Sorrow takes over, kissing me on the mouth and drawing my attention to him. He even grabs me as he rolls onto his back and encourages me to straddle his waist. With some careful maneuvering, his shaft finds my opening and slips inside, making me groan.
Wolfe doesn’t waste any time, moving up behind me and kissing along the side of my neck. He pauses at the exact place where he bit me the other day…but he makes me wait for it. I ride Sorrow fast and hard as Vyce grabs some lube from the nightstand drawer—even in a queenly suite, vamps are gonna have lube because, well, they’re slutty as hell—and hands it to Wolfe.
He slicks it along his shaft, getting nice and slick before he puts the tip of his shaft against my ass…and pushes inside. He’s so wide, I can feel myself stretching, but I love it, having two cocks inside of me at once. They push at each other as they move, teasing that thin layer of flesh between my cunt and my ass.
Vyce doesn’t just sit aside though. He moves up close to us and lets me wrap my hand around his dick. We kiss while I work Vyce, Sorrow, and Wolfe all at once. Even though there are candles flickering in the room, it’s relatively dark, so most everything is in shades of gray. I like that because it lets me focus on the pleasure instead of the sight of the boys surrounding me. I do things a little differently because of the contract, working Sorrow to orgasm and then letting Wolfe turn me over onto my back so he can put his shaft in my pussy instead.
He rides me just as hard and fast, finishing before he switches out with Vyce.
Once we’re all done, we lie there on our backs, panting and sweating and staring up at the ceiling.
“So…are you guys busy tomorrow, too?” I ask, and three different masculine chuckles chase me into the best sleep I’ve had in years.
11
The evening of the coronation, I’m beyond nervous. I can tell something bad is going to happen, but I can’t decide what, exactly, that is. Somebody’s going to try to kill me, that’s for sure. But are they going to use something subtle, like an arrow from afar? Am I going to be friggin’ jumped on my way downstairs? Maybe on my way down the aisle to marry the king?
Oddly enough, none of those things happen.
The Stiltz kin watch me with varying levels of frustration as I dress myself in the black gown with the plunging back, plunging neckline, and the spider-web patterned skirt that drapes out across the ground behind me.
“How do you think the king will react when he finds out we can’t fuck until I’m pregnant with another man’s baby?” I ask and Wolfe scoffs. Sorrow just laughs at me, but at least Vyce answers normally.
“Once you’re crowned, we’ll lay down the law for him. You don’t have to worry.”
I chew on my lower lip and wonder once again if Rumpel doesn’t have something else in mind. Like, say, taking down House Verenim. Putting a puppet-dhampir on the throne would certainly help shake royal confidence in their leader. After all, he was stupid enough to make the declaration that brought me here in the first place, a half-breed mistake that shouldn’t be breathing their air let alone ruling them.
Fuck.
At least I know that for now, the boys will have my back.
But shit...starts to go down before we even leave the room.
The king bursts in, red-faced and panting, and behind him, there’s the tall, dark man with yellow eyes and a pinched but handsome face. There’s a weight behind those eyes that makes my stomach drop.
“Rumpel,” Vyce says, smoking a cigarette. He doesn’t sound worried, but there’s a tightness to his shoulders that’s scaring the shit out of me.
“Vyce,” the man says, pushing the king into the room with a hand on his lower back. Vesnic looks at me like I’m twice as weird as I was before. Fantastic. What the hell is going on now? “Sorrow, Wolfe. I’d like to apologize to you,” Rumpel says as the king just stands there and glares at me with something odd and unreadable in his eyes. “But your bargain.” Rumpel twirls his hand in the air my stomach drops. “Is null and void. Not only is this woman already royal, but she already belongs to me.”
He smiles at me as I feel my stomach drop.
Fuck.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Sorrow asks, stepping up beside me, almost protectively. But no fucking way. No way a dude I’ve known for a handful of days gives two shits about me. I’m on my own here.
“This is the daughter of the last Verenim king, and Vesnic’s sister.” Rumpel delivers this news like it doesn’t mean shit, but I swear to God, I almost pass out right then and there. I can’t breathe; my throat is tight. White spots dance in front of my eyes as I struggle to get out a single word.
