“Excuse me,” Rans said, mock-glaring at me.
I grinned at him, wide and ridiculous. “Oy. Do I need to put the leash back on? And may I remind you that this whole thing was your idea in the first place?”
“So it was,” he allowed, fondness creeping into his voice and making me feel warm. His icy eyes moved to Len, a thaw visible behind all that glacier-blue. “I owe you one, mate, for taking care of her when I couldn’t. It was good to meet you.”
He and Len shook hands, and the four of us left the private room. I imagined whatever cleanup crew this place had on call would be equal parts confused and grateful upon seeing the lack of mess.
Hell, we hadn’t even rumpled the sheets on the giant bed.
* * *
Rans and I ended up hanging around the various ongoing BDSM scenes for another hour or so. I tried to get a better feel for the other people around us, spending as much time people-watching as kink-watching. I caught sight of Len and Tristan on several occasions, mingling and spectating as other people engaged in rope bondage.
I also noticed a group of half a dozen guys making the rounds, stopping every once in awhile to chat up unaccompanied women unwary enough to be caught alone. The vibe they gave off didn’t seem to match the easygoing one of most of the people here. I mean, sure—there were people whipping other people, so maybe ‘easygoing’ wasn’t the best word. But this felt different. Especially when I noticed how carefully the venue staff appeared to be watching the little group.
“Have you noticed—” I began, only for Rans to cut me off.
“As soon as they came in, yes,” he said in a low voice. “It’s not terribly unusual to get a few arseholes in a place like this, even with all the precautions in place. Just keep them on your radar, but try not to worry about it otherwise.”
I nodded, returning my attention to the rest of the room. There was one other person who’d caught my attention, though I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was about her that struck me as odd. She was of average height and average build. Her black lace bustier and black leather pants were far from the most outrageous attire here. Her features were striking, though perhaps not what you’d call classically beautiful. Something about her face seemed oddly familiar to me, though I was certain I’d never met her before.
“You sense it, too?” Rans murmured in my ear.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Something seems… off about her.”
“Hmm. Well, no one said we were the only non-humans in the place, I suppose. Keep her on your radar, as well.”
“Will do,” I agreed. One thing I was quite sure of was that the woman wasn’t Fae. I would have been able to tell, I was certain. With that in mind, I was willing enough to follow Rans’ lead on this. I squared my shoulders. “Tell you what. I’m not sure how many more hours I want to teeter around on these high heels. I see an available piece of sex furniture, and I think I’ve got a decent feel for things now. If you’re sure you still want to go through with this, that is.”
He shot me a look through his messy fringe. “That is why we came, isn’t it?”
I huffed. “Yes, it’s why we came. But now we’re here with a strange woman who’s maybe not human, half a dozen creepy biker guys, and my former coworker. Plus I still can’t guarantee I won’t lose concentration and end up feeding from you until you pass out.” I paused. “Which sounds way dirtier than I intended it to, somehow.”
“You’re right. That does, indeed, sound absolutely filthy,” he said, drawing out the words with that delectable accent.
I grit my teeth. “Not. Helping.”
He smirked at me, but sobered a moment later. “This will help, though. Your concern about weakening me helped you cut off the flow of my animus before. So take your worry about the people you just described, and channel it. I have absolute faith that you won’t drain me while you’re feeling protective about my safety. Which… is rather charming, by the way—in case I failed to mention that before.”
I mulled that point over and tried to ignore the flutter of warmth in my chest. “Okay. Protectiveness. I can work with that.”
Rans nodded. “Of course you can. I think the main question will be whether you can let other people’s energy in while blocking mine out.”
That was the question of the evening, all right. “Only one way to find out, I suppose,” I said gamely. “Come on, then. Let’s go see how many people we can titillate.”
NINE
IF RANS HAD BEEN human, I couldn’t help but think the position he was shackled in would become excruciating after the first couple of minutes. The bondage furniture he was draped over resembled nothing so much as a very well padded sawhorse—only considerably sturdier. Each of the four legs had an attachment at the bottom for wrist or ankle cuffs.
