Chapter 34
Just … Him
The scent of his arousal filled my nostrils—then it was all I could smell.
He was all I could smell. All I could sense. All I wanted to feel.
My hunger—so profound, so all-consuming—shifted from desire for his blood to a desire for him. Just … him.
I growled, feeling more like a savage creature than I had since waking in my underwater tomb.
I shouldn’t be feeling anything for him but loathing. My body could not be betraying me like this!
My breathing was too heavy. I wanted to slow it. Wanted to stop my shaking too. Desperate, I searched for my control. When I found no more than the floundering control I had now, my desperation doubled.
I didn’t know exactly how many days had passed with me locked in this dungeon.
Even assuming I’d only been out a short while that first day, in the pitch darkness, and without any regular rhythms from my visitors, the days blurred together.
Had it been five days? Eight? More? How many remained before the Fuerin Star eclipse?
However many it had been, I shouldn’t feel this … hollow. Like I needed him to fill me.
I growled again. What … the … fuck? Even my own thoughts were betraying me.
I’d fed to bursting before leaving Zaraga, and I’d fed while aboard the higantorus. A normal s?nglure could go several days without feeding before experiencing serious hunger, a few days more before being in danger of succumbing to bloodlust.
Since my rebirth, I’d been extremely careful to avoid bloodlust. Now, against my will, I was going to experience it twice in a short time?
No. Fuck no.
Another growl tore through me. I barely recognized myself.
This man felt somehow different from all the others.
No, not a man. Alobaz Hawxley was a destroyer of worlds, killer of fae and humans. Ruiner of lives the world over.
He was my brother’s murderer.
Aware the chain around my ankle would stop me, I still surged off the bed and lunged at him, reaching for his throat, clawing the air between us like a feral beast.
“Whoa,” he said, his voice reaching me as if through a fog. “Take it easy. I’m not here to hurt you.”
I half scoffed, half snarled.
“All you have to do is tell me who you are and what this is all about, and I swear I won’t hurt you.”
Beneath the lumoonlight, his face was earnest, his eyes steady, beaming with truth.
But the great general was lying. He had to be.
He’d never let the woman who’d tried to assassinate him loose.
Like so many men, he was just lying to get his way.
He wanted information to leverage against me and anyone I was connected to.
In our world of political domination, information was as valuable as rubies.
He wouldn’t be searching for my weakness anymore. I was doing a fine job of revealing it to him right now.
“Feed from me,” he said, entreating. “Things don’t have to be this way. You don’t have to feel like this.”
I breathed heavily through my nostrils. “I hate you.”
“Yes, so you’ve said. Many times. It’s the one thing I’m quite clear on after days of this. Why do you hate me? Because of your brother?”
Unable to cause him any of the harm he deserved, I allowed my arms to fall limp at my sides. My chest heaved.
“You killed my brother.” My voice shook at the end, making me instantly want to retract the words. I should have screamed my accusation.
He sighed. “I figured as much. I know this won’t ease your pain, but I truly am sorry.”
“Sorry?” I trilled in disbelief. “You’re sorry?” I laughed bitterly. “Oh, well, I guess we’re all set, then. We’re even. Release me and I’ll be on my merry way.”
He frowned, and dammit, even his scowl was enticing.
“I’m not making light of your loss,” he said. “But I can’t bring back the dead.”
Though I despised his answers as much as I did him, at least talking was calming my breath, my shakes. My thoughts were arriving more clearly, taking over for the beast inside me.
“Who is your brother?”
“Who was my brother, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not telling you.”
“I also gathered that. But why won’t you? I’ll show true remorse once I know who he is.”
I chortled, as dark as the abyss’ reaching shadows. “You’ve killed so many you can’t possibly figure out who I’m talking about on your own.”
“That’s right.”
He sounded almost … regretful.
“You’ve killed countless people and creatures,” I said.
“I have.”
“All for what? For greed? For more territory? For endless violence and death and conquest? To take, take, take, and take some fucking more?”
“Yes.”
Though his voice was steady, the blue-green of his eyes seemed to slosh like torpid ocean waves.
“Why? Why would you do that?” I said.
“I don’t get to decide my actions.”
“Of course you do.”
“I don’t, not really.”
