Pivoting, he met the baleful glare of his charge. Instead of saying anything, she merely raised her eyebrows, then held out her wrists. The rich tang of copper hit his nose at the same instant, and saliva flooded his mouth. Concern drenched his earlier rage as the blood ran in rivulets from her savaged wrists.
“Fuck,” he swore and reached for the first shackle. Pressure applied in the right spot should release them, but they refused to budge. The metal itself had begun to sink into her wrists.
Lips compressed to a thin white line, she stared at him with fiery retribution in her eyes. The shackle didn’t release as he continued to press into it, and the blood slicking her arms began to pool on the floor. The overwhelming fragrance with its sensuous notes of bourbon soaked vanilla stoked a hunger he hadn’t experienced in well over five hundred years.
The magic in the shackles wouldn’t release. Renewed anger flooded him. So far, this retrieval had turned into a clusterfuck. “You shouldn’t have run,” he growled at her, and she shifted her fingers, curling three of them and her thumb, leaving only her middle fingers extended at him. “Very cute, Kitten.”
“Stop calling me that.”
He considered it for a beat before he gave her a smile that was more grimace than grin. “Sorry, Kitten, no can do.” He didn’t mean the apology about her name but about the fact he had to grip and tear the shackles. The metal screamed and fought him as he wrenched the first one open. The magic zapped along his arms, and the unpleasant odor of singed hair polluted the air.
Fiona didn’t make a sound as he ripped the first shackle off. The horror of her flesh would haunt him for a while. Blood dripped steadily, even after he removed it. Fortunately the second one didn’t fight him and responded to the correct pressure points, popping open.
“What the fuck are those things?”
Maddox stared at the dwarven-forged cuffs. They’d cost him his weight in gold and had held everything from a mad troll to a wild vampire in a feeding frenzy without ever breaking.
And he’d had to use the fact they were keyed to him to destroy them.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said, tossing them into the sink to be cleaned. Maybe he could fix the other cuff later. Doubtful, but worth a try. He went to take her hands and lift her bloodied wrists to his lips, but she pulled free.
“Let me help,” he ordered, and she rolled her eyes.
“I’ve had enough of your help. You know, I was having a really lovely day before you showed up with your bitching, snarling, and moaning—not to mention your murder bracelets. I don’t mind kink, hot stuff, but I draw the line at fire games.”
Fire…
“They weren’t fire-infused, but cold forged. They shouldn’t have done that.” They’d never responded to any thing or person he’d shackled before like that. “If you won’t let me lick them, Kitten, then you should.”
“Why the fuck am I going to lick my bloody and mangled wrists?”
Because they were still bleeding, even if sluggishly, and she had grown paler. The puddle grew wider as well as deeper. Done with the argument—all the arguments—he pounced. Tossing her onto the narrow cot, he dropped down to pin her, even as her eyes blazed. He narrowly caught her forearms before she clawed him with her hooked fingers.
Running his tongue over her ravaged flesh, he damn near moaned aloud. Despite the stench of the other male, her blood tasted sweeter than nectar and twice as potent. Even the lingering hints of magical steel decorating the wounds couldn’t detract from its potency.
Hunger ripped through his beast with a kind of ferocity he hadn’t experienced since he’d settled into his first true transformation. Man, animal, and vampire lived in harmony, but right now, both vampire and beast fought to lap up every drop. Her musk deepened, grew more refined, and even as the wounds closed on one wrist, he turned to suck gently against the other.
Cock painfully swollen, he ground his hips at hers, and she arched her head back as a low moan vibrated from her throat. Fierce desire fisted him, and he gazed at the slender column of her throat as he cleaned her wrists and hands of every drop and scrap of blood. He sucked on her fingers, and she let out another of those delicious moans that vibrated from her throat like a true purr.
Definitely his kitten. Only when her hands and wrists were clean and the skin shiny and pink from fusing closed, did he push her arms up and shackle her wrists with his hands this time—one hand to be precise. With his free hand, he caught her chin and tilted her face so he could see the color in her lips. Still too pale, but there.
She opened her eyes. The amber color of them drowned out by fat, blown pupils, and her scent grew all the more intoxicating.
“You need to feed.” His voice came out too animalistic, rough, and raw. The rumble of his beast stalking through each word.
“No,” she husked the word, and he reared his head back. Her languid smile taunted him. “I don’t. Trust me, I’m well-sated.”
He’d kill the bastard. It wasn’t just about territory anymore. Whoever that male was, he’d never live to whisper about having touched her, much less think about it. The only one who would be sating her from now on would be him.
When her purr turned to a laugh, he glared at her. “You might have been sated.” He refused to use the word ‘well.’ “But you’re still a newborn. Blood is vital to you, you need to drink plenty and often. The stronger the blood, the less you’ll have to feed.”
“I’m not a vampire,” she informed him. “I’m a succubus. I’ve always been a succubus. I don’t feed on blood.”
She hitched her thighs around his hips, and one minute, he blanketed her, and the next, he was on his back on the hard stone floor. His skull rapped against the surface with a blow that stunned him. His kitten straddled him, grinding against his aching cock even as she gave him a vicious smile.
When he would have gripped her hips, she smirked and then stood. His whole body shook with want of her. Not even the other male’s stench was a deterrent. More, it served as enticement to remove it and replace it with his own, until he branded her with it.
His beast snarled as she looked down at him, her expression almost disdainful.
“Your lust is a magnificent thing, hot stuff. But as I said earlier, I’m full.” Then she casually stepped over him like he wasn’t even there. Skirting the pool of blood she paced over to the sink where she lifted the shackles up and out with two fingers and dropped them on the floor like they were a distasteful.
Disbelief rocked through him as she cranked on the water and began to wash her hands. Before he could growl or even summon his language skills, she stripped off her top, giving him an eyeful of her slender back and the fresh bruises littering her flesh.
His mind stuttered to a halt as she raised her damp hands to her wild tumble of red hair and then began to twist it up, tucking it into itself in a knot.
The fact that she shed her pants nearly made him swallow his tongue. What fresh hell was this? With cupped hands, she splashed water over herself, and he tracked every droplet as it skated over her soft flesh.
Until he zeroed in on the very present, deeply imbedded handprints bruising those hips he’d wanted to hold while he fucked into her.
Their presence doused his lust in ice water.