Bozena and Sveta (Neuripra) Read online

  Her mouth is open, pouting full lips glossed with sin and breathless with dread. I can hear her gasping even though the music in here could deafen the sane.

  She's terrified, but has the good sense to try to hide it.

  I'm in a bastard mood, so wait for her to come to me without moving. Here kitty kitty, come to the lion's den.

  Nothing says 'I own you' more than having the most powerful woman on earth responding to my presence, beneath me, just the right height for....

  It was fun the first time, but now... She used to be a challenge and now she's scared of getting hurt. She can dish it out but she's never been gifted at taking the pain she savors in others.

  “Zarak?” she whispers, staring up at me with eyes widened by passion and terror.

  Sometimes the physical response is the same to both.

  I incline my head, inhaling the signature celestial perfume she always wears. Just the scent of her reignites an old flame that's been smoldering in my subconscious.

  “Ellindt,” I smile, finally unlocking my folded arms and opening them wide in a hug invitation.

  This is the true test.

  She swallows and her slow heartbeat races with uncharacteristic speed. Her breath becomes ragged and her fingers tremble.

  It makes me sadistically hard to catch her response to me.

  This is the moment of truth. She either takes the bait and risks her life, or, she yells for my brother to come and save her.

  Which will it be minx?

  I manage to hold the poker face when she submits to dominance, to the summons, and swans into my arms, pressing her quivering form against mine when she embraces me.

  “Why now?” she murmurs, looking at me with the vulnerability of a child while I close my arms around her and lock her in.

  There will be no escape this time. Your freedom just ran out of leash.

  Caressing palms down her arms, I snare her hands in mine, moving them from behind my waist, to behind hers, looking to any observer like a couple cuddling.

  Lacing my fingers through hers I tighten the grip with her arms caught behind her back, flexing my left hand until I hear the socket on her finger pop.

  She weakens, sagging into me, the cry of pain so close to her cries of pleasure it widens my smile.

  “Do I have your attention, Ellindt?”

  She nods.

  “I beg your pardon, did you say something?”

  God, I am so tempted to laugh.

  “Yes,” she whimpers, nodding again.

  I tighten both hands and listen to the glorious rhythm of every finger in her hands dislocating.

  “It's time you were declawed,” I laugh softly into her ear.

  She should be able to vanish from any embrace at will, but because I outrank her, she is powerless.

  Perusing the crowded club, I wonder where her watchdog is. It's unlike Ellindt to not be shadowed by the male they call Arelstin. I step with her imprisoned in my strength back into the shadows, moving us through space - to the crypt.

  Hard nipples engorge deeper into my torso when she realizes where we are. The shudder is poetic and I adore the trembling bottom lip as tears fill her eyes.

  “Zarak please...”

  “Now now Ellindt, you know I love it when you beg.” Chuckling silently, every jolt from my hold causes her hands pulsating pain, and I bend to speak intimately into her ear again, “But I love it more when you scream.”

  Her shaking is eliciting minute squeals of agony and I tighten the grasp on her hands, pulling them forward and up, protruding voluptuous breasts to rise against me.

  Fear bleeds the red across her pupils and her fangs elongate, slicing her lip and causing a trickle of blood to cascade down her chin.

  Desire filters toxins through my system at the sight and I lower again, shoving her against the padded wall to snake my tongue over the elixir of pain.

  Savoring the rich fluid, it burdens my senses with wildfire.

  She's always done this to me, and finally I have an excuse to push her to the ledge of insanity.

  Thrusting her arms against the wall, I hold them over her head. Real tears course her porcelain pale skin while she stares at me with accusing eyes.

  “Nice try sweetheart, but we both know you won't give me the satisfaction of hearing you beg, scream, or cry.”

  To emphasize my point I impale the hooks through her forearms just to watch the searing pain make her convulse.

  Her knees give in and she hangs heavily on the hooks, slicing through flesh. Leaving her with the maximum anguish for a moment, I take my time shredding the blouse off her body.

