Dawn of Eve Read online

  He smirked.

  “We’re probably going to die in here.” I anchored my hands on my hips. “I don’t want to die a virgin.”

  I sounded crazy. Was this what idleness did to people? Was I losing my mind?

  “You won’t.” He folded his hands behind his back, watching me intently.

  “Won’t what? Die in here? Or die a virgin?”

  “Neither.”

  Same song we’d danced to for days. I turned away and glowered at the steel door. Over the past week, I’d resorted to a screaming tantrum of colorful insults every time it opened. I was ready to unleash some more vulgar yet ever-so-heartfelt words for our captors.

  “When is your next monthly cycle?” he asked at my back.

  Holy shit. “Pregnancy?” I whirled on him. “That’s what you’re worried about?”

  “Answer the question.”

  “I don’t know.” I pushed a hand through my hair. “I’m not regular, but it’s usually every two to three months. I probably have a month before my next one.” Fucking hell, would I still be in here then? “Why?”

  “Two reasons. One, you’ll bleed and the scent…” His eyes flashed. “I won’t be able to control myself. Two—”

  “Wait. Back up. What happens when you lose control? Be specific.”

  “If you’re bleeding between your legs?” He stepped toward me, his gaze lowering to my suddenly-too-short shorts. “I’ll start there. Licking. Sucking. Biting.”

  I stumbled back, my mouth gaping.

  “Then I’ll suck on one of those plump veins in your delicate neck.” He took another step, and his fangs jutted between his teeth. “I won’t drain you, not even close. But I’ll most definitely fuck you until you can’t walk.”

  A gulp hung in my throat. “And the downside?”

  “The second reason for my question about your cycle. I’ve never fathered a child. I don’t even know if I’m fertile.” He backed me against the wall and skimmed his hands around my waist to grip my butt. “How do you feel about giving them a child?” He nodded at the door.

  Images flashed through my mind of a redheaded toddler with fangs, wearing a collar and crawling on a leash.

  I shuddered. “Ten days ago, you were all… How did you phrase it? I’ll pull down your pants right now and fuck you.”

  “Ten days ago, I didn’t know you, didn’t give a shit what happened to you after I got off inside your tight body.”

  Ouch. Well, that was honest. And not all that different from my feelings about him when we first met.

  “My fathers are infertile,” I said. “Jesse wasn’t—obviously—until Michio bit him.”

  “Maybe I am, too.” He gripped the back of my knee, hiked my leg up, and pressed his erection against my core. “Maybe my seed won’t take. Maybe we’ll escape before we find out. The maybes have been a tiresome weight on my mind, but you know what? I want you. I want you so fucking badly, damn the risks. Damn this fucking prison. Damn the whole miserable fucking world, because none of it is as agonizing as being with you without having you.”

  How could he say such disastrous things and make them sound so damn perfect? I was so knocked off balance and tongue-tied he might as well have aimed an arrow at my heart and let it fly.

  “What will it be, Dawn?” He braced a forearm on the wall above my head and touched his lips to my ear. “Is it worth the risk?”

  In the face of human extinction, pregnancy was a reward, not a risk.

  Outside of concrete dungeons, I was pro-reproduction. All the way. I knew some human women resented being thought of as an incubator, and I understood that at a gut level. Sex for the solitary purpose of pleasure was an awesome notion, and most women indulged in that, but there was no birth control. One did not even consider such a crazy concept.

  STDs were the least of humanity’s problems.

  Salem and I could bust out of here, smash the boil-covered faces of our captors, and fuck each other’s brains out in a river of their rotten blood. Sign me up for that scenario. It got me laid. I loved when human women got laid. Because hello? A dying race! To save!

  But pregnancy within these walls? I dropped my head against the concrete. “Fuck.”

  “Is that your answer?”

  “No. Yes.” Idon’tknowIdon’tknow. I needed to gather my wits, which was damn hard with his lips tickling along my shoulder, tongue swirling against the arch of my neck. A delectable shiver tiptoed across my skin. “Make me a promise.”

  His mouth stilled on my throat, and his cock jerked against me. “Anything.”

