Ruin: A Reverse Harem Dark Fantasy Vampire Romance (Fire & Blood Book 1)

by Alexa B. James

  Ruin’s brow furrowed. “Can you answer me something completely honestly?”

  “That one is tricky.” I smiled, tilting my head back and forth. “How about we agree that I have the right not to answer you, but if I do, it will be honest.”

  “Do you want me? Would you dread every moment we spent together? Would this arrangement make you miserable?”

  I laughed. “Ruin, I gave you one of three priceless stones so I could have a night with you.”

  “A lot has changed since then,” he said.

  He was right. Knowing that I needed to answer the question with the honesty and significance that it deserved, I turned to the fire and watched the dancing flame. “I probably would have hated you three if you’d been here two weeks ago. But, from what I heard, the slaughter was explicitly against your wishes.”

  They all shared a heavy look, staring into one another’s gazes. For nearly a minute, the three men stayed absolutely silent before Ash said, “She has to pick.”

  “Agreed,” Death said as Ruin nodded.

  “You’re the one who’s going to have to pick between us, Kori.”

  “No,” I whispered, as my stomach dropped. There was no way that I could pick between them. If I picked one, the other two might resent me. It was better that they picked so I could keep a friendship with all of them. “I can’t pick between you.”

  They locked gazes again, and I could feel the heaviness of their silent conversation.

  Ruin’s gaze slid down to mine. “The thing is, Kori, we can’t let this come between us. You either have to pick one of us or none of us at all.”

  I contemplated the problem. The only possible way that I could keep a tender relationship with all three was by picking Ash. If I picked Death or Ruin, Ash would turn cold as ice. I knew it instinctively. But the idea of rejecting Ruin twisted my heart. He’d still be sweet to me, but there would be no wicked smiles or sexy words. And then there was Death. He was the one I knew the least. He was quiet, serious, and intent, but the memory of his kiss had my thighs slickening with my lust even now. A sudden idea occurred to me which would both solve this problem and give my family and I more time to plan our escape.

  “Could we do a trial period and see which one of us clicks?” I asked. “When we decide which one of us makes the best couple, we could start the bonding.”

  Ruin’s eyes went wide. “Are you saying that you want to be all three of our consorts until you decide?”

  I let out a quaking breath as nervousness thrummed through me. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “That’s a lot of blood. I’m not sure I could satisfy you all.”

  Their gazes locked again, and an achingly familiar wicked smile spread onto Ruin’s lips. “That’s something you’d have to try to know.”

  Oh, wow. That same sweet nervousness I only ever felt with these three men made me hyper-aware of every inch of my body. I grabbed four throw pillows from the side of the settee and lined them up on the floor. Unzipping my dress, I shimmied it down to the ground and stepped out of it, naked. I knelt on the second pillow.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  KORI

  My heart raced so fast that I could feel my pulse fluttering in my wrists as I knelt there naked, staring forward at the fire. I should have asked these three men if they wanted to feed on me before I undressed and climbed onto the floor. In my nervousness over being bitten by three vampires at once, I just offered myself up. I turned back to look over my shoulder.

  Ash’s lips parted as he watched me before the roaring hearth. The firelight gave his skin and long, curly blond hair a warm glow. For some reason, his otherworldly beauty just made this situation even more intimidating. Ruin leaned his elbows on his knees as his gaze slipped down my naked body.

  Death watched me with that single-minded intensity again. But none of them crossed the distance to me.

  “I should have asked first,” I managed, even though the air in the room felt too thin. “Don’t feel like you have to.”

  Ruin nodded. “I just know that this is a moment I will never be able to come back from.”

  “And, I don’t want to make the decision lightly,” Ash added.

  “It’s okay.” I bit my lip. “Somehow, the fact that you’re reluctant makes me less nervous.”

  Ruin’s dark brows rose. “You’re nervous? You have an amazing talent for hiding it.” He stood and walked over before me and climbed down onto his knees. He shouldered off his suit jacket, and his hands unbuttoned down his front. When his shirt followed his jacket, I looked across his muscular chest. He was huge. His soft caerulean eyes met mine, and his hands came up to cup my cheeks. “Are you still nervous, Goddess?”

