Queen Takes King

by Joely Sue Burkhart

  Reaching around her, he cupped her pussy, stroking through the blood to make her quiver between us. “Tell us, my queen. Tell us exactly what you want so we may fulfill your desire.”

  I waited, my heart thudding heavily, aching to touch her again, but afraid to hope she would want to include me again. I had lived with a service I dreaded for so long that I’d given up on ever having something more. Something precious. And now that I had hope of something more…

  I didn’t want to lose that joy so quickly.

  “I want you both inside me. And I want you both to feed on me while you fuck me.”

  Rik

  Hovering over her back, I fought to keep my emotions from bleeding out as profusely as my wrist.

  My queen needed.

  Our queen.

  She trusted me to see to that need. Even more importantly, her second Blood was waiting for my orders on how best to satisfy her.

  Never being around Blood before, she might not understand the subtle power shifts among us. With only the three of us so far, we’d been able to avoid in-fighting, though she’d seen how Daire had been upset today with Guillaume’s approach. I knew from experience that as the number of her Blood grew, so too would the difficulties in keeping each Blood feeling useful and needed. Let alone loved.

  Guillaume de Payne could have easily toppled me from my position as alpha. He had the years, experience, power, and yeah, the bigger dick, though I’d seen alphas with smaller dicks that were still able to dominate the pack. As Daire had noted, Guillaume was hung like a stallion and could have fucked my rock troll senseless if he’d wanted.

  If he’d wanted.

  And that was the catch, because he didn’t want to take my position. Even though both of us knew he could have.

  Even if that meant I denied him access to our queen.

  Which I wouldn’t do, ever, because she needed him as much as she needed me.

  I smeared blood across her buttocks, down her hips and over his hands. “Our queen needs.” At least my voice didn’t break, though my dick was hard enough to cut diamonds.

  “Then we should fill her up.” Guillaume sounded like my rock troll had one fist around his throat and the other on his dick.

  “Yes,” she growled, fighting his grip.

  “Let her take what she wants.”

  He loosened his fierce hold and she sank down over his cock with a blissful groan. We didn’t rush her, though she didn’t seem to have difficulty with his size. She worked him deep and let out another throaty cry that made him arch up beneath her. Her bond shimmered, my blood burning on her skin. “Rik…”

  I pressed against her, nuzzling her ear. “I’m here, my queen.”

  “I want you too.”

  I drew my index finger down her spine, smearing blood between her cheeks. More blood. I needed her aroused to a fevered pitch. Guillaume rocked up into her, a slow, easy ride meant to stoke her need. I bled on her, waiting, lightly stroking her back and buttocks. Waiting for her breath to catch on a moan, her pleasuring rising toward climax. Waiting while I drew my dick down that crevasse, smearing blood, testing whether she would change her mind or have any last-minute qualms. Up until a handful of days ago, she’d been a virgin. Taking two men at once, especially one of Guillaume’s size—

  “If you don’t get inside me I’m going to die.”

  11

  Shara

  My skin was on fire. With G’s big cock jammed inside me, it should have been enough, but I still burned.

  I wanted Rik inside me too. I wanted to be between them, connecting them, the conduit that powered a detonation the likes of which none of us had ever felt before.

  Rik pushed the head of his dick against me, and all I could think about was how he’d taken Daire. How hard he’d pounded him.

  “Not yet,” he growled against my ear. “I have to break you in gentle like first. I may not even get all the way inside you this first time before you come.”

  “I’ll make it,” I swore, even though my legs were quivering beneath me. I wasn’t even doing any of the work, not with G doing that slow rub inside me, while Rik eased deeper, letting the natural rock and lift of my hips ease him in.

  Hot chills raced down my arms. I groaned, a guttural, rough cry somewhere between a plea and agonized pleasure. So full. I burned all over. I clawed at G’s shoulders and he cupped my face, pulling my mouth down to his.

  I gave him my tongue, lightly touching the tips of his fangs. A pang rocked through me. :I wish…:

  :You will.: They both said in unison.

