Текст книги "Desire in His Blood"

Автор книги: Zoey Draven

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Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

Her wings flared wide at the last possible moment, making her hover above the ground where we stood before she landed gently and neatly. The female was smiling at Ludayn as she tucked her wings back. She was beautiful, I couldn’t help but notice. With gleaming black hair and bright red eyes.

When the female saw me, however, it was difficult to explain the expression that came over her features. She hadn’t seen me, I realized. I’d been hidden behind Ludayn and the archway above me. But when this female locked eyes with me, something dark and cold shuttered her gentle smile.

“Oh,” she said simply, looking down the stretch of me. A familiar look. One Piper had often given me when she hadn’t liked a dress I had chosen that day. Then she ignored me completely, turning to regard Ludayn, her tone strange and tight as she asked, “Where’s Azur?”

“He went to meet with the patrol at the northern borders,” Ludayn said. She added, “With Rivin.”

“Where are you taking her?” the female asked stiffly, discomforted, barely glancing at me again.

“I’m Gemma,” I cut in before I could think better of it. But my hackles rose, and I didn’t like to be spoken over as if I wasn’t even there. If I allowed that, it would make me feel smaller than I already was. “Gemma Hara. Pleased to meet you.”

The female stiffened. Oddly, when she looked at me, I saw her eyes fill with unexpected tears.

“Kalia,” Ludayn gasped, reaching forward to take her arm, “are you all right? Do you need—”

“You belong to House Kaalium now,” the female, Kalia, spit out. “Do not forget it, Gemma Hara.”

I was too shocked to speak, watching a sudden tear trail over her cheek. It was silver. Her tears were silver, like mercury.

Kalia sniffed, wiping angrily at her cheeks, and then she pushed passed us.

“What in Raazos’s name is wrong?” came Zaale’s voice as Kalia nearly bowled him over in her attempt to get outside. “Kalia.”

Only, the female never said anything, and Zaale pinned me with a long, unreadable look. My tongue felt glued to the roof of my mouth.

Then a weathered huff burst from Zaale. “Take the Kylaira up to her rooms, Ludayn. Just as the Kyzaire asked of you. And keep her there until his return.”

“Yes, of course,” Ludayn murmured, limping forward, tugging me farther into the atrium and toward the wide staircase that rose high into the keep.

My new prison, I couldn’t help but think as we ascended.

Because for all its beauty…that was exactly what it was.

Chapter 8

Azur

The wind slid through my hair and traced its fingers over my cheek. Cold and refreshing, it filled my lungs, and I dipped my left wing to catch the edge of it, letting it propel me farther as the keep came into view.

Rivin had stayed behind at the northern border for the night. No sightings of the Kaazor since I’d left or of their kyriv, but the lack of anything put me on edge. When the Kaazor went dormant, they were preparing. For what? I didn’t quite know. Laras had a strong army. With my brother’s armies, most of which could be here within a day, I didn’t fear that the Kaazor—and their leader, Zyre—could overrun Laras, the capital of the Kaalium. They had tried before after they’d broken the treaty and had failed miserably.

It was the kyriv, truthfully, that could do the most damage if one managed to reach Laras, or if they hit the city walls from the eastern pass. The lore harvest was approaching too. The fields were vulnerable.

My home glittered like a beacon as I circled around it. The sprawling villages of Laras stretched beyond it, spreading to the west, the east, and the south. The Silver Sea reflected Krynn’s moon, which rose high in the northern sky.

For a moment, I savored it. Hovering in the sky, my wings working to keep me stationary as my gaze ate at the view. I took in the villages—the lights that flickered in individual homes, the long stretch of fields to the southeast, the thick, lush forests just beyond. In the air, I breathed in the north winds that funneled down from the mountains.

I swiveled around to look at the keep. The home I’d grown up in. There was a part of me that envied my brothers. That they had spread out among the Kaalium, each overseeing a different territory.

They’d received something new, something untainted.

And me? As the eldest son, I’d received Laras. I’d received our keep, the great keep of House Kaalium. With all its memories. With all its triumphs. With all its grief.

My eyes narrowed on the east wing, zeroing in on a specific stretch of windows.

My body felt depleted. Flying took much of our energy. It was why there was a blood giver encampment on the northern border, so our patrols and soldiers wouldn’t have to return to Laras to feed, to renew their strength when they’d been in the sky for hours on end.

Drinking from my wife was inevitable.

How could I begin to set things right for Aina’s soul unless I nourished myself with the blood of our enemy?

