erect cock inside me as quickly as you can.”
Her words had made it only more important that he bury himself inside. Every breath was bringing him close to release. There was something about the erotic smell of her cunny, of scents he could not describe, but that were feminine and lush and appealing, and that had him on the brink of orgasm.
He threw aside the pretense at being submissive, and he pulled her into his embrace. Fighting and warrior exercises had made him strong. Standing, he could lift her to straddle his cock, and he impaled her on his rigid spike.
She laughed. Her eyes changed to a vivid red, and she rode him until she tore at his neck with her teeth and ravaged his back with her nails. Climax after climax took her, then he surrendered to his orgasm. Laughing, she pulsed her cunny around him, sucking him dry with her muscles. His legs collapsed beneath him and he let them both fall to the ground.
She leapt up to her feet while he was still gasping for breath.
“I will name you Lukos, and your beast shall be the wolf. You shall be a predator, sleek and swift, without mercy. You shall be a beautiful beast, my pet. And you will put behind you your mortal name, your mortal ties. You will give everything up—”
“Including pleasure,” he grumbled.
She smiled, eyes narrowed, her thick black lashes batting playfully. “A small price.”
“After that bout I know it is a great sacrifice.”
“Do not flatter.” She waved away his words, then went to a table in the corner of the vaulted chamber. She dipped her blade into a gold dish of hot water. She stroked it along his head. He felt the scrape, the awareness of pain, of sensation. She worked, shearing his hair from his scalp.
“You will lead me there?” he asked. “Through the labyrinth.”
“Ah, there is so much you do not know. That is not the way you meet Lucifer.”
“How then?”
“You will find out very soon. Now, let me finish.”
After his head was shaved to his scalp, she bade him to stand. He lifted his arms as she commanded, and she drew the blade on the skin beneath his arms. She pricked him several times.
He caught his breath as she shaved his chest, then took off the downy line of hair that ran down his abdomen.
“Stay very still,” the demoness murmured.
He stood like a statue as she drew the blade along the plane of his pubis to reach the root of his cock. She cooed and stroked his soft member until it swelled again, and his blood rushed into it. The scrape of blade over his skin aroused him, and made him harder than he’d ever been. He held his breath, afraid the slightest twitch would send the sharp edge into his flesh.
He’d always been proud of his thick, rigid organ. The maidens of Wessex all loved it. He wasn’t ready to lose it.
She gave him a wicked glance, then licked the head, running her tongue around and around as her hands deftly shaved his nether curls. He watched the hair fall to the ground.
Then he shuddered as she drew the shaving blade over his ballocks. She pulled the skin tight to shave and the pressure chased his balls around in their sac.
With a tap on his buttocks, she urged him to bend over, and she swept the sharp edge around his anus to take away the hair there. She cleaned the blade in the water and even shaved his legs, then finally, his arms. She took off the long golden hairs on his forearms.
“There, you are finished.”
She stroked his hard shaft. “And now, your poor sweet organ will no longer be able to play.”
He did not believe that. He refused to. He reached for her breast, but she slapped his hand away. She still held the blade, so he jerked back quickly.
“Now you will take me to Lucifer.”
She gave him a robe of fine scarlet fabric, sensually soft. “Put this on and get down upon your knees.”
His scalp prickled where it had been shaved. His ballocks itched. But he forced himself to ignore the nagging desire to scratch his testicles, to ignore the stinging places where the blade had drawn blood.
“Close your eyes and tip your head back.”
A shudder passed over him. A shadow of wariness. But he had lived for this moment, the moment he became one of Lucifer’s ten apprentices, and he had to trust.
But his lids opened and he relinquished faith—
He saw the countess’s arm move in a smooth arc. The blade penetrated his throat, and her strength drove it through his skin to the bone beneath. He felt a pass of cold, then a spurt of warmth.
Panic flew up like frightened grouse. Blackness swirled in on his vision. He spluttered. He fought to breathe.
She had sliced his throat open.
Her voice sang by his ear. “This, Lukos, is how you meet Lucifer.”
Her hands were held together and a strip of her own petticoat was being wound around her wrists to bind her.
Miranda bit her lip, fighting to stay calm, but her chest heaved on a fit of panicked sniffles. The vampire with the white streak in his hair was tying her up. His breath whispered softly over her neck as he meticulously wrapped the cloth around and around her crossed wrists. His breath was surprisingly…warm.
The shades were drawn, the carriage lamps were not lit. She sat in the gloom, a prisoner of two otherworldly beasts, trapped in shadow. Trapped in fear. To think she’d been terrified of poverty and the workhouse.
Miranda didn’t understand. Why tie her up? They were so strong. Wouldn’t they just plunge in their fangs, drain her blood, and leave her dead?
“Not too tight, Lukos. We don’t wish to harm her pretty hands.”
So the vampire with the white streak in his hair was called Lukos. She had seen her brother’s schoolbooks—Lukos was the Greek word for “wolf.” There were tales she’d heard of men who could transform themselves into wolves. Between the vampire and the werewolf, she would be torn limb from limb.
Wouldn’t she?
“Where were you traveling?”
The mesmerizing, silky baritone of the vampire Zayan compelled her to turn to him. Against her will, she drew in a sharp breath at his stunningly handsome face. She could not fight against the need to stare into his silvery, reflective eyes.
Could she break free, throw herself at the carriage door, and fall out? She ran the risk of being run over by the wheels. But wouldn’t it be better to die that way than by a vampire’s bite? And if she forced the door open, she’d burn the vampires inside.
Zayan’s compulsion was pushed aside and another took hold. Lukos. She sensed anger between them—it was like sparks of lightning in the carriage. Fire shot from their glittering eyes at each other. She had seen gentlemen before a duel, struggling to keep rage beneath a restrained and refined exterior. She could sense things about people—their darkest fears, their most primitive emotions, the things they did not say but that they felt deeply. And she could almost taste the hatred between these demons.
“Good plan, but it won’t work, sweeting,” Lukos growled. “You’d never get the door open. Tell us where you were going.”
It was like a command, and inexplicably the words came to her lips. She couldn’t understand why they wished to know. “To Lord B—” She stopped, battling the compulsion to speak.
She looked at Zayan again, was drawn to him.
He undid his cloak and let it fall from his shoulders. The thick cape was lined with dark, rich fur—an animal’s pelt that was as black as his long, untied hair. His burned skin had now repaired itself. Within moments of being inside the carriage, with the shades drawn,