Chapter 3
three
OPHELIA
Eventually, Dante stopped thinking and started talking.
"Because you're pretending to be a pixie, you need protection. The best way to get that is to find a fuck buddy. Men in the prison will kill to protect the woman they're with, consequences be damned. If you're not comfortable having sex down here, we can come up with something else."
"I have no problem with casual sex, as long as the person I'm casually fucking is attracted to me and all my darkness." I gestured to myself.
Dante lifted an eyebrow. "Darkness? You walked into the penitentiary in jean overalls and a bright orange bra. I didn't even know they made overalls that cut off like shorts."
I gestured toward his face. "The disdain coming from this region at the moment is a little much, considering I'm here to save you."
"You're here to save me from your prison. Which I was locked up in without breaking any laws."
"I came down here to fix that as soon as I found out and gathered enough magic. Is anyone else in here who shouldn't be?"
"Of course they are. Most of the fuckers in Shiv's gang don't deserve to be here."
Well, that wasn't good.
Maybe I'd need to come back for a few more immortals after I got Dante and Jazz out.
That was a problem for later.
I put us back on topic. "Alright, so, I need to find someone to hook up with for safety. Cool. Not anti-feminist at all."
"You're in a prison full of men. Women are both a hot commodity, and at a disadvantage," he said bluntly.
"So it's life as normal. Fabulous." I nodded. "You're not interested in the fuck buddy thing, right?"
His forehead creased. "What?"
"It doesn't matter." I waved it off, not interested in hearing an uncomfortable explanation. Things would get awkward again. Fast. "I can find someone else to fuck me. If you point me toward the guys who are only here because of the loophole, I can screw one of them, and come back for him after—"
"I never said I wasn't interested. I assumed you wouldn't be comfortable with it, all things considered." He gestured to his face.
"Why are you pointing toward your face? You have to know you're fucking gorgeous."
"I was gesturing to my fangs."
Ah.
That made more sense.
"I have no issue with the fangs. As long as you're not going to fall in love with me, you being a vampire isn't a problem."
He gave me a look. "You're tiny. You only have so much blood. Without a mate bond, your body won't recover from feeding me as fast as it needs to. You're not going to be operating at full function if I'm drinking from you."
"Could it kill me?"
"No. I have more control than that. It could make you weak, though."
I waved his worry off. "My magic's already weak. As long as we keep the pottery alive and you don't let Shiv kill me, we'll get out of here."
"What if the pottery breaks early?" he asked.
"We'll cross that bridge if we get there."
"That doesn't exactly inspire confidence."
I shrugged. "I'm banking on the dishes."
My hiking backpack chose that moment to fall sideways. There was a crash, but I didn't hear anything break.
Dante looked at me incredulously.
"I influenced the magic to make the pottery hard to break," I said defensively.
"How hard?"
"I don't know. I wasn't going to test it. Every one of those things took me months to channel magic into."
Dante sighed, tipping his head back against the wall. "We're fucked."
"Way to be positive, Inferno."
"Don't call me that."
"Does it make you horny? Because we're supposed to be fucking, so..."
His lips twitched. "Are you always like this?"
"Nah. Usually, I'm alone." My reply was lighthearted, but he was quiet again after I spoke.
Really quiet.
"Are you thinking again?" I finally asked, and he swatted my leg lightly. Almost playfully. I liked it, oddly enough.
"Maybe. Who is Shiv to you?"
"That's a long, shitty story that I have no interest in telling."
"Is he an ex?" he asked.
"No. A family member."
Dante nodded, as if that told him enough. "We should sleep. The clock in the dayroom said it was getting late. I don't know what time it is in Rumor, but we live by that clock here."
Rumor was the name of the magical city above the prison.
"What's the dayroom?"
"The open area where everyone interacts during the day. At night, the prison forces us into the cells, and the doors lock. You should know that."
Right.
I had set that up.
It had just been a really long time since I did. The details were escaping me.
"You'll be stronger if you feed from me before you go to sleep, right?" I asked.
"I drank from you too recently. Biting you again isn't a good idea."
"That lasted half a second. There's no way you actually took any blood."
"We'll figure it out in the morning," Dante said vaguely.
"We'll figure it out right now." I turned toward him, lifting my knee up onto the small, hard mattress as I turned toward him and gestured between us. "Do you actually want to do this? Making us look like a thing so we can get you guys out of here?"
"What I want and what's safe for you are two entirely separate things." His expression gave away no emotions, positively or negatively.
"Do you always worry about people more than you should?"
"Do you always ask personal questions?"
"Not usually."
"I worry about the people I feed on. It's a demon thing. Culture. Expectation. Moral requirement. Whatever you want to call it."
"I'm a willing victim."
"If you call yourself a victim again, this isn't happening." He gestured between us like I had.
"Let's just forget it. You can keep starving. I'll find someone else to fuck me."
"A lot of people in this prison won't try to make it good for you," Dante warned. "I'll find you some options, and—"
I put a hand over his mouth. "Stop talking."
I waited a second before pulling my hand away. He was glaring at me when I did, but he didn't say anything else about it immediately.
Turning a little more, I draped my legs over his lap and lowered my back to the mattress, staring up at the ceiling.
"This is going to be a really fun eleven and a half hours," I said, after a few minutes.
Dante didn't laugh.
He either agreed that it was going to be long, or didn't catch the sarcasm. Probably the former. He seemed like a smart guy.
"What did you do before you came to the prison?" I asked. "Is being the vampire king a full time job, or…"
"I ran our businesses. Spent most of my time in meetings, improving the way things functioned, and fixing messes."
I scrunched my nose. "Gross."
"It wasn't glamorous," he admitted. "I was good at it, though. I liked it. Feels like a distant dream."
"Twelve years in this hellhole is a long time."
"It is."
"What do you miss the most?" I asked.
He didn't answer right away.
I wondered if he would, watching the colors of his aura and the soft gray of his shadows dance over and around his body.
He lifted one of his hands to my knee, resting his gigantic palm casually on my skin. The physical contact felt nice.
"Feeling safe," he finally said. "That's what I miss the most. I felt secure, before the coup. In control. Untouchable. It was a false sense of security, obviously. I don't think I'll ever be able to go back. But that's what I miss the most about my old life. The safety of it."
"Is it not safe down here?"
"Did you just ask me if a magical, high-security prison full of deadly immortals is safe?"
"You're one of those deadly immortals," I pointed out.
"Maybe if I had enough blood, I would be."
"Who's feeding you?"
"Shiv, usually."
My eyebrows shot upward. "Seriously? Why would River offer you his throat?"
My brother's real name slipped out before I could stop it.
Dante didn't seem surprised to hear it. I guess if he was mated to Jazz, she might have called him by his real name, too.
"I bite his wrist, usually. Jazz and I were feeding from each other when we first came down here. It was awkward, but we did what we had to. When Jazz and Shiv started fucking, he didn't want me biting her. She told him he had to offer his blood if he wanted her to stop, so he did."
Somehow, the story made me like my brother just a tiny bit more than I had. Which was still not much.
"Well, you can bite River after we get out of solitary, then. You'll enjoy his personal sunshine more than my dark blood, anyway."
Dante's grip on my knee tightened slightly. "I enjoy your blood plenty, Ophelia."
I rolled my eyes. "I'm sure. That's why you'd rather bite a mated man than me."
"I don't want to weaken you. It's a compliment, not an insult."
"I'm not that fragile. I've been bitten by vampires before. If we end up fucking, you won't be anywhere near the first demon I've hooked up with."
His eyes narrowed. "Who? When?"
"If that was any of your business, you'd know."
They narrowed further. "But you've fed vampires before? Multiple?"
"Yeah. I already said that. I wouldn't call it my favorite, but it can be hot. I don't mind it."
Dante let out a slow breath. "Fine. We're doing it. Take your clothes off."
