I licked my lips and then kissed Alfred. He let out a hum of approval as his tongue swept against mine. I lapped at the taste of my blood in his mouth while his coated mine. It was the strangest sensation and so absolutely right in the same breath.
The stroke of his hands along my sides had me arching, his cock nestled against my labia, already slick from how wet I was, and I ground against him. His chuckle vibrated through me as he fisted my hair tighter, the tug lighting up my whole scalp. The desire eddied there, a constant thrum against my senses, but it wasn’t hunger but true want. True need. I sucked against his tongue and dug my fingers into his shoulders.
When he rolled me over, I wrapped my legs around him, arching upward to tease along his thickening girth. Breaking the kiss, he nipped at my lower lip, and I groaned.
“Do you want this, hellion?” The question startled me. “Do you want me? Or are you responding to your hunger?”
Hurt struck like a slap, and I blinked. I wasn’t hungry at all, but he was like holding onto a storm, all sizzling zaps to my senses, and he’d saved Maddox. I wanted…
“Shh,” he shushed me with a nuzzling kiss that took him to my ear and then to my throat. “I have to know, because I will not take from you as the little coward did.” The press of his lips ghosting over the marks he’d made had me shuddering. “I will wipe him from you, but you have to want me to be in my bed.”
Wasn’t I already in his bed? Despite my best efforts, the words wouldn’t leave my tongue. The graze of his teeth had me clawing at his back as the panic bubbled up inside of me. Darkness edged my vision, and Alfred sighed.
Had I disappointed him? Fuck. Why did I care?
“When I get my hands on that demon, I’m going to have his entrails for garters.” With that cryptic, if brutal statement, he bit me again, and this time I didn’t pretend not to scream. It was like I was being burned from the inside out as he began to suck. The pleasure faded entirely to pain.
We were standing on the beach. The house was above, but I didn’t look there, I kept my gaze on the water. “You keep killing me.” It had taken me a moment to put it together, but the agony racing through my veins before clarified it.
“Yes,” he told me. Well, at least he didn’t sugarcoat it. “You don’t want me to make it sweet.”
I almost laughed. Twisting, I met his dark-eyed gaze. I really couldn’t tell if his eyes were that dark because he was full of shit, or if his pupils had swallowed the irises. The corners of his mouth tipped up. “Why?”
“Because, Hellion…” He said the nickname like he had Fiona, and it sent a shudder through my whole system. “You fed on a shadow demon for weeks. You never fully transitioned. You basically slowed your own death, but death comes for everyone.”
“So you’re killing me? How does that logic work?”
“I’m turning you. I’m clearing away the stamp of the fool who tried to and the taint of the shadow demon who wanted to own you.”
Anger flash-fired through me.
“Have no fear, Hellion. No one else will be able to claim you.” He stroked a finger down my cheek.
“Except you.”
“Except us,” he corrected. “Fin is right. You do belong to us, but we also belong to you.”
I rolled my eyes and jerked away from his touch. “I didn’t ask any of you for this.”
“I know.”
“But you’re doing it anyway.”
“I can’t let you die.” The admission should make me feel something. Wanted. Needed. But all it made me feel was…
“That isn’t your decision to make.” I glared at him, and he gave me another of those faint smiles. It didn’t quite reach his eyes though.
“It is very much my decision,” he said. “As modern people are fond of saying, the buck stops here. I will make sure you have what is due you. The vengeance on those who harmed you.”
“I can get that on my own.”
“I have no doubt.” At least he sounded like he meant that part. “Just as I have no doubt that I will very much enjoy helping you. The crimes done to you are numerous, and no one hurts what is mine.”
I moved away from him, but I couldn’t escape. He was there, like a shadow in my step. A pulse under my skin. He was pulling all the blood from my body.
Again.
“The pain is real,” he murmured. “I can block most of it. But this is the best way to ease your transition.”
“Wow, I’d hate to see the hard way.”
He didn’t comment. I focused on the ocean, on the foam of the sea as it rolled in and how the air tasted. I loved the ocean so much.
“Why?”
“What?”
“Why do you love the ocean?”
“Can you at least pretend to not read my mind?”
“Not right now, no,” he said. “I am taking all of you into me, and then I am having you take me into you. You will know me as intimately as I know you when we are done.”
Resentment sliced through me. “You turned Rogue without his permission.”
“He hated me for a long time.”
“Why did you do that?”
“Because he was my friend, and I did not want him to die.”
“But he didn’t want to live like this.” Did Rogue and I have that in common? And I thought he was such an asshole to me.
“No,” Alfred admitted, moving to stand next to me. I was tempted to lean my head against his shoulder, but I resisted it.
Barely.
“He didn’t think it natural. Elves are—they are very attuned to nature. He was—is a frost elf. He thrives in winter, it is his favorite season. His magic is a part of him. When I turned him, he lost some of that. He gained more, but…that took time for him to grieve and to acclimate.”
“And you feel no regret for it.” I dared him to lie to me. I’d been in that memory. I’d been there when he turned him.
“I do not regret saving my friend. Nor do I regret giving him the time to make his peace with it.”
“Generous.”
He shrugged.
The light faded, and it was getting darker. I sat abruptly. The sand was warm beneath me, even if the breeze was cold.
“I could just not drink.”
“I cannot let you do that,” he told me, and he sounded almost sorrowful. But he wasn’t. He didn’t regret doing this to Rogue, and now he wouldn’t regret doing it to me.
“Did you force Fin, too?”
But even as I tried to focus on him, he faded. Through blurred vision, I found him hovering over me. His mouth was red with my blood. He pressed his lips to mine, a teasing kiss, and then ground his hips gently against me.
I refused. Even if my body wanted his, I refused.
I closed my eyes and blocked him out.
“Hellion,” he whispered. “You have to drink. Take back from me what I have taken from you.”
“No.”
His sigh filled the room.
“Fiona,” he commanded, and my name settled on me like strings attaching themselves and jerking me to move. I opened my eyes to find his throat right there. He rolled onto his back, pressing my face into his throat, and then he dragged a hand down to my ass, massaging it. “Drink.”