by Scott, Helen
“I’m glad you think so,” I told him lightly.
He folded his arms across his chest, not even wincing when his wound rubbed against his body. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten what I asked you.”
I blinked at him, aware I’d completely forgotten, this time for a different reason—I was drunk on his blood—then our conversation surged back into me: pursang mate bonds and their peculiarities.
My jaw clenched as I thought back to my mother. Constantly hungry unless he fed her. Never healing, unless he gave her his blood. Even feeding from me had only assuaged the intense ache, making it bearable. And when I’d tapped out, the sickness she’d suffered from having to feed from the life force of other males, forced to swallow it down if she was to survive.
Sadly, and as confused as ever by my parents’ complicated relationship, I whispered, “I researched pursang mate bonds because my mother and father were mated, and I wanted to understand why they were the way they were together.”
9
Keiran
“Wait a minute,” Raven demanded. “Your mom was your dad’s thrall, wasn’t she?”
Marcella’s mouth tightened. “Yeah.”
“And he treated his mate like that?” I breathed, uncertain how I felt about that. Aside from horrified and disgusted which, I guessed, were essentially the same feeling.
She swallowed and nodded, her eyes focused on her knees. I got it. They were nice knees, but hell, the way she was studying them, it was like the answer for world peace was scrawled on the joints.
My fingers worked on their own volition as I rubbed her hands and tried to soothe her. I wanted to connect with her, wanted to gentle her to my touch, but equally, I wanted to please her. It was an intrinsic need inside my soul.
I’d pushed her away at the start, and now? Now I couldn’t get close enough to this woman.
“I’m sorry, Marcella,” I said after a few moments’ silence. “I can’t believe a male would put their mate through—”
“He pretty much tortured her,” she whispered. “And she let him. I never understood it. Ever. So, when I was dumped at Westbrook, and when I was old enough, I used to research mate bonds. There are whole fields of our science dedicated to its study. Its strengths and weaknesses, and why it’s so rare.” She shrugged. “I read as much as I could, and that’s how I know about the feeding.”
Raven shook his head, and it was like he had water stuck in his ear that he couldn’t get out. “Why would he do that? Why didn’t he cherish her? Pursang mates are, like you said, pretty unique.”
I shot him a look, trying to get him to stop going down that particular track, because Marcella didn’t need to hear it. But also, I could see how perplexed he was, and damn, I understood.
Even when Darius had been a prick over these past five days, he’d done everything in his power to see to Marcella’s comfort. With our resources, we had access to blood from clinics. Darius called on the council’s blood banks, their personal reserve, to get her blood. To feed her. It was like giving her expensive champagne over water. And whenever it had pooled in her mouth, spilling over the sides, the agony in his eyes as she rejected the nourishment had made me realize there was no bullshitting going on here.
Darius was tied to her just as we were.
“I-I think he was ashamed of her,” Marcella confessed in a hushed voice.
“Why would he be?”
“Because he was important and she wasn’t.” She shrugged. “I think he’s on the council.”
“You think?” Raven demanded, his eyes widening.
A hum escaped her. “I don’t know his name. I never even saw his face. He always covered it with a mask.”
For a second, we both gaped at her, then I realized the water in the bath had grown cold, and I murmured, “Sweetheart, do you want me to top up the bath or do you want to go back to bed?”
“Honestly?”
I tilted my head to the side. “Of course.”
“I want bed and to bind you both to me.”
A smile curved my lips. “You do, hmm? You sure you’re up for it?”
“No. I’m not sure. But I need the binding more than I need to soak.” She swallowed thickly. “Darius is my mate, I know that, but he has to earn mate status from me. You’re already there, and the only reason we haven’t consummated the bond is because of how we’ve been living the past few weeks.”
I nodded, understanding what she meant. Sure, we’d slept in motels every night, but we’d been exhausted. Traveling all hours, driving cross-country. Sexy times weren’t an option when you were in survival mode—no matter what Hollywood wanted everyone to believe.
