Evie Burne - Bound by Blood

What a question after his night. His stomach churned with bruise blood. No way could he eat right now, but he was on fire. And as horny as he was, he was just as confused, because he could not place exactly what had turned him on so much about that lunatic, or why she was supposed to be his mate. All in all it was frightening.

So it was good to be on his home turf, to see familiar sights. This was his life.

Alex glanced up, giving his tacit consent for whatever Gregor wanted to do.

“I’ve just fed, Sara,” Gregor said. “But I’ll watch, because you’re beautiful.”

Sara’s lips curled into a smile. Her grip on his hand tightened, then gave way as Alex increased his attentions, so Gregor sat down in his armchair.

Gregor might be the boss of Tangiers, but Alex was its darling. His big brown eyes and puppy smile got him whatever he wanted. That, and his reputation as a lover, which was entirely deserved.

Sara’s eyes were open, but they glazed over as Alex congealed the wounds on her breasts, stopping the blood flow for the moment. Sara already had tiny wounds running down the inside of her wrist and just behind her earlobe. Alex could drag this on forever, keeping the woman in a slow crawl of ecstasy until she begged him for mercy. And that was before he fucked her.

Unlike Alex, Gregor did not have the time or inclination to make every meal a three hour orgy. There was pleasure for the donor in even the most straightforward transaction, but Alex always reveled in the process. Alex loved humans, loved pleasing them, and passed as one easily—so different from their brother, Mikhail, keeper of the old ways. Gregor went to neither extreme. He was the practical one, the middle child.

Alex lowered his face between her breasts to clean up the blood there. He swiped his face in the thickening blood, and came up with his cheek stained. That was a gesture of dominance, and an instinctive, marking behavior. Gregor’s incisors sharpened in response. A fleeting desire to challenge Alex for the girl passed through him, and was quickly repressed. It was not true desire, it was instinct. Alex claimed one of Sara’s breasts, sucking it deep in his mouth. She arched her back, rising with the suction, moaning loud.

Gregor thought of Maddy’s flannel nightgown, of how it could not hide the fullness of her breasts. He imagined unbuttoning the front, and taking one heavy breast in each hand. She’d have dusky nipples.

No.

He forced his mind back to the scene in front of him.

Alex hiked Sara’s short skirt up around her hips, exposing the tops of her stockings. Swift and sure, he punctured the soft flesh of her inner thigh, making what Gregor suspected was his final, and so deepest, bite. Sara’s body stiffened as she cried out with the pain, and then she jerked under his bite as the sucking began. This mimicking of the death throes swept all rational thought from Gregor’s mind. Now he wanted her in his mouth, full belly or no. With parted lips he sucked in the air, picking up the flavor of Sara’s blood and the rising musk of her desire. Her head rolled his direction and her eyes, glazed as they were, sought and found his. Soft feeding sounds came from Alex.

Keeping her eyes on Gregor, Sara teased her own breasts, smearing bloody fingerprints across her white skin, staining her nipples red. Some action of Alex’s made her eyelids flutter and her lips part, and it was all that Gregor could do not to jump on her.

All the way back to the city he had struggled to master his desire and now he was fanning the flames. Was it masochism, or was he just an idiot? If he had any sense, he would sit down and look over his freshly audited books and pretend he didn’t have a dick at all, and continue pretending it until Elixir opened. But there was only so much deprivation he could stand in a night. He unzipped his pants and began to stroke his cock through his boxers. Crooking her mouth into a half smile, Sara imitated him: she reached down to rub her clit with her bloody hand. Alex lifted his head, nostrils flaring.

Gregor knew what was in Alex’s mouth, the salty taste of blood and pussy combined, and the memory of it made his saliva run. His cock hardened and he pushed the boxers back so he could have full play. For an instant Sara’s dark, wide eyes fixed on his cock, and then Alex buried his face between her legs. Her eyes closed, and she was gone.

Gregor leaned back in his chair, jerking and stroking alternately, his eyes narrowing, until all there was for him in the world was the strength of his hand and the sound of Sara’s gasps and pleas in his ears. Sara’s cries became Maddy’s cries, and he was under that flannel gown, feeding off her round inner thigh, and her hands were in his hair, pleading with him to…how’d she phrased it? Move north. With pleasure he’d move north. Anything to stop that mouth of hers.

That mouth of hers.

Closing over his cock and sucking deep.

He came, each spurt reluctant and agonized.

“Fuck me,” he muttered, drawing his free hand over his face, while the other still cradled his wilting cock.

Sara’s rhythmic cries told him she was about to come, too. He took that moment to disappear. Alex could have her in private.

An empty cab appeared in Maddy’s line of vision just as she was about to bite down on a steaming hot frank smothered in relish. “Damn.”

Quickly she wrapped the foil back around it and ran forward with her arm upraised. If she got it she may not be late to her herbalist after all, and that would almost make up for the sin of eating a nitrate-and-preservative-packed hot dog on the way there.

The cab slowed down and pulled over about twenty feet away. She ran for it, juggling her bag and her dinner, dodging bodies. Even a short run was proving too much for her any more. She put one hand to her chest, feeling the disturbing, lurching rhythm of her heart. Nitrates are the least of your problems, Maddy girl .

As distracted as she was, she ran straight into someone—someone trying to steal her cab.

“Oh no, buddy. This one is mine.” He was so close, and so tall, that his chest blocked her whole field of vision. Black tie, black shirt, black suit, black overcoat. Color me morbid.

“Madelena?” the wall gasped.

She craned her neck upward to see Gregor Faustin gaping at her like he’d seen his own death.

“What is your problem?” She meant it all sorts of ways. “Let go of my cab.”

Faustin recovered enough to return to his usual unpleasant self. “It’s not ‘your cab’. I hailed it.”

“You lie like a rug.” Her mind boggled trying to figure out how he could be there. How they could possibly meet again. It had to mean he was stalking her.

“What—you think I’m stalking you?” His incredulous expression, she realized, was less than flattering to her as would-be stalkee. And did he just read her mind?

“You’re right,” she snapped. “Why would you go through the trouble of stalking me when you can just break into my apartment and suck my toes whenever you like?”

Faustin folded his arms and glared at her down his crooked nose. “I have no idea what you are talking about.”

Nothing was more hateful than a bald-faced lie, with the possible exception of an arrogant bald-faced lie. “Look, I don’t know what you intended that night, but if you meant to do some kind of memory wipe, you failed. At the very least you could have taken away my coat and pants. The damning evidence, you know? Sloppy work, Faustin, very sloppy.”

He arched a brow. “Tell me, did you ever get checked for head injuries, Madelena?”

“Bite me.” She smacked his hand off the door handle and claimed the cab.

As quick as a blink, Faustin jumped in on the other side. “Oh no,” he said, “You’re not stealing my cab.”