Page 52 of Queen Takes Rook
I closed my eyes and sank into her bond. I was not a jealous alpha, but I had to admit, having my queen to myself was a rare luxury that I would remember well. Even if foreboding chilled my heart.
Despite her tears after seeing her birth, she was braced for war. She wasn’t closed off from me—she would never lock me out of her heart and mind. Yet she wasn’t easy and open to read right now. I could easily guess what troubled her.
We were here to kill my former queen, who tortured alphas. My queen was many things, including fearless and powerful, but she could also be tenderhearted, especially for those she loved.
Before she could ask, I said, “Yes. Use me as bait. She’ll want an alpha to make an example of, and I’m strong enough to last until you can find a way to kill her. Let her take me.”
“No.”
“You can heal me,” I insisted. “I trust you implicitly. If you can’t heal me, then I’m still relieved to spare your other Blood the same fate. You will kill her, I’m sure of it.”
She jerked upright and glared down at me, tears glittering on her cheeks like diamonds. “You think that’s why I wanted to talk to you? To ask you if I could risk your life to kill Keisha?”
“It’s not?”
She blew out a long breath, shaking her head. “Despite knowing my heart inside and out, you couldn’t be more wrong. I will kill her, and I won’t have to offer you or any of my Blood up as bait, either.”
Eyes narrowed, I searched her bond for answers. She gleamed like fresh, hot steel straight out of the forge, showering me with sparks. “How?”
“By giving her exactly what she wants.”
I started to push up in protest, but Shara planted her palm on my chest. I could have ignored her, of course, but my body melted to her every touch and desire. If she wanted me to stay flat on my back, then so be it. “You can’t give her your blood.”
She swung a thigh over me and straddled my lower stomach. Arching a brow, she shrugged out of the elegant emerald green silk suit jacket that Mehen had picked for her to wear to New York City. “Oh, really? I can’t?”
“She’s not going to be as easy to kill as Greyson. She won’t blindly take your blood like he did.”
Shara pulled the ivory shell over her head and tossed it aside. She’d gone braless. The sight of her naked breasts stilled my tongue—so I could put it to better use. I leaned up and nuzzled her breasts, breathing in her scent. She always smelled divine—literally. But when her hormones raged, and blood spilled from her center, I couldn’t think of anything else. Her scent permeated my senses, rich, thick blood calling me to insanity.
“I tried something new this time.” She looped her arms around my shoulders and leaned back into my hands, letting me support her so I could lave her nipples and feast on the softness of her skin. “I think it worked. No tampon—but I didn’t bleed everywhere either.”
It took a few moments for her words to sink into my brain. I closed my eyes and let my senses flow through her bond, gliding through her body. All her bonds gleamed in the corner of my mind, glowing red streams tangled around her heart. Deep in her abdomen, something else glowed.
I sank lower, reveling in the way our souls rubbed and melded together. Her power made it possible for me to look inside her body and search for any illness or injury, or in this case, liquid moonlight that caught the menstrual blood flowing from her core.
Her scent still flooded my senses, ripe with hormones and need, but the blood itself stayed contained rather than leaking over her clothes. Smart. But I couldn’t help but miss the very visual sign of her fertileness. Since it was difficult for Aima queens to breed at all, we’d been conditioned to respond to the sight and smell of menstrual blood. It was a biological compulsion bordering on the strength of a meth-head’s drive for that next hit. One taste of that power-laden blood would fucking blow the top of my skull off.
So much blood, pooled in one place. Waiting.
“What I wanted to ask you…”
She waited until I blinked and tugged my gaze up to her face. “Yes, my queen?”
“When we are presented to Keisha, will any of her people try to feed on you? To try and cower us, or prove her dominance over me?”
“Generally, no, but House Skye likes to push boundaries. Since this is a fight between two powerful queens, her Blood may very well try to make an example of us. If one of them feeds on your alpha, a former sib, that automatically puts the Skye stamp on the rest of your Blood.”
She nodded, a small smile quirking one corner of her mouth, but her eyes remained locked to mine, watching my reaction. “I thought to warn them not to feed on any of my Blood, especially my alpha, or I would see them dead.”
I smiled back with appreciation for my queen’s wicked sharp wit. Of course, if she warned them not to do something, Keisha would very likely do it out of spite. “An excellent idea.”
“You said you didn’t care for anyone to feed on you outside of my bed, and I don’t want to put you through undue pressure. If you don’t—”
I grinned and lay back down, giving her a bump with my hips to remind her I was fully at her disposal. “It will be my great pleasure to let one of those fuckers sink fang into me and taste my cobra queen’s poison.”
“Who else has fed from you since I poisoned you?” She leaned down and pushed her hands up beneath my shirt to stroke my chest. “Daire, right? Anyone else?”
“No, but it’d only take a few minutes to envenom them all, except Guillaume, of course. Your headless knight won’t need any poison, though.”