  “A lot of things can happen in nine months. Promise me one of those things will be our escape.”

  He feathered a hand up my back, released the tie on the bandana, and yanked it from my chest. “I pro—”

  “Don’t just say it.” I batted at his wandering fingers, heart pounding. “Mean it.”

  “I promise you.” His expression darkened. “We’re getting out of here.” He gripped my shorts and shoved them to the floor. “But I’m fucking you first.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The wall at my back chilled my nude body and added little support for my wobbly legs. I clutched Salem’s shoulders as his dark promises deposited a lump in my throat.

  I won’t be gentle.

  I can’t fuck without biting.

  I’ll most definitely fuck you until you can’t walk.

  The lustrous silver of his eyes lured me in like a moonlit tide. My impulsive tendencies didn’t always work in my favor, but I knew in my gut I wouldn’t regret acting on the reckless, unpredictable, blistering desire I felt for him. No matter how scared I was, intuition demanded I give myself to him. Whether it was the glowy-vein thing or our insane attraction to each other, we were connected on a level neither of us could ignore. Call it fate, prophecy, pheromones, whatever. This was happening.

  He stroked a finger down my breastbone, pausing at the curve of my breast. I swore his hand trembled before he dipped lower and traced the jut of my hipbone. And lower still, ghosting knuckles along the inner flesh of my thighs.

  He brushed his lips against my throat, whispered at my ear. “Part your legs.”

  “You part my legs.”

  His fingers shifted, clamped onto my clit, and tweaked it. Hard.

  A hot flush quivered low in my belly. I scooted my feet apart and dropped my hands to the sculpted indentations of his hips. “We’re going to do this standing up?”

  “If that’s what I decide.” He scraped a fang along the juncture of my shoulder and neck.

  “It’s gonna be like that, huh?” A silly comeback, considering we both knew he would be leading me through this.

  “Exactly like that.” He sank his hand between my legs, coaxing me open and exciting my inner muscles.

  I followed the low waistband around his hips to his back, caressing beneath the cotton and savoring the muscled curve of his ass. With every stroke he made through my folds, I grew wetter, more feverish, silently begging him to ease in.

  But there was no easing. His fingers impaled me, pinching delicate tissues and eliciting a foreboding burn.

  I yelped, rose up on tiptoes, and adjusted my grip on his glutes.

  “Fuck, you’re tight.” He dropped his forehead to my shoulder and twisted his hand, sinking deeper inside me. “If you bleed on my dick, I won’t last.”

  I’d thought about that. His fingers had penetrated me countless times, but his shaft would be an invasion of epic proportions.

  Shifting my grip to his biceps, I lowered my gaze to the hand stirring merciless pleasure between my thighs. “Will I…tear during sex?”

  “If your hymen’s still intact.” He slipped his fingers out and swirled upward to circle my clit.

  I gasped, my legs shaking against the onslaught of sensation.

  “I haven’t felt a barrier.” He probed me again, roughly, cruelly, knuckles buried, while his rock-hard chest trapped me against the wall. “As athletic as you are, you probably to
re it long ago.” His smoldering eyes found mine. “You’re soaked. Feel that? Your tiny little pussy sucking on my fingers?”

  Ahhh, his naughty words, his ruthless touch, the hunger in his eyes… I slid out my tongue to lick dry lips, but he beat me to it, sinking wet fingers into my mouth and shocking my taste buds with the tang of my arousal. His fangs lengthened, his breathing quickened, and his grip on my waist dug in.

  When I tightened my lips and sucked, he yanked his hand away, shoved it between us, and pushed the front of his pants down just enough to free his swollen length. With taunting strokes, he rubbed the broad head against my slick flesh. My eyes fluttered shut, my entire body trembling with nervous excitement.

  “Look at me.” His syrupy timbre snapped my eyes open.

  My breath dissolved. It was impossible to not stare at him like he was a sex object. Or a sex god. The translucent embers of his eyes glowed against a flawless complexion. His sexual confidence was palpable, radiating from him in waves of heat. Layers of muscle flexed against me, hard-packed strength carved into a physique made for fucking. He was the kind of man who seduced and ensnared, seized and conquered. Because he could. He could do whatever the hell he wanted. And right now, he wanted me.

