Page 82 of Stalked By Seduction and Shadows

“Eat,” he said softly. “Or I will feed you.”

He must’ve avoided the side of my throat I’d been fed from. And at that buried thought rising to the surface, I quickly shoved it back down and focused on the pile of food on my plate.

Rune’s hands gripped my hips when I leaned forward before sliding down my legs, his fingers slipping through each slit in the dress and skimming my bare thighs.

“I’m eating because I’m hungry, not because you ordered me around like an entitled prick once again.”

Rune stopped his roaming of my body, a dark chuckle rumbling through his chest. “You just can’t help yourself, can you?”

I recognized that cruel lilt. The hairs on the back of my neck rose in anticipation, and I paused in my spreading of jam on a piece of fresh bread.

Suddenly the bread and knife had clattered back down to the plate, and Rune had my wrists behind my back.

I wiggled against him, and he let go of my arms as his shadows wrapped around them instead.

“You may be used to having the upper hand with men, but as we’ve already established,” he said in my ear as more shadows bound my ankles together. “I am much more than a man.”

“Oh, so you’re putting me in my place?” I asked, struggling against him futilely.

He stroked my cheek. “You’re so intelligent, baby,” he said. “I love when you steal the words right out of my mouth.”

My eyes widened in horror and humiliation when he picked up the knife and bread and finished spreading the jam. Then my mouth clamped shut when he lifted the slice to my lips.

“Open.”

Something sick and twisted crawled from my most buried depths. I was bound by shadows in a vampire’s lap, and now he wanted to treat me like a human pet who ate gratefully from his palms.

But that wasn’t the sickness. The sickness was the way my mouth opened, and my body stilled, my mind succumbing to the headspace I hadn’t stopped thinking about since I’d come undone on Rune’s fingers.

The headspace of complete release.

I held tight to my last threads of defiance as Rune continued to feed me, bite by bite, his free hand combing through my hair. Each time I tensed or squirmed, he only laughed softly, and though this should’ve enraged me, I was only growing more and more uncomfortably aroused.

His cock was hard against my ass, and each time I struggled, it twitched and throbbed.

Because everything twisted and sick inside of me thirsted for everything sick and twisted inside of him.

When a turned vampire entered the room, I went stiff, heat searing my cheeks. Rune’s shadows tightened, his arms moving to hold me tight against his chest. The man had his head bowed in deference, and he appeared to be in his midtwenties, youthfulness radiating from his features. He handed Rune a chalice before nodding, his eyes flitting to me only once before he hurried from the room.

“I don’t have to drink this in front of you,” Rune said softly.

The heavy door closed loudly.

Blood. I expected my stomach to sour at the thought, but it didn’t. I was having a hard time feeling anything at all except for Rune’s scorching touch.

“I don’t mind.” When my voice came out throaty, tainted with lust, Rune’s cock once again throbbed against me.

I pressed back against it, shifting my weight as my thighs rubbed together. Rune groaned, swallowing his first sip of blood.

“You wish it was my blood you were drinking,” I said, feeding off Rune’s desire like a drug. My head was floaty, as if it was elixir Rune had fed me instead of food.

I delighted in the way he went tense. I reveled in breaking his seemingly unbreakable self-control.

“Yes,” he growled, twisting me in his arms so that I was across his lap, watching his face. “You have no idea.”

He glared down at me, his dark eyes homing in on my jugular. My stomach dropped as if I was standing at the edge of a precipitous cliff. His shadows released me, and I tentatively reached a hand to my neck as he sipped from his chalice.

A tremor passed through his jaw. “Ripping those vampires to shreds hadn’t been enough of a punishment. But I can promise you they suffered greatly, Scarlett, even if my lack of patience had made their deaths quicker than optimal.”

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