Chapter 11 #2
“Don’t.” I’m still pressed to Valen, his other arm wrapped tightly around me. “Don’t kill him.”
Gage kicks and struggles, but Valen doesn’t move.
“Why not?” Valen seethes. “He stole you. Caged you. Dared to touch you.”
“We need him. The humans need him.”
Gage’s face is red, his hands beating ineffectually at Valen’s arm.
“Please, let him go.”
Valen growls but releases his hold.
Gage crumples to the floor and coughs, his eyes bulging as he tries to get his breath.
More soldiers are massed at the other end of the hall, their guns pointed at us.
“Call off your dogs or I’ll snap their spines,” Valen turns so he’s between me and the soldiers.
“Stand down,” Gage cries hoarsely. “That’s a fucking order!”
“You swear you aren’t hurt, kedves verem?” He inspects my face, his fingers roving along my back, my sides.
“No, are you?”
“No.” He tsks as if it were a silly question.
“Coal?”
“Safe. He ran into some Tantun trouble. I saved his ass, as usual.” His eyes narrow. “You put yourself in danger.”
“No, I—”
“It wasn’t a question.” He reaches out and snatches Gage’s keycard.
“What are—” I gasp when he lifts me with one arm.
Swiping the card, he opens Gage’s quarters, carries me inside, slams the door, and takes me to the bed where he pins my wrists over my head and settles between my thighs.
“You ran from me.” His eyes are a chasm, a dark pit that threatens to devour me.
“No, I didn’t.”
“Liar.” He snarls and rakes his claws down my front, shredding my sweater and the t-shirt underneath but not so much as scratching my skin. Then he swipes across, destroying it completely.
“Gage said—”
Another snarl. “Don’t even say his name. I should’ve killed him. You should’ve let me, kedves verem.”
“He said my friends were here. I wanted to see Wyatt and Evie and Gretchen again.” I can’t stop my eyes from watering. “They are. They’re alive.”
He sighs. “Your soft heart was easy to lure out. He took advantage, and you fell for it.”
“No, he told me the truth. I thought they were dead. But Wyatt and Evie were alive. You let me think they were dead even though you knew they weren’t!”
He tsks again. “They were alive when I last saw them. That was all I knew.”
“You didn’t even tell me that much!”
“It would have changed nothing. They were just as beyond your reach as you were theirs.”
“I—”
He slides his claws down the front of my pants, destroying the material with ease.
“What are you doing?” I protest as the fabric falls away, leaving me bare. He surveys me with a hunger that sends a pleasant shiver through me.
“You ran from me.” With an easy movement, he yanks his shirt off and uses it to mop the blood from his face.
Then he shucks his pants, his thick cock popping free.
“You know I’m a predator, Georgia. And you ran from me.
” He prowls over me and pins me again. “What did you think would happen? That I’d let you go?
” His pupils are huge, eyes gone almost black.
“I’ll never let go you. Never. No matter where you run, I’ll find you.
I will always find you. There is no escape from me. ”
“I didn’t run. I was—”
He strikes at my neck.
I gasp, my body arching at the pleasure and pain. With a hard thrust, he slides inside me, his cock stretching me as I’m assaulted by a thousand sensations. A moan tears from me, my body on fire, my veins scorched as he pumps in and out of me.
He pulls back and licks my blood from his lips. “You are mine. You gave yourself to me. Say it.”
There is no gentleness in him, nothing of the soft declarations from our last time together. This is a claiming, a marking.
“Say it.” He kisses me, and I taste my blood on his tongue.
“I’m yours,” I breathe when he kisses to my throat. “Yours.”
“Louder!” He kisses lower, the sounds of our skin slapping echoing around the concrete room.
“I’m yours!” I cry.
He slides his hands down my arms and cups my breasts, squeezing as he stares down at me. He pinches my nipples, twisting them between his thumbs and forefingers, and I dig my nails into the blanket.
“More.” He pulls out, then grabs my hips and flips me to my stomach.
With another vicious thrust, he enters me.
I brace my hands on the wall as he punishes me, dragging my hips back to him again and again. I shake with the impacts, with the roughness he pours into me. My body reacts, my pleasure growing with each stroke.
He comes down over my back, his warm breath on my neck as he reaches beneath me and strums my clit. “This is mine. This body. This soul. Every part of you. Say it.” He runs his fangs along my shoulder.
“I’m yours. All of me.” I look at him over my shoulder. “Now tell me you’re mine.”
His feral growl pushes me closer to the edge. “Only yours, my one, my only. My Blood.” He bites my shoulder deeply, his fangs embedding as he fucks me harder.
My toes curl as he strokes my clit, my entire body alight as my release barrels through me. I cry his name as I come, the waves huge and spilling over me again and again.
He slams deeper, his cock growing even harder, and then I feel it kick as he groans against my skin. I push back, bearing down on him as my orgasm keeps rolling, squeezing every bit of pleasure from us both until it’s nothing but aftershocks.
I sink lower to the bed, Valen’s fangs still in my shoulder, and try to catch my breath.
Slowly, he removes his fangs, and licks along the wounds, healing them.
With a groan, he pulls out and lays beside me, pulling me into his arms.
I press my forehead to his chest as he strokes my hair.
When my mind finally flickers back on, I look up at him and ask, “How did you even get in here?”
He smirks and kisses the tip of my nose. “I’d break down the gates of hell to get to you, kedves verem.”
“Why do you think I’d go to hell?”
“Perhaps to spite me, just as you came here.”
“I didn’t come here to spite you.” I snuggle closer to him.
“Then why do I feel spited?”
“Maybe you’re sensitive.”
He snorts a laugh and keeps stroking my hair.
“You didn’t kill anyone, did you?”
“I’ll need you to be more specific.”
I reconsider asking. Maybe I don’t want to know. “They have a lab here.”
“Mm.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I know what you want to ask me.”
“I don’t have to ask you anything. I can do what I want.”
He sighs. “You already want another hard fuck?”
“What?” I snap my head up.
“When you speak that way, I can only assume you want me to bury my cock in your pussy and ride you until you scream.”
“You’re filthy.”
“Yes.” He rolls me to my back and presses kisses to my throat.
“I can work in the lab here.”
“No.” He kisses lower along my collarbones.
“Yes. I can work on the vaccine and the poison. I have what I need. Or, at least I should be able to get it.” I nibble my lower lip.
“Honestly, I don’t know. Wyatt said they have materials here, but they’re difficult to find or something.
But let’s assume I can get what I need, then I can create both.
Well, I can definitely create the poison relatively quickly. The vaccine will take a lot more time.”
“And then what?” He lingers at the peak of my shoulder.
“Then we distribute them.”
“How?”
A shiver courses along my skin. “You’re making it hard to think.”
“Too bad.” His lips leave a trail of heat along the mound of my breast.
“Once created and perfected, the vaccine would be a simple shot. The Saints would have to deliver it to the cities with the largest remaining populations. Herd immunity. Then we can work down to the smaller areas. Wyatt and Evie said Atlanta is holding out. Florida is full of refugees, and Texas and some of the other western states are also holding their own despite the number of people migrating there to escape … you.”
“True. I don’t have the forces to spread out across the country all at once.”
“Good.” I exhale.
“And the poison? Do you intend to wipe us all out?” He returns to my mouth, kissing me deeply.
I wrap my arms around his neck, melting into him despite all the twisting thoughts and plans in my head.
When he lets me come up for air, he strokes my cheek with his thumb. “Well? What’s it to be? Vampire extinction?”
“How can you joke about it?”
“When you’ve lived as long as I have, gallows humor is the only thing that’s still funny.”
I shrug. “You know, before Melody, I would’ve said yes. I would’ve said to do whatever it took to make sure every last vampire was wiped off the planet. But she showed me it doesn’t have to be that way.”
He nods and presses a tender kiss to my neck. “She had that effect on everyone she ever met. Vampires and humans alike. Even on me.”
“I’m sorry.” I run my fingers along his forehead.
We never talked about it, not really. Not once my memories returned, but losing Melody had to have just as big of an impact, perhaps even bigger, on Valen than it did on me.
He was like a father of sorts to her. They had a whole history, so many years together that I don’t even know about.
God, what I’d give to hear her voice again. “I miss her, you know?”
“I know.” He sighs and settles beside me, cradling me in his arms.
I blink, trying to clear my watery eyes and focus on the now. “I’ve thought about it a lot—what I’d do if I could manufacture the poison at scale.”
“And?”
“And we kill Gregor. We have the poison stores if we need them, but we start out with a surgical strike on Gregor. Let’s assume that’s something we can pull off. What happens then?”
He shrugs one shoulder. “That’s not a possibility. I’m the only one who’d stand a chance of taking him down, and you know why that isn’t an option. So, your scenario—”
“Pretend it’s possible. What happens if we cut the head off the snake, or I guess the dragon, in this case.”
He groans with frustration.
“Just play along.” I nudge him.