by Tina Folsom
He didn’t understand her ramblings, but his lips were too swollen to bother speaking.
Bess let out a nasty chuckle, then lashed the whip at him again. “I had to make sure. You understand that, don’t you?” The next lash brought darkness and silence and with it a reprieve from the pain.
***
Yvette heard the footsteps outside in the hallway and the sound of something being dragged along the floor. Instantly alerted, she jumped up from the cot she’d been resting on, nervousness and a feeling of dread creeping through her cells. Certain sounds were never a good sign. She’d learned that long ago. This was one of those sounds.
When the door swung open, the stench of witch permeated. But it wasn’t the only smell that tensed her nostrils. Blood was in the air. Yvette’s gaze snapped to the witch and the bundle of flesh she’d dragged behind her that now slithered into the room. Briefly, she wondered whether the witch was using her powers to drag Haven’s heavy body along the floor rather than her muscles, but Yvette’s question died a silent death the moment she saw him.
He was only barely conscious, his chest practically naked with only strips of what used to be a shirt clinging to his bloodstained body. His lips were bleeding, his neck and shoulders crisscrossed with cuts and bruises, but that wasn’t the worse. Along his abdomen, three large gashes dug deep into his flesh. Yvette’s heart clenched painfully. No matter how much pain Haven could take, he was human. The pain would be excruciating, and the blood loss would weaken him. Without a doubt, he was in agony.
The blood pouring from Haven’s many wounds made Yvette’s stomach growl, no matter how much she tried to suppress her hunger and hold her breath. Certain things not even she could withstand, despite the iron willpower she possessed.
“Oh, my God!” Kimberly took a few tentative steps toward the door.
“Oh, shit, Hav,” Wesley cried out, crouching down next to his brother. “What the fuck did you do to him?” There was murderous fury in the glare he pinned on the witch.
“It’s his own fault. Too stubborn for his own good.”
Yvette tried to stay back, not wanting to get any closer to the enticing smell of blood, but her stomach growled again. The witch heard it and gave her a nasty smile. “Looks like someone’s hungry.”
Instantly and simultaneously, Wesley’s glare and Kimberly’s scared look landed on her. Yvette retreated to the far corner of their prison. Whatever headway she’d made with Kimberly, trusting her not to harm her, she’d lost again.
“Human blood’s not really my thing.” Yvette suppressed the urge to snarl and flash her fangs at the fucking bitch. It wouldn’t do any good, other than scare Kimberly even more, which was the last thing she wanted to do. “I prefer the taste of witch’s blood myself. Care to make a donation?” Yvette forced a nonchalant look onto her face.
The witch didn’t take the bait, seeing through her as if Yvette was as transparent as a politician’s campaign promises. “Haven’s blood must be stinging your nostrils by now. How does it feel?”
Yvette didn’t dare glance down to the floor where Wesley tended to his half-conscious brother. She kept her eyes firmly on the witch. “Not particularly. I fed just before you captured us, so I’m good for at least two days,” she lied.
At the best of times, she could hold out twenty-four hours, but even before that she’d get cranky. Her colleagues had always teased her about it and avoided her when she hadn’t fed. She could admit it to herself: she was a royal bitch when she was hungry. And she was getting hungry. Her last feeding had been too many hours ago, and the potion Haven had used to capture her had zapped even more of her energy.
The witch scoffed, and maybe for now Yvette had been able to fool her. Not that it mattered. Soon, her colleagues would be looking for her and Kimberly. She’d missed her regular call-in into Central Control. Gabriel would be notified, and knowing him, he’d start combing the city for her. Somehow they’d find her and get her out of here. It was only a matter of time. She just had to sit tight.
“You think I can’t tell how you’re holding your breath so you won’t smell his blood? You want to suck him dry, don’t you?”
Yvette narrowed her eyes and clenched her jaw. “No.”
The witch turned her head toward Wesley. “I think you’ll have to kill her after all. Or do you want to risk her killing your brother?”