“Mom was already pregnant when you made the deal with her,” I choke out and Rumpel smiles. I don’t care that I’ve just confirmed that he’s right. Doesn’t matter. The second he decided to come here, he knew. There wasn’t going to be a chance to lie. My only hope now is to run...or fight.
“No, she wasn’t,” Rumpel says with a long sigh, like this is all a serious inconvenience to him. “She became queen with the use of my magic, became pregnant with the king’s child, and then she ran.” He takes a few steps toward me and leans down to look into my face.
It takes everything I have inside of me not to lunge at him.
“Not only do I already own you, my dear,” Rumpel says as Vyce and Wolfe exchange a glance over my head. “But you are in breach of contract and yet, you used the magic I gave you anyway.” He reaches out to touch my chin, but I jerk my head away.
I’m only going to have one chance to run here.
One chance.
And then it’ll all be over.
“So I’m taking what’s rightfully mine,” he continues, nodding to the three Stiltz boys in turn. “You’re dismissed,” he tells them, just before I turn and run as fast as I can toward the open window. I can survive a fall like this. But so can he. Still, it’s the closet exist and the only one that isn’t blocked.
But I don’t make it that far.
Instead, Rumpel’s fingers tangle in my hair and jerk me back. Magic washes over me in a wave and I collapse to my knees. The last things I see before I pass out...are the three faces of Rumpel Stiltz’ kin, men that I’m coming to like...but who I’ve had no chance to love.
I pass out before I have the opportunity to count my many, many regrets.
The smell of decaying leaves teases my nostrils, making me sneeze as I come to and sit up, blinking into the solid blackness of a forest. The city never gets this dark, not even when I'm hunting a badass undead vamp and all the streetlights go out, all dramatic and shit. They like to do that, vampires, cause all that drama.
"Where the fuck..." I start, just before it all comes back to me.
Rumpel Stiltz.
He knows who I am.
Chills chase across my skin as I wrap my arms around my chest and squint against the faint flicker of a fire. The flames are an unnatural blue-green color, and there's no heat coming from it at all. In fact, it feels colder in that direction and to be quite frank, it's cold as fuck out here.
I don't bother asking where I am or what's going to happen to me, blah, blah, blah. What's the point? The bad guy found me after all these years and it's over. It's over. Harry was right. Hopefully when he has a drink and toasts my memory, it'll be something that's properly mixed and doesn't taste like gin and tequila. Either that or a nice, clean Scotch. Shit, I hope he marries Miri and they make cute little ogre mixed breed babies together.
As I adjust myself, I feel the thick, heavy length of rope at my ankles. When I reach down to touch it though, there's nothing there, just magic.
"Fucking hell," I curse, putting the palm of my hand up to my forehead. I'm still dressed in that nightgown from earlier, sans panties. I can feel the wet, mucky ground leaching through the silk and soaking my ass and cunt. It's beyond uncomfortable.
As my eyes adjust to the darkness, layering the forest in fifty shades of gray (see what I did th
ere?), I notice a pair of yellow eyes watching me from a nearby tree stump. Rumpel Stiltz was a handsome man in his day, and although he's an immortal undead vampire, he's been through a whole hell of a lot of shit. Magic has twisted his face into something unrecognizable, scars from battles with mages or faeries or angels that can't be reversed.
To say he's repulsive would be an understatement. Not only is his face reminiscent of melted candle wax, but his smile is dark and empty of emotion, and those eyes...I can't look away from them. My guess? He was wearing a glamour when he confronted me in the castle and now, this is his true form. It's hard to go around such beautiful people looking like a monster. Trust me, I know that from personal experience.
"Your mother..." Rumpel begins with a long sigh, his voice as beautiful as his fake face was just hours earlier. Or, at least I think that was mere hours ago. It's hard to say, considering I passed the fuck out in my attempt to flee. Some badass heroine I am. "She was clever, wasn't she? Just enough to be impervious to magic. That's a one in a million trait, you know. It means you're quite special."
