Page 23 of Bloody Bargain
The way D’abel’s tongue massaged my flesh, though, was the sort of good that spilled over into addiction. How he groaned, sucking the blood-soaked cuff of my sleeve. How he kept his hands to himself and used his mouth, unafraid of the mess… I was a live wire and my pussy was thrilled, dripping and ready for that tongue to head south.
My fingers sifted into his silver strands of hair, and I yanked him off my arm with the last dregs of sense in my melted brain. He looked like he’d kissed a woman wearing red lipstick, his mouth puffy and smeared with blood, breath shallow.
“You said you aren’t a fiend,” I trembled murderously.
“I am not,” he confirmed in a blood daze. He looked desperate and drunk. There was none of the aggressive, manipulative good humor of a fiend in those eyes. The divot between my brows deepened.
I had seen fiends in a feeding frenzy and none of their habits overlapped with D’abel’s glowing throat and curved fangs. They ate humans like our insides were scrambled eggs. There was no specific fascination with blood, no husk of a body left behind. Just ground meat and chewed-upon bone knobs.
I let go of D’abel’s hair slowly, committing myself to rationalizations that could get me killed someday. Anyone would find his features attractive; the suction of a mouth, the undulation of a hot tongue. It was natural, not a fiendish thrall. Just my lonely body speaking to his.
This was a struggle I was well-acquainted with. The fog of uncertainty. I tried to look unapproachable and cold now, but it didn’t stop good-hearted humans from trying to welcome in the lonely American in Europe when I ordered a drink alone or was sick and buying cold meds.
My future miscalculations blanketed my mood in shadows. When I made that inevitable mistake, who would it kill? An innocent or me?
D’abel threaded his claws through my knotted curls and held me in place like I had done to him.
“Are you angry with me, my lady?” he asked with genuine curiosity, tilting his head to match how he held mine. His voice was gentle, a fang catching the light.
“I just don’t know you,” I swallowed, looking down the length of my lashes at him. “I don’t know what this deal means, or when it’ll backfire. I don’t trust me all that much, and I definitely don’t trust you.”
“Trust will come. We are tied together. We will feed each other. We will complete each other.Ay mare.Forever.”
“Those sound like wedding vows,” I hedged darkly, heart in my throat.
Ethereal amusement gleamed in D’abel’s eyes, accompanied by the barest hint of a smile. The scales of his face flattened where they had been split and dull, taking on a smooth, soft texture. His cheeks caught the grey morning, shining like opals.
D’abel wasn’t beautiful. He wastreacherous.
The b’adruokh hummed something like a snake’s rattle deep in his chest. He held my glare as if my ire fueled him. “Would it upset you if they were?”
A glint of silver on the horizon caught my attention, and I glanced over D’abel’s shoulder. A car wound its way along a road I couldn’t see, windshield catching rays of sunshine through breaks in the clouds.
Relief washed over me. I wanted four walls again. Even if they didn’t make me safer, they gave my brain a break. And I was cold, the kind of cold that made you slur and feel as if your joints had rusted over. I needed a hot shower like I needed air. I needed sleep and food.Warmfood. I practically moaned at the thought.
I pulled my hair out of his claws and stood up.
“Iam following that car. And thenIwill take a shower and sleep for a whole day,” I snapped, mirroring his words as I snatched my strewn supplies off the ground one by one. “Andyouwill–I don’t know. Whatever you want. But away from me, because a badrock can’t just walk into a bed and breakfast and tell the host to mind his tail. Besides, you don’t have clothes.”
D’abel was silent as I duct taped my duffel together and shoved everything back inside. I couldn’t look at him. I was too busy giving myself a lecture, face as bright as a tomato, a snarl on my lips.
I should have read the fine print.
Because of all the things I thought a deal with the devil might entail…
I never once considered that maybe I’d agreed to marry him.
09
Three hours past lunch, the sky hadn’t brightened into the promises of sunny weather the morning had offered. The clouds hung low and pregnant with bellies that dragged the hills, and the sun was dimmer than I remembered, like a flashlight on its battery’s last reserves.
It didn’t seem to bother the sheep though. They roamed the nearby pastures with their heads down. The flock was close enough to hear their chewing, shooting me uneasy glances from time to time. A sheep dog, the same shaggy cream color, lounged uphill from them, surveying the mountains with me, smelling the air with a wet black nose.
I paid them no mind, chewing a protein bar without tasting it as I sat on blackened rocks and drew my fingers over the roads on my atlas. The village below was small but well-groomed and picturesque. There was a moss-covered church with several neat steeples and arched windows. A pub sat across the street with polished lamps of amber glass bolted into the ancient stones.
I thought the village might be Bronaber from the straight highway out in the distance and the old cemetery on this side of the hills. Blackened slabs jutted out of the little fenced yard like fingernails, and a cottage with black stones and white window frames kept watch over them as if ensuring they didn’t escape. There were short, plump trees now too, and the rush of black storm water where it sluiced through divots in the landscape.
Some sort of hotel or guesthouse sat in the center of the village with a large backyard that was entirely fenced in, the white planks overflowing with dark green vines and the spindly twigs of plants that had already retreated from the cold for the season. There were three picnic tables with red awnings, a vegetable garden, and a shed with white scalloped fascia to decorate the eaves. I couldn’t see into the dark windows, but there was no doubt in my mind there would be miniature bottles of cheap shampoo in the showers, starchy bed linens, maybe some antique quilts to maintain the countryside charm.
