Page 27

My gaze snapped to hers.

“Not at all,” Nox said. “Is it strange for you, Your Majesty?”

“A little,” she admitted, her cheeks coloring with delicate pink. “At least in the beginning. Isn’t that right, Lew?”

“Once you got it out of your head that in one of those infinite possibilities I could have been your father, I think we got on well enough, my queen.”

Her cheeks darkened and she muttered, “Not helping.”

His smirk deepened. “Then perhaps I should not remind you that I also knew Selena.” He waggled his eyebrows. “In the biblical sense.”

I could only gape at him and hope that I didn’t look as foolish and dumbfounded as I felt. My former alpha. Making sexual innuendo jokes? Mr. Strait-Laced Asshole himself?

Nox started to laugh and then tried to cover his mirth by shifting to a polite cough.

“I’m sorry, but who the fuck are you?” I finally blurted out.

Lew laughed. Easy and smooth. A sound I couldn’t remember him ever making—despite Mallac’s best attempts at lightening our moods. “I’m still the same asshole you remember, don’t worry. But I don’t have to knock heads together this time around. That’s Rik’s job now.”

“Speaking of knocking heads together,” the big man growled with alpha bass. “Get your asses up here or lose your fucking turn. Our queen hungers, and she waits for no one.”

Wait, what? Mentally still reeling, I must have misunderstood his words. Shara had just drained Gerard to unconsciousness. There was only so much room in her stomach. I’d never heard of a queen being able to drain several Blood back-to-back.

Surely Rik didn’t mean⁠—

“And take your clothes off.” She licked her lips, flashing her fangs. “Unless you don’t want me to enjoy you that way. Which is fine, of course, but⁠—”

I damn near broke my own legs stumbling out of my pants as fast as possible. Though Nox still beat me to the bed.

I knelt on one side of her, Nox on the other. Rik remained leaning against the corner column, though he grabbed a couple of pillows to make it a little more comfortable. Like he was settling in for a very long time. Which only confused me even more. Was he not going to participate? Granted, it’d been a damned long time since I’d been in a queen’s bed, but surely the alpha would do more than watch.

“What are you comfortable with?” Shara asked.

“Anything,” Nox said. “Everything.”

I nodded. “Me too.”

Though I must have hesitated ever so slightly. Her gleaming midnight eyes locked on me, silently compelling me to admit the truth. “I love all touch, my queen. I don’t mean this in a derogatory or historical reference, but in a kinky sense. I’m a blood slave. I love to be fed upon.”

Pausing for a moment, I gathered my courage. Not all queens welcomed truth, especially a Blood’s sexual preference. Her mother had understood, and Shara had asked what we were comfortable with… “I prefer to be fucked by males. While you feed on me. Endlessly. Please.”

“Goddess,” she breathed out, her voice shaking.

I braced for her to say she’d changed her mind. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t take a Blood who’d served her mother. A Blood who’d tasted the queen of Rome. Even if Shara’s own mother had sent me to her. Even if all of Marne Ceresa’s blood had been pulled out of me. Some queens were very particular about what went into—or touched—their food source. Understandably so.

Let alone a Blood who’d rather not fuck their queen at all.

She leaned close, her breath fluttering over my skin. “I’m sorry. I can’t wait.”

Her fangs jammed into me, sending a cataclysmic wave of pleasure rolling through my entire body. Blasted to queendom come. That fast. That easily. Though the real bliss was her lips on my skin. Feeling the pull of her swallows, the eager rush of my blood rising to her will. The heat of her body against mine. So long. Goddess.

Since I’d felt. Anything.

Touched. Anything. Anyone. Held. Felt a heartbeat against my own.

Let alone breathed the warm scent of magic and power flowing from my queen.

Every swallow of my blood made her stronger. I fed her. I fueled her. My heart pumped harder, pushing as much as possible through my veins. Making every drop available. And somehow, by goddess, she drank me down as easily as she’d drained Gerard.