Page 2

I IGNORE MY OWN INNER voice when Warrick scoops me up into his arms and carries me the remaining twenty feet to the storage tent.

The heat of his body soaks through the thin material of my oversized cardigan and long skirt. It prickles my skin, making me too aware of every inch of him touching me. Of his scent.

God, he smells so good. Like night flowers, campfire, and warm skin. Everything masculine and dark. I am powerless to resist. Even with my mind screaming to be stronger, everything else melts into his hold. My only attempt at defiance is not burying my face into his neck and nuzzling in.

The tent stinks. It’s a hot box of mold, dust, and sweat. Crates of props and furniture for the shows are stuffed along the walls with the bigger, more used items scattered around the center.

I don’t have an act. I run Bloom’s Apothecary with Mama — mainly alone now — but Warrick and Aiden’s mirror is tucked to one side. An upright oval piece of glass framed in a soft, brown oak. There is nothing remarkable about it, except its purpose.

Warrick takes me to it and the rickety chair placed in front of it. It’s the same routine. The same layout no matter which city or country we’re in. The mirror. The chair. The creature setting me down on my feet.

His tail loops around his leg and brushes my skirt. I ignore it as I reach for the hem of my cardigan and drag it up over my head rather than undo the tiny pearl buttons.

Warrick never looks away. I am the center of his entire world. The reason for his every breath. He follows my every motion like my movement holds the secrets to the universe. The absolute focus used to be unnerving. It made my cheeks hot with embarrassment. But as I grow older, I like it. I like knowing I hold some power over him for a change. I like that I am the only woman he has ever looked at with such insatiable hunger. Stupid, I know. I’m supposed to deter his attention, not crave it.

Yet, I prolong every second until the air is thick with the musk of his barely contained desire.

The sweater hits the floor at our feet and I lift my gaze to his face, but his unblinking stare devours my breasts through the thin fabric of my tank top. His tongue flicks out between his teeth, I’m guessing to wet lips he doesn’t have, but I’m more fascinated by the way the long, pink appendage divides down the center and runs over the top and bottom set of fangs simultaneously.

His free arm snakes around my center and I’m pulled against him. “I can smell the heat between your sweet thighs, my little human. Can you feel how badly your body wants my knot?”

He’s told me what a knot is. He’s whispered it in my ear while feeding, describing the way he would stretch me around his cock and fill me up with his cum. He’d knot to keep his seed inside to breed me.

And I have never wanted anything more in my life. The filthy image of him pumping me so full he has to contain it with his cock has my panties soaked. My core throbs with a sweet need only he can satisfy.

But he’s in Aiden’s body. He’s wearing a body I shouldn’t even be touching, never mind imagining fucking me until I give him a baby.

“That’s not the deal,” I pant uselessly because I know if he ripped my panties off and pulled me down on his dick, I wouldn’t struggle. I would take every inch and beg him to breed me. But I have to try.

Warrick snickers but doesn’t call me on my bullshit as he turns to the chair.

“Come. I’ve been starving for you all night.”

My cheeks warm at his husky confession. My stomach flips. I do my best to stay focused — neutral and unyielding — but I can’t lie that this is something I too look forward to.

Instead, I move to stand between the wide V of his knees and wait to get pulled into his lap.

But he keeps me there with his hands resting on my waist.

“You were late tonight,” he tells me quietly. “You know the penalty.”

The haze of lust dissipates as his words register.

“Mama—”

His tail snaps up and smacks my backside. Hard. Once. The attack burns a raw rope across both cheeks, prickling the skin and tearing a yelp from me and sending me forward into his chest. My hands catch on his broad shoulders.

“No excuses. You promised to take care of me and in return, I won’t consume your brother, did you forget?”

Resisting the urge to rub my injuries, I stare hard into his beautiful features with hot tears choking my words.

“No,” I bite out through my teeth.

“Do you want me to add pain to his transformation for every minute you kept me waiting?”

Venomous hatred burns my throat. “No.”

Despite my brewing fury, I don’t stop the twist of his fingers in my top straps. I don’t say a word when they are dragged down my arms. I’m perfectly still as he bares my breasts for the first time.

Both mounds spill out into the night chill. Tips puckered knots, eye level to him. To his fangs that he dips forward as if to taste.

“Warrick,” I gasp without thinking.

My brain can only process how sweet the pain of his teeth sinking into each nipple and tugging would be. I can only hold my breath and pray to feel his hands cradling and squeezing, and dragging his talons over my flesh.

Marking me.

Claiming me as his.

He grants part of my wish and cups my breasts in his warm palms, testing the weight. Rolling the nipples beneath his thumbs. Pinching them. Tugging.

My knees almost buckle under the heavy rush of arousal. My stomach seizes and I’m sinking my nails into his flesh, warning him not to stop.

