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  “There, there, be a good laddie.” Pändra stroked Arc’s shaft, her blood-red fingernails evil-looking against such sensitive flesh.

  Mürk and the two lowlifes followed the motion of Pändra’s hand, mesmerized.

  Another sound boiled out of Arc, nastier than the last.

  Pändra quickened her strokes.

  Nothing happened.

  Mürk cracked off a laugh. “The git’s got a lazy lob.”

  Pändra glanced up sharply. “Ease back, Mürk. The chap can hardly get a stalk when he can’t fecking breathe.” She slid her hand over Arc again, up and down, tip to root and back again.

  Bile burned Thomal’s throat and nose. Sweat soaked his shirt. He flexed and released his fingers. If he concentrated hard enough, maybe he could make his hands small enough to slip through.

  Air rushed in and out of Arc’s closed teeth, his chest expanding and contracting, his face sopping with sweat, worse than Thomal’s. Still no lift-off.

  “Well, fuck me backward,” Mürk said in a snarky tone. “It appears the almighty Pändra has lost her touch.”

  “Not effing likely.” Pändra stepped back and studied Arc. After a moment, she made a noise of understanding and crossed to her purse, this time pulling out a comb. No…sch-nick. A knife punched out of the top of the handle. It was a switchblade. She waved off her lowlifes. “Chivvy along, lads. What I have to do now isn’t for your ruddy perving.”

  “That’s not fair,” the tall lowlife whined.

  Pändra’s fist flashed out so fast, Thomal barely saw it. A solid thwack announced knuckles meeting flesh, and then the complainer was lying flat on his back, lids closed and mouth flabby. Not doing a whole lot of moving.

  “Get him out of here,” she told the short one.

  The guy’s lips quavered. “I can’t carry Duane.”

  Pändra’s chin edged down. “Move him or join him, Bo Bo.”

  Somehow the short lowlife managed to grunt-drag the taller one outside. The door shut, and Arc’s rapid breathing filled the hotel room. The whites of his eyes showed as he craned to keep track of Pändra and her knife.

  “So what’re you about, Pändra?” Mürk asked, his attention also on the switchblade. “I thought you didn’t want to snuff the wanker.”

  “I’m going to make the vamp pop his fangs.” She flipped the blade into her other hand. “I couldn’t do that in front of my lads, could I?”

  Mürk frowned. “Why the hell are you goin’ to do that?”

  “He’s Vârcolac, durbrain,” she said in the impatient tone of someone dealing with an especially stupid stupid person. “He likely needs the scent of blood to get a knob on, you ken?” She pulled off her immortality ring and set it on the nightstand, then slashed the switchblade across her finger. A line of blood pebbled to the surface of her skin.

  Thomal’s nostrils twitched.

  Pändra moved toward Arc, her strides lithe and feline, her black eyes glittering with feral intensity.

  Arc thrashed against Mürk again, but with that cord around Arc’s neck and his hands and feet bound in chains, he couldn’t do much of anything to free himself.

  Mürk tightened his grip, and Arc jerked and wheezed.

  Pändra swiped a finger across Arc’s upper lip, smearing the area under his nose with her blood.

  Arc let out a short howl.

  Thomal’s bones rattled from it and he pressed his eyes closed briefly, feeling his brother’s pain. The blood of anyone but Beth, Arc’s bonded mate, would smell utterly wrong.

  Pändra made a noise of satisfaction. “Ah, there’re your wicked ivories. Let’s see how your plonker does now, shall we?” Pändra dropped to her knees at Arc’s feet.

  Thomal exhaled through his nostrils in abject shock when Pändra grabbed Arc’s cock in her hand and swallowed the head of it between her red lips. Sweat streamed through Thomal’s lashes. No. This isn’t happening. A loud buzz droned through his brain, trying to shut down functions. He could do no more than stare, his teeth rhythmically chewing his cloth gag as Pändra rode down Arc’s shaft, taking him deep into her throat, then pulled slowly back off his length, her mouth wrapping him in a tight grip. She paused at the satiny cap to work it with several quick, hard sucks.

  Arc’s dick went rock-hard.

  Mürk grunted.

  “There’s ol’ Percy,” Pändra said with a note of triumph.

  The muscles in Thomal’s crotch tautened. He started to tremble, from boots to scalp; he couldn’t stop the body-quakes.

