by Pam Godwin
“You’re nineteen.” I stared at the man with spider-like fangs.
“I’m twenty. Five months older than you.”
Icy coldness hit my core. I wasn’t shocked he knew my age. The day of my birth had been a monumental moment in new world history. It was the day of Eve’s death. The day the prophecy was fulfilled. What chilled me to the bone was his age. I wasn’t the first child born in the new world, but those who came before me were only a month older.
Arkendale was home to the first flood of women my mother had cured. They were the first to establish a human settlement and the first to become pregnant, making Arkendale a turning point for the human race. One month after those unprecedented pregnancies, my mother became pregnant with me.
“You’re lying.” I narrowed my eyes. “Even if you were born in Arkendale—”
“I’ve never been to Arkendale.” His gaze traced my rigid stance and flicked back to my face. “You need to loosen up.” He patted the floor beside him. “Sit down. I won’t bite, Dawn of Eve.”
“We’ve already established you know my full name.” Tension knotted my shoulders. “Seems only fair that I know yours.”
“All right.” He leaned forward, elbows braced on his knees, and pinned me with his stormy eyes. “Salem of Elaine.”
My breath hitched. “Elaine? No, that’s…not…”
A storm of denial and rage swelled inside me. Elaine’s child would easily be five months older than me.
But it was too coincidental for Elaine’s missing child to show up here, in this room, in fucking Canada of all places.
“Ah, so Michio told you?” A sick kind of pleasure lifted his cheeks. “Then you know about his relationship with my mother.”
“Relationship?” Beneath the calmness of my voice, I boiled with ferocious protectiveness of my father. “Elaine raped him. Repeatedly.”
“Ain’t that a bitch?”
Bang bang bang went my heart, that wretched sound. “My mother found Elaine in the mountains months before Arkendale. She cured Elaine. Protected her. And Jesse, my—”
“Your biological father.”
“Yes. Jesse’s friends took care of Elaine.”
“They fucked her, you mean.” His lack of emotion sent a chill across my skin. “She said I look like Tallis, your father’s Australian friend. I wouldn’t know because Tallis died before I was born. Because the Great Eve failed to save him.”
I knew the story, every gruesome detail. “My mother tried to save him. She did save Elaine. And you know how Elaine returned the favor? She teamed up with the Drone and turned against my entire family!”
He shrugged a shoulder.
Fuck him. I could still feel the pain in Michio’s voice when he told me how his body had been controlled by the Drone, how he couldn’t lift a finger to rescue my mother, couldn’t protect himself from Elaine.
I glared at that vile bitch’s son. “Michio was locked in a room, mentally aware but unable to command his muscles, while your pregnant mother violated him over and over. For months.” Feral hatred simmered my blood and growled through my voice. “Where is she?”
No one knew what happened to Elaine or her unborn child. Other than my mother, Elaine was the only woman Michio had ever bitten—a bite that had been against his will. It was unknown what the effects would be on her unborn child.
Salem sure as fuck didn’t look human. It wasn’t the fangs so much as those unnatural eyes, the way they diffused the passage of light, deflecting logic and hypnotizing to the point of confusion. Distorted, blinding, hot-flashy kind of confusion.
Was hot-flashy right? I didn’t know, but holy shit, I felt things—powerful, irresistible impulses throbbing frantically between my legs. I didn’t just want to touch his fangs. I wanted to taste them. The consuming ache in my pussy begged me to crawl onto his lap and grind against the hard length outlined by his pants. The sparks in his eyes emblazoned the world in licking, biting, thrusting lust. Nothing mattered but the need to make him my first, my last, and my everything in between.
It’s a trick. It’s a trick. Snap out of it.
I sank my teeth into my lip until the taste of blood coated my tongue. Until my vision cleared and my body cooled. “You’re bewitching me.”
“I’m not, but I gotta say… Virginity has never smelled so desperate.” His timbre vibrated through my womb. “So fucking exquisite. Before we get out of here, I’ll have you writhing on my cock, clenching around me, and begging until your voice is gone.”
