Which is what they wanted. Precisely what they wanted.
But not all that they wanted.
Jin stood behind me, his thick cock resting against me, teasing but not entering. Kingsley moved to the front of the stock. Though he was naked, his cock was flaccid. Some deep down part of me prayed like hell it stayed that way.
He stopped. The heat, the acrid, male scent of him, rolled over me, calling to the wolf, making her hunger.
He sensed it. I don’t know how, but he did.
“Look at me,” he said softly.
His words were a command that whipped around me. When I didn’t immediately obey, he chuckled softly and slid his finger under my bloody chin, lifting it up. The position had the muscles in my neck screaming and yet the pain was a distant thing, much like the alarm and fear and the desperation to be gone. I knew they were all there, but they just weren’t touching me.
I wish the same could be said of Kingsley.
The heat and need in his eyes would have melted steel, and I have never claimed to be that strong. My body began trembling in response, my blood like quick fire through my veins.
His gaze blazed with power, and the energy of it ran over my skin, burning me, consuming me, in a way that went way beyond anything physical. And through it, a connection formed, a connection that wasn’t telepathic, wasn’t anything I recognized, but one I felt through every quivering inch of my body and soul. It was almost as if he were stroking me, teasing me, from the inside out, using that raw energy to strum the taut strings of my desire.“You wish a completion?”
His free hand caressed my left hand, his fingers playing with mine. Something inside screamed a denial but it was still such a faint sound. I had no idea why his innocent action should cause such terror. Maybe it was just the fact that he was physically touching me.
“We can give it to you, you know,” he continued. “Give you satisfaction of a kind you have never felt in your young life.”
I didn’t say anything. Couldn’t say anything. My tongue seemed stuck to the roof of my mouth.
“Do you wish a taste, little one?”
My tongue unstuck itself, as if in preparation to say yes, and despite the fog, despite the distance, I bit down on it, hard. Acquiescence to this man—this dark god—was not a good thing. I had no idea why, and couldn’t seem to battle the fog long enough to reach clearer thought processes. But I wasn’t about to ignore it. Not when something more precious than life itself was at stake.
Kingsley laughed—a soft, seductive, and totally evil sound. His gaze moved from mine and he nodded briefly.
Jin’s hand came down hard on my rear. I groaned, caught between desire and pain, wanting and not wanting.
Both men drew a deep breath, as if sucking in the taste of my pain and desire. Kingsley’s fingers trembled against my wrist, evidence of a lust I could smell. Oddly enough, that lust still hadn’t reached his cock. Maybe someone was listening to my prayers upstairs.
Jin hit me again, and again, until my muscles quivered, my flesh stung, and my traitorous body ached with a desire fiercer than anything I’d ever felt before.
I wanted. God, how I wanted.
Whatever they could give me. Whatever they would allow.
Sweat trickled down my forehead, tickling my cheeks before moving on to mingle with the blood still dripping from my chin. Some of that blood was now coming from my mouth, from my cut tongue. I was still biting it, still holding in the need to plead, to beg, for the ending my body so desperately required.
Just as I thought I could take no more, Kingsley nodded, and Jin thrust inside me. There was no gentleness about it, no smoothness in the way he withdrew and thrust, withdrew and thrust, but I couldn’t have given a damn.
Besides, it wasn’t Jin I felt, but Kingsley. He was all around me, all through me, filling me with his darkness, his desire. He touched me, caressed me, claimed me—not physically, but psychically, and in many ways, it was far more powerful than any mere touch. My body, my senses, responded eagerly, wantonly. Somewhere in the last few moments, I’d become his to do with what he wished, and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.
Truth be told, I didn’t want to do anything about it. I was lost in the moment, lost to the passion and intensity, drowning in it willingly. My heart pounded furiously, my body screamed for release, and every muscle, every fiber, felt so tightly strung that everything would surely break.
Then Kingsley took my left pinky finger into his mouth and began licking it, tasting it, and the sensation tipped me completely over the edge. I came, hard and fast and gloriously. In that precise moment, Kingsley’s teeth pierced my flesh, biting deep and hard. Pain flowed through me, around me, only to smash against the raw energy that was Kingsley’s presence in my mind and soul, mixing with it and becoming something so undeniably exquisite that I came a second time.
