Blood of the Dead, page 21
As long as we cherished him all the rest of the time, which we did, Madden games aside, our Sunshine loved being fucked by us.
I leaned forward, planting a hand on the bed, and wrapping my other arm around him to hold his swelling cock, shifting only an inch or so in and out of his ass, speeding up.
“I love being buried in you,” I growled in his ear, and heard him whine—as Paco reached down, putting his hands on my back to brace. Zach was making choking noises now, and fuck that turned me on. “Gonna come inside you,” I promised him, stroking him now, too. “Gonna fill you up with me.”
I felt him tense, arching his ass up, ready. I let go of him and grabbed his hips with one hand to hold him because I knew if I did things right, me using him to satisfy myself was far hotter inside his head than me touching him could ever be. “Fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck,” I snarled, and he made a strangled sound as he came, still gagging on Paco’s cock, as his ass squeezed me. “Yeah—oh—fuck,” I said, my voice low, my hips thudding against his, and then it was my turn to cry out, and Paco was grunting too, both of us filling Zach up from either end, while all our Sunshine could do was moan mindlessly.
I felt him shiver beneath me, as Paco pulled out first, leaving poor Zach drooling cum. “Oh my God,” he whispered, collapsing at once, and mostly sliding off of me. I finished pulling myself out and softly stroked his back with a hand.
“You’re so good, Sunshine. I love it.”
“I love you,” Paco said aloud, and I realized he hadn’t given the statement an antecedent—and that it didn’t matter. He loved both of us. Not equally, but differently, and everything still felt right.
I reached out for him because I loved him back so much I wanted to be the air that he breathed, but failing that, I wanted to be inside him. “I want to fuck you, too, before the sun comes up.”
He smiled at me, and quickly lay down.
I got behind him, and while I did use lube, I didn’t give him the courtesy of fingers since dawn was coming—and I knew, as a vampire, he could take me. He made a guttural sound as I hilted myself in him, lying on top of him, pinning him with my body, and I hooked one of his knees up with a hand.
He could take me all the ways Zach couldn’t, and I thudded into him, again and again, my head bowed against his back, making him grunt each time I landed. I even still bit him sometimes—sometimes because I couldn’t help myself, and sometimes for old times’ sake.
This was going to be one of those, and I knew he knew it—and it was why he struggled enough to turn me on. “Fuck, Paco,” I panted, holding him down and fucking him. We were far more evenly matched now that he was a vampire just like me—the only difference between us was he was playing to lose.
And me?
Somehow, against all conceivable odds, I had won.
I had a job I loved, a business I liked, a beloved vampire boyfriend who liked being wrestle-fucked, a beloved human boyfriend who was like a ray of sunshine in my life, and somewhere out there in the world, I had a kinda-sorta-vampire daughter who, I had noticed, had taken to texting me on Sundays, like most good kids should.
This was my best life—or unlife—and no one was ever going to take it away from me.
I sank my fangs into Paco’s shoulder with a cruel shake, heard him gasp and moan, and felt him shiver—the fucker was right about to come.
I pulled my teeth out of him, licked up blood, and whispered, “I fucking love you.”
“I know it,” he groaned, his ass clamping down on me and taking me with him. I cried out as we rocked in synchrony, our hips rolling and grinding like they were meant to, and then I gasped when I was finished. I wrapped my arms around him, and contentedly licked up all the blood I’d missed.
“I’m going to go take a shower,” Zach announced, after hitting the button to close the window’s metal curtain, then crawling forward to kiss us both in turns. “And maybe go jack off, after watching that.”
“Have fun,” Paco murmured, breathing hard below me, before looking back after Zach got out of bed. “You just going to stay in there all day?” he asked me with a grin.
I snuggled into him, unwilling to move, especially with dawn so near. “Yeah. Do you mind?”
And instead of answering, he pulled one of my arms up to make it a pillow for him, then grabbed my knee to pull my thigh and hips across him like a blanket. “Not in the least.”
I kissed his neck, and then I died, happy.
Thanks for reading my Dark Ink Series all this time! KEEP TURNING PAGES for a final art image of all of the men!
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And, if you’re interested in reading an epilogue featuring Jack & Zach, my novella Tooth, Fang & Claw is in the upcoming Monsters in Love: Wicked Tales and Monstrous Ever Afters from 3/7—7/7/2023, after which it’ll be available via my newsletter.
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Keep reading for a sample from my upcoming Feb 14, 2023 release
Bend Her: A Dark Beauty and the Beast Fantasy Romance,
an MF romance with the following tropes: Dual 1st person POVs, Beauty and the Beast, Touch Her and You’ll Be Unalived, BD$M, age gap, virgin princess, enemies to lovers, mentor/student, angst, dick piercing, and a spicy slow burn that gets more filthy as the trilogy continues.
Chapter One
Lisane
I woke up to utter darkness.
That wasn’t so unusual—the women’s chambers of the palace were underground, to protect our quarters from the eyes of enemy mages—so my whole life, I had been a creature used to candlelight.