“Um, yeah…good luck with that.” I blinked hard and pointed my glare on his bare feet. “Where the fuck is your mother?”
The air shifted, and in the next breath, he was on me. Trapped between the wall and the large muscles of his chest, I couldn’t pry my wrists from the shackle of his hand at my back, couldn’t turn my head away from the grip of his fingers on my jaw.
“My mother is dead.” His heart thumped against mine, his erection jabbed against my thigh, and his fangs teased the delicate skin on my neck.
“H-how?” I dug my fingernails into flesh, ripping at the muscled terrain of his forearm.
He pressed his teeth against my jugular. “I tore out her throat.”
CHAPTER FOUR
“Why did you tear out your mother’s throat?” I drew in a jagged breath, pinned between the wall and the hard length of Salem’s body. “Was it a hunger thing or a she’s-a-vile-bitch thing?”
“Does it matter?” He pinched my neck between his teeth, biting hard enough to spark pain without breaking skin.
“Yeah, it really does, seeing how your fangs are digging— For fuck’s sake, are you licking me?” I stiffened beneath the wet heat of his tongue, bracing for an impending puncture. “For the record, I’m not a vile bitch.”
He hummed, a deep pulsating rattle against my throat.
“Stop licking me.” My voice was strong, unwavering, despite the sinking dread in my stomach.
Not only had I been captured by an unknown monster, I was confined in a room with a bloodsucker. Every nerve in my body demanded I shove, kick, and inflict unholy hell. But if I moved, my jugular would not fare well.
“Let’s just…think this through for a second.” I swallowed against his aggressive nips. “Maybe our captor locked us together so we’d kill each other.” I twisted my wrists at my back, causing the shackle of his hand to clench tighter. “We should work together, find a way out.”
“Maybe our captor’s a voyeur and wants to watch me fuck you.” He sucked on the tendon straining in my throat. “We should have sex first then find a way out.”
“I’m serious.” I bucked my hips, panic surging as I inadvertently bumped the swollen length between his legs. “Get off me!”
He tightened his grip on my hands and jaw, his breaths quickening, growing deep and urgent. The sound of hunger.
“Do you always play with your food?” I quivered beneath the stinging scrape of his fangs.
“Only when she smells like desperation.”
“I’m not—” Something flickered in the corner of my eye.
Wavy lines illuminated in his throat. What the fuck? I stared harder, certain I was seeing his veins. They were…glowing. Pulsing. Shimmering like tributaries in the moonlight.
A dull throb lit at the base of my skull. Was I hallucinating? I tried to angle my head for a better look, but the hand on my jaw prevented me from moving.
The longer I strained my field of view, the sharper my eyesight became. Arteries spiderwebbed through his neck, bulging red and blue beneath porcelain skin. I tracked the pump of blood through each bend and branch, spellbound by the ferocity in which it flowed. Was he doing this on purpose? Somehow altering his physiology to scare me?
My vision zoomed in. I didn’t know how, but the network of capillaries magnified until all I could see was a matrix of swirling blood cells. And something else. Something that didn’t belong.
Silver particles glimmered in his veins. The cellular flecks floated toget
her, wriggling and alive, forming wormlike structures that grew brighter, denser, as they sped through the vessels toward his chest. I should’ve been horrified by the microscopic sight, but instead my mouth watered, and a rapacious urge came over me. I wanted to put my teeth on his throat, sink into an artery, and extract every venomous ribbon.
What?
“Salem.” My voice cracked. “There’s something in your throat.”
He stilled. “What did you say?”
“Something really fucking weird is slithering in your veins.”
He jerked, moving his neck into my direct line of sight. When my eyes refocused, I couldn’t see arteries or silver worms or anything abnormal. Had I imagined it?
No way. I was not seeing things. “How did you make your skin transparent?”
Releasing my wrists, he gripped his throat, mouth parted, forehead scrunched, distracted.
I dropped to the floor and swept out a leg to knock him off balance. He stumbled, eyes wide, and I pounced.
