by Reid, Stacy
“What the fuck is wrong with him?”
“His eyes reflect a madness we cannot reach.”
“I have never seen Drac in such a state,” Gidon rasped. “But do not suggest that we cannot reach him.”
Gidon's Cerberus circled Drac stealthily, looking for a moment of weakness to attack, and Drac kept it in his sight, anticipating the battle.
“His beast chakra has subsided; he is regaining control,” Lachlan said.
“We need to get his fangs out of her.” Gidon’s voice vibrated with rage. “Anything can cause him to rip her throat out.”
“Probably not,” Lachlan said. “It is apparent that it was her fear and pain that caused him to lose control.”
With his fangs buried in the princess’s throat, Drac tracked the movement of the predator that circled them, and his cadre's voices were to him only a distant drone. His beast slammed into his mind, weakening his psychic shield even further. Drac closed his eyes, uncaring of the danger. He only wanted to immerse himself in her taste. The feel of her soft skin against his lips centered him. He finally sucked, unable to bury the need. Blood, hot and spicy rushed down his throat, more intense and pleasurable than the consumption of negative energy. He groaned, his gut tightened, his beast howled in ecstasy and triumph. Her taste ran over Drac’s lips, and he shuddered at the bliss.
He pulled strongly at Saieke’s neck, a hiss slipping from him as her dread increased. They did not like the metallic taste of her fear, beast, and man recoiling from its repulsiveness.
Protect, the sibilant voice hissed, and Drac stilled.
No, he growled, hating the very idea.
Mine, another whisper echoed across his soul.
He retracted his fangs from her neck and swiped his tongue across the twin punctures. He ran his tongue over his teeth, savoring the sweet taste of her blood. Gidon’s Cerberus growled as it prepared to launch at him. Before it got a chance, he shiktred with her to the castle with the king and the rest of the cadre keeping pace.
* * *
Drac placed the Princess gently on the bed in her chambers. Gidon and Lachlan appeared behind him within seconds, ready if he were to make any sudden move toward her. The very thing he dreaded had sneaked upon him, and he’d have to deal with the consequences. Was this how it had been for his brother when Vlad lost his mate? He’d not willingly given over to his demon, but control had been wrested from him?
“The ones who hurt her?” Drac questioned.
A lengthy silence ensued. Drac knew the reason lay in the distortion of his voice. Two voices spoke, his and the sibilant hiss of his beast.
“Talon took them to the sheriffs in the castle. They will be placed in the dungeon under guard,” Lachlan responded.
All Drac’s focus rested on the Princess in the bed. Ours, his beast whispered.
She lay bruised and battered. Blood soaked her caftan, purple splotches marred the perfection of her skin, and her chest rose shallowly. His gaze rested on her neck. He had feasted on her blood, a primitive desire from his beast, and he had acted on it without thought. The punctures were healed over from the venom he swiped with his tongue, but her throat still looked tender and raw.
He did not relish her pain; it was repugnant to him. Why?
You know why. A voice filled with malevolence sang.
Drac wove back the pattern, reinforcing the shield to keep his demon suppressed. And even then, he could hear the echoes of cruel laughter in his mind.
“Our healers have been summoned, and they will be here shortly to examine the princess,” Gidon said.
Drac heard the curiosity that underlined the king’s words. He did not respond as he looked at Saieke, willing her to consciousness. What could he say? He had tasted her pain and lost mastery of his self? Like his brother?
His gut twisted in hard knots, and evil brushed against his senses.
Like your brother, relinquish rule to me, and I will make you King of Amagarie. Drac ignored the hiss. Though he bonded with his demon and accepted the brutality embedded in him, his beast never let an opportunity pass to try and seduce Drac to let him have free rein to devour.
There was a rustle of sound, and the door was flung open to admit Talon and two of their most proficient healers. They had their baskets, cloths, and basins of hot water scented with medicinal herbs. Drac rose from the bed to stand beside his king and give the healers space. He felt Gidon’s stare, but his gaze did not leave her.
