Page 49 of Countdown to Murder
And then he returned us to the beach house, and was gone.
The next four days, we didn’t leave our rented beach house except to swim or run on the sand. Mostly, we ate, fucked, and slept. I taught her how to give a proper blowjob, and it turns out, snakes don’t have a gag reflex.
I also taught her the joys of doggie style, lion style, cowgirl, reverse cowgirl, sex-against-the-wall, sex-bent-over-the-kitchen-island, and — my favorite — her on her back with her knees by her ears and a cushion under her butt, so I hit her g-spot without even trying, and she comescompletelyunglued. The danger of this one is that her feet aren’t far from my face when they turn into snakes, but so far, they haven’t bitten me. Also the more we do it, the more control she has.
Also, so far, she only loses control during her most intense orgasms. Mordecai says this speaks more to her sexual inexperience than her control over her serpent abilities. So, with that in mind, I gave her as many sexual experiences as I could manage because we didn’t know for sure how long we had.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Mira
When Ryan showed up on our porch, I knew he was coming for me. We were supposed to have a few more days, but I hadn’t expected the Concilio to allow it.
He came at three in the morning, when I was already ravenous.
“When did you last eat?” He asked while I put clothes on. Apparently, I wasn’t allowed out of his sight once he came to retrieve me. I even had to pee with him in the room, but my trainers had required it of me as well, so it wasn’t like I’d never had to before.
“It’s been four hours. I’m starving.”
“Feeding you now will only prolong your captivity. It’s why I prefer to gather subjects at this hour. I’m sorry,but you’ll need to go into shackles for transport, and they’ve been magicked so you can’t shift. Standard protocol.”
I nodded and let him put the metal cuffs on my wrists, ankles, and waist. Chains kept my wrists near my waist, and my feet close together. I’ve been bound before during stress training, so I focused on relaxing and controlling my responses. No fear. No reactions. No emotions. I found the pieces of the wall in my brain everything had been behind before Panda shattered it, and I began to rebuild it.
Panda hadn’t shattered it — I had, by having an orgasm. Panda had helped with that, but if I hadn’t responded, I’d still be closed off from who I really am.
And we’d shattered it once, we could do it again. I turned to Panda and my heart broke for him. He looked angry, sad, and frustrated. He wanted to rescue me, but he knew I had to do this, and it was tearing him apart.
“I’ll be fine. You aren’t required to do anything while I’m away. I won’t need rescuing, remember? I’ll pass their tests, and then I’ll come back to Chattanooga. You should go home to wait for me.”
“She’ll be closer to Chattanooga than here, actually,” Ryan told him. “She’s right about you going home. I’d offer to fly you down, but I’m going to follow protocol to the letter on this, so the Concilio can’t argue with the results.”
“Not a problem. I can arrange a flight. Take care of her, Slayer.”
“I intend to.”
* * * *
Mira
A long flight, a long ride huddled in a small cage in the back of an SUV, and then the cage was carted into an underground fortress. It felt as if we were in the bowels of the earth, fifty levels below the surface.
I was fine until they put me into the silver-lined room, though. Every wall was silver. Even the ceiling. The section of floor around the door also shimmered with silver flecks, but the rest of the floor, thankfully, didn’t.
But I couldn’t escape the burning pain, and my very aura seemed to smolder and slowly disintegrate. I felt like a candle, and the silver was the flame that burns the wax, but it happened from every direction.
I curled into a ball in the center of the room. The silver hurt as badly as when I’d been injected with it during training, when I’d nearly died from silver poisoning.
I’m not as sensitive to it as most shifters. I couldn’t imagine what would happen if one of them was put into this room. The cell was about six feet by three feet, so I could’ve stretched out if the silver wasn’t present — but it was.
The shackles were off, meaning I couldchange, but I needed to stay human.
Ten minutes of the silver and I thought I’d do anything to escape it. But then a voice came through a speaker. One word.
“Change.”
It was spoken with power, but I managed to resist.
And then a mist came from the ceiling. Acid.No, Silver. My skin burned. My lungs were on fire. My sinuses felt as if they melted away, and my brain burned inside my skull. Ichangedto my snake form and somehow slithered sideways, out from under the water, but it was just water by then. No more acid. No more silver falling from the ceiling, but it was still all around us.
