Doing It To Death: Shivers and Sins Volume 2

by Kaia Bennett

  She reached for me at the same time I reached for her, pulling me up and away from the growing pool of blood surrounding the queen. Her kiss tasted like the tart flavor of my kind and her own sweetness. She kissed me like she needed me. She kissed me like she loved me. Like she trusted me in a way she didn’t know she could before.

  “I thought you were going to kill me!” She panted in between kisses and licks to get the blood off my chin.

  You and me both.

  I ignored my self-doubt and returned her kiss with feverish need, pressing her spine into the wall in defiance of my nature. I would never have killed her. I never would’ve given her up again without a fight. I reached between our bodies with urgency and cupped her sex to catch the intoxicating nectar pooling there. I lifted my hand and slurped the mixture into my mouth, growing so hard, I groaned at the ache in my groin. While I swallowed her down and gasped, with my eyes shut tight, she bit and kissed my throat, then shared the taste of her own blood with me in an urgent kiss. I slid my cock against her sex, dipped the tip between her folds and coated my shaft with her blood.

  “Oh God!” She cried out, her head tilted to expose her neck. “We don’t have time for this. We don’t have time!”

  I sank just low enough to cup her ass in my hands and lifted her up the wall. She shrieked, first at the swift rise of her body so far off the floor, then at the growl I loosed against her navel.

  “Jesse! Please!”

  That wasn’t a plea to stop. I hooked a leg over my right shoulder, sighting my red prize as she braced her hands on my head for balance and swung the other leg over.

  I dove in with lips and tongue, groaning at the taste. The fireworks of sweetness, the embrace of a mother, the kiss of a lover, all there between her thighs, painting her pink folds ruby red. I licked up every drop, then suckled her fluttering folds, aching for me. Her entire body became a single life-giving vein that would make me whole. Her pussy vibrated under my tongue, humming like concrete under a jackhammer, the nerve endings dancing frantically to the beat of my quest to sate the insatiable hunger, to worship at her altar.

  My sweet poison. My cure.

  “Oh! O-ohh! Ungh!”

  She squeezed my head with her thighs and arched her back as she came. I sucked harder still, sweeping my hands over her curves, bracing myself against the force of her bucks into my face. I grinned at her strength, the challenge in her limbs that made mine flex to receive her.

  “I need to fuck you,” I rasped when I pulled away. Her spasms against my tongue refused to settle and I needed to feel them wrapped around my shaft.

  I grabbed her hips and slid her lower, pinning her thighs to her chest with my torso. Cupping her ass for leverage, I slid my tongue into her mouth, drove my cock into her cunt, and coated myself with her clenching core.

  I actually sighed with relief, more myself than I’d been in days. More myself than I’d been in my whole life. I pumped my hips into her, harder, faster, her body riding up the wall then settling over me, down to my balls.

  She cupped my face in her hands, clawed my shoulders, tugged my hair. Every thrust met her clench, the circular grind of her hips as she tried to fuck me, pull me in deeper.

  “Fuck me,” she cried. “I want to hate you! I want—”

  “You want me,” I answered, breathless and hunting an orgasm in the forest of her body. Born to hunt, born to fuck and feed. I did both to her gorgeous form, but this time I gave back. This time I fed her as she fed me.

  “I want you.” She groaned her admission, staring down with a furrowed brow between our joined bodies. Then up at me, at every line of my face. Her full lips opened on a breath that refused to enter her lungs, the same breath that refused to enter mine, though I forced myself to speak around the deprivation.

  “I want you, too. I want you forever.” I gripped her face with one hand, smearing blood on her cheek and kissed her with all the fierceness I reserved for the kill.

  I came deep inside her, buried to the hilt, buried down to the soul. We rode out the orgasm against the wall, panting against each other’s lips. I felt dizzy, high, the world spinning on her taste and her willing body accepting mine. Heat swept through us, our extremities tingled, our bodies glued by a sheen of sweat, blood, and come.

  I let one of her legs down to wrap around my waist, then the other. When I parted my mouth from hers, she pulled me in again. She savored that joining for the first time. When she finally came up for air, I smiled. Full in all the ways a vampire can be full. In ways I’d never known.