  Sobbing seduces me when I squeeze her breasts and bite her right nipple, leaving sharp imprints on the unmarred skin.

  She hasn't worn my mark for too long, this is overdue.

  Pressing my leg between hers, I knee up, hoisting her to my level to prevent the hook from slicing all the way to her wrist.

  The shocked gasp is an aphrodisiac I seldom hear.

  “That hurts, doesn't it?” I laugh softly at the pain ramming up from her groin to her nipples.

  Her eyes are squeezed shut, her perfect beauty scrunched in a twist of pain. The challenge is too great and I grind her nipple between my fingernails. “I didn't give you permission to close your eyes. Open them and gaze at your master, or risk tasting my ire.”

  She struggles but manages to reopen her eyes, now so saturated in red they look fake.

  “Why?” she breathes at me.

  Inhaling, I delight in the raw emotion riding the airwaves of her voice.

  “It's time you were taken out of the public. I need you to myself for a little while,” I say, being deliberately obtuse.

  She slumps, banging her head against the padded leather at her back, staring at the ceiling with desperation.

  Aaaah, the ceiling. The crypt has a ceiling of a thousand mirrors that fracture every image and plays on aversions, magnifying them until your courage fails and you believe you are in the grip of true misery and punishment.

  Following her gaze, I read her deepest fear in the mirrors.

  Enthralled, the hilarity of what awaits me bursts laughter out of my chest, and I rip her off the hooks, leaving her hands helplessly mutilated and unable to protect her from the assault. It's time for me to masquerade as that fear, reducing her to terror.

  Twisting, I hurl her into the pit, watching the long mermaidesque mane flay around her, veiling perfection from my greedy gaze.

  It's not all that's feeling greedy now. I have so many desires that require satisfaction, this night will cause stars to fall in meteor showers across the heavens.

  Surveying her in the undulating waves of fabric catching at her and holding her under, I wait for her face to reemerge. I want to watch her eyes as I walk down there.

  She breaches the bed with a desperate scream, her blood spraying across the pearlescent satin from the gouges in her arms.

  Once her eyes are on me I bind her mind to imprison her focus, and slowly descend the stone steps.

  Every footfall of my boots echoes and ricochets louder and louder, the excruciating stroll I take induces her heartbeat into pecking so hard and erratic, my dick starts hurting with an anticipatory throb.

  I sit down on the stone lip, taking my time peeling off my shirt, pulling off my boots, choosing painful slowness to prolong her anxiety.

  I know what she fears and I'm going to give it to her. Looking at her with my black eyes, I let the inkiness swirl outward to smother the corneas, over my skin, marbling it charcoal gray all the way to my fingertips. This is a stereotype and I can't believe a woman that intelligent falls for such cheap melodrama.

  I'm 7'2 on a bad day, but now I unfurl, expanding my build and height until her breathing is shut off with a terror induced tourniquet. Training my now empty eye sockets on her, I gift her with a sharp smile.

  “Ready for a love bite?” I growl, deep and demonic.

  “No!”

  “Aw,
come on. Just a little love bite.”

  “No!” screeches hysterically.

  The bed incarcerates her for me, and my will prevents her from looking away from her worst nightmare come to life.

  I take the next step lower... closer, then the next, each increment drawing panicked gasps from her burning lungs. I know they're burning because the bed is toxic to vampyres and right now she feels like she's taking a sulphuric bath in hydrochloric acid.

  “If you bite me, I'll stop the burn,” I offer a bargain, dangling it between us in the mere space left between me and the stripped naked queen of the vampyres.

  I love that bed, it does the dirty work for me.

  She nods, imperceptibly. It's more of an agreement made mind to mind than an actual motion witnessed with vision.

  Yesssssss... now we're talking.

  Stepping knee deep into my bed, I lean over my favorite victim, offering her my neck, “I'm waiting.”

  Pleasure blasts through my veins when her elongated vampyre teeth sink into my neck, and I close the wound, locking her in my flesh, preventing her escape.