“Are you strong enough, Marcella? Do you need more blood?”
She blinked at me. “Nope. I don’t. Remember, your blood is stronger than a human’s. I need less, but it has to come from a particular source.”
Raven bit his bottom lip, then murmured, “Come on, then, Miss Bossy.”
A smirk lit up her face. “Yeah. I am bossy, aren’t I?”
He grinned back at her and leaned down to help her get to her feet. I quickly joined in, and I knew she was lying the minute she was standing, because she was wobbling a little. Just when I was about to chide her for telling us untruths, she moaned, “Maker, your blood is potent, Raven.”
He chuckled. “I could have told you that, baby.”
She slapped his arm. “Hush, you.” Closing her eyes, Marcella pressed hard into both of us to keep herself standing, and as she did, we just stayed in place, looking at our mate’s totally nude form.
Marcella didn’t seem to mind. Didn’t appear to even notice. She just stood there, shamelessly and with confidence, and us? Well, I couldn’t speak for Raven, but my cock was starting to ache. Touching her had been both heaven and hell. I wanted more, but only if she was ready for it.
And her saying she was, when she wasn’t, seriously didn’t cut it with me.
A Sixth was precious to her Brotherhood, and I wasn’t about to fuck this up by acting like a horny, teenaged douche.
When she opened her eyes, I saw that they’d reverted from the quicksilver they’d been since she’d awoken. It was a start. Thank the Maker. Raven’s blood had hopefully nourished her, and if it hadn’t and she was lying, then she could take from me too, and that should take care of the rest.
We didn’t know Marcella as well as we knew each other, but we’d been stuck together for a while now. Living in and out of each other’s pockets, with zero privacy and zero space. I knew her well enough to know she was stubborn and a forward thinker. She’d feel there was no issue in lying about being satiated when she knew, very shortly, her fangs would be in my throat.
And man, if that didn’t make my cock twitch happily.
Before she could protest, I swung her out of the bath and into my arms. She clung to me, wrapping her hands around my neck to stabilize herself. When I placed her on the bathroom floor, Raven grabbed a towel and carefully dried her. As he did, she stared at me, looked me straight in the eye, and I could see her melting. Literally. Melting. As we tended to her.
This woman was my kryptonite. I swear it to the Maker. Why? Because she was just like us. She’d had no affection in her life. No love. No hugs, no kisses, no soft touches. She was dying for them just as we—even if dicks like Cade wouldn’t admit it—were.
I couldn’t stop myself from leaning forward and pressing my mouth to hers. The second I did, she opened her lips, and I speared her with my tongue. A moan escaped her as she began to tangle with mine, until her body was plastered against my own as she wriggled and writhed in an attempt to best me. But she couldn’t. I’d been wanting to tongue-fuck her mouth since day one, if I was being honest, and there was no way she could beat me here.
When she launched herself at me, I instantly caught her, and was well aware that her pussy was bare and wet—I could scent her arousal now that we were out of the water.
Grabbing her under the thighs, I began to stalk back to the
bedroom, and leaving Raven behind, I moved toward the bed, carefully lowering her to the mattress. Her hands tugged at my back, ripping my shirt here and there as she tried to get it off me. I pulled free from her kiss to drag it off, making the buttons ping against the ground, the bed, the ceiling, and the walls in my haste to strip, but I didn’t give a damn. I just needed to touch her. Skin to skin.
When my bare chest rubbed against her faintly damp breasts, my jaw clenched as the desire to bite them hit me. Fuck. I wanted nothing more than to do that. Wanted to leave my marks all over her pretty titties, and wanted to slurp up the blood my nips caused.
Shuddering, cock leaking pre-cum, I thanked Raven for readying her for us a few minutes ago, and dragged my cock out as I shoved down my jeans. When she saw my dick, the quicksilver in her eyes flashed once more, and that her Vampire was out and ready to party stirred my blood fiercely.