  His erection throbbed, hot and hard, against my pussy. He bent his knees for a better angle, working the tip around my slippery opening. This wasn’t the position I’d imagined. I was too short, my legs weak and unsteady. I didn’t know where to put my hands, didn’t know what the hell I was doing. The floor would’ve been ideal. I could barely remain vertical, and he hadn’t even fucked me yet.

  “Salem?” I rested a hand against the taut tendons in his neck. “I don’t think—”

  He crashed his mouth against my lips, grabbing my neck as his tongue rubbed and lashed and owned. Holy hell, he’d been holding back. I felt his urgency in the wild, brutal edge of his kiss and in the frantic jab of his dick against my sensitive flesh. He consumed me with a passion he’d never shown before, his mouth hard and bruising, scorching a trail of fire to my core.

  The wall vanished from my back, and the room spun around me. In the next heartbeat, I lay on the pallet of furs, spread beneath his vibrating body. He kicked off his pants, grasped the backs of my legs, and pushed my knees toward my head, opening me in the most vulnerable way.

  With a ringing roar in my ears, I locked my hands on his shoulders and pressed my back against the floor, welcoming the support. I would’ve sighed with relief if I had any air left in my lungs.

  Lining up his cock, he met my eyes. The only warning he gave me.

  Sharp penetrating pain speared my pussy, and the force and depth in which he thrust stopped my heart. My mouth hung open in a silent shriek, my fingers locked on his shoulders as a blaze of fire devoured my inner walls and raced up my spine.

  Buried to the root with an iron grip on the backs of my thighs, he held still, choked, “Deep breath.”

  Was he talking to me or himself? I was pretty sure my lungs had collapsed beneath the inferno in my body.

  He stared at where we were joined, his fangs indenting his bottom lip as he inhaled.

  I found my breath. “Is there blood?”

  “No.” When his gaze reconnected with mine, his eyes were volcanic, and the muscles in his face twitched with tension. “Do you feel…any changes?”

  Other than the searing fullness stretching my body beyond capacity? I knew what he was asking. Did sex with him unlock another weird ability? His veins remained invisible beneath his skin. I didn’t feel any cravings for blood, didn’t have the sudden urge to tear out his jugular. Nothing was amiss, and the uncomfortable pain slowly began to sink into a warm, languid fever.

  When I shook my head, his focus zoomed in on my throat. Then he kissed a path there, across my cheek, over my jaw, his fangs sharp and menacing as they dragged down my neck. My insides quivered, and my blood sang, surging toward my heart and skyrocketing my pulse.

  He jerked his hips, gliding his length along the raw tissues inside me. Then he kicked into a pounding fast rhythm, releasing my legs to fist my hair and pull painfully at the roots. With my head angled to the side and held immobile between his hands, he pressed his teeth against my jaw, his breath seething with desire.

  He didn’t just fuck me. He burrowed inside me with total engagement of his being, embracing me with every tendon, bone, and molecule in his body. He possessed me physically and emotionally as if I were an extension of himself. I felt stripped of more than just clothes, as though every secret part of me was exposed and at his mercy. The intimacy was beautiful and terrifying, inflaming a desperate need to deepen the trust and hold on to the connection with teeth and nails.

  “You feel unbelievable.” His syllables blended together, smooth and velvety like the lips on my cheek. “Your body was made for me. I can’t get enough.” He hammered faster, harder, his fangs scraping across my jaw, voice breathless. “The grip of your narrow little cunt is driving me fucking insane. I need…I have to…feed.”

  I moaned a garbled yes and stabbed my fingers in his hair, digging against his scalp. He nipped and kissed my jaw, hands clenched around my neck, and in my peripheral vision, his eyes illuminated beneath hooded lids.

  Then his hands slipped over my breasts and wedged under my back. His thrusts sped up, lunging deeper inside me as he stretched his jaw over my throat.

  Scars from a dozen bites tingled on my chest and arms, the remembered pain shooting tension through my neck. I anchored my feet on the floor and forced my fingers to relax in his hair. I felt so fucking fragile and small beneath his powerful body and lethal teeth. But I also felt safe. He won’t hurt me.