  Pändra licked a circle around the rim of Arc’s cock with her tongue, and a sound echoed through the room, horrible and raw, the kind of noise an animal might make when it was being slaughtered.

  His brother.

  Panic sent Thomal staggering to his feet. He yelled, bit the ragged gag in two, and yelled again. “Stop it! For shit’s sake, stop, you’re killing him!”

  Pändra turned her head towards Thomal, her eyes dark and blank. “Nobody ever died from getting gobbled, love.”

  “You don’t understand.” He huffed the words out, never so close to losing it as he was right then. “You don’t know how it is with Vârcolac. He’s married, bonded to his wife, which means that every instinct inside him will fight against being with another woman. Look, he’s bleeding from his ears—just look!”

  Pändra rose to her feet and peered at the side of Arc’s head, where, see that, you little whore, blood had pooled in the cup of Arc’s ear. His eyes were also narrow and glazed, his breathing erratic.

  “You don’t want to kill him,” Thomal went on hoarsely. “I heard you say that.”

  Pändra jerked her head around, her brow darkening.

  “But if you keep messing with him, he’ll fucking implode, I swear it.”

  She crossed her arms beneath her black-and-turquoise hooker bra. “We’re in a bit of a spot, then, chum, because I’m not ready for this bash to come to an end.”

  Thomal lurched forward a step. “Then take me.”

  Chapter Eight

  Thomal was a soldier. Any given day on the job, he faced pain and death from a state of mental calm. Dancing Le Freak while in hot water never helped a man save his ass. But, right now he was skirting embarrassingly close to a full-on panic attack, his heart lodged like a gooey lump in his throat and his head trying to do a James Bond shaken not stirred number off his neck into outer space. Because it was an absolute certainty that if he didn’t convince this skeezy ’ho to leave Arc alone, his brother was going to die, and living even one day of life without his big brother in it was impossible.

  Pändra tilted her head to one side as she considered him. “Are you promising to be a good little egg, is that it, all agreeable to my…appetites?”

  Thomal drew in a deep, steadying breath. “Yes,” he forced between parched lips. “If that’s what you want.”

  Mürk voiced his dissent with a, “My arse.”

  Pändra glanced at her brother.

  “He’s talkin’ tommy rot,” Mürk said to her. “Tryin’ to trick you into something.”

  “Well, he’s right about him.” She nodded at Arc. “The bloke looks manky.”

  Mürk’s face grew tight. “Are you forgettin’ this is my show, Pändra?”

  Thomal blazed a look at Mürk. “If you want Arc to suffer, Om Rău, you’ll get your wish. I’m his brother, and he’ll hate it if she takes me instead.”

  “It’s an interesting proposal, Mürk.” Pändra crossed to Thomal and unlocked him. His chains clattered to the floor. “All righty. Let’s see what you’re offering, vamp.”

  Thomal stood in place, rubbing the ache from his wrists. What he was offering?

  “Your body,” Pändra prompted. “I want a gander at you, eh?”

  Heat flushed over him. He flared his nostrils as he kicked off his shoes and socks, then peeled his jeans down his hips and stepped out of them. Finally, he jerked his T-shirt off and his underwear.

  Pändra’s gaze roamed over his naked body, r
aking him boldly from head to foot.

  The muscles in Thomal’s stomach flexed and released, echoing the back-and-forth chaos that had just lit off inside his brain. Being treated like a slab of meat wasn’t exactly his idea of a day at the park, but also…the feminine appreciation in Pändra’s expression was very genuine, and undeniably arousing.

  “Now your bum.” Pändra twirled her index finger in the air. “Turn around.”

  He turned, anger and tension throbbing in his head.

  “Bloody ’ell,” Mürk uttered. “Another one of those dragons on his back.”

  Thomal completed his circuit and faced Pändra again. Arc’s strained and shallow breathing created a bizarre counterpoint to his own harsh breaths.

  “You’re a right fine piece, vamp.” Pändra’s eyes were bright black, like rain over tar. “I believe we have ourselves an accord. Get on the mattress and lie on your back, spread eagle.” She grabbed her purse and pulled out another length of telephone cord.

  Thomal’s gut seized. “You don’t need to tie me down. I told you I won’t fight.”

