Alaric was on his knees, crouching over Aliceanna’s face, shoving his pants open, and Charity realized what was about to happen. Aliceanna was going to suck Alaric. Aliceanna was going to give Alaric head.
Charity gasped.
Alaric jerked around, and Charity clamped her hand over her mouth a few seconds too late. She blew out her candle and stepped away from the door, careful not to step too hard on any of the floorboards. She retreated until she felt the opposite wall on her back. Chest heaving, praying Alaric wouldn’t come out to investigate, she froze. Only then did she realize the hall was lined with deep wall recesses that held candles. Blowing out her lone candle hadn’t done a thing.
Ten seconds past, fifteen, twenty, nothing happened. She’d been lucky. What on earth would she say to her host had he caught her playing the voyeur? She could try the truth, she supposed. That she’d come down to the library to find a book and found something far more interesting instead. That she’d never seen such interaction between two men before and had let her curiosity get the better of her.
She turned to leave, grateful she didn’t have to think up any such excuses. She made it five steps when a voice stopped her cold in her tracks.
“Leaving so soon?”
She turned slowly, her face heating with embarrassment. As soon as she saw him, his large frame filling the hall, she wanted to kick herself. “I’m sorry,” she said, and launched into her looking for a book excuse. But he cut her off.
“Do I look offended?”
He held the flaps of his shirt wide as he stood, hands on hips. His fastened jeans seemed tighter now, more snug as they hugged every muscle. And his boots gleamed.
“No,” she answered. “I just didn’t want you to think ill of me.” Apology made, she turned to leave, then screamed. She’d walked straight into an unyielding mass of…man. She jumped back, hand over her mouth, as Alaric stared down at her. Like a fool, she looked over her shoulder at the library door where he should have been standing. Where he had been standing a second ago. “How’d you do that?”
“I only wish to know,” he said, stepping closer to her, “if you came here to see Damon and me fuck Aliceanna, or if you came here because you want us to fuck you?”
She backpedaled until she came against another unyielding mass she wished had been a wall.
Damon’s arousal was unmistakable as it pressed into her back.
“Has Raven sent us a gift, Alaric?” Damon asked. “A pretty toy to play with.” He wrapped his arms around her, and the clean fresh scent of soap filled her nostrils. He hugged her to him as though he was a four-year-old girl, and she was his new baby doll. “I do hope he has. I would so love to play with her.”
Alaric stepped closer to her, bunching her hair in one hand and bringing the mass of it to his nose to smell. She felt the rough press of his jeans through the thin material of her robe and cursed herself for not wearing something a little less revealing.
“I can’t say, Damon, but I hope so as well. She smells of apples.”
She felt Damon press closer to her, felt his erection press harder into her back. Then she felt his hands on the ties of her robe. Before she had a chance to protest, he pulled the loops free and eased the robe wide. Alaric stared down at her naked body, grinning his feline smile and suddenly she felt like the mouse.
“Why Raven let you out of his sight, I cannot say.”
“To come to us,” Damon insisted, running his hands over her thighs as he spoke.
She knew she should do something. Run, scream, anything, but she didn’t do a thing. She stared up at Alaric as he got his fill of her. This had truly been the most bizarre day of her life, and from the look of things, it was about to get a whole lot stranger.
What better way to get over Raven than to enjoy the company of two attractive men? Even if the men were vampires. But she knew even before the thought was finished that she’d never be able to go through with such a thing. She’d only just been with Raven.
She could feel Damon reaching around her to take her hair from Alaric. She nearly cried out when he jerked her hair back, pulling her head against his chest so her neck was bared for Alaric.
Alaric panted, stepped closer to her until his jeans were rubbing her naked flesh raw. He reached inside her robe and wrapped large hands over her breasts. Damon was at her neck, running his tongue along her carotid and covering her with tiny kisses. When Alaric bent forward and closed his mouth over hers, she was too surprised to protest.
She gasped as the heat of him enveloped her. His lips were soft against hers, insistent, and she could feel the desire to struggle slowly ebbing away.
“See, Alaric,” Damon insisted, “she wants us to play with her. Have you ever been with two men before, Charity?”
She couldn’t answer now with Alaric’s tongue filling her mouth, claiming her as if he owned her. When Alaric pulled away, she was gasping for breath.
“Take her into the library, Damon. We can’t very well have her right here in the hall.”
Damon wrapped his arms around her and lifted. When he entered the library with her, and she heard Alaric close the door behind them, a slow panic began to build deep within her. She was alone in the library with two men who really wanted to have sex with her. And they weren’t just two men, they were two vampires. Aliceanna was still there, crouched on the floor, but she wouldn’t be any help. Not in her present state of submissive bliss.
Damon set her on the floor, spun her to face him, then shoved her back so she landed on the couch. She fell back, her robe falling open again. She fumbled to close it as Alaric came to stand beside Damon. Seeing the pair of them standing there, she knew any woman would kill to be in her position, but really all she wanted, all she needed was Raven. And she would have him. If it was the last thing she did.
She was about to tell them as much when she looked up to see they were both smiling down at her. Smiling with fangs. Vampires. They were going to kill her.
She shot to her feet. “I’m sorry,” she apologized, “but there’s been some mistake. See, I’m with Raven, and I just came here to get a book. I saw the two of you, and I know I shouldn’t have stared, but I did. You’re both very attractive. Beautiful, even, and I couldn’t help myself.” As she gave her speech she backed to the library doors. She was more than a little surprised when she felt the press of hard wood against her back.
“Are you sure, beautiful?” Damon asked.
“We’d be very gentle with you,” Alaric promised.
“And we’d only drink a little of your blood.”
She fumbled behind her back for the doorknob, too terrified to take her eyes off them. Too terrified to do anything but get the heck out of there. When she finally found the knob, it took her three tries to pull the door open. But when she did, she apologized one last time and ran.
As she made her way down the hall, she heard male laughter echoing in the library behind her. She felt her face heat with embarrassment for the thousandth time this day and knew she was the biggest sucker. Of course they weren’t going to bite her. Not after Raven had gone to so much trouble just to get her there. But she couldn’t help playing the fool. So much had happened to her in one day, it wasn’t bizarre that she was feeling more than a little emotional and flighty. Anyone in her position would.
Five minutes later when she’d managed to find the parlor, she was still smarting.
“Did you enjoy your time with Alaric?”
She spun around on her heels. To her vast surprise, Raven was seated in a corner of the parlor, staring up at the fresco of Apollo. The candlelight danced across his features as he spoke to her in a deceptively quiet voice she had to strain to hear.
“Alaric?” she parroted like a fool.
“And Damon, or course. We cannot forget him. Nor can we forget how you accused me of playing the cad. You accuse me, then run off to bed another.”
She gaped. “What?”
“Did you enjoy yourself?”
; At first, she’d been too stunned to form a coherent response, but as his accusation sunk in, a slow anger replaced her surprise. “I didn’t do anything with Alaric or Damon. Not that it’s any of your business.”
Raven got to his feet. In the dim candlelight with the shadows casting shades of darkness around the room, he seemed to loom larger than anything else in the parlor. “Is it like that now?”
“Raven…” She shook her head. He wasn’t making any sense. He had said he’d come for her if she didn’t return to the room in an hour, and it was true that more than an hour had passed, but if he’d come looking for her, why was he sitting in the parlor in near darkness? “Azriel?” Her voice was tentative, cautious.
Raven approached. “You know Azriel can’t get in. At least not without us knowing. Don’t try to change the subject.”
Instinctively she took a step back. “Maybe you found a way around it. It was you, Azriel, that said the student can’t outsmart the teacher.”
He shrugged, as though he was becoming bored with this conversation and had better things to do. “True. But I’m not Azriel.”
“Then who are you? I know you’re not Raven.”
“Do you, now?”
He advanced on her until she was flush against the wall. She was damned tired of retreating from men, but in this instance she really couldn’t do anything but retreat. She didn’t have a clear idea of what she was dealing with, and she didn’t want to react emotionally. What she did know was that the man before her wasn’t Raven. Raven was imposing, but he’d never been intimidating. This thing before her was intimidating.
“Run,” he said in a hoarse voice, the rotting stench of his breath filling her nostrils.
She screamed.
He slammed one hand over her mouth so hard she felt her teeth bite into her lip. She fell back into the wall and slid towards the floor, damning herself for her weakness. He wrapped his arm around her waist and hefted her to her feet. In one move, he’d thrown her over his shoulder and started for the door. She kicked and punched, but it wasn’t any good.
In three great steps, he was at the door. As he pulled it open, she heard footfalls on the stairs.
Raven, she thought. Raven will save me.
But already her captor was stepping out into the chill night air with her. The cold bit into her exposed skin making gooseflesh break out along her body. She damned herself again for not finding a thicker, winter robe to wear instead of the sheer, thigh-length robe she’d opted to put on.
“Raven!” she screeched.
But her captor carried her out to the street. He unceremoniously jerked her from his shoulder so she landed hard on her feet in the middle of the road.
“Master,” she heard him say.
In the seconds it took him to bow, his entire body made a metamorphous that had her screaming out again. The long dark hair that looked so like Raven’s fell from his head in great clumps. The soft olive skin turned dry and rotten. The lean body withered, horns appeared on his head, and as she watched, his sable eyes turned milky gray.
A ghoul.
Her legs wobbled for a moment, but through sheer force of will, she stayed on her feet. At least she had until she heard the voice speak behind her.
“Charity,” it said.
Over her captor’s shoulder, she saw a red head appear in the doorway to Alaric’s house. Aliceanna, then Alaric and Damon. Myrddin appeared. Then Raven was there, pushing his way past them and onto the front steps.
“Raven!” she called again. Her previous anger with him forgotten.
Raven started forward, then stopped in his tracks. He stared.
She felt strong arms close around her, enveloping her.
“One step, and I’ll hurt her,” Azriel said from behind her.
“You need her,” Raven countered.
Azriel tightened his hold on her. His strength was immovable but still she struggled against him. She opened her mouth to scream, but he clamped a hand over her mouth.
He chuckled. “Try me, Raven.”
Raven didn’t move.
To Charity, he said, “Now you’re mine.”
Raven, help me, she thought.
“He can’t save you. Nobody can save you from me.”
Turning her head, she looked up into the gray eyes of Azriel and knew he spoke truth. Already his wings were spread wide. As she watched, they began to flap.
He pulled her closer. Beneath her, the ground fell away.
They were rising.
“Raven!” she screamed. “Raven!”
TO BE CONTINUED…
About the Author
Adrienne has always loved the arts. As a young girl she used to entertain her friends by writing stories for them then acting them out. She had a particularly good time creating unpleasant scenarios for certain characters, then naming those characters after annoying schoolmates.
As she matured, her forays into writing matured as well. Currently, she spends all of her free time creating new characters and writing stories. She views books as the ultimate form of escape. “Within the pages of a book you can go anywhere and be anything you want to be,” she says of reading. “Anything is possible with a book.”
The Nephilim War: Book One Page 11
