Page 17 of Queen Takes King
“It’s your hunger.” Rik said grimly as he climbed intoo.
This hunger. It was quickly becoming maddening. I couldn’t think about anything but Daire’s throat. Rik’s wrist. His blood. G’s. I wanted them all and I’d just hadDaire.
I couldn’t keep drinking from him like this or he’d be sick andweak.
Daire snorted and gently washed my face. “Nothing you did could make me weak. I’ve had three sandwiches the size of the one I made for you already. You can take my blood whenever youwant.”
Rik eased me back so he could wash my hair, his arm underneath myshoulders.
“I used to swim laps in this tub when I was a kid. I never pictured it being too small because I had two men in withme.”
G stepped inside and shut the door behind him. “Make thatthree.”
He’d already stripped. I wanted to say to protect me from the tainted blood that must have gotten on his clothes, too, but I couldn’t say for sure. Not when he had such a large erection. Very large. I didn’t have a lot of experience comparing men’s genitals yet but he seemed excessively big, even while I suspected Daire and Rik both had impressive cockstoo.
“Gina and Frank are already resolving the issue with the body. It seems as though Catherine Chambers had a terrible car accident on the way back to thecity.”
He came to the edge of the tub but didn’t climb inside. Instead, he knelt at the edge, watching me with those dark solemn eyes. “Why did you killher?”
“Her manner was odd. She approached you too closely. As a human, she ought to have been wary of us, and if she wasn’t human, she would have been downright terrified of three powerful Blood. But she wasn’t. At all. She had only one thought and that was to get close toyou.”
“We suspected her but didn’t react right away,” Rik said, smoothing his hands through my hair. “Until she said thrall. No human would have thought to use that word. Even you called themmonsters.”
True. I just had the nagging guilt that we’d hurt, no killed, an innocent person. A human. Who had nothing to do with the monsters that huntedme.
“The item in her pocket.” G laid a small tattered scrap of material on the edge of thetub.
Cotton. White, well, mostly. It looked like it’d been washed hundreds of times and taken on a slightly grayed tone. It took me a moment to recognize what itwas.
A scrap of my very plain, very cheapunderwear.
“Some humans have a natural interest in our kind. They’re drawn to us. They’re curious. Some say it’s because they have a drop or two of Aima blood in their distant family tree that stirs when they’re near us. It makes them easy prey as thralls, or for queens who use them for more nefariouspurposes.”
“Marne,” I whispered, shivering again. I hoped that saying her name wouldn’t bring her attention to me like some kind ofdemon.
“She has been known to…” He paused a moment, as if trying to think of the best word. Or perhaps, spin the story in a way that wouldn’t scare the ever loving daylights out of me. “Booby trap humans such as this. She feeds on them, gives them a drop or two of her blood, and then looses them into the world with a simple command. Seek. Bait to reel her preyin.”
I sat up, moving closer to the edge while Daire popped the drain to let the gross water out. I thought about getting out, but none of them seemed to be in a hurry, and then Rik turned the water back on to refill the tub with clean water. “I don’tunderstand.”
“A well-fed queen would usually not look upon a human and hunger,” G said, his voice gentle and without censure. Yet I still felt heat rush across my face. “She does it on purpose, trying to catch the unsuspecting queens who might not know any better. Queens who were raised far from her court, in America, say, where there are so few known queens. Queens without enough Blood to satisfy their thirst. If you had tasted the human’s blood, you would have indirectly taken Marne’s bloodtoo.”
My eyes widened. If I’d taken the queen’s blood… “That would make me her… sib? Is that theword?”
“Her pawn,” Rik growled, his fury leaking through our bond like sparks from an blacksmith’s forge. “She almost got away with it too. I had no idea she tainted humans likethat.”
“Don’t blame yourself,” G replied, shaking his head. “Only someone familiar with her court would know. Unfortunately, I’m all too familiar with her tricks. She’s tried to snare me thusly for decades. Even a single drop of her blood would have given her a hold on you. Most likely, she would have been able to command you to come to her and offer throat to her formally. Though you are very strong, myqueen.”
“And stubborn,” Rikmuttered.
My cheeks flushed hotter. He was right. I knew that. Swearing some silly oath that I wouldn’t ask them to help me out of pride was only going to get someone hurt or killed. Maybe it wouldn’t be any big deal if I died, but could I live with myself if one of them was killed because I was too weak? Too stupid? If I died, what would become of them? And if I’d fed on that tainted human out ofdesperation…
Stupid. So stupid. When I had three magnificent men begging me to take theirblood.
G stood, looking down at me. I ran my gaze over him, noting the many scars and puckered punctures that ran over his body. All faint now, rather than vivid on his skin like when he’d first come to me. I couldn’t imagine how many times he’d been wounded, and so severely that they’d left scars when even Daire’s and Rik’s messiest, deepest bites hadn’t left a single mark the next day. He was thicker and stockier than Rik, about the same height as Daire, but he carried himself so differently. He moved like a man who’d looked Death in the face a million times, only to spit in his eye and limp away to fight again another day. Over and over. Forcenturies.
I slid back against Rik, making room for G to step into the tub with us. “Bring aknife.”
Flashing a small silver blade against his palm, he grinned and stepped into the tub. “Already ahead of you, myqueen.”
