by Heather Long
My panties and camisole hadn’t survived that first night. I was back down to bare-assed naked and the robe I’d claimed. They always had clothes—assholes—and I hadn’t figured out where they hid them. This morning though, I’d purloined the t-shirt Maddox had worn the day before. It draped me like a dress, and then I dragged the robe over it. At least I had slippers—a concession I was sure to the fact none of them liked my icy feet on them.
Well, none except Rogue. I don’t think he even noticed them.
All we’d done was eat—Fin always left and returned with the most decadent meals. He brought food from all over the world. So, my life could be tougher.
Sex. So much sex.
Even I don’t think I’d ever had as much as I got from them. The fact that I was so full my body hummed constantly hadn’t been lost on me. Then the biting and the draining, and none of them touched my neck. Not since that first night. Whether Fin told them why or not, I didn’t know and I didn’t ask.
Honestly, I didn’t care as long as they stayed away from my throat. The fact that asshole’s face popped to mind when their mouths brushed past on their way to what had to be their second favorite feeding area—my breasts—bugged me. The fact that he was still out there somewhere, alive and probably going about his normal life bugged me more.
I should have long-since gutted him. Leaving them to sleep, I made my way to the bathing room and made quick work of washing. While it was tempting to linger in the hot water, I needed time to think. The whole keep had begun to transform over the last couple of days.
It started in the bedroom—though I hadn’t noticed when Fin stole away with me there. I hadn’t until the next morning. In addition to the bed, there was a huge shaped sofa framing the large hearth. They’d added hangings to the wall, thick and colorful. Some depicted scenes of knights on horseback, others were of glades in the forest, another of the mountains, and one of the ocean with the skies turning crimson and orange as the sun set into the sea.
That one was for me. They said nothing, but it was the view I’d wanted from the bedroom of my house on the cliffs. Of course it was for me.
The chilly confines weren’t so icy anymore. As I pulled the robe tight and slid my feet into the slippers, I wouldn’t freeze as I made my way up to the library. I tried to go there most mornings. It was now dust free with more comfortable seating, and Fin had found an old style record player and a collection of records. The lack of actual electricity required we put batteries in the record player, but I was not bitching.
I missed the modern world. I kept half-expecting one of them to tell me not only had they stolen me from prison, they’d stolen me out of time. But I was too damn chicken to confirm that.
The idea that I’d never see a Starbuck’s again or find out who Jeanette picked on Match Me was just too damn depressing. There were a couple of blankets in the library now, too. The side table was always stocked with something to eat. Usually breads and cheese. Sometimes meat. And as of today, apparently, jams. I had a sweet tooth that I hadn’t been able to indulge, so I spread marmalade heavily on three pieces of bread, then worked my way through eating those while sipping water and staring out at the sun rising over the hills in the distance.
There was another oddity. Vampire or not? I was awake before the sun. Every day since I’d gotten to see it again, I didn’t sleep past its rising. Whether I had in the prison or not, I had no idea. I’d been something of a morning person before, but not like this.
It also didn’t seem to matter if I got hours of sleep or minutes. By the time I reached the library, the sun would be rising and I could stare out at the kiss of light as it flooded the world.
The marmalade tasted tart and sweet on my tongue. I should probably light the fires, but I wasn’t that cold. My initial plan to leave had been shelved when Fin asked me to stay. To give them time. The longer I stayed though, the more I didn’t want to leave. No matter what Fin believed, I couldn’t just stay here.
Stay with them.
I sighed and leaned my head against the cool stone as I stared out the window.
A whoosh in the fireplaces told me someone was awake. The heat wrapping around me as strong arms slid around my waist told me it was Maddox.
“You should have lit the fires, Kitten,” he rumbled. “I left them stacked for you.”
“I wasn’t that cold,” I assured him. When he rubbed his bristly cheek to my temple, I closed my eyes and sank back against him.
“No?” Was that hope in his voice?