  “In a good way.” I ran my fingers up his chest, feeling the smooth ridges of his muscles.

  A moment later, someone knelt down with his legs on either side of mine. Warm breath tickled over my shoulder. He wasn’t touching me, but every inch of my back was hyperaware of his presence. His calloused fingers slid down my sides and into my lap, caressing over my inner thighs.

  “It’s Death,” he whispered in my ear.

  Ash knelt down beside me a few seconds later. He had also removed his shirt, and the low light danced over his wide shoulders and chest. He reached out and grabbed my forearm, lifting it up to his mouth. His eyes came up to mine, and he kissed the inside of my wrist.

  “Do you want me to do this?” Death whispered into my ear.

  Adrenaline sizzled through my veins like lightning. My whole body thrummed as I said, “Yes.”

  Death’s hands slid up between my legs, and I sucked in a breath as he spread my inner lips. His other hand ran up and down my soft crease, feeling the wetness there. He hummed in my ear as his fingers rolled over my clit. I gasped.

  “Sexy Goddess… Damn.” Ruin leaned in, and his hand slipped between my legs. He pushed one finger inside of me, pulled it out, and then slid two in. He hooked his fingers.

  I moaned as waves of pleasure pulsed through my core, and I clenched around him.

  “You like it when I do this, don’t you, Goddess?” Ruin hooked his fingers again.

  “Yes,” I whispered.

  Ash leaned in, and his hand slid up onto my breast. He rolled his fingers over my nipple. “Tell us when to bite you, Kori.”

  A thrill of anticipation hummed through me.

  “Bite me,” I whispered.

  Ruin and Death leaned in on the opposite sides of my neck while Ash knelt beside me. A moment later, six sharp points sliced just above my collarbone and at my wrist as I felt the slow slide of three sets of fangs plunging into my flesh. Instinctively, I pushed away. My body screamed that this wasn’t right, I was prey, and to flee, but I barely could convince my shaking limbs to obey me. A hot, shaky feeling washed through my body, and I opened my mouth to tell them to pull their damn fangs out of me when a different feeling altogether spread from my neck. Their lips pressed into the sides of my neck and wrist, forming a suction, and a pulse of warmth spread through me as they drank deeply, pulling my blood into their mouths.

  The pain and tension ebbed away, replaced by a crashing wave of sensation that electrified every cell in my body. My whole body grew tight as tidal waves of pleasure exploded through my clit and radiated from where Ruin’s fingers drove in and out of me at a furious pace. As soon as one orgasm let me go, I was tipping over the edge again.

  The softly abrasive tip of their tongues ran over my puncture wounds in slow circles over and over again, and then Ruin’s lips pulled away, followed by Death and Ash’s.

  “Your wounds have closed,” Death said, his warm breath heating the moisture on my neck.

  My breathing was coming in harsh pants. Reaching up, I ran my fingers over my neck to find smooth skin. After losing so much blood, I’d expected to fall forward, but only found myself a tiny bit tipsy feeling, like I’d finished my wine glass and had another real quick. I tried to catch my breath and leaned forward into Ruin, who immediately wrapped his muscular arms
around me.

  Ash sat back on his knees and stared down at his hands as if completely confused. “This feels so . . .” he trailed off as a blue and white flame sparked at the tips of his fingers, flickering like little candles. “Ignis fire.”

  This was something I would never get used to. It was the hardest possible moment in a courtesan’s life when a vampire played with your magic as if it belonged to them. Before my first feeding, I expected it to hurt, but I didn’t expect it to cut straight through my heart. All my life, my power had been unreachable, and with one bite, a vampire could take it for their own.

  As if he knew he was being rude, Ash closed his fist, and the flame extinguished. His dark gaze met mine cautiously. “Does that bother you?”