"Take them off for me," I countered.
He took my hand and pulled me to a sitting position before sliding the first strap down my arm.
"I can't believe I'm taking jean overalls off the first woman I've been this close to in twelve years," he drawled.
Teasing.
My favorite way to set the mood.
"I'm sure my outfit's a total turn-on for a fancy businessman like you, right?" I drawled back.
"I'm hardly a fancy businessman these days."
"So overalls make you hard now that you wear prison jumpsuits?"
"No. The woman beneath the overalls, though…" His eyes moved slowly over my torso as he pulled the second strap down too.
Dante slid the light blue fabric over my abdomen and lowered me back to the mattress. My head was on the opposite side from where you'd put a pillow, but there was no pillow in the room, and the thin blanket under me smelled clean.
"If you don't like overalls, you have poor taste in clothes," I murmured, as he slid the fabric down my thighs.
"I don't." His gaze moved over my body, heating as he took in the bright orange boyshort panties I wore—every other style of underwear refused to stay put, and I liked fun colors—and my matching sports bra.
I'd never cared about luxury, or bothered trying to make the money I'd need for it.
I had my little house, I had my pottery studio, and I had solitude. Other than a little fun from time to time, what more could a woman want?
Dante hooked his fingers in my panties and dragged them down my thighs too. His breath hitched, and there was no mistaking the instinctual rumble of pleasure that escaped him at the sight of my bare lower half.
"Fuck, you're beautiful." The words escaped him on a breath, so quiet I almost missed them.
"You'll give me a big ego if you—oh god." I moaned the curse, reaching for his hair as he dragged his tongue over my clit slowly. "Can I—"
He pulled my hands to his locs. I tangled my fingers in immediately, holding on for dear life as he licked me again, a little rougher.
A groan escaped him, and he picked up the pace, licking and stroking and sucking.
I rocked against his face, coming with a desperate cry.
He barely paused.
Barely fucking noticed.
I definitely wasn't opposed to the way he continued devouring me.
One of his fangs grazed my clit, and another climax tore through me so hard, I screamed. My back arched. My body jerked. I felt his fangs sink into my thigh as I came.
While the bite wasn't necessarily pleasurable, some part of me was innately satisfied by the fact that he was feeding from me.
My blood would be in his body, fueling the massive, gorgeous vampire, paying him back for the pleasure he gave me.
As I came down from the high, dazed and slightly dizzy, he pulled his fangs free and slowly licked the wounds he'd left. The tiny amount of pain there vanished with the stroke of his tongue.
I breathed heavily as he lifted his head from my thigh, meeting my gaze head-on.
"Don't worry," I said. "You've still got it."
His lips curved slowly. Just the tiniest bit. "You're fucking delicious, Angel."
"I'm more of a devil than an angel," I admitted.
"One of us has horns, and it isn't you." When vampires shifted into their demonic form, they had horns and tails, like all of the other types of demons.
He lowered his lips to the wounds he'd left on my thigh, and dragged his tongue over them again slowly. "How do you feel?"
"Amazing."
"Not dizzy?"
I moved my head a little to test it out. He was worried I'd lost too much blood. "No."
"Good. I'll feed again before we leave here in the morning, if you still don't mind."
"I won't."
He slid my panties back up my thighs and settled them back into place, then lifted me up long enough to tuck his body beneath mine.
There wasn't enough room on the bed for us to lay next to each other, but it wasn't like I minded being on top of the gigantic, muscular man who'd just gotten me off twice. I usually slept on my stomach, anyway.
"Do you care if I sleep with my wings out?" I mumbled. "It's more comfortable."
"Go for it."
I patted his chest lightly. "Thanks. You're a good friend."
"Is that what we are?" He sounded a little amused.
"Sure. Until we get out of here, and never have to see each other again."
"Sounds like a fucking dream."
"For both of us," I agreed.
I fell asleep way too fast, considering I was locked in a tiny room in the prison I'd built with all but a few drops of my magic.