Dawn of Eve

by Pam Godwin

  “Spread the message to every resident,” Salem said.

  Erebus stood outside the door, his blond head lowered in deference. “Anything else?”

  “Her things—”

  “There.”

  I followed Erebus’ gaze across the room to the packs in the corner near a steel safe. My bow and arrows lay on top, surrounded by… Holy shit. Opulence was the best word to describe this ginormous bedroom. Curvy upholstered sofas, exotic statues of half-naked women, an entire wall of artfully-displayed weapons, such as old-world guns, bullets, missiles, and torpedoes—all of it pulled together with strong contrasts of colors and materials.

  Curtains draped the walls and silky textures covered every surface, giving the space a warm sensual feel. Countless cushions invited one to curl up and lounge, sleep, and fuck. A pleasure palace built for a sex god. Or a rapist.

  My face heated with renewed fury. “Is this my room or yours?”

  His conversation with Erebus had ended, and the door was shut behind the casual lean of his body.

  “Mine. Now ours.”

  “What about Macaria?” Acid lanced my tone. “Or your other women? How many girlfriends do you have?”

  “You’re free to roam my home. It’s yours now.” He prowled through the room, tiptoeing his fingers along the back of a sofa. “But I expect you to sleep here. With me.”

  “How many women are you fucking?”

  “Meals are served in the dining hall—”

  “Stop ignoring my question.” I ground my teeth.

  “Stop acting like a child.” His eyes blazed as bright as the sun and ten times as hot.

  I pulled the blanket tighter around my nudity. “When my best friend gave me a platonic kiss on the cheek, you acted like a rabid dog. That woman”—I thrust a finger at the door—“humped your leg and grabbed your dick! But I am acting like a child?”

  “You’re my girl,” he said matter-of-factly, as if that was the answer to everything.

  “I’m not your girl. Especially not when you’re fucking other women. How many whores have you claimed in front of your loyal followers?”

  A muscle bounced in his cheek, and that hurt. It hurt so goddamn much.

  My throat thickened, burned. “You raped me.”

  “I call it…” His lips twitched. “Surprise sex.”

  I sucked in a sharp breath. “Don’t you dare fucking trivialize it.”

  “You didn’t say no.”

  “You had my jaw clamped shut!”

  “You came all over my cock.” He reached into his pants. “Want to see the evidence?”

  “Fuck you.” I shook from head to toe, my voice weakening with tears. “You made me. You…” I swiped at my cheek, despising my emotions. “You hurt me.”

  His face fell, and those glowing eyes shuddered. In a blink, he knelt before me. I tried to jerk away, but he gripped my hips, my wrists. His hands were everywhere, evading my slaps and effectively subduing me into a sitting position on the bed in front of his crouch.

  “I won’t apologize for claiming you.” His fingers cinched around my hip and hand. “I did it to protect you. None of those men will bother you now.”

  But he’d claimed and protected other women, too. I couldn’t focus past my jealousy. It was a vile wretched poison in my blood, eating me alive.

  “Stop thinking about them.” He held me tenderly and petted my hair, twisting up my emotions. “You’re the only one here. The only one sleeping in my bed.”

  I clung to his words, the sweetness of his touch, and strengthened my resolve. A battle loomed on the horizon, but I was a fighter. Only this time, I wouldn’t win with arrows or blades. He was too fast and physically powerful.

  I needed to win his heart. His vein. Then I would give him a bite that turned the darkness to ashes.

  The bite of dawn.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  The next two months burned like a lazy flame on an endless wick. Salem and I spent most of the time in his room, our bodies joined in mutual lust while I pretended to rekindle an emotional connection corroded by lies. It wasn’t easy.

  I’d become a doormat, cuddling in tangled sheets with my rapist. But my end game required the ruse. I needed to win his heart and calculate every move so that he didn’t steal my heart again.

  I lay beside him in bed, curled around the relaxed muscles of his thigh and torso, both of us nude. He’d fallen asleep only moments ago, stretched out on his back with his fingers woven through my hair. With each steady draw of his breath, his arm slowly surrendered to gravity, his hand slipping from my hair and falling limp on the mattress behind me.