Heavy lids lift, and I’m pinned with the full assault of his eyes watching my every reaction. My every attempt to keep from making a sound even when he leans back in and flicks the right one with the tip of his tongue.

I have never been a strong person, but I never realized just how weak I actually am until this very moment because that simple gesture has my walls collapsing. My foundation rocking.

“Warrick...” The whimpering plea is unmistakable, as is the bow in my back, driving my breasts closer for more.

My demon tilts up one corner of his mouth in the only show of triumph before sneaking his tongue for another taste.

My hands are in his hair, guiding him. Keeping him in place. I’m so lost in the sight of him raking his teeth over the peak, nipping that I jump when his tail slides under my skirt, grazing my skin with the barbed knots.

It slithers up my leg. Tightens around my thigh. The tip — shaped like the smooth, flat head of a snake — nudges the crotch of my panties. Presses against my center. Rubs up the mound to press into my clit, dragging the knots up my soaked core.

My eyes bulge even as my body is already driving down, meeting the pressure.

“Warrick ... wait...”

“Shh,” he soothes, lifting one hand off my breast to finish dragging the rest of my top down and over my hands. “You will never understand the pain I suffer when you’re away from me. I crave you with a mindless hunger that nothing else will ever satiate. You are all that keeps me alive.”

His words whisper like silk across the flesh he’s bared. Each one burns where he’s nuzzling my neck — feeding. Inhaling my heat, my arousal through the palms of his hands kneading my breasts, rolling my nipples.

In the nine years I’ve been feeding him, it’s never been like this. Each time before, he only ever needed a small sliver of flesh and my arousal to be satisfied. That bit of skin increased the older we got. He needed more of me exposed. More of me to touch and lick.

But never like this. He’s never stripped me. Never had his tail rubbing my core. Getting me so close.

“Sit,” he commands into my ear.

I start to perch on his lap as I have in the past, but he has other ideas when I’m turned away from him. I’m made to face the mirror and my flushed reflection. The woman on the other side stares back with darkened eyes banded in a ring of soft green. She takes in my exposed breasts, the bunched tank wrinkled around my waist and stops at the tail shifting between my thighs. The hands that slip around from behind to take my waist and pull me back.

“Lift your skirt, Seraphine,” he says.

I know I should say no. This isn’t part of the deal we made all those years ago. But the woman in the mirror has her hands twisted in the soft material and she’s dragging the hem up her calves. Over her knees. She’s not stopping until I have a clear view of her panties — simple, white cotton.

From between her lips perfectly outlined through the fabric, his tail rubs in slow strokes. I’m transfixed.

Warrick tugs me down. My back is nestled against his chest. My knees are pulled over both of his and spread wide. Spread so there is no missing the dark, wet patch in between.

“What ... what are you doing?” I breathe, finally finding my voice.

“This is your penance,” he whispers into the dark strands falling over my ear. “For starving me of you for even a minute.”

I don’t know what I’m supposed to say when his palms are back at my breasts. When they’re squeezing and lifting them. The contact alone has my entire body bowing reflexively into the caress. The motion grinds my ass into his erection and his groan sings through me with the potency of warm liquor. From between his long, pale fingers, my nipples are a vivid pink. The sensitive peaks are pinched and tugged, sending my head back against his shoulder with a low groan. My eyelids sweep closed.

“Don’t look away,” he urges. “I want you to watch your body feed me. I want you to watch me take what’s mine.”

I will my eyes open in time to watch the head of his tail disappear beneath the elastic of my panties.

“Wait,” I choke out.

But the smooth, flared head has already breached me. It pushes past my entrance with zero resistance. My body welcomes it in. I take every textured knot deep into my untouched channel, coating it with arousal while its owner palms my breasts and stares into my eyes through the mirror.

I expected pain and discomfort, but all I feel is each knot pressing into an unfamiliar place that has me seeing stars. Has me gripping the armrests while my hips thrash to meet every thrust.

“There’s a good girl,” he drawls into my ear. He pinches and rolls my nipples hard enough to tear a cry of pain from me. “Take what’s yours.”

I hear the words as if from a great distance through a heavy fog. They flow under the loud clang of bells resounding between my ears as he sends one hand down my shuddering belly to join his tail beneath my bunched skirt.

In the mirror, I watch him disappear to the wrist. See the outline of his knuckles rise beneath the cotton. Then he’s at my mound, fingers parting my lips to rub my clit.

“Warrick!” I sob.

“Yes,” he groans into the side of my neck. “Feed me. Give me everything.”

I would have given him my soul in that moment as the world goes fuzzy around the edges and tips me sideways into a high, shrilling wail. My body convulses as it releases. As it cums on his tail with such intensity I might have blacked out.