Page 32 of The Midnight Order (The Thorngray Vampires Duet #1)

Silver

My body is on fire. Liquid flames are ripping at my resolve, and I can’t figure out what would sate the burn: sex, food, blood, revenge? I want it all.

I want to roll in the cold, wet grass of the morning and let it chill to my bones.

I want to run my hands over my aching center as the males who hunger for me stand surrounding the bed, watching, craving.

I moan as I’m placed on the bed in Lowell’s room.

His figure is shadowed and blurry as he walks closer through the open doors from the terrace. “What the hell? What happened?”

“She was drugged in town. Corvin thinks it’s ecstasy. He’s running tests.”

“Of course he is. Why does he think she was drugged?”

Jasper’s apprehension breaks through the haze of whatever’s happening to me as I beg Lowell for a reprieve with a cracked voice. “Please.”

“Shh, little lamb. I’m here.” Lowell eyes Jasper once more.

“He tasted it in her blood.”

Lowell’s eyes grow fiercely dark. “He what?! Does no one listen to me anymore?”

“Hear him out before you set him ablaze. It was a trap. Did he fall into it? Yes. But he’s young, sire.”

Hearing Jasper’s respect for his maker only singes my veins more, causing me to cry out and arch off the bed.

My skin is sticky with a sheen of sweat. It should cool me down, but it’s only causing a warming tickle that I wish I could escape.

“I’ll deal with him later. Leave me.”

Lowell’s eyes are fixed on me as Jasper leaves, tossing one more look over his shoulder with worry flickering across his face before he closes the door on his exit.

“Lowell.” My choked plea causes him to crawl further onto the bed.

He wipes my hair back from my forehead, taking some of the sweat lingering there.

“Oh, little lamb, what did they do to you?”

“Make it stop.”

“I can’t make it stop, but I could feed it a bit. Would you like that?”

I don’t know what he means. I only know I need it to end. If that’s a semblance of his promises, I’d do anything to have it.

I nod.

His red eyes wander over my body.

I can’t sit still. I know I look ridiculous to him because of the way my thighs rub together, trying to work out some of the built-up tension.

Even so, the look in his eyes is tender—a direct contrast to the male I witnessed on the plane that dragged me back to this manor.

“I’m going to touch you.” His hand skims up my inner thigh, and the burn gets worse.

I realize this is why he warned me.

My scream is a release of tension I’ve been begging for since this ache set in hours ago. It was slow building, one I barely noticed after Jasper and I got home from the coffee shop.

“Just let it out, little lamb. Scream all you like.”

He works my shorts down over my hips.

As the air hits my sex, I realize that’s where the burn is emanating from.

He doesn’t torment me more than the drugs already have.

“I’m going to kiss it better.”

I nod, frantically finding him in my hazy vision as I lift my head to watch his tongue lazily drag across my pussy.

I’m breathless. Weightless. Undone completely.

Tension unravels at his will, his tongue the mediator between it and me.

He drags two fingers around the rim of my entrance, testing before pushing them inside.

“Ahh!” My cry is drawn out, languid. Given to him in payment for his gift of reprieve.

As his tongue works my clit over in mind-numbing circles, his fingers hold me hostage in a space where I’m building toward a finale that might be my end.

I don’t care.

I’ll die with Lowell’s mouth on me.

The first orgasm floods me in an overwhelming wave, nearly blinding me with pleasure.

“Lowell,” I growl, my voice sounding inhuman as I grab his head and forbid him from surfacing.

Wrapping my legs around him, I beg for more.

His dark chuckle against my center vibrates, sending a shiver through me.

The second orgasm is ignited when he crooks his fingers against my G-spot.

I’m a shivering, shaking mess when he crawls over me, his mouth glistening with my pleasure, and crashes his mouth to mine.

For a moment, I forget who he is. The fact that he’s the leader of a vampire coven and over nine hundred years old goes out the window as I curl my legs around him and hold him tight as his kiss smolders against my lips, fervent.

“Silver,” he warns, his fiery red eyes looking darker around their edges, reminding me there’s a slayer beneath the surface I don’t want to call out of hiding.

“I’m sorry,” I breathe. Despite that, my pelvis has a mind of its own as it grinds against his hard length that’s pressing into my center.

