Page 28 of The Midnight Order (The Thorngray Vampires Duet #1)

Silver

“Part your thighs for me, Sweet Silver. Let me look at your perfect cunt,” Jasper says, and I gasp as I hurry to listen.

There’s enough venom in my veins to knock out a dead horse as I heed his command and await further instruction.

He lays me back on the counter like I’m his meal, but I was already his meal.

Now, I’m more.

His hands make quick work of splaying over my breasts. The breeze blowing through the open sliding glass doors to our left causes my nipples to grow even harder as he fondles them.

“You’re so beautiful,” he murmurs, running his hands over my stomach, turning them against my flesh to grasp onto my sides with a subtle squeeze.

Having their venom in my blood is tantalizing, addictive. It makes me wonder if it’ll be the same if I trigger my gene.

“Jasper,” I plead, the heat inside me becoming more than I can bear.

“Let me take my time to savor you. It’s the least I can do after the way you offered yourself to me.”

No matter how much attention I get in this house or how many times they make me come, I’m always so greedy for more. Half of me knows it’s chemical; it’s from their bite.

The other half of me knows that while they all haven’t fallen for me, I’m slowly falling for each of them.

Last night, things with Lowell felt like nothing could stop them.

Now, it feels like that’s a lie.

“What I wouldn’t give to be the first to sink into your pretty pussy,” Jasper snarls, tugging me from whirling thoughts of blood and fangs.

His statement, although unfair to me, only serves to further inflame my blood.

Inky tendrils of venom make their way through my body like curling wisps of dark shadows, and I writhe against their touch as Jasper finally parts my folds and slides his fingers over my clit.

“He’s waited so long for you,” he whispers, and the words have something brewing in my stomach. Something that feels like… satisfaction.

Knowing that Lowell has roamed this world alone, waiting for me, shouldn’t satisfy me, but it does.

Jasper’s expert fingers work me over until I’m a panting, mumbling mess. Then, he sinks two fingers inside me, and I lift my head off the granite counter, which is slowly becoming slicker as my body grows hotter, and watch where his fingers plunge into my depths, only to be pulled out again.

“One day, this will be my cock.”

My mouth drops open as a stuttered exhale makes its way out of me as I hold the next one, feeling my body peaking into something electrical the faster he fucks me with his fingers.

And his words aren’t helping.

“I will sink into you and never return,” he adds gruffly.

I flick my eyes up to his red ones that beam at me from behind his mask. “Soon.”

He grins. “You’re right, Silver. Soon.”

I register Lowell as he enters the kitchen before I spot him in my peripheral vision. His presence is like an overwhelming cloud of heat.

There are still ghosts in his eyes as he leans against the fridge. One booted foot kicks up, and he crosses his arms and watches Jasper tease the venom out of my system.

“Do you want me to stop?” Jasper asks, and I’m grappling for words when I realize he’s speaking to Lowell, not me.

“Whatever my little lamb wants,” Lowell replies, his tone dark and sinful as it rakes my eardrums.

My nipples harden to peaked points, and my breathing grows erratic as he and I lock eyes.

Jasper never lets up, never slows down, and it has my toes curling against the side of the island.

“Do you want me to stop?” This question is tossed at me.

Lowell claimed me, and even though this isn’t sex, it is sexual, and Lowell’s given me control.

Even while his feral eyes say he wants me to himself, there’s a contradiction flickering there, too, that speaks to how hard it would be for him to stop.

I get the distinct feeling Lowell is much darker than he lets on. It’s like he’s still hiding things from me, even though he told me a bit of his long past.

“No!” I finally manage. “Lowell,” I whimper, reaching for him.

I don’t know exactly what I want, but I know I want him closer.

He kicks off the fridge and trudges closer, his hand coming down and splaying over my nipple as his eyes grow curious.

“Are you going to come, little lamb?” he asks, leaning down and hovering his lips over mine.

For a suspended moment, it feels like he’s using my breath to keep himself fed.

“Yes,” I squeak out as Jasper grinds the heel of his palm over my clit.

I wonder if part of the reason I’m so unsatisfied with what they’ve given me is because I want it all.

I want them to use every hole in my body while they feed off my blood like the beasts they are.

The picture builds in my mind, and Lowell is there, sunken deep into my center and thrusting relentlessly as I scream my pleasure to the world.

Lowell’s lips find mine, and they’re what breaks the dam.

My orgasm washes over me like summer rain, coating Jasper’s hand and making Lowell growl into my kiss.

Long after I feel Jasper leave the room, Lowell and I are locked in a kiss that feels all-consuming, transpiring.

