by Sofia Daniel
“Oh.”
“What do you say, Alicia?” Dante knelt at my feet. “Will you form a pact with us? We can live anywhere and be strong enough to protect ourselves from hunters, the forces of Lord Stryx, or anyone else.”
Fatigue set into my muscles, and I blew out a breath. As much as I wanted to kick Dante in the balls and make him suffer for all their indignities, I couldn’t. The boys were annoying as hell, Dante especially, but I didn’t want him tortured and executed because a daughter of Lady Mantis had manipulated him into becoming a spy.
My gaze dropped to his pleading, blue eyes.
“It’s not going to be easy,” I said.
His fists uncurled, and the muscles of his shoulders loosened. “What do you mean?”
“You three have a lot to atone for.”
Dante dipped his head. “I’m truly sorry.”
“Sorry because you underestimated me and now find me useful, or sorry for treating me like a shitty whore?” I held my breath, knowing the answer. If he lied and said he was sorry for treating me like shit, I would get up and walk back to Frumosi Tower.
“If I’m honest, I regret underestimating you because you probably hate us now.” He placed both hands on my bare knees and peered up at me with hopeful, aquamarine eyes.
“I won’t agree to any kind of truce,” I said.
His face dropped. “But—”
“If you want us to work together, you’ll have to taste some of the humiliation you heaped on me.”
Dante gulped. “What…” He drew back and rubbed his hands down his thighs. The penis between his legs lengthened and thickened, and his chest rose and fell with rapid breaths. He rasped, “What would you like me to do?”
Heat rose to my cheeks and spread low in my belly. The pulse between my legs throbbed with anticipation. I raised my leg and pointed my toes toward his growing erection. “K-kiss my foot.”
“Of course, Alicia.” He cradled my foot between his large, warm hands. For someone who had terrorized me the previous term and privately mocked me this term, he was surprisingly obedient.
“Call me Mistress,” I said.
“As you wish, Mistress.” Dante placed his lips on my big toe, and then he glanced up at me with wide, blue eyes.
I shook my head. “To earn my forgiveness, you’ll have to do better than just a peck.”
Dante engulfed my big toe in his hot mouth. Tingling pleasure surged up my legs and filled my core. My eyes fluttered closed, and I braced my hands on the edges of the wooden bench. It was hard to tell which turned me on the most—Dante’s mouth or Dante’s obedience—but right now, it didn’t matter, not when his tongue swiped up my toe, sending a lick of fire along my slit.
“Ah!” My eyes fluttered from all the sensations, and a moan slipped from my lips.
“Am I pleasing you?” Amusement laced Dante’s tone. He brushed his thumb along the arch of my foot, making my toes curl. “Mistress?”
He was more than exceeding expectations, but I said, “You can do much, much better.”
“Perhaps you would be kind enough to heal my wounds?”
I glanced down at the red patch of burned flesh on his scalp, and my arousal evaporated into dust. “Does it hurt?”
“Like sunburn,” he said. “but I’ll live.”
Guilt twisted my heart. Knowing what the sun meant to vampires, the pain had to be pretty bad. “Sorry—”
Dante placed his hands on my knee and rubbed circles on my inside thigh. “Don’t apologize. I’m proud that you’re able to protect yourself so effectively.”
He continued to caress the sensitive skin of my inner thighs, making my breath quicken and making heat pool between my legs until he coaxed me open, and I became fully exposed. His nostrils flared, and he lowered his lashes to stare at my folds.
I held my breath, half of me expecting Dante to slip out an insult while I was so vulnerable.
Instead, he raised his gaze and stared at me with fire in his blue eyes. His pupils narrowed and lengthened, but his teeth remained blunt.
Instead of the usual discomfort I’d feel from those reptilian eyes, a bolt of arousal hit my core. Right now, all I could think about was the tongue that had pleasured my toe and how it would feel between my legs.
“Mistress,” he whispered. “May I feed on your nectar?”
My core muscles fluttered, aching for his tongue. It would take a while to process everything Dante had told me, and I didn’t completely trust him or his brothers, but weeks of sexual frustration had mounted until I could no longer resist his advances.