He said that he would be the one to fuck me first. So, what better time?

“Not like this,” he grits out, but his eyes are heady, like there’s a war going on inside him.

“Like what?!” I coo, digging my heels into his ass as I give him another long drag of my sex over his cock.

“With drugs in your system.”

I stop. It’s like I’ve been doused in cold water. Now that the fog of arousal has lifted, blown away with two mind-blowing orgasms at the hand of this male, I now realize what’s happening around me.

“Drugs,” I repeat, and finally, the gravity of the situation hits my brain.

His kiss keeps me from spiraling, but there’s an apology in it—one I’d rather him not give.

“Who did this to me?” I ask him, emotion stampeding through my tone.

“I don’t know. We’re going to find out.”

“But I was with Jasper. I was with one of you!”

“I know.”

The fact that someone could get to me while I was with one of them is chilling and worrisome. Someone doesn’t want their curse broken, and my death would’ve reached their goal.

“We’ll keep you closer,” he says, with a look in his eyes that suggests he hopes I now understand why he’s kept me so close and why he threw a fit over me getting on that plane. “Are you feeling better?”

What a loaded question.

“Yeah. I’m still boiling, but other than that, yes.”

“Good.” He gets off me and stands, looking down at me with a heated gaze as he licks his lips. That I know he still tastes me on them has a thrill racing down my spine. “Get cleaned up. You should eat and take in some water. I have to go deal with Corvin.”

Unease spreads through me, and I toss my legs over the side of the bed and race to catch his wrist.

He looks down at the contact as if I’ve stunned him.

“Please, don’t hurt him. We were caught up in the moment, and things just got out of hand. I begged him to drink from me. It was my fault.”

“It wasn’t your fault. He’s hundreds of years old; he should have more composure.”

“We wouldn’t have known I was drugged if he hadn’t drunk from me.”

“Fair point. I’ll consider it. Now, cover yourself before I toss you back on that bed, and don’t let you leave.”

I bite my tongue, wanting to beg him to do just that because I’m losing my sense of reality and morals in this place by the second, but he’s right. I need to clear my head and flush my system.

I find my shorts and slip back into them before rushing to shower in the room they’ve given me.

I want to follow Lowell and ensure that he doesn’t come down on Corvin too harshly, but on the other hand, there’s so much guilt eating at me for how I behaved with him that I don’t think I’m ready to face him.

I get into my room and shut the door, taking a deep breath as I undress and step into the shower.

My skin still feels so heated from the drugs and the encounter with Lowell, so I forgo a hot shower and mix in some cool water, balancing the knobs until the water’s just right.

I’ve never done drugs before—other than this one time in high school when a friend talked me into smoking a joint with him. It was never my thing.

Now, I can at least say that it still isn’t.

My head is throbbing, and I hold my face beneath the water to let the spray beat into my sinuses.

Being the epitome of stealth and silence, I don’t hear Asher enter my bedroom. His hands grasp my shoulders and pull me out of the water, and I scream, thinking he’s the one who drugged me. Come to finish the job.

“It’s only me, sweetheart,” he whispers in my ear, pulling me back into his nude body.

“What are you doing in here?” I manage as his hand travels over my right breast and down my stomach.

“Lowell wants you watched twenty-four-seven.”

Great.

“You can’t watch from outside the shower?”

“I could have, but you looked like you were in distress.”

“I was not!” I reason, but the argument ends with a moan when he teases the tip of his finger between my folds and over my clit, only to pull it back.

“Well, I thought I’d come in and check—just in case. We should be thorough after what you went through today. Speaking of,” he opens the sliding glass door of the shower and reaches out, grabbing a water bottle as I turn to face him.

Taking it, I open it and chug its contents.

Asher chuckles. “First time on a substance like this?”

I nod. “And my last.”

“It’s not all bad. They can be fun when done properly and with someone you trust.”

“You’ve done drugs?”

“Sweet Silver, I think you’re forgetting how old I am. Of course, I’ve done drugs. Opium dens were all the rage during my favorite era.”

“If it made people feel anything like I felt, I can see how it would be a problem. I never want to feel like that again.”

“You sure? I know I’ve heard tale you love the thrill of venