by Unknown
“I already fed.”
“Too bad.” He spun me around. “Assume the position.”
I set my hands against the cross and spread my feet. My heart ached with intense pounding. Maybe after this I could finally start forgiving myself, since ignoring my past was doing nothing for me.
He undid my leather pants and pulled them off, making sure to run his hands over my ass as he bent to slide my feet out of them. Thank goodness I’d worn a thong. I usually went commando but leather could chaff my important bits. He leaned against my legs and bit my left cheek.
“Hey!” I almost swatted him but caught my arm in the down swing and set it back against the cross. Fangs hurt; don’t believe those stupid vampire movies.
He saw what I’d almost done though. “You’re feisty.” He rose behind me and undid the laces of my top until it fell at my feet, letting my breasts fall free. “I don’t like that.” Grabbing my hands, he restrained my wrists in the soft leather cuffs attached to the cross. He did the same to my ankles. “This should help you behave.” Silence settled around us except for a distant weeping that had replaced the earlier cries.
I hung my head. How had I lost my way and gotten so far from who I was? Who had I become? I wasn’t liking her much. My parents taught me about love. I’d seen it all my life. I was raised with it. How could I not want it for myself?
He returned just as silently as he had left but this time he carried a metal suitcase that he set upon a table. I guess Sin wasn’t the only person who owned a box of bad toys. Sin’s looked more worn though. My dom held a paddle. “We’ll start slow. What’s your safe word?”
“Stake.” Of the wooden variety.
I sensed him go very still. “Smartasses get extra punishments. What’s the house safe word?”
I rolled my eyes. “Red.”
“And if you want me to pause?”
“Yellow.”
“Good, let us begin.” He swung the paddle and let it connect with my behind.
I gasped at the sudden sharp pain. He didn’t hold back on his vampire strength. It stung right down to my bones.
He repeated his swings, not following any pattern or rhythm until I cringed with each breath. He paused and ran his hand over my hot, sensitive skin. “Are you still bad?”
I bit my bottom lip to stop from moaning from his touch. This was supposed to be punishment, not foreplay.
He slapped me sharply with his palm. “Answer me.”
“Yes.” I gasped out my answer.
“Good.” He returned to his box and sorted through his equipment, testing them against the air. I followed every movement, trying not to picture how those tools would feel on me. He held up a soft flogger used to tantalize the flesh, and grimaced before approaching me with it.
“I want it to hurt.”
He glared at me then at the flogger.
“I’m very bad. I need you to punish me.”
A slow grin spread his lips. He tossed the flogger aside. “As you wish.” Without hesitation, he pulled out a cane. I knew it because my sister owned one and had used it on me when I borrowed her favorite skirt without permission. They hurt.
I shrank against the cross and closed my eyes.
The first strike was the worst and I cried out. After that, I bit the inside of my cheeks, repeating I deserve it over and over in my head.
He worked the cane around my shoulders and stopped.
I panted. Sweat coated my skin. Gone was my original arousal, replaced by a deep ache. I expected pain, but in comparison to the emotional trauma I suffered, the bruises were almost a relief. I was replacing my inner discomfort with an outer one. “More,” I whispered.
He brushed his fingertips over my cheeks and came away with my tears.
I clung to consciousness. The pain belonged to me. “I deserve this.”
“What?” He stopped mid swing. “Did you use your safe word?”
“No.” It came out a whisper and I licked my dry lips. “Hurt me.”
He snarled. Returning to his position behind me, he worked the cane over me with renewed zest from shoulders to knees. The thwacking rhythm slowed.
“More.”
He moved so he could see my face. “I don’t know.” He glanced over his shoulder as if looking for someone to ask. With gentle hands, he slid his fingers inside my thong. His eyes went wide. “We’re done.”
“No.”
“Yes. You’re supposed to be getting off on this. You’re not.” He unclasped my left wrist.
“Please, don’t stop.” I kept my wrist where it was. “I promise to do better.”
“Pia?” Sin’s voice struck me as sharply as the cane. A snarl followed and I sensed my dom’s grasp on my restraints yanked away. “What are you doing to her?”
“S—she asked me to, master.” The dom lay on the floor next to me. “She wouldn’t use her safe word. I stopped it when I realized what she was doing.”
“What was she doing?”’
“Making me punish her for real, not for pleasure. Please, master. I didn’t know.”
“Sin, it’s okay. Let him finish.”
He didn’t listen to me and undid the restraints holding me to the cross.
I puddled to the floor before he could catch me.
“Fuck.” Sin loomed over me. He held a blanket, I’d no idea where he’d gotten it from, and covered me. “What am I going to do with you, Pia?” He lifted me in his arms and I must have blacked out because the next thing I recalled was swaying in Sin’s arms.
I closed my eyes against motion sickness. The ding of an elevator startled me and I sensed us moving again until I rested on something soft. I sank deeper into what must be my bed and listened as Sin spoke to someone.
“Flynn, we need to talk about Pia.”
Chapter Nine
The metallic taste of blood woke me from a deep slumber. I blinked the sleep from my eyes and wiped my mouth. My hand came away wet with an unnaturally ruby-colored blood smeared across the back.
