But tonight, I’ll relish every last drop of her juice, especially because I know it won’t happen again. Tonight, I get to offer her one last hard, powerful orgasm.
Her thighs flex and quiver against my cheeks as she comes, her clit throbbing, pouring the cream of her climax into my mouth. A brand new desire surges inside of me—I want her to mark me with the juices of her body like I’m her property. I want to be her slave, hers to do with as she pleases. Sweet fuck—I want her to dominate me.
I make sure that her pleasure is so intense that she screams. In the end, she falls back on the bed, spent and smiling like she’s high.
I can’t get enough of looking at her like this. I spend a while by her side, drinking her in, imagining her dominating me in the most shameful ways. Damn, what’s happening to me? This woman brings out a side of Tristan DeKnight that I never even suspected existed.
A knock on the door brings me back to reality. It’s been a while since Isolde screamed—apparently because I’d bitten her—and they want to see blood. I can sense serpents lurking around outside the terrace doors, too. Of course, Mark sent them to make sure that I didn’t let my ‘food’ out, in case it was Isolde.
I cover Isolde’s sleeping form on the bed, and turn toward the door, ready to face Mark, Darius, and the rest of the serpents. As I stride towards them, I strip off my shirt, and grab the old one from the chair—the shirt I was wearing when I killed the rapist by the dumpsters, the shirt that is stained with his blood.
CHAPTER VII—The Plan
Isolde
“YOU WANT ME TO DO WHAT?” As Tristan predicted, Mark is so taken with Tristan’s plan of getting his hands on Father Ruben that he doesn’t dwell much on last night. In the end, it was his main man Darius the alligator who found me at the nursing home, curled on the terribly uncomfortable leather couch in what used to be my office. I was still wearing the silk nightgown, and my feet were muddy.
Of course, Tristan strategically planted me there before the morning hours, and skillfully led the alligator during the brainstorm about where I could be. In the end, the alligator thought it was his idea to look for me at the nursing home.
Mark doesn’t waste any time to tell me all about the plan since, to my astonishment, it involves me. He stands up from his regal chair at the end of the table, and walks over. He gestures enthusiastically as he speaks.
“Tristan is right. For a whole year we’ve been trying to find Ruben Parvan. Now, we’ll bait him to come to us. And you, Isolde, are the perfect bait.”
I can barely refrain from laughing out loud.
“What makes you think he’ll come to me?”
“You saved his life last time, didn’t you?” The glint in his eyes tells me he remembers that part with particular pleasure. My skin creases. “If he finds you in distress, he’ll do anything to help you, to return the favor.”
“I was in distress all this time. Still, I don’t see him anywhere.”
“Because you were too heavily guarded. But picture this—you travel to his village in the Western Mountains, having run away from me—”
“You’ve already searched the village, and those surrounding it,” I interrupt. “He was never there.”
“No, because nobody can ever find Ruben. That only happens if he wants to be found, and I see that now. And here is where Tristan DeKnight had a brilliant idea. Ruben hasn’t showed his oh-so-precious face in over a year because he knew better than run directly into my hands.” His gaze darkens, showing his cunning. “But if he thinks that you’re alone in that village with the vampire....” He trails off, letting me draw my own conclusions.
“You can’t possibly expect me to—” Wait a minute. I frown at him, not sure I got him right. “You’re going to let me go with Tristan alone?”
“I’ll have my people in the localities surrounding the area, but yes, mostly it’ll be just you and Tristan in Ruben’s old village.”
I can’t believe my own luck. It’s like the sky opened up and God himself is reaching down to pull me up. It’s hard to contain my enthusiasm. I could do the happy dance.
Still, I need to somehow make sure Mark and Soraya drink from the potion before I leave, so that by the time I escape, Mark will be too obsessed with her to care about me anyway. My eyes move to Tristan, full of hope that he can pull this off.
“Like Mark said,” Tristan offers, “there would be no serpents, it would be just you and me. But we have to work out a solid and believable story to explain what we’re doing together in the village. Father Ruben isn’t stupid, he’ll smell a trap if we don’t do this right.”
My spirits sink at the thought of baiting the good old man like that.
“But can we even be sure that Father Ruben still lives in that area? The serpents searched those places many times.”
“Father Ruben knows how to hide, and he knows the secret caves in the Western Mountains like the back of his hand,” Tristan replies. “He’s basically a walking map, so no one will ever find him if he doesn’t want to be found. When people know places the way he does, these places transform into an emotional map for them. No matter what, they always return to the spot they feel most connected to.”
Jesus, how can he talk to me as if I’m nothing to him, staring coldly into my face? Last night we took each other with mad thirst, how can he act as if nothing happened?
I square my shoulders and look around, from Mark and Tristan to the rest of Mark’s people, my eyes resting on Soraya. She’s sitting on the windowsill of the far window, holding a cup and a saucer like a lady, drinking tea and observing the rest of us. The alligator hovers around her.
“I risked my life once to save Father Ruben’s,” I tell Mark, raising my chin. “What makes you think I’d do the opposite now, for a man who treats me like garbage, no less?” I pull down the high collar of my cashmere turtleneck. The makeup may cover the bruises on my face, but the ones on my neck are black and hurting. Even some serpents gasp. “I will certainly not help a man who did this to me.”
A grin stretches slowly on Mark’s face.
“Yes, you will, because if you don’t, you’ll have his blood on your hands.” All it takes is a jerk of his head for his serpents to pull out guns and point them at Tristan. Tension spreads into the room in a flash, and I stiffen.
Tristan sits in a chair on the right side of Mark’s ‘throne’, surrounded by black gun barrels pointed at his head. Just like in an ad for an action movie, those electric blue eyes stand out, focused and cold. He seems unimpressed, completely unfazed, as if he either expected this, or he’s been in such situations so often it’s got nothing on him anymore. But my heart breaks. There’s absolutely nothing he could do to dodge the silver bullets in these guns. On the inside, he must be afraid.
“I know Tristan isn’t by far as close to your heart as Father Ruben,” Mark speaks as he touches my head like he’d stroke a child. “But still, can you live with the knowledge that a silver bullet tore straight through his brain because of you?”
I’m focused on Tristan, on his icy eyes that don’t move away from my face.