Page 30 of Deadly Maiden

“My queen. What a lovely scene.”

I swallow. I might partake despite my anger. I tear my gaze off the rippling water and the wriggling bodies and kneel behind my love. I pull back her head and kiss her upside-down, bite her lip, draw it out with my teeth. Then I whisper. “I need some of your blood hawks to look for the girl.”

“Wyntre?” she breathes that into my mouth, then tongues me.

“Yes.” The woman at her breast eyes me, mouth parted, and I reach to smooth my hand over her hair, then stick my thumb into her greedy red mouth and watch her suck. “Gods, this one is making me hard.”

“Then have her while I summon some of my darlings.”

She slips from the pool and pads wetly off to do my bidding. I devour the sway of her hips while I slip into the girl’s ass, bending her over that pool edge, ramming her into it so she gasps. She claws blindly at the floor tiles while I fuck her.

“Do her mouth,” I tell the male.

A faint scream reminds me of how the usurper is suffering, and I bang into the girl even harder, deeper. At least one of us is having fun. I bite her back and leave a crescent of bloody wounds that weep dribbles of red. I’m still fucking her when Ruelle returns to squat and lick the blood from her skin. Then she shifts to bite her neck and get more blood. The blood hawks will be powerful. I grab Ruelle’s hair in my fist and kiss her shoulder while she feeds.

The girl shudders. Her mouth opens and closes, makes these pitiful, beautiful whimpers, and all the while I ream her.

Soon the girl is spluttering and moaning—moaning more than I or the male kneeling before her with his dick shoved down her throat as he climaxes.

Ruelle departs to work her magik.

When I come, jammed inside that tight hole, the girl screams and gurgles into her own climax. She lies collapsed and panting, her cheek in the come-puddle on the tiles. She twitches as small orgasms chase her into oblivion. I trace the marks of my teeth and of Ruelle’s, drawing a face in the smears.

Which reminds me to double-check they heal the Usurper’s balls and dick, afterward. Yesterday someone was sloppy, and his eyes were still messed up at midday.

The rankor crabs had an early supper of mage-on-a-stick.

Chapter 8

Wyntre

It’s mid-morning when we stop at the small town where Bethy and Fiorn plan to sell books. They unlatch the doors and beckon me into the sunlight and down the steps. Once on firm ground, rucksack over my shoulder, I look around with my hand over my brow to shield my eyes. After two days stuck in that box, sitting on my ass, even my bones feel bruised.

Someone grabs that hand. Someone with fingers the size of?—

Oh.It’s Rorsyd, of course. He looks down at me.

I squint up at him. “Hi?”

He sighs in exasperation and drags me behind the book cart and a cart selling sausages on a stick, then into an alley that leads between brick buildings. I barely manage to wave at Bethy to show this is okay.

“What are you doing?” The snappy growl and his glare says he’d like to raze me to ashes on the spot.

“What do you mean?”

“You are extremely easy to recognize with this.” He gestures at my hair, flips a strand of it. “Your long blue hair.”

“It’s not that—” Okay it is a bit unusual if not unique, but then, I’ve never before been threatened and chased, almost arrested, and then…that slaughter.

I’m a fugitive.

Rorsyd is more of an expert on this than I am. I may not trust him entirely, but for now I will listen. I nod slowly. “What do I do?”

He purses his mouth. “We need to make you blend in.”

I study him in turn, his flame-red hair and solid build. Rorsyd’s shoulders will take out a door frame if he steers wrong. When he drops the saddlebag he carries, one-handed, it thuds and clinks on hitting the ground.

Since it’s before me, I give the bag an explorative kick. It budges not one inch. And my toe hurts.

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