by Maya Daniels
“Sara, what are you doing here?” The warmth leaves his words when he turns on her. “I told you to leave April alone and to stay away from her. Go!”
Her cheeks turn red, then a dark cloud shrouds her when her head hangs limply on her shoulders and, jumping up, she runs away. That’s why she asked for forgiveness. Sara is in love with Sebastian, and I’m the one thing keeping her at a distance. How much of her helping them was for the sake of Eddie? And how much of it was because Sebastian simply asked her to do it?
“You are so stupid,” I tell the jerk looming over me. “He really is stupid.” I also say to Mutt just for the sake of it.
“What did I do now?” Sebastian has a bewildered look on his face. “I do not want you upset, my redemption. Sara always gets you angry when she is around. That’s why I have forbidden her to come within a few yards of you. She took me by surprise earlier this evening, but after your reaction, I knew I made the right decision. Besides, you’ve had enough of stress for one night.”
“I told you he is stupid,” I mumble to Mutt and, of course, my protector agrees with me. He whimpers softly.
“As I said,” Sebastian sits down next to me, his back pressed on the wall and a forearm thrown over his bent knee. “It was wrong of me to keep the dog away. He will stay with you all the time now.”
“Thank you, Sire, for allowing it.” My words are so dry I’m surprised they don’t crumble in the air between us.
“I didn’t mean it that way.” He presses a thumb and forefinger on the bridge of his nose. “Minchia! I’m screwing this whole thing up.”
Chuckling at his outburst, I scratch Mutt behind his ears. The poor bugger fell asleep snoring softly in my lap. I don’t want to let go of him yet. Feeling his chest move reassures me that he is alive.
“I know what you mean, but even if you didn’t agree, I don’t care. No one is taking him away from me anymore.”
“Agreed. That dog has more courage than half of the Council put together. If not all of them.”
“Speaking of the Council.” Glancing at him, I watch his reaction. “We can’t keep waiting here for them to decide to come out of hiding.” He looks back at me with a frown on his face. “I say we go find them. I’m not looking forward to dealing with more mages trying to ambush us. Being buried under a collapsed building was not fun at all.”
“We still don’t know where exactly they are hiding. We know where they will be in two days, but not where they are now.” His fingers trail over the side of my face, tucking the blood crusted hair behind my ear. “It’s only two days we have to wait.”
“That’s only if their assassins gets to me, remember?” I’m so tired right now, not even the fact that someone might be coming for my head can rile me up. “They’re supposed to be celebrating my death. Just like back in the old days.” Grinning like a fiend, I shake my head. “Greedy miserable creatures.”
“So, you remember it all now?” Sebastian is on alert, his dark eyes attentive on my face.
“I remembered it since I woke up.” When he opens his mouth, no doubt to tell me off for not spilling the beans sooner, I stop him by lifting my hand in front his face. “I couldn’t remember it during the day, not all of it anyway. I don’t know why, but I feel like both sides of me are merging together slowly. The red-haze moments still happen, mind you. I know you saw it yourself out there. But it’s night still, and I don’t feel the need to rip everyone apart.”
“That is good. Maybe you just needed more time.” Slinging his arm over my shoulders, he pulls me to his chest. “I will do everything to assure you have all the time you need.”
“You are getting ahead of yourself, Sebastian. I said I don’t feel like ripping everyone apart now, but that’s because I don’t sense the Council’s bonds around me.” Relaxing my stiff body, I let him carry my weight. “I know for a fact the switch will flip the second I smell it.”
“If you know who the betrayer is, I will join you, my redemption. I wasn’t aware that it was turning you into a woman obsessed with killing. Had I known, I would’ve followed at your heels to make sure we kill them slowly.”
“You are so romantic. I don’t know how any girl can resist that.”
My body shakes when he chuckles behind me. “It’s part of my charm. Severed heads and blood baths instead of roses and chocolate.”
“Was Sara your lover?”