  I'm tall, my body is impossibly enormous, so it's with ease that I twist and return the love bite, sinking my own teeth into fragile skin, releasing the living lust that pumps in her veins across my taste-buds and into gushing down my throat like a newly tapped keg.

  I battle overriding pleasure to dim the cauterizing scorch the bed has on her body. Slipping into telepathy, I swim over the satin, covering her with the heat that makes her suffer, sliding my impatient libido inside her.

  Pain makes her so wet it tempts me to lick her, but that's a delicacy I have to save for later, after I've broken her in.... again.

  Ramming the volcanic heat up, smashing against her in tempest, her neck locked in my bite, mine in hers... I take my satisfaction, patiently biding my time to hear her pleading for pardon.

  Why do I hurt you, Ellindt? I ask her softly, using the tone of a lost lover returned from Styx.

  Because you're a bastard! An evil, demented, cursed, bastard!

  Wrong, I sigh gently, completely contradicting the violence I'm inflicting on her tearing and saturated sex.

  Exploding searing heat into the inflamed canal between her legs, loving the way her body is unnaturally twisted to accommodate me while imprisoned by the magical properties of my bed, I whisper into her mind, I give you pain for the same reason it gives you pleasure.

  I hate you!

  Ignoring the tirade of venom she bursts into my thoughts, I continue with a sedate tone, Pain reduces you to a pinpoint of existence. It's only in that tiny space of life that your true heart is exposed. If you weren't such a manipulative bitch I wouldn't have to resort to these extreme measures.

  Fuck you, Zarak!

  Most people are reduced to that state during orgasm, it's only you Ellindt who finds her true identity in a lake of agony.

  Heat hurts the vampyre more than anything else, so I turn my temperature up, and up, purging my lust into her body to scald her from the inside out, smothering her in a furnace so furious it could vaporize the sun.

  We've been here before. She knows I won't stop until she screams. Her pride won't let her scream until she's on the cusp of death.

  This doesn't hurt me Ellindt. Don't force me to hurt you, just succumb.

  No!

  She leaves me no choice. Releasing the illusion into her bloodstream with my bite, I know she now feels as if every involuntary sip from my neck is like swallowing a mouthful of flame.

  When she looks at me she sees a phoenix in full pyre mode.

  Consumed with a blaze inside and out, her clamped mouth releases a long wail of torture to hum against my artery. Her body is charred and withering... the agony all consuming while incineration destroys everything that keeps her whole.

  But it's an illusion. Only demons and angels understand this power, and only we wield it.

  It won't be long now and she'll beg to be pardoned for her crimes so the purification ends.

  It's who she is after the fire that I look forward to.

  Chapter 6

  Sveta:

  I stand when Zauran stops. Moving around the Gray Ghost I lift it off its side, waiting for Zauran to get out and help me hoist it onto the back of the pick up truck.

  “Are you okay?” he says, leaving the driver's door open and swaggering to block the tailgate.

  “Yup.”

  “Wanna tell me what the hell happened?” he gestures at my torn leathers that look like I humped a cheese grater.

  “Can we get the bike off the road first? The longer we stand here the greater the odds of having someone stop and ask questions.” It's a priority over explaining my predicament.

  He scowls at me, alpha flaring in his eyes and misting briefly to aqua the night.

  It's almost morning and I'm so fucking annoyed I haven't had a chance to contact Zena tonight. My temper is itching for a confrontation.

  We wrestle the Ghost onto the back of his vehicle in silence and I wait for him to slam the back shut, before jumping down and facing him.

  There's three feet between us and so much that needs to be said it may as well be a canyon.

  My older brother raises his black eyebrows, hiding them behind wild hair. It's a silent question, one he won't ask again.

  “Tell me what happened when you went missing,” I say, instead of revisiting my face meeting Venix's foot at 160 mph.

  He takes a step back, the shock registering in his expression.

  “What did he say?” he says, so low it's a threat.

  “Fuck what he said Zauran. I want to hear it from you.”

  I don't trust that vampyre cocksucker, angel or not.