“My King,” the head healer said. “If we could be offered privacy for the princess, we are going to remove her caftan. We will set her shoulder and leg and give her a healing draught to help with the pain and provide a restful sleep.” She kept her head slightly bowed as she waited for his response.
“I cannot leave until she wakes.” Drac could not explain his behavior or the knowledge that if they tried to remove him from her presence without knowing how she fared, the leash on his darkness would slip another fraction. Drac did not know what his king saw, but he inclined his head and shiktred from the room with Lachlan and Talon.
Drac sank into the high wingback chair closest to the bed, watching the healers every move, willing her to consciousness.
* * *
Saieke woke slowly. She shifted and hissed from the pain that slashed through her ribs. Her hand flew to her throat, feeling for torn flesh, and encountered smoothness. She scanned the chamber and her eyes collided with dark and fathomless ones. Saieke nervously swallowed as she eyed Drac. He said nothing, just sat in the great armchair by her bedside. She tried to lift herself and let out a pain-filled moan at the hurt that it caused.
“I will alert the healer.” There was no inflection in his voice to give her an inkling of his thoughts, and his emotions were leashed.
Why was he in her chamber?
“Please alert no one. I will attend my needs,” Saieke replied, wanting him to leave the room. She needed to be alone and not in the presence of any Darkan.
“You have a fractured shoulder, several cracked ribs, a broken shin and hip, and have lost several pints of blood,” he countered.
Saieke shivered at his distorted voice. She lifted her fingers to her throat feeling for her pendant. It was gone. “My pendant …if you would locate it for me, I would be most grateful.”
He rose fluidly to his feet and then disappeared. Saieke reared back when he appeared at her bedside. “Ahh...” she groaned.
He crouched so that she looked down at him. “What can I do?”
Saieke blinked at him in bewilderment. Was he concerned? “If you could locate my pendant …”
He dangled it in front of her with the vial. She grasped it, and he still did not move. She clutched it to her chest and glared at him balefully. “Why are you in my chamber?”
She tried to hold his gaze, but after a few seconds, lowered her lashes as the memory she was working very hard to repress brushed against her mind.
“Do not fear me,” he ordered.
An absurd command. Saieke opened her mouth and closed it several times. It was impossible not to feel fear. In fact, she was terrified. She needed to be out of the Darkage and away from him. “I...” she could not give voice to the images and thoughts in her mind.
“Speak so I may lay the fear that beat from you so powerfully to rest,” he said flatly.
“I was attacked…and I saw something…” Saieke held her breath as anxiety seared her. "It had three heads and the eyes of the king. It came from his …out of him, and the feelings that came from it are not to be borne.”
Her fear spiked as he got colder than before.
“Let the image burn from your mind, Princess. Your attackers were arrested and await trial in the dungeon.” A grimace twisted his lips. “The taste of your fear is repulsive, control it.”
She glared in stupefied amazement. “You believe that if you order me not to feel fear, it will vanish?” Saieke took a deep calming breath and then winced. She could feel that their healers had tried to mend her, but
it was primitive work at best.
He watched as she painstakingly uncapped her vial and took a mouthful. The healing elixir rushed through her with warmth, like a soothing balm. Saieke’s bones pinched, reconnected, and vessels that had burst repaired themselves. Vitality flushed her skin and made it glisten. Within a minute, it restored her to full health and energy.
He observed it all with an inscrutable expression on his face. “You are still consumed with fear, Princess.”
“And you will simply live with the taste,” she snapped.
Disbelief scythed through her when amusement gleamed in his eyes.
She sat against the headboard of the bed. “What did I see?”
“You saw my king’s Cerja.”
“What is it?”
There was the slightest of hesitation, then the corner of his mouth tightened. “Every Darkan is born with a Cerja—a tattoo of a beast that lives in us inked on our back. What you saw was my king’s beast. He summoned it for your protection.”