“We all make our own choices. We might not like the consequences of those choices, but the choices are ours regardless.”
I tamped down the sense of hypocrisy that niggled at me.
Didn’t I do what Rafaela asked of me without question because I knew disobeying her would land me—or more likely, Teo—in the cage?
As our rebirther, she could do worse to us too—especially to him.
Teo wouldn’t survive for long without her say-so.
“You’re right,” Alobaz said.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Then free me.”
“I’d like to. But I can’t.”
“Can’t, or won’t?”
“Won’t. You tried to kill me.”
“I did. What a pity that I failed.” I grinned savagely. “There’s always next time.”
He hummed, almost as if … as if he wouldn’t mind dying nearly as much as he should.
“I have people to protect, who count on me,” he said. “So you will tell me what I need to know.”
“I won’t do that. Not now, not ever.”
“Then prepare to be very miserable.”
I flashed my fangs at him. “Don’t you know? Since you took my brother from me, that’s all there is for me.”
“What, misery?”
“Yeah, misery.”
He inhaled, exhaled. Stared at me for long beats. His arousal still scented the air. I feared mine did too. There was, apparently, a fine line between hatred and wanting to fuck someone to death.
“I can’t bring back your brother,” he said. “But if you feed from me, you’ll experience bliss. You’ll forget your pain for a while.”
He dragged his eyes up and down my body. I retreated back to my bed. Sat down and forced my legs to clamp shut.
“I can offer you this relief,” he said. “Won’t you at least accept that?”
“No.”
“Who was your brother?”
“None of your business.”
“Are you here just to avenge him?”
“Just to avenge him? Yes. I’m here to fulfill a vendetta to honor my brother. I’m here for your head, and I won’t leave till I have it, even if I have to gnaw it from your stump of a neck.”
“Understood. You know I won’t be able to let you go so long as you mean me harm?”
“People like you don’t ever free their prisoners.” Not a prisoner like me anyway.
“That’s not true.”
I harrumphed. I’d have to find a way to escape. He’d grow bored of me eventually. He’d lower his guard at some point.
“Since you won’t tell me who your brother is, won’t you at least tell me who you are? I’d like to call you by a name instead of ‘prisoner.’”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“If you know who I am, you’ll know who he is. There’s no separating us.” My heart squeezed with a sudden agony that stole my breath. “There wasn’t until you murdered him. You stole a part of me. Killed a part of me.”
He pursed his lips for several moments. “And why can’t I know your identities?”
I shook my head.
“Why?”
Because then you won’t bother with these games anymore. You’ll kill me right away for being a D’Arco. Then you’ll go after Alonso and Rafaela and whoever else, because Rubors will always hurt a D’Arco when the opportunity arises.
Rubors hated D’Arcos, and D’Arcos hated Rubors. It had been that way since forever. There was no changing it.
“I’ll ask you one last time today,” he said. “Who are you?”
“I’m your motherfucking punisher. I’m an envoy of Justice, sent to exact the appropriate punishment for the magnitude of your crimes.”
“You dare mention a demigod?”
“I dare a whole lot more than that.” I dared, obviously, to lie about a demigod, which meant I might just incur Justice’s wrath. But scorchit, bring it the fuck on. Whatever it was, I just didn’t care anymore.
“I never give up,” I said. “I will have your head.”
“And I, apparently, will have my prisoner.”
“I’m not your anything.”
He stepped closer, within range of my chain length. But when he leaned down over me, I didn’t strike. His proximity awoke the beast inside me again—and the beast was interested in activities other than rending his flesh from his bones, at least to start.
I wanted more than just to kill him.
I wanted to taste and to feel him—to know him—before I killed him. I wanted him buried to the hilt inside me.
“That’s where you’re wrong, my prisoner. Whether you want it or not, you are mine.”
A shiver racked the length of my body. I pretended it was from the cold, but it wasn’t. I wasn’t cold anymore.
Based on the way his dick bulged behind the ties of his pants, he wasn’t fooled.
He leaned lower.
Until his lips were close enough to mine to kiss.
I inched forward.
He did the same.
And when our breaths came rapidly, mingling, I jerked my mouth to his—and bit his lower lip hard enough to tear it, relishing the sensation of ripping the delicate skin.
His blood, only a few drops, dripped onto my tongue.