“Scheming bitch! Can’t do your dirty work yourself, can you?” Yvette hissed. Maybe the witch’s powers weren’t quite strong enough against a vampire. Was that the reason why she hadn’t tried to kill her yet? It was an avenue to explore. If her powers were only strong enough to hold the humans at bay, Yvette just might have a chance at defeating the witch. If she could get out of this room. The wards seemed strong enough to hold even a vampire captive, but if she could somehow get out from within the wards, maybe she could fight her. The problem with witches was you never knew what they had up their sleeve. She hated that.
Warring emotions danced on Wesley’s face as he glanced from her to the witch and back. Mistrust won out. Could she really blame him? After what he’d told Kimberly about his mother, it was natural that he hated vampires. Which meant he hated her.
“Here.” The witch tossed Wesley a stake. He caught it in one hand. An agonizing moan from his brother made him turn.
“Hav, didn’t I tell you not to fight her?”
“I didn’t fight her,” Haven pressed out. His voice was labored, the pain clearly evident in it. Yvette stole a look to assess his injuries again. The gashes on his abdomen were still bleeding, and if the blood loss wasn’t stopped soon, she feared the worst. Despite the fact that he’d kidnapped her and Kimberly, she couldn’t just let him bleed out. Only to spite the witch, of course.
“Time to go, little one.” Stepping over the threshold, the witch crooked her finger at Kimberly, whose eyes widened in shock.
“No!” Yvette cried. She couldn’t allow her charge to be harmed. She was responsible for her. It was her job. “Don’t touch her.” She lunged forward toward the witch, but a power blast pushed her back.
“Stay out of it!”
“Somebody help me,” Kimberly wailed as she was pulled toward the door by an invisible force.
Wesley ran toward her, but like Yvette, he was pushed back by an invisible blast. “Whatever you do, don’t fight her!” he cautioned Kimberly.
When the witch grabbed Kimberly’s arm and pulled her over the threshold, the force field holding Yvette and Wesley back dissipated. Both stumbled.
Yvette watched the witch slam the door shut. Could she only exert her powers within the protection of the wards? Could this mean that if they were inside the wards, the witch had to be inside them too in order to use her powers on them? Yvette tucked the assumption away in the back of her mind. There were more pressing things to do right now.
Ten
Wesley’s harsh voice bellowing out a warning to someone brought Haven back to reality. He forced his eyes open and knew he was back in the room where they were being held captive. Nothing had changed. Except for the fact that he was in pain.
He lay on the floor and tried to sit up, but the pain around his midsection made him slump back instantly. His brother was kneeling next to him, the haunted look on his face providing little comfort. When his field of vision widened, Haven saw the stake that Wesley held tightly in his right hand.
“What the—”
“She’s hungry, and you’re bleeding,” Wesley cut him off.
Haven jerked his head and saw Yvette standing several feet away from them, her eyes trained on him. Would she attack him?
“Shut up, Wesley, and don’t keep repeating the crap the witch has fed you. I’m fine,” Yvette insisted. “I’ve fed plenty. I don’t want your brother’s blood.”
Haven locked eyes with her and for a moment he believed her, but then he saw a glint in them, like a little flame that started burning, and he knew she was lying. Yvette was hungry. His gaze drifted down her body wher
e her hands clenched into fists. Hungry, and fighting it. Which side was stronger? Her humanity or her animal instincts?
“Shit,” he mumbled under his breath.
She’d heard it. He could tell by the way she dropped her lids. God, she was beautiful. A beautiful angel of death, yes, that’s what she was. Yet, instead of feeling fear of what was to come, he felt a strange excitement build in his core. Almost as if he was looking forward to her bite. It told him how far gone he was already. Maybe the injuries Bess had inflicted were indeed deeper than he’d thought at first. He knew he was bleeding profusely, but was the blood loss to blame for his addled brain? For the fact that he was craving Yvette’s touch even more than he had at the premier party? That he wanted her to come closer and embrace him?