  “You don’t hate me,” I whispered. A statement, not a question. A claim on my mate and not a plea.

  She raked the skin at the nape of my neck and pulled me close, rubbing her forehead against mine as she shook her head and swallowed deep.

  I think I could love you. I think I could be yours, in spite of everything.

  Not a memory. A thought. One we shared as the afterglow fell around us and reality returned with sharp focus.

  “Shit.” Evie hissed in annoyance. She looked down at our still joined bodies and the blood covering us. “We can’t leave like this, someone will see.”

  With a reluctant grunt, I pulled out of her pussy, but my cock pulsed at the mixture our freed juices, rubies and pearls twined together.

  I set her down, grinning when her legs trembled and she held onto me for support. She tried and failed to mask a smile, then turned her face away with a frown, fangs peeking out to pierce her lip. That same expression had been on her face when she met Stark’s eyes after consummating our bond. Shame. Maybe she could love me. But not yet. She couldn’t laugh with her rapist while standing in the death trap his father laid for her.

  I went directly for the wall closet and pressed the panel. The illusion of uninterrupted white parted to reveal a hiding space. I crouched to inspect the contents. Two black shoulder bags, along with a jug of water.

  “The fucker knew we’d make a mess,” I muttered through a grimace. But had he known we would make a mess of the queen, or had he known we’d fuck like animals while Altani bled out? Something in his eyes before he shoved me off the elevator made me pause.

  “How did you get those?”

  “Cai left them.” I uncapped the jug with my thumb and stood. “I do you, then you do me.”

  I let her splash water on her face, then went to work. I struggled but managed to drip water over her without fondling, sluicing off the blood in a quick shower. I couldn’t help snaking my tongue through her folds one last time, though, as I knelt to clean her. I tasted the salt of my offering, her pussy and the sweet blood that had slowed but not quite stopped.

  Her thighs now clean, I rinsed my hands and unzipped one of the bags. Several pairs of jeans, black boots built to withstand the winter, a jacket, a couple of long sleeved black shirts, underwear and bras to last a week, all in her size, as well as a small box of tampons and pack of pads—fucking thorough, aren’t you, Cai? And underneath all of that, the texts and journals she’d palmed from Sundara’s library apartment. Cai must’ve found them when he found Evie, Stark, and Vaughn preparing to flee the attic.

  I handed Evie her bag, which she quickly inspected, then set aside so she could douse me with lukewarm water. I splashed my face, then watched with a smile as she cleaned me. She paused, perhaps watching the play of my muscles—or studying my wounds.

  The aftermath of my torture had nearly healed. I’d barely noticed until now. She ran her hand down my cock, aiding the water’s journey as she cleaned my balls and thighs.

  “Turn around. hurry up.”

  I did, swept my hair over my shoulder and let her quickly douse my back, ass and thighs.

  “Okay, clean the blood off your teeth and we’re done.” She gulped some of the water to swish and spit, then handed me the remainder of the jug to do the same.

  I had nearly an identical outfit to Evie, the shirt navy blue and the jeans black, as well as a couple of changes of clothes.

  I dressed in a h
urry and I frowned as Evie inserted a tampon before pulling on her underwear. She winced at the discomfort, then sighed. I checked my pack for a phone and found the device, in addition to some cash, passports, and a small planner. Numbers and the safehouses we’d need if we managed to survive this jail break were scrawled in Cai’s sharp print within. I shoved the empty jug inside my pack and zipped up.

  “Ready?”

  Evie slid her shirt into place and pulled on her jacket. “Yeah.”

  Her voice trembled as she zipped up her bag. I closed the panel and faced her. The fear on her face almost unmanned me. She would trust me not to let her drown this time instead of begging me not to hold her under.

  This time I wouldn’t let her drown. I wouldn’t watch her get consumed by Cai’s greed or my father’s vengeance.

  I held out my hand. She slid her fingers into mine and squeezed. We skirted Altani’s gory remains. At the door, I knocked three times. Cai rushed in as if something had happened, then slammed the door shut.

