Page 36 of Feeding Beauty (The Lost Girls #5)

I’m emptied in an instant. My vision runs red and pink. My hand shoots out, grasping a stranger’s face. My mouth opens before I can stop myself. Power drags into me and I almost choke on the relief. He groans under my grip, pleasure tangled with pain.

My name echoes from somewhere far away.

As my vision clears slightly I see patrons stagger. Some collapse.

Enough sense returns to me that I release the man I've been feeding on. He drops to the ground like a bag of bones.

I have no idea if I’ve killed him, but I can’t stop to check.

The instant I stop feeding, my body convulses.

The rush that had filled me vanishes, leaving every nerve flayed raw.

My skin burns cold, my insides claw at themselves, desperate, empty.

The hunger isn’t gnawing anymore. It’s ripping me apart.

I seize a woman and yank her close. Her scream cuts short against me as more power floods in. It does not fill me. Nothing does.

I am ripped away, hauled through the air.

The searing heat on my exposed waist tells me it’s Talon. The blistering touch jerks me back to some clarity.

We crash onto the platform by the front door and he lets me down. My ribs convulse. Pain throbs with a new rhythm.

Talon’s mouth moves at my ear, but I can’t hear him. All I catch is the thunder of my pulse hammering in my skull, the blood rushing so loud it drowns the world.

Snow grips the table, her eyes wide, as if she doesn’t know me. Ariel holds her forehead as she tries to shake off her daze.

Their faces are masks of horror. The people who were my family now look at me like I’m nothing but a nightmare in their midst.

I fed off them.

Oh fae lords.

I hurt my friends.

My throat locks. I cannot breathe. My stomach twists and heaves. Shame crashes over me, heavier than the hunger, sharper than the pain. I clutch my chest, but it does nothing.

All eyes are fastened on me.

The weight of their stares crushes me, pinning me in chains of judgment and fear. My breath stutters, my knees buckle.

They know.

Succubus.

The word pulses in the air. I hear it in the mutters. In the silence. In the recoil of bodies pulling back.

Every drop of hope I carried for the last month drains away.

There’s no hiding anymore. No future. I’m a monster exposed, and the way everyone stares at me makes me want to shrivel up and die.

In one moment, I’ve lost everything, and I may have left dead bodies on the floor of Poison Apple. I’m not sure.

They are going to string me up and burn me. At the very least they’ll exile me like Mal. I search the spot where I last spotted the vampire, but she’s disappeared.

I’m dragged out into the night by Talon. I’ve lost everything except for one thing.

The hunger.

“Mal was there.” My voice scrapes out like sandpaper as Talon drags me into the apartment. “She was in the crowd.”

He doesn’t answer. Doesn’t even look at me. Just drops to his knees beside the couch and pulls out his old leather bag, seemingly searching for something.

“My curse…it left my body.” My breath hitches, my chest burning with more than exhaustion. “I didn’t even know I could do that.”

And it happened in front of everyone. I sucked off the entire room of the Poison Apple as I tried to drink some of them dry.

The looks of shock on Ariel and Snow’s faces burn inside of me.

In one stupid, rash moment, I lost my friends, my job, my new life.

Because now that it’s out I’m a Succubus, no one will want to come within thirty feet of me.

Hell, since my identity as the Rosari Princess was also outed, it may even get back to the kingdom. If it does, there’s really no going home.

Still nothing from Talon. He reaches into the bag and retrieves something new.

Black gloves. Fine leather. Unmistakably his size.

When the hell did he get those?

He slides them on and grabs my elbow, hauling me toward the bathroom.

The motion sends a scream through my starving body, like every muscle is shearing away from bone.

My legs barely work. I’m shaking so badly I’m vibrating out of my own skin.

Hunger gnaws deeper like acid, eating me alive from the inside. My vision tunnels in and out.

He sets me on the toilet seat and lifts my crop top so it rests up on the swells of my breasts.

My skin prickles with the painful awareness of his closeness, but Talon moves with mechanical precision.

There’s no hunger in him now. No heat. Just cold, grim focus as he kneels and starts working antiseptic into the burns his hands left on my waist.

I hiss at the sting, but it’s nothing compared to the ache gnawing at my center. The real pain is beneath. Deeper, spreading. My soul is devouring itself, cell by cell, thought by thought. I'm an empty pit lined with teeth, clawing for something to fill it.

I fed a little, but not enough. Not even close.

Talon is silent as he digs shards of glass from my knees, his jaw tight. My power used to heal this kind of thing. Now? I’m too empty to knit skin, too drained to even stop the slow trickle of blood down my calves.

“What was Mal doing there?” My voice breaks on her name. Even now, with my body collapsing in on itself, my mind fixates on her. The shape of her. The look she gave me. She did this. She did this on purpose. She must have.

“I don’t know,” Talon says, clipped and distracted as he tapes gauze into place. His touch is careful, almost tender, but his tone is steel.

“You sound like you don’t care.” The words come out harsh.

My hands won’t stop shaking, and their wide-eyed stares keep replaying in my head, as vivid as if I were still standing in that room.

There’s no room for grace or softness left in me.

“Like you don’t care that I blew up our new lives in spectacular fucking fashion. ”

I hate myself for how bitter it sounds, how desperate.

Talon finishes with my bandages and stands without a word. I trail after him into my bedroom, dazed.

My knees buckle under me, vision tunneling as the hunger gnashes harder, meaner, hungrier.

Not just in my gut now. In my veins. In my bones.

In the hollow of my skull, where thoughts used to be.

I can’t think. Can’t breathe. There’s only the need.

I’m burning through my own existence trying to stay upright.

Talon opens the drawer like he’s reaching for a gun. But it’s worse.

The collar.

“What are you doing?” My heart sinks as he holds it in his gloved hand.

“My job.” His tone is flat as stone.

“No. I—I?—”

“You have to feed,” he says, like it’s a fact as immutable as gravity. “And we’re going back to the club. Right now.”

Panic rises sharp and hot in my chest, choking off air.

“I’m not going to feed on anyone but you.

Never again.” The vow anchors me. I’ve already chosen.

I let him inside me, and that choice is carved into bone now.

I won’t share my body, my hunger, my curse with anyone else, even if it starves me hollow.

For a moment I can’t remember if my parents found Talon to protect everyone from me, or me from myself?

Even in their fear of what I'd become, they searched for a solution, spent a fortune to keep me safe. Would they recognize this starving, stubborn creature I've become?

Would they still see their little princess in this Lost Girl covered in piercings and rage? Part of me hopes not. Part of me desperately hopes they would.

Talon's face is unreadable as he closes the space between us, taking off his gloves.

Part of me relaxes as he does so.

He’s not planning on making me do anything I don’t want to. Otherwise, he would have left the gloves on to haul me off to the club like he threatened.

The collar clips around my neck, and his bare hand holds it, melting the clasp shut.

My pulse beats frantic against the cool band.

“You will,” he says. Quiet. Unmoving. Unshakable. “Because you’re dying.” His grip is unyielding.

And he’s not wrong. Something about the ricochet off Mal has thrown the power of my curse...off. It doesn’t even burn the way hunger usually does, sharp and bright and urgent. This is something darker. Deeper. It feels like decay.

Like I’ve poisoned myself.

But I can’t go back. Not after him . Not after what we had. I won’t crawl back into bed with strangers. I won’t sink my curse into random bodies just to patch over the hole that keeps ripping open.

I’d rather burn out from the inside than let another stranger touch me again. I’d rather starve than let someone else’s energy fill me.

Talon puts his gloves back on and pulls me out into the night.