Page 23 of For Love and Blood and Fury

Glancing around, Zuri scanned for witnesses. She couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching her. Was it a crime to use someone else’s visitor badge? She shoved down the anxiety roiling in her guts.

Instead of talking herself out of the objectively stupid plan, Zuri slapped the sticker right at the cleavage of her V-neck T-shirt. Making use of the big boobs that usually offered nothing other than back pain, she decided most people would avoid openly staring at her tits and pushed inside.

Holding her breath and preparing to feign confusion if questioned, she approached the single security guard seated at the side entrance. Heart hammering, Zuri reminded herself that she came from a long line of fierce women. That her ancestors had armed themselves and fought on the front lines of Cuba’s war for independence from Spain.

Zuri tried to remember how she usually walked when she wasn’t pretending to be normal. Plastering a smile on her face, she was ready to aim it at the guard looking down at his phone. She was at his little stand when he finally glanced up, looked at her chest, and went back to his phone. “Visiting hours are over at ten. Better hurry,” he said in such a disinterested voice that Zuri could have jumped in his lap and kissed him.

She was only ten steps beyond the security checkpoint when she recognized her next obstacle. She still had no idea where the hell Elena was. With the garnet ring in her pocket, Zuri ducked into an unlocked storage closet. Dumping water into an empty mop bucket, she made do with what she had and focused on Elena’s location.

Now that she was so close, it was much easier to find her. Swaying to the rhythm of a song her grandmother used to hum, Zuri’s mind slipped into the water.

The moment she felt Elena, Zuri’s brow furrowed. A moment later, her eyes snapped open.Painwasn’t what Elena was feeling now. Anger replaced fear as Zuri flung the door open and barreled toward the emergency room.

Chapter Fifteen

Elena’s lipswere laced with the potent drip of a bad idea. A spectacularly bad idea. But Marisol was entranced. Self-preservation screamed for her while self-indulgence bound and gagged that nerd and threw her in a cell.

Marisol wanted. Wanted with a fury she’d never felt in her thirty-one years on Earth. Wanted so much that it pulled from her marrow and her skin and her aching core. Wanted until she’d devolved into the singular need for Elena’s body.

She kissed Elena harder when she should have pulled away and salvaged her career. Slid her tongue deeper into her hungry mouth instead of apologizing for her behavior.

Pivoting on her knee, Marisol leaned closer until her chest was pressed to Elena’s. With the remnants of her self-control, she resisted the urge to straddle her. To rip off the scrubs constricting her movements and making a thin layer of perspiration creep over her lower back.

“I want you to bite me,” Marisol heard herself say in a voice far too deep and commanding to be her own.

Elena’s wicked mouth slid down the column of Marisol’s throat. Her lips soft and warm and a dizzying contrast to the scrape of her sharp fangs. The fangs should have terrified herbut all she could think about was how badly she wanted to feel them sink into her. How much she wanted to give up control and be possessed in a way she never imagined possible.

“It’ll hurt,” Elena whispered against her ear in a voice that was all filthy promises. “But only in the very best way.”

“Do it,” Marisol moaned, heart pounding and body on the verge of breaking under the weight of her desire.

Instead of puncturing her where her lips had been teasing the sensitive spot below her ear, Elena yanked the neck of her top so hard the seams screamed and ripped. The animalistic act echoed in the pounding between her thighs, the desire sticking to her underwear.

“Fuck,” Marisol cried, bracing herself for the bite on her shoulder. “Please, bite me,” she begged, hot and breathless and shameless.

Elena made a deep rumbling sound in her chest before she tightened the fist in Marisol’s hair and warned, “Keep breathing.”

Marisol barely registered the command, her entire body primed for the sensation of teeth sinking into her.

“What the fuck is this?” a woman whisper-screamed when she appeared out of nowhere in Elena’s room. Curtain mercifully closed behind her, the woman’s dark brown eyes were wide and painted with rage.

Marisol’s body slowly responded to her belated command to move. “You have a girlfriend?” she shrieked in the same frantic whisper the other woman had used while her gaze bounced between her and Elena.

“Ex-girlfriend,” Elena and the woman corrected in unison.

“Oh, that you remember?” Marisol glared at Elena, wishing she didn’t feel so naked despite being completely dressed.

“Remember?” The woman crossed her arms over her ample chest. “What does Nurse Bambi mean? And what the hell are youdoing here?” She assaulted Elena with questions like Marisol wasn’t standing there.

“I didn’t remember who you were until you just walked in here,” Elena explained, lips kiss-swollen but fangs retracted. “I’m all fucked up. My memory is in shambles and I can’t walk. I need to get out of this place. I’m not safe here.”

“Can’t walk? What do you mean, fucked up? Why aren’t you healing?” The woman glared at Marisol as she approached Elena. “I’m assuming Bambi knows about your nature considering you were about to make a cute little meal of her.”

Marisol straightened. She wasn’t going to be disregarded. This was her hospital. Her territory. “What’s your name? What do you want with my patient?” She tried to read the visitor tag but she found herself averting her gaze from the woman’s cleavage. Half of her body was still turned on and the rest was vibrating with something like panic.

“My name?” She tossed a glance over her shoulder while she started for Elena. “The Wicked Witch of the West?—”

Cutting her off by physically blocking her access to Elena, Marisol used her moderate height advantage as if she towered over her. “You will not go near my patient?—”

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