  He nodded at the dead queen as if making a mental checkmark.

  “When you leave, run for the elevator. Make it look convincing, and hit me a few times before you go. When they find me I should be healing.”

  He dropped his phone on the floor and smashed the device under his heel, then pulled a gun from behind his back, under his suit jacket. He grinned as he held up the gun. “Don’t act like you don’t want to.”

  I took the weapon by the barrel, set my bag down and whipped the handle across his cheek. Then again. And again. His bones cracked like gunshots as I pistol-whipped him. He stumbled far enough to slip in Altani’s blood, then held up an arm. On his knees, he stared up at me, his mouth a bloody mess oozing onto the floor and his crisp white shirt. Cai tapped his forehead, gritting his teeth and bracing himself for death.

  I chambered a round, took aim, and fired twice into the center of his skull. Bull’s eye.

  The thud of his body hitting the floor gave me so much satisfaction, I almost came.

  I lowered my arm, taking in the scene. I could pull his spine out now and save myself the trouble later. I took a step forward, but Evie stopped me with a hand to the chest.

  “Don’t,” she ordered. I gave her a quizzical stare. She shook her head in answer. “I don’t want to see what he has planned if we betray him, Jesse. He’s thought out everything else, you don’t think he considered this too? And, he might have something we need later.”

  “Like what?”

  “Information. He might be an ally. I don’t know, I just have a bad feeling. Don’t kill him.”

  I stared down at my torturer, my father’s right hand man. She had a point. Cai had hinted he had contingencies in place if I betrayed him to my father. If he were prepared for that, he’d be prepared to fuck me over if I killed him.

  I put the safety on and stowed the gun in my pack.

  Then, I turned to my mate and held out my hand again.

  Her fingers trembled inside mine, adrenaline racing, fear prickling under her skin, and mine by proxy.

  I’m scared. Her mind whispered the words and my mind echoed them.

  I squeezed her hand and set my shoulders for the invisible weight I would rest on them going forward.

  I jerked the door open. “Go!” Evie ran many times faster than she had the night I’d chased her in the woods near her house. I stayed on her heels, knowing the fear she’d felt that night.

  29

  We followed Cai’s orders, stopping at exit eighteen to trade the SUV for a white cargo van on our way to Syracuse. I put Evie in the rear compartment with my phone so she could call her parents and brother, and Vaughn climbed up front with me. Stark decided, in the end, to forfeit questioning me in order to get his briefing from Evie. Pallets were laid out in the cargo area for both of them to rest, as good incentive.

  For my sake and Vaughn’s, this turned out to be a good thing. We needed to keep the distraction of Evie’s menstrual blood at bay, the witch blood calling to vampire tongues in spite of our stressful escape.

  I spared a glance at Vaughn when we hit congestion on the interstate.

  He hadn’t looked at me, just stared at the world outside his window. But, he seethed. I could hear the gears in his mind turning. Eventually he pulled a pack of cigarettes from his jeans pocket, his lighter from the other.

  “You good?”

  Vaughn smacked the pack against his palm and pulled a filterless cylinder from the carton to pop in his mouth.

  “Yup.”

  He rolled down the window halfway and lit up. In the back, Evie loosed a sob, then a series of them. She muffled the sound with her hand or Stark’s chest, who took to making cooing reassurances. The phone call with her family ended, and now reality settled heavily around us. She might never see them again. Who knew when she’d be safe enough to visit them or tell them her location? We’d sever our bond, but she’d still be a wanted woman.

  If Vaughn heard her pitiful cries, he didn’t let on, not even to sneer with satisfaction. He inhaled deep and let the cold air snatch away the ashes.

  “Did they hurt you or the wolf?”

  “Nah.” I thought that would be all he offered, but after a moment he continued. “When you didn’t come back, I thought something was up. Tried calling you a bunch of times. I went to Asylum to look for you thinking maybe Sundara had word. That didn’t work out like I hoped.”

  “Why?”

  “She was busy. Being back there without you reminded me why I hate true borns.”