I feel like slapping myself for blurting it out. Sebastian stiffens at my back and numbness covers me from head to toe. I shouldn’t have asked. I should’ve kept my mouth shut and ignored the insistent thoughts, but no, I had to blab it out. Only, her face looking at him like he was the best thing in the world kept popping in my head, and the words spilled from my lips without any permission from my rational brain.
“We have not been lovers, no.” My shoulders relax for a moment. But this is Sebastian we are talking about. He always drops the shoe last. “I have fed from her. And I've had sex with her like with many humans, but she wasn’t my lover.”
Scrunching up my face and wincing when the still-healing skin pulls and sends pings of pain, I blow out a breath like a wheezing balloon. Mutt stiffens in his sleep, so for his sake, I relax my coiled-up body.
“In this century, when you have sex with someone, they are automatically your lover, grandpa.”
“We feed and we fuck, April.” He sounds affronted. “It is our way. You have felt it yourself. Where is this coming from? What is bothering you?”
Anger rears its ugly head. Okay, not anger. Jealousy, but I’ll be damned if I admit it to the asshole.
“No, we don’t feed and fuck, Sebastian. I have fed plenty, yet I haven’t fucked anyone.” Whirling on him angrily, I grip Mutt tightly so I don’t drop him on the ground.
“No, you haven’t, but you have killed while feeding.” Glaring at me, he straightens up, trying to intimidate me with his size. “Should I have killed her? Should I go kill her now? Should I kill them all?”
“Don’t you dare raise your voice at me.” Hissing at him, I’m forcing myself not to scratch his eyes out. We can both be half blind then.
“What is bothering you, April?” A knowing look enters those dark orbs and I really, really want to jam my fingers in them. “You don’t like knowing another woman has touched me? I am long centuries old, my redemption. Those are many lifetimes.”
“We were talking about the traitor you sent to befriend me, asshole. Don’t you dare change the subject. I don’t give a fuck who you’ve been with.”
“Should I go kill her?” he repeats, watching me unblinking. “I will go do it now if that is your wish.”
“Why would I want you to kill her?” Lifting my chin stubbornly, I swallow the stupid jealousy. “I don’t care who you fuck.”
“Is that so?” The sides of his lips quirk up, his smoldering gaze not moving away from me.
“Yes, that’s so.” Looking down my nose at him, I stubbornly refuse to look away.
We stay like that, staring at each other for so long I’m sure my neck will develop a kink, and it’ll hurt like a bitch when I finally move. I’m glaring a bloody murder, and he is trying to burn me with his eyes, the smile growing on his face the longer I stare at him.
“Have you fed from her since the night I was transformed?” I hear my voice like from outside of my body.
I honestly can’t be this pathetic. I just can’t. Yet, it’s my mouth moving and my voice asking the damn question.
“No.” That smile grows impossibly wide, his fangs extending from under his upper lip. “But I do feel like feeding now.”
Caught in Sebastian’s gaze, I’m unable to free myself so I can think of a way out. Even in the water, he is unnaturally still, a predator in his prime, his full attention on me. Those are qualities that I always associate with Sebastian. It’s what makes him a great leader and why each one of his people will follow him to their deaths without question. When he gives you his full attention, nothing else in the world exists. He suck
s up all the oxygen around him, and you know that you can live or die at his whim.
The problem I’m facing at the moment is, I now have a predator in me as well. He got her attention, and she wants to play. Oh, how she wants to play. If he had any idea, he would be grabbing the clothes he so casually threw away and running from this space.
My skin pebbles, and the water feels cool to my fevered skin when he comes close, unaware of my internal debates. My body trembles with the strength of my conflicting emotions. How can you hate someone so much for what they’ve done to you that you want nothing more than to see them on their knees begging for mercy, while at the same time feeling that you won’t be able to continue breathing if they are not present in your life?
“April?” His hand cups my face, his thumb scraping gently over my cheekbone.
My breath is coming in small puffs, raising goosebumps on his skin where it coasts over his chest. This is the first time I watch the monster inside me take control. She will know what to do with him. Me, on the other hand…I feel inadequate, a girl from the sewers that can never in her wildest dreams learn how to handle someone like Sebastian.
Someone larger than life.