  Rik gave me inch by inch, more of his weight, until he was finally balls deep.

  I twitched between them, though I could barely move. They didn’t have to thrust; they breathed, and it shifted me, higher and lower, their dicks stirring inside me. Pressure built inside me. I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t have room in my body for air. Not when they filled every corner of me.

  :Ready?: Rik asked. His bond glowed like the hottest forge.

  My heart thudded. My thoughts had slowed. My brain incapable of words. All I could manage was a deep, “mmmm.”

  He sank his fangs into my shoulder, gripping the top of that muscle like a leopard taking his mate. G took my throat.

  My blood erupted like a volcano. They both groaned against my skin, their hunger surging through our bonds. I fed them. I gave them power. Rik’s rock troll swelled inside him, ever bigger, badder, a nightmare for anything or anyone who threatened me. G’s stallion screamed a warning into the night, the thunder of his hooves rumbling the ground.

  I soared in a night sky. Twirling, wings furled like black velvet to catch the soft sighing wind.

  It took me awhile to find my way back to them.

  G’s face softened when I opened my eyes. “There you are, my queen.”

  Rik had shifted us so we all lay on our sides. He had my back, as always, his nose pressed to the hollow beneath my ear.

  I yawned so hard my jaw ached. “Is Daire okay? I can’t believe we didn’t wake him up.”

  “He’s still alive,” Rik said, his voice tinged with amusement. “Though he’ll be pissed when he realizes what he missed in the morning.”

  G tucked my face up beneath his chin. “I think perhaps you should skip feeding from him tomorrow, my queen.”

  I felt the ragged scar ringing his throat against my cheek, and it made me want to cry. I couldn’t believe he’d endured that kind of horror. That someone had actually cut his head off. And he’d lived.

  “I lived so I could be here with you.”

  12

  Daire

  “Why the fuck didn’t one of you kick me in the head and wake me up?” I growled at Guillaume, pacing back and forth in the kitchen. “I can’t believe you motherfuckers were menaging right there beside me and I didn’t hear a thing.”

  “I’ll kick you next time.” He laughed. “Though it might not be in the head.”

  Fucking hell. I wasn’t mad exactly. Or even jealous. I just wanted to be a part of everything she did. I wanted to wallow in her pleasure as much as her blood, even if she didn’t touch me at all. I would have still felt everything she enjoyed.

  Pain splintered through the bond so viciously I dropped the coffee carafe in the sink. Rik. I raced for the stairs, Guillaume behind me. I hoped he had some blades on him because the fuck if I knew where my ketars were. :What’s wrong?:

  He didn’t answer. When I threw open the bedroom door, I saw why.

  A gigantic hooded black cobra had wound around him. Her coils were as big as Rik’s thighs, and that was not something to sneeze at. She hissed and bared vicious knife-long fangs, making me flinch back against the wall.

  “Well, I guess her fangs have come in,”Guillaume said mildly.

  I would have given him a look like dude, are you fucking crazy? But I was afraid if I looked away, she’d drag me into her coils too. There were a lot of ways I’d willingly die for my queen, but squeezed to death or eaten by a cobra was surpri
singly not too high on the motherfucking list.

  “No,” Rik gasped. “Stay back. It’s all right.”

  “The fuck it’s all right,” I retorted. “I feel your pain.”

  “Pain. Okay.” He took shallow breaths, because that’s all her coils would allow. “Don’t hurt her.”

  Guillaume raised his hands and softly crooned to her. “All is well, my queen. No one will take him from you.”

  She swayed, watching him a few moments. But as soon as he took a step toward her, her hood flared wide, revealing a ruby-red diamond against her black scales, and she scooted back against the wall, dragging Rik with her.

  The snap of another bone was gruesomely loud. A rib. I felt it puncture his lung. Heard the blood starting to clog his breathing. But he didn’t scream. He wouldn’t. He didn’t want to scare her, even if she was killing him.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw one of my ketars against the wall. Slowly, I edged toward it, hoping Guillaume could keep her attention locked on him. But what could I do with my favorite weapon? Could I really cut her? My queen? I might as well cut out my heart instead.

  Another pop, and this time Rik couldn’t hold back the ragged gasp of pain.

  “Daire,” Guillaume said softly. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

  I looked back up at her head and the cobra’s slitted eyes were locked onto me. Watching me. She knew damned well what I was doing. Now that she had my attention, she slowly tightened her lower coil on Rik’s leg. Tighter. I felt the stretch of tendons in his knee, the joint close to tearing apart.

  “Okay,” I rasped out and backed away from the weapon. I couldn’t fucking see because I was fucking crying. I hated feeling his pain. I hated feeling so helpless. But more, I hated that right now, I’d thought about slicing him free of her coils.

  I was fully prepared to hurt her in order to protect Rik. Hurt my queen. It was unthinkable. Unconscionable for a Blood to even contemplate allowing his queen to be hurt, let alone doing it himself. Yet I couldn’t let Rik suffer. I loved him too fucking much.

  :She can heal me.: Even his mental voice was soft but anguished. :From anything. Remember. Who she is.:

  Goddess. If I had to endure feeling him die, waiting on Shara to resurrect him, I was going to fucking lose my mind.

  She struck hard and fast, sinking those long fangs into Rik’s abdomen. It happened so fast he didn’t even cry out. Maybe he couldn’t. She lifted her head, and rather than blood, something black oozed from the punctures that were almost as big as my fist. I felt tears deep inside him. Nicked organs. Torn arteries. Blood dripped from his nose and leaked from his mouth. But he still managed to fucking smile.

  “Worth it. Fangs.”

  His skin started to blacken, his body swelling. She hadn’t used those fangs to feed on his blood—but to pump him full of venom.

  “Fuck.” I fell to my knees. “Rik.”

  Guillaume dropped a hand on my shoulder and I leaned against his legs. Rik turned his head to look at us, his face pale and clammy. “G. Take care. Of them.”

  Shaking his head, Guillaume replied, “I’m no alpha. And like you said, she can heal you of anything. Even death.”

  “You can.” He gasped, his breath a horrible wheeze. “Just in case.”

  I could feel how hard it was for him to breathe. His heart labored to pump blood that was slowly thickening in his veins into a poisonous sludge.

  “It’s almost time,” Guillaume whispered. “Hang in there. It’s almost over.”

  “Time for what?” I was terrified he meant time for Rik to die. “You’ve seen this before?”

  He hesitated a moment, his fingers digging into my shoulder. “I’ve lived it.”

  Guillaume

  I remembered living through this nightmare, though blanks made it difficult for me to piece it all together.

  Blanks—that might have involved Shara’s mother who’d been wiped from living Aima memory. It made a dreadful kind of sense. She was a cobra now, and it had been a cobra queen that helped me kill Desideria despite my oath that I would never lift my hand in violence toward her in any way.

  Daire made a choked cry and I squeezed his shoulder. “I lived through it. He’ll pull through just fine.”

  “Right.” Daire growled. “So says the knight who had his head chopped off.”

  A low rattling drew my attention back to the bed. It wasn’t a purr, exactly, nor a hiss, but a deep guttural vibration that rolled from her sleek body. She struck again, but not with her fangs. She latched onto the puncture wounds and started to suck, her coils sliding over him in a sinuous feast.

  “Her venom changes the blood,” I whispered, watching in a sort of grisly fascination. “If you or I were to feed on him right now, we’d die. Even me.”

  “Why is she doing it, though?”

  “She’s using him to make herself, and him, and eventually us, indirectly, poisonous.”

  Daire shuddered. “Will she bite us too?”

  “Undoubtedly,” a man said to my right.

  I whirled, blade sliding down my wrist to my hand. An Asian man about Daire’s height stood beside us. I didn’t wait to see who he was. I struck, hard, intending to behead the motherfucker who’d sneaked past the human guards at the gate and then three Blood to invade the queen’s bedchamber.

  The man just leaned aside and I missed him entirely.

  “Is that how you greet all her Blood?”

  Daire surged to his feet. “How the fuck did you get in?”