  His tone grew clipped and he seemed to prefer studying the clutch of emergency vehicles causing a bottleneck in silence. Figuring he was butt-hurt over thinking I’d abandoned him, I left him to his thoughts. I veered around an old Saturn Ion, merging into the left lane and sped up to eighty miles an hour.

  Fucking humans. Rubbernecking like they’ve never seen a dead body before.

  I squeezed, then released the wheel, inhaling deep to calm myself. I longed to reach our destination. The sooner we got to that address in Syracuse, the sooner we could bed down and get rest. I wouldn’t be able to truly breathe until we hit the border and settled deeper into the unruly parts of my father’s territory.

  “I was gonna leave you,” Vaughn blurted. “I thought maybe after the third day you were dead and you’d want me to get the girl someplace safe. Which, fuck me, man, I never thought I’d be thinking about that bitch’s safety. She argued with me for a full day. I wanted to slit her fucking throat, but I knew if you were dead you’d come back from the grave and torture me just for thinking it. Plus, the wolf would’ve lost his shit. So, I gave in. They came for us the next afternoon as we were packing up.”

  Another silence stretched between us. He turned to look at me. The familiar burn of nicotine in my nostrils matched the burn of his stare.

  “They hurt you and the witch?”

  I’d healed completely. Evie’s blood had soothed every ache, even the subtle one in my head from my healing fangs. Vaughn asked the question like he could see every scar.

  “They didn’t hurt her. They just tried to kill her and use me to do it.”

  “They hurt you, though.”

  Not a question this time. A fact cradled in cigarette smoke floating between us.

  “It changes you, getting tortured.” He glanced out of his window. “Like growing an extra bone or something. It just sits inside, solid, like it belongs and was always there. Changes the way you move, even. Or maybe that’s just how it felt ‘cause I was human.”

  I swallowed. I tasted the lack of oxygen, the abysmal darkness, the ooze of dead blood like a fist working past my throat and into my lungs.

  “They used different tools, different mind fucks.” The twist and pop of my fangs being extracted made my skin prickle. “They left behind the same bone.”

  “I feel like shit’s different.” Vaughn’s quiet voice sank under the wind battering my face. He could’ve been talking to himself. “Like the day Liam died. Feels like we�
�re leaving him behind. Like we’re leaving everything we know behind.”

  The sobbing in the back petered into gasps.

  “Yeah.” I swallowed the lump in my throat. I flexed my fingers like they could still feel my brother’s curls, the ones at the nape of his neck, clinging to the bone I couldn’t pull free. Not without Evie’s help.

  In a way, Vaughn wasn’t wrong. In a way, he was. I hurtled toward things I used to know, familiar places that would wear a different mask, soil I’d walked on a hundred times, a hundred different years. Vaughn hadn’t even been out of New York until he met me. We’d been to Canada a few times, but mostly to big cities. The bustle of Quebec, the charm of Toronto.

  We were headed for the wilderness on the other side of the continent, and only to undo my bond with Evie. Then what?

  I glanced at the speedometer, wondering if I should push the vehicle harder or stick to my speed. If I got pulled over, I’d have to eat a cop.

  “Shit!”

  “What?” Vaughn glanced at the dashboard and huffed. He flicked ashes out the window. “Fucking rust bucket.”

  “We’ve gone from half a tank to damn near empty in just two hours.” A leaky fuel pump meant we had to stop and fill up, risking exposure.

  “Maybe we should ditch this ride and steal another one?”

  I thought for a second. Night had fallen hours ago and there were plenty of travelers. We could find something else. But changing vehicles would mean moving baggage, and reports of a stolen car at some point. We had to stop before crossing the border in the morning, and I had to assume, this van had been chosen for a reason. I shook my head.

  “If we fill up we can make the rest of the trip.”

  Vaughn nodded. I got off on the next exit ramp and pulled up to a gas pump at a truck stop. The glare of the awnings bright lights under the night sky made me feel exposed, like I’d been caught slipping through the barbed wire of my prison.

  Calm down. No one is looking for us out here.

  Not yet.

  Vaughn reached into the go bag I’d stored at his feet. He sifted through the cash Cai provided and snagged a twenty-dollar bill.