Page 14 of Taken By Touch and Torment

How cruel was it that I was forced to feed off my own suffering? That what made me prey, in turn, made me a huntress?

“No wonder Rune wanted to keep you after centuries alone,” he moaned with delight. “What enrapturing blood my pet has.”

Again, his tongue lapped up the blood on my stomach, wet and warm against my skin. I swallowed down bile as I stared up at the sculpted ceiling accented with gold—the gaudy display of wealth gleaned from brutality.

His tongue trailed over the grooves of his knife marks, clotting the bleeding. Which would’ve been a positive if it didn’t mean his saliva was now entering my bloodstream.

Against my will, pleasurable tingles spread from my wounds outward like ripples in a stream. The sharpness of the pain reduced, and my body surged with warmth.

Durian raised up and stared hard into my eyes, his mouth covered with my blood. When he clamped down on my neck, I didn’t scream. I didn’t writhe. I let it happen, wrapped in a blanket of unwanted pleasure.

I wanted to go back to the pain. The agony was what made sense. That was what I should’ve felt. Not these swells of ecstasy. My mind filled with sweet numbness, far better than the empty place.

Though I had the thought that I wanted—needed—him to stop, I no longer experienced the visceral disgust, the discomfort, the fear.

Durian moaned as he fed, his hands holding my body down roughly, even though it was unnecessary in the face of the altar’s bondage magick. I didn’t feel any of his bruising touch.

In this delirious, uncontrollable rapture, the only thought I had was him. Not the man whose name was carved into my flesh, but the man whose name was carved into my soul. I saw Rune’s smile, heard the deep rumble of his laughter—fell into it like the warmest, most decadent bath. I inhaled his woodsy, clean masculine scent, felt his shadows curl around me.

I didn’t want to be anywhere else but with him. To be anything else but his.

Rune’s.

Rune, Rune, Rune.

Rune!

“You stupid fucking cunt.”

I was yanked out of my state of peaceful bliss harshly. I woke up on the floor, covered in blood. My neck was sore and searing with heat, the pain still eclipsed by pleasure.

Disoriented, I attempted to stand, but immediately fell back down.

I saw double. Two royally pissed off Durians were looming over me, the coldest fury in their pitch-black eyes.

“How dare you say his name when your Master feeds from you, when you’re being reclaimed for Lillian’s glory!”

When power flooded the room, his wrath cutting through my haze sharply, I didn’t think. I scrambled, this time managing to stay on my feet as I ran.

Durian laughed. I didn’t make it far before I was back on the ground, held down with a boot on my back.

“Running won’t get you back in my favor, you useless whore,” he spat. “No matter how much it excites me.”

He flipped me over and straddled me, his eyes wild. I’d awakened his predator instincts. And even though thinking was more than difficult right now, I still managed to understand that I was losing far, far too much blood.

When he went in for my neck again, I hoped he was going to clot the open wound. But that hope was soon squashed as Durian sank his teeth into my skin and continued to steal my life away.

This time, locked in bliss and quickly fading, I only saw Rune’s face twisted in wrath, in disgust.

I stared into his ice-cold eyes until I saw nothing at all.

7

RUNE

“Are you here to apologize for being a spineless, incompetent ruler, Rune the Ruthless?”

The room was dead silent as Isabella faced me down, not a hint of fear in her feral alley cat eyes.

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