Heartsblood (2 page)

Marco pulled away and looked down at him, one eyebrow quirking up a little in surprise as he grinned and pushed forward, shoving Nicky’s naked ass up against the glass. He ground his hips against Nicky’s and cupped Nicky’s balls with his free hand.

Nicky grinned back at him, knowing that Marco hated submitting to anyone. But this was becoming a new ballgame and one he had no intention of losing. At least he would give Marco a run for his money. He might not be quite as large as Marco yet, but he was getting bigger every day, almost six feet two now, and he’d gained a lot of muscle in the last few months. He let Marco handle his balls and even put a knee between Marco’s thighs to move himself in closer.

Marco’s hand left the back of Nicky’s neck and went up to his head. He grabbed the back of his still-wet hair, yanked back, and they were suddenly looking eye to eye. Marco’s jaw jutted out a little, aggressive and challenging. He was trying to stare Nicky’s wolf down and deep inside him, Nicky’s wolf stirred uneasily. “Bastard.” The alien thought sprang into his mind before he could stop it or wonder why he’d even thought it.

Once, long ago, Nicky had tried to top Marco, who agreed readily enough and then made a mocking game of directing every move, and lending a whole new meaning to topping from the bottom. He’d been condescending and something of an asshole, and though Nicky always enjoyed their games, he’d never forgotten how angry and resentful he’d been that night. This time would be different.

They were playing a game now too, at least at first, but then it gradually became…something far more serious. A need to make Marco submit to him swept over him unexpectedly. A part of him still had the presence of mind to wonder where exactly this urge was coming from. In the almost four years they’d been together, he’d never felt this way before.

Marco’s own aggression was hot as hell, and Nicky responded to it. He moved his hands slowly and seductively down Marco’s chest, seriously aroused, but only pretending to give in. He moaned softly and Marco loosened his hold on his hair, bending to nip at his neck. Nicky moaned once more and then hooked his foot around Marco’s leg while pushing as hard as he could against his chest.

Marco threw out his arms as he fell helplessly backward and his eyes went wide with shock. He hit the floor hard with a
whoosh
of breath and Nicky pounced on top of him, rolling him over on his stomach before he knew what hit him. Grabbing the waistband of his jeans, Nicky dragged Marco’s pants down past his knees and dropped down on the backs of his thighs, pinning him in place. Marco’s hips fought against his captivity, so Nicky put an arm across his lower back to hold him down.

“No you don’t. You’re not going anywhere.”

Bending over his back, he laughed huskily in his ear. The groans Marco had been making were turning into faint little sounds that were suspiciously like whimpers, sounds he’d never heard before from Marco. “Open your legs, baby.”

Marco tried to heave Nicky off him, but Nicky was ready and leaned all his weight against him. He was breathing hard and Nicky couldn’t tell if he was angry or turned on. Probably both. Maybe he was just too far gone to know what he was.

Nicky’s cock was harder than it had been in months. He pressed it against Marco’s crease and ground it in. “Open up for me, baby.” He laughed against his ear again. “Take it like a man.”

The whimpers had turned to low growls, and Nicky returned them, biting the back of Marco’s neck hard for good measure. Marco kept his face turned stubbornly down toward the floor, his muscles trembling with the effort to get up. Nicky couldn’t remember the last time he’d wanted Marco so badly. He wanted to ram his cock up Marco’s ass and own him. Marco heaved upward again, but not as strongly as the last time. His breath was coming in short gasps and his hands were clenched in fists on the floor. He eased his legs open a couple of inches, though, just enough to give Nicky what he wanted.

Still holding him down, Nicky spit in his hand and rubbed it across Marco’s tight, hot hole. He’d need more lube than this, but this was about staking his claim and showing Marco how the terms of their relationship had shifted. He shoved the tip of his cock inside and Marco arched up, groaning at the pain. Nicky gave him a moment to adjust and then he pushed inside a little farther, making him take it, forcing his muscles to accept and adapt.

“We’re doing this, do you understand?” Nicky growled softly in Marco’s ear. He ignored him until Nicky gave him a sharp nudge with his cock, forcing his way in another inch. “I said, do you understand?”