  A nearby candle cast a lethargic gleam of yellow across the menacing angles of his face. According to the electric clock on the wall, it was just after five in the morning. But time was irrelevant in this underground world. Sleep set its own schedule, and right now, I was wide awake.

  I still felt the disorientation of being cast underground in this complacent life. I didn’t have to hunt for my food, sharpen and clean weapons, or strategize defensive maneuvers. Freedom from war was softening me, but it didn’t seem to have the same effect on Salem. He reigned over his utopia through intimidation and hero-worship, using the residents’ adoration and fear of him to maintain order.

  Gazing at his perfect face, I wondered how many had ever seen him like this. When his jaw was slack, lips parted, and lethal gaze hidden from view. I loved to watch him sleep. He didn’t look as threatening. Though his masculine beauty was always daunting.

  A silk blanket gathered below his hips, exposing the root of a soft cock nestled in short dark hair. The sharp ridges of his abs widened into a broad hairless chest, his skin impeccably smooth and tight over pronounced muscle. I wanted to drag my tongue along the irresistible valley that divided his six-pack, nibble on his flat nipples, and nuzzle the hollow of his throat. A quiver awoke in my core, my fingers twitching to touch every inch of his dangerous sexiness.

  I hadn’t forgiven him. That wasn’t what this was. My desire for him was an unemotional beast that I kept separate from my heart. Mostly.

  Careful not to wake him, I gingerly brushed soft inky hair from his brow. He never cut the strands, never needed to shave. He’d told me his follicles stopped growing after puberty. If he shaved or trimmed, the hair returned to the length it’d been. Eternally frozen in time. Neither my fathers nor the hybrids shared this characteristic with him. What if he was immortal? What if I bit him and nothing happened?

  Every time I thought of his death, a masochistic twinge pinched my chest, as if my heart cared more about protecting him than itself. I crushed that sentiment with the reminder that he’d made me lie in the letter I sent to my fathers. I’m happy and safe. Alberta is cold. Salem is amazing, blah, blah, bullshit, and more bullshit.

  I shifted my touch to his throat. His breathing remained even, his dark lashes unmoving against his cheeks. The veins in his neck lifted and bulged beneath my fingers, and the rushing sound of his blood hummed in my ears. He didn’t stir as I traced the vascular path to his heart, marveling at the ribbon-like streams of venom in his arteries.

  A week after I’d arrived here, he’d led me to the parking garage where his friends had held three feral hybrids. He hadn’t lied about the effects of his bite. As he drained the mindless creatures to near-death, I watched the silver ribbons slide down his throat. It only took seconds for the hybrid venom to bleed away from his digestive system and enter the veins in his chest.

  When the hybrids had awoken from a coma-like sleep hours later, they were as grateful and loyal to Salem as all the others. Salem was their savior, their god. A god that could see and hear his own veins. But he couldn’t make his blood flutter beneath his hand like I could.

  I glided my palm over his chest, beckoning the venom in his blood vessels. The silvery foreign bodies swarmed toward my touch like staticky glitter, begging me to open his vein and extract them. I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, this was what I was mean
t to do. The venom in his veins had reacted when I bit Kip. They were the very essence of the hybrid infection. The heart of it. Whatever the Drone had injected in Salem’s unborn body had connected him to the hybrids, and I was connected to Salem.

  My mother had a direct link to the aphids. My link to the hybrids was through Salem. If I imbibed the venom in his blood, I would kill him and sever the connections forever. Maybe that would wipe out the entire hybrid race or—if there was any mercy left in the world—it would cure them.

  But I’d given up trying to bite Salem without his consent. My constant attempts had ended in frustrating failure. It also didn’t help my effort to win his heart.

  Pretending to love him was critical. There was a perilous line between faking it and becoming it. If I fell for him again, if I requited any of the feelings I drew from him, I wouldn’t be able to destroy him.