“No,” I admitted. “Took a bath, came up here, got some food. Not really cold. Probably these fuzzy slippers that Fin found me.” Fuzzy kitten slippers. No, I hadn’t commented on them at the time. They were warm, that was all I cared about. Maddox chuckled, he liked them.
“Good.” Satisfaction unfolded in his tone, and he slid a hand inside the robe. “You’re wearing my shirt.”
Yeah, I didn’t ask how he knew whose shirt it was. “You didn’t need it,” I told him instead.
When he slid his fingers under the shirt, I laughed as he teased down to my thighs and then up. “I like you smelling like me.” Then he nipped at my ear before stroking my hair to one side. It was still damp, but he hesitated when he bared my neck and I stilled. “May I kiss you here?” He stroked a single finger along the side of my neck. “I won’t bite. I give you my word.”
Something unfamiliar unfurled at the solemnity of his promise. Truth resonated in each word, and I bit my lip to keep from groaning. The hammer of my heart though, I couldn’t control that.
“I promise, Kitten,” he whispered, close but not actually brushing my neck with his lips. The little puffs of his breath tightened the coils in my belly. “I won’t bite you. No one will ever bite you there again if you don’t wish it.” His voice darkened toward the end. “I’ll kill anyone who tries.”
The promise of death shouldn’t turn me on so much, but fuck if it didn’t. Tilting my head back to his shoulder I looked up to meet his gaze. The slitted eyes of his dragon stared back at me solemnly. He meant every single word.
A shudder rolled up my spine. I believed him.
Blowing out a breath, I eased forward. He loosened his hold but didn’t remove the cage of his arms fully, and for that, I was grateful.
I didn’t want him to move away. Shrugging out of the robe, I let it fall to pool at our feet. With one hand, I gathered my hair and pulled it all over one shoulder and then turned my head enough to bare that part of my neck.
“No teeth.” The words came out trembling and without an ounce of the confidence I usually injected into my voice.
“No teeth,” he assured me, and then pressed his lips to the base of my neck where it joined my shoulder. The pressure sent little shocks pulsing from my skin to my pussy and back up again. The gentle nudge of his leg sliding between mine had me adjusting my stance.
With care, he began to nuzzle kisses along my neck, inching higher with each one. The hum in my system began to ratchet higher. Maddox settled hit hands on my bare hips and pushed his shirt up. I had on nothing below it, and the fact that he ground against my ass sent liquid heat to dampen my thighs.
I reached behind me as he reached a pulse point and sucked gently, just his lips and mouth and the sensuous trace of his tongue. Terror and pleasure twinned as the erotic tease continued. He wore jeans, but they weren’t zipped or buttoned. I slid a hand in to wrap around his cock easily. It was thick, pulsing, and hotter than the rest of him.
“Kitten,” he whispered. “You feel good.”
The barest scrape of his teeth to my earlobe, and then he went back to kissing along my throat. My head was all the way back now, baring it for him as he ran his hands up beneath my shirt to cup my breasts. The first pinch of his fingers to my nipples, and I couldn’t hold back the groan anymore.
He thrust against my hand, but that wasn’t what either of us wanted. I twisted in his hold, then pushed down against his jeans. Without a word, he released me and shoved
them down to his feet before stepping free. Meeting his gaze, I hooked my hands to the hem of his shirt and pulled it off.
Bites littered my chest, and he dipped his eyes to trace each one with his gaze. Fuck, I could feel it as if he were touching me. When he cupped my chin and tilted my head up, I parted my lips, anticipating the kiss before he even claimed my mouth. I fisted his hair and wrapped myself around him. The heat of his whole body scorched me, and I wanted that fire.
The rough, cold stone at my back was a perfect counterpoint to the hot, corded muscle pressing into me. He savaged my mouth, every stroke of his tongue had me arching. When he lifted me, I reached between us, and like we’d choreographed it, I stroked him from base to tip, then teased his fat, mushroomed head against my labia until I’d lined him up.