“I want you.” His deep voice reverberates through my entire being.
Pressing my thighs together, my channel clenching and feeling empty at his words, I stare in horror when his eyes glide over my face and neck before centering on my breasts, the hardened nipples bobbing in the water between us, begging for his attention. A pained groan sounds around us, the water amplifying it. His hand glides down, my skin burning in its path, and I stifle the moan behind pressed lips when he wraps his strong fingers around my breast, pinching and twisting the nipple.
“You are afraid of the water, my redemption.” A line forms between his dark brows as if he noticed this fact just now.
“I never learned how to swim.” There, I can at least talk. “I was a little busy running for my life.”
“No more running, cuore del mio cuore.” He calls me the heart of his heart, my own stupid organ doing a painful thud in my chest in answer. “Let go, April.”
I’m almost positive he is not only talking about releasing my death grip on the tiled edge of the pool. The master of word manipulation will never make anything as simple as that. Swallowing the lump in my throat, my lips part to answer him, but he renders me mute when his arms come on both sides of my shoulders, caging me in between his hard chest and the tiles at my back.
Leaning close, Sebastian runs his nose up and down my neck and shoulder, barely touching my skin but setting me on fire nonetheless. First, a gasp, then a moan is ripped from me when his front presses our skin together from chest to toes. All his hard muscles and sharp edges press my softness to cushion him, making me aware of every ridge, dip, and bump. His thick erection seers the skin of my lower belly, branding me and setting me aflame a hell of a lot better than that mage who tried to melt my face.
I’m burning.
An entire volcano of heat erupts inside me, and I know that only Sebastian can stop me from turning to dust. He keeps sniffing my skin, rubbing his face like a cat marking its territory, scraping his sharp, deadly fangs, warning me not to try and escape.
“Let go, my redemption,” he repeats again, his voice raw and thick with need. “I got you, and I will never let go.” His chest presses harder, my nipples rubbing on it, sending delicious thrills through me. “You are mine, April.”
This time I shiver for an entirely different reason. A foreboding feeling like icy fingers from a freshly dug out grave crawl up my spine. His hand moves over my shoulder, dipping underwater and gliding over my side to my hip. Fresh wetness makes my thighs slippery when I press them together at his touch. His thumb does little circles right on my hip bone. Somehow, I think that spot affects every nerve in my body because I can feel that touch everywhere.
He moves fast, one second all cuddly and gentle, and the next his large hands have a bruising grip around my thighs while my legs wrap around his narrow waist. The thick erection parts my folds, pulsing there and bumping my clit, eliciting a scream that echoes through the room. He keeps gliding back and forward, his hardness like hot steel wrapped in velvet teasing my center. He is thrusting painfully slow, forcing me to bite my lips so I don’t start begging. My body arches at the contact. I’m reduced to moans and whimpers, my mind delirious with need and matching the hunger in his dark gaze when our eyes lock.
Sebastian looks tariffing and sinful at the same time, pulling me in until I know nothing but him. A moth to a flame. The voice is faint somewhere in the background of my mind, but I ignore it.
Wedging firmer between my parted legs, Sebastian takes my mouth in a hard, unforgiving kiss. Like he is burning inside just like me, and only I can save him from turning into ashes. His tongue tangles with mine, licking, sucking, biting, and driving me insane.
He growls in my mouth, the sound crazed and feral, his hips pumping as he slides his shaft between my folds, making my channel clutch with the emptiness I’m desperate for him to fill. Sebastian growls again like he can’t help himself and I dig my heels in his lower back, pulling him impossibly closer. More, I need more.
I’m lifted slightly up in the air, my eyes flying open at the feeling of the chilly air on my skin only for a moment. The mushroomed head of his shaft lines up with my opening and, holding me captive with an intense gaze, Sebastian surges forward, yanking me to him and impaling me so hard I can feel him bumping the mouth of my uterus. A sharp pleasure pain makes me scream. I feel too full, the sensation overwhelming to a point I’m ready to push him back, but as soon as my hands touch his shoulders, he starts moving.