Raazos demanded it—the god of battle, protector of the three realms. If I strengthened myself on Hara blood, maybe I could reach out to Aina in Zyos. Maybe I could find her and tether her back to us.

But without her soul gem, without the vessel for her soul to fill, created from her very bones…maybe it would be a wasted effort.

I will still try, I thought.

With a growl, I propelled myself to my bride’s rooms, landing with a thump on the balcony just outside her bedroom window.

I shook some ice from my hair, inhaling a sharp, deep breath before I pushed open the doors.

She was in here. I could smell her. She made my mouth water even as nausea crept up on me, bitter and thick.

Out of the corner of my eye, I spied movement. Gemma stood from a plush chair tucked into the corner. I knew it hadn’t been placed there. She’d dragged it over to the most private part of the room, facing all the doors and windows. Prey watching for predators. Burrowing and tucking herself away, as if she could hide from me.

Scenting her sudden fear, though she tried to hide it with the bold upturning of her chin, I felt anticipation rise. It coated my tongue, made my venom drip from my slowly elongating fangs.

Though it was obvious she’d been sleeping, she looked at me warily, her eyes tracking my every movement.

“Do you know what it is to be a bride of a Kylorr?” I asked her, keeping my voice smooth and soft as I latched the balcony doors behind me. My own rooms were just next to hers, at the end of the hallway—I had a view of the Silver Sea and the mountains to the north. Though her mere presence put me on edge, I wanted her close. I wanted her near.

I heard her sudden swallow. It looked as if Ludayn had shown her to her rooms and Gemma had immediately fallen asleep in the chair once she’d left. She was still dressed in what she’d been wearing on the ship, a shapeless black silk shift that covered her from head to toe like she was in mourning. But her eyes were bright. Watchful. Observant.

Tilting my head, I studied my bride. She wasn’t anything spectacular to look at. Her black hair nearly matched my own though it was pulled back into a tight, unforgiving bundle at the nape of her neck. Her eyes were wide. Her brows straight, dark little slashes across her morose expression. Her cheeks were full, no sharp bones, only a round face.

Her pouting lips were perhaps the most pleasing of her features to look at—plump and pursed—but they couldn’t save the rest of her appearance.

Then again, I hadn’t chosen House Hara’s eldest daughter for her beauty. I’d heard the Hara daughters were well sought-after. I’d heard they were great beauties of their race, but I couldn’t see it in Gemma.

And the speed at which her father had given her up to a stranger, a stranger from an alien race I knew he loathed…it had given me pause. Perhaps I’d miscalculated. Perhaps I should have chosen another of his daughters, one he seemed to want.

“No,” came her quiet reply in response to my question. Whispered in the still room. As if all the air had been sucked out of it. Even the fire flickering in the hearth didn’t dare make a sound. “I don’t.”

My bride bit her bottom lip to stifle her gasp as I gave my wings a small pump behind me, jumping easily toward her with speed that I realized unnerved her.

Good.

The closer I drew, the more I could scent her. That delicious, surprising, tantalizing scent.

My fangs elongated fully in a rush, hunger gnawing at my belly, at my tendons and muscles with sudden ferocity. I could feel the hunger in my wings even, in the blood that rushed in the thin membranes.

There was an inkling of suspicion of what was happening, but I immediately dismissed it. I would make it untrue. The only way I could dispel the nagging dread would be to take my first feeding. Then I would know for certain.

Gemma expelled a harsh, ragged breath when I circled behind her, when I clasped her waist with a hard grip and dragged her in front of a long mirror perched in the corner of the room.

It was jarring to see us both presented there. And for a moment, I caught sight of my own face and didn’t recognize it. It was a male with a hardened expression, with unfathomable coldness in his eyes, burning with the need to make her hurt. To make her ache, as we all had.

She was so small against me. So…different. I’d fed off human givers before. There were many living in Laras, many spread throughout the Kaalium.

But this was different.

This human was my wife now. My bride.

She was mine by right. By oath. By blood.

For a moment, I thought of Rivin’s careful, disapproving expressions. His careful words. His knowing eyes.

Then I shook him from my mind. Fuck Rivin. He wasn’t responsible for the lost soul of someone he loved. But I was. He wasn’t allowed to judge me as I tried to uphold a promise I’d made long ago.

Gemma’s brown eyes were wide as I gripped the high neck of her black dress and tore the material, exposing the smooth column of her throat. Laughable really. Had she thought that simply covering her neck would make me forget my hunger?