The memory of Drac’s fangs, the cruelty that had lined his face, red eyes, and the blackest of charka all around him rose in her thoughts. She sucked in her breath, her hands fluttering to her throat. He had bitten her. Had the king thought to protect her from him? “He called forth his beast for my protection?”
“King Gidon would have taken my life to protect you,” Drac said, his voice implacable.
“Why did you bite me?”
He lowered his lashes, before lifting his eyes to her. The regret in them was unmistakable. “Forgive me, Princess. I lost control and I...” A grimace flashed across his face. “I have yet to figure out why I attacked you.”
“You also saved me.” She allowed her gaze to caress the paleness of his features, the dark mark that curve from hair to left cheek, the harsh beauty of his face, waiting for his response. He could not comprehend how frightening he looked crouched before her. Saieke’s curiosity warred with her disquiet, and his silence prompted her to speak, “All Darkans possesses a beast?”
He smiled, but it did not reach his eyes. “Yes, but not all can do what my king did. Only the oldest and most powerful of our kind can summon our Cerja to a corporeal form.”
“I had not thought your king was an elder.”
He hesitated. “Gidon is not. My king has a power only a few can comprehend.”
Saieke sensed he was not comfortable talking about his people. “Why do you share this knowledge with me? Many are ignorant about your kind.”
"To allay your fear."
Saieke hesitated. “I will honor the oath I made even if I fear your people.”
Drac tensed subtly. “I assuage your terror because I do not like it.”
He did not like it? “Don’t you mean that you feed on my fear?” Saieke’s raked her fingers through her tumbled hair. “I know you consume my dark emotions, and you enjoyed my torment.”
He reached out as if to touch her hair and paused. He spoke with quiet intensity, “I have known fear, Princess. Have felt its bitter taste, smelled its fetidness, and I do not wish for you to have such feelings. I did not enjoy your pain. I am deeply regretful you have known such horrors.”
“I doubt you know my fear.” Her fingers tightened on the coverlets.
“I live in a world you cannot comprehend, Princess. I have been broken. Limbs shattered. Spine severed and the stench of my blood all I could inhale. I understand. Be assured that you will not be harmed in my kingdom again,” he vowed.
She believed him. Saieke’s heart clamored as she gazed into the cruelty that lined his features. “Thank you," she whispered at a loss with what else to say. Though, it was hard to imagine the predator crouched before her ever being broken as he had described.
“May I touch you?” His voice was gravelly and hoarse, and an unexpected shiver of anticipation cascaded down her spine.
“Yes,” she pushed the words past her lips, her heart beating a painful cadence.
His lips curved into a smile. He was such a vicious beauty. Oh, why am I so intrigued when I should be petrified?
He held one of her hands, his touch so gentle it was startling. “Though I do not know what prompted the desire to bite you, I promise I will not lose control around you again. Even now, I can taste the anxiety you feel at my closeness, but I swear you have no cause to fear me.”
She wetted her lips, a nervous reaction, and he jerked visibly.
“I will try,” she promised.
A fleeting smile touched his lips. “Thank you. How many I make amends?”
She hesitated. “Amends for?”
“Hurting you.”
“You did not hurt me.” Why did she say that?
His gaze landed on her throat. "Then for scaring you. For my people harming you." He pulled his eyes from the arch of her neck with evident reluctance. “Please speak.”
“I do not know the fate of my Queen’s blades. I…I would be grateful to know if they lived or perished.”
“You will have that knowledge, I promise.” The timbre of his voice was rough and thick, but soothing.
“You are staring, Darkan.”
The slightest of hesitation, then he said, “You are beautiful.”
Oh. "As are you," slipped from Saieke unbidden.
He arched a brow. “I have been called many things, but never beautiful.”
She smiled. “I am glad to have been your first.”