  It's deeply dark and cold in this envelope before sunrise. He rubs his face, staring across the road to the vast emptiness of Ada Huja. “I don't know if it was him. It was someone I know though, but they disguised their voices. Two motherfuckers the size of mountains jumped me in the garage. They smashed my head in with a metal pipe. I woke up in a cave, chained to the floor.”

  “Why didn't you tell me?” I ask quietly, disappointment thickening my voice.

  He squares his shoulders, lowering his head to glare black opal eyes at me, “What for? There's nothing to say.”

  “You could have said something when Venix returned you. We were all there. Instead you arrived and in seconds the shit started hitting the fan with Darise shooting at everyone.”

  He raises his arms up on either side in a helpless gesture, “What the hell do you want me to tell you, Sveta? That I had my ass handed to me in bloody rags? I don't know who attacked me, so discussing this is pointless.”

  “Why? Why would someone attack you Zauran?”

  “Because I broke spiritual law. We're always watched even when we think we're not. I had every bone in my body broken and ground up, I was spitting blood for days. It's not exactly something I want to chat about.” He gestures to the truck, “Look, can we get out of here?”

  “No.” I step back, expecting him to get volatile. “Was Jowendrhan with you?”

  “What? When I was attacked and kidnapped?”

  I nod, waiting for the truth.

  “Yes.” His jaw clenches so tight it looks painful.

  “Why?” I ask, disbelief churning my stomach.

  “Because he made Božena pregnant without her prior knowledge or consent.”

  He folds his arms, resigning himself to the interrogation with obvious resistance.

  Fuck, so Venix told me the truth.

  Mulling it over, I take a few seconds to meet Zauran's gaze. “That's what Venix said. He told me you and Jo were punished for doing wrong.”

  “What of it, Sveta? Why the hell are we even having this discussion?”

  “He also said he kept you captive for two days to deliver more pain to you both. Is that true?”

  “Why the fuck would he tell you? Is this how he divides and conquers? What does he hope to gain by telling my brother
what he did when I was chained up with Jowendrhan? Is he trying to get inside your head and make you think I can't protect Belgrade?”

  “Is it true?”

  “Yes,” he snarls.

  He turns and punches the metal tailgate, gonging it loudly to peal out into the open drifts beyond the tarmac.

  Now I answer the question, “He gets his kicks out of proving he's mighty. Except with Venix he gives you no warning and plays dirty. He just appeared in the middle of the highway. I reacted instinctively, slamming on anchors, and the bike lost traction. I went sailing into his waiting foot. Venix is a bastard, Zauran. He's an evil prick who gets his rocks off hitting on our girls and breaking our balls without announcing his intentions. He has no fucking honor!” I say, anger helping my voice to rise.

  If I was itching for a fight before, now it's an addiction needing a fix.

  “Why did he tell you?” Zauran demands, every vein on his body pumping out in rage as he morphs into true neuri form.

  “He wanted me to leave his precious prodigy alone. For some reason he thinks Jowendrhan can do no wrong. But in light of Venix kicking my ass, and yours, I would say he has an agenda. He stood in the middle of this fucking highway,” I yell, pointing down the white line into Novi Beograd. “...I went sailing into an incoming foot to the face at an ungodly speed. He sent me backflipping over the bike, dislocating my stuck leg and breaking it. Then while I was man down he stood here bursting out angel light and antagonizing me into doing the same. If he was truly an angel...” I say, adding finger inverted brackets. “...Then he would be protecting the supernatural community, not risking exposure out in the open. Add his behavior to the savage attacks around Pravus and I would say Venix is the rogue leader who is trying to get this land back under his control. He's making us look bad while framing us for murder!”

  “What about Ellindt? She's Jowendrhan's sister, the twin to Jo's dead brother Seithe, and she owned Pravus first. This could be payback for her brother dying. She has just as many reasons to be killing innocents and framing us as Venix does. She's already a fucking red eyed murderer. If anyone could lead them, she would be the prime candidate,” he shouts back.