Sin sat on the edge of my bed. The wound on his wrist healed before my eyes.
“What did you do?” I sat up quickly and a wave of dizziness rolled my stomach.
With a finger set on my breastbone, Sin pushed me to lie down again. “Don’t vomit in my bed.” His frown grew impossibly stern. So I wasn’t in my room.
The dim lighting didn’t reveal much detail but I could see other rooms behind Sin through the doorway. “Where are we?”
“My apartment. We’ll have more privacy.”
I’d never been here before, but I knew his living space was off limits to almost everyone and that it was deep underground.
The room stopped spinning finally. “I’m good. What are you doing feeding me your blood?”
“Healing you.” He rolled me onto my side and ran his hand along my spine. “The bruises are already fading. What were you thinking letting a sadist like Tony play with you?”
The taste of Sin stuck to my tongue. “Do you have any water?” I’d been drowning in despair at the club and it still suffocated my heart. I’d seen my future. My kind lived a long time. Every three days I’d be with a new male with no connection and no love. I wished Sin had never found me in that motel. Centuries of being alone wasn’t the life I wanted.
He handed me a bottle of water that I sipped.
I was only wearing my thong. “You carried me home naked?”
“You weren’t in any shape to dress.”
The caning marks on my thighs faded before my eyes and the pain went with it. “I didn’t know vampire blood could heal.”
“It only does if you’re as old as I am. Most vampire blood would just make you sick to your stomach.”
“It won’t do anything else to me, will it?”
He cocked an eyebrow. “Everything comes with a price.”
“So I’m your slave?”
“You’ve been my slave since you moved in my nest. No blood required for that. If you were human like those in my nes
t, you’d be compelled to do as I say.” So that was how he kept the humans obedient.
“I wondered what was wrong with me that I couldn’t seem to stay out of trouble like them. Maybe your blood will cure me.”
“I doubt there’s any cure for your troublesome nature.” He kissed the top of my head.
I turned, giving him my back. “Leave me alone, Sin.”
He sighed and rested his hand on my shoulder. He didn’t correct my shortening of his name. “You’ve been living in my nest for months?”
I snorted. He didn’t even know. “Yeah.”
“Time passes differently for me, Pia.” He sounded annoyed. “When you reach my age months are like hours, so forgive my disinterest.”
I glanced at him over my shoulder. “How do you keep track of my day threes then?”
“I have a secretary. She sends me a daily agenda. Your feedings are scheduled by her.”
“You’re an ass.”
He nodded. “That goes without saying. What I was trying to say is that you’ve been here for months and you haven’t tried to contact your family once.”
“How do you know? Are you tapping my cell phone?” I knocked his hand off me.
“Don’t try changing the subject. I just spoke with your father.”
I covered my face with my hands. “I don’t want to see them, okay?”
“I called him to ask permission to heal you.” He spoke very softly. “I didn’t know what the effects would be and didn’t know how well you could heal naturally.” For a succubus, I was pretty young. Power grew with age, just like a vampire, so I healed human slow and could die from trauma like them as well.
“Was it that bad?”
“You were just caned by a vampire who thought you were as old as Adele. Yes, it was bad.” He massaged the bridge of his nose as if he had a headache. “Tony said you didn’t use your safe word.”
I wanted Sin’s bed to swallow me whole. How did I explain? He wouldn’t understand. He didn’t even follow time, a basic law of physics. “I wasn’t ready to use it.” I tried to sound nonchalant.
“So he wasn’t lying.” He growled. His cell phone rang and he answered. “Let him go. He’s not to return to Cleaver until I’ve discussed this with him further.” Then he hung up.
I sat to face Sin slowly this time. “You’re banning him because of me. It was my fault.”
“It was both of your faults. You for not using your safe word, when clearly you had no intention to do so, and him for not realizing this.” He stabbed me with his glare. “You’re banned from there as well. No dom will trust you now.”
“Not even you?”
He laughed. “Especially me. If someone doesn’t tell me to stop, I won’t. Why do you think I pick my playmates carefully?” He shook his head as if bewildered. “Why did you do it? I don’t understand.”
I stared at the dark red sheets. Sin’s bed seemed so mundane compared to the vampire. I had expected it to be orgy huge with chains hanging from the ceiling and leather cuffs bolted to the headboard. This just looked like a place to rest with extra soft pillows. He had a stereo system and a television. I couldn’t picture him doing ordinary things like watching the news or game shows. “How old are you exactly?”
“Old. Don’t change the subject.” He’d said something about Babylon and Google when we first met. I would check it out if they ever let me near the nest computers again. I mean, one little virus and my password was revoked. “If you won’t speak to me, then at least speak with your family.” He held up his phone. “Any of them.” It almost sounded like a plea. He rested his head in his hands. “I’m not very good at this kind of thing.”
“Talking?”
“Caring. Speak plainly and honestly. Tell me what’s wrong or god help you Pia, I’ll be forced to do drastic things like marry you off to the first incubus I meet.”
