Page 8 of Queen Takes Knights
She struck hard, her teeth gripping the column of my neck. I squeezed my thighs, keeping my hands off her until she had taken what she wanted. She gnawed on my skin and it hurt, yeah. But I fucking loved it. She couldn’t ever hurt me enough to satisfy me. Even Rik, with all his size and strength, had never hurt me beyond my limit.
She made a low, desperate sound of frustration and I couldn’t help but cup her face. “I can’t do it. I don’t know how. And I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You could never hurt me, my queen. Since you’re half human, it’s possible that you don’t have fangs. I don’t think we’ve ever had a half-human queen before.”
She looked at me with such a look of desperation that I lifted my wrist to my mouth and shredded the skin for her. I offered my bleeding wrist and she grabbed me like a toddler tackling her first birthday cake. Closing my eyes, I sank against her. Her mouth on my skin. Her power rising. Hairs rose on my arms, my spine tingling, bones melting. Something rose inside me, a dark, hungry beast I carried, waiting to be brought out into the world. Rising to my queen’s call. My skin rippled, bones aching and cracking under the force of power. I groaned, eager to embrace the gift. I’d waited my whole life for this. But the beast prowled back down inside me, still locked.
It needed a queen’s blood to be completely free.
She lifted her mouth and looked at me, her eyes going wide with realization of what she’d done. Blood smeared her face, trickling down my fingers, splattering on the floor and the bed and her jeans.
I’d never seen anything more perfect in my life than my blood smeared on her lush lips.
“Did I take too much?”
I snorted, pressing closer to her. “Even starved all your life, you couldn’t drink enough to harm me. Your stomach simply isn’t big enough to hold that much.”
She looked at the raw wound on my wrist, still dripping blood. “Shouldn’t you close that? Bind it? Something?”
“Why? It’s only blood.”
“They hunt by blood,” she whispered, shivering.
“They huntyourblood,” Rik said, his voice deep and booming so much she jumped against me. She didn’t know him well enough yet to understand he wasn’t angry or even jealous—just aroused to the point of pain, aching to give her his blood and his body. Rik was too fucking eager to feel his power rise at her touch, and desperate for his first taste of royal blood. Same as me. “Our blood is a warning to their kind. We’re here, we’re close, and we’re willing to die to keep you safe. When you establish a permanent nest, we’ll fucking bleed on every inch of it, though it’s your blood that will give the nest its power.”
We’d been sibs to the New York City Queen, Keisha Skye, for awhile, but never served her directly. We were not to her taste, since she preferred women, though her Blood and sibs had used us occasionally. It wasn’t a fulfilling life.
Not for Aima in our prime, dreaming of serving our own queen.
Luckily, we’d been allowed to leave in search of weaker queens that Keisha could pull to her support. Rik had a crazy idea to follow thralls in the hope that one would lead us to a queen who didn’t have many Blood, and so we’d left the cities and roamed together. Feeding each other, sibs only to ourselves. I loved the shit out of Rik and would die for him, but we both burned for a queen. We burned to be Blood, those who bleed in her service. After years of roaming from one coast of America to the other with no luck, we’d given up hope.
Until the faintest touch in the most unlikely, unglamorous state of Arkansas drew us to Shara fucking Isador.
Beautiful. Untouched. Lost.
Isis’s own daughter.
Fuck.
The power she was going to have once she took us both. Even the Triune might sit up and take notice at the upstart half-human American vampire queen.
Shara
I couldn’t believe it. I was a fucking vampire.
And Daire’s blood tasted… incredible. Like a thousand of the world’s most expensive, rare wines all blended together, sprinkled with fine crystal and gold. Heat pumped through my veins, as if my body had already managed to turn his blood into energy. My senses sharpened. I could still smell the musk of his skin. I threaded my fingers through his tousled hair, marveling at the softness of the multi-colored strands. It reminded me of a dark lion’s mane, streaked with threads of gold. He even smelled a bit like what I’d imagined a big cat would smell like. Wild and dangerous.
I’d honestly forgotten all about Alrik. Until he planted his hands on either side of my hips on the bed and leaned in, muscling the other man out of the way. For a moment, I thought Daire might object, or even start a fight, but he yielded without complaint. Though he did shoot a sultry wink at me as he scooted to the side.
“My turn.” Alrik growled. “My queen.”
He smelled different from Daire. More like sweat and hot iron and a hint of smoke.
Yum, on both accounts.
“Are you too injured?”
Daire made a choked noise of amusement, while Alrik frowned. Evidently, I’d insulted him gravely.