I tuck my legs to the side, like a mermaid. They might be bound together, but I can still move them. Inside my chest, I can feel that constant running trickle of magic that Sorrow broke open with a single kiss. I know it's not enough to fight this man though, not even close. But if I could get by myself a small opening to escape, that should do the trick, right?
"Can we bypass the whole bad guy speech and just get on with it? You going to kill me or what?"
"Kill you?" Rumpel asks, rising from the stump with unnatural movements. His legs don't look right. Instead, they seem to be bent backward at the knees, like a cricket or something. I find that I can't look away as he hops down and moves over to me, yellow eyes sparkling. His pupils are the square shape of a goat's and they're freaking me the fuck out. "I've been searching for you for over two decades. What a waste that would be. Besides, you have such useful skills."
"Sooo," I started, reaching up to pick rotten leaves from my hair. They're wet and slimy from the recent rain; my stupid curly hair doesn't want to let them go. Plus, I mean, I don't just have freshly fucked hair today, I have orgy hair. Orgy hair is substantially more tangled and hard to deal with. "Why did you drag me out into the middle of a dark and ominous forest?"
"Does that get you far in life?" Rumpel asks, reaching out and taking a handful of my hair in his long, gnarled fingers. "Being clever like that? Because I don't find it amusing." He jerks me forward and stares into my face for the longest time.
"Then what do you want from me?" I snap, literally snap at him with my teeth. I yank back as hard as I can and even though it hurts, even though it pulls hair from my head and makes me shiver with pain, I do it anyway. Being contrary is the only way I can feel powerful in this situation right now. "You want to train me up like one of your Stiltz kin?"
"Something like that," Rumpel says, standing back up with those strange legs of his, the black pants he was wearing earlier now wrinkled and disheveled from bending into such an unusual shape. "The thing is, with my kin, I require complete and total obedience."
Rumpel moves back over to the strange blue-green fire and opens up a black bag, extracting a metal canister and unscrewing it. Unsurprisingly, the contract I signed with the Stiltz boys is inside.
"Do you know what usually happens to those that try to skip out on payment of their contracts?" He reads the paper in his hand over and then tosses it into the flames. Even though I can feel the icy kiss of the fire, it burns like any other, turning the contract to ash.
"You have them torn limb from limb inside their own homes?" I choke out, hating the emotion in my voice. I don't need to show my cards to this asshole. Whatever he's going to do to me, it can't be as bad as what he's already done. Mom is dead, and she's the only person in this world that ever loved me. What harsher punishment could I possibly suffer?
"If you're referring to your mother," Rumpel continues, pulling out a few more items from his bag. One of those things is a hot metal poker with a brand on the end of it. A brand. As soon as I see that, I start to sweat, cold droplets running down my spine and staining my flimsy nightgown. "Then you have to understand that by the time I found her, I was quite angry." Rumpel lays the brand in the fire and then moves over to me with a small glass bottle, similar to the one hanging around my neck.
"So it was you?" I ask, and I hate, hate, hate that I'm relieved to hear it wasn't the boys that did it, like it gives me some sort of license to like them or whatever. Not that it matters. I betrayed the terms of the contract. And fuck, I shouldn't even have been able to sign a contract. My whole existence is a breach of contract. "You killed her?"
"Your mother owed me," Rumpel snaps, grabbing me by the hair. I hardly have a moment to register the surge of magic in the little clearing before tendrils of it are wrapping around my wrists. The creep shoves the small bottle against my lips and dribbles bloody liquid in my mouth. Of course, I thrash and fight, but inevitably some of it slides down my throat, choking me. "And now I'm collecting on that debt."
As soon as Rumpel releases my hair, he also releases the magic on my wrists and ankles. Only...I can't get up. I can't even move. My muscles lock tight and it feels suddenly hard to breathe.
"You're mine to do with what I want," he says, looking down at me with those bright yellow eyes for a moment before heading back to the fire. "And I've spent years looking for the right bride. With your natural resistance to magic, you're perfect for the role." Rumpel pulls the brand from the fire and starts to hum under his breath. I can taste the magic in the air as he goes about weaving a spell with his words.