“Wesley, I need to—”
Wesley jumped up at Yvette’s words, his raised hand holding the stake as a warning: stay back. “You’re not getting anywhere near him.”
“I won’t hurt him. I can help him heal.”
A bitter laugh left his brother’s chest. “How stupid do you think I am?”
“Do you want your brother to die?”
“No! And that’s exactly why you’re not getting anywhere near him.”
Bless his little brother. Wesley would protect him even though he knew he was no match for Yvette, the strong and beautiful Yvette, the sinful beauty, the deadly vampire whose touch Haven desired against all reason. Was he already drifting into a delirium?
“I told you I won’t hurt him. If I wanted to, I would have done so long before you even got in here. Don’t you get that?”
Wesley raised his chin stubbornly. It was a gesture with which Haven was all too familiar; he did that when he wasn’t willing to budge, but had no arguments left. Haven had been at the receiving end of it many times while they’d grown up together.
“What do you propose?” Haven asked, each word hurting as his breath deserted his lungs.
Yvette’s eyes widened in obvious surprise. She hadn’t expected him to ask. “I can seal your wounds so they won’t bleed anymore. It’ll stop the blood loss.”
“How?”
“With my saliva. I can lick the wounds and …”
Haven didn’t hear the rest of her words. She would lick him? God help him. If the blood loss didn’t kill him, her lips and tongue on his naked skin would. Already the thought of it made his body temperature rise. How could he let her do that to him? And in front of his brother and the girl! It wasn’t an experience he wanted to have in front of an audience. At the thought of Kimberly, Haven scanned the room. She was gone. An icy coldness shot through his veins.
“Where’s Kimberly?”
Yvette frowned. Wesley answered, “The witch took her.”
“Shit!” What had he done? He’d delivered an innocent girl to a witch, who would hurt her. Why hadn’t he resisted? Why hadn’t he come up with a better plan that wouldn’t have involved kidnapping the girl?
“I told her to do what she says. She won’t resist her, not like you. Stupid,” Wesley growled.
“I couldn’t, I just couldn’t …” But Wesley wouldn’t understand. He’d always taken the easy road, the way of least resistance. Whereas Haven had yet to meet a brick wall he didn’t like. And his head wasn’t thanking him for it either.
“So, do you agree to it?” Yvette intercepted his thoughts.
Haven looked back at her and let his gaze sweep over her body once more. He didn’t have much of a choice. The bleeding wasn’t stopping no matter how hard he pressed his hand against the wounds. And already now he felt dizzy. It would only get worse. But he still couldn’t trust her.
“Wesley will stand next to you. And if you’re trying to hurt me, he’ll use the stake.”
“Now we’re talking.” Wesley grinned and rolled the item in question between his fingers.
Yvette merely rolled her eyes. “Idiots!”
With fluid grace she walked toward him, waiting for Wesley to step aside before she dropped to her knees beside him. Her closeness made him feel almost intoxicated. He wrote it off to the pain that coursed through his body and made him weak.
“Show me how it works,” Wesley ordered, looking down on them.
Haven saw Yvette’s mouth twitch as if she was biting back a snide remark. But then she lowered her face to his and looked into his eyes. “Your lip is split.”
His groin tightened at the hint of what she was about to do. Couldn’t she start somewhere else on his body, maybe on his hand or arm? Did she have to deliver the death blow with her first strike? But before he could voice his protest—and he wasn’t even sure it would have been a protest—her lips closed in on him.
Haven held his breath when her pink tongue snaked out and lapped against his lower lip. Instead of a stinging sensation, he experienced a slight tingling, pleasant and gentle. He exhaled and relaxed his facial muscles. Again, her tongue licked over his lower lip, slower this time and with more pressure.
The strange tingling morphed into a shiver which raced down his body and slammed into this groin. She would definitely kill him—that much was clear. By what means? The jury was still out on that.
When he looked at her, he noticed how her eyes had closed as if she was savoring his taste. There was a drop of his blood on her lip, and fuck it if he didn’t find that sexy as hell. And hell was clearly where he was heading if he didn’t stop this madness. If he could stop it. If he wanted to.