“I don’t know how I’ll go forward with you, little lamb, when I’m so broken. But I know I need to find a fucking way.”

I’m at a loss for words. I cup his face with my hand, feeling my heat sink into his cold skin.

“There’s no going back to a world without you,” he whispers, and my eyes fill with tears that I leave unshed.

Every moment with them feels like I’m building toward something.

Then, I’m left unsatisfied when it doesn’t happen.

I hope he finds a way through, a way to navigate the memories, because I agree with him.

There’s no going back to before.

Lowell sits me up on the counter. He snags my clothes off the floor from where they’d fallen and hands them to me with a sly grin.

The ghosts haunting his eyes are further away now, but there’s still an awkward way he fumbles about that tells me he’s still reeling.

“Sorry about earlier,” he says, his eyes on his boots.

“We all have our demons. You certainly may have more than your fair share after nine hundred years.” I hop off the counter with Lowell’s help, and I don’t drop the hand he offered me in assistance.

Instead, I hold on to it steadfastly.

Lowell clears his throat. “I know that, but I come with much more baggage than anyone you’ve ever met, Silver. You keep making light of everything you encounter here with us, but I know it’s a lot.”

I’ve lost track of all the odd encounters and the list of things I’m up against in this manor. Now, it’s becoming my reality. My normal.

“I don’t want you to think I’m making light of things, but I just don’t want you to feel bad for being you, Lowell.”

He gives a slight nod before sighing and rubbing the back of his neck with one hand.

My tongue itches to ask about Ossana, but I refrain. It’s too raw.

“Jasper’s going out of the country for a few days,” I say instead, and Lowell’s eyes narrow at me.

“Yes, he is. What about it?”

“I wanted to go with him.”

His glare turns unabashedly carnal. “No.”

“Excuse me?” Part of me wants to shout at him and remind him that my asking is only a courtesy because I belong to no one.

But the look in his eyes reminds me that I’m mistaken; I belong to him.

“I said no. Is there another language you’d like it said in for you to comprehend it better?”

“No, I was?—”

“Nein,” he says, cutting me off.

“Lowell,” I warn.

“Non,” he adds, ruefully tugging his finger to his lips as if thinking of more ways to deny me.

I cross my arms over my chest and let him continue his charade.

“Nej, Nei, nee,” he continues, and I’m finding it hard to keep my mouth shut with this burning anger flaring in my chest.

No one tells me what to do.

I’ve always taken care of myself. I belong to myself.

“Are you done?”

“I don’t know. Do you understand my answer?”

“Lowell, I wasn’t asking. I was letting you know I was going with Jasper.”

He takes a massive step toward me, effectively caging me into the island as his hands grip the granite on either side.

I hear it creak under his powerful hold.

He leans down, his nose touching mine, his breath fanning my lips.

My heart speeds.

His fangs glisten in the kitchen’s lights when he opens his mouth to speak. “I said no. You are mine, and you will listen to me.”

I swallow. I wish I weren’t growing aroused by his proximity. I wish even more so that he couldn’t scent that same arousal.

“You can come with us,” I offer weakly. “He’s going to see if he can find out more about me. I should be allowed to go, Lowell.”

His features don’t crack. There’s no weakening him to my plight.

“It makes me crazy to think about you leaving this manor and being away from me.”

My breathing hitches at his admission. This is where I lose the argument.

He’s still teasing his lips over mine, and the moment is heating between us. The air is growing riddled with electricity that our connection creates, and I can’t breathe through it.

“Come with me.”

“I can’t. I don’t leave Blackmoore.”

“Jasper said that you could. Especially now that you’ve found me.”

“Jasper gives me no orders, little lamb.”

“I know that. I was only saying…”

My words die as his hand wraps around the front of my throat. A hiss leaves him, and it’s the first time I’ve genuinely witnessed the threat they pose.

“I don’t leave. I’ve never left. This is my home.”

I manage a nod in his hold, and he loosens it some.

As he realizes what he’s done, the ghosts return to his eyes, and he backs away from me.

“I’m no good for you. But I can’t let you go.”

A long silence stretches between us, where I’m merely trying to control my emotions and breathing.

“I don’t want you to let me go.” I rub my hand over my throat where it aches.

I don’t know if the way he held me or the fact that he relinquished his touch caused the ache. I’m not sure if I want to know the answer.

“Then you’re more ignorant than I thought you were.”

He storms off, leaving the open sliding glass doors before I can even blink the first tear down my cheek.

I don’t know how I will ever be what he needs or what they need if I can’t break through to Lowell.

I know one thing, however: I’m getting on that plane with Jasper.