She’d been lying against the bed, watching me, but at that moment? The Vampire took over, and she grabbed me with her feet, hooking them around my hips and dragging me down, against her. Hell, she pulled me so hard I could have hurt her when I fell atop her, but I knew what she wanted.
Knew what she needed.
Me.
My blood.
My bond.
A shudder escaped me as her fangs tore into my throat, and the pain was so exquisite that for a second, I just let her feed. Then, my cock began to pound because it was rubbing against her cunt, her sweet, wet pussy and it was just more torture. To be so close, but not inside her, was an agony I wasn’t about to permit for much longer.
When I bucked my hips and managed to notch inside her, I considered it fate. Then, when I slid home and she snarled, pulling back to flash those quicksilver eyes at me again, I knew I loved her, because even though the Vampire was in charge and definitely hadn’t fed enough, she paused to kiss me.
The taste of my blood heightened both of our arousal, as I sucked her tongue into my mouth and let her fuck me there, as I fucked her pussy. My fingers dug ferociously into her thighs, and tomorrow, her butt would be bruised, but neither of us cared. All that mattered was here, now.
I shuddered as she clenched tightly around me, an out-of-the-blue orgasm sending her spinning out of control. She pulled back, her head falling against the mattress, her arms tense around my shoulders as she clung to me for the ride, and screamed out her pleasure.
Fuck, I couldn’t stop myself.
The move put her tits right in my face, and I leaned down, grabbed one of the curvy mounds between my teeth, and bit down. Hard.
Blood gushed into my mouth and I swallowed it, two deep mouthfuls, before I pulled back and fucking roared as the link surged into me.
Maker!
How the hell had I lived without this?
I felt Barclay and Cade rear to life somewhere in the city as they realized what was happening, and then I could sense Darius’s rage too. But I ignored that, ignored them, and focused on Marcella. This link… it was like a line, connecting me to her, and I could feel what she was feeling. See what she saw. I could even feel her heart beating, dammit.
At that moment, the exquisite pain she was experiencing was enough to have me pressing my forehead between her breasts, as I fucked her like she needed me to—hard and fast. She didn’t want soft, she wanted rough. The Vampire wanted that.
There’d be other moments where I could be tender, but now wasn’t one of them.
As I fucked into her, I focused on sending the few emotions I was feeling down the link. Need, for her. Hunger, for her. Want, of her. They turned around in an endless circle, and as they flooded her body, I felt her pulse around me again as she screamed out her second orgasm around my cock.
Mine came next. There was no way I could hold back, could stop myself from coming when she milked me dry, and even as my dick was twitching, as my body craved just to lie on top of her, to stay there, warm and comfortable, I couldn’t.
Darius wasn’t at the house, but after what had just happened?
He would be soon.
I tore myself from the haven that was Marcella, and ground out, “Raven? Claim her. Darius will be back shortly.”
I saw my brother leaning against the doorjamb, his cock in his fist as he watched us fuck. “So? What’s it matter?”
“He’s pissed. She’s awake, Rav. He must have wanted to claim her first.”
Raven’s eyes flashed, his own Vampire making a rare display of rage, but then he looked at Marcella, and softness took over his expression, followed by want.
I traced the path of his gaze and saw my cum starting to pool from her body, saw the way she was writhing on the bed as though she needed more. What? Blood?
Or the link?
I sought the answer from the link and knew the conduit inside her was seeking an anchor. She had Cade, Barclay, and me now. A half bond with Darius, which would be completed once they had sex, but Gideon and Raven? They were just phantom connections.
Raven grunted as he reached between her thighs and began to spread my cum all over her pussy. The sight shocked me but, equally, it had me swallowing thickly. Sex for us wasn’t as big of a deal as it was for humans. Guys fucked all the time and we didn’t label it anything. It was all about desire and want. We were feral in some ways.
But unusually enough, we’d never fucked. None of us.
To see him touch my cum? It had something stirring to life inside me, something that roared as he pushed into her with little hesitation, the extra lube aiding him as he guided his cock inside.
