by Talyn Scott
“Believe it or not, human, we have other matters to attend to besides yours.” He stopped in front of the last door and crossed his arms. “And yet I’m put on babysitting duty for the likes of you.” He curled an arrogant lip. “You bought yourself two extra hours here. I suggest you don’t waste any more time with me.”
Resisting the urge to give Fedor the finger, she opened the door to find Sage dressed for war.
“Wow,” she purred, trying to make light of a horrible situation. “You don’t mess around, do you? Leather gloves and blades make me hot.”
“Nevesta.” His eyes flashed the brilliant green that drove her insane. He bent at the knees and opened his arms wide. Scarlett ran to him with everything she had, knowing she couldn’t knock him over even if she tried.
Although the blades she’d joked about were actually more than menacing, she wrapped her arms and legs around her warrior and felt the true male beneath the Vojak. Her desperate kiss was only outdone by his, and when they came up for air she muttered, “You’re still a Vojak.”
“Until I take my dying breath, yes.”
She shook her head, pressing her nose against the hollow of his throat. “That’s not what I mean. Under all of this, I expect to find my male. The one beneath the boots, the leathers, and the weapons, the vampire who doesn’t dissect or behead with claws and fangs. But you’re you.”
“Did Volos bite you?” He kept one arm beneath her bottom for support, and studied her pupils. “Because a bite from a pureblood Dynasty Vampyr is poisonous, nearly to anyone other than a Donor.”
“No, he didn’t bite me.” Though she’d blundered through rigorous negotiations in order to see Sage and Roman before they took off, and she dreaded what was coming next. “What I mean is beyond all the noise that’s going on around us, and ultimately the death sentence on your head, you were born a warrior. Even Volos said you are a rarity.”
“I am,” he said without arrogance, stating a simple fact.
“Then it’s in you to fix this.” She glided her nose up his throat, feeding her need to smell him. “You’ve fought for everyone else and have won.”
When Sage opened his mouth to argue, she burned him with another kiss, making sure he felt the pride brimming from her. “As I was saying,” she continued with a nip on his bottom lip, “you’ve fought for others, risking your life not once but twice for everyone you saved. Because as a mercenary, you gambled against your authorities finding out, as well as retribution from the criminals you pissed off.”
“So you’re saying I have big balls.” He pressed his forehead to hers. “I already knew this.”
Boy did he ever, but he wouldn’t distract her pep talk just yet. “So if you ask me, by the time twenty-four hours roll around, we are going home to Captiva Island.” She cupped his face in her hands, because she didn’t have to hang on; Sage would never let her fall. “Edik doesn’t have a chance against you. No one does.”
His tongue slid into her mouth, curling around hers. She knew what he wanted, because she wanted the same damn thing. So she ground her pussy against the outline of his rising cock, getting the thick seam of her jeans aligned with her clit.
“You’ll be leaving soon.” Another rub on his cock, this one rougher, demanding. “Why hasn’t Roman shown up?”
“They briefed us separately,” he explained, his free hand reaching beneath her shirt and finding her nipple, “and then he’s going to feed from one of Volos’ subjects.”
Jealousy gnawed at her. “I would have fed him.” She grew cold when Sage removed his hand from her breast. “Why was that right taken from me?”
Sage hesitated as he lowered her to the floor. “I had to feed from another, too.”
She knew how the monarchy paraded around the most beautiful women imaginable, and those women fed vampires generously. “Let’s change the subject.” She did not want to waste their time together filled with jealousy and pain. Pain was bad enough on its own.
“Scarlett, it wasn’t another woman. And even if it was, a little trust please?”
“I do trust you,” she was quick to say. But faithfulness still didn’t erase the intimacy of feeding. “Let’s drop it.”
“I fed from a Gryph.”
“Please tell me she was ugly.”
