Page 70 of Stalked By Seduction and Shadows

“Nah, other than that.”

Snow took a step back, and all three vampires tracked her movements. She reached for my free hand. “We’re going to leave now, and you will not follow us. As soon as we scream, the turned patrolling a block over will rush to our rescue and kill all three of you. Get your friend help, and let us go.”

She was bluffing about the turned, but I still hoped her lie was a product of her witchy senses picking up on real help nearby.

“You will stay here and fucking talk to us, or we will let this one loose on ya,” the bald one said.

“We. Are. Not. Interested,” Snow said, short and clipped. “Let’s go, Scar.”

I prayed to the gods her confidence and lies had been convincing enough to get us out of this. But as soon as we started backing up, the two men exchanged a shrug and a look.

They let go of the vampire in bloodlust.

Snow screamed. She shot him with a powerful blast, sending the vampire sprawling back into his friends as they all three got knocked onto their asses.

They were, predictably, highly pissed off by this.

Suddenly vines from the nearby building leaped onto the ground and grabbed Snow’s feet and arms and yanked her down to the cobblestone. The vampires moved with unearthly speed, and all I could do was flail out my arm and swipe at anything that moved.

I heard a snarl as my blade connected with something. The dagger was ripped from my hand, and someone threw me up against the black stone wall facing Snow.

I slumped down the wall, the impact knocking the wind from my lungs and sending starry splotches to my eyes.

I screamed when the blond vampire latched onto Snow’s neck as she struggled. She blasted off the vines, burning him with her palms as he held her still on the ground with his weight. He winced from pain, but the more he drank, the more her power dimmed.

Then the vampire in bloodlust was grinning psychopathically, eclipsing my view of Snow as I continued to scream for help.

The bald vampire was next to him, holding my dagger.

Nothing could’ve prepared me for the pain of a vampire in bloodlust ripping into my neck.

Instead of a full-body orgasm, it felt like all of my nerves were suddenly on fire. His fangs bore down so hard I worried he was seconds away from ripping off my head.

Hands were all over me, touching me, grabbing me, and a second pair of fangs were in my wrist as I kicked and screamed until my throat felt raw and bloody.

“You have to taste her,” I heard someone say, but it felt like it was coming from the end of a long tunnel. “Before Peter sucks her dry.”

Laughter.

“It’s crazy, man. Tastes like pure sex.”

No, losing my blood virginity was not orgasmic. It was nothing but never-ending pain and helplessness. I was cold and shaking, disoriented as if I’d been drugged with a heavy sedative and was riding out waves and waves of unwanted, deceptive body highs.

It felt like blades were ripping into my neck and wrists.

And I was fucking angry, because I couldn’t open my eyes wide enough to look up at the stars. I couldn’t leave my body behind and go to the empty place where nothing hurt, and nothing was real.

My body was not my own. Over and over, men had shown me that I was only a temporary caretaker, a custodian of the flesh that belonged to everyone who desired me, but never to me.

Slowly, behind my eyelids, stars flickered on one by one until I was staring into the great expanse of the Milky Way. Purples, blues, and yellows—the same hues that would mark my dead corpse in all the places these men grabbed.

I fell inside the light, and I saw my parents, how they were before Mom got sick. I saw my dad kiss my mom’s forehead. I saw them stare at me and then at Isabella, some unrecognized emotion in their features that would haunt me for the rest of my life. Like they saw something inside of me that they didn’t understand, something that made me different from the daughter with Dad’s blond hair and Mom’s light brown eyes.

Different, different, different. The same story, over and over, and all I could ever do was imagine the worst. That there was something evil inside me, like a possession or a curse, something everyone could sense and recoil from.

But then I saw Jaxon, laughing in his kitchen as we baked cookies and dreamed up our adventures. I saw Snow reach for my hand. I heard Rune’s voice, calling me perfect.

Perfect, perfect, perfect.

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