At first Nicky thought he wouldn’t reply, or that he’d jump to his feet and tell him to go to hell, but finally he gave a short, sharp nod and drew in a ragged breath. Relenting, Nicky kissed the side of his face.

“Okay. So I’m going to get some lube so I won’t hurt you. Don’t move while I’m gone. You hear me?”

After another barely perceptible nod, Nicky pulled out and got to his feet. They kept lube in practically every room of the house, so he didn’t have to travel far. His hands trembling, he found what he needed in the drawer of an end table and turned around. Marco hadn’t moved. His hands were still clenched into fists and his body was tense and flushed a dark red, but so far he was accepting this, and Nicky could hardly believe it. He must be as turned on as Nicky.

Nicky pulled Marco’s jeans off his ankles with a quick motion and fell back between his legs, shoving Marco’s thighs farther apart and bending over to nip him on the tender skin between his ass and his thigh. Nicky splashed lube down Marco’s crease and spread it on his hole as he squirmed and tried to haul himself forward to get away. Nicky pulled him back, his lube-covered hands digging into Marco’s hips like talons. “No, you don’t. Stay with me, and I’ll make it good for you. I promise.”

Marco looked back over his shoulder at Nicky for the first time, his eyes stormy and filled with lust, before those thick dark eyelashes closed over his eyes, and he nodded and turned away. He gave another sigh and Nicky reached beneath him to close his hand around Marco’s dick at the same time he pushed the wet tip of his cock in from behind. Marco gasped as Nicky held his heavy cock in his hand and raised a knee to give him more room.

Marco thrust into Nicky’s hand as Nicky pushed into his ass. Marco’s cock softened with the pain and Nicky used slow, intense strokes to get him hard again. He kissed his neck as he pushed inside Marco’s body with the same long strokes. “I’ve dreamed of fucking you like this,” Nicky whispered to him. “Of owning you like you own me.”

Nicky had once, not all that long ago, thought Marco was lost to him like their bloodmatch had been—ripped away by the Hunter’s cruel experimentation with drugs and ghoulish compounds made from the blood of murdered wolves. Nicky tightened his grip on Marco and pushed in again, possessing him, staking a claim that had almost been taken away from him for good.

Now, ironically, and again because of Jeremy Tate, some of what they’d lost had been restored to them, even though Tate had bastardized and corrupted it, injecting Nicky with what the doctor was calling the Bloodlust drug and changing him irrevocably, it seemed. Nicky had survived the injection, but would he survive what came after? No one seemed to know.

Marco shuddered again and reached back with one of his hands to hold Nicky’s hip. He turned the side of his face toward him again and Nicky rewarded him with kisses. “I love you, Marco. And you’re just as much mine as I am yours. Forever. You understand?”

Marco bit his lip and shifted his eyes toward the floor again, but he nodded, arching up again and groaning as Nicky raked his cock over Marco’s prostate.

Marco moved his hips along with Nicky’s and Nicky stroked faster as he felt his orgasm clawing at him, tightening his balls. Marco’s whole body tensed as Nicky drove deeper and faster still. Nicky knew he was close, so he rubbed his cock hard again over Marco’s prostate and felt him shudder as his orgasm claimed him. Nicky followed, coming so hard he couldn’t even make a sound. He strained against Marco, burying himself inside him, and he might even have lost consciousness for a split second or two as the stars exploded behind his eyes and rained down around them.

Afterward, he collapsed on top of Marco, loving the feel of that hard body against his. He didn’t yet have the knot that Jax, the only other mate who knew anything at all about the Bloodlust, had told him would eventually come, but he found himself longing for it suddenly, wanting to fill Marco up, tie up with him and hold him there for hours, fucking him over and over again.

Finally catching his breath, he rolled off Marco and lay beside him on the floor, his heart still pounding in his chest. Marco turned over too and lay on his back staring up at the ceiling. He turned his head to look over at Nicky, his eyes dark with some emotion. Nicky reached for him, but Marco sat up quickly, flinching away. He glanced back over his shoulder at Nicky, his face angry and confused, glaring down at him.

“What the
fuck
was that supposed to be?” he said bitterly. Nicky’s mouth fell open in shock but before he could answer, Marco surged to his feet, grabbed his clothes off the floor and stomped into the bathroom, his muscular back stiff with fury.