  I lowered my mouth toward his throat. With no intention of biting him, I simply wanted to taste his skin, lick the strong lines of his neck. He smelled clean from his shower and so sinfully male I couldn’t stop myself from indulging. Just a press of my lips, a delicate kiss. I moved carefully, silently, an inch away—

  His eyes flashed open, and in one imperceptible motion, I lay on my back beneath him, staring into the furious fire of his gaze.

  “Are you prepared to kill me?” The cruel whip of his voice left a clawing echo in my ears. “Have you thought through what that would feel like? Your skin covered in my ashes? Your fangs stained red with my death?”

  A knot formed in my throat. I hadn’t let myself imagine those things. I couldn’t.

  “I just wanted to kiss you,” I whispered, filling my eyes with the truth.

  Half the truth. I wanted the kiss to lead to feelings. His feelings, not mine.

  He searched my face, and his expression softened, pupils dilating. His hands found my hair, and he growled, a low rumbling sound of pleasure. The vibration penetrated my chest and gathered between my legs, throbbing with promise.

  His head lowered. Our lips rubbed. A touch of tongue, a release of breaths. Then we kissed, slow and gentle, hands caressing, legs entwining. He growled again, and this time, it was louder, resonating through my veins and awakening my blood. Pulses of warm moisture saturated my pussy, my inner muscles clenching, opening me, preparing for him.

  He swelled against my inner thigh, hot and rock hard. His tongue collided with mine, but the kiss kept its own pace, measured and deep, burning with unhurried passion. When he lined up his cock and sank into me, I felt so possessed by him, breathless, the bond between us purring with electricity. He took his time, rolling his hips with drugging strokes, weaving his fingers through my hair, and kissing my lips, my neck.

  His bite followed, melting my veins with liquid fire. Then he cradled my face in his hands, stared into my eyes, and rocked us into a growly, grinding, deep-reaching climax that left me adrift on a cloud of dark ecstasy. Nothing existed but Salem.

  He looked at me as if I were his sunrise, his sunset, and everything in between. His thumb absently stroked my cheek, his gaze intense yet adoring as it rested on my lips, traced the line of my nose, and fell into my eyes. His irises shimmered with fragile emotion, and it was in moments like this when I thought I had him.

  I glanced at his neck, at the alluring vein that summoned a twinge in my gums and begged me to bite him.

  “No.” He pulled out of me and rolled to his back, glaring at the carved beams in the ceilings. “You’re hell-fucking-bent in your determination to kill me.”

  “I’m not! I—” Shit, I’d ruined the moment. What the hell should I say? Partial honesty would be better than lies. “I crave you.” I sat up and leaned over him. “Imagine if you weren’t able to bite during sex. That’s how I feel. I have this insane overwhelming need for your blood and have never quenched it. Not once.”

  His jaw tightened, and he pulled the blankets over his waist. “You’re willing to kill me to scratch an itch?”

  “It’s not an itch, dammit. And we don’t know that my bite would kill you.” I cupped his flexing cheek, nudging his gaze to mine. “Open your heart, Salem. Give me your vein. If you let me in, it won’t—”

  “Never.” He shot from the bed and strode through the room toward the wall of cabinets, rifling through our clothes.

  His gorgeous ass flexed in the candlelight, and I had to force my gaze away to concentrate.

  My fangs were an off-limit topic. Right up there with his relationships with other women. Since my arrival here, I’d counted three human women, fifteen hybrid females, and at least sixty hybrid males. The female hybrids were guards, but I’d also spotted them when they were off-duty, fucking and biting male hybrids in the common room—the lobby I referred to as the orgy room.

  Then there was Macaria, haunting the halls in her lingerie. After the message Salem had dispersed the first day, she didn’t so much as look at me. I didn’t know if the other two human women were as friendly with Salem as Macaria. All the women kept a safe distance when I was with him.

  He refused to talk about the female residents, but my vicious jealousy wouldn’t let it go.

  I slid from the bed and approached him. “Have you fucked the female guards?”

  He pulled on a pair of cotton shorts, eyes on his task, lips in a flat line.

  “Did you let them bite you? I’ve seen them fuck, and they always bite. Must be nice.”

