Page 44 of The Surrender

The grip on my throat tightens as those eyes catch fire. What sort of storm twists inside him? A storm of scars and ruin. I can’t believe it’s nothing more than a rotted corpse. Not with the way he looks at me. Not with the way he...unravels me. But the way he’s frozen still like a corpse sends a soul-shattering fear into my veins.

“Who holds the most power to protect you when this world ends, Quintessa? Who will hold you when your whimpers shame the apocalypse? Can you put your hope in the monsters? When you wish to claim every shard of our damned souls but offer nothing in return? Nothing but the lily-white ghost of your flesh and the pretty roses in your blood?”

I lick my lips, “Merikh, I—”

“Have it your way, little dove,” he growls, and I brace for him to strangle me. “Don’t you know better than to tempt angels and dance with demons in the dark of night where moon and stars can never shine, and sun will never rise? You want a glimpse beyond the scars while you share none of your own? Have. It. Your. Way!”

He rips all breath from my lungs when he seizes my body into his arms and carries me within seconds to the other side of the Court of Storms—to the great black stone bridge. No, he carries me under the bridge, lower and lower until we arrive at the edge of the bank where the icy water rushes over frost-gilded black rocks. This time, I don’t whimper when he shoves me to my knees upon the snows.

But when he grips the first of the hand-sized thorns and rips them from my spine, I throw my head back and scream!

31

Merikh is healing me…

QUINTESSA

My scream slices off.

Choked by my throat convulsing. Then, Merikh applies large shards of flat ice to my lower back area. Sweet relief fills me from the ice soothing the burning in my lower back. Thunderstruck, I arch my neck to the pale skies, blinking back tears from his tender care. The edges melt from my body heat. They sluice water to mix with the blood, tainting it. Most of all, the ice reduces the swelling.

The vampire is...not drinking my blood. Merikh is healing me.

Shivers, fathomless shivers, crawl through my body and tickle the surface of my skin like moth antennae. I cross my arms over my shuddering chest—my palms on my shoulders. Hold back the cries. Surrender to the tears from the undeniable care in his fingers as he holds the ice to the wounds.

“If you’d bound yourself to me, constricting the blood vessels would not have been necessary. I could have instantly clotted the blood, eliminated all inflammation and swelling. Closed the flesh.”

“And would you have?” I murmur, eyes daring to trespass over the curve of my shoulder where he studies my lower back.

At first, he doesn’t respond. That’s when I notice the blood droplets on my shoulder—from my hand. A couple thorns have transferred to the skin, tumbling onto my collarbone. I barely feel the heat scorching my palms from the smaller thorns.

At least not until Merikh grips my wrist and picks apart the thorns—one by painstaking one. Each sliver removed splinters a fresh burst of pain. His nostrils flare. Those blood-blotted pupils still have not faded to their usual black. The fear holds me as a frozen captive when he draws my palm to his eye, when he parts his lips of seductive cruelty.

Nothing like Drago’s full and wicked mouth always bearing a stubborn and knowing upward curve that comes from being the alpha. Nothing like Mayce’s full and sensual mouth with intelligence and charisma stitched in the noble lines. Nothing like Kyan’s shapely pillowed mouth with its hint of sweet lust that can turn dark in a split-second.

Ten thousand nightmares exist in the seams of Merikh’s mouth.

Nightmares that all bow to beauty in despair when he drapes a collection of fresh snow onto the wounds in my palm.

I swing my gaze to his, a gasp shaking loose while my nipples bead to attention beyond the cold wind puckering them.

“No, Quintessa, I would not have done such a thing,” he answers my question while pressing the tips of his fingers to the snow in my palm until scarlet stains the snow. “I prefer to have you alive, so you may bleed for me later.”

Collecting a new handful, he replaces them. My hand trembles, but his is steady and even. “Nor did I carry you to Kyan’s healing lake. Or inside the castle where I might call for a host of servants to bring all the healing implements desired and necessary.”

He lowers his head to my palm, closes his eyes, and inhales the stemming blood scent. One I know must drift into the air beyond the infinitesimal snowflakes. “I have not experienced this depth of pain in centuries. No matter how long, no matter how far I and Kyan’s demon have carved my flesh in the vain hopes the blade might go deep enough to cut my soul.”

My soul hangs onto every word. My blood, the beat of my heart, my entire being is lost to whatever mystical force exists between us. I may share the gravity of Drago’s soul and a bond with Kyan, but another energy pulls me toward Merikh. A fusion of his dead heart and my live and heated and gushing one. I’m convinced the bottomless sea of who the vampire is, and the power of his need, will wash me away and consume me in his undertow.

Tears run cold, clinging like frosted salt to my cheeks.

“The mastery of this thirst, of this desire, of this pain...” he adds. The lust thickening in his voice triggers me to tremble, deeply, soulfully, from his knuckles brushing along my spinal cord, “...is the truest source of power. And the first time I have felt alive in centuries. How could I deny you the opportunity to share in this when you desire my scars so much?”

Without realizing it, I’ve turned my front to him. With him kneeling before me, his clothed body, his masculine lower chest is close enough for the fabric to rasp my pebbled nipples if I lean in. My legs below the knees have turned numb. The pain of my wounds stings and burns. But none of it matters. Not with how my heart overheats in his presence. Not with my nerves firing on all cylinders even as my blood congeals.

The moment the vampire lifts his lips to press them to the barest traces of blood left upon my shoulder, the moment the crimson thirst in his pupils fades while they contract, I inhale a deep gust and arch my neck, hoping to claim him.

He dives down. Captures my mouth. Claims me first. Crushing my lips, crushing my body with my back to the snows now, I bow beneath his attack. It’s the only way to describe it when he chases all the edges and curves of my body with his lips and tongue. He sets fire to my blood and strikes lightning into all my senses.

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