by Jill Myles
Hunger swept through him, echoed by a fierce, longing need. She was his. She belonged to him…she was…
She was in Noah’s apartment.
Her eyes were pale because her Itch had been fixed by her Serim lover. Not him. Not the one that should be with her. Hate gnawed at his insides, burned in his core. Zane’s hands clenched. The Serim bastard had won her simply because Zane had to step off the playing field.
For now.
Fighting the overwhelming urge to break through the window and carry her away into the night, Zane pressed a hand to the glass. He needed to hear her voice. Just a small bit to carry him forward into the endless years of servitude that loomed ahead. Years – without her.
She tossed clothes into a box, haphazardly folding them as she bounced around to the music. His fingertips brushed against the thick glass reflexively when her ponytail bounced – he longed to touch her hair, to bury his face in the curling, slightly sweaty mass of it.
A phone rang and as he watched, she crossed the room, slapped off the radio, and picked up the phone, cradling it between her ear and shoulder. “Hello?” As she spoke, she grabbed another shirt and began to fold it. “Oh, hey Remy. What’s up?”
The sound of her voice made his entire body strain with need. He could feel his fangs pressing downward, an instinctive reaction to the woman on the other side of the glass. Her voice – soft and casual – only fueled the flames of his desire. God, he missed her. He’d thought that seeing her again might help quench the ache he carried in his heart for her. He was wrong; this was hell. And seeing her here, happy as she packed clothes in Noah Gideon’s penthouse…it stirred all kinds of emotions – anger, jealousy, longing, love, need, frustration – to the forefront.
And fucking Noah Gideon got to touch her every day. Got to kiss her and run his hand through that messy hair. Got to push her down to the bed and fuck her until she wrapped her legs around him and called out his name.
Zane’s hands clenched. He wanted Noah to die, all for simply being the one that got to touch her while Zane could not.
Her low chuckle made his cock harden, and Zane willed his body to calm, the need raging inside him making him irrational. His body tensed as his ears strained, desperate to focus on her soft voice.
“We leave tomorrow,” Jackie said to the phone. “Yep. Eight months in the wilds of Mexico. I’m so excited! Noah says that it’ll be totally primitive but I don’t care. My first real archaeological dig. I can hardly wait.” A pause. “I know! It won’t be so very long, though. You’re welcome to come with us.” Another pause, then another throaty laugh. “I figured you’d say no, but it never hurts to ask. Noah’s paying for everything, you know.”
Ask about me, he wanted to say. Think about me. His fingertips pressed on the glass, hard. He wanted it to crack under his fingers, to shatter into a thousand pieces so he could swoop into the room and carry her away. It didn’t, though. Bulletproof and reinforced, it saved him from making a mistake.
He couldn’t have her. He’d given her up to save her, and he couldn’t go back on it now.
He removed his hand from the glass, making a mental note to warn Barnabas about the bulletproof glass. Or maybe he wouldn’t. His brothers needed to be taken down a notch in their arrogance, especially Caleb.
Jackie didn’t notice him on the balcony. Her back was to him and she laughed into the phone, still chatting with her fellow succubus. “That’s not funny,” she said after a moment, her laughter dying. Phone cradled against her shoulder, she crossed the room and pulled something out of a dresser drawer.
The conversation paused, and then Jackie spoke again. “I’m not going to answer that.” Annoyance clouded her voice. “You don’t want to hear if I miss him or not, right? So don’t ask me, Remy. I can’t talk about him.”
His entire body stiffened, and he strained to hear what she would say next.
“No, it’s not that. Noah’s great. It’s just…let’s drop it, okay? I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
She turned and Zane saw her holding a shirt. One of his shirts – a Spinal Tap black tee. He hadn’t realized she’d had it. As he watched, she cradled it to her face, inhaling the scent of it. Her eyes closed and a look of pain crossed her face.
He staggered backward as if struck.
He’d wanted her to miss him, but seeing the pain on her face? That hadn’t been what he wanted at all. He wanted her to be…happy. Her happiness came before his. There was no question in his mind. He’d do everything he could to keep her happy.
The thought was a sobering one. When had he become such a selfless bastard?
“Noah?” She said into the phone, interrupting his thoughts. “Oh, he’s here, but he’s asleep. It’s night and all.”
Shit. Noah.
The Serim dickhead the three of them were about to off.
His most hated enemy.
Zane swore, alighting back onto the railing of the balcony and thinking hard. Jackie was leaving New City tomorrow with Noah, she’d said. She needed to fuel her Itch every two days. If they killed Noah tonight, not only would the archaeological dig she was anticipating never happen…but she’d be forced to find another man to fulfill her needs.
For some reason, the thought of her being driven to another stranger’s arms instead of Noah’s didn’t fill him with the satisfaction he thought it would. Jackie would be devastated by the death of a master, he knew. She might even have feelings for Noah. The thought made him clench his hands in anger. Her world would be ruined if Noah was destroyed.
And Zane couldn’t be there to pick up the pieces.
He swore. Once. Twice.
And then he went to approach his brothers.
Arching his wings to catch the breeze again, he darted across the balcony and leapt back to the other side. Like a parachute, his wings caught the air and allowed him to glide forward, and he landed on the balcony outside the bedroom with a light, noiseless thump.
The other two vampires awaited him with gleaming smiles, their fangs bared.
