Page 15 of Queen Takes Knights
Until I realized She nuzzled my throat and cupped my breast. Memories poured into me, so real that it was hard to remember they hadn’t actually happened to me, but to Her. Hands stroking her. Me. Hungry mouths. Male, female, both, other. It didn’t matter. They all felt divine. They all wanted to touch and please the goddess.
“It’s been so long.”
Her voice echoed with hollowed sadness. I wanted to ask if She had no one here at the pyramid. No one to talk to, no one to touch. But I didn’t want to take my mouth from Her blood, not while She still had power to send to me.
Heated desire chilled, Her blood changing again. I felt the coldness of the grave, the chill of death, an echoing endless numb sleep. My head rolled to the side awkwardly and I lost contact with the puncture wound. My body twitched and I could literally feel the light dying inside of me. Little pieces of my soul drying up, withering away. A hard gust of wind would shatter the husk and scatter me to the four directions.
I lay across her lap and died.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Daire
I was well used to watching other people have sex and being expected to stand guard and not participate. As only a minor sib, I’d never been allowed to join the queen’s bed. I understood the hierarchy and my job. Shara, though, was my queen too. Damn it.My queen.
When Rik started feeding, it was all I could do not to come. Though our bond, I felt the tidal wave of power flooding his body. So much power. I don’t know how he’d contain it all.
When he came with all the explosive power trapped inside his powerful alpha body, I almost lost it again. I wanted to come with her, inside her, feel her writhing beneath me. Even better if Rik was inside me, coming too. All of us climaxing at the same time. Again and again.
I’ll have the chance soon enough.
The air was thick in the room, heavy with power and sex and blood. All the hairs on my body lifted, my skin tingling. I could smell the tantalizing rich scent of her blood, mixed with sex, and I couldn’t wait any longer. I took a step closer to the bed.
A vicious howl tore through the night, breaking through my moment of weakness. I whirled around and grabbed my ketars, ready to tear the thrall apart if he even thought about trying to step foot into this flimsy roach motel she called home. Reaching out with my senses, I felt the dark, foul stains on the night. Multiple human thralls roamed outside the hotel, whipped into a desperate frenzy by their master’s hunger. They knew well that two Blood had found her. Die facing Blood, or die when they returned to the master empty handed? They didn’t have much choice. At least I would give them a quick and merciful death.
Evidently the memory of the attack where we’d easily killed several of their kind was fresh enough in their minds that they chose to return to their master. They pulled back, slinking away like starving coyotes, but the thrall still howled off in the distance. I felt his rage. His desperate hunger. His need.
For my queen. Same as me.
I would kill for her too.
Pity flickered through me. Not enough to spare his life if and when he came after Shara, but understanding. Not much separated me from him in the end. If she died, and didn’t resolve our bond beforehand, I, too would roam the night killing like a mindless, starving beast, desperate to find myself a new queen. Though no queen would take a thrall as Blood.
A ragged groan sent me wheeling back to the bed. That masculine sound wasn’t one of pleasure, but pain. I’d never heard Rik whimper.
But he wasn’t Rik any longer. A huge hulking shape rose up over Shara, impossibly wide. Like a mountain. Fuck. He’d come into his power—and shifted into something I’d never seen before.
Blood were generally able to transform into protective predators: wolves, lions, panthers, even a few dragons back in the old days. But this… He looked like a rock troll. Literally, his muscles and limbs looked like giant boulders.
“Shara!” His voice sounded like an earthquake mixed with an explosion. He turned and looked at me over his shoulder. There was nothing of the man I knew in that face, except his eyes. Those eyes I knew. And he was fucking terrified. “Something’s wrong. I think she’s dead.”
I scrambled to the side of the bed and checked her pulse. Nothing. Her eyes were open but unseeing and glassy. I pressed my ear to her chest, and I couldn’t hear her heart beating. Even her skin was starting to chill.
I started chest compressions and gave her mouth-to-mouth for several cycles, then checked her heart and pulse again. “No. Shara. No!”
Rik slid a giant platter-sized palm behind her neck and lifted her slightly, checking the wounds he’d made with his fangs. Neat, tidy, and though I’d been too aroused myself to pay attention to how long he drank, I doubted he could have drained her to the point of death. I’d never heard of a Blood being able to drain his queen to death with a single feeding.
Dread certainty filled me. I’d been afraid she might revive an entire cemetery, but maybe her greatest power would be resurrecting herself. I whispered, “Remember who she is.”
“Isador,” Rik ground out in that rumbling new voice. “House of Isis.”
“The goddess of resurrection. I could continue chest compressions, but I don’t want to risk breaking her ribs for no reason.”
Rik gingerly stepped off the bed, though why he bothered I couldn’t say. The frame was already a pile of kindling, the mattress on the floor. He sat on the floor, drew her lifeless body into his arms, and then held a hand out to me. “We should hold her. Keep her close and warm and safe.”
I took his hand and settled into his arms with her. Rik held us both easily, as if we were just children. I wrapped my arms around her and put my head against her chest so I’d hear the first beat of her heart. Though with the low roar of his breathing, I’d be lucky to hear a jet taking off. “Can you shift back now?”
He grunted and it sounded like a piece of the earth tearing away in a landslide. “Not until she’s safe. If we have to fight our way out…”