“A male,” Sage emphasized as he dropped into a wing chair. Whereas his leg started to bounce. “After I consume his blood, it’s far easier for him to track me down.” He fisted a hand on that bouncing knee, his anger palatable. “As if I wouldn't come back here to free you, when you are the other half of my soul.” He looked up at her. His cheekbones flushed from feeding. “There’s no respect left in this monarchy for my kind, at least, not anymore. ”
She’d have to take his word for it. Scarlett’s knowledge of the monarchy was negligible. “Why do you suppose that is?”
“The wings rule; the way they paddle and preen their human toys, the gladiator style matches they still conduct to this day. The Gryphs and Lovci are show ponies now because Vojaks and soldiers were called in to keep the line drawn in the human world.”
“Yeah,” she agreed, “sounds thankless.”
“All over the world, the vampires buried within the walls of miasma can’t understand why my kind still dedicate themselves to protecting humans alongside vampires.”
“Are they that arrogant or simply don’t care?”
“You met Volos.” He watched her walk over to a tray of food. “You tell me.”
Instead of answering the obvious, Scarlett stated the obvious, “You became a mercenary, risked everything, because you wanted to fight for what Prince Volos ignored.”
“It didn’t exactly start that way.”
“How did it start?” Even though food was the last thing on her mind, Scarlett recalled one of Fedor’s earlier suggestions and lifted a small sandwich from the tray.
“I told you about my sister.”
“Yes.” Scarlett could never forget that Elissa had lost her life in a half-baked attempt to save her human lover. “You have suffered so much, watching your sister mist into a storm.” Upon inspection, the sandwich looked like shaved roast beef with some sort of horseradish sauce. A smile lifted her lips. If she could down enough of these horseradish babies, maybe her blood would be hot enough to burn later. “But don’t forget, Edik’s going to meet his punishment soon.”
“There’s no punishment suitable for what he’s done.”
“Get it out, Sage,” she said around her first bite. “That’s what I’m here for.”
He watched her chew for a moment, his eyes growing hooded by the second. “Tell that to my cock.” He glanced down at his bulge. “Because it’s screaming for me to shut up and get inside you.”
“I’m no shrink,” she said, temporarily ignoring his libido, “but the firm I worked for specialized in criminal cases. Many times, the victims regained some sense of” — she hated putting it this way but — “mental mobility, after they talked through a tragedy.”
“Mental mobility?”
At his look, she shoved another sandwich in her mouth, thinking he would always keep this horror inside, allowing it to stew so the nightmares would keep coming back. Scarlett wanted to unlock the memories in his waking hours, by, hopefully, purging them right out of his subconscious. There was a significant strength found in letting go of the past, especially a dark and bitter one. This made it easier to handle what the future was up to.
“I want to know the starting point for you,” she pressed, picking up her third sandwich, “though it must have to do with Elissa.”
“So stubborn, is this where the nagging wife comes out to play?”
“If that’s how you see it?” Scarlett used the fanciest napkin she’d ever seen. “Sure.”
He tilted his head to the side, his eyes going out of focus as he revisited the past. “I couldn’t get to Elissa’s human lover before Edik. The bastard had already followed them long, before I was aware of what she was doing. So I was at a
disadvantage in protecting him. This played with my head, considering she’d lost her life trying to mist the man.”
Through the window, she spotted Gryphs flying out and landing from the same cliff, their wings overlapping one another. “What did Edik do to the human, before he killed him?”
“Edik didn’t kill him.” For a second, Sage froze, lost in thought. “I did.”
“How horrible it must have been for you, to kill the love of your sister’s life.”
“By asking for various missions, even taking those beneath a Vojak’s station, I was able to tail Edik all over the world. I was waiting for him to slip up again, to break any Dynasty law so I could haul his ass in with my own cuffs.”
“He’d tried to force his will on your sister, and frightened her enough that she gave up her life. I can understand your need.”
“It was more than a need, Scarlett. It was an obsession. I became unbalanced, but I wouldn’t listen to my family or fellow warriors when they pointed it out.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “There was nothing for me to concentrate on other than her eyes as she faded to her death, right out of my arms.”