But I wasn’t accustomed to my own breath hot against my face, or the rough feeling of fabric against my cheek—or knowing that my wrists were tied behind my back, painfully tight.
I blinked furiously, trying to wake up and remember what had happened to me, and why I was trapped like this.
The last thing I could recall was being in a carriage, with Castillion the Spiked sitting across from me. We’d been running away from the Deathless . . .
And now I was here.
Wherever here was.
Tied up, in the dark, on the ground, with a bag over my head.
The very thing my father had been afraid of for me for my whole life—and the reason I lived in a gilded cage, only getting to leave the palace when I had throne-sworn mages by my side—had apparently happened.
I had been kidnapped.
My panic became a living thing inside me, scurrying like a mouse from my brain through my throat to my heart and back, making it hard to think and breathe in turns. My hands throbbed as all the blood my heart was pounding fought to get beneath the ropes that bound my wrists.
But I made sure to let nothing show, as I fought against every instinct I had to sit up and run.
I didn’t thrash, nor did I scream for aid.
I was a princess.
I would give no one the satisfaction of seeing me frightened.
No matter how dangerous I knew lying on the ground could be.
And so I lay still for hours.
Waiting.
For Deathless to crack open the earth and pour through.
And when that didn’t happen, I waited for someone to come and check on me. To name their price. To touch me in ways they shouldn’t.
Only no one ever did.
I slowly moved to kneel on the cold stone floor.
My entire life I’d been told that I was precious. Too precious to see the sun unguarded, too precious to see the stars at night. It was what my father told me, and my brother, and the mages that guarded our doors, and my mother too, up until the Deathless killed her.
I’d wanted to believe them with all my heart, but the ties that bound me—and my captor’s ongoing neglect—felt far more earnest and resonated with what I’d always feared to be true: that once precious things were put away, they were easily forgotten.
And if they’re forgotten long enough, nobody notices when they break.
Three days passed . . . I think.
I managed to wriggle the bag over my head off, but the knots around my wrists never slackened, not even after me twisting enough to make my skin burn beneath them.
There’d been a bucket of water down here with me, and I’d drank from it awkwardly, with my hands tied as they were. It only occurred to me that I might be better off drowning myself in it after there wasn’t enough water left in it for me to do so.
I even dared to use the one spell I knew, creating a small pool of light in my hand, hoping that it would attract someone’s attention—women weren’t allowed to learn much magic, lest it turn us barren or set us aflame—but no one came to chastise me.
In fact, no one had come to check on me all that time. My own waste was on my skirts; I was starving, weak, and whatever ill thoughts I had had about living windowless beneath the palace, well, now I knew how wrong I was. At least the palace had life and color and candlelight.
Water.
Food.
Whereas here . . . I was in a room made of stone just like my father’s throne room. Only instead of a room where half the space was taken up by a statue of a woman's face crying an emerald tear overlooking his massive, ominous carved throne, this room was small and ill-lit by just a weak gray light, which showed dull gray stones, a low uncomfortable wooden chair, the bucket of water I’d finished—yesterday?—and three stairs up to a door that never opened.
Until now. The door creaked open and I jerked up.
“Hello?” I asked quickly, then was instantly ashamed. Hello was what you called to someone you were friendly with, not a jailer. It was a peasant’s greeting from someone who was unsure of their place, not the greeting of a princess under dire circumstances.
I rocked to sitting, from where I’d been attempting to sleep on the floor. The space behind the open door was dark; the gray light didn’t reach that far, but I knew someone was there.
There had to be.
All of this was happening for a reason, wasn’t it?
I struggled to stand, balancing on stiff legs, dizzy and weak from hunger and dehydration, and I didn’t know what to do next, honestly. I had been traveling incognito, so there was a chance whoever had killed my mage and guards then captured me didn’t know my rank.
Was it better to announce who I was and claim my lineage, or lie and seem incapable of producing ransom if they knew no better?
Which approach was more likely to get me out of here alive?
I decided neither, more immediate needs were first. “I’m thirsty, I’m hungry, and I need to bathe.” I swallowed, staring into the darkness, willing something there to answer me.
“Do you think you deserve any of those things, Princess of Tears?” asked a low and menacing voice.
They knew—no, he knew—who I was. Drelleth, my homeland, was shaped like a teardrop, my dead mother was known as the Queen of Tears, and my captor was now mocking me.
I swallowed dry, my throat parched, as I grit my teeth and swallowed. “I would like to think that any human does.”
He made a thoughtful sound. “And what of your father, sending soldiers to fight the Deathless? Or his many wars before that? What of them? Or are his men, his humans,” he said, mocking me again, “only fit to die?”
I took a deep and steadying breath. “My father does what he thinks is best, at all times. And I assure you that he cares for his soldiers, perhaps as deeply as he cares for me. As for the war itself . . . he has the best men and mages working on it.” If he knew who I was, he knew how my mother died, and why my father fought so hard.
The disembodied voice watching me snorted, and I feared I was losing his attention. If he closed the door again and left me here, I didn’t know what would become of me. I couldn’t stand being trapped in these walls another moment, the pain of the sores opening beneath the rope around my wrists, or the stench of my own befoulment.
