Court of the Vampire Queen: Part 1 – Chapter 3

“I’m feeling generous.”

I stare up at Malachi’s handsome face. “What?” I should be fighting right about now, but the only thing I’m fighting is my desire to arch against his hard body.

He flashes a little fang in a quick grin. “I’ll let you choose where I bite you this time, little dhampir. But only if you speak quickly.”

“You can’t.” I sound like I’m asking a question, rather than giving a command. I lick my lips, achingly aware of the way he follows the movement. “Unless you really do want to kill me.”

“I’m not hungry for your blood.” He leans down and his lips brush against the shell of my ear. “I want to feel you come again.”

I open my mouth, but not a sound emerges. I expected a lot of things when my father laid out my fate in that cold way of his. Pain. Torment. Maybe even death. I didn’t expect this. I’m not even sure what this is. “What?”

“I can bite you here.” He gives my neck a slow kiss, dragging his mouth over the spot where he bit me last night. Malachi keeps moving down, stopping at the top of my chest. “Or here.” His gaze flicks to my face and he descends to flick his tongue out and stroke my nipple. “Or here.”

“Do it.” I don’t even sound like myself. I sure as hell don’t feel like myself. It takes everything I have not to reach for him as he holds my gaze and sinks his fangs into the soft skin of my left breast just above my nipple.

Pleasure bows my back and I cry out. Gods, it shouldn’t be so good. And then his mouth closes around my nipple and it gets even better. He cups my other breast and loops his free arm around my waist, pulling me tighter against him. He strokes me with his tongue and I’m lost.

I barely register letting go of the counter. One second I’m clinging to it for dear life and the next my fingers are tangled in his long dark hair, holding him to me. My knees buckle, and he eases us to the floor with me straddling him. Careful. He’s so fucking careful. He’s not really taking blood right now, not more than a few drops. His hold on me is tight, but nowhere near tight enough to hurt me.

Like before, each pull of his mouth sends a bolt of lust directly to my clit. I whimper and arch closer. “Please.” I’m so empty. I need to come. I need to fuck, hard and quick. I simply need.

He shifts his grip around my waist, urging me down until I’m pressed against his cock. He’s hard again, and I have the dazed thought that he’s massive, but I can barely cling to it. Not when he rocks me against him, sliding my pussy along his length through his pants. It’s not enough, but it feels too good to stop.

Over and over again, building my pleasure stroke by stroke, pull by pull of his mouth.

He releases my breast and I cry out in protest, but Malachi moves to my right one. This bite is a little rougher, and it propels me into a brutal orgasm. I cry out and grind down on him, coming so hard he has to tighten his hold to keep me from collapsing. He licks my nipple one last time and lifts his head.

I look down and find twin bite marks marring my breasts. Thin trickles of blood run from each puncture wound, and the sight threatens to ramp up my desire again. Especially when he leans down and drags his tongue over my skin, cleaning me.

Now’s the time to say something. To remind him again I’m not here because I chose to be. I don’t actually want this, humping him in the kitchen notwithstanding.

Malachi looks up at me and gives that slow smile. “Don’t worry, little dhampir. I will fuck you, and soon. This was simply a little taste of what it will be like.”

There’s no point in protesting. He will fuck me. It was inevitable from the moment I walked through the door, but it feels almost like fate in this moment. A fate I’m not quite sure I want to fight. If it’s this good with a bite and most of our clothes on, will it be better when we’re both naked and I’m entirely at his disposal.

Will I survive it?

Vampires can go into a frenzy when they fuck. It doesn’t happen often as long as everyone’s getting regular feedings, but Malachi has been alone in this house for at least as long as I’ve been alive. I don’t know why he doesn’t hunt, but the last sacrifice my father sent was before I was born. No matter how good his control right now, it might not hold.

He might kill me.

“Let me go,” I say quietly.

He slowly releases me and leans back to prop his hands on the floor. He’s studying me like I’m a puppy who’s done something unexpected. “You enjoyed what just happened.”

Yes, I did. A lot. I also want it to happen again as soon as possible. I have too much self-preservation to admit as much, though. “Your bite is orgasmic. Of course my body liked it.”

“Ah.”

I need to get up, especially when I can feel his cock pulsing against me, but my legs aren’t cooperating. Or that’s what I tell myself as I glare at him. “And stop ambushing me. I get you need blood, and that’s what I’m here for, but unless you want this sacrifice to be short-lived—literally—you need to knock that shit off.”

His brows inch up, and he’s back to looking like he’s half a second away from laughing at me. “I’ll take that into consideration.”

“I’ll need food, too.” I brace my hands on his shoulder to push to my feet, but somehow my wires get crossed and I rock my hips against him. Just a little. I bite my bottom lip. “What are you doing to me?”

“Nothing.” He very slowly, very gently, replaces his hands on my hips. “Nothing at all.”

“I don’t believe you.” My desire is spiking again, my body hot and pliable. I have to get out of here, and I have to do it now. Otherwise I’m in danger of doing something unforgivable, like reaching between us to free his cock and taking him deep inside me. I want it. I want it more than I want my next breath.

I shove to my feet.