  “I’m surprised it was so easy to approach her,” the man drawled, making Daire’s cat bristle. Claws shot out of his fingers and he snarled. “But I suppose you are a bit… distracted at the moment.”

  I opened my inner senses, using not just my eyes but my nose, ears, and mind to feel for this intruder. But I felt or sensed nothing from him. He didn’t have a scent. I could hear the slowing, labored heartbeat of our alpha, but not this man standing next to me. He might as well have been a mirage.

  “Good,” Rik wheezed. “Welcome. Help. Them.”

  The man approached the bed despite our feeding cobra queen, and my estimation of the size of his balls went up considerably. He went down on his knees beside the bed and took Rik’s hand. “I will help them and you in any way I can, alpha.”

  Rik looked rough. His skin white and oddly loose, like his body had dissolved underneath. The cobra was slowly transforming back into our queen, each swallow of his poisoned blood pushing the scales and coils back inside her. I feared that he wouldn’t last long enough to see her fully transformed though.

  I wished I could remember exactly what had happened when the cobra had come to me. I remembered so little. Maybe that was a blessing. Maybe Rik wouldn’t remember his queen killing him, though I don’t know that Daire would ever be able to get over it.

  She threw her head back and licked her lips as the last of the scales sank into her skin. A small trickle of red dripped from the punctures on Rik’s stomach, not black. So she’d sucked all the poison—and a great deal of his blood—back out. His heart stuttered. There wasn’t anything left to pump.

  Daire scrambled across the floor and grabbed Rik’s hand from the new Blood, hugging his limp arm to his chest. “Shara, please. You have to save him. Shara!”

  She blinked and stretched languorously, as if she’d only now started to awaken from a glorious dream. Her gaze fell on the new Blood and her eyes flickered with shock.

  “Shara!”

  She jerked attention down to Rik and her eyes flew wide.

  We all felt her horror splintering through the bond, but she didn’t hesitate. She slashed her wrist open on her new fangs without thinking and pressed her arm to Rik’s mouth.

  He was too far gone to feed. Her blood spilled from his mouth, his eyes glassy and unseeing.

  She held her wrist over one of the punctures and allowed her blood to drip into the wound. Eyes closed, she sank into him. Our bond crackled with lightning, rippling with power.
She surged through him like a bolt of pure energy, sealing the injuries she’d caused, casting sparks through his body. Cells refired that her venom had killed. Her blood raced through his veins, filling his heart. Pumping him full of anti-venom and power at once.

  He hauled in a deep breath and Daire buried his head in the crook of Rik’s elbow. His eyes focused on her and he lurched up and sank his fangs into her throat. She held him, stroking his back, dripping tears and blood on him while he fed.

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered, her voice breaking. “I thought it was a dream. I killed you. I can’t believe…” She sucked in a ragged breath and squeezed her eyes shut, curling around him. “I fucking killed you.”

  He wrapped one arm around her back and hugged Daire to him with his other, but he didn’t lift his mouth from her throat. :And you fucking resurrected me too, my queen.:

  She shuddered against him, hiding her face from us. Shame and guilt thudded through her, tightening her throat.

  I could not abide that feeling from my queen. I joined the new Blood on my knees beside her and dropped my forehead to her thigh. “Your power is great, my queen. The cost is high. But we willingly pay that cost to be here with you.”

  “Was it my stupid oath that did this? Because if Rik had to die to give me fangs, then I would have rather done without.”

  I lifted my head. “I don’t think so, my queen. I’ve seen this happen before.”

  She finally turned to look at me, her eyes gleaming with tears. I’d seen eyes like hers before. Dark, but glittering with diamonds. Haunting, mesmerizing eyes. “When?”

  “When your mother came to me.”

  “But you said you didn’t know her name.”

  “I didn’t. I still don’t. Even though you gave me her name last night, I cannot pull it up in my mind. But when I saw your cobra, I remembered another cobra queen. I remember being envenomed like Rik. And that is how I was finally freed from Desideria. She drank from me and died of the poison my blood carried.”