His obsidian eyes darkened if that were even possible. He slowly rose and leaned into her, giving her enough time to retreat. With her heart beating in trepidation, Saieke angled her head down slightly to meet his ascent. Fear and lust swirled in her blood when his lips met hers, then he stilled. Uncertainty and liquid heat, hot and scalding, rushed through her, leaving her breathless.
A Darkan is kissing me.
Not just any Darkan, but Drac. His eyes pierced hers, swirling with a need she could not identify. She waited for him to continue, and he did nothing. The silky hardness of his lips lured her into a tentative exploration. She softened her lips, opening them slightly.
His taste was evocative. Though he did not respond, it was the most thrilling kiss Saieke had ever had. The soft press of her lips teased his mouth open, and she moaned, overwhelmed by need. She felt a hard pulse of emotion from him that was contained so quickly, she could not decipher it. Smoky threads of chakra coated his skin. She felt the curve of his lips beneath hers, and that was all the warning she got before he plundered.
His mouth moved under hers with raw, seductive force. He rose to his full height, lifting her to meet him. Saieke moaned into his mouth as her body pressed flush against his. He cupped her cheeks, and her mouth was now under his, being thoroughly ravished. His tongue beckoned and suckled, pooling heat deep inside her core. Everything about him called to the primal instincts buried in her, and she responded greedily to the dominance of his touch.
She wrenched herself from his arms, stumbling as her feet touched the ground. Saieke backed away, stopping when the bed hit the back of her knees. She had never felt such gratification from a kiss before. The ache from it was deep and satisfying, too satisfying.
His eyes ran over her in a predatory manner, caressing her lips that felt bruised, then over the coverlet that she still had clutched to her. Saieke sputtered when he wrenched the covers from her hands, leaving her naked.
His chakra throbbed violently, and the smoky wisps became darker than before. Her first impulse was to rush behind the screen and dress, but she forced herself to stand still under his perusal and fought the wave of mortification that turned her body pink.
She had thought to seduce him, and now she stood in front of him in all her naked glory, and he seemed utterly fascinated.
She might not have to do anything at all to lose her purity. But unease flared, for she was also undoubtedly fascinated.
7
Drac had never felt such arousal in all his three hundred years, or such pleasure from looking at a naked body. Darkan women were tall a
nd honed like warriors, lithe and sleek. The princess was all curves. Her breasts were heavy yet firm, and her flat stomach flared into hips that were wide and alluring. His gaze roamed from her hips down and paused, then moved to her thighs which were well toned and curved. She was so sensually formed his teeth ached.
Need rode him hard and deep. He could feel the princess' anxiety as she faced him, and he could smell her wetness. She smelled sweet. He knew with bone-deep certainty her heated arousal on his tongue would taste even better.
He wanted her with a fierceness that was overpowering, but she was the heir and princess to a throne and must be a virgin. She could not handle anything he could throw at her, much less a fucking. He wanted her underneath him, seated so deep on his cock she would never forget the feel of him. That was not something he should be contemplating, but he and his beast agreed about wanting her.
Take.
The longer he stared, the more she reacted to his proximity. Her eyes sparkled with uncertainty, wickedness, and temptation, and his fingertips burned with the need to glide over her skin, down to her slit to test her readiness.
Remember what is at stake if I succumb.
Never had he been so drawn to a female. Drac had always been careful to bed women who understood the viciousness buried him in, who embraced their darkness similarly. His brother had fallen in love with a woman who refused to draw upon her demon powers, reviling the very essence from which she could never separate. Assassins had come with the shadows and had taken her as a bargaining chip. And she'd been an effective one. Vlad had betrayed their kingdom in the name of saving a woman who’d been too weak to fight and hold on until he arrived. Then he’d relinquished his soul to his demon when he lost her.
The torment of fighting his brother, of being unable to kill him as he ravaged so many of their people, drunk on the malevolence of the power of his demon, beat in Drac’s blood. Vlad had been unstoppable. Terrifying.
Drac had already proven that harm to the princess made him dangerous. And he risked the same loss of self even to contemplate taking her as a mate.