I gasped. “You wouldn’t dare.” I couldn’t imagine a worse fate. The last place I’d look for a husband would be among my kind. My parents somehow managed to find love, but lightning didn’t strike twice in the same family. That’s why I’d taken up with humans. They were really good at loving. Maybe, one day, I’d find a man who could love me for who and what I was.
“Pia.” He voice snapped out the unspoken command.
I jumped. “Punishment!” It came out as a shout. I crossed my arms under my breasts. “Satisfied?”
Being male, his gaze followed my action.
I yanked the sheets at the foot of the bed to cover my body.
“Of course, I’m not satisfied. It’s not in my nature.” He grinned, not because he was happy but to shows his impressive fangs and to remind me of what he was. “I thought we’d taken care of your issues when I let you move in here.”
“How?” I tilted my head. He’d forced me to leave the motel. “I would have been happier if you’d let me die.”
He grew statue still. It was creepy.
I lay back in the bed again, curling into a ball with the sheets pulled to my chin. “I didn’t ask to be saved. Y’all forced it on me and I’m trying.”
He crawled under the sheets with me and wrapped his arms around me.
“This is all because of that guy, Pierre, the one you told me about?” I hadn’t told Sin the mailman part of my story on our drive back to Lake City. It wouldn’t help him to understand my issue any better than he did then and I didn’t want to revisit memory lane.
“Yeah.”
“What if I killed him? Would you feel better?”
“No.” I snuggled deeper into his arms. He felt warm, so he must have fed at the club. “I still love him. It would make it worse.” Who was he that I had to explain the obvious? “I miss him.” I missed the way Pierre smelled after a shower or the feel of him in bed next to me, the way his laugh rolled from deep inside his belly and how easy it was to make him do it. We’d been very happy together. A twinge of sorrow struck my chest. “I miss being happy.”
“It’s a dangerous thing for a succubus to fall in love. I know your parents are unconventional but I would have thought they’d explained that.”
“I didn’t listen.”
He snorted. “How comforting it is to hear that I’m not the only one you ignore.”
“It’s not fair, Sin. Why can they be in love and not me? Why can’t I find what they have?”
“Because they’ve had centuries to perfect their marriage and they stayed within their own race. You’re what? Twenty?”
“Nineteen.”
He shuddered. “You make me feel ancient. I hate it. I can’t even remember being human. How the fuck am I supposed to help you? My best advice is to kill the fucker and move on.”
“I would agree but I’m the bad guy in this story. I’m the one who deserves to die.”
“You can’t fight your nature. You need to forgive yourself. You didn’t ask to be what you are. You just have to deal with it.”
“And then what?”
He shrugged. “You continue to feed on your day threes just like all of your kind.”
“What if I fall in love again?” I rested my chin on his shoulder and wrapped my limbs around him. “It’s easy, you know.”
“Maybe for you, sweetheart.” He sounded stunned. “From my experience, it’s the hardest thing to ever do.” With strong hands, he rubbed my back. “While you were unconscious, I had a long discussion with your father. Apparently, he understand you. I couldn’t figure out why he’d decided to find suitors for you.”
“They think I’m impaired?” Nobody used suitors anymore. “No, Sin, don’t let him do that.”
“After what you just told me, I have to agree with him. A chosen circle of men you can feed from. That way you won’t expose yourself to anyone you might like too much.”
I clung to Sin’s hand. Feeding from suitors was an old-fashioned thing that dated back to when my dad was just a kid. Back then incubi were more possessive of their wives and would only let them feed from certain males they deemed safe
. After a few decades they became aware of how weak their wives were growing, and in turn they were too. The practice was abolished. As the old saying goes, you are what you eat. If incubi wanted to remain strong their wives had to be well fed with variety, so they had to learn to share.
In my case, suitors weren’t about possession. It was to keep tabs on me, making sure I didn’t go on a starvation diet again or fall in love. They were treating me like I had an eating disorder.
“Where am I supposed to find these men?” My words came out mumbled since my face was buried in Sin’s neck.
“Your father will be looking for candidates. I had a few suggestions.”
I jerked from his arms and shoved him away. “My dad is going shopping for my lovers?”
Sin winced and rubbed his ear that was close to my mouth. “He said you’d say that. He asked me to remind you that it could be worse since legally he has the right to demand witnesses to make sure you’ve completed the act. If you don’t want him involved, then get over Pierre and start acting sane.”
“I hate you.”
“I count on it. Otherwise how else could I be eligible for your suitors list? Your father wants men you won’t be tempted to fall in love with.”
Chapter Ten
Day two of my cycle
Feeding from just three men didn’t bother me as much as the stigma of needing suitors. Word would spread, because nobody gossiped like my people did, and I’d never be able to look another succubus in the eye again. Present day, only insane or ugly succubi needed their families to contract suitors.
I had wanted to die before, but not from embarrassment. I sat in the common room while a ping-pong tournament went on around me. Vampires were very competitive. Sometimes the ball went so fast all I could see was a white blur.
Pulling out a crumpled piece of paper from my pants pocket, I went over the list of names. They were my suggestions from my dad, people I didn’t really like but could bed. Since I was feeding exclusively off these three males none of them could be human. It would kill them.
The list was short.