Page 40 of A Bond in Flames

My arm shot out across the mattress. Nothing. It was empty.

No Zinnia.

Only cool sheets. She’d been gone a while. Bounding out of bed, I stormed out of the room, not giving a fuck that I was naked, and leaped up the stairs and onto the deck. “Zinnia!” My roar echoed through the night, causing the demons asleep up here to startle awake. “My consort! Where the fuck is she?” I demanded.

“I haven’t seen her,” one of the demons said as he scrambled from his pallet.

Rushing him, I grabbed him by the throat and shoved him against the mast. “Where the fuck is she?”

He shook his head, trembling, the smell of piss reaching me. “I-I promise. I haven’t seen her. I didn’t do anything.”

Shoving him away, I strode back the way I’d come, jumped down the stairs, and kicked every cabin door open, yanking back covers and flipping beds. She wasn’t here. I knew it deep down; I felt her absence like a festering wound in the center of my chest. The same as when she left me, when she left Limbo to go back to her family for a month, and I was left counting down the fucking weeks, days, hours, minutes until she returned.

She was gone, but she hadn’t left me. Someone had taken her, and when I caught up with them, I would tear them to pieces, until they were nothing but bloody chunks of meat wriggling on the ground.

“Everyone, up!” I bellowed. “Get me to the docks, now.”

* * *

Zinnia

The captain of theFetid Slug, Sig—I mean, it was as if the ship had been named especially for him—sidled up to me again, like he had been with increasing frequency since I got here, and pressed his face to my throat, sniffing deeply. He made a weird, excited little noise.

“Does she still smell like his lordship, Sig?” one of the other demons asked excitedly.

“Oh yesssss, and her cunny is still ripe from his tupping. His seed marks her,” the captain said.

It took everything in me not to gag. That this creep was smelling me and, by the looks of it, getting off on it was more than I could stomach. “Bring your nose anywhere near me again, and as soon as I get the chance, I’ll slice the fucker off.” They’d at least removed the gag. They seemed to be amused by my threats. Little did they know, they weren’t just threats. I would deliver every one of them, slowly. Unfortunately, there was some kind of ward on the ship, and my magic was bound tight.

Another demon dropped to his knees and crawled closer.

“Back the fuck up,” I snarled.

He ignored me and kept coming. If my legs weren’t tied to the chair, I’d kick the ugly fuck in the face. I jerked and fought, but it was hopeless, and he dragged his bulbous oily nose along the leather of my pants all the way up, until he was pressed between my thighs, and dragged in a deep breath.

“Oh yes,” he said and laughed excitedly. “His lordship has used her. The scent of his seed is strong. She is the right female. The mistress will reward us.”

They all giggled their weird fucking giggles, eyes flashing with glee.

“When I tellhis lordshipwhat you just did, asshole, he’ll tear your face off and feed it to the fishes,” I snarled. “That is, if there’s anything left of it when I’m through slicing your ugly fucking face to ribbons.”

They laughed again, uproariously.

Sig picked up a piece of my hair and pressed it to his nose, breathing deeply again. “You are a weak female. Your words are stupid. Your threats are false and make us laugh.”

“And your breath smells like shit and makes me want to puke,” I said, probably foolishly, but I didn’t give a fuck at this point. I was usually good at controlling my temper, my emotions. I’d had to be with a mother like mine, and with my line of work, you learned to lock it all down. So when I did lose it, when I let that side of myself take hold, it was hard to get control back, and these ugly pervs had pushed me so far past my control, there was no coming back.

Sig’s face darkened with rage a moment before he balled up his sledgehammer-sized fist and slammed it into the side of my head.

* * *

When I regained consciousness, I was being jostled, carried unceremoniously by the demon who’d sniffed my crotch and one of his buddies. It was dark, and I blinked, trying to clear my fuzzy vision. He’d hit me hard, and the side of my head still throbbed.

We were off the boat and moving across rocks and stones toward a massive temple surrounded by forest—the same kind of forest as the one we’d walked through in the Outer Realm. The towers on either side of the temple looked like the demon lighthouse we’d stayed in.

It wasn’t hard to guess who was so desperate to meet me that she’d had me abducted off our ship.

I tried to fight, but it was no use; I was still trussed up and gagged again.

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