Scarlett wanted to hold him now, but knew that if she wrapped her arms around him, he would stop talking and start loving. No, Sage needed this inner cleansing before he left.
“When did this obsession end? Because you’re one of the most balanced men I’ve known.”
“After I finally nailed Edik, or at least thought I had. You see, I caught him doing in Istanbul what his buddy did in Russia: swiping a female right from a tourist dive.”
She hated to ask. “Did you save her?”
“Not at first.” He let out a breath, dropping his hand from his face. “For three days I followed Edik, waiting for my break. And sure enough, the idiot got too cocky and led me straight to a blood club, then lit that place up.” He smiled without pleasure. “I pulled out my blades and my Stavz, going at them with the entire force of my Vojak. There wasn’t another Gryph in sight, nor any of the Lovci, so I split vampires like timbers.”
“You can tell me now that you saved the woman, right?”
“I’m getting to that.” Sage’s frown grew deep. “When I started tearing the rooms apart, I couldn't believe what I saw.” He held up his hand. “I’ll spare you the details, but those Donors were so fractured. Had been treated as animals in every way, most caged and all abused.”
Her hand came to her throat, bile rising. “How horrible.”
“The worst part? The one who was fractured the most was my sister’s lover. I’d finally found him alive, and yet I had to kill him right there on the spot. He wasn’t in any shape for me to change, either. His derangement would have carried over into his Undead life.”
Her poor Sage! “It was an act of mercy.”
“I know, but at the time, it was like watching my sister die all over again.”
“You still did the right thing.”
“The right thing would have been to find the human sooner. Humans should never be brought into our world, Nevesta. Look what happens to even mixed bloods.”
She kept him focused, “That was the day, right? You found another purpose.”
“Something like that.” He went silent a moment. “I remember looking around that blood club while on the phone with my old Commander, Qudar. I had no idea of legalities, like who belonged where. Or how the Donors would be rehabilitated to assimilate back into the life of the monarchy. I mean… How would anyone feed from them? They were ruined from fangs. I even scared them just as my hands were loosening their bonds and saving them.”
“And they weren’t in any shape to go in the human world, either.”
“Not a one.” He smiled bitterly. “And get this, my commander told me to walk away and don’t look back.”
“What?”
“Nice, huh? Later on, we discovered Qudar was into some nasty shit. So he met final death, and Oycher took his place. Major improvement to have a male with integrity lead us.”
“Big improvement, so what’d you do with the rest of the Donors?”
“I assessed them.”
Separating the ones he had to kill and the ones who could survive, she realized. “I see.”
“So after I hauled out the survivors.” He closed his eyes, the pain lining his face. “I called an old-school Vojak for advice. He told me the system had been corrupt long before he even entered the academy, and that was centuries prior.”
“But did he give you any useful advice?”
“Dad’s always got useful advice, just wait until you meet him. He said, ‘Youngling, it’s about time you join us.”
“So then you discovered Roman’s involvement?”
“Sure did. Roman showed me how real missions beneath the Dynasty missions went. How we would find twenty Donors and turn in five or ten to the Dynasty Empire in order to appease them, and then sneak the rest into an elaborate network of rehabilitative homes.”
“So what happened to the woman?”
“What woman?”
“The one Edik had taken from the tourist trap.”
He hesitated.
“Sage.”
“Turns out, she became your mother.”
Chapter 19
“Are you okay, Scarlett?” asked Sage. “You don’t look as shocked as I expected.”
“Volos told me about my mother a few minutes ago.”
“Do you want to talk about her?” He blew out a breath. “I’ll be honest. I don’t really remember much about her, except for Bestra adopting you into his family.”
“I don’t think there’s any point in discussing her. It’s just too sad. And I don’t want to be sad right now. I want to send you off charging, warrior.”
His eyebrows lifted. “And how do you suppose you’ll do that?”