Years on a battlefield had given me deadly strong fingers and hands. As I wrestled him to the floor, my unbending grip stayed close to his joints—wrists, shoulders, pelvis—but fuck me, he was slippery. Every time I maneuvered him into submission, he twisted free, slamming me against the concrete and shoving me against the wall.
Shit, okay, I was weaker, definitely slower, but I made him work for it, deflecting bites and landing blows. My reflexes kicked in, every muscle firing the way my fathers had trained me. I timed my punches, moved my body like water, and linked my state of mind to my breaths.
Using Salem’s center of gravity against him, I redirected most of his strikes as we rolled through the room in a tangle of arms and legs. The heave of our grunts echoed off the walls, our fists smacking flesh and knees digging into muscle.
Pain exploded in my thigh, followed by a warm gush from my wound. I bit down on my cheek, tasted metal, and swung toward his face.
He dodged, slipped past my guard, and flipped me on my back. He wasn’t even winded as he pinned my arms above my head and leaned in. “What did you see in my neck?”
I gulped for air, searching for arteries that were no longer visible. “Your veins? Your blood? I don’t know! You tell me.”
“My veins?” He winged up a black eyebrow and used the weight of his body to flatten me to the floor.
The concrete chilled my sweaty back, but the heat pouring off him was burning me up. “Get off me, you heavy bastard.”
Twisting beneath him, I tried to free my arms from the clench of his fingers. But my struggling was a wasted effort, one that felt a whole lot like foreplay. Every lift and roll of my hips rubbed our lower bodies in a dirty dance. With only a thin swath of suede between our chests, my damp skin slid intimately against his, making this the most body fluid I’d ever shared with another person. Or animal.
It should’ve repulsed me. Should’ve convinced me to stop squirming. But holy merciful Mother, my blood fevered and my pleasure centers went berserk. The smothering weight of his rock-hard torso, the twitch of his erection against my pussy, the taunting smile all over his breathtaking face made my libido purr and my heart roar.
I needed to exorcise this shit before I did something stupid like devour his mouth, because seriously, his lips—all pink and pillowy—looked good enough to eat.
Forcing my body to relax, I reined in my runaway pulse and steadied my voice. “What do you want?”
He dipped his head, bringing the intensity of his faceted eyes closer, closer, the view so damn sparkly and fathomless, so enthralling and…wrong. I forced my gaze to his pale shoulder.
“Has your cunt ever been this close to surrender?” He ground his cock against me.
“This isn’t surrender, baby.” I squeezed my legs together, trapping his muscled thigh, and grimaced at the sting in my injury. “It’s resistance.”
“Ah, yes. Dawn of Eve, leader of the Resistance.” His eyes bathed my face in blinding heat. “You’ve been resisting your entire life. Waiting. For me.”
“Wow.” I let out a strained laugh. “Since you have me all figured out, you can return to your side of the room now.”
A devilish grin took hold of his mouth. “No resistance is impenetrable, sweetheart.”
I pressed my lips together, certain he wasn’t talking about my army. Why wasn’t I more pissed off? He was disrespecting me, violating me, fucking restraining me. I wasn’t this woman, this confused creature who lay beneath a man while warring with the desire to taste his filthy mouth.
He squeezed my wrists, holding them with superhuman strength against the cold floor above my head. “Tell me why you’re a virgin.”
No sense in denying what he’d already figured out. But should I answer him? Only my fathers asked about my virginity. They questioned me as a doctor, a priest, and an overprotective dad, always in the interest of guarding their daughter’s emotional and physical health.
I settled on the truth. “Been a little busy. Fighting. Protecting innocents. Killing bloodsuckers. No time for—”
“Breeding?”
“Yeah. That.” I glared at him, wrestled against the pull of his magnetic eyes, and quickly turned my head. “Is that what you do? Breed human women?”
I stared at the cracks in the wall and let my focus drift to the fringe of my vision, trying to recreate the indirect view I’d had of his throat. Sinews strung tight in his neck, his skin an opaque sheath of white. No glowing veins. No wriggling silver organisms.