There is no middle ground with Sebastian, I’ve noticed. It’s all or nothing, and that’s the same right now. He doesn’t take his time or work his way up slowly. He pounds relentlessly between my thighs. The sound of the tiles cracking at my back, sounding like applause for his efforts. Blinding pleasure overrides my senses, and I claw at his shoulders, urging him on.
“Harder.” My voice sounds foreign and raw.
“You are mine!” If I weren’t holding him, I would’ve thought a demon straight out of hell spoke instead of Sebastian.
Through the pleasure, I manage to focus on him, and my breath gets stuck. His cheekbones are sharper, like cutting blades on the sides of his face. His intense dark eyes are black holes pulling my soul in until there is nothing left of me in this body he uses to bond me irrevocably to himself. His swollen lips are red, contrasting with his tanned skin, and two sharp fangs peek out from under it.
“Mine, April.” He growls, baring his fangs in my face, his hips pumping faster between my legs. “Say it!”
Shadows play over his skin, highlighting the perfection of his body and face, pulling my eyes to the muscles contracting every time he drags me down on his shaft. The elastic band keeps tightening in my lower belly. Feeling him stretching my inner walls to bursting, his calloused hands leaving marks on my spread open thighs, something in me clicks. Like a bone that’s been out of its socket gliding into place when our gazes stay locked, our bodies are connected deeper than we have ever been. Possessiveness rears its head in my chest, so strong my world tilts upside down from the force of it.
“No.” When his eyebrows dip low over his eyes at my refusal, I give him a wicked grin. “You are mine!”
Without warning I strike, sinking my fangs in his neck, embedding them as deep as his shaft is in me. The rubber band snaps, my scream muffled by the mouthfuls of blood that I’m greedily gulping. Sebastian’s roar shakes the walls of the room, the glass panels bursting and showering tiny pieces of glass all around us. A red haze covers everything just for a split second, and I hear the monster inside my head chuckling like she just won a war. It’s the last conscious thought before my eyes drift shut.
Sebastian
She claimed me! Staring dumbfounded in April’s sleeping face while I cradle her to my chest, my mind is railing.
T
he door crashes open, swinging on the hinges and embedding the door handle into the opposite wall. Leaping out of the water, I fling April behind my back, facing the threat with fangs bared and claws ready. The new bond tying me to April rides me hard, pushing rational thought aside. She squeaks but luckily stays pressed at my back, her tiny fingers curling and her nails digging in my skin.
“Sire!”
Marcus stops dead in his tracks a few feet inside the room, eyes crazed with violence. Andrei is right on his heels with death written all over his face. A vicious growl comes from the center of my chest, the bond pushing me to destroy the two males that dared to enter where April stands naked. The muscles of my thighs bunch up, preparing to jump and rip them to shreds while they stand there, confusion replacing the rage on their faces.
“Oh my God, I can’t believe this!” April’s voice is like a slap, bringing me out of the edge of mindlessness.
Groaning, she thumps her forehead on my back before an angry screech sends her stomping naked towards the pile of clothing she had dumped on the floor. For a moment, all three of us stare openmouthed at all the pale flesh revealed, her ass rippling with each angry stomp and her breasts bouncing.
“I can’t have sex or even die in this place without having these two as witnesses.” Snapping angrily, she snatches the dirty clothing and shoves a leg in the pants. “This is fucking insane!” After her head pops out from her t-shirt, she glares at each of us in turn. “Get out!”
We still stare at her openmouthed, rooted to the spot until her hands clench into fists, the golden glow in her eyes flashing a warning. The damn dog decides to become animated as well, standing up on the chair close to her and baring his teeth, growling menacingly at us. Foam forms on his muzzle with each second we stand motionless.
“Get the hell out!” Her arm snaps up, her finger pointing at the open doorway.
Her power surges through my veins, propelling me into motion against my will. Through me, it does the same to Marcus and Andrei, all three of us tripping over our own feet to do as she asks. She follows behind until we are all in the hallway, then she slams the door shut in our face. Another angry screech sounds from behind the door and a loud crashing follows it.