“Yes,” I whispered.
Dante made a slow trail of kisses up my inside thigh, each press of his lips causing tiny sparks of ecstasy to ignite on my skin. Ibit down on my bottom lip and placed a hand on his broad, muscular shoulder to steady myself. This was the first pleasure he and his brothers had offered me since I’d become their concubine.
His other hand curled around my right thigh and spread me wide open until I was fully exposed to his hungry gaze. A shiver of anticipation skittered up my spine, and my nipples tightened with excitement.
“You have the most delectable pussy.” He pressed a kiss on my clit.
The touch of his lips on my most sensitive part caused an explosion of ecstasy down my thighs and up my belly. I whimpered, and the muscles of my core clenched.
Next, he swiped his tongue up my slit, gathering up the blood and moisture. I squeezed my eyes shut and bit down hard on my bottom lip. Would this be just like that time when I had healed Raphael? The boys had prolonged my pleasure, milking me for nectar with arousing touches, and hadn’t let me climax until Raphael had consumed enough.
Dante lapped up and down my slit, rubbing gentle circles over my nub with the pad of his thumb. I lay on the hard bench, arching and shuddering at his busy tongue. Sometimes, he’d stick his tongue into my core, and other times, he would stretch me open and fill me with his fingers, making me clench and moan around him.
“So. Fucking. Good,” he growled.
I raised my head and gazed down at his scalp. The redness in his skin had gone, and tiny golden hairs sprouted on his bald patch. Dante clamped his lips around my entrance and sucked. His soft growls and moans of pleasure reverberated against my sex, making me fall back onto the bench with my eyes rolling to the back of my head.
“Imagine what it would be like with three of us attending to you?” he murmured against my folds.
I couldn’t help moaning at the thought of more hands, more tongues, more erections, but I had to keep a semblance of control.
“Shall I call Raph and Nero?” he asked.
A conversation and a few minutes of pleasure couldn’t begin to make up for the humiliation, the name-calling, and the dog-crate. No. The Stryx brothers would grovel for the rest of the term until I forgave them for being such dicks.
“This is a one-time deal,” I said between clenched teeth. “Once you’re healed, I’ll make the three of you grovel.”
Dante slid two thick fingers inside me and pumped them back and forth through my core. Jolts of pleasure made my legs tremble. “Then I’d better give you something to think about while you’re keeping us at bay.”
I shuddered against the hard bench, so tongue-tied by his lips and fingers and tongue that I couldn’t form a response.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t like more than two fingers?” his hypnotic voice curled around my senses like a serpent. “My cock is much longer, thicker… Infinitely more satisfying. Say the word, Alicia, and I’ll give you what you need.”
A moan tore from my lips. I yearned for his dick. Ached for it. Needed to be stretched and filled and pounded. Despite the pleasure coursing through my body, I had to win this battle of wills.
“What do you say?” he purred between my legs. “I can make you climax over and over, give you unimaginable pleasures. Ask for my cock, and it’s yours.”
I clenched my muscles hard around his scissoring fingers and clenched my jaws hard over my trait
orous tongue. Every fiber of my being wanted to accept his offer, even though Dante wanted to subdue me with sex.
My common sense slapped the haze out of my brain. If I said yes to him, I would lose my upper hand.
With all the arrogance I could muster, I said, “You’ll get to fuck me when you’ve earned the privilege and not before.”
Dante’s responding growl sent a pleasant shiver up my core. My thighs clamped around his head. He was such a brat at times.
“Have you finished yet?” I snapped.
“No.” He circled my clit with his tongue, and pleasure swirled around my core.
My muscles rippled around his thick fingers, and pressure built up to the point where I thought I would implode. It burned along my nerve endings, and my heart pounded like a fist against my rib cage.
I thrashed my head from side to side, forcing myself not to plead, not to beg. To cure Dante and take control of the Stryx brothers and direct them to my will.