“I’m not a hybrid.” His chiseled jaw tightened in my periphery.
“Then what are you?”
“I could ask you the same question.” His thigh flexed between my legs. “Look at me.”
“Hell no.”
“Are you scared, my little fighter?”
“Don’t confuse my distrust with fear.” I pulled in a breath and released it slowly. “I’ll make a deal with you. Explain the hocus-pocus bullshit you’re doing with your eyes and see-through skin, and I’ll look at you as long as you want…until we get out of here.”
The scent of leather and pine wafted from his skin as he pressed impossibly closer. “It’s not me.”
“What’s not you? Are you telling me you’re not controlling your own body?”
“I’m telling you I’m not tricking you with my eyes, my blood…or whatever it is you’re seeing.”
Did I believe him? I shouldn’t, but something in his voice made me consider alternatives. “We were drugged. Maybe it did something to our—”
“It’s you.”
“What?”
“Your golden eyes are seducing me.” He cocked his head. “You are the one seeing things in my veins.”
I immediately rejected the accusation, every part of me coiling in defense. But a niggle of doubt worked its way in. Wasn’t this what my fathers and I had been searching for? An idiosyncrasy that defied science? A quirk in my genetic makeup?
“Okay, let’s say you’re right—which you’re not.” With a steeling breath, I bore my gaze into his. “What do you see?”
“Yellow leaves in autumn.” His breath whispered across my lips. “Blooms in a sunflower field. Wings of a swallowtail. The golden—”
“That’s not what I—”
“Shut up.” His pupils widened, swallowing the metallic shards of his irises. “The golden sky at dawn. Enchantment. Beauty. In its rawest, purest, most dangerous form.”
Seductive warmth electrified my core. Evidently, I was a sucker for pretty words. “But what do you feel when you look at my eyes?”
“You already know.”
The inch of space between us charged with ionized air, crackling static across my skin. How could this be my doing when everything I felt was a response to him? The press of his thigh between my legs made me tremble. The heat of his breaths caused my ribs to expand. His cock, stiff and pulsing against my pussy, produced a throb that was so sharp and greedy I wondered if I’d torn an inner muscle.
I let my gaze
wander over his masculine jaw, razored teeth, straight nose, and complexion that was as pristine as fine china. Inky black hair lay in sexy finger-raked clumps, neither too long nor too short. When did he find time for a haircut? Now that I thought of it, there wasn’t a hint of stubble on his face. It made him look boyish and innocent. Until I looked at his eyes.
Raw sexuality emanated from the depths. Dark. Voracious. Bold. I imagined his fingers pulling my hair. Our bodies naked. Grinding. The smacking sounds of pounding flesh. The walls of my pussy stretching around him. Teeth in my neck.
I blinked, blew out a breath, and blinked again, but the erotic sensations lingered, demanding and insatiable. Why had I even let my mind go there? With him? Was this what he felt when he stared at my eyes? If so, why hadn’t he tried to fuck me? I didn’t believe for a second he was protecting me from himself.
If he thought my blood was poisonous, he was probably protecting himself from me.
“Do you bite during sex?” I pressed my shoulders against the concrete, aware my nipples were trying to cut through the band of suede across my breasts.
He smirked. “If you want my cock, all you have to do is beg.”
“I want you to give me some breathing room so I can figure this out.”
His gaze drifted to our hands above my head and returned to my face. “Don’t move.”
At my nod, he released my wrists. His fingers tiptoed down my arms and rested on my cheeks.
“I’ve heard rumors.” He searched my face, his expression contemplative. “When your fathers bite, it’s sexual, for them and whoever they’re feeding from?”
“They only bite each other.”
“So it’s true?”
“Yeah.” I pulled my arms down and stretched them along on the floor at my sides. “They keep their fangs to themselves. The outcome is too intimate.”
I’d wandered into their bedroom too many times as a child and found them entwined, nude, always with their fangs buried. As far as I knew, they’d never brought a woman into their bed, not once since my mother. They were nothing if not stubbornly faithful to her and one another.