Maddox broke the kiss, his gaze fixed on mine as he hovered there, just barely nudging inside of me. Licking the taste of him on my lips, I gathered every ounce of my courage and tipped my head back to bare my throat. He promised no teeth. His moan reverberated through me as he thrust in one, long relentless push. The girth stretched me as he pressed his lips to the most vulnerable spot, the puffy bite left by Rogue, and when he traced his tongue around the edges of it, I clenched down on him.
He held inside of me as I fluttered and squeezed, all the while nuzzling my throat. System zinging from the contact, I ran my hands all over his shoulders and then into his hair. At the first touch of my nails to his scalp, he began to rock his hips. Then we writhed together, grinding and arching. He kissed my throat, my chin, my cheek, and then his mouth was on mine again as we moved.
This wasn’t a frenzy or heat. It wasn’t hunger or feeding. It was dancing. It was loving. It was terrifying. It was wonderful. He lifted my thigh higher and changed his angle, and then every thrust struck a spot inside of me that had me seeing sparks. I clung to him, the sweat adding to the friction as the stone scraped at my back and his chest rasped against my nipples. Then I spiraled, ambushed by an orgasm that detonated in my whole system.
His shout pleased me on a level so primitive, I didn’t even understand it. He was swelling inside of me, knotting deep as he came, and then he had my mouth pressed to his throat. “Bite me,” he pleaded, and it was a plea. I didn’t make him beg. No one should. I needed to bite him, so I sank my teeth in, and he jerked as he came in hot shooting jets that lit me up inside.
We hung there, clinging together for what seemed like an eternity. Locked inside of me, Maddox groaned in between panting explosive breaths as I licked the wound I’d made closed. The mark was deep, deeper than any I’d left on him before. They’d all cut themselves to let me drink. Always opening themselves up for me to feed.
Not this time.
As I laved my tongue against it, I shuddered and clamped down around him again. I’d broken his skin myself. I’d bitten him, sharp and deep, and something unlocked within me that should never have been opened.
Beyond Maddox’s shoulder, I met Fin’s beatific gaze and warm smile before darting mine away, only to collide with Rogue’s icy blue eyes and satisfied nod. How fucking long had they been standing there?
The fact that I had Maddox balls deep and knotted inside of me still only made their fixation on me hotter. Maddox murmured something against my ear, and I closed my eyes. The depth of feeling when he said Kitten had me closing my eyes. They saw too much.
I wanted too much.
The morning passed in a blissful haze much to my own disgust. Maddox didn’t lord it over me that I’d let him kiss my throat or how we’d been knotted together for nearly an hour before he finally softened enough to slip free. He’d carried me down to the bath, and we’d drowsed there for another hour in the languid heat. By the time we returned to the library, Fin had fetched fresh food, including fruit, and I ended up napping in Maddox’s lap like the kitten he’d labeled me.
By afternoon, Rogue had vanished and no one said where. Maddox had left me to sit in a chair by the fire without him as he went to deal with chores. The regret when he kissed me had been as tangible as the gentleness in his voice when he’d whispered against me earlier.
I still wouldn’t acknowledge what he’d said. The words branding themselves deep inside of me, burrowing into places where they didn’t belong. Fin came and went, all three of them busy with their tasks. Probably getting the keep ready for Alfred. Even as my thoughts turned to him, I scowled.
He would come for me when he woke. That was a cheery thought. Beyond those words of wisdom, they hadn’t spoken about him at all. While there wasn’t some digital clock ticking down somewhere, I could feel one. It seemed to flicker in my soul, an awareness that each passing second drew us closer to when the mysterious Alfred would awake.
I couldn’t tell if they were excited by the prospect or worried. The amount of time they were spending on fixing the keep up suggested a little bit of both. The interior began to look more homey and less like a tomb. So I supposed that was an improvement. There was a set of windows in Rogue’s bedroom—the room we’d been using—and Maddox promised he would get those opened today. That way, I didn’t have to leave the bedroom to see the sunrise.
That wasn’t the only reason I left the bedroom, but I didn’t bother to correct him. Guilt wormed its way through me, like a cat scratching its way to the surface. Fin and Maddox had been amazing, and even if he wasn’t exactly warm, Rogue had been a generous enough companion.