As I remembered how to breathe again, I became aware of Jin, still thrusting deep inside of me, his breaths short and sharp, speaking of a peak about to be reached. Became aware of Kingsley, still sucking at my finger.
There was an amazing lack of sensation coming from my littlest digit. Just a pounding, aching weirdness. And there was blood, lots of blood—so much so that even Kingsley’s swirling, sucking tongue could not stop it from running down my hand and wrist.
And then I saw why.
My finger ended at the first knuckle.
Just like the women who’d ended up gutted on the floor of the warehouses.
That’s what my clairvoyance had been trying to tell me. That’s what it had seen, what it had feared.
I knew it now, when it was all too late.
I screamed. Internally, externally, I have no idea. I just screamed.
And then the darkness overtook me and I knew no more.
Chapter 12
Consciousness came back slowly, accompanied by a pounding headache that had spots dancing crazily before my closed eyelids and my stomach doing an accompanying jig. And I couldn’t even begin to describe the pain radiating up from my left hand.
Better to ignore it. Pretend it wasn’t there, even if the sheer force of it had sweat rolling down my forehead.
Or maybe that was the heat. It was hot here, wherever the hell “here” was. My skin burned, and it wasn’t just the aches that caused it. The air was thick and humid, and filled with the rank scent of mustiness and old earth. Lingering underneath those two were the finer aromas of blood and death and sorrow and pain, some of them ancient, some of them fresh, all of them raw.
Which suggested that this place was not only underground, but somewhere that had seen more than its fair share of death.
As had the table on which I lay. Misery and death seemed embedded in the stone itself, and the chill riding up from it ate into my spine and butt, making them ache. I resisted the temptation to shift position, and concentrated on what was going on in the room itself.
Somewhere to my left, fire crackled. I couldn’t smell smoke, but there didn’t seem to be even the faintest trickle of fresh air and it just didn’t feel like a hearth-type fire complete with chimney. Given who had more than likely lit the flames, it was a fair bet to say it was probably magic in origin. I very much doubted Caelfind had been the only practitioner. Surely a dark god would know a bit about the dark arts of sorcery, as well.
Rising beyond the crackle of flame was the sound of chanting. I listened for several seconds, trying to understand the melodious words, but they didn’t seem to be in any language I recognized. But the voice I knew—it belonged to Jin.
A tremor ran through my soul. I might not know where I was, but scent, sensation, and instinct were giving very strong indications of what this place was used for.
This was Quinn’s gateway. The place where Kingsley did his sacrifices or feedings or whatever the hell they actually were. Why he transported the bodies to warehouses afterward, I have no idea. Maybe he simply didn’t want the stink of rotting flesh hanging around his place of sacrifice.I was tempted to open my eyes and look around further, but until I was sure Jin and I were alone in this place, I couldn’t risk even the slightest twitch.
I drew in a breath—slowly but deeply—tasting the air, sorting through the thick scents of death and age and power, looking for the one that was Kingsley.
Nothing.
He wasn’t here—a thought that was surely backed up by the fact I was relatively clearheaded. No longer was I the compliant, needy little bitch I’d been in the house, and my thoughts were free of the foggy distance that had made me so pliable earlier. Of course, there were now a thousand little miners working away on the inside of my skull and within my hand, but the pain—eye watering as it was—was a good one. Because I could think. I could feel. And after the events of the last few hours, that alone felt like heaven.
But the bitter, metallic taste in the back of my mouth very much suggested that my distant state had probably been artificially induced, that perhaps both the wine and water had been drugged. They had to have been—it was the only explanation for what had happened. What I’d allowed to happen.
And with my will suppressed, Kingsley had a relatively easy time of getting through some of my shields and making me do what he’d wanted me to do.
But only when he was close. My brief attack on Jin had proven that.
The one good thing about this whole situation was the fact he obviously hadn’t gotten through all my shields. Otherwise, he would have known I wasn’t any old sacrifice victim, but a werewolf and a guardian. And they surely would have taken far more precautions with me if they’d realized what they actually had.