Yvette pulled back.
“Fucking amazing,” Wesley commented as he looked at Haven’s lip. “It’s like new.” His brother grinned down on him. “Quite handy.” Then he made a movement toward Yvette. “Okay, do the rest.”
If his brother only knew what kind of torture he was going through right now … It might look cool and be “handy” as Wesley had said, but to be at the receiving end of it was something entirely different. It was the most amazing sensual caress he’d ever felt.
Yvette’s hands divested him of the remainder of his shredded shirt, fully exposing his chest to her view. Her eyes showed the hunger she tried to keep leashed, but Haven saw it nevertheless. What if she fell into bloodlust now that she’d tasted his blood? Was it the same way it was for an alcoholic, who once he’d tasted alcohol again couldn’t stop himself? Was that what would happen to her?
From the corner of his eye, he noticed Wesley shift and adjust the hold on his stake. He briefly wondered where he’d gotten it from since Haven’s own stake was still in his jacket pocket, and his jacket was nowhere to be seen.
Yvette’s hands felt surprisingly warm as she took his hand and lifted it from where he was still pressing it against his wound. He’d always thought that vampires would be cold, being the heartless creatures they were. He’d fought plenty of them in hand-to-hand combat, but had never really noticed their body temperature. There’d never been the time during the fight to really register what they felt like. And he’d never wanted to anyway.
But now Haven had all the time in the world to feel and sense what a vampire’s hands were like. And why shouldn’t he? The more he learned about these creatures, the better he could fight them in the future. Because nothing would change. Just because he was thrown together with a vampire and had to work with her to get out of the predicament he and his brother were in, didn’t mean he’d suddenly become friends with one of their kind. At the very least, hell would have to freeze over first.
“What did she use?” Yvette asked and stroked her fingers along the gashes as if mapping them.
“A whip.” It took all his restraint not to moan out the answer. Pressing his jaw tightly together, he tried to ignore the effect her warm fingers had on his body. Like a sensual caress, she explored his injuries.
“They’re deep.”
Yvette bent over his stomach and lowered her head to his wounds. Her tongue flicked against his flesh, spreading the same tingling sensation as before. With long, sure strokes, she licked along his damaged skin, lapping up the blood as she went. Haven�
��s head dropped back. He was unable to watch, not because it disgusted him, but because her actions got him hotter than a lap dance. With every lick of her tongue, he grew harder. He could only hope that neither his brother nor Yvette noticed how his cock expanded beneath his black pants and strained against the zipper, threatening to destroy the last piece of his rented tuxedo and any remaining hope for his deposit.
Haven closed his eyes, not wanting to be exposed to the embarrassment that would follow if either of them discovered his arousal. His brother’s lack of discretion would make the situation uncomfortable at the very least.
“Are you okay?” Wesley asked, concern evident in his voice.
“I’m fine.” Fine? Who was he kidding? He was about two steps away from paradise.
While Yvette’s mouth kept licking his wounds, her hand slipped to his side as if trying to hold onto something. Her fingers dug into him, and by the intensity with which she gripped him, he suspected she was unaware of her own actions.
Haven let out a ragged breath. How long was she going to torture him like this? Did she even know what kind of effect she had on him? Was this her way of paying him back for kidnapping her?
When she suddenly lifted her head, cold air wafted against his wounds.
“It’s not working,” Yvette said.
Haven’s eyes flew open.
“Why?” Wesley hissed. “Are you just sucking him dry? Is this all a trick?”
Yvette ignored Wes’ snide remark and instead looked at Haven. “The wounds are too deep and too large. We need to try something else.”
Wesley lifted the stake as if to strike.
“No, Wes!” Haven yelled. He couldn’t let his brother hurt her. When Wesley lowered the stake again, Haven let out a relieved breath. Then he looked at Yvette. “Was it a trick to get my blood?”
She graced him with an indignant glare, then shook her head. “As I said—”