Page 1 of Taken By Touch and Torment

1

SCARLETT

Rune had once told me he called me Little Flame because I had a fire inside of me that refused to die. He’d said that no matter how many times I’d been betrayed, abused, demeaned, and violated, I possessed a blinding hope that I tended to devotedly, never allowing it to fizzle out. He’d said it was the most beautiful thing about me—this radical choice to stay open and warm in a world that was overwhelmingly cold and brutal.

Then he’d told me everything he’d ever said to me was a result of my succubus magick. My parasitic manipulation. He’d said that I meant nothing to him—that I’d never meant anything to him at all. Everything he’d ever felt for me was nothing more than smoke rising from my dead embers.

With an inflexible, thick collar locked around my throat, Rune’s lyrical spoken poetry billowed further and further out of my reach. My kidnapper, the leader of the born vampires, hoisted me to my feet and pushed me forward.

My head spun, my empty stomach rumbling. Flickering crimson candles illuminated the golden designs on the dark walls and ceiling, the onyx statues of Lillian and her consorts, and the burgundy and black furniture.

“Go to the door,” Durian commanded. His tone was forceful and cold. I flinched instinctively.

I’d been fighting for so long. To keep my head lifted, my steps light, my hope in a better tomorrow vibrant and within reach. I’d been absorbing every blow, transforming each crucifixion into sublimity.

But too many wounds had been dug into my flesh—my demon flesh. I no longer reached to close the cuts, to clot the blood. I poured, and I leaked. My head dipped. Each step forward was labored with the weight of my heaving limbs.

In Durian’s palace, surrounded by Lillian’s psychopathic spawn, I was hemorrhaging. And I was lucid enough to understand that made me marked for death.

My head pounded as I moved forward, my gaze trained on the heavy, ornate door that was left open just a crack. Liza must have delivered a brutal blow to my skull when she rendered me unconscious and dragged me onto her firebird. Not to mention I’d barely slept, ate, or drank water in days. Nor had I fed. Because apparently, I needed to be around others in order to survive—to siphon desire from surrounding people.

I’d been on my way to see Rune. To stupidly fight for us one more time, even if it killed me. Clearly, fate had much worse plans.

“No, no, no.”

Durian’s condescending voice raised the hairs on the back of my neck.

“Crawl, pet. You have not yet earned your walking privileges.”

My face heated. I froze.

And in that sliver of hesitation, I heard a whoosh before a loud crack. An excruciating burst of pain erupted on the backs of my thighs. I cried out, tears immediately pooling in my eyes as I fell to my hands and knees. A shiver rolled through me as the biting sting continued to assail my nerves in aftershock waves. Whatever he’d hit me with had been long and thin, rigid like wood.

Durian clicked his tongue on the roof of his mouth, and I moved, unable to endure another blow. I reached my hands out. And I crawled.

“I’m not surprised you lack proper training, my dear,” Durian said, a deceptive note of paternal warmth in his tone.

Now that I was aware of what I was—a sex demon, born of a human and a born vampire, descended from the Dark Goddess Lillian—it was as though a dam had crumbled. I understood now that if I reached toward Durian, following the threads of his mind that leaked out as energy into the stifling air, I could read the nature of his desires.

I tasted bitter, dry thirst on my tongue as dark splotches invaded my vision. My stomach twisted with nausea. Durian wanted me humiliated. He wanted me under his complete control, with no thoughts or will of my own. He wanted to feast on my pain, get drunk off my fear and my absolute submission.

He desired for me to no longer exist as anything more than as an extension of him. But he didn’t want it to come easily. No, he wanted to break me slowly, agonizingly, meticulously.

I’d never felt such ice in my veins. I’d never glimpsed such dark, unending, cruel desires.

The marble was cool and hard underneath my trembling knees. I welcomed the reprieve of the soft carpet once I reached it. I tried not to think about how much of myself was on display underneath my sweaterdress with my ass in the air.

At the cool breeze on my backside, I knew Durian was following me as I crawled toward the door and the sliver of light beyond.

“The bastard lord did you no favors with his weak style of rule. You, a poorly behaved human servant, are but a microcosm of his grander failures, his inability to wield true, goddess-blessed power.”

I gritted my teeth, and Durian somehow knew it. Another blow hit the back of my thighs and knocked the air from my lungs. I screamed, and Durian’s sickening desire only flared brighter. When I sunk to my forearms, I was struck again.

“Up,” he said, his tone as biting as whatever cruel implement he was beating me with. “You will not falter when you’re given an order, no matter how much pain and discomfort you are receiving.”

My tears fell, and worse than the watery blur was the wave of light-headedness that threatened to pull me under.

And yet, there was this one tiny burst of relief—a collection of threads that tethered me to this cruel vampire that grew stronger with every crack of agony.

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