me.

  It was here that the message had been left—for me or for him or for both of us; I didn’t know which, but I tensed slightly at the reminder of it.

  “I’ll keep you safe, Cora,” Dorian swore. “That’s why you’re here while my allies deal with those behind the attack on you.”

  “You can’t promise that,” I said. “Not forever. Every cognate dies someday.”

  “And so does every agnate,” he said. “But for us—it won’t be soon. I’ll make sure of that.”

  I nodded. I had no reason to believe him. There was so much that was outside the control of even Dorian, and he had enemies every bit as powerful as he was and with far fewer scruples. No matter how hard he tried, he might not be able to win against the forces that opposed us both.

  But I did believe him. I had to because I couldn’t go on if I believed we were doomed. And if anyone could face impossible odds and win, it would be Dorian.

  He sat on the edge of the bed, taking one of my hands in his—and then the other, and before I realized what he intended, he was slipping the belt over them and pulling it tight. It had no belt holes. Instead, it was held in place by the pressure of the buckle against the leather, and he locked it down around my wrists and kissed my fingers in turn.

  “I want you to feel, not touch,” he said, sliding the length of his body next to mine. “I want you to watch. I want you to see everything I do to you. You want the end of this?”

  I nodded, biting my lip.

  “Then don’t close your eyes,” he said.

  I didn’t answer. I didn’t have to because his mouth met mine then, sending the burning heat of my awareness of him through my body. As he’d ordered, I didn’t close my eyes. Not this time. And he didn’t push my hands away when they reached for his waistband, despite the fact that they were bound together. He granted me that—but then he caught both my wrists in his hand and held them pinned together even as he slid his pants over his hips and off with his free hand.

  “You said it was the end.” I whispered the word against his skin as his mouth moved to the corner of my lips.

  “It will be,” he promised.

  “I hope it’s worth it.”

  I’d meant the words to be a tease, a joke, but my voice broke on the last two words. They carried far more meaning than I’d ever intended. In those words was everything that had happened between us and everything that might happen—to me, to him, to both of us…and to the entire world because of the changes that he was making to it. I knew that as yet I only had the dimmest understanding of the implications of his research, but even I knew that the results would be revolutionary no matter what…and possibly catastrophic.

  Dorian pulled back far enough to meet my gaze, the brittle blue of his eyes like a distant star. “It already is.”

  This time I kissed him, my legs twining around his body as I tasted the sweet traces of champagne on his lips, the slightly salty coolness of his skin. I needed him like I could never need anything else. My body was his completely. And so, I feared, was my soul.

  He was still holding my hands, so I explored his body with my mouth instead. The strength of his neck, the muscles that bunched beneath his collarbone, the perfectly symmetrical contours of muscle beneath his flawless skin.

  “Cora,” he said. Nothing but my name, but the sound of it thrilled through me, right down into the building heat in my center.

  Dorian. My Dorian, now and forever. Whatever the future might hold.

  I answered him with my mouth—but not with my voice. Kissing, sucking, tasting, as if I could take the essence of him inside of me.

  He was very still even though his breath came fast—until he let out a kind of groan and flipped me onto my back and rolled over on top of me in a single movement, supporting his weight on one elbow and on his knees between my legs. My arms were above my head, held there by one of his hands, raising my breasts higher to his gaze that swept across my body. I could feel the heat of it in my blood, my bones.

  “You know now what I can do to you,” he said. “How deep our bond runs. What you don’t know—what you never can understand—is how much more you do to me.”

  He’d peeled his boxer briefs off as he spoke and tossed them to the side, and with the last word, he slid up my body and buried himself inside of me, inside of the swollen, aching void that had been yearning for him.

  Home. That word came to me out of nowhere, as a shock. All this time, I’d been fighting him and his vision for my life because of my desire for home, for the white picket fence life that I’d always imagined would be mine.

  But now, suddenly, with him inside of me, I realized that this was where I belonged. Where he belonged. His home was inside of me—and whenever I was with him, I was home.

  “Oh, God, Dorian—” I managed as he started to move. But then all my thoughts were dashed away by the wave of sensation that came over me, and all that was left was him. Over me. Inside of me. Around me. It wasn’t the terrifying blaze that pushed my body to the edge of the abyss, though the undercurrent of darkness was always there with him. It was, however, every bit as complete. As complete as our bond—and my love for him, however slow I’d been to accept it.

  My body clenched around his heavy thickness as he thrust home, my hands in their bonds curling into fists as I tried to grasp at what was coursing through my body. And all the time, I watched him. I watched his face, the lines of strain making it only the more beautiful. I watched his eyes, burning and piercing straight into my heart.

  Which belonged utterly to him.

  My skin was on fire, the duvet cover chafing against it, everything unbearable except for his touch, his skin. My climax built slowly this time, tiny tremors in rhythm with his body, each one stronger than the next until my orgasm and those burning eyes were the only things left in the world. I heard my voice cry out, but it was carried away in the deafening rush of the blood in my ears. I couldn’t think or even breathe. All I could do was be, in the moment of my ecstasy, with him.

  Then, finally, when I thought I could bear it no longer—when I thought I’d been past bearing it for eternity, it seemed—he came. He came with me, my vampire who loved only me, who lived for me now as I lived for him, shudders overtaking his frame until he slowed.

  And stopped.

  The world was still, the silence of the stateroom complete as he lay there, his skin against mine. My heartbeat and our mingled breaths raspe
d in my ears. Only then, finally, did I close my eyes to savor the moment that I knew must end.

  I’d won whatever game it was that we’d been playing. Whatever that meant now. Whatever it could mean. And the prize was…him. Completely and utterly with me. Forever. It was a prize, I realized, that I’d had all along.

  7

  After far too short of a time, Dorian gave a sigh and rolled to the side, and I opened my eyes again, wiping my hands across my cheeks to dash away the tears that had trickled down onto them.

  “I don’t know why I do that,” I said. My voice was hoarse.

  Dorian gave me one of his lopsided smiles, his eyes shadowed with thoughts I couldn’t even guess at. “I do,” he said, and he caught my bound hands and slipped the belt loose, sliding it off, before kissing away the dampness on my cheeks.

  It was my turn to sigh, and I leaned against his body. “I love you, you know.”

  Those words seemed insufficient to describe what was between us. I might say, I love ice cream. How could I possibly use the same words for what I felt for Dorian?

  “I do,” he said. His arms settled around me, and he squeezed me against his body. In the silence was his reply, everything inexpressible that I meant to him in return.

  There was a confession I had to make. I’d known it since I spoke those fatal words to Dorian in the wake of the attack upon me, accepting his proposal of marriage. It had lain at the edges of my consciousness ever since, the guilt of it eating at my mind. Though I knew it changed nothing—it could change nothing, not with what was between us now. Still. As long as the bond endured.

  “I have to tell you something.” I forced myself to speak the words, dropping them into the silence like pebbles breaking the glassy stillness of a pond. That was as far as I got, though, a knot forming in my throat, choking me, giving me no room to say what needed to be said.

  “Yes?” Dorian prompted finally when I didn’t continue.

  I had to tell him. And I had to look at him when I did. I raised my chin and met his eyes. “I almost broke the bond. Cosimo told me how, told me that if I broke it, it would never come back. And I went on a date with Geoff, the guy who attacked me. I thought I might break it then. Give you up. Be free of you and all that you wanted from me. That’s why Cosimo chose him, out of all the people in the world, to send after me.”