Chapter 10 Susenyos
SUSENYOS
Susenyos sagad had once felt all his bones break, gone to the space where sweet agony met nothingness, and he still preferred it to being human.
It was why he’d memorized the exact boundary line between Adane House and Uxlay proper that would strip him of his immortality. And he made sure never to cross it unless absolutely necessary.
“Stop,” he said, staring down at the soil.
Susenyos stood three paces behind Kidan, in the weeds of Adane House’s garden, restricting his breathing. He could hear the old door creaking with the wind. The gentle sounds of Etete baking his favorite bread—ambasha.
But most importantly, his ears didn’t pick up the presence of his old friend. Samson was not here.
They had arrived moments ago, and all was quiet. Good.
He didn’t want an audience for what he planned to do.
Kidan stopped and turned to face him. The afternoon sun fell behind her, drenching her brown skin and blurring the edges of her determined eyes. He wondered why he was always cursed to find the things that harmed him most—beautiful.
But this wasn’t the moment to appreciate his companion’s beauty.
In a flash, Susenyos pushed Kidan against the ancient weeping willow tree, the floor-length vines guarding them from the outside world. His hand closed around her neck, around her tie, a circle of red igniting in his vision. Her breath hitched sharply at the sudden contact.
“Barely a week, and you’re already turning on me. Maybe I should kill you right here.”
Susenyos knew the scent of her fear, had tasted it the day he pulled out Titus Levigne’s spine. Sour, tinged with ash. He waited for it with equal measure of pleasure and apprehension, half expecting her to bolt.
Though she treated him with caution, there was too much bravery in her gaze. With each second he remained still, her eyes sparked with confidence, almost trust. Trust he wouldn’t hurt her and underneath that trust… frustrating desire. And God help him, he liked it.
He’d been the object of her hatred for too long. It’d sustained him for a while, burning like ocean ice. But what he longed for now was something dangerous, something she didn’t offer anyone because her very soul was bound to it.
“You’re loyal to me.” Susenyos tried to avoid breathing in her dizzying scent as he spoke—night oak and crushed Abyssinian rose. “Say it.”
Kidan’s eyes lightened at the words. “But you’re the one who needs me.”
He growled, sensing her grasp for more power. “I’m not signing the house over to you.”
“The house is rightfully mine.”
“Is it?” he countered. “Your family chose me. You ambushed me. You should have discussed it with me first.”
“I tried. You said no.”
His laughter was clipped. “So you decided for me?”
Kidan paused for a second, lifting her lashes. “I had no other choice. They were going to vote for Adane House to become a Border House.”
His nostrils flared. Dean Faris was a calculating witch. But that wasn’t what frustrated him. It was Kidan’s words, the caging nature of them.
You’re the one who needs me.
“I don’t need anyone,” Susenyos said, his fangs pulsing with hunger.
The longer he spent in her presence the harder it was to deny himself of her.
“I can tell you what I want, though. I want to trust you. To go for one week without seeing you as my enemy. I want to destroy the people threatening us without your impulsive actions ruining us. I want you to do as you’re told and change the house law.
Return what was stolen from me. Be a good little bird. Can you do that for me?”
Like he knew they would, holy flames roared to life in her gaze.
“Are you done?” she bit back. “Can I tell you what I want?”
Susenyos nearly smiled, studying her dangerous mouth as she tore him into pieces. To go to hell first. To return her gun second. To help her kill Samson third.
Had it really been only a few days they’d been apart? Susenyos rarely felt the strangle of time. It was an inconvenience he’d shed long ago, yet he’d been aware of every second this past week. As if he were human again, bound to the great clock. A truly disconcerting thought.
“Are you listening?” she asked, frowning. “Why are you smiling—”
He touched her where he most wanted to—her lips.
She stuttered a breath, her cascading words cut at once, chest rising and falling.
His thumb pressed on her mouth, its warmth bleeding into him.
His eyes flicked up, catching the swift shift of alarm and desire at war on her face.
A soft blush spread along her earthy-brown skin.
The blood vessels beneath the thin layer of her lips pumping.
This, he thought. This is how it should feel when we touch. Every sense electrified.
Earlier, when she’d brushed his cheek in the hallway, it had felt wrong. Both numb yet horribly invasive. Like he was a raw nerve, flayed bone to muscle.
He could not let her touch him as a human. He was not worthy of it.
But he could touch her now. He could do anything now.
Reading his intention, she swallowed thickly.
Her eyes tracked him, speaking to him in a private language.
There was the piercing intensity of her hatred and the thick water of her grief.
Her delicious rage. But this… the way she was looking at him now—open and cresting with need—made him forget she carried more treachery in her little finger than his greatest foe’s drawn weapon.
“What are you doing?” she breathed.
What was he doing?
He had planned to not touch her at all—inside or outside the house. But how quickly he bent his rules when it came to her.
She’s dangerous.
Susenyos tried to focus on his words and not her stilted breath playing at the base of his thumb.
“You wounded me before the council. What am I supposed to do with you?”
His canines widened in his gums until he had no choice but to part his mouth. Often, it was a fresh wound that woke his fangs. But there was no cut here, nothing to explain why he was quickly losing control, mouth hovering dangerously close to her neck.
Enough. He tried to still himself.
But his fangs only drew closer, thumb still toying with her bottom lip.
All he could think about was hot, gushing blood.
He pulled at her tie, a red-and-black Uxlay design with the twin golden lions emblazoned, slid it free, and tucked it into his back pocket, smiling.
Such a thin piece of clothing guarding her lovely throat.
He pushed her thick braids over her shoulders, opening her collar.
A furrow grew between her brows, the swirl of desire snuffed out by confusion.
She studied his fangs, her tone distant. “You want my blood.”
Even his voice was parched. “Always.”
All of this had to be bloodlust.
“Then drink.”
He could read something wrong in her tone but that damn word always stripped him of any coherent thought. And right now, his fangs were thinking for him. He tipped his head down, her soft skin heaven against the hard ridge of his nose.
He could feel her veins, all three of them, two branching into one, and the longer he held himself still, the more blood gushed through the vein. Sensations danced on his lips as he traveled up and down the column of her throat. Not a bite, but a near-kiss. Breathing her in.
Her fingers bunched on his arms, hard enough to pinch his skin.
“Just do it.”
How quickly she sounded like him—equally starved.
He smiled. “You’re not enjoying this, are you, little bird?”
Susenyos continued to press his mouth to her vein. She might have won the game of the house, but he wouldn’t let her command every part of him.
He returned to the feel of her long braids wrapped in his hand. Like the vines of Farah’s trees, shimmering with pieces of the sun. The leaves surrounding them swayed with the wind, a circle of tattered curtains cutting them off from the world.
“What is it, exactly, you want me to do?” he whispered against her ear. “Kiss you?”
He was thrust back to the memory of her angling his head down to her shoulder, gentle and eager during Cossia Day. He’d been powerless, completely at the mercy of the scene before him, her body worthy of worship. Then she’d uttered those damning words. Asking him to drink with such sweet innocence.
He tried to distract the craving in his fangs by trailing lazy kisses along her neck, teeth scraping gently on the lobe of her ear.
He wouldn’t drink… not until she needed him to.
“We’ve done this before. Tell me what you want. Tell me where you want my mouth.”
A stifled moan slipped out of her, sending pleasure coursing through him.
She wouldn’t admit it. Even at Cossia Day, he had to drag those three lovely words out of her.
So he was surprised when she shifted, allowing their cheeks to make delicious contact, and planted angry fervent kisses—more teeth than lips, inch by agonizing inch, along the line of his jaw, leading to his own mouth.
Kidan pressed their bodies closer, so they were flush against each other.
He allowed himself to get lost in the heat of the moment, hand sliding across her waist, hips, and thighs.
He’d always loved her like this, bold and unafraid. Taking from him what she wanted.
The urgency thrilled him into a momentary stillness.
Kidan froze as well. Reality snuck up on them, cruel and fast.
Her voice came out angry. “I told you to just do it.”
Susenyos nearly laughed. “So now it’s my fault you want to kiss me?”
She pulled back slowly, cheeks flushed, eyes clouded. “It won’t happen again.”
“If you want a kiss, all you have to do is ask, though I’ll say no.”
Her mouth opened slightly, making his smug smile stretch. Wriggling out of his hold, Kidan quickly buttoned up her collar.
“Because it’ll be the last thing I ever do?”
“Yes,” he said, enjoying the uneven rhythm of her heartbeat.
Though he could sense she was angry, her curiosity won out. “Why?”
“Because after a vampire kisses a human being, they often have to bury them.”
Kidan froze, jerking her head up. “Really?”
“Unfortunately, yes. A vampire bite releases memories and sometimes those memories are so euphoric, we can’t stop feeding. Pleasure can quickly turn into tragedy, so try not to kiss me, little bird.”
Her dark eyes narrowed slightly, but there was also a flicker of true disappointment. It nearly made him smile again.
Instead, he took a careful step back, cold common sense creeping in. He couldn’t let her have the house and be the source of his hunger and desire.
Ignoring the painful ache in his fangs, Susenyos put more distance between them. He needed to attend blood courting and get himself under control.
“So you’ll sign over the house to me?”
Kidan angled her chin, a challenge clear in her jaw. She was testing him, that much was clear. The problem was Susenyos wasn’t particularly fond of proving himself to anyone.
Her hatred of vampires and her assumptions had painted him as cruel and untrustworthy. Cruel, he might be, but trust was forged. Had been forged between them with blood and yet, for some reason, she insisted on testing their fragile bridge.
Her brown eyes betrayed nothing but there was a pounding in her chest. Heavy, thudding. A familiar rhythm of panic he recognized from the Bath of Arowa, when she asked him to stay with her.
He angled his head, listening to the wild beat.
Dean Faris had more than won this round. She wasn’t actively denying his right in the will, which meant he couldn’t rile up the vampires of Uxlay to cause a riot. She was simply announcing a proposal that elbowed Adane House to the border.
Conniving as any true ruler. His father would have liked her.
“Fine,” he heard himself say, not bothering to hide his annoyance. “I’ll sign over the house. But this is the last time you twist me into submission.”
Her pupils stretched wide, revealing the fanned strokes of her irises. It pierced him like a blood-licked silver, finally relinquishing this house.
Fourteen years.
And he’d failed.
Could Kidan truly master the house before the House Council voted? Could he trust her with something as precious as his vampirism or the artifacts he’d chased for more than a century?
You have no choice, a voice whispered. And he hated having no choice.
His phone buzzed, cleaving his thoughts. A message from Arin. Deadly as a black thorn. The vampire that had helped turn him.
Professor Andreyas kept the three rogues quite busy, but Arin must finally be ready to talk. Finally, he could start on his plans.
Kidan was watching him curiously as he pocketed his phone.
“I’ll find the blade artifact,” he told her. “You get the mask.”
“So you’re leaving?” Something else lurked in her voice but he couldn’t decipher what.
“Yes, I’ll be back soon.”
“And then? After we get the artifacts?”
He recalled her sleeping in the hallway, trying to read pages of the Abyssi myth he’d destroyed. Susenyos looked to the ominous beast that was Adane House and back to the human girl that could bring it to heel.
“One of us will surrender to the other,” he said.
And Susenyos would be damned before he did such a thing.