Sunny: Mona Lisa Craving

“That’s the reason why you wished to rid yourself of the babe,” Amber said in sudden understanding.

“Yes. Even though the child could be yours, I feared how this change in me would affect it.”

“It is not mine, Mona Lisa.”

Amber’s words startled me with their surety. “You sound as if you know this for certain.”

“I do,” Amber said. “Who have you shared your body with since this new life has sparked in you?”

Actually, I had to stop and think about it a moment. To rerun the past few days in my mind. “Just Dante.”

“ Only Dante. Since that first time you lay with him,” Amber said.

“Why do you sound so sure about that?”

“We are the children of the moon. Beings tied close with nature and its rhythms. A Monère woman knows whose seed has taken root in her body. And she will instinctively desire only that man while his child grows in her.”

“Oh.” There was still so much I did not know about who and what I was. But with that explanation, my behavior of the past few days became clearer now. Why I had just slept in Amber’s arms and then Dontaine’s. How I had lain with them without making love with them, without desiring to do so, and why they had not pressed themselves on me. I realized the full significance now of that look in Dante’s eyes when I had taken him into my body that last time of my own free will, of my own instinctive desire. He had known then, for sure. Everyone had known who the father of my child was all this time. Even me, deep inside.

Amber turned to Halcyon. Asked him, “What can we do to protect her?”

“Just be near her” was Halcyon’s answer. “And be willing to donate your blood should she need it. The demon part of her lies dormant until it is triggered by the presence of another demon. Then bloodlust, an almost overwhelming hunger at first, rises up within her. She will be able to control it more as time passes. In the beginning, however, it will be more prudent to simply slake her thirst instead of trying to fight it. A small drink of blood will regain her much of her control.”

“She is in your presence now and has not evidenced the bloodlust you speak of,” Amber observed.

“Because I have linked us mentally, giving her some of my control. I wished to reach the privacy of my quarters before I unleashed it.”

“You can do so now,” Amber said. “I will gladly give her my blood.”

“That is my role,” Dontaine said, stepping up to my side. “She asked us to come with her here so that she can explain this to you and drink from me.” He bent down to me, tilting his neck to the side. And with an abruptness that was like a curtain tearing away, Halcyon’s control was removed.

Need crashed over me in a sudden deluge, and hunger, thirst, flared up inside me. My teeth morphed into sharp, piercing fangs and plunged into the white neck offered up before me. I drank him down mindlessly, reveling in the rich, piquant lifeblood flowing into me, gulping it down greedily at first, then more savoringly. Such bountiful flavor. Such abundant life. The taste was incomparable, and the need it filled beyond description. Dontaine moaned against me, clutching me to him, and I pressed my body against him willingly like a cat rolling sensually in catnip.

Unthinking need receded, and awareness returned. Enough , I thought, and felt the blood slow and thicken beneath my tongue. Reluctantly, I pulled out of that rich vein I had so easily tapped, so easily piercing that soft, tender flesh.

Perhaps it was because I was more familiar with it now that the thought of drinking blood no longer repulsed me. I hadn’t fought it this time, and control and thought had returned more quickly, easily.

I stepped back from Dontaine and looked up at Amber, let him see my fangs, the blood coating them. Another deliberate thought, and I shrank them down, felt them become normal teeth once more.

There was shock in Amber’s eyes, and I reacted without thought to it.

“No, don’t turn away from me,” Amber said, pulling my stiff body back against his much larger one. “It was just the surprise of seeing it. Even after you had told me, it’s not the same as seeing it for the very first time.”

“Let me go, Amber,” I said, my voice low, hard, closed down.

“Never.” His arms tightened around me. “Don’t run away from me.”

“I repulse you.”

“No! It was just…different, new. Forgive me.”

Another pair of arms came around us, glowing with soft light. Dontaine’s blond hair brushed feather-soft across my face as he drew up against me.

“That was wonderful,” he murmured in a thick, dreamy voice, nuzzling behind my ear, positioning his neck a whisper away from my mouth. “Drink from me some more.”

The unfeigned eager press of his body against mine was a soothing balm healing the cracks of my uncertainty. Pulling an unwilling smile from me.

“You sound like a cat that has just lapped down cream, instead of being the one who was drunk down,” I observed.

“What you made me feel was far better than any cream could ever taste.” Dontaine rubbed his face and body against me with a soft, sensuous purr. “Sweet blessed moon. That was almost as good as being inside you.”

“You felt pleasure?” I asked.

“Beyond your imagining.”

“Did it hurt?”

He drew back just enough so I could see his face. “Only when you first bit me. Then it disappeared and all I felt was this amazing pleasure rolling over me, filling me.”

“It will get even better when she gains more finesse,” Halcyon promised.

A delicious shudder ran through Dontaine’s body. “I can’t wait.” And the way he said it brought another smile to my lips.

I patted Amber’s hand, letting him know that I was all right. “It’s okay,” I said softly. “It’s new to everybody. We’re all learning how this works.”

He let his arms fall away. Instead of stepping away from him, I turned and wrapped my arms around Amber, burying my face against that broad chest that made me feel so safe. He was my anchor in this world, and I clung to him as such.

He pressed a kiss to the top of my head, then set me from him, crouching down so that we were face-to-face. “I would have you take blood from me next time. It would please me…as Dontaine is making so damn obvious,” he said with a slight smile.

“Next time,” I promised, feeling my world settle once more back onto its axis.

When all was tranquil once more, Halcyon presented me with a beautifully carved, small wooden box, inlaid with ivory and gold. “I brought you here not only to feed, but to give you this,” he said, putting it into my hands.

It was a gift from my mate.

“Oh, Halcyon.” I lifted stricken eyes to his. “I didn’t think to get you anything.”

“You have given me the gift of yourself. All else is immaterial. Do not distress yourself. It is truly not so much a gift as my claim on you for others to see. Open it.”

I did and gasped. Inside was an exquisite cameo necklace with Halcyon’s likeness. It was framed around the rim by scroll-like writing. At the bottom was engraved the image of a fierce dragon. But the most striking part of it was the bright, glittery metal of the necklace itself, something that would catch every Monère’s eye.

“The chain is silver,” I said.

“Yes, I had it made thus in your honor. For the only Monère Queen to whom silver is not a weakness but a strength.”

The touch of silver against a Monère’s skin usually drained them of their power, made them only human strong. I was not only not weakened by it, but seemed to have an affinity for it, able to call any weapon made out of silver easily to my hand.