September Moon (Alexa O'Brien, Huntress #8)(81)

“Do you think you’re so powerful that even I will succumb to your wiles? Get over yourself.”

“You already have. A few times now.” My control was slipping. I watched Gabriel bite into his victim’s wrist and groaned with the effort it took to keep my focus on the fallen angel holding me.

Getting Falon to release me was my goal, but dammit if I didn’t enjoy his reaction. Knowing I could get to the fallen angel gave me an arrogant satisfaction. Too bad I didn’t have the courage to try such a thing on Shya. He frightened me too much.

“You want me,” I whispered, grinding against the bulge in Falon’s pants. I was going to really hate myself for that later. “Let me go, and nobody has to know how bad you want to take me right here.”

My movement was subtle, the barest of motions, but it was enough. Holding both of my wrists tightly in one hand, Falon grabbed a handful of my hair with the other and jerked my head back.

His breath was hot on my skin when he said, “I want what’s between your legs because you’re a manipulative bitch. That doesn’t mean I want you. In fact, it only makes me hate you more. If that’s even possible.”

The weight of Arys’s gaze was heavy upon me. He’d watched me manipulate others, like Jenner, and he had enjoyed it. He wasn’t enjoying it now. I was willing to bet it had something to do with Falon’s reaction to me when I’d taken his blood in Vegas. Arys had watched Falon kiss me in a moment of power-influenced passion. It wasn’t real, but that hardly mattered. The action spoke for itself.

Falon did a good job containing himself. It wasn’t good enough. Shya eyed us with anger burning in his red eyes. He intervened with a shot of power that threw Falon and I apart. I landed on my knees just a few feet from where Gabriel licked the blood from his victim’s wrist.

“You may have power over vampires, but you do not have power over my demons,” Shya hissed, giving me a shake as I tried to get my feet under me.

“Falon isn’t a demon,” I challenged, unable to just shut up. Shya brought out the worst in me. “If he can’t resist me on his own, then he deserves to be manipulated.”

Shya was furious. So much so that he grabbed the arm of Gabriel’s victim and thrust her bleeding wrist in my face.

“Let’s test your resistance, shall we?”

The woman practically oozed lust. Blood dripped from the wound, taunting me. I never stood a chance. With her bleeding arm inches away, the last of the fight went out of me. I simply wasn’t strong enough to resist after what I’d recently been through. I needed it.

Ravenous and crazed, I snatched her arm from Shya and ran my tongue over the bleeding punctures before biting deep into her flesh. Regret would come later. In that moment I was lost to the bloodlust. It consumed me completely.

Blood coated my tongue, tangy and warm. I drew hard on her sex-charged energy. Right away I felt the rejuvenation begin. It flowed through me, strengthening where I was weak while sating the hunger. It wasn’t enough. The vampire within me needed to take everything she had to give. I took her down beneath me, unmindful of those who watched. There was nothing but me and her.

I went for her throat while she clung to me in a mesmerized state of arousal and oblivion. The euphoria held me in its grasp, taking me to heights I never wanted to come down from.

Shya put a quick end to that. He grabbed my hair and violently flung me off the woman. To keep me from going at her again, he surrounded her with an energy circle.

Wiping blood from my chin, I glared daggers at him. I was still riding the high, and it was difficult to concentrate on reality after having been so brutally brought back to it.

At Shya’s command, two demons from the pool orgy came forward to fetch the injured woman. They carried her off, into the house. I watched her go, feeling strangely detached.

“At least I got something out of you,” Shya sneered. “As long as I’ve got you here, I’m going to take you for everything I can.” He extended a hand, pointing at Arys across the yard. “Arys, please join your wolf and I at the fire.”

Shya’s wings flared with a loud snap that hurt my ears. The demons holding Arys released him. Many of them had ceased to pay attention to us. They were all engrossed in their sin of choice.

Arys swept me into his arms and buried his face in my hair. “I’m not leaving you again. I don’t care how dangerous it is to be together. It’s more dangerous to be apart.”

Senses heightened from the feed, my emotions were on overdrive. I held onto Arys as if he were my lifeline, which in many ways he was. I concentrated on the way he felt pressed against me and the sound of his devotion as he murmured in my ear. Just in case we were parted, I needed to memorize these details.

“There will be time for the dramatic lovers’ reunion later. If you don’t somehow find a way to f*ck up what happens next.” Radiating condescension, Shya turned his back on us and stalked over to the fire, forcing us to follow or risk his wrath.

He stood outside the pentagram of fire. He motioned for us to stand beside him, which we did, albeit with great suspicion. A few demons gathered around the exterior of the large circle.

A glance back toward the pool revealed Falon preventing a hotheaded Gabriel from joining us. Good call. Whatever Shya had planned, there was no way a newbie vampire with power like Gabriel’s could handle it.