Page 17 of The Syphon King

She hurried to the bedroom, then the bathroom and went to the farthest corner of the shower room and sat, pulling her knees in tight. It was a familiar position to her, and she didn’t know why. He’d taken many things from her when he siphoned, but she wouldn’t tell him that and see him beat himself up over it.

She gasped on a silent sob, fighting them back and losing. Why couldn’t she justhavehim? Why did it have to be wrong? She just craved tolovehim. Why did he have to see himself as a monster?Why? She cried as quietly as she could until the pain and need morphed into exhaustion. Then she found her safe place in that quiet darkness in her mind.

CHAPTER FOUR

Zodak waited a full twenty minutes before finally going to get Zeen. Not seeing her in his room, he peeked into the bathroom, then made his way to the silent shower area. Flashes of her laying on the floor in blood sent him running in with his powers erupting through his body. His breath blasted at finding her asleep in the corner, her perfect angelic face softened in peace.

He lowered next to her and very carefully lifted her in his arms, his gift tearing through his touch sensory to feel her. He stood there, breathing her into him, her smell, her taste, her delicate vibrations. Such a little thing. He dared to hold her closer and removed his eye gates. Staring at her, he absorbed her being’s signature with a quiet, quantum precision, his breaths coming faster as he realized her whole being was defined with joy. Was this why he hadn’t put a dent in it? Or did giving it causeit to reproduce in her.

The idea of such a thing had his pulse racing with hunger.

He took in one more careful breath, pulling her gift inside him. Holy of wonders. She was a psychedelic drug that produced visions of sound and taste and color. He’d never experienced anything like it. His taste sensory fought to rip through his willpower as he made his way to his bed and laid her on it. He placed his lips on her forehead for a very brief eternity, feeling the dark stains on his mind sizzling with its own demands. He forced himself away, tearing his soul in half as he hurried out before the storm erupted and he took every drop of thiseverythingheaven she’d begged him to take.

In his library he called Lore, scheduling the bio-ink operation for both of them. It would take him two days to perform and three for the extensive test-prep required. He opened the preliminary file King Thakx sent and went over everything for the pre-op. After the third page, his eyes burned with fatigue, and he pushed back in his chair.

“Will you be getting a tattoo?”

Zodak turned, finding his forbidden angel with her back against the doorway, gaze everywhere but on his. “Yes.”

“Where?” she wondered, looking down with her hands behind her back theimage of innocence he needed to protect as much as he craved to devour.

“Over my right eye.”

This brought her direct gaze on him. Angry. “Youreye,” she balked. “Are you joking?” She regarded the grin he struggled to hide.

“No. This allows the information to be intercepted by my strongest gift which processes things faster.”

Her brows narrowed. “How much faster, a second? What difference could that possibly make? You see a spike in my emotions, and you’ll know I need a hug or something a fraction of a hair follicle sooner?”

Her tirade pummeled his greedy pores. She was becoming a supernova. He stood and made his way out, not wanting her to see how much he liked her this way or every other way. But at the door, the urge to touch her turned his legs into pillars of cement and he stopped. She aimed her gaze right up at him. His defiant, protective little raven. He slid his finger softly and very slowly over the side of her face, watching as he drew all the anger from her.

He snatched his hand away at seeing what came in its wake, but it was too late, his gift gobbled up her potent desire and hid it all in his newly awakened cock.

“Don’t touch me,” she said angrily after he walked off.

“It won’t happen again,” he swore, ready to pass out from the amount of lust flooding him.

“Good,” she muttered when he stood like a dumb statue in the kitchen. “Put the tattoo wherever you want, it’s your body, not mine. But I think it’s stupid and unnecessary.”

“Are you hungry?” he asked, looking for something to do with his brain besides watch the X-rated images it now dumped on him.

“Why? Are you cooking?”

The curious accusation added humor to the raging lust. “I can.”

“Good for you. I think I can, but I don’t really remember. I wasn’t going to say anything, but you over siphoned me and now I’m missing alotof memories,” she said, her voice moving around like maybe she was pacing.

He pulled out ingredients for sandwiches, wondering over her one-eighty-degree turn. From bended-knee coddling servant to scolding vixen. He could find nothing but smiles for it since both behaviors were...angelic where she was concerned. And forbidden, he rememberedwhen those lusts stirred and brought his tongue over the points of his teeth.

“You’ll just have to make more memories,” he said. “Do you like mayo and ketchup and mustard?”

“For what?”

“Ham sandwiches.”

“That’s a really weird food to cook. This an Arabic thing?”

She wanted to fight, and he wanted her to but why he did was not good. “I didn’t say I was cooking, I said Icancook. Do you want me to?”

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