  “They don’t turn their partners into dust.” He shoved his feet into a pair of joggers.

  “So you let them bite you?” I grabbed a shirt and trousers from the drawer and pulled them on, my voice rising. “Are you still fucking them?”

  Without a glance in my direction, he strode from the room and shut the door. My fangs retracted, and my hands curled into fists.

  I hated his refusal to explain his relationships with other women. I hated the hope I harbored for his monogamy when we were together. I hated the passion-filled hours I spent in his arms, basking in the notion that if he was with me, he wasn’t with anyone else. Most of all, I hated the moments he wasn’t with me, because all I saw was him with someone else.

  A steel safe sat across the room, taunting me with its hidden contents. My bow and my mother’s dagger were locked inside. Why, when so many other weapons were within my reach? Ancient guns hung along the wall like a museum display. Knives and forks sat among the dishes on the coffee table from last night’s dinner.

  It wasn’t like I could storm out of this place in a rage of gunfire and arrows and…forks. Me against seventy hybrids and Salem? That wouldn’t end well.

  He knew what the dagger meant to me. Maybe he thought I wouldn’t try to escape without it, that I wouldn’t leave it behind.

  But there was no escape. I was powerless prey among inhuman predators.

  At least he hadn’t locked up my medallion. I fingered the metal disk against my breastbone. My mother had been pregnant when my fathers gave it to her. She was wearing it when she took her last breath. She’d seen her death coming and confronted it with spectacular courage. If she could do that, I should be able to face this thing with Salem.

  The door to the hall opened, my fangs popped out.

  He stood in the doorway, stiff and still as a predator. “Come with me to dinner tonight.”

  My breath hitched. Every evening, he ate dinner with dozens of his friends in the dining hall. As much as I needed to meld myself into his life and his heart, I refused his daily offers to join him. I hadn’t gotten over the humiliation of being publicly fucked against my will. Couldn’t bring myself to eat with those women who had seen Salem use me in such a degrading way. I hated my weakness, and I hated Salem for making me feel vulnerable.

  I wasn’t as brave as my mother.

  I gave him my answer with a shake of my head.

  His expression turned to stone, and the slam of the door vanished my fangs and cracked a sizzling fissure in my chest.

  Fuck him and his self-righteous anger. And fuck me,
because through all my chafing animosity, I couldn’t stop my body from heating in his presence. Couldn’t stop my heart from pumping harder and my soul rejoicing whenever I saw him. I craved him, yet I was no closer to forgiving his lies than I was two months ago.

  One thing he hadn’t lied about was my ability to roam his home alone and without restraints. So I left the room to wander down the main passageway, populated only by the guards at this hour of the morning.

  All corridors led to a central hub, like spokes on a wheel. At the center was the industrial kitchen, dining room, and orgy room. I’d counted ninety doors in the corridors. Ninety private suites. Over the past weeks, I’d slipped into a few rooms that had been left unlocked, looking for windows or escape routes.

  Of course, there were no windows in this underground hotel. The only way out was through that parking garage. If this place went up in flames, not even Eve would be able to save me.

  I quickly passed through the empty orgy room and turned into the hall that led to the garage. My fangs hadn’t emerged, so Salem must’ve been jogging out of hearing range.

  Given his aversion to daylight, I understood why he’d built underground. The residents lived down here without sunshine, but I knew they came and went frequently. Someone had to gather food and supplies. And three humans weren’t enough to satisfy seventy-some hybrid appetites.

  I hadn’t seen the sun in two months, but I’d felt the heat of its rays and needed that sensation now to warm the chill of Salem’s absence.

  My brisk walk took me up the stairs and into the parking garage. I strode toward the massive door on the far side, giving a taunting wave at the twenty hybrid guards. They didn’t move, didn’t smile.

  They also didn’t stop me when I reached through the thick bars of the inner gate. Didn’t twitch a muscle as I pressed my palms against the exterior door. Warmth seeped from the steel to my hands, and I sighed. Sunshine was just a door away, right there on the other side. It was torture, and I delighted in it several times a week.