Dante kept me suspended on the brink of a climax, adding to my sweet torment with his agile tongue until every fiber of my being swelled with the need for release.
“I want to—” My teeth clenched.
In all the time the boys had held me captive as their plaything, I’d never begged them for release, and now that I had the upper hand, I had to be careful with how I phrased it.
“What do you want?” said Dante between licks.
“Ah!” Short, ragged gasps burst from my lungs, and what was left of my brain scrambled about my skull for a way to sound authoritative. “We need to discuss our next steps. As a team.”
“As a family,” he growled.
Warmth spread through my chest. “A family, yes!” I raised my head to find a thick covering of golden hair over his scalp. “G-good. You’re cured. Time to finish.”
“Cum.”
My entire world imploded, and the muscles of my core contracted. In the space of a heartbeat, everything stilled. Then the muscles loosened and released a burst of pleasure that swept from my scalp and to the tips of my toes.
A scream tore from my lips, and I bucked and shuddered and clamped around Dante’s head.
When the waves of intense pleasure ebbed into gentle laps, I relaxed my thighs and released Dante from his grip.
He sat back, giving me a genuine smile that made the corners of his eyes crinkle. His pupils were round and blown with only a narrow ring of aquamarine. “If that’s how you’re like when you’re curing us, I can’t wait until we have sex.”
“That’s not going to happen until—”
“I know.” He stood and offered me his hand. “We have a lot to atone for, but now we’ve cemented our truce, we need to work on deepening our bond.”
Chapter 13
Dante and I walked out of the bathroom into the reception area of the boys’ suite. Nero scowled at me from the dog bed, and I swept my gaze down to the stream of cum he had squirted over the cashmere blanket. I couldn’t even muster up the annoyance because, from this moment onward, I would be sleeping in a bed.
Raphael poked his head out from his room. “Can I come out now?”
Pointing at the chaise, I said, “I want all three of you kneeling at my feet.”
Nero snarled from within the dog crate. “You agreed to a truce!”
Ignoring him, I snapped my fingers at Raphael. “I need underwear, tampons, and some clothes.”
With a nod, he disappeared into his room.
The clang of metal against stone sounded from the fireplace, and Nero crawled out from the crate. “How will we ever bond if you’re going to hold a grudge?”
I strode up to him and prodded him in the chest. “You should have thought about that before you coerced me into killing Micalla and blackmailed me into becoming your concubine.”
His handsome features hardened. “We had no choice, and you owed me a favor.”
“Had it occurred to you to use the favor I owed you to create a bond? We might have made some progress by now as a group, but you were so focused on murder that you lost sight of your long-term goals.”
“It wasn’t like that.” Dante sat on the sofa.
“I remember the look of resentment on all your faces every time Micalla flexed her power over you. If you could incinerate her with your eyes, she would have turned to ashes.” I pointed at the marble floor.
“We don’t like being controlled,” Dante said, his voice ringing with a warning.
“Neither do I, and this is payback.”
Raphael emerged from his room with a bundle of items. I swept past his kneeling brothers, stepped into his room and got changed. If I was a vindictive person, I’d make all three of them sleep in the dog crate while I took the bedrooms for myself. But if the brothers could help me develop my powers as a frumosi, I would be happy to work with them while I explored our bond.
On Monday, I arrived at breakfast walking prouder. We had spent all of Sunday night combing through the legend of Dracula’s three grandsons. According to Dante, Lord Stryx had encountered them during his travels and wanted the frumosi woman as a consort, but she and her mates had fought with magic he hadn’t even seen in hunters.
Captain Tanar sat at the high table with Miss Margolyes slumped on his lap. She didn’t even have the energy to raise his goblet. The vampire narrowed his eyes at me, and I turned my gaze to Raphael, who squeezed my hand.
Juno from the table flipped her blue hair. “You’re looking very pleased with yourself. Did the boys feed on your pussy?”
“Jealous?” Dante pulled out my chair like a gentleman.
“Maybe I am.” Juno narrowed her eyes as I sat. “She must have been really tasty if you’re no longer treating her like a whore. Are you going to share?”