  Everything narrowed to the firm lips on my throat, tugging, nibbling, his tongue flicking across delicate skin. Then his breath evaporated, and a sharp piercing burn ripped through my neck. The pain was shocking yet finite as a torrent of longing so hot and intense rushed wetness between my legs.

  A low guttural groan reverberated in his chest, and his hips slowed to a rocking grind. He suckled and swallowed, producing a strange melting sensation in my body. Venomous heat spread through my veins, warming my chest and throbbing my teeth. The drugging sensation was so immensely demanding it smothered me in a haze of hunger. I wanted to come. I needed to bite.

  Perspiration formed on my skin. The room bled red. Sound slipped away, leaving the humming swish of his blood. And the scent of iron, warm and thick. The flavor, bold and rich, on my lips. I tasted his blood? Impossible. But I needed to. I needed to sink my teeth and alleviate this starving ache.

  I bucked my hips and angled my mouth toward his neck. His hand caught my jaw, holding it in a vise as he drew from my vein and fucked me into submission.

  “I need…” My voice sounded distant and reedy, weighted with lust.

  His free hand reached between us and rubbed my clit with expert strokes, momentarily clouding my craving for blood. I shut my eyes, relaxed into the pull of approaching bliss, and when the orgasm hit, I felt it so acutely my back bowed and a scream shattered my vocal chords. I locked my legs around his back and met his furious thrusts, reaching, gripping, and vying for control.

  He yanked his fangs from my neck and threw his head back, following me into madness. My name poured from his bloody lips like a plea, his breaths ragged and muscles stark with tension. Then he collapsed on my chest and buried his face in my neck, his tongue roving over the puncture marks.

  “Best thing I’ve ever experienced.” His mouth moved against my skin, his fingers lazily curling through my hair.

  His neck was so close I could taste his coppery essence. My mind and body refused to ignore it. Fuck, my teeth hurt. Just a bite. A little turnabout was fair play. I angled my head, pressed my teeth against his throat—

  “Fuck!” He jerked back. “What are you—?” His eyes locked on my mouth and widened. “You’re bleeding. You’re—” He pressed a finger on my lip and inched it upward. “Shit!”

  He pulled out of me and fell ba
ck on his ass. Dread sank in my stomach as I tentatively moved my tongue, catching it on a razored point. My hand flew to my mouth, and the rushing roar of my heart filled my ears.

  I scooted until my back hit the wall, putting space between me and the intoxicating scent of his blood.

  He pulled on his pants, watching me cautiously. “Do you feel stronger, faster?”

  “I don’t know. I’m…” Stunned. I touched my canines, probed at the sharp tips, and held my hand in front of me.

  Blood. That was what I’d tasted. I’d fucking bitten myself, and now that my senses weren’t overloaded with sex and bloodlust, I felt the twin indentations against my lip when I closed my mouth.

  “How?” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and stared at me with wary astonishment. “Was it…did it happen when we started fucking or when I bit you?”

  I replayed the past few minutes in my head and remembered the moment I tasted blood. “When you bit me.”

  We stared at each other, the silence thickening until he broke it. “What are you thinking?”

  “You told me your bite wouldn’t turn me.”

  “This wasn’t me, Dawn.” His voice deepened, clipping with anger. “I’ve bitten countless human women and they’ve—”

  “Stop.”

  “—never grown fangs!”

  Furious desperation blazed in his glare. I swallowed the bait, internalized it, and decided I believed him.

  “I’ve waited my whole life for some kind of genetic alteration to happen, but not fangs. I would’ve never imagined…” I waved a shaky hand at my mouth. “How the hell does this save humanity?”

  His jaw tensed. “Maybe your bite alters hybrids.”

  “Like a cure.” I pulled the pelt of furs over my nudity, shivering against the cold and the racing direction of my thoughts.

  How could my fangs cure the hybrid infection? It wasn’t like I could bite the entire population. But maybe I only needed to bite a few, and it would spread?

  He rubbed his neck, and a tenebrous storm swept across his expression. “I don’t like this.”