Scarlett braced her hands on the armrest of Sage’s chair. There wasn’t one place on his body that wasn’t delicious, his taste better than any sweet offering she could eat. Often, she thought she could come just by kissing him. “I can taste you even from across the room, sliding over my tongue like sex.” Really, really good sex. “Why?”
His lush mouth coiled on one side as he spread his legs wide, to accommodate her. Next, he curled his leather-clad hands behind her thighs and brought her against him. “I am yours, that’s why.”
“I like the sound of that.”
“Come here,” he said, urging her to lean forward. “Let me touch you.”
When her forehead pressed to his, Sage slanted his mouth over hers, his velvet-soft lips leading hers expertly. “Put your hands around me, Nevesta.” He positioned her hands behind his neck, and her fingers sank into his thick hair.
She placed small kisses around his mouth and chin. “I love the feel of you.”
Her fingertips still at his nape, Scarlett trailed one down to play with the shell of his ear as he pulled her onto his lap. “Your eyes,” she realized, feeling his erection pressing against her hip, “they’re some sort of warning system. That’s how I know when your vampire is surfacing, huh?”
It was his turn to nip at Scarlett, licking the underside of her jaw as he made his way down her throat. “You don’t need a warning system where I’m concerned,” he whispered against her skin, over a sensitive area she’d never before noticed. “Not my Nevesta.”
Scarlett started relaxing as his gloved fingers moved up and down her spine. What he was doing to her throat, sucking and nipping over the ultra sensitive skin found there, made her hot and tingly. “It feels good, you know. Your bite tantalizes your prey?”
“If I allow it to.” Another nip on her throat, this one stronger. “Otherwise, it hurts like hell.”
Her fingers tightened at his nape briefly before she trailed them featherlight around to his throat. “Do other vampires feed from you often?” She tapped his pulse point.
“If I let them,” he whispered over her delicate skin, wet from his biting kisses. “What is it?”
“I have no idea
why I’m feeling this way, when there’s so much other stuff going on.” But this feeling, she didn’t like it one bit.
“You have no reason to be jealous,” Sage assured her. “I will feed from no other female unless I’m in an emergency situation.”
Why did this make her feel better? “What if one wants to feed from you?”
“Again,” he emphasized, “only in an emergency situation.”
“Even then,” she argued, realizing how selfish she sounded, “biting and sex go hand in hand for vampires.”
“When a vampire finds his destined Bride, no other female matters. At least, not one who is related to him.”
“I don’t want you feeding anyone else.”
Responding his answer, Sage took her mouth hard, his fangs tapping the front of her teeth. Bringing her closer with his palm flattened between her shoulder blades, he mashed her breasts against his chest. Her hands when to his big shoulders, rubbing against the leather. The way it felt smooth yet rough against her skin caused her to shiver.
“Open for me, Scarlett.” Sage lured her with another scrape of his fangs, as he pulled her blouse over her head. Next off was her bra. Sage reached out with those gloved hands and lifted her mounds, weighing them with his palms. She trembled when he started bouncing her breasts on his fingertips, almost smacking beneath them but not quite reaching that intensity.
He lowered his face to her chest, tugging her right nipple between his fangs, then grazing over her turgid tip. A gloved hand moved down and squeezed her ass. Then her zipper started going down.
The sudden warmth of Roman’s body was at her back. He scraped his fangs across her shoulder, and Scarlett opened her mouth on a wordless plea.
Sage licked a trail through the lushness of her cleavage. “They’re perfect in my hands, beg for my lips and teeth.” He rubbed his face on them, back and forth. “Mmhm, I want to stroke my cock between them, while you sip my load from the tip.”
Roman brushed back her hair and dotted kisses across her cheek as he lifted a breast for Sage. For a long moment, Sage just stared openly at her, mesmerized by the sight of Scarlett topless for him. Then he dipped his head again, claiming ownership of the rosy nipple Roman offered, tugging it across his tongue.