“No,” said Nero.
“Hey, Lava.” Juno gave Ponytail a nudge. “Don’t you think it’s awfully selfish of the brothers not to let us have a taste?”
“I don’t give a shit,” muttered the vampire girl.
I glanced at Raphael to see if he felt any guilt at having killed Ponytail’s twin, but his neutral expression told me he had no regrets.
A knocker placed a plate of grilled liver, toast, and tomatoes in front of me at the table while another knocker poured the boys glasses of sangria. I picked up my knife and fork and ate.
“Have you checked the library for information on vampire lore?” I asked.
Nero nodded. “It’s the first thing I did when we joined. I also gathered everything I could on the kind of magic hunters use, because it seemed familiar to what I’d heard about the brothers.”
I rubbed my chin and took a bite of my grilled liver. Maybe the onion woman would have more information on the legendary brothers. If she had spent time as Dracula’s consort and the vampire was as paranoid as she had claimed, I was sure he would know something about mating bonds.
“Attention, students!” Captain Tanar placed Miss Margolyes back in her seat.
The woman stared out at us through half-lidded eyes. Guilt gnawed at my insides. Last term, I would have tried to do or say something to help her, but from the way the captain stared in our direction, I had a feeling that his mistreatment of her was a ploy to make me misbehave.
The whole thing smacked of the incident with the bottle of garlic hydrolat. All the vampires knew I couldn’t have been able to obtain such an item, but they overlooked that fact in their eagerness to dole out a punishment.
“Lord Dracula will be pleased with the progress you’ve all made in the fight against hunters. You should all be proud.”
The vampires gave him a smattering of applause. I glanced at the frumosi side of the dining room, where the others sat, looking either resigned or resentful. I guessed it was a huge step to transition from a potential consort to a daytime guard dog.
Later, the gong sounded, and we went our separate ways. The boys had martial arts in the dojo, and the frumosi in our year had Basic Protection with Miss Margolyes and Commander Shanks, who made us run laps around t
he ground floor, up one flight of stairs, across the first floor and down again.
In the stairwell, Zarah broke off from Kat and Annette to jog at my side. “Did you think about what I said?”
“Were you serious?” I pulled open the door to the stairwell and held it open for her. “I hadn’t given it much thought because nothing you said the other day made sense.”
“You should,” Zarah hissed. “Lady Mantis is returning at the end of term to check on Captain Tanar’s progress. I plan on telling her everything I know.”
“Where did you find that out?”
“Juno.”
I narrowed my eyes. “How can you still talk to her after what she did?”
Zarah’s nose rose into the air. “You’re not the only sought-after frumosi.”
Irritation fizzled over my skin, and I picked up my pace. One minute Zarah wanted to escape, and the next, she was in cahoots with one of the vampires who had drained her blood to the brink of death? I couldn’t blame her for trying to secure Juno as a protector, but why the hell was she attempting to use my vampires and me as a means to escape?
Zarah accelerated, her cheeks reddening with the effort. “Did you hear me?”
“If you’re so popular, why don’t you charm Juno into helping you?”
“Because,” Zarah said through clenched teeth, “She wants to keep me for herself. I can’t act as a familiar for one vampire, let alone her whole noble house.”
A pair of knockers walked toward us, each holding piles of rolled-up scrolls. Everyone ran in single file so as not to bump them. I used that opportunity to speed ahead to the ground floor, where Commander Shanks held a clipboard to monitor our progress.
Throughout Monday night, I couldn’t help thinking about Zarah’s threat. By dinner time, I couldn’t stop looking at the wretched girl from across the dining room. She glowered back with a mixture of resentment and expectation, as though it was somehow my fault she was in an academy of vampires, and it was now my duty to help her escape.
Grinding my teeth, I squeezed my fork so hard, the metal gave under my grip. Zarah was desperate enough to share her theory with Lady Mantis, as she had nothing to lose. Either the vampire noblewoman would dismiss it as nonsense, and Zarah would end up under the protection of Juno’s noble house, or she would be awarded her freedom.