Apparently, most people used the thing for flogging or spanking, with the victim lying on their stomach across the padded top, ass in the air. Rans, by contrast, was draped backward over it like a gymnast doing a backbend, ankles spread and attached to the legs on one side, wrists on the other.
I’d made good on my promise to get his coat off. The position stretched the taut muscles of his bare torso, lengthening the already lean and elegant lines into a tense arch. The matching silver piercings gleamed in his brown nipples. He was still wearing his tight leather trousers, however, because A) there was something to be said for holding onto a bit of the mystery, and B) mine, damn it. Meow! Hiss!
Ahem.
A silk blindfold covered the top half of his face, though I had little doubt his inhuman senses could still pick up more detail about our surroundings than I could with my eyes wide open. We’d attracted a few people already, with more wandering over all the time.
I wasn’t sure whether I should be focusing all of my attention on Rans in an attempt to keep my nerves at bay, or if doing so would only make it harder for me to filter out his energy from the rest of the crowd’s. As a test, I started simply, by running the tips of my fingers over the vulnerable lines of his chest and stomach like a sculptor molding clay. I felt a fine tremor beneath my touch, and his sigh of pleasure settled something inside me.
Rans wouldn’t be attempting to stifle his reactions while I played with him. We wanted horny onlookers, and that meant giving the crowd a show. I flicked first one nipple ring and then the other, drawing a low hiss from my captive. Emboldened, I trailed my hand down and cupped his trapped dick, which was hardening already. As expected, I immediately felt the surge of his lust pressing at my magical barriers, trying to get in.
I took a steadying breath. We’d practiced this several times over the last few days. I knew how to block him now. I thought about the people nearby that I didn’t trust—the rough men in their biker gear, and also the mysterious woman who might not be human. I didn’t want to weaken Rans when there might be trouble at some point during the evening. His animus coiled restlessly, but it stayed on his side of the invisible wall I’d placed between us.
Good.
Next, I tried casting my senses outward. Sure enough, the unseen currents that had hovered just outside of my awareness grew more tangible as I teased Rans, and by extension, the people watching us.
And… whoa.
It was startling, actually—though perhaps it shouldn’t have been. This room was rich with sexual energy. Most of it was separate from me—directed at someone else, and therefore out of my reach. But a few strands wafted toward me like smoke. I had to stop myself from staring at them like a crazy woman. Instead of trying to look at them with my eyes, I turned back to the expanse of pale skin in front of me and cast my mind outward, instead.
Yes, I could still feel the hazy trails converging on me. I tried to let them in while keeping Rans out. It was hard to tell if I was succeeding. I’d gotten so used to the power of Rans’ animus that these insubstantial brushes seemed like a pale substitute.
Not wanting to deviate from the plan we’d discussed beforehand, I gave Rans’ stomach a final rake of my nails an
d turned to retrieve one of the lit candles from a table nearby. Several of the trails of energy grew stronger. Looks like we’d uncovered a popular kink—not that any of the kinks in this place were all that covered up in the first place.
Rans and I had decided on this particular scene mostly because it didn’t do a whole lot for either of us, at least in theory. The idea had been to choose something that would minimize both the amount of animus Rans was throwing off, and my own level of distraction. It had all sounded perfectly logical at the time. Unfortunately, I was quickly coming to realize that having Rans trussed up and at my mercy while a bunch of horny men and women hung on my every move was… kind of doing it for me.
Oops.
Being careful of the candle flame, I sauntered around the sawhorse using my best ‘model on the catwalk’ stride. Rans’ head was hanging limp, his hair dangling toward the floor. I had to crouch a bit awkwardly to reach his mouth, but I sat on my haunches and leaned forward to catch his lips in an upside-down kiss. Despite his seeming helplessness, he turned things filthy in seconds, our tongues dueling and sliding together. A few more of the energy trails around us strengthened.
