her breath left her body. His power snatch was so quick and severe that she didn't even have time to gasp.
He smiled and kissed her slowly as he brought her beneath him and extended his onyx-hued wings to blanket them both. "You asked me to be swift and I complied. But I had never considered my giving you pleasure a torturous thing. . . . Should that be swift, too?"
She looked up into his intense black irises that held the depths of all darkness. Unable to helpherself , she touched the side of his face, confused when she witnessed raw passion and appreciation in his eyes-something she'd never seen to this degree in them before.
"You did it," he said quietly, nuzzling her throat and beginning to call her jugular vein to the surface of her skin. "You made him. The males who took the lead throne of evil on my most cherished Vampire Council couldn't produce him, but you, my wife, you did." His voice dropped to a sensual whisper. "My own son, Dante, couldn't even do it, but you did."
Relief washed through her and her body relaxed in his hold, but she didn't say a word for fear of ruining the moment. She allowed him to lead the negotiation for now. Dark energy began to enter her pores, infusing her with a slow, inner-leaking pleasure that caused her to writhe beneath him with a feral moan.
"He is not lost, Lilith," her husband crooned as his hands lavished her body, leaving her so sensation-drunk from his touch that she could barely move. "He homed to my energies. . . . Millennia ago I had been there to challenge the one who we never name, and now, my heir has gone to Mount Temptation and slipped out of his birth skin to find the dark chrysalis of transformation. Forty thousand demon troops as a cannon-fodder diversion . . . what you did up onMasada was epic, Lilith," he said, his breaths becoming ragged. "I will give you what I wanted to give our son, Dante-what he was never demon enough to have earned as a reward."
She arched with a shriek as he entered her and bit her simultaneously in one deft move. It felt as though her heart would explode as temporal colors and scents and sounds from the earth plane erupted inside her. She dug her nails into his shoulders, her talons growing as he sent power into her throbbing vein while he moved against her, causing climatic bursts. When he lifted his head from the infusion, fangs dripping with her black blood, she was barely conscious.
"Give this to your councilmen, and surprise them with the gift. They cannot pass it yet, only my heir will have that right. But you have pleased me, Lilith. . . . This time you have outdone yourself." He kissed her, making her taste her own power-infused blood on his mouth. "Stay with me this morning of your own accord . . . and let me take my time to do this with agonizingly slow precision. Tomorrow, you can share this with them. Is that fair exchange?"
All she could do was nod.
"It's too close to dawn," Sebastian said, looking at his fellow councilmen. His gaze ricocheted between them, the chamber doors, and the goblet of blood he was afraid to touch for fear of being poisoned. "A meeting now, after months of trying to rebuild all the damage . . . what do you think this could mean?"
Fallon Nuit kept his eyes on the huge black marble doors of the Vampire Council Chambers as he spoke in a resigned, philosophical tone. "The caverns murmur that she was called by her husband. After the fledgling from Nod was lost, and given the heavy losses atMasada where the Arc of the Covenant was actually unleashed against us . . . I would say that this is a fond farewell gathering, a prelude to sure assassination." Fallon made a tent with his fingers before his mouth and closed his eyes. "When the Harpies come, do not struggle,mon ami . They will delight in it, and that will be added to your torture terrors. Rest assured, I know."
Yonnie leaned forward and filled a goblet of blood from the pentagram-shaped table, his gaze fixed on the golden-fanged crest that revealed all evil machinations beneath it. He absently took a sip. "Then, why worry, Sebastian. If you're poisoned, that's fucked-up, but a better way to go than the wall."