  Did it bother me? Yes. Without a doubt, I was not okay with giving them my powers. But I inevitably would give my magic to some royal, and these three kings seemed rational, receptive, and kind. They were so different from the king before them.

  “I’ll be a lot better if we finish what we started a year ago,” I told Ash, knowing that would be one sure way to fight off my sudden turn in mood. My body was still pulsing with pleasure, and I wanted them to fill me with their cocks. The word cock still gave me a thrill every time I thought it, but it was exactly what I wanted. “If you want to.”

  I twisted and glanced around, finding the three men locked in a stare down again. Ash shook his head, and my stomach dropped. They didn’t want me.

  “Not until you decide between us, Kori,” Death said from behind me.

  I twisted to look at him. “How can I decide if we don’t have sex?”

  “We need to—” He cut off, and his hands came up to grip the sides of his head. “I have the strangest feeling,” he said, his voice sounding far away. “I have this feeling that someone will steal you away from us, Kori. You owe him something—to do with petals from a flower. He’ll take you in the night and steal your life.”

  It was as if the blood drained from my whole body instead of just from my neck and wrist. The room swam around me, as my heart beat in my throat.

  Death shook his head, hard. “I’m sorry. That’s nonsense.”

  Ruin’s arms tightened around me. “You’re not used to this rush of power, Death. Maybe you should take a walk.”

  Death was feeling a rush of power—but it wasn’t Ignis-fire power. He was prophesizing, just like my brother Timothy. And I realized as I stared at the white-haired king, I wasn’t just a latent Ignis, I was also a latent Tempus. Blood mages only ever had one power. It was a fact that all mages accepted as truth, but I somehow had two powers that I was giving these kings through my blood.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  ASH

  My hand pumped up and down on my rigid cock as warm water splashed down on my head. Pressure built at the head of my dick and through my shaft as I pulled my hand up and down in long, violent strokes. I needed to get her out of my head. I had to stop picturing her eyes heating as she teased me, or her dress sliding down her body as she stood before the fire. I especially needed to stop seeing her full lips as she cried out in orgasm while Death and Ruin’s fingers rubbed over her pussy.

  I had to stop…

  The pressure in my shaft exploded out, and cum erupted from the tip of my cock, washing away into the warm stream.

  Damn it.

  I laid my head against the cool tile as my sensitive cock finally went flaccid in my hand. Shame washed through me, as I glared at the tile floor.

  Kori was a rebel. She wasn’t just a rebel, she was a high-ranking officer who’d talked her way into one of the highest positions in our government in one day.

  Damn it. I knew better.

  If you let yourself be vulnerable to a lover, they used and betrayed you. Kori would get me exactly where she wanted me and use me until she killed me—and I was walking straight into it—eyes fucking wide open.

  Love was a knife. You either wielded the blade or got gutted by it, but the smart vampire stayed far away from its sharp edge.

  I was smarter than this—a fucking educated and judicious vampire king—not a naive human with stars in his eyes, thinking with his heart and dick but never his head. And yet… for the past two days, all I seemed to think about was how much I wanted to finally bury myself deep inside Koribella and mark her as my mate. She was in my head—she’d been in my head for years--fucking with my judgment.

  My dick already started to tingle at my thoughts, warning me that I’d be coming up for round ten in the past forty-eight hours if I didn’t watch my thoughts. With a sigh, I turned off the tap, wrapped a towel around my waist, and headed out into our new apartment, only to be greeted with… space. Wide-open space.

  Death stood at the window, looking over the city, his gaze far away.

  “Are we late for our meeting?” I asked as I combed back my wet hair with my fingers.

  “We still have about ten minutes to get down there,” he said, not looking back. “Feel any better?” Death had been close enough to feel my climax and moment of shame over our bond. I knew he wasn’t asking the question to be invasive, and it wasn’t like we hadn’t both climaxed in the same woman together before. I knew nothing about werewolf bonds aside from experiencing the one I shared with Ruin and Death as werewolves had fled to Europe before I even knew supernatural creatures existed. But, as far as I could tell from the things Death said, sharing a mate was a common werewolf practice —whereas vampires were usually highly possessive of their bonded partners.