After a minute or so of this, I pulled away from him and stood up. With no further warning, I lifted the candle and tilted it until a thin stream of hot wax dripped down Rans’ sternum. He jerked and grunted—playing to the crowd, I was fairly sure. After all, I’d once pulled a silver knife out of this man’s shoulder, but he’d barely flinched in response.
And… oh.
Now I could feel the unfamiliar trails of animus flowing into me. I paused, trying to keep everything straight inside my magical core. Don’t feed from Rans. Do feed from this crowd of strangers… but don’t start actively pulling from them and accidentally take too much.
It was a lot to keep track of.
I glanced around, trying to look both imperious and untouchable—playing for time. Len and Tristan had wandered over at some point. That probably should have been weird. I expect it would have been, if my inner succubus hadn’t already come out to play. Apparently, she had no problem with an audience.
Even so, it helped considerably that neither Tristan nor Len had any sexual interest in me. I could sense their energy flowing in our direction, but it wasn’t for me. It was for Rans. And, hey? Who could blame them? Besides, the energy flowing back and forth between the two of them was far stronger and more vibrant than what was wafting our way.
D’aww.
Okay, I could totally do this. After quickly double-checking that I hadn’t started pulling from Rans while my attention was split, I went back to my soft-core sadism routine. More wax splattered along the defined valleys along his six-pack. He made a production of yelping and struggling, drawing a fresh burst of excitement from both halves of the S&M crowd.
The sadists wanted to be in my place. The masochists wanted me to be doing this to them. All of them wanted, and I was the focus of that desire. Even though I wasn’t the one wearing hot wax on my bare skin, I could feel warmth growing low in my belly. I tried not to dwell on the fact that I was feeding from these people. As long as I didn’t hurt them, I told myself firmly, what I was doing wasn’t wrong or evil.
It was simple survival.
Rans had to drink blood, or he’d starve. I had to drink animus, or I’d go back to my miserable part-breed life of perpetual near-starvation. If I was careful—if I didn’t get greedy and take too much—all that would happen to these people was that they’d feel a bit more wrung out than usual after a night at the local kink club.
I glanced around again. Oh, good—the creepy bikers had made an appearance. All of them were staring right at me, and one in particular was giving off an unusually powerful wave of lust. Something about that wave reminded me of the time I’d instinctively tried to pull animus from Caspian in self-defense. Not that this biker guy was Fae—he definitely wasn’t. No… it was the desire for violence twining with his sexual desire that was familiar.
I suppressed a shiver, but I let his energy flow into me nonetheless. The violence couldn’t touch me—not like this. All my magic allowed in was the lust.
I replaced the spent candle with a fresh one. Rans groaned and jerked hard against the restraints as wax pooled in his navel and overflowed. When hot dribbles landed on first one pierced nipple and then the other, he twisted as though trying to get away before falling back, limp and panting with feigned reaction. The excitement from the audience peaked, and then began to ebb as I returned the candle to the table and snuffed it.
Now I felt jittery and overfilled with energy. Energy that wasn’t Rans’… and I hadn’t even needed to fuck a stranger to get it. It wasn’t a bad feeling, really. Just unusual. I took a moment to collect myself, breathing deeply.
When I turned away from the table, the strange woman from earlier was standing over Rans, stroking a proprietary hand through the cooling wax on his chest.
TEN
“HANDS OFF THE MERCHANDISE.” Rans’ voice was flat and cold. He swiped the blindfold off in a single, swift movement by rubbing the side of his face against his bicep, and craned up to catch the woman with an unimpressed stare.
I was at his side in an instant, squaring off with the intruder. “Back off,” I snapped. “Whoever you are, you’re not invited to this party.”
The woman lifted her hands in a gesture of surrender. She looked at me with a guileless gaze that didn’t gel with the arrogance of her bearing. “My apologies, dear,” she said in a sweet tone that made me clench my jaw. “I need to speak with you once you’re done here. I know I shouldn’t touch, but this one is so very pretty, all trussed up like this. I’m sure you of all people can understand the impulse.”