  She gave him a droll, almost bland, look. “For effect, love, for effect.”

  He stared at her.

  She threaded the cord through her fingers. “My party, my rules.”

  “I get that,” he snapped. “It’s just…” He pushed his fingers through the short hair of his flat-top. More chaos in his head. What he had to do next was disgusting, but also…it ignited a primitive fire in his belly, a bloodlust that pounded through him with such feral intensity, thoughts of betraying Hadley were pushed to a barely visible, pinpoint spot at the back of his mind. “I have to bite you first.”

  “Come again?”

  “I can’t get a boner without your blood in my body, so I have to—”

  Arc groaned.

  His brother couldn’t see what was going on—Mürk had Arc’s head wrenched back in what had to be a painful angle—but Arc obviously could hear what was happening, and he fully understood the devastating, life-altering consequences of what Thomal was about to do. Well, hey, if there was time to gather a war council and come up with a better way for saving Arc’s life, he’d do it. As it was, he was hanging onto this situation by a thin thread.

  “Your brother didn’t need to bite me,” Pändra pointed out.

  “That’s because Arc’s married, as I told you. He’s already taken the blood of a woman into his body, so the scent of your blood was enough to get him…him…”

  “Proud?”

  “Yes,” Thomal ground out. “That’s not the case for me.” Put two and two together and you’ll figure out I’m a virgin. Luckily, she wasn’t concentrating on Vârcolac math at the moment, otherwise fuck knew what this cruel skank would’ve done with that intel.

  “That’s the biggest load of cack I’ve ever heard,” Mürk declared. “The maggot’s tryin’ to dupe you into lettin’ him bite you so he can drain you dry, Pändra.”

  “That’s impossible,” Thomal shot back. “Even if I wanted to do that, I couldn’t. Mother Nature installed a safety valve in Vârcolac, so my fangs will automatically retract once I’ve taken enough blood.” And how fun was it that he was having this entire conversation bare-assed naked? “There are many ways I could kill you, half-Rău, but feeding on you isn’t one.” That much was true. ’Course while his fangs were elongated, he could rip out Pändra’s throat, then get back to the task of dishing pain with Mürk.

  A smile flitted across Pändra’s mouth, a genuine one this time, and if it’d remained in place, Thomal had the sense his insides would’ve done weird things. “You know, I like you, vamp. You’re a bit of a brass-neck.” She set down the cord. “All righty, let’s take a whack at it.”

  She strode up to him, stopping an inch away.

  He swallowed hard. And again. Night and day, black and white, apples and oranges…the difference between how she smelled now, without her ring on, and before went beyond his ability to describe. The closest he could come was to say she smelled somewhat like Tonĩ, who, with her Fey blood, had smelled better than any other Dragon out there, mind-and-crotch-blowingly fantastic—that was, before she’d hooked up with Jaċken and killed her scent for any male but her husband. And Pändra had Fey blood, as did all Topside Om Rău. Still…somehow Pändra smelled even better to him than Tonĩ. Better than Hadley, too, which was a mind-fuck on levels he never thought possible. How could an ice queen like this smell so damned good?

  “Was there something else?” Pändra inquired blandly.

  “My bite’s going to hurt.”

  Her lips curled into an ironic line. “What a perfect gallant you are to warn me.”

  He knotted his jaw. “I just don’t want you to think that I’m trying to kill you, half-Rău, and retaliate.”

  A Vârcolac’s first bite always hurt. Not only that, but the feel of blood being siphoned from the body often set off a new host’s survival instinct, and when that happened, struggling and screaming came next. Bonded males spoke in soft, guilt-ridden voices about their wives’ first time, and Thomal had never particularly looked forward to that part of his own wedding night. Not in a millennium of years would he have thought he might relish the thought of inflicting pain on a host. But with this floozy, he damn well would’ve corked up his fangs and stopped the pleasure elixir of Fiinţă from coming out, if it’d been within his power to do that.

  “The very thought of my pain must have you sick as a parrot,” Pändra said in a droll tone. “But no worries, mate, I can hack it.” With a sweep of her hand, she brushed aside her long hair, baring her neck to him. “Feed away.”