I reached up and began to touch her breasts, rubbing where I’d bitten, pinching her nipples, teasing them even as Raven sought her mouth. Whenever she moaned, I’d pinch down hard, and as I sought her down the link, I felt her joy in that bite of pain. The Vampire in us loved pain. It relished it, and I gave her it. Gave her what she needed as Raven fucked her too.
It wasn’t ideal.
I knew Raven liked to take his time with his lovers. He was gentle, soft, until things turned. I’d watched him before, even if I’d never joined in his or Cade’s games.
I felt how rushed this was, and it disappointed both of us. I hadn’t intended on getting off of her so soon either, but even though we were disappointed, Marcella wasn’t.
Her Vampire was too close to the surface to be enraged by what was happening, by our haste.
This was what the beast wanted.
Hard. Rough. Fast.
It wanted to mate. To bond, and to do so, it wanted to celebrate the feralness in us.
When she nipped at Raven’s throat, I sensed that she wasn’t as careless as she’d been with me, mostly because she’d fed from him earlier and didn’t want to take too much—so even in this, when she was out of control, she still maintained some control. That interested me, but what interested me more was watching Raven bite her, watching him suck down her blood, and feeling the link ping into being once more.
He roared with the sensations and she screamed as she came.
Like an elastic band, the connection was forged between us. I felt her exhausted satisfaction, and his delight. I felt Cade’s glee and Barclay’s humor.
But, more than anything, I felt Darius’s rage.
10
Darius
Fury.
Indignation.
The promise of violence.
That was all my Vampire was concerned with in that moment. Nothing else mattered.
It was making it hard to drive. I could barely concentrate as my mind filled with images of Marcella's body being plundered by Keiran and Raven. I knew they were with her, since they had been when I’d left, and the others were mostly out and about taking care of different things, like I was. It had been five days and nothing, now, the moment I leave her side she wakes and fucks them?
I could feel that my eyes had slipped to silver, the monster that lived within me coming to the fore as I got closer to the house where we had been staying. If I couldn't get control of myself before I got there,
I would end up cutting their dicks off when I saw them and grinding them into worm food. Not that my new mate would be okay with that.
With a sigh, I scrubbed my face with my hands and took a deep breath. I had already lost control in front of the Brotherhood once, and that could never happen again. I’d put too much time into developing them as a team, to honing them to meet my family’s needs. They had no idea how much had gone into their preparation on my end, and they never would.
Except now, everything was ten times more complicated, because the Maker had a sick sense of humor. I hadn't been thinking when I tried to close the wound on Marcella's neck. Hell, I hadn't been thinking when I bit her.
As soon as our blood combined, it was like a M.O.A.B. went off in my chest. All my bones felt cracked, my insides scooped out, and for all I knew my heart was completely destroyed and my blood was painting the wall in the entryway. At that moment, the organ I'd just been thinking of gave a well-timed thump. I was too old for it to beat regularly. I was too old for almost anything to work the way it should for one of our kind, and yet I functioned like a healthy thirty-year-old male.
Just because I was older than dirt didn't mean I knew everything though, clearly, as I couldn't get Marcella to wake up, but the two walkers had. I had pulled in favors, agreed to owe favors, which was not a position I enjoyed being in, even given up a prized possession, all to get different types of blood in the hopes that they would wake my mate from the sleep I seemed to put her into.
I would have done anything to get her to wake up, but for some reason none of it worked. Now, two pups had woken her and they had reaped the rewards, a reward I'd been hoping to claim for myself. It was bad enough feeling her orgasm in the shower, but to feel it over and over again at someone else's hands? I was ready to tear my hair out.
My mind filled with the memory of Marcella's blood. The hot, smoky, spicy taste of it, the luxurious feel of it on my tongue, the way it seemed to flood my cock before my belly, it was all enough to make me lose my damn mind. For my mate to have blood like that, was like waving a perfectly cooked steak under the nose of someone who hadn't eaten in days. My belly growled just at the thought of it.