“And I’m sure you can understand the words back off,” I shot back. “So maybe you’d like to, oh, I don’t know—do that now?”
On some level, I was aware that I was leaning over Rans’ chest, resembling nothing so much as a dog snarling over a bone. Rans was watching our back-and-forth like someone viewing an upside-down tennis match, and I had to admire his aplomb.
“Perhaps a conversation somewhere else, in more congenial—not to mention private—circumstances?” he suggested.
A disturbance in the murmuring crowd around us caught my peripheral vision. One of the staff members was pushing her way toward us, calling, “Ma’am! I need you to step away from those people if you aren’t part of the scene—”
Relieved by the imminent arrival of backup, I watched the staffer elbow her way through the half-dozen scary biker dudes. All of her attention was focused on our little drama, and a dart of unease pierced me. Almost casually, the biker creep whose animus had been so tainted with violence reached out and grabbed her by the hair, yanking her head back. She shrieked—the sound cut off by a gurgle as he slashed a knife across her throat. Blood spurted, and her body fell to the floor, convulsing.
“Well?” the man demanded, looking around at his buddies. “Don’t just stand there, you stupid fucks. Kill the demon bitches!”
The room erupted in screams and shouts. Time seemed to slow down around me.
“Buggering hell,” I heard Rans mutter, followed an instant later by the sound of splintering wood as he wrenched all four heavy rings free of the sawhorse, freeing himself and swinging to his feet in a single lithe movement.
He pressed one of his hidden daggers into my grip hilt-first, and I stared at it stupidly for a moment. “Stay back, and don’t let any of them cut you off from the exit,” he growled. “This is going to get messy.”
He shot a glare at the woman who’d intruded on us as he delivered the final words. Connections clicked into place inside my head, completely separate from the panic that was trying its best to strangle me.
The strange woman was a demon. She had to be. But what the hell was she doing here?
Rans was already gone, flinging himself toward the group of creeps approaching us. In mere seconds, the room had nearly emptied. After seeing one of their number bru
tally murdered without warning, it looked like the rest of the security staff had decided that the safest course of action was to retreat, presumably to call the police.
A horrible feeling of déjà vu settled over me. These days, the police were questionable allies at best. Everything inside me wanted to collapse into human hysteria, but my freshly engorged magical core coiled warm and restless, keeping my spine straight and my weight balanced lightly over the balls of my feet in the impractical boots I was wearing.
I had to fight the urge to round on the demon and demand to know what the fuck she was playing at, bringing this shitstorm down on us in a place filled with innocent people. I knew I couldn’t afford to let my attention wander, but from the corner of my eye, I could see her watching the group of bikers with what looked like utter boredom.
Rans slammed into the lead goon and knocked his knife-hand to one side. His eyes blazed with inner light. “Drop your weapon,” he snapped.
The goon didn’t drop his weapon. His face didn’t take on that dazed look I’d seen other people exhibit beneath Rans’ vampiric gaze. If anything, Rans looked even more surprised than I felt, but an instant later he forgot about mesmerizing his opponent in favor of dropping him with a vicious roundhouse to the jaw.
“Zorah!”
I jumped in surprise at the sound of Len’s voice calling my name. In the next moment, he was beside me—his hand wrapping around my upper arm. “C’mon, girl, we need to get you out of here.”
His expression was grim; his face pale beneath his tanned skin.
I balked. “I’m not leaving Rans!” I insisted. “Go—get Tristan and get the hell out of here! We’ll catch up!”
A flash of red hair showed that Tristan was attempting to hustle the female demon toward the exit, even as Rans threw a second man over his shoulder and sent a third flying backward with a kick to the stomach. He was trying not to kill them, I realized. His other dagger was still in his hand, but he hadn’t used it yet.
“I’m serious, Zorah,” Len said. “It looks from here like your boy can take care of himself.”
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