Jeaniene Frost - This Side of the Grave

“Those rituals were a sham,” he cut me off. “They gave people the excuse to pretend any depravities they indulged in weren’t their own doing, but none of them ever really received Zombi’s power over the dead from her blood. What happened with you was the real thing, however. Marie said she’d never seen it before, except very rarely with other voodoo priestesses.”

“Mambos,” I supplied glumly, my relief turning to ashes as I remembered Marie’s earlier words. I am black magic , she’d said about turning from a Mambo into a ghoul, so it stood to reason that her blood was potent magic, too. “So is that why you had to chain me up? Because absorbing Marie’s powers turned me into a violent tramp? No wonder you said you’d earned that smoke.”

It made even the powers I’d absorbed from Vlad and Mencheres seem like a mild inconvenience by comparison. Shoot a little fire from my hands when I was upset? No big deal, and hey, came in handy at times. Accidentally smash several pieces of furniture in our house through telekinesis? Well, we’d needed a new couch and TV anyway, and that also had helped out against the bad guys at a critical time. But this? Not useful at all, unless Bones had a deep sadomasochist streak.

“The good news is, she said this sort of blind hunger shouldn’t happen to you again,” Bones responded. “That it was just the initial, overwhelming response to the gate opening between you and the dead. Similar to the blood craze new vampires experience, but that you’d be able to control future twinges once you were yourself, as you clearly are.”

That was good news, but he’d avoided answering my question, I noticed. “Chains?” I prodded, my voice hardening so he’d know I wasn’t about to drop the subject.

“All right, luv, if you won’t let it go,” he drew out. “As I said, you were crazed with hunger, and a lot bloody stronger than you normally are. Didn’t seem to recognize anyone, either, which meant you weren’t being particular about who you sought to assuage that hunger with. Had to chain you up because otherwise, you tried to find someone else to ease your needs if I wasn’t servicing you, and I did have to pause to feed a few times.”

My jaw dropped at “weren’t being particular” and hung lower at each subsequent word, until I was vaguely surprised it wasn’t resting in my lap by the time he finished. I grabbed the sheet, pulling it around myself in a sudden rush of scalding shame.

“Oh. My. God. Please tell me I didn’t—”

“You didn’t,” Bones said, with a trace of a grim smile. “Though you did give a lucky bloke in the Quarter quite a thorough fondling by the time I caught up with you after you broke free from me in the cemetery. Still wasn’t a hundred percent at that point, and I hadn’t expected you to be so strong. I was able to fly us back to Tepesh’s after I’d fed, but by then, you were well and truly lost to the hunger. Marie warned me you’d be that way, and I must admit, she didn’t exaggerate.”

I’d had to be dragged away from sexually assaulting a tourist ? Why oh why hadn’t I listened when Bones told me not to pursue this subject? But now that I knew this much, I had to know the rest.

“So, I attempted to rape a tourist and turned you into a sex slave for two days.” My voice was neutral because the embarrassment was so deep, it transcended reaction. “Anything else I should get a heads-up about? Like, who else to expect a restraining order from? Are we still at Vlad’s? Don’t tell me you had to drag me off of him, too?”

Bones made a sound like a delicate cough. “No, and we’re not at Tepesh’s anymore. It was a temporary residence, so it didn’t have the means to restrain a vampire in it. Marie offered to take us in, but as you can imagine, I wanted far away from her. Mencheres had a place with a vampire holding cell in West Virginia. He chartered a plane to Louisiana and helped contain you while we traveled here.”

His voice changed ever so slightly when he said “contain,” making me almost screech as I demanded, “What exactly did Mencheres do?”

“Held you immobile with his power while I shagged you in the back of the plane,” he replied bluntly, a half shrug seeming to say, You wanted to know. “Couldn’t risk you breaking free and crashing the aircraft, and attempting to drive to West Virginia with you in that condition wouldn’t have been wise.”

Mencheres. Bones’s co-ruler, grandsire, Master vampire of incredible power, and the ally who unnerved me the most, had telekinetically held me down so Bones could boink me into submission en route to a vampire holding cell? Sweet holy Jesus, let me have hallucinated hearing that!

“Get me some silver,” I managed to croak. “I’m going to kill myself.”

“Don’t fret, he faced the other way the whole time,” Bones said unperturbedly. “Aside from knowing it would’ve bothered you to have him watch, Kira also wouldn’t have fancied that.”

“ Kira was there, too?” Good God, I barely knew her! And she’d been just a row or two away while all this was going on? If I still had the ability, I would’ve passed out from humiliation.

“Told you you’d feel better if you didn’t know the details,” Bones replied with a pointed look.

“I’ll never doubt your word again.” Or set foot out of this room, if Mencheres and Kira were still here.

He dragged me into his arms even though I was stiff from mortification.

“You needn’t be so ashamed. All you did was shag your husband; who’s to be shocked by that? Can’t say it’s an experience I’d care to repeat, but that’s only because you weren’t really yourself.” His lips brushed my ear. “Otherwise, chaining you up for over a day and a half of uninhibited rogering sounds terribly appealing.”

I knew he was trying to cheer me up, but I was still staggered over hearing I’d assaulted a tourist, gotten crazy every time Bones wasn’t plowing away at me, and as the coup de grâce , Mencheres had—in a manner of speaking—participated in Bones and me having sex. And here I swore I’d never have a threesome , the thought occurred to me amidst my lingering incredulity.

“Thought you said it was two days,” I muttered, finally registering the last part of what he’d said.

“You’ve been asleep for round nine hours now. Wasn’t sure if you’d still be caught up in the same hunger when you woke, so I didn’t take your restraints off.”

I didn’t blame him. God, I wouldn’t have blamed Bones if he’d duct-taped a vibrator to me and just took care of the whole sordid nightmare that way.

“You know what they say about being careful what you wish for? I used to wish there was something we could do, you know, intimately together that you hadn’t already done before, but I didn’t think it would ever happen.” I gave him a limp smile. “Though I doubt you’ve ever been forced to nonstop bang a woman hyped up on the undead voodoo version of Spanish fly, have you?”

His chuckle was soft. “Can’t say that I have, Kitten.”

“Yeah, well, consider me an original.”

This time, when his lips brushed across my skin, it lasted more than a moment.

“I always have.”

How he could be affectionate with me right after this latest cluster fuck—literally!—was beyond my comprehension. I should thank my lucky stars that while this scenario was an eleven out of ten on my perversity scale, Bones’s former human life as a gigolo combined with his promiscuous past as a vampire meant this probably only rated a three for him. Thank God he’d been there, too. I would have been horrified to cheat on Bones if I’d been hit with Marie’s blood-induced slut whammy when he wasn’t around.