Page 28 of Siege of Blood and Betrayal

When he draws on his power, the answering call in my clit has me arching my back as my blood responds. The pain of the day is blocked out by a tidal wave of pleasure.

I need to stop this—to tell Zane to leave my pain intact.

I push that thought away. There has been pain lodged in my soul for so long, the absence of it is an exquisite relief.

His power is building and my blood sings in response. It makes me so sensitive it almost hurts. I need more, but it can’t come from him.

Zane made his feelings crystal clear years ago. I am nothing more to him than a friend of convenience in a world where he wasn’t free to go out and find his own.

And so I slide my hand down my belly and beneath the elastic of my underwear. I’m swollen and wet and the moment I make contact, fondling myself and running my fingers through my folds, I detonate.

I orgasm hard, every nerve ending within me lighting up. It might be the blood loss, but I’m pretty sure I exit the physical plane for a time.

Zane’s fingers tighten against my skin, still pinning me down. He doesn’t stop with his healing. He bathes the flesh of my hip, ribs, and belly until my wound is healed and my flesh knits back together.

As the pulsing waves of my orgasm recede, I close my eyes and let myself get lost in the peace within. Today was tied for the worst day of my life. We lost time because of the injury, but when I wake up, I’ll be back in fighting form.

This was a sound tactical decision to get me on my feet again. Nothing more.

With the pain gone, I sink into the safety of his caress, rising to the surface of consciousness a few times before sleep finally claims me for good.

Today shattered my life.

Tomorrow won’t be any better.

Zane

“No. Not again. Never again. He broke me… my trust… my heart…” As Scottie’s words slip out in a mumbled whisper, I curse myself a hundred times over.

Such a fucking bastard.

We grew up being two sides of the same coin. We liked the same books and movies. We shared the same sense of humor, defiance, and need to seek mischief. We always imagined how our lives would look when I was king, and she was my queen.

And then came her twenty-first birthday.

I swallow, and the ambrosia of her blood coats my tongue the way it could have for the past seven years—the way itshouldhave—if I had handled things differently.

She’s the perfect match for me.

But I didn’t want perfection. When the dark impulses of my coming of age broke open, I wanted to feed like an animal, to fuck like a beast, and to fight anyone who stood in my way, to ravage lovers and have their blood glugging down my throat.

As the heir to the seat of Toronto, I wanted to consume my world and live wild and free to do as I pleased. The beast within was hungry and violent, and I didn’t want that part of me anywhere near Scottie.

And so, I rejected her.

I lick at the seam of her healing wound. It’s knitting back together now, but I can’t bear the thought of stopping. Instead, I call her blood and take her pain away… replace it with something better.

Tonight, she trusted me enough to heal her body, but I need to figure out how to heal her soul.

I broke her… her trust… and her heart.

Closing my eyes, I can see that night in perfect clarity. I returned to my suite after we’d all celebrated her birthday. She was waiting for me, standing at the foot of my bed. The spicytang of her anxiety spiked the air as she opened her robe and revealed her blood-red panties and bra.

She was so fucking fearless.

It took a lot for her to offer herself to me—to officially cross the boundaries of our friendship. I’d flirted with the idea a million times, and we had always talked about the future as us being together, but she took the leap to make it happen—and I handled everything wrong.

I felt the beast inside of me growing and didn’t want to ruin what we had. What if I lost control and hurt her? What if the wildness of my cravings for sex and fighting disgusted her? What if the ugliness of the vampire mafia touched her life? She was too precious for that—too precious to me.

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