“This bastard’s in his night hibernation. We don’t even need to juice him up with unholy water.” The look on Barnabas’s face was pure delighted evil as he pulled one of the molotovs out of his bag. “Anyone on the far side of the balcony?”
Zane lit a cigarette and jammed it between his lips. “No one.”
“Really?” Barnabas said in a sly voice, his mouth curving into a smile. “We heard he had some hot piece of ass living with him.”
Fucking bastard. They knew perfectly well who was living with Noah Gideon. And they knew how Zane felt about her. His hands clenched hard and he grabbed the molotov out of Barnabas’s hands before he could light it. “I said, there’s no one over there. And you two jackasses have to listen to what I say.” A thin smile curved Zane’s mouth. “Don’t talk back to your prince.”
Barnabas rolled his eyes and pulled out another molotov. “Fuck you. You want to be the prince, act like it. We ready to do this?”
Zane stepped backward, as if acquiescing to the other two vampires. He gestured for them to begin, and took another step backward, feeling the iron railing of the balcony against his wings. As he watched, Barnabas took his cigarette and held the lit end against the rag sticking out of the bottle. He lifted it, grinning, preparing to throw it through the window and incinerate the sleeping Serim within.
As he moved to toss, Zane twisted and leapt off the balcony, falling through the skies, his wings tucked close. Above him, he heard the bottle smash against the glass window, and heard the cries of the two vampires as they were caught in the molotov’s fireball.
“Dumbasses.” He spread his wings, halting his fall, and began to pump steadily upward once more. As he passed the balcony, he saw the frantic motions of the two vampires – blinded by the fire that had liquefied their eyes, their burning hands desperately patting the delicate feathered wings that were burning like flash-tinder. He hovered near the balcony for a moment, the fanning of his wings
starting to put out some of the flames. And he delivered a warning.
“You don’t fuck with that succubus. Either of you. She is under my protection, and because of that, so is the Serim. Understand?” He loomed over them, out of reach of the licking flames, furious with his brothers. Furious that they had set this up purely to fuck with him – and his feelings for Jackie. “You need to remember that I’m one of the bad guys too.”
With that, he tossed the molotov in his hands onto the balcony below, and ignored their angry cries.
They’d heal up in time if they were smart enough to get out of the fire. But they’d remember his warning, and they’d leave his succubus alone.
*~*~*~*~*
The queen was not pleased. Caleb and Barnabas had limped home near dawn, charred pieces of meat that needed serious healing. The queen had allowed them to have one of her precious human pets as an appetizer and had left them locked in a room, ignoring their hoarse screams for revenge.
Revenge was always, always the queen’s decision and no one else’s.
She approached Zane as he knelt before her throne, her face pinched with anger even if her steps were slow and even. He recognized the look on her face. She was not pleased at what she’d learned – no doubt Caleb had spilled the beans as to why Zane had saved a Serim asshole and torched his own brothers.
He’d do it again. He wasn’t sorry. And he found it hard to put the appropriate contrite look on his face. Instead, he couldn’t stop the satisfied smile on his face, even if she was going to make him regret it.
“You have betrayed me…again.” The queen’s voice was icy. She paced around him, moving behind him.
“Mercy,” he said, continuing to stare straight ahead, at the throne she had vacated. “I betrayed your trust, and for that I am sorry.” It was not a true apology. He’d never apologize for maneuvering around her.
Not when it kept Jackie safe.
The queen seemed to sense his reluctance. She reached forward with her hand, her fingernails tearing claws. Ripping pain shuddered through his wings, and feathers rained down around him.
He screamed. His body jerked with pain.
“Hold him there,” she hissed, her voice low and full of rage. Two other vampires approached, held him down. Anchored him there as she tore at his wings again, ripping out one handful of black feathers after another. Over and over as she screamed at him.
Agony whipped through him, his world nearly blacking out. The vampires grasping his arms would not let him slump to the ground. Would not let him escape as she clawed away his reason for living.
No, he thought even in the haze. Not his only reason.
The delicate bones of his wings were half-bare from her ministrations, the web of skin covering them resembling butchered meat. Zane closed his eyes, shuddering, unwilling to look at the destruction.
"You came to me and I gave you wings. I can take them away again," she purred in his mind. Always in his mind.
Not his wings. Not again. He’d do whatever it took to keep them. So he said, “I'll do anything you want.”
Her black eyes grew fierce with anger, and she clenched a bloody hand. “Show obedience to me and only me.”
He knew what that meant. Stop thinking of Jackie. Put the queen first. Always first. She was furious that he’d worked against his own kind to save a lowly Serim and an even lower succubus. For that, he would suffer…unless he acquiesced and showed her his loyalty. A feather fell to the floor, landing on his clenched fingers and leaving a pink stain.
He had to do it. Somehow. What else did he have to live for?
The clawed hand slashed against his wing again, ripping once more. He screamed in pain, nearly collapsing.
“I will do it. I am yours to command.”
He could feel the queen’s smile in his thoughts. “Of course you will.” She released the handful of bloody feathers in her grasp, let them trickle to the floor. “Do not disobey me again, my darling prince. What I gave you, I can take away again.”
The vampires released him. Zane collapsed to the floor, his wings a shredded, white-hot mass of agony.
And yet…he was still glad he’d done it.
For her.
* * * Not the end... * * *
Thank you for purchasing this ebook! If you enjoyed this, please check out Jackie's further adventures in the Succubus Diaries series available from Pocket Books. You can also check out my website for free stories, additional information about the series, and more updates.
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