Her pulse was dancing and throbbing. My eyes zeroed in on it, listening to the beat and pump. Dizzying and beautiful.

“There is usually ceremony in this. I should have taken my first feeding on Nulaxy,” I whispered into her ear, making her shiver as I met her eyes in the mirror, as I ran a dull claw down the side of her throat. Still, they were sharp enough to make her flinch. I was nearly trembling with need, with hunger, grinding my back teeth down in an effort to drag this out. “Would you rather we have witnesses, my bride?”

It was meant as a taunt, but her expression of horror nearly made me want to call in Zaale or a nearby roaming keeper.

Then her expression changed completely. To my utter surprise, her own eyes narrowed in a glare, practically spearing me through our shared reflection with her sudden anger. The mirror was ornate. Silver and shimmering with the finest and strongest of Krynn’s metals. Still, I thought it might melt with her derision.

“Do it,” she hissed. “Get it over with already, husband, and stop talking about it!”

This was the Hara daughter I’d expected. Unbending. Proud. Stubborn. Iron-willed.

I flashed my fangs.

“I want you disobedient, little wife,” I purred. “Because it will be all the more pleasurable to break you.”

“You might have bought me, Azur,” she told me, her voice strong and even. “But you will never own me. You think I am frightened of what you could do to me? Well, I am. Does that please you? But if you think that you are the worst thing I’ve ever endured, then you would be wrong. So do your worst, husband. Feed from me. Make me fear you. Break me. But I will always be my own.”

We held one another’s glares in the mirror. In the darkness of the vast room, only lit by the dwindling firelight, I looked like a shadow behind her. One with glowing, hungry eyes.

A shadow that would consume her. A beast. A monster.

She’d drawn the battle lines between us. But didn’t she understand? She would submit to me. Before I returned her, broken on her father’s doorstep, before I took everything else away. I would stop at nothing less.

My wings unfurled from behind me, and she froze when they wrapped around her hips and torso like a cocoon. To keep her still, to keep her from struggling away when she felt the prick of my bite. My wings wrapped around her like a vice, tightening, pressing her soft backside firmly into my front, making her huff out a panicked breath despite her bravado.

But I still wanted her to see. I still wanted her to watch what I was doing.

Our eyes met in the mirror as my head lowered to the column of her throat.

Her nostrils flared wide when my fangs pressed into the sensitive, heated skin. But she didn’t struggle. She didn’t move. If anything, her glare was a dare. A challenge.

Gemma made one desperate little sound as I broke her flesh with my bite.

A rough sound hummed from my chest as the taste of her blood exploded across my tongue. My venom unleashed, flooding into the wound as I drew out her blood.

On a particularly deep draw, ecstasy burst in my mind, momentarily stunning me. My hands went slack on her waist, my eyes sliding shut, my heart beginning to thunder.

Gods. She tasted divine.

My claws bit into her flesh, dragging her closer, wrapping one arm beneath her breasts. Her scent lingered around us like a misty fog, delicious and perfect, almost as sublime as her taste. Rich and thick and hot, her blood spilled over my tongue, and I greedily drank down every last drop.

I need more, came the primal thought. My body was roaring to life. My strength was growing, my muscles expanding. A warning went off in the back of my mind.

Too close to the edge, it told me. Closer than you’ve ever been.

I pushed it away, shoving it back, even as my cock throbbed with the sudden overwhelming need of release. I ground into her soft backside, rutting against her like a mindless beast, getting lost in her scent even as I fed more. Harder. Longer. Deeper.

Then I heard a moan.

Small and stifled behind a bit lip. Her moan.

Reality froze my blood.

Understanding made me want to roar with resentment and rage.

No.

Why her?

Why now?

Gemma Hara, the daughter of my enemy, whose House I had vowed to destroy, whose will I was determined to break, was my kyrana.

My new bride was my blood mate.

Chapter 9

Gemma

I’d lied.

I was not my own.

Not right then.

I was his.

He controlled me.

He controlled everything.

I wanted to sob at the wrongness and the rightness of this unfathomable, taunting, drugging pleasure.

When I’d first felt the sharp prick of his fangs, I’d felt resigned. This was what I’d agreed to, was it not? This was the price for my family’s freedom. And I would pay it. A thousand times over.

Yet I’d also felt determined. Because I’d realized right then that Azur might be able to feed from me, he might be able to make me fear him, he might be able to keep me locked away for the rest of my natural life, but I was in control of my own thoughts.

It was my mind in which I would live. He could do whatever he pleased with my body and not even get close to touching me.

Azur wanted to break me?

He could try his hardest, but I refused to let him.

Only, at his first dizzying suck, I felt my body tingle and warm. Heat radiated out from his bite, the pinching prick of it already faded in my memory, giving way to something far, far more worrisome.

I panicked when the pleasure began to crest, sudden and alarming, making me gasp. I clawed at the strong, tight arm that was bracketed against my breasts, scratching and tugging, but I didn’t know if it was to keep him near or to warn him.

I could feel his warm tongue lapping at the bite. I could feel the sucking pull of his fangs, drawing my blood into his mouth. His wings were holding me in place, my body rendered powerless. Between my legs, I began to throb, flaring to life as my knees trembled.

A moan escaped my throat, unwanted but inevitable. I swore I could feel that mouth on every inch of my body, on my suddenly heavy breasts and tight, straining nipples, to my inner wrists, behind my knees, in the creases of my thighs. And there. Right there. His bite seemed to connect directly to my clit, to the aching bud that fluttered and pulsed with every long, deep draw.

What is happening? I thought wildly, straining against him. I was aware of him in a way I hadn’t been before. The tease of his hair as it trailed over my shoulder. The hard press of his chest and ridges and valleys of carefully sculpted strength. His ragged breath and the sudden rocking of his body against mine. That was when I felt it…

The unmistakable massive length of his cock. Hard and fully erect.

My eyes widened. When he groaned against me, taking my blood deep, I went to my tiptoes, trying to keep his mouth on me, my head lolling, going dizzy.

I’m going to come, I thought desperately.

I needed to!

Biting my lip, I moaned, feeling a familiar flutter between my legs. I didn’t care anymore. My thoughts and needs hinged on his fangs in my neck. Nothing else mattered.

So, so close!

Then Azur froze.

I felt every muscle in his body stiffen and tighten until he became a column of stone at my back.

Then before I could part my lips in protest, he was tearing away from me.

I nearly cried out in frustration in my dazed state. My neck felt empty where his fangs should have been imbedded deep. I was shaking with my need to orgasm and suddenly so angry with him for denying me that once-in-a-lifetime kind of pleasure. Because I knew, undoubtedly, that was what it would’ve been.

Then I remembered myself.

When I did, I gasped.

When the reality of our situation crashed onto me like a pile of bricks, I felt deeply, deeply ashamed. Mortified. Disgusted.

My knees gave out from underneath me, and I tumbled to the soft rug that covered the stone floor, sitting splayed. I stared up at Azur in shock and disbelief, even as arousal still coursed through my body, even as my blood sang from his bite. Pressing the pads of my fingers hard into the twin wounds near my jugular, I focused on evening my breaths.

Never in a million years had I expected this from a Kylorr’s feeding, I thought quietly.

I almost laughed. Maybe it was their best kept secret. Maybe it was intentionally done.

Azur’s shoulders were heaving as he stared down at me. His eyes were glowing red. Like rubies in the darkness, illuminated like a blaze. And…had he grown? He filled more of the room, which seemed to have shrunk three sizes.

I watched as a tiny drop of my blood, red like his eyes, rolled off one of his ivory fangs. He caught it with the pad of his thumb, sucking it cleanly off as I sat, shivering, waiting.

The tension in the room was thick. So thick I could barely breathe. Like heavy heat during summer in the Collis.

I expected panic to rear its head after the embarrassment.

Strangely enough, I began to feel calm.

Maybe it’s from the blood loss, I thought. He’d fed from me hard.

Swallowing, I lowered my hand from the bite mark and pushed up to my knees. Azur watched me, tracking my every movement. The longer he stared, the harder and colder his face became.

But something was changed.

Azur was looking at me.

Really looking at me.

I felt the weight of his observing gaze like it was the clasp of his unyielding grip.

Something’s wrong, I realized, my instincts telling me so.

When I finally found my strength to stand, I stood before him, meeting his gaze head on.

Quietly, I told him, “You got what you wanted. You can leave now.”

His nostrils flared at my bold command. His wings—which were frighteningly strong, as I remembered the tightening hold of them—twitched. The tops of his wings were capped with a single set of sharp, curved talons. They could gut me where I stood if his gauntlets didn’t first.

If I thought it was a risk daring to give him an order after what had just happened, it was one I knowingly took. He needed to leave. I needed to wash him from my body. I needed to sleep away this entire day, this entire week.

In the morning, I would begin a new life. One I wasn’t certain of, but one I was determined to have a hand in shaping.

Krynn wasn’t anything like how I had expected. My own ignorance had played a hand in that, but I wouldn’t make the same mistake again. I needed to be rested. I needed to be alert. I needed to be ready.

And if my Kylorr husband’s bite promised dark, seductive, unwanted, dizzying pleasure?

Next time, I would be better prepared to receive it.

This was my life now. Whether I wanted it or not.

Turning from him, showing him my back, I made for the washroom I knew was off the sitting room.

There was a whisper of movement behind me, and then he was there. Spinning me to face him and pushing me up against the wall next to the hallway door, bracketing his hands on either side of my head. My heart pounded fiercely, but I leveled him a long look, the back of my skull pressing into the textured gray stone wall behind me. The bite on my neck gave a throb.

“You don’t get to dismiss me, wife,” Azur growled down to me. His eyes were still glowing.

“You’re in my rooms, are you not?” I answered in an even tone that made his fangs press against his bottom lip.

“Do you forget who I am?” he hissed, crouching low into my space until we were eye level and all I could see was him. His wings blocked out everything behind him. “And you still dare speak to me like this?”

“How could I forget who you are?” I snapped back, clenching my fists into the silk of my dress. “You’re the male who bought me! The male who’s made it clear to me that I am an object to him, a plaything, a damn meal. I am nothing to you but a neck you can stick your fangs into and torment whenever you wish.”

“Torment?” he asked, eyes narrowing dangerously. His purring tone was at odds with the hardened glint in his gaze as he asked, “Is that what torment looks like for you? As if you weren’t moaning with my fucking fangs in your pretty neck! Which, by the way, is only one of the many places I will feast on you, little bride.”

Fury rose. Shame made my cheeks heat, but it had nothing on the sudden rage.

“Fuck you,” I whispered. I began to shake. I pushed at his chest. “Fuck you!”

I never lost it. I was the calm sister. The rational one. The one who didn’t let emotions take over. The one who Piper had called a cold bitch with a stick up her ass. That was me.

Circumstance had made me that way. Even before my mother’s death.

Nothing about me felt calm. I wanted to claw Azur’s damn eyes out. I wanted to pummel his chest with my fists until they were bruised and raw.

I pushed at his chest again, and though he growled in warning—a low, deep, rumbling sound that made the hair on my arms stand on end—he didn’t budge. So I did it again, throwing my weight into him. Slapping at the hardened wall of his chest with my palms before I curled them into fists.

My throat was tight. My eyes began to sting. I was making small noises I’d never heard before, like a snarling, sad little beast.

I’m going to cry, I realized, and the thought made me even angrier. Because now he would see me cry, and I loathed to show him another weakness, another vulnerability after what had just happened between us.

“Stop,” he snapped when I banged on his chest harder. He tried to snag my wrists, to keep me still, but I fought against him. There was this hellish thing inside me, a beastly thing that wanted to break free. I wanted to hurt him. I was desperate to.

But it wasn’t truly him I wanted to hurt, was it?

It was everything else that had led me to him. My deep-rooted anger that had festered for years and years and years was beginning to surface.

I had no idea how to handle it.

I had no one to turn to.

I was completely and utterly…alone.

That realization made the first sob tear from my throat. The blur in my vision made my fists finally slow from their frenzied whip, and Azur caught them up, holding them strong. I fought against him half-heartedly as my grief and a bizarre sense of loss finally caught up with me.

I cried until my throat ached, trying to hide my face from Azur.

“Gemma,” came my name, spoken in a tone that was so unlike his cutting hiss.

My name alone gave me enough strength to break away from his hold. I stumbled away, toward the chair I’d dragged into the corner, turning my back on him. Wrapping my arms around my body, I felt the bite on my neck give a twinge, a constant reminder I couldn’t erase.

“Go away,” I whispered.

“Gemma—”

“I’ll beg if I have to,” I informed him, my voice shaking, trying to hold back another sob. “Please, just go away!”

Silent tears tracked down my cheeks as I stared at the shadows flickering against the stone walls. I could see his shadow there too, long but wide.

So, so alone, I thought. What I wouldn’t have given for my sisters right now. For Fran. For a familiar face, even my father’s. Because the heart was a fickle thing and I couldn’t simply erase the love I had for him.

I felt my face crumple. My shoulders shook as the deep sobs clawed up my throat.

Finally, though not soon enough for my liking, I heard Azur retreat. His heavy footsteps boomed across the floor, sounding quick and angry.

When the door closed behind him, I cried even harder.

At least he was gone.

Truly alone now, I thought.