Even The Vampires Get The Blues

want and, yes, love.

'No!' I shouted, arching my back so my breast would receive what it wanted. 'Yes! Do it! Hurry, before I die!'

The moment before he bit the very tip of my nipple was excruciating, not with pain, but with anticipation.

When his teeth nipped my breast, the sharp burst of pain melted almost immediately into something akin to a drug rush as he sucked off the resulting drop of blood, his tongue swirling over the abused flesh like the softest velvet.

It was heaven, it was ecstasy, it was absolutely the most divine feeling I'd ever experienced… until he shifted and his mouth touched my ears at the same time he entered my body. I screamed, my hands digging into his flesh as he filled me with more than steely flesh—he filled the empty spaces inside me with happiness and warmth… and love. It was like a brilliant ray of sunshine piercing a stormy sky.

My fingernails raked down his back as I grabbed his butt, shifting my hips and pulling him deeper. 'I want you inside me!' I cried.

'Sweetheart, if I was any more inside you, I'd be coming out your mouth,' he said, moaning as I wrapped my legs around his hips and thrust up hard as he bit the top of my ear.

'I want you in me. I want all of you in me,' I begged, the world starting to come apart as a familiar rush of rapture built. Unable to stop myself, I bit his shoulder, not a love bite, but one intended to draw blood. As my teeth pierced his skin his back arched in surprise, pulling away from me. I threw my weight onto him, sending him falling over backward onto his back. I knelt for a moment to drink in the sight of him. He was so beautiful, so masculine, but it wasn't the outside of him that I craved—it was his heart and soul and very being that I wanted.

He growled at me, actually growled as I crawled up his body, my breasts brushing the wet length of his penis. 'Sam, I told you, I like to be the one in charge.'

'Fine,' I said, pausing to bite his hip. He gasped in surprise. I smiled as I licked up the drop of blood that welled from his skin. I flicked my tongue over first one nipple, then the other. He held his breath for a moment, clearly wondering if I was going to bite his nipple as he had done mine. I smiled reassuringly at him for a moment, then leaned down and bit an area on his rib cage. 'Order me what to do, then.'

He shivered as I sucked a couple of drops of blood, then without a word pulled his legs up to provide a backrest for me, grabbed my hips, and before I could do so much as utter a gasp of my own, impaled me. 'Love me!' he demanded, pulling me down for a kiss, his hands urging me into a fast rhythm. I bit his tongue.

'Sam!' he snarled, pulling back. I leaned forward and bit his lip.

'I love you, Paen. Now fill me! Fill every inch of me. I want all of you!'

His mind flooded me with the emotions and sensations that racked him, the light from his love almost blinding me. I felt the elation he experienced when I bit him, and without considering the wisdom of my actions, nuzzled aside his hair and bit down on the muscle that joined his neck to his shoulder. He groaned something that sounded like an apology, then pain burst hot in me, on the same spot where I was drinking from him. His orgasm exploded to life, sending wave after wave of intoxicating rapture through both him and me, triggering my own as we each simultaneously gave and received life.

He filled me, completed me, made me whole again… until I came back to earth, and found myself just as hollow, just as empty as I had been before we started.

Paen held me tight while I wept through the long, dark hours of the night.

Chapter 17

'What's first?' Finn asked without any prologue when Paen and I emerged from my bedroom several hours later. 'The statue or the manuscript?'

'Manuscript,' Paen said at the same time I answered, 'Statue.'

The love of my life glared at me. 'We'll find the manuscript first. You need your soul.'

'We'll find the statue first,' I said, ignoring his scowl to pour myself a cup of tea from a lukewarm pot and scrounge a piece of toast from the breakfast remains that Finn and Clare had left scattered over the table. 'My soul is already gone, but your mother's isn't.'

'We still have a day left—' Paen started to say.

I shook my head and interrupted him, speaking around a mouthful of cold toast. 'You said yourself my soul is tucked away somewhere on the Akasha. It's not going anywhere, but Paen, your mother's is in danger. And my darling, you and I both know how horrible it is to live without it. I wouldn't want her to have to go through this hell.'

His frown deepened until it was as dark as his eyes. Begrudgingly—his reluctance to postpone the hunt for my soul something I cherished close to my heart—he agreed. 'But only because it's likely the two things are related, and if we find the statue, we should find if not the Coda itself, information about where it is.'

'That makes sense,' Clare said, pushing around a small mound of scrambled eggs with her fork. I looked at Finn, and was struck for the first time by something that hadn't occurred to me.

'You can eat food? People food, that is, rather than just… people?' I asked.

He grinned. 'I prefer the latter, but yes, I can eat food. Clare insisted I'd fade away to nothing unless I had something other than a liquid breakfast.'

'Oh.' I looked at Paen. 'Can you eat something other than blood, too?'

'If I had to, yes.'

I spread a little grapefruit marmalade on a bit of toast. 'Good. I was worried that since I was a few quarts low, you'd have to go elsewhere to have your breakfast, but if you can eat real food, that's perfect.'

He shook his head. 'Sam, food provides us with no nutrition. Finn and I need blood to survive. I'll just wait until you have fully recovered before I feed.'

You fed off me a few hours ago, I pointed out.

Just a few mouthfuls. His voice was tinged with regret. I'm sorry about that—I didn't intend to take any of your blood until you've recovered from the loss, but you drove me into such a frenzy it was all I could do to keep from taking more than I did.

'I can feel how hungry you are, Paen,' I said, accepting a plate of fresh eggs from Clare. 'I don't particularly like the thought of you snacking off of someone else, but this is a bit of an unusual situation, so you've got my OK to round up some breakfast.'

'No, I can't,' he said, going to the window to carefully look through the blinds.

'I appreciate that you don't want to do the fang sink with anyone else, but I have a feeling we're going to need your strength today. So go on out and find someone to feed from. Just don't enjoy it too much.'

Clare rolled her blue eyes and went to get her coat and purse.

'You don't understand. I can't feed from anyone but you,' Paen said, watching out the window.

I moved over to see what he was looking at. It was raining again, a cold, dark, nasty rain that almost exactly matched the cold, dark, nasty emptiness that resided inside of me. 'You can't? Is this some sort of a Beloved thing?'

'Yes. When I said a Dark One can't survive without his Beloved, I meant it. Once he finds her, human blood taken from anyone but a Beloved is poison. Likewise, the Beloved's blood is unacceptable to any other Moravian.'

'Whoa,' I said, a chill going down my arms. 'So if I had died when Pilar tried to kill me…'

'Paen would have died as well,' Finn said, standing to stretch. 'Which is one more thing I have to thank you for, Sam.'

'I thought you were immortal?' I asked Paen. 'You'd die without me? Really die?'

'Eventually. It isn't a quick or pleasant process, but it is inevitable.'

'Who thought up these rules?' I asked, exasperated. I didn't mind thinking that Paen would mourn me for a long time if I died, but I didn't want to be the cause of his death.

'I hope the answer to that is in the Coda,' he said, dropping the blinds to face the