“While I don’t mind the fight, I’d rather get Kitten to somewhere secure and let her feed. She’s hungry.”
Thank you.
I almost said it aloud, but then thought better of it when Rogue seemed intent on boring his way into my soul, and the longer he stared, the more uneasy I became.
Mad-Dragon I got.
Astral-Boy? Him, too. Mostly.
Even Dorran—longing punched through me. I’d been so close to feeding, and now he was absent. If I followed through with their insane plan, I’d be out of his reach.
That was what I wanted, right?
I wanted out of that cell.
Out of this prison.
I wanted what remnants of my life were left to me.
All of those things were true. But so was the sudden anxiety swarming me. If we left, I’d never see Dorran again. I might…
What, Fi? What might I do? Die?
The thought was so patently ridiculous, I snorted, and yet the ever tautening ball of anxiety in my chest began to compress my lungs.
“Give her to me,” Rogue said taking a step toward us.
“No,” Fin began, but whatever else he might have said was lost in a whoosh of motion as Rogue suddenly wrenched Fin’s arms away from me and slid one of his gross, bloody hands to my waist. I slammed against him, and if Fin and Maddox were steely, Rogue was damn near diamond in his surface tension. No give. At all.
It was like being stabbed and cradled in equal measure.
Pleasure and pain.
His hunger?
It was absent.
Except…
The lust unfurled like a slow moving avalanche that gained force and speed as it rolled downward to me.
“I wasn’t asking,” Rogue finished his sentence, and then the air whistled past us. I had to hold on for dear life and even managed to get my legs around his hips. He never so much as let me slip, but the wind hitting my back cut at me.
It must have sliced my shirt half to ribbons, or maybe that was my flesh. I barely had time to process Maddox’s furious expression or Fin’s shocked one before they were gone.
The race through the night seemed to stretch into infinity. Time ceased to have real meaning, and if not for the definitive squeeze of Rogue’s hand to my ass, I might have written this off as a bad dream.
Nightmares. I had been known to have them.
I’d been stuck in one for weeks now. They even called it Nightmare Penitentiary.
The sudden stop would have cracked my neck, but Rogue had a hand against my hair. My gratitude for the thoughtfulness died a swift death when he pulled the hand away and my hair clung to the bloody debris decorating his fingers.
Yeah.
Gross.
Stomach lurching, I swallowed back the bile as the raw coppery scents from too many different bodies hit me at once. Troll. Shifter. Pretty sure a couple were vampires, too. And at least four or five others that I didn’t know and really didn’t want to know.
Instead of putting me down, Rogue pinned me to a wall and leaned his hips into mine. There was no heavy cock shoving its way at me, so that wasn’t what he wanted.
Good—
The thought stuttered as he sliced at his throat just above where his neck joined his shoulder. Ancient blood slid out of the wound, fresh, hot, and so pungently sweet and savory, my mouth watered.
“Feed, little sváss.” The order settled into my bones, and unlike Maddox or Fin, I wanted to obey this one even if a small part of me continued to rebel. I didn’t even know this guy.
“I’m not a vampire,” I argued.
“I don’t care,” he retaliated, and then cupped my head and pulled my mouth to the injury.
Yeah, that argument wasn’t really working for me either.
The first brush of his blood to my lips, and I latched on without a second thought. Decadence exploded across my tongue, and I closed my eyes as a throaty moan vibrated in my throat.
Sinking my teeth into the wound, I worked it wider, and then it took active sucking to pull more blood from him. I applied myself, because I wanted more. Tightening my thighs against his hips, he rewarded every pull with a grind against me, and where he’d been lacking an erection before, one nudged at me now.
More, the crater of lust simmering beneath the surface cracked wide open, and then it swallowed me hole.
Fuck.
Me.
Maybe there was something to this vampire schtick.
Chapter 7
“‘I don’t believe in magic,’ the young boy said. The old man smiled. ‘You will when you see her.’” - Atticus
Fin
“Droch chrích ort.” Fin glared at the gaping hole in the wall through which Rogue vanished with their prize.
Maddox kicked a body away from him as he followed Fin’s stare, then scowled at Fin.
“It’s not my fault,” Fin argued.
“No?” Maddox half-growled, half-rumbled. “Whose idea was it to bring him into the middle of this?”
“I stand by that idea.” With a wave of his hand to the stacks of bodies around him, Fin paused, then pulled a handkerchief out of his inner pocket and began to clean the blood from his fingers as they made their way out. “It worked, didn’t it?”
For his part, the surly dragon just grunted. “Where did he take her?”
Concentrating, Fin focused on the feel of his brother and where he might have gone. At the moment, there was a blankness to his presence. Out there, but just beyond perception. Rogue didn’t want to be found immediately.
Probably protecting their prize. They’d only waited a few hundred years for her to be found, and the first word they get of her, she’s trapped in a prison with a shadow demon feeding on her.
Not ideal.
Still…
The white square turned crimson as he continued cleaning his hands. They met no resistance as they made their way down the mountain. Finding vulnerable access points to the prison warded by magic and layered with the power of far too many dimensions to sit in just one had required all of Maddox’s skills. Dragons kept their hoards in similar pockets, so he’d at least had a starting point.
Fin had been the one to confirm the vulnerability after Maddox located it. Maddox wasn’t in a rush, if Fin didn’t know better, he would suspect him of wanting the warden and his guards to pursue them here.
The prison might very well restore some of them. If they decided to follow, they wouldn’t recover so easily if at all.
“Well?” Maddox demanded.
“He’s blocking me at the moment.” As much as he didn’t want to admit it.
“Of course, he is. I made that woman a promise.” The last came out through gritted teeth.
“How do you think I feel?” Fin turned it back on him. “She was supposed to sleep with me tonight.” That, and she was hurting from lack of sustenance. The shadow addiction needed to be dealt with as well. Though Fin didn’t doubt for an instant that Rogue couldn’t handle her need to feed.
Conversation, on the other hand? Yeah, he wouldn’t place any bets on that.
“He’d take her to the keep.”
“No one goes to the keep anymore,” Maddox argued. “We abandoned it fifty years after I turned.”
“Which is why he would take her there.”