Dark Magic

“If you don’t mind my saying so, sometimes women just need to cry it out,” Gary ventured.

Sava

Sava

After leaving Gary, Gregori came to her in gentleness, with tenderness. His hands were caressing as he undressed her unresisting body. He made no attempt to arouse her, to persuade her to join with him. Instead he crushed herbs, soothing, healing herbs that carried the scents of their homeland to them. He joined her in the sleeping chamber, burrowing deep into the rich soil, taking her slender body into his arms, pulling her close.

Sava

He knew how to hunt and kill the most vicious and cu

Chapter Fifteen

The storm moved in from the sea in the gathering darkness, blowing fast and furious over the canal and into New Orleans. It was wild and uninhibited, slamming rain into the streets with such force that it pooled inches deep immediately, the city’s massive pumps unable to keep up with the load. Bolts of lightning streaked and sizzled across the sky and danced in the air, displaying the raw magnificence of nature. Thunder cracked loudly, drums filling the sky, breaking free to shake the very foundations of the buildings.

Gregori padded through the house on bare feet, suddenly worried about Sava

Sava

Gregori paused in the open doorway, his eyes molten mercury, watchful and careful. She was staring up at the dancing whips of lightning, uncaring that three inches of water had pooled on the patio, that her long hair was drenched and that the thin shirt she wore clung to her like a second skin. She was so beautiful, she took his breath away. All around her nature was erupting, wild and untamed. In the middle of it all, she sat as if she belonged. The white silk of his shirt, soaked in the rain, was transparent, hugging her high, firm breasts so that she looked like a pagan offering.

She was deep in thought, far away. Gregori touched her mind with his because he needed the contact. She seemed so distant, and he no longer could bear the separation from her. Despite her outward appearance of serenity, her mind was as wild as the storm. She was soaring above the earth, no longer anchored by skin and bone. The fury of the impending gale was in her, turbulent, untamed.

He could find no condemnation in her for his failures, no blame for the sorrow in her. There was only a fierce need to find a way to understand and accept those things she could not change. She felt the shortcomings were her own youth and lack of experience. She was particularly distressed that she had inadvertently placed him in danger because she didn’t have the knowledge to shield her presence from their enemies. Gregori nearly groaned aloud. He didn’t deserve her; he never would.

Sava

He could feel it then, the heat and hunger. The raging storm. It moved through her blood the way it moved through the night sky. It called to something primitive and savage in him. He felt the beast roar, the hunger swamp him. Silver eyes glowed red in the dark night, ferocious, feral, more animal than man.

Gregori would never forget that moment. Not in a century, not in an eternity. The night was theirs. In spite of everything between them, there was nothing that could keep them apart. They belonged together. They needed each other. Hearts and minds, bodies and souls. Trees swayed in the winds; plants nearly bent double under the onslaught. The humidity was high, the air filled with electricity arcing and snapping. Jagged bolts of white heat slammed into the ground, shaking the earth. Lightning hit the side of a building a few blocks away, charring the walls and sending bricks spilling to the sidewalk and street. It exploded a nearby telephone pole into a shower of fiery sparks.

Sava

Gregori went to her because he had to; he had no other choice. Nothing, no obstacle could have prevented him from getting to her side. His arm snaked out and dragged her to him, his mouth meeting hers with the ferocious intensity of the storm. He couldn’t find the words, had no words to give her, only this, his fierce need to show her what she was to him. What she gave to him. Life. Everything.

He wanted her just like that. Wet and wild, with lightning streaking across the sky and scorching their blood. His mouth took hers, feeding voraciously, devouring, claiming her for his own, branding her mouth, her skin with his mark.

Fire raced across her neck as he kissed her, stroked her with his tongue, as his teeth sank deep. The pleasure and pain shook her, reduced her to a wild ecstasy, craving, forever craving more. He took her blood, the sweet, hot fluid filling him as he gorged himself, as he tasted her very essence.

As he fed on her honeyed spice, his hands stripped the edges of the shirt aside so that he could cup the fullness of her breasts, reveling in her body, her softness. So perfect. He could feel what she wanted in her mind—the savage hunger, the need to match the fury of the storm, the need to feel alive in the midst of all the violence surrounding them.

Her need was his. He stroked his tongue across the pinpricks so his mouth could wander down her throat, leaving fire in its wake. He found her breast through the thin, water-soaked transparency of her shirt and suckled wildly, a frantic frenzy of lust and love. His hands found her bare bottom, cupped her buttocks to drag her against his raging body. Need overcame sense; his fangs burst forth, and he pierced the creamy swell of her breast, so that she flowed into him like nectar.