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“But—” he protested again, and I silenced him with a look.

“Just tell me where they go.”

Catherine set her lips together as I placed the wet, slimy creatures on her, and they nuzzled around, attaching quickly onto her pale skin, hanging down the fine curve between her white throat and her creamy breasts.

I stood beside the bed as she lay there, the leeches like dark marks on her skin, reminding me of the marks I made on her hips and ass when I took her. The leeches were swelling now, sucking her blood, their bellies getting fat on her blood.

I felt another flush of angry rage, and I had to tighten my fist in my pocket, my eyes glued on the leeches.

Jealous of a godsdamn leech.

But I was.

The way they sucked, got fat off her blood.

I saw my wife swallow convulsively, her small hands clutching the sheets. There was a line of sweat all along her neck, the beads standing out like crystalline drops.

I felt my cock hardening in my pants, sudden fierce need for her raging at me.

The leech on the top curve of her breast was getting fat and engorged with her blood.

Fuck. That’smygodsdamn wife, which means her blood is mine, too.

Suddenly I pounced on top of her, bending close and I ripped into the leech, crushing the body in my mouth so the corpse would fall easily off her. The blood the leech had stolen from my wife spurted across her in a vivid scarlet splash, and she shrieked. Her pounding heartbeat only made me more ravenous, and I spat the leech’s body out, moving to the next one, and then the next, chewing up each one, rending its body apart in my mouth and spitting out the creatures onto the floor.

When I was done I cleaned my mouth out with some whiskey and watched her fair skin, the pink marks flush and bright where the leeches had been.

“My lord, that is not how the treatment is supposed to go,” Dr. Bertram said disapprovingly.

“I don’t care,” I said. “No slug is going to get fat offmywife. What other treatments do you have?”

The older man looked disgruntled. “Those are leeches, not slugs, my lord,” he said. “The next treatment is bloodletting. Simple and effective. It will stabilize your wife’s humors so she’ll be prepared to receive your seed.”

Dr. Bertram then rustled around in his bag and came to stand beside me with his knives out, the sharp implements pointed toward Catherine’s frightened face. I snatched the equipment from him.

“I’ll do that, too.”

“My—my lord, but you don’t know how to do it.”

I ignored him and impatiently moved to pass my own knife through the fire.

“You old sawbones always think you know everything. Just give me the basin and run along to Cook. She’ll give you something to eat.”

He perked up and left, shutting the door behind him.

My Kitten was looking at me, her eyes even wider.

“I d-don’t believe you know the first thing about it,” she said.

“Silence,” I replied sternly.

I placed the slim knife at her shoulder, feeling her tense, a muscle in her throat working.

“Stay still,” I ordered.

Then I took the knife and sliced across her shoulder and down her arm, my eyes riveted to the thin line of blood that sprung to the surface, how it contrasted with her pale skin and the pristine white sheets on her bed.

I put the basin under her arm, watching with fascination as the little drops rolled down her arm, gathering in the crook of her elbow, dropping into the pan with tiny littlepings.