My orgasm hits me even harder than the vampire did earlier and I come more intensely than I ever have before, crying and panting as I hump him like I really do want this. The last wave crests and I slump back to the cold marble floor, my head feeling fuzzy and too light. “You took too much,” I murmur, my words coming as slowly as taffy.
His tongue strokes my neck and he gives another of those growls I don’t want to enjoy. “You don’t taste like a human.”
It’s strange to be having this conversation on the floor while he’s pressing between my thighs, but I can’t seem to find the energy to shove him off. “I’m not.” I lick my suddenly dry lips. “I’m half bloodsucker.”
“Ah.” He inhales and slowly, oh so slowly, he releases me and sits up. There’s a new flush in his pale cheeks and his eyes are blazing with power. He kneels between my legs and his gaze strokes over me in a way I can almost feel, lingering on my lips, on my bloody neck, where my breasts are nearly escaping this ridiculous dress, where said ridiculous dress isn’t covering my panties any longer. My panties that aresoaked.
I start to cover myself, but he catches my wrists, easily overpowering me. He does another of those long inhales and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt he’s scenting my arousal. He shifts my wrists to one hand and reaches for my panties with the other.
“Wait!”
The vampire’s eyes are pure black and his fangs are on full display. The little glimpse of control from earlier, of regret, are nowhere in evidence. Gods, I’m in trouble. His gaze drops to my panties again. “You know why you’re here.” His knuckles brush the wet fabric, lightly stroking against my pussy. Despite just coming, I have to fight the desire to lift my hips in invitation. Iknowit’s the aftermath of the bite, but I hate myself a little for it.
He pauses, his hands shaking as if he’s fighting himself. He could have broken my wrists, could do so much more damage and there’s nothing I could do to stop him. “Say it.”
I don’t want to. I very much don’t want to. But the words spill from my lips, almost as if he compelled them with his low voice. “I’m here to satisfy your hunger.”
“Hungers, little dhampir. All of them.” He strokes me again. “Lift your hips.”
I obey even as I argue. “You said we’d talk.”
“Yes, after.” Still, he hesitates. A drop of blood drips down his chin and I dazedly realize he’s bitten himself. “Say yes.”
The fact he isn’t simply taking what he obviously wants confuses me even as I hate him for making me say it. Would he really stop if I tell him to? I’ll never know. “Yes.”
His eyes flash to my face as he grips the crotch of my panties and tugs them down my legs. He could have just ripped them off—it probably would have taken less effort—and that little show of restraint almost makes this worse. Or better. I’m honestly not sure.
I didn’t choose to be in this house, to be a sacrificial lamb, but that doesn’t stop my body from shaking with need. I bite my bottom lip as he moves down my body and I know I should argue more, should never have let the wordyesleave my lips, but he gives my pussy another of those light strokes and the touch short circuits my brain.
“Please,” I whisper. I don’t know what I’m begging for, for him to stop or not stop. It doesn’t matter. He shifts slight to the side and strikes, quick as a snake, sinking his fangs into the sensitive skin of my upper thigh.
I come again instantly.
I keep coming, wave after wave, until I’m sobbing and begging, but I can’t begin to guess what I’m begging for. For him to stop. For him to fuck me. It doesn’t matter. Before I can decide, he lifts his head.
And then he’s gone, a flash of motion up the curving staircase, and I’m left alone in the entrance hall. Wet. Bleeding. And filled with enough confusion that my head feels like it’s spinning wildly on my shoulders. “What thefuckjust happened?”
2
Ithink I blackout. I must, because one moment I’m lying on the cold marble floor and the next I’m blinking up into a darkened bedroom. I go perfectly still out of habit, forcing my heartbeat to slow and my breathing to stay even. I can see well in the dark, courtesy of my vampire blood, and I pick out the features of a bedroom that must have been the height of luxury sometime in the last few hundred years. It hasn’t been kept up in the meantime. There’s dust on every surface of the heavy wooden furniture and the canopy overhead is filled with holes and worn nearly transparent.
I count to one hundred slowly, and then do it again.
Nothing moves in the room except for the steady rise and fall of my chest.
I can’t lay here forever, no matter how much part of me wants to curl into a ball and wait for this all to be over. Maybe another woman in my position would. Maybe the last sacrifice sent to this place did.
It’s not who I am.
My life has been hell since I was old enough to realize my position within the vampire colony my father rules. I am the worst of all things. Magic-less. Bastard. The product of my monster of a father and one of his human mistresses he pretends is there of her own free will, rather than an exotic pet he likes to keep to prove his power. Unlike other dhampir children of bloodline vampires, I have no magic to speak of. I fit nowhere, and so every move I made was an insult deserving punishment.
For years, I didn’t understand why he resisted killing me and getting me out from underfoot once and for all.
Now, I do.
This is where he planned to send me all along. A sacrificial lamb. A womb just waiting to be filled with one of the failing vampire bloodlines my father holds so highly. And if I die before accomplishing that? He’ll lose no sleep over it.
Under other circumstances—mainly, if I’d inherited his magic like I should have—my getting pregnant would make me his heir. Now, he wants me to serve as a vehicle to bring another bloodline under his control. It seems particularly cruel, but I’ve long since stopped expecting anything resembling kindness from my father.