Lover Awakened (Black Dagger Brotherhood #3)(33)

The Mistress rose from the bed and stared down at him. Then she slapped him so hard she must have hurt her palm. As he spit out blood, he wondered if one of his teeth wasn’t leaving with it.

While her eyes bored into his, he thought for sure she was going to have him killed, and a calmness came over him. At least the suffering would be over then. Death…death would be glorious.

Abruptly she smiled at him, as if she knew his thoughts, as if she’d reached into him and taken them out of him, as if she’d stolen them just as she had laid larceny to his body.

“No, I shall not be sending you unto the Fade.”

She leaned down and kissed one of his nipples, then sucked it into her mouth. Her hand drifted over his ribs, then onto his belly.

Her tongue flicked yet and still over his flesh. “You grow gaunt. You need to feed, do you not?”

She worked her way down his body, kissing and sucking. And then it happened quickly. The salve. Her getting up on top of him. That hideous merging of their bodies.

When he closed his eyes and turned his head, she slapped him once…twice…many more times. But he refused to look at her, and she was not strong enough to force his face around, even when she grabbed onto one of his ears.

As he denied her his eyes, her weeping grew as loud as the slap of her flesh against his hips. When it was over, she left in a swirl of silk, and not long thereafter the chains were released.

The slave eased himself up on one forearm and wiped his mouth. Looking down at his blood on his hand, he was surprised that it was still red. He felt so soiled, it wouldn’t have been a shock to find it some kind of rusted brown.

He rolled off the bed, still groggy from the darts, and found the corner that he always went to. He sat with his back to the juncture of the walls and curled his legs up against his chest so his heels were tight to his male parts.

Sometime later he heard a struggle outside his cell, and then the guards pushed a small female inside. She fell in a heap, but launched herself at the door as it closed.

“Why?” she yelled. “Why am I punished?”

The slave rose to his feet, not knowing what to do. He hadn’t seen a female other than the Mistress since he’d woken up in captivity. This one was a maid of some sort. He remembered her from before….

Blood hunger rose in him as he caught her scent. After all the Mistress had done to him, he couldn’t see her as someone to drink from, but this diminutive female was different. He was suddenly dying of thirst, his body’s needs coming out in a chorus of shouts and demands. He took lurching steps toward the maid, feeling nothing but instinct.

The female pounded on the door, but then seemed to realize she was not alone. When she turned around and saw who she was locked in with, she screamed.

The slave was nearly overcome by his drinking urge, but he forced himself away from her and scrambled back to where he had been. He crouched down, wrapping his arms around his trembling, naked body to keep it in place. Turning his face to the wall, he tried to breathe…and found himself on the verge of weeping over the animal he had been reduced to.

After a while the female stopped screaming, and after even longer she said, “’Tis truly you, is it not? The boy from the kitchen. The one who carried ale.”

He nodded without looking at her.

“I had heard rumors you had been taken here, but I…I believed the others who said you’d died during your transition.” There was a pause. “You are so large. Like a warrior. Why is that?”

He had no idea. He didn’t even know what he looked like, as there wasn’t a mirror in the cell.

The female cautiously approached him. When he looked up at her, she was eyeing his tattooed bands.

“Truly, what is done to you here?” she whispered. “They say…terrible things are done to the male who dwells within this place.”

When he said nothing, she sat beside him and softly touched his arm. He flinched at the contact and then realized he was soothed by it.

“I am here to feed you, am I not? That is why I was brought here.” After a moment she peeled his hand free from his leg and put her wrist into his palm. “You must drink.”

He wept then, wept from the generosity of her, from the kindness, from the feel of her gentle hand as it rubbed over his shoulder…the only touch he had welcomed in…forever.

Finally she pressed her wrist to his mouth. Though his fangs unsheathed and he craved her, he did naught but kiss her tender skin and refuse. How could he take from her what was regularly taken from him? She was offering, but she was forced into it, a prisoner of the Mistress just as he was.

The guards came in later. When they found her cradling him, they seemed shocked, but they were not rough with her. As she left she looked at the slave, concern on her face.

Moments later the darts came at him, so many through the door it was as if he were pelted with gravel. As he slid into oblivion, he thought vaguely that the frantic nature of the attack didn’t bode well.

When he awoke, the Mistress was standing over him, furious. There was something in her hand, but he couldn’t see what it was.

“Think you too good for the gifts I give you?”

The door opened and the young female’s limp body was brought in. As the guards let go, she flopped onto the floor like so many rags. Dead.

The slave screamed in fury, the roar rebounding off the stone cell walls, magnifying to an earsplitting thunder. He strained against the steel bands until they cut him to the bone, until one of the posts cracked with a squeal…and still he roared.