Afterlight - Elle Jasper [60]
“The body you saw, behind the alley? His throat and chest were ripped open because a strigoi vampire desires blood directly from the heart. So be afraid of me, Riley,” he said quietly from the darkness. “It will keep us both alive.”
I sat up, breathless, and became so conscious of my heavy breathing and thumping heartbeat that I tried to force both to slow. I’d never been known for my shyness, or the ability to keep quiet, so I drew a few more calming breaths, then spoke. “I don’t scare easy,” I said, and I heard Eli snort—or something. “But why both of us?”
Eli groaned, frustration thick in his voice. “Because if I lose control and something happens to you by my hand, the contract will be broken, and Preacher and his kinsmen will destroy me.” He gave a soft laugh. “And my father will let them.”
“Pretty sick contract,” I said, and when Eli didn’t respond, I decided to keep my mouth shut for the time being. It was already difficult enough to try to fall asleep with him in the room; the current in the air between us snapped like it was alive, and swear to God, despite his strigoi threats, I couldn’t help the perverted thoughts that stormed my brain at the memory of Eli’s hand on my body, his mouth so close to my skin. When he was near me like that? A relentless, seductive, feral desire surged through me, one I couldn’t control, and visions of his hands touching me everywhere invaded my mind. I wanted his mouth and tongue on me; his hardness inside me; the two of us naked and slick with sweat; Eli standing and holding me as my legs wrapped around his waist while he pounded into me against the brick wall of my bedroom; and for a half second I thought I’d die where I sat if I didn’t get it right then. There was something else, too—something deeper, something more intimate than mind-blowing, nasty sex, and it was that one thing that made my brain shift into reverse and seize. I couldn’t even name it, but it scared the holy hell out of me.
In the shadows, I heard Eli’s muffled groan—at least I thought it was a groan. Then another sound broke the darkness, barely there, quiet, but I heard it just the same. It was skin against skin, and the only conclusion I could come to was that Eli had read my dirty thoughts and had decided to take care of business himself instead of putting us both at risk by taking me. I could have been mistaken, but I probably wasn’t, and it totally turned me on. All I could do was lie there in the darkness and think about Eli. My mind filled with vivid images of his hands moving painfully slowly over my bare flesh, his tongue and lips tasting my throat, my breasts, down my abdomen, and settling between my legs in a long, erotic kiss that had me writhing with need. My hand moved without command, and the moment I touched myself, I came. I wasn’t as shocked at myself as I thought I’d be, having done that in the same room with the very subject behind the act. In the shadows, I felt him; I didn’t hear him, but he was everywhere.
It irritated me that sexual thoughts of Eli could push their way to the forefront of my mind even in the midst of the chaos that had become my life. Eventually, I drifted back to sleep, but it was a restless, agitated slumber that I fell rebelliously into.
The breaking dawn fell across me the next morning, and I cracked open my eyes and immediately sought out the corner where Eli had last been. He was no longer there, and I really wasn’t that surprised. Sitting up, I scrubbed my eyes with my knuckles and tried to ignore the feeling of the morning after,