  I had no idea where Death, Ruin, and I would fall between possessive and sharing when it came to Kori – none of us had ever even considered getting serious with anyone up until two days ago.

  “Better?” I blew out a laugh. “I don’t know. My mind isn’t any clearer when it comes to her. I hate to agree with anything Duchess Dread says, but it is true that Genevieve and Brendan Ignis are the only surviving courtesans that planned and enacted the coup against King Razor and the Portland royals. They’ll try to kill us if they get the chance, and then I guess we’ll see whose side she’s really on.”

  “Most days I wish I’d been the one to slaughter those Portland royals. They took Koribella and her siblings in as adolescents and trained them to be their sex and blood indentured servants—I regret that they died in their sleep.”

  He didn’t sound angry, just matter of fact. Death’s feelings didn’t come as any sort of surprise. To Death, there were three kinds of people in this world: the people he cared about, the people he didn’t care about, and those who endangered the ones he cared about. The first two groups deserved to live in his eyes. As far as Death was concerned, the third group better have their affairs in order.

  “Some of those royals deserved to die.” I leaned my shoulder into the cool glass so I could look at Death fully. “I’ll agree with you there, but some of them were as innocent as you or me…” When Death raised a brow, I amended, “Well, maybe just as innocent as me. But you already know what I feel about what happened. There has to be due process and a rule of law, otherwise no one is safe—evidenced by the fact that every single courtesan who participated in that attack are dead except for Brendan and Genevieve Ignis.”

  “Those royals weren’t good people.”

  “You don’t think I know that?” A pulse of frustration thrummed through my chest. “I haven’t forgotten that it was that same group that watched with smirks on their faces as King Razor burned Kori’s dress off. I haven’t blacked out that they’d gathered around in hopes that King Razor would murder us in the middle of the throne room only a couple hours before they all met their death there.” Opening my hand, I let my frustrated energy surge up, and a blue flame sprung to life in my palm to flicker there. “Rebels kill the humans, humans trick the vampires and massacre them, vampires trick the humans and annihilate them… it’s a vicious cycle of wrongs with no rights in sight, and we could keep it going forever.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  I blinked at Death’s abrupt
change in subject. “Can’t do what?”

  “Ignis fire.” Death lifted his hand. “I guess mage powers don’t pass to werewolves-turned-vampires. What does it feel like?”

  I thought about it. “A release… sort of tingly, like sneezing fire from your hands. Kori hated it when I made that fire in front of her, anyway, so I wasn’t planning on flaunting it all over the palace. I always thought that playing with others’ magic shit was fucking tacky. I only made fire in front of her because it felt so strange. It was probably my biggest asshole move with her to date. Ruin can make flame too, but he had the fucking sense not to taunt her with it.”

  “Well, it’s her power, and she’s never been able to use it.” Death’s eyes went far away, and a familiar thread of grief slipped through our bond. I could easily guess that he was thinking about the power that Queen Hell took from him. Death would forever be trapped in a human body. He never said it aloud, but I knew that Death would have rather died from his wounds as a wolf that day than wake up as a vampire bound in shackles.

  I extinguished the Ignis fire in my closed fist and gazed down at the deserted city, glowing in the crimson light of morning. Many of the shanty homes that once housed large groups of humans had been cleared away, probably used for fuel or added to the large barricades. The downtown buildings no longer had upscale condominiums for the vampire elite but instead cluttered human cooperatives that looked to have housed four per room. The only building that hadn’t been reclaimed by the human masses was the palace itself.

  “How the fuck are we going to get the humans to return to the city, Death?”

  Death lifted a dark brow. “Asking Kori to help us is the obvious choice—"

  “No.” I shook my head as my gut clenched, violently. Death might be right, but yet, I couldn’t let go of that tension inside of me that screamed that I shouldn’t trust Kori. If I let her in and she betrayed us… I shook my head at the thought. There was no way that I’d let her get that close—not until I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I could trust her.