He certainly held nothing back in bed, even if he was far more reserved during waking hours.
Fuck, I was getting attached. It was bad enough they were attached. I couldn’t get attached. Succubi didn’t settle down, it never worked out. The need to feed coupled with how others responded to us…it was a recipe for disaster. Possessiveness. Fights. There were already rumbles between the three of them, and the enigmatic Alfred hadn’t arrived.
What then?
Head resting against the chair, I stared at the fire. Music played on the record player—something bluesy and jazzy. It was nice. At least that suggested a more modern sensibility than some of the hand-inked tomes stored in the library. They had a lot of books. I’d looked for something to read that second day we’d been in here.
I gave up when most of them turned out to be written in Latin or Greek. Though Maddox swore that one was Aramaic.
Whatever. They weren’t languages I knew.
Fin offered to read one of the Gaelic ones to me. Selfishly, I’d let him, and we were about halfway through the tale of the Fae who lost his way. Rogue rolled his eyes at the first few words of the book, but neither he nor Maddox left when Fin read to me.
I wanted to know what happened. That was another reason I put off leaving.
How much time was enough?
It had been a few days, and I hadn’t been hungry in any fashion. They fed my body, my soul, and my mind. Too comfortable.
Sitting forward, I glared at the kitten slippers on my feet. I could still feel Maddox inside of me like was he buried to the hilt. Not that I had any trouble imagining Fin or Rogue in the same spot. I knew all of them, my body really knew them.
And I was getting warmer the longer I sat there, my body softening and growing damp.
Fuck, they weren’t even present and I wanted them.
This was a problem.
Enough with the library and musing about their bodies. They were busy, and I needed something else to do. Sitting idle wasn’t how I normally went through my days. Once upon a time, I’d actually had a job. I worked in a shop, I got to see people come and go. It hadn’t been glamorous, but I enjoyed helping tourists find the perfect crystal and teasing real witches when they had to make nice with them.
It had been a good space to feed, too. There was always someone lusting after something in the Rising Phoenix. Always some young buck wanting the ingredients for a sex spell to enhance his performance or a silly twat on the hunt for a ‘make him love me’ potion. The first was possible to a point, the second was ridiculous. Bending someone’s will to mak
e them love you? Well, it could be done. If you didn’t mind the homicidal rage it would trigger, the obsessive behavior, and the fact that the object of the spell would likely turn on you and murder you in your sleep to keep you with them forever.
Sure, no problem.
Nothing said love like a knife in the intestines.
Just saying…
Dragging the robe on, I headed for the doors. A walk to the garden maybe. It would let me get outside, and I could get some fresh air. I’d go to the interior one because if I found the front doors, I’d probably be tempted to keep running.
A pause rocked through me as I reached the gallery leading to the garden doors. Why not just go? It was what I wanted, right? It was what I’d been wanting since I woke up in the prison. I wanted out.
So why stay here? Maybe the shackles were sex and blood, but they were still shackles.
I glanced back toward the hall and the way I’d come. The scent of dust and disuse in the gallery was missing. There were more wall hangings up and wood piled into the large hearths ready to be lit. There was also a long table and chairs set up along the front of the room, and the shutters on the windows had been removed, though they were all frosted panes in different colors. The light coming in was muted, and yet still lovely.
Shaking my head at the inane thoughts, I gripped the door and yanked. It gave a hollow sound and a wrenching creak of noise when I pulled it open. Both comforted me, because until the moment it gave, I half-expected to find it as impossible to open as the cell door in the prison.
The rush of cool air brushed against my face. The sun was on the back half of the garden, not the front. The tangle of dark vines still had snow all over them, and the ground was thick with it. I hesitated. If I walked out there in my slippers, they’d get soaked.
That would be shame.
Making a face, I tugged them off and nudged them to the side. Bracing myself with a breath, I stepped out into the snow. It was cold, but not frigid. Maybe spring was coming soon to wherever the fuck we were. Still, I tied the robe a little tighter. The snow crunched under my feet as I tugged the door closed, not all the way, but to a crack.