  Air blasted from his nostrils as his eyes ignited on the smooth flesh of her throat, his Vârcolac vision zeroing in on a particularly juicy artery: the carotid. He watched the steady, throbbing pulsebeat there and his own pulse jerked forward a pace. Bloodlust consumed him, instantly and savagely. His mouth watered and, before he could stop it, a primitive sound broke from him.

  Pändra angled a questioning glance at him.

  Hands shaking, he set a palm on her bare hip and drew her closer, bringing her breasts to within a bare inch of touching his naked chest. Oxygen seared a path through his lungs. He felt the prick of his fangs against his tongue. He hadn’t even had to think about elongating his fangs, like the concentration it required with a donor. They were just out, ready to puncture a vein and bring him some serious culinary ecstasy.

  Sliding his other hand around the back of her nape to hold her in place, he bent his head to her throat and pressed his open mouth to her downy skin, sampling the salty-sweet flavor of her flesh. Something twisted in his gut. She tasted kind of…fresh and outdoorsy, as if she’d gone for a dunk in the ocean earlier today, then washed off with lavender soap. Was this the real Pändra? Thoughts of neck-ripping vanished. His next breath tripped out of him as he found the intoxicating throb of her pulse with his tongue. It was the beat of a necessary life-source. His fangs pulsated to the same rhythm, an exquisite ache running into his upper jaw. He flexed his fingers into Pändra’s supple flesh and groaned.

  “Thomal,” Arc wrenched out. “Don’t.”

  To hell with don’t. There wasn’t any such thing as don’t anymore.

  The hum in his canines told him exactly were to punch in. He inhaled a thick breath, then, with a hard clamping motion of his jaws, he drove his fangs into the velvet softness of Pändra’s throat, sinking in, Jesus, so deep. She barely even reacted to his bite. A small, swift exhale was the only acknowledgement she gave of being virtually stabbed in the neck with a couple of blades.

  He came half out of his skin as her warm blood filled his mouth, saturating his tongue with viscous pleasure and forging a path of eternal ecstasy down into his stomach. A growl thundered in his chest. The taste of her was sensation itself: power, heat, potency, energy, elation, life. The earth swayed beneath his feet and bright colors raced across the screen of his closed lids. A tingling warmth started at his toes and spread upward, engulfing hi
m in a sensation he’d never felt before: a feeling of absolute rightness. Like his life was clicking exactly into place and he was finally finding the true fit of his skin.

  Strength poured through him, Pändra’s Fey blood nourishing him like some violently fantastic drug. Every cell in his body stood up and did a posedown, and his crotch… Something was happening down there. Like the Panama Canal, valves were opening, liquid rising, locks swinging wide. The blockage that kept him from getting erect was gone. Blood surged into his cock and swelled him up against Pändra’s belly. Another groan rumbled out of him. Against his tongue, he felt her pulse quicken. Fear? No, it tasted like excitement. A strange thrill coursed through him. He sucked harder, pumping his jaw against her throat to push blood out of her artery even faster. Alarms resonated in his head when he felt his fangs retracting. No. He dug deeper into her artery, a misplaced thought racing through his mind that Hadley would’ve hated him for such rough treatment. Then it was over.

  As his fangs tucked back into his upper jaw, he staggered a step away from Pändra, the bones in his knees feeling like nuts and bolts clanking around in a tin box. His lungs pumped, and his whole body felt like one big throb: the veins in his head, the aftershocks in his fangs, and his dick—definitely that part of his body. His organ wanted to go spelunking right now.

  He observed Pändra, and his stomach caught. Her eyes were soft and hazy, the pleasure on her face changing the look of her completely. It was as if that fresh outdoorsy scent of hers was her true self, and in a startling flash, he realized this woman wasn’t dead inside, just so ruthlessly contained that her emotions probably rarely saw the light of day.

  “Hey,” Mürk butted in. “You okay, Pändra?” More sharply. “Pändra?”

  “Yes. Yes, Mürk. That was…” She laughed breathlessly. “Bejesus, you have to get yourself a Vârcolac, brother dear. That was the absolute berries.”

  Mürk expelled a tch noise. “Well, it worked, whatever it was.”

  Her attention drifted down to Thomal’s erection. “So it did,” she murmured.

  He followed her look down, and…thank God. Shallow of him to do an internal happy dance at this particular moment, maybe, but this was the first time he’d ever seen his organ at full readiness and…he was imposing.