My body is still frozen in place, locked down with that strange magic. I can even feel it sweeping over that natural still of power in my chest, blocking me from using a damn drop of it.
Rumpel starts to sing, this strange off-key tone that makes my teeth hurt. I don't recognize the language either, but it's something old and broken, like shattered teeth in a rotten mouth. He twirls the brand around in the air as he moves, dancing around the fire with strange, jerking movements, like a marionette or something.
The spell twists above the trees like a tornado, snatching limbs from trees and dropping them into the clearing. One of them hits me in the leg and sends violent pain ricocheting through my body. The green and blue flames rise higher and higher, licking against the canopy and leaving icicles clinging to the branches.
"Please don't scream," a voice says from behind me. I can barely hear it over the din of Rumpel's raucous singing, and the violent surge of the wind. But it's deep and low and kind of...grumpy? It's gotta be Wolfe.
A bottle appears over my shoulder, pressing against my mouth. This time, I don't fight it; I drink the liquid down and within seconds, I can feel my muscles unwinding, the paralysis drifting away in the wild wind.
Rumpel pauses his song and dance, but the storm doesn't stop and the air only seems to get thicker with magic. I follow his gaze across the clearing as Wolfe hauls me to my feet. I'm a little unsteady at first, but as soon as he hands over my I Love Lucy family, I start to feel like myself again. I might be wearing a wet, soggy nightgown but I've got Ricky, Ethel, and Lucy to back me up now—them and their assorted sheaths, straps, and holsters. I promptly put them all on. I might not be wearing underwear, but I'm packing serious heat.
"What are you guys doing here?" I ask, glancing over and finding those cold gray eyes on mine. Wolfe scowls like he doesn't give a shit, but he's here, isn't he? And he did give me back my weapons.
When he doesn't answer, I turn back to the clearing and notice that Rumpel's staring at something in the shadows. Since I'm only a half-vamp, it takes me a moment to register what it is that I'm looking at.
Vyce.
And Sorrow...on a leash.
Vyce is holding a long silver chain, the end of it looped around the demon's neck. I'm sure it's all for show, but I have to admit: the pair of them look pretty damn cool. Vyce is lounging in bla
ck leather and buckled boots while Sorrow lifts the corner of his lip up in a snarl I can't quite hear over the storm.
Rumpel doesn't look all that surprised to see his kin here. Me, I'm floored. Are they rescuing my ass? Why? We've only known each other, what, two weeks? And there was a whole week gap in there where I didn't see them at all. Why the hell would they care one lick about me?
Vyce leans down and unhooks the leash from Sorrow's neck.
As soon as he does that, it's like a signal to start the fight. The red-furred demon darts forward and leaps over the fire, crashing straight into an invisible shield around Rumpel. Instead of letting it knock him back, he clings to it with his claws and tears into the magic with his teeth.
"Try not to get killed, okay?" Wolfe says, whipping his revolvers out from beneath the dark brown leather duster he's wearing. He takes aim at Rumpel and fires several shots that stick in the invisible bubble of the shield. They hang there in midair for a moment before Sorrow tears the magic wide and the ammo lodges itself into Rumpel's side.
Blood blooms, staining the white button-up he's wearing a dark crimson, but the man himself doesn't look concerned whatsoever, not even when Sorrow drops to the ground, bounces off and slams into him.
"What the fuck is going on?" I ask, grabbing onto Wolfe's arm. In my mind, it's four against one, so we've got this in the bag, right? But then, I should've known better. This is Rumpel fucking Stiltz we're talking about here.
"What's it look like?" Wolfe growls out, dropping his gaze down to mine. "We're rescuing your ass—even though you lied to us."
"What the hell was I supposed to do?! Tell you I was infertile so I most definitely didn't get the deal I wanted? Be realistic."
"Infertile?" Wolfe asks, like I'm some sort of crazy person. "I was talking about the fact that your mother pulled one over on Rumpel. He's been looking for you for twenty-five years."
"You don't care that I'm infertile?" I ask, my heart thundering in my chest. I don't have time to hear Wolfe's answer though because Rumpel's just pushed the bullets from his side, letting the tiny pieces of metal fall to the forest floor.
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