As scared as I was for whatever lay beyond it, if I stayed here . . .
“If you know me, you know my father and brother will pay good money for my safe return.” I tried my best to sound proud when I said it, but I wasn’t. I wanted to be stronger, and I was certain that three days prior I had been, that I would’ve spit at a captor’s eye. But now, my entire world seemed to be collapsing into the darkness outside the door, like a tunnel I needed to crawl through to find light. And when there was no response, when the thought of my station or my money wasn’t enough to guarantee my release, a part of me broke. “Please,” I asked my captor, not even sure what I was asking for anymore. I licked my lips with a sandpaper tongue. “Just . . . please.”
The moment between us stretched out uncomfortably long. If he closed the door again, I would die; I was sure of it. Then I heard him release a sigh. “Yes. You will have to please me. To survive.”
I felt his presence depart, but the door remained open, and I stumbled toward it.
The stone stairs leading up from my dungeon were sharp, something I found out when the rope binding my wrists suddenly released. I fell forward, out of balance, my shoulders in agony, and cut my palm deeply on the edge of a stone step.
I stopped myself before I cried out, though my eyes watered, and my palm sang in pain as thick blood poured down. I didn’t want him to know I’d been hurt. I already felt over-exposed to him—whoever he was—and I was quite literally feeble.
But half a flight up from where I’d cut myself, I found another open door, and inside of this one was a bathroom, easily comparable in luxury to any in the palace. It had a wide copper tub full of steaming water with soap at the edge, and there was a carafe that had cool clean water to drink on a wooden stool beside it. I wedged the door closed with the toe of one shoe then took off all the rest of my clothes, guzzled water, and slipped into the tub’s embrace.
I was in it until my toes wrinkled, recovering, feeling the warm water erase the knots of my days on the stone-floor. And then I scrubbed myself as I may never have before. My life prior to this place had been lived relatively cleanly, except for the times my brother and I roughhoused as children, throwing horse apples at one another in disgusting sport, under a mage’s protective eye. Now—I watched the water around me go from clear, to dingy, then back again to see-through.
Magic.
Someone here knew magic.
Of course they did.
I’d been kidnapped, after all.
I spent as long in the tub as I thought I could afford, knowing all the while that I couldn’t hide forever.
And then I got dressed, in the exceedingly simple gray dress that’d been left out for me, not much more than a knee-length cotton sack with a thin sash for a belt. I quickly braided my long wet hair, without a tie to trap the end, and I couldn’t bear to put my old shoes back on and so I didn’t.
My wrists ached, and my hand throbbed, but if my captor wanted me to drink, and wanted me clean, then surely I would get to eat—and the second I was out in the stairwell again, I smelled what I hoped was dinner.
I walked up at least two flights of stairs, tracing fingertips along the cool stone of one wall—how high was this place anyways? Surely higher than the palace!—and by the time I reached the final door, I was so hungry I wanted to run through it.
Then I saw the long and narrow room beyond and stopped. It was clearly a dining hall—a long, dark wooden table marked it as such—but there were only two chairs, one at each end. The one closer to me was placed behind an empty silver plate, whereas I presumed my captor sat behind the other, and his plate was full.
He was bigger than all but a few of my father’s guards, and looked sterner than most of them, with sharp cheekbones and a square chin. He had black hair to his shoulders, dark eyes, pale skin, and lips that seemed used to frowning, just like he was now. He was dressed in some sort of black leather shirt, I could tell by the way that it was draped on him, although the cuffs of it were folded back in a workman-like fashion, revealing a dusting of black hair and the stripes of several different scars on both his muscular forearms.
His eyes squinted and his nostrils flared at seeing me. I looked at his full plate—I didn’t think he’d taken a single bite.
Either he was exceedingly polite, or he’d arranged this display to continue my torture.
“May I sit down?” I asked, attempting courtesy, hoping it would be returned in kind.
“You may,” he said, gesturing to the table’s far side. I sat down in the only other chair and saw my wan reflection on the dull silver plate in front of me.
The second I sat, he started eating, and even though I wasn’t thirsty anymore my mouth watered. Perhaps there was a slim chance he’d forgotten that captives also needed food.
“May I eat?” I interrupted him when he showed no signs of slowing.
He ignored me, taking a deep drink of whatever was in his goblet, and then surveyed me with disdain as he set it down. “I haven’t decided yet.”
“What kind of answer is that?” I snapped before I remembered the importance of manners when placating strange men. My jaw clenched and my teeth ground, as he made a show of licking gravy off a knife in front of me, the corners of his lips just barely lifting up.
“The kind of answer you’re going to get, my drab little moth, until I decide.”
I watched him take several more bites, listening to my stomach rumble all the while. “I’m Princess Lisane.” I had a name, and I would rather he used it.
“Oh, yes, I know,” he said, rubbing a piece of meat around his plate with a fork, before putting it in his mouth and biting it free. “Your friends mentioned that when they dropped you off.”
