Chapter 47 Susenyos
SUSENYOS
Their mouths parted at the same time, pressing together in a small, tender gasp.
They froze on the precipice of torturous lust. He wanted to stay like this forever, stretch this moment until every bone and muscle tremored.
They breathed heavily, quickly, out of rhythm.
Kidan made a sound and began to slide down but his arm wrapped around her waist, holding her up.
Susenyos sped to the nearest tree and gently rested her back against it.
“Please.”
He didn’t know who said it. It hardly mattered.
Their lips met and they were off the cliff, plummeting together.
Her hands were in his hair, around his neck, holding on tightly.
It wasn’t the kiss that broke him as much as the feel of her tongue.
It swept him into delirious waves of pleasure every time it touched his, devastated him whenever it brushed past his fangs.
He must have made a noise because she repeated the movement, a dizzying circular dance against his left fang, then his right.
Stars exploded above a night desert, and the ocean drowned him from underneath, and he was lost.
At the mercy of his unending, maddening hunger for her.
“I need you,” he whispered in a rushed gasp. “I’ve fought this for so long but it’s no use. I need you today. I—”
His fangs elongated and pierced her tongue before he could finish. Kidan hissed, a sound he swallowed along with the small trickle of blood. It quenched his parched throat and pooled in his stomach like gold, a divine liquid.
Then he delved into her mind. Her memories of pleasure.
Everything that ever intoxicated her five senses crashed on him at once—slipping under his silk shirt to find a hard stomach, the sultry whisper of his nicknames, private and sinful, the sharp pain of his fang breaking skin, the wielding of his silver blades, covered in enemy blood, night eyes catching golden fire.
It was all… him.
He was all over her body and mind, possessed every inch of her pleasure.
God.
Kidan moaned with him, lost too. He knew she must see herself in his thoughts, must finally know how much he craved her.
His fangs snagged on a rope, a tap to more euphoric blood. He cut it free and swallowed greedily. He was in the clouds, among the stars. They spun into a different universe, and nothing mattered except this, them, together.
But far too soon, something was trying to anchor them to the earth. He resisted, ignoring the familiar voices—Taj and Iniko.
Leave us alone, he growled inside his spinning thoughts.
A powerful yank snapped him free from Kidan’s mouth. From heaven. Iniko and Taj held him back at the shoulders. Susenyos fought to get that high again.
“Yos!” Taj shouted, eyes panicked. “Enough!”
Reality slammed down.
Kidan’s image came into focus. She was slumped backward against the tree, her mouth bloody and blood running down her chin, pooling at her cleavage.
Her eyes were shut, and a delirious smile played on her ruined lips. The previous loud beat of her heartbeat had quieted down to a faint pulse.
It beat once.
Twice.
Then it disappeared entirely.
She slid down the tree.
“Kidan!” he shouted, panic removing all traces of pleasure. Taj restrained him.
Iniko caught her instead, laying her on the ground. She pressed her ear close to her chest, and straightened quickly, alarm stark on her face.
“Her heart has stopped. You must have severed one of her lingual arteries.”
Taj had finally let him go, but Susenyos couldn’t move.
No…
He had only been drinking from her for a few seconds. It was nothing. Nothing. But that didn’t appear to be true. She could only have lost so much blood if it had been several minutes.
A loud buzzing filled the forest. Nothing felt real. He was lost again, suspended in a nightmare.
Iniko extended a claw and cut down the middle of Kidan’s sweater. Past the smooth brown skin to reveal the sternum and heart. Seeing the flesh part so easily, like a hot knife through butter, collapsed the truth Susenyos had tried to ignore right above him.
Kidan was human.
No matter how she acted, how violent and strong—she was in a human body, the weakest of all.
And he’d drained her of her blood.
“God,” he whispered, crouching down beside her. “God.”
Only Taj’s firm hand on his shoulder kept him from sinking to the ground. He clung to his trust in Iniko to bring her back.
Please, bring her back.
Above the cut, Iniko fisted her hand and poured her own blood into the body. It flowed continuously, gliding down the sternum bone and absorbing into the muscles.
They waited.
Susenyos had become used to her slow, pounding beat.
A gentle rhythm that calmed his racing thoughts.
The first few weeks she’d arrived at Uxlay, it had been this uninvited pulsing on the roof of his skull and pressing two pillows to his ears hadn’t helped.
He’d wanted it to stop, to sink his fingers into her chest and pull her heart out.
It’d evened out to a beat he could tolerate during their tenuous arrangement to work together, and on the day he learned she planned to end her own life, he hadn’t been able to sleep.
He had lain awake counting her heartbeats, that fragile sound had to keep beating to alert him she was safe and alive.
With a sickening lurch, he realized maybe he could no longer sleep because he couldn’t hear it.
Susenyos released a short breath when vampire blood began to pump the still heart. It knit the exposed flesh together slowly, leaving no scar besides the one she received in childhood.
This… this was why he would always be grateful for what he was. The ability to heal, to bring one from the edge of death, what other gift was there?
He covered his face with his palms. “Thank you, Iniko.”
“Christ.” Taj’s voice, strained, finally came. “You nearly killed her.”
“Kissing was reckless.” Iniko’s tone was flinted stones, and her disapproval deepened his guilt.
He lowered his hand, studying the soft rise and fall of her chest.
Alive. Alive. Alive.
She would not be like Talaa. He would not fail her like Talaa.
Kidan would live.
When Kidan’s eyes began to lazily open, Susenyos took his coat and draped it over her cut clothes. He propped her head on his thighs. Her cheeks were still hot against the backs of his fingers, flushed from the endorphins coursing through her. At his touch, she let out a soft sigh, leaning into it.
It stirred another wave of desire inside him, and he quickly pulled back. “That’s the last time I kiss you.”
She made a sound of protest, coming awake. “I highly disagree.”
A sad smile claimed his mouth. “Your heart stopped.”
“Really?” He didn’t hear alarm in her voice. “Hmm.”
“Hmm?”
“Here I thought taking pills was the least painful way to die. Who knew I just had to kiss you?”
He narrowed his eyes. “Kidan.”
Leaves were caught in her braids, and he picked them out.
A shy, small smile played on her lips. “Not even a peck?”
“Not even that,” he said seriously.
Kidan pouted and looked up to the branches, covering the purple and orange sky. “At least you kissed me before I told you my plan.”
Alarm bells made him pause. “Which is?”
Kidan took a moment, blinking until she was fully awake. After biting on her blushed lip for a few seconds, her brown eyes met his. “I’m going to tell Samson you’re human inside Adane House.”