Chapter 22
His Vicious Viper, the Very Definition of an Irresistible Temptation
Baz rarely slept well, and practically never slept deeply.
Over the centuries that he’d been Junot’s enforcer, he’d amassed so many enemies it was hardly worth keeping track of them all.
He always had to be on his guard. No matter where he was, there was sure to be someone out to get him.
At times, they disguised their distaste for him; others, they didn’t bother.
Certainly, there were those, like the young Crute, who’d bought into the stories of the Bazrians’ legendary prowess, and even some who understood that Baz and his friends could have done so much worse and purposefully hadn’t.
They could have raped, pillaged, and razed entire villages to their smoldering foundations, and Junot would have applauded their brutality.
As the face of Junot’s army, when Baz had led legions across continents, the people had called him the Razer.
They had cursed him—him, not Junot. Baz was the one haunted by all those who’d died because of him.
There were so many that they would crawl endlessly through his thoughts. They’d occupy entire sleepless nights.
So when Baz came to from the deepest sleep he could recall, he was groggy.
He burrowed deeper under the covers. He was warm and content, and it had been so long since he’d been either.
When he shifted, his arm bumped into another body.
He blinked, but he already knew who it was: his vicious viper.
No one else felt the way she did. No other woman had ever warmed him from the inside, like she might be all his immortal body truly needed to survive.
He hadn’t even known she was alive less than a Fuerin Star cycle ago, and yet now he feared he couldn’t live without her.
Not shouldn’t or wouldn’t—but couldn’t.
He would never be able to tell another essence that he’d fallen … out of hate for her.
His mind knew she was supposed to be his enemy, but his body didn’t.
His cold, dead, hardened heart didn’t understand how very off limits she was, when it damn well should have.
His heart couldn’t take another disappointment, another betrayal—it should have been the part of him flying the banner of retreat and galloping away in the opposite direction from her.
Her. When had she moved into his heart and made a home?
When his fingers sank into the curve of her deliciously plump ass—still clothed, scorchit—he moaned and didn’t bother toning down his reaction.
It felt too good not to hold back, to be bold and free.
He would blame it on the bizarre frenzy that overtook them when they were in close proximity to each other.
By the Ethers, he’d never fucked like he had with her.
He’d never thought he would actually die—permanently die—if he didn’t sink another little bit deeper inside her.
He’d never needed someone with such consuming desperation.
By the Ethers, he really couldn’t do without her. After her, no other woman would ever do. He craved her. She was better than the best blood he’d ever tasted—from feeders who kept themselves pure and feasted on strawberries and cherries to lend that flavor to their ichor.
He gripped her ass and pulled her against him, so she would feel exactly what she did to him.
Not in all the time he’d been both a fae and then a s?nglure had he ever been this hard this often for someone.
His desire for her barely seemed natural.
But she’d sworn she wasn’t a sorceress, that his obsession wasn’t due to any spell casting.
He hitched her leg onto his thigh, so that her soft, hot center was lined up with his erection, already throbbing with the need to fill her.
Into her neck, he growled. “Too many clothes. I need you naked.” He pumped his hips against hers and she gave a little moan, so much quieter than usual.
He dragged his fangs along her neck and she hissed in pleasure, tightening the grip of her thigh around his.
Someone thumped him on the back. In a blink, he had spun onto his other side, pinned his temptress behind the shield of his body, and retrieved the dagger he always stored under his pillow.
The point of his blade dug into the neck of the man hovering above them before Baz registered that it was Night.
He lowered the blade, but still clutched it close, while he blinked up into the darkness. A sole lumoon hovered near the doorway on the other side of his bedchamber. The illumination it provided was dim, but more than sufficient for his s?nglure vision.
He lay on his bed with Velle, while Night, Félix, Zi, and Ed loitered around his large bed.
His friends’ lips were moving but he couldn’t make out what they were saying.
When they realized he couldn’t hear them, Zi gesticulated impatiently.
She seemed to be gesturing to his dick, then to Velle behind him …
and next to the far corner of his room, farthest from the lumoon, where it was darkest.
Deep in a nest of Mauldrene’s shadows … huddled the phantom.
Baz tucked the blade back under his pillow and sat up, still shielding Velle. She smacked him on the arm and scooted next to him.
The shadows danced around the ghost he’d spared from the cage.
How had he been sleeping? He’d last been in the sitting room with the whiny nobles and the locked doors—with a phantom fighting to break free of his essence. Just another type of cage, he supposed.
Why hadn’t he considered that before?
Now Velle was talking too.
“I can’t understand any of you,” Baz said, hearing his own voice as if from a continent away. “My ears are ringing. Can’t even hear Mauldrene’s orchestra.”
The specter’s eyes were as dark as the castle’s most devouring shadows—and pinned on him.
Dammit, but he’d been trying to get to Lev and Moncho! Had he blacked out on his way to them? How was that possible?
Hurriedly, he rose. His head spun, and he had to hold the bedframe. Night and Ed were suddenly in front of him, trying to steady him. Both their lips were moving, and they kept moving, when Night hardly ever said anything at all, and Ed was far from a chatterbox.
“I can’t understand you,” Baz mumbled. His words wobbled.
Night, who didn’t usually talk with his hands, was using both to get his point across. Whatever it was, it was urgent.
At his back, Velle must have said something, because his four friends shifted to glare at her, protesting wildly.
Abruptly, she tugged him down to the bed, shoved him back against the headboard, and straddled his lap. Even now, when Baz realized others were present, he still moaned. The reaction was automatic. Like a sword meant to be sheathed, his dick was pining to slide inside her.
She rocked over him, dragging her clothed core across his cock.
After fumbling to find its edges, she drew the illusioned-veil from her face with annoyed hit-or-miss tugs—right, she’d claimed she couldn’t feel or see it.
She settled the veil roughly across the back of her head and tugged her fingers into his hair.
The Rillis rope thumped softly against his back.
After yanking his head back with more violence than was necessary, she angled her bare neck in front of his mouth with a clank of her iron collar he heard as a muted thud.
When he didn’t react, she nudged his teeth against her skin, above the band.
Wide for her slender neck, it sat heavily at its base, like a macabre necklace.
When he hesitated, she dragged his head back and forth so that his fangs scraped that tender, smooth skin of her neck.
She was his enemy.
He should resist.
He didn’t.
Couldn’t, really. She was the very definition of an irresistible temptation.
He sank his fangs into her Majora, piercing the skin with a crisp pop he’d heard thousands of times over the centuries but only imagined now.
Everything was still buzzing dully.
But something finally sliced through it.
When Baz took his first pull from her vein, his vicious viper moaned so loudly it reached him through the ringing.
He sucked her blood, allowing it to dance across his tongue, to explode with flavor—she tasted like everything he’d ever wanted, which really shouldn’t have been possible—while he pumped his hips against hers.
With how hard he was, maybe his dick would succeed in piercing the leathers they both wore.
He drank more, much more. Velle moaned again. And when Zi groaned in complaint, this time he heard her, loud and clear.
He just pretended he didn’t.