Or at least, I try.

My bad knee buckles halfway up, and Malachi catches me before I make harsh contact with the floor, his hands beneath my knees. I barely have a chance to register what happened when he moves us, lifting me up and setting me on the counter. He pushes my dress to bare my knee and frowns at it. “This is recent.”

No point in denying it. The truth is written right there on my skin in ugly purple scars. “Yes.”

“I was under the impression dhampirs heal quickly.”

“Not as quickly as vampires.”

“That is not an answer.”

He’s like a dog with a bone. I don’t understand where he’s headed with this line of questioning. “Yes, I heal quickly.”

“And yet you have an injury like this.” His face takes on a forbidding look. “Explain.”

Oh, for fuck’s sake. I shove at his shoulders, but I might as well try to shove a mountain. Frustration bubbles up inside me, hot and cloying. “As I’m sure you’ve probably figured out, I didn’t exactly volunteer for this gig. I tried to run. My father made sure I wouldn’t be able to again.”

He goes still in that predatory way that makes every instinct I have scream at me to flee, which might be laughable under other circumstances. Flee. Sure. That’ll work out great.

Malachi’s thumb traces the most prominent bit of the scar, the spot where my father beat my knee again and again, until the bones were little more than pebbles. “There is no quick fix for this type of injury.”

“Thanks for that, Doctor Malachi, but I’m already aware. Even with my accelerated healing, I’ll never walk right again.” It’s something I can’t think too closely about or it might be the thing that breaks me. My entire life has been spent running, even if it was contained within the colony walls. I’ve escaped beatings and worse because of my ability to flee. No longer.

He presses a hand to the center of my chest. “Stay.”

“I am not your dog to command.”

“Stay,” he repeats.

I don’t know why he bothers to tell me what to do. He moves so quickly, I barely have a chance to tense before he’s back between my thighs again, this time holding a knife. I freeze. “A vampire with a knife. How novel.” Which reminds me. I narrow my eyes, trying to ignore the blade glinting between us. “Return my knife.”

“When I’m sure you won’t try to carve out my heart, I will.”

“Looks like someone already tried and botched the job.” I jerk my chin at the mangled scars on his chest. “I’m more than happy to do it properly.”

He chuckles, a dry rasping sound. “What’s your name, little dhampir?”

As much as I want to dig in my heels instead of answering, it won’t serve any purpose. I’m here for the foreseeable future. Might as well be on a first name basis with my captor, willing or no. “Mina.”

“Mina.” He says it slowly. “It suits you.”

“If you say so.”

Malachi reverses the knife in a smooth move and presses it to the side of his throat. “You seem like a smart girl.”

I blink. “Um.”

“Too smart to deny yourself a tool, even if I’m the one giving it to you.”

I don’t know he’s right about that, but I can’t help staring at his throat as he drags the tip of the knife over his skin, leaving a thin trail of blood in its wake. My fangs ache in response. I might not require blood the way actual vampires do, but the desire is still there. “What are you doing?”

“Blood is power, little dhampir.” He leans in, pressing against me, until his neck is a few spare inches from my mouth. “Drink from me enough and your knee will mend itself.”

“Impossible.” I throw the word out like a life preserver. “It’s healed already.”

“Not impossible.” He tilts his head to the side, baring his neck completely. “Drink.”

I shouldn’t. It’s another tie linking me to him. His bloodline’s power might not be glamour like my father’s, but sharing blood back is what vampires do to mind-fuck humans. I’ve never drank from a vampire before. I don’t know what will happen if I do.

But if he’s not lying… If it can heal my knee…

My tongue snakes out without permission and drags over his neck. That small taste feels like a nuclear bomb going off inside me. I stop thinking, stop trying to rationalize my way through this. I simply act.

I bite him.

I have no finesse, like he demonstrated even when he was tackling me to the floor that first time. I’m too desperate for more.

His blood is like lightning on my tongue. It lights every nerve ending up. I swear I can actually feel the power rolling through my body. I want more.

Malachi digs his hand into my hair and gently pries me off him. “That’s enough.”

“But—” I can’t take my eyes off his neck. Even as I watch, the wounds close. “More.”

“Not today.” He steps back slowly, as if it pains him to put distance between us. “Get some sleep, Mina. You’re going to need it.”

I inhale. Even the air tastes different with his power flowing through my veins. “I don’t want to sleep. I want to…” I look at him. He really is sexy in a brutal sort of way. I can appreciate that, appreciate his strength and the way his eyes bleed to black when he looks at me. “I want to fuck.”

“Not that, either.”

“Why not?” Is this what being drunk feels like? It’s completely different than the bliss of his bite. That’s a physical thing and it eases almost as soon as his fangs leave my skin. This feeling is in my veins, searing me right to my very soul. I shiver. “It’s what I’m here for, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” He’s studying me, but I’m too loopy to read his expression. “But not yet. If you still want my cock when you wake up, you’re more than welcome to it.”

“I want it now.” I hop off the counter, but the world shifts, turning topsy-turvy on me. My bones go liquid and the last thing I feel before darkness claims me is Malachi’s strong arms closing around me.