* * * *

Centuries ago, the Romans built a fort on a rocky hill near the base of the Pyrenees in what is now France. By the twelfth century, the Château de Foix occupied the same space and overlooked the small village below. The castle housed various noblemen over the centuries, and at one time the first of the great Hunters, a nobleman named Gaston Phoebus. Considered to be the greatest huntsmen of his day—he actually died of a stroke while washing his hands in a stream after a bear hunt—he wrote a book about hunting different animals, as well as describing animal behavior. But bears weren’t the only animal Gaston hunted. And they were far from the worst.

The village of Foix was attacked time and again by the vicious mountain timber wolves, great slavering beasts who came down from the mountains and killed the peasants indiscriminately and who were said not really to be wolves at all. Late at night, when the townspeople huddled around their hearth fires, trying to hold back the darkness, they whispered that the wolves were actually Werewolves—terrible, fierce creatures who could be men and women by day and then change into wolves when the moon was full so they could feast on human flesh.

The great Hunter Gaston fought a valiant fight against these wolves, but when the attacks became too frequent and the losses too great, he was forced to employ a necromancer to help him in his fight against the creatures. The necromancer, called Yvain Benauges, went out with the Hunters and observed the wolves carefully. He noted the leadership of an alpha pair, a strong, beautiful male and female, who were both bloodthirsty and deadly. He directed Gaston’s Hunters to direct all their efforts to tracking and killing the alpha male, whose body turned into a pale, handsome man, his features strong and stark in death. Yvain drained the werewolf’s heart of all its blood. With the blood and his unholy secrets, the necromancer made a magical elixir he called the Bloodlust.

He told the Hunters the compound would make the wolves more vulnerable to attack, but he lied to them. He had other uses for the blood. He drank the elixir himself and turned into one of the werewolves. Since he had taken on the characteristics of the alpha male whose heartsblood he drank, he found and mated the alpha female, knowing that the compound would make the alpha female fall in love with him. The necromancer and his mate then led their pack and ravaged the countryside for the next hundred years, despite the rage of Gaston and his descendants at the necromancer’s treachery and betrayal.

The new alpha pair was even more terrible than the one that came before. A reign of terror prevailed over the next century that decimated the population of Foix and the surrounding towns and increased the popularity of the Hunters, as they were the only ones who tried to stand against them.

Finally, the Hunters were able to trap and then kill the alpha female, and they found to their joy that her death also destroyed Yvain, the necromancer, who was unable to live long without her. The remaining wolves in the pack fled, arriving eventually in America, along with the many descendants of the alpha pair. With them, they carried the Bloodlust in their own blood. The d’Alisandes were among these descendants.

Cade d’Alisande put a finger on the page of the old book he’d been reading aloud and looked up at Marco. “That’s all the book says about it. This necromancer took something he called the
heartsblood
of the alpha and added his magical compound, but it doesn’t say what the compound was or give any clues as to how to make it.”

“Damn it,” Marco said, standing up to pace around Cade’s office, wincing a little. Two hours had passed since his sexual encounter with Nicky, and Marco was still sore. It had been a long time since he’d bottomed for anyone, especially someone as strong and determined as Nicky had been. He actually wasn’t sure how he felt about the whole thing. It wasn’t the forced seduction—he’d been about to do the same thing himself, really, and he could have stopped Nicky if he’d wanted to. Nicky gave him his chance to simply get up and walk away.

He and Nicky both liked it a little rough—they always had, though he usually played the role of aggressor. But something about what happened between them that morning was different. There had been moments when Nicky had seemed almost like a stranger.

“I was hoping it would give us some clue as to what was in that hypodermic needle that Tate used on Nicky in the attack,” Marco said. “Aren’t there any more books that mention it?”

“My father’s still looking, but this is all he’s found so far.” Cade frowned at Marco. “What about Nicky? Is he any better?”

Marco shook his head. “No, not really.” Marco ran a hand over his face. “I don’t know. He’s not shifting anymore, but now I think he’s afraid to and he’s holding his wolf inside as he becomes stronger. Forcing him down. I’m worried about him, Cade. This thing is affecting his personality. He’s quieter now and moodier. More irritable. He’s lost interest in things he used to love, like his art, and he stays to himself a lot. It’s changing him physically too.”