"Don't you mean fuck, sweet human?"
I jolted fully awake, blinking until my eyes focused, and then inhaled sharply at the eight-foot-tall man with striped skin, shaggy brown hair, fluffy cat ears, horns, claws, and atail.
Right. Okay. So that hadn't been a delusion or weird dream.
Unless this was an evenweirder, more elaborate dream.
My eyes itched with sleep, and I moved my hands to rub them—but chains rattled, and my stomach shot to my feet. I lifted bleary eyes and tilted my head back, gawping at the chains that secured me to a dark wall. My feet barely brushed the ground, my body extended to its full length.
A clear canvas for him to hurt anywhere.
"Oh, god," I breathed.
I’d been expecting to be captured by weapons and keepers, not by shadowkind. But here I was, chained and trapped. At their mercy. And something told me they didn’t have much of that to go around.
The room they chained me in was clearly a dungeon of some sort—the walls and floor were matte black, and there was zero furniture but a whole lot of open space. Space they'd probably be dragging my lifeless body across to dispose of later…
I could smell the blood sunk into the floor, couldfeelthe violence and dark history of this room settling over me like a second skin, and I began to shake all over.
"Hello again, sweet human," the shadowkind—Sang—purred, jumping off the steel table he'd been sitting on while he watched me sleep.1"What would you like to happen now?"
"You could let me go?" I tried, giving him a hopeful look and tugging on the chains binding my wrists above my head. I expected to feel wounds and pain across my body, but it seemed my kidnappers hadn't beaten me while I slept. They hadn’t even removed my clothes, though I’d lost my jacket somewhere. Maybe they were saving the exciting bits for when I was awake.
I.e. now.
Sang rushed forward so fast I flinched, rattling my chains and knocking my head back against the solid wall. Huge canines were bared in my face, his yellow eyes bright with something like panic.
"Let you go?" Sang demanded, sliding clawed fingers along my face to cup my cheek. "I'mnevergoing to let you go, sweet human. You're mine to keep, mine forever, mine minemine."
He snarled the last part, insanity making his slit-pupil eyes bright, and I caught my breath. For all the wrong reasons, my stomach flipped, sank, and leapt all at once.
I'd never been anyone's before.
I unstuck my tongue from the roof of my mouth and rasped, "Yours as in you’ll give me cuddles and orgasms and we'll walk hand-in-hand through a park as the sun sets … or yours to torture and make bleed?"
Sang laughed and ducked his head to kiss my neck. Soft hair and warm horns brushed my skin. I jerked in the chains and found my ankles bound too. Oh, holy fudgeballs. This was going from bad to worse.2
"Wouldn't you like to know?" he teased instead of answering me, grazing a spot that made my eyes flutter.
"Yes," I replied, breathier than I meant to. "Yes, I really would."
"Orgasms or torture—those are my options?" he clarified, scraping down my throat with the sharp edge of his fang. Not slicing me open, but taunting me with the fact hecould. I went still, fear and electricity moving up and down my bound body. "What if I want both?"
I needed to get out of these chains and escape this place Sang and his tentacle friend brought me to.
The tentacle friend I killed. Who was now alive again.
Think about it later,I told myself.Escape now.
The chains were too taut to wrap them around Sang's thick neck, and choking the life out of him would be difficult, but if he moved up a little, I couldmaybebite him. Rip off his ear, or tear out his throat. The thought made me squeamish, but I was sure I could do it. I’d done much worse.
But even if I ripped out his throat, I'd still be chained up. With a dead shadowkind at my feet… Or a very angry shadowkind missing one ear and taking his anger out on me…
No, I had to try something else.
God, please,pleasebe kind.I was so bad at flirting. But seducing him was all I could think of.Let this work.
"If you want my vote," I said in a husky voice I was alarmed to find took little faking, "I choose option A. Or option O," I joked.