Bite me
“Blake.”
The name falls from my lips before I can stop it.
It tastes familiar on my tongue. Like a memory I can’t quite reach.
The shadows at my feet answer first. Cold crashes over my skin hard enough to raise every hair. The air itself seems to hold its breath. The darkness in the corners of the balcony thickens, coalesces, takes shape.
I rush into the room and close the balcony door. But shadows follow me—they slip under the door like smoke, merging with the shadows of my own room.
He steps out of the shadows. His hair is nothing like the short dark crop from the portrait.
It falls in long, liquid-silver waves past his shoulders in eerie silver waves, wild and luminous like liquid moonlight.
His violet-blue eyes have crimson-ringed pupils—those impossible, burning eyes—they pin me with a hunger so absolute it punches the air straight from my lungs.
He stands impossibly tall. The shadows cling to him like a second skin, a living cloak of pure night. He wears the same archaic velvet jacket from the painting, the cut of a king who ruled centuries before this one.
He is devastating. Otherworldly. A nightmare given beautiful, lethal form.
I see the madness in the tight line of his jaw, in the flex of the long black shadow-claws at his sides, in the way his gaze drops to the frantic pulse hammering in my throat and stays locked there with naked hunger.
“Lucille ” My name on his lips sounds like a lethal weapon. “You should not have called me.”
“I…” My throat works uselessly. “I don’t know why I said it.”
Those crimson-ringed eyes burn into mine. “Liar.”
He advances. Every rational instinct shrieks at me to run, to scream for the Masters, to hurl myself off the balcony if that’s what it takes. My mind claws at the inside of my skull.
My feet stay rooted to the cold stone.
“The shadows,” he says, voice low and barely leashed. “They led you to me. They showed you my portrait. They answered the prayer already written in your blood.”
One shadow-claw lifts. I flinch, but he doesn’t strike. The long black talons hover a breath from my cheek, radiating a cold that sinks straight into bone. “I will not deny it any longer, Lucille. These shadows are my rawest instincts given form. And they want you.”
“You feel it,” he continues, deadlier. “The pull. The hunger. The need to know who I am.”
I shake my head, denial rising on my tongue. “I don’t —”
“You do.” His eyes bore into mine. “Your blood calls to me. You feel it in your veins, in your bones, in the space behind your ribs where your heart beats too fast.”
God help me, I do. A primal, dragging need coils low and vicious in my belly, an emptiness only his shadows seems shaped to fill. An ancient spark in my blood answers him like a slave answering its master.
This is wrong. This is madness. He is a monster, a legend of horror, a ghost from a portrait. And still my body leans toward him.
“For the first time, you are afraid,” he says, and his voice softens. “Good. You should be fucking terrified.”
He closes the last distance, and the shadows rise around us, blocking out the fading light. We are cocooned in darkness, and I can’t see anything but his purple eyes burning through the black.
“I can smell both,” he says, voice dropping into a rough caress. “Your fear and the wet heat between your legs. They’re tangled so tightly I can’t tell where one ends and the other begins. You want this. You want me. And it scares the shit out of you.”
A shadow-claw tips my chin up, long black talons framing my jaw with lethal precision. The cold of his touch sends a violent shiver of pure heat straight between my thighs.
I shake my head. “This is not—I’m not—”
“Tell me to stop,” he orders. “Tell me you do not want this, and I will disappear. I will leave you here, and I will not come back. This is your only chance.”
I open my mouth. The words are right there. Stop. Please stop. This is wrong. You are a monster.
They die on my tongue.
His thumb—shadow-claw and all—drags across my lower lip, smearing the chill of him into my skin. The darkness presses closer, thick and intoxicating.
“I’m going to fuck you,” he promises, voice raw.
“I’m going to drive into this pretty cunt until your blood races to every hungry place in your body.
And when you come, when that pleasure floods your bloodstream, I’m going to drink it like the finest wine.
” His tongue wets his upper lip. “I will ruin you, Lucille. I will take every last piece of what you are and leave nothing but the memory of my name. And you will thank me while you shatter on my cock.”
My breath stutters. My thighs press together hard enough to ache.
“Do you want that?” He tilts his head, predator toying with trembling prey. “Say it. Do you want me to ruin you?”
The answer tears out of me, ragged and shameless. “Yes.”
He clicks his tongue in disapproval.
“I’m giving you one final chance, sweet Lucille.” His eyes blacken with red. “Tell me to stop.” The command cracks like a whip. “Say it. Now.”
I stay silent.
He lifts me clean off the stone, one powerful claws locking under my ass as my legs wrap around his waist. I lock my ankles behind his back. A single shadow-claw digs into my hip and drags me hard against the thick, steel ridge of his cock trapped behind his trousers.
