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I shuddered, her words hitting deep in my core. I’d never expected to feel this way—never in the world thought I’d find someone who made what life I had so very important. After Dredge, I’d given up hope. Then came Nerissa. And like water to a dying man, she had quenched the flaming thirst I hadn’t even realized was there. She was my everything. My all. Even though I loved to play with Roman, I’d kill a dozen of him just to keep my bronze goddess happy.
With a low growl, she reached out, grabbed my wrist, and yanked me to the bed. She had me down, her lips covering my neck, my chest, seeking out my nipples. As I spread my legs, she reached down and her fingers lightly trailed over my pussy, lingering along my clit, as the fire began to build.
I wrapped my arms around her, forcing my fangs to stay retracted. And then, I was exploring, my own fingers playing a melody with her body, cupping her breasts—pendulous and ripe. I squeezed, lightly at first, but then she pushed herself up, kneeling over me.
“Don’t play nice. I want it rough.” Her eyes were on fire. “I want it dark and delicious and deadly.”
“You know I can’t drink you—you know I won’t.” I shook my head, unwilling to subject her to my dangers.
She laughed. “There are other ways. Your glamour—you can use it without drinking from me.”
I understood then. I knew what she wanted. My lover was more like Camille than anybody knew, although Camille and Nerissa had talked about their needs before.
Unleashing my glamour, from both my Fae and vampiric natures, I focused on her. I willed her to hunger for me, to ache for me, to beg for me. And she growled again, low and throaty, and I knew her inner puma was on the prowl.
“Fuck me. Fuck me, please, fuck me. Eat me out, take me down, make me crawl for you.” Nerissa was panting now, clutching the sheets between her fingers. I pushed her away and rose up to my knees. She groveled in front of me, her butt in the air, her forehead on the bed.
I reached out and smacked her ass—hard—and she let out a sharp cry.
“You want this, baby?”
She whimpered.
“You need to get out of your head?”
With a nod, she let out a choked cry. “I had to help a werewolf today whose partner had been raped and murdered. I went with her to identify the body, then counseled her. I saw the look on her face, in her eyes. I need to get out of my head, out of my thoughts.”
“Too bad Venus is gone.” Venus the Moon Child had guided her through learning both how to heal through sex, as well as how to release pain through it.
“You know what to do. You understand.” Nerissa gazed up at me, her eyes teary. “Please…”
I nodded. I knew. I understood all too well. Sex for us was always loving, but it also mirrored our natures—feral and wild. I jumped off the bed and opened the drawer to my nightstand, withdrawing the black satin cord. Nerissa gave me a mute, grateful look, and I motioned to her hands.
“Wrists together.”
She presented her arms. I tied one end of the long cord around her left wrist, then the other end around her right wrist. She let out a soft sigh, almost of relief. As I looped the middle of the long cord around the hook that was screwed into the wall over our bed, forcing her to lie on her back with her arms taut but not to the point of pain, she began to cry, gentle tears, but she was smiling through them.
Just as silently, I removed a blindfold from the drawer and slid it over her eyes. Then, fetching the spreader bar from beneath the bed, I buckled the cuffs around her ankles, forcing her knees into a bent position, taking care not to cause her muscles to pull.ash just reached out and laid light fingers on my arm. “No fears. I will not harm her. I admit, when I arrived today, it was with the mind that their union was wrong and should be severed, but I would never have hurt your sister in order to come between them. And after seeing my brother with her, it’s obvious that he’s dedicated to her, that he will uphold his duty.”
I frowned. It was obvious to me that Shade loved Delilah. She wasn’t just a duty call. But whatever the case, it was enough that Lash was willing to let it be. She didn’t have to like Delilah; she just had to avoid hurting her.
“So what are your plans? Are you staying for a while?” I was trying to find some common ground, to make her comfortable so that she’d be more comfortable with Delilah.
But she surprised me. She let out a sigh and straightened her back. “I suppose I’m going home. You seem to be at rough ends right now, and I think my presence here will just make things more tense than they need to be. I don’t want to upset my brother, or Delilah, so I will leave in the morning.”
“I don’t want you to feel unwelcome.” Where was Camille? She was so much better at playing hostess than I was. I glanced around and saw that she’d slipped out of the room, so I was going to have to field this one myself.
Lash smiled, though, and shook her head. “Quite the contrary. I don’t feel like you’re trying to shut me out. I did sense your not-so-subtle threat about not harming your sister, but that—too—I understand. No, I really do think that you need all your focus right now. I don’t pretend to understand everything that’s going on, but I gave Lady Vishana my word. I will never mention anything I’ve seen here to anybody. I’ll go home and tell my mother that Delilah is an appropriate match for Shade, and then I’ll get back to my work.”
She paused, eyeing me carefully. “You do know I’m proud of the work I do? And that I feel my brother is selling our father short? We all have our places in life, and Father was chosen for his post because of his abilities. You are not one to judge his actions so quickly, I think.”
I shrugged. “What can I say? Look at what I am—what I became? My father taught us to hate vampires. He hated vampires. Then, I fell into a nest of them—literally—and here I am. I had to learn how to cope with being what I am. I’ve had to unlearn a lifetime of hatred or I’d be walking into the sun. I don’t have to kill to feed, to survive, but the truth is, I choose to. Oh, I choose my victims carefully, unless we’re in the middle of a battle—and that’s war. But I kill, and feed on others.”
A little smile crept across her face. “What about when there’s no one suitable around?”
That was a good question, with no really adequate answer. “When I feed, I take into consideration who they are—what they are like. Sometimes it’s easy. Some freak who I catch trying to rape a woman, or pimp out kids? No sympathy. I take them out and am happy to do so. But when I have to feed on someone who doesn’t deserve what I do to them, I try to make it pleasant. Then, I wipe their memory and tell them to go home and rest and have a steak and anything else I can think of to ensure I do no permanent harm.”
As I finished speaking, my phone rang. Eager to extract myself from the increasingly uncomfortable conversation, I gave Lash a polite nod. “Excuse me, I have to answer that.”