“Tell me you want this.” His hips roll up into my core, insistent, filthy, grinding the hard length of him exactly where I need it. “Tell me you need more.”
“More.” I beg.
He takes my mouth passionately. The shadows slam closed around us like a living cage, sealing us in complete black.
They crawl over my skin like molten lava, hot and possessive, searing every nerve.
They slip beneath the remaining buttons of my dress—the same ones Cain’s clumsy fingers began to unbutton, but were always meant for my true master to complete.
The shadows press outward with fierce intent, ready to tear the fabric apart the same way they shredded my nightgown last night..
“Please be gentle,” I gasp against his lips. “How would I explain a ruined uniform?”
The shadows pause. Then they obey in their own way. They slide outside the fabric instead. One button. Then the next. Then the next. Slow. Deliberate. Each soft pop of thread feels louder than the last.
The dress falls open, lifted and peeled away by living darkness until it hangs from my elbows, then drops completely. Cool night air kisses my bare breasts. The only thing left between us is a scrap of red lace.
“Enough of being gentle,” he groans.
His shadow-claws hook into the delicate sides of the thong and rip. The lace gives with a soft sound. The ruined scrap flutters to the stone. While the shadows begin to worship every inch of my skin.
They pour over my breasts, coiling tight around each peaked nipple, tugging, rolling, pinching with perfect, relentless pressure.
Another thick tendril slides between my thighs, spreading me open against the hard bulge of his cock.
It finds my clit and circles it in slow, devastating strokes while a second tendril pushes inside me, thick and cool and pulsing, stretching me open while I stay locked on his lap.
I cry out into his mouth. My hips jerk helplessly against him.
The shadows fuck me with ruthless precision.
The one inside me curls and strokes that hidden place that makes my vision white out.
The one on my clit never stops. More tendrils wrap my thighs, keeping me spread wide for them while his shadow-claws dig into my hips, forcing me to grind harder against the thick ridge of his still-clothed cock.
Pleasure builds vicious and fast. My nails dig into his shoulders through the velvet of his jacket. My head falls back. A broken, high sound tears from my throat as the first orgasm crashes through me. My pussy clenches hard around the shadow buried inside me. Wetness floods down my thighs.
The shadows drink thirstily, taking every drop. They thrust deeper, working me through every pulse, every shudder, until I’m shaking and oversensitive and still coming.
He never stops grinding me against him. Fully dressed. Completely in control. The shadows keep moving, keep claiming, keep wringing every last drop of pleasure from my body while I stay locked around his waist.
“This is not a dream,” he growls against my lips. “Eyes on me. I’m going to consume every fucking inch of you.”
I gasp, trembling. “Consume me.”
His eyes blaze pure red.
“I warned you.”
His control fractures.
He transforms in a single violent heartbeat. His eyes flood pure, feral crimson. He grows taller, his frame expanding with power. When he hisses, I see them…
Long, gleaming. Wicked. FANGS!
He has FANGS!
“W-what are you?”
“I am your worst nightmare, Lucille.”
Shadow-claws seize me and yank me against the hard wall of his body. His mouth drops to my throat. Icy breath ghosts over my pulse, and then his fangs scrape against my sensitive skin.
“Please,” I whisper.
I must be losing my mind.
His entire body goes rigid. “Please what?”
“Please,” I choke out, voice breaking. “Don’t stop.”
A broken, animal sound rips from his chest. Razor fangs pierce my neck like white-hot needles. Fire explodes through every vein at once. My body seizes—once, twice—then locks.
His shadows hold me rigid while he draws long and deep from the wounds, swallowing my blood in ruthless, greedy pulls. The burn and the relentless tug at my throat short-circuit everything. Sensation floods me.
One more hard pull from his mouth, and the sensation shoots straight down, a direct line of pure need straight to my core.
My body jerks as raw, pounding arousal crashes through me.
A molten ache blooms low in my belly, turning my blood to liquid heat.
Pleasure races through my chest and stomach before pooling heavy and throbbing between my thighs.
Every pull of his mouth now yanks straight at that aching center.
My hips jerk. The flood of need hits so hard my knees nearly give out.
He groans against my skin, arm tightening, and I feel him—steel-hard, massive—pressed against me. Tension coils vicious and sharp. He lifts his head. Eyes glowing red, lips wet and dark with my blood, chest heaving. Shadows whip around him like a living storm.
“Lucille.” My name comes out ragged. “I shouldn’t have—”
I don’t let him finish.
I launch myself at him. My mouth crashes onto his. I taste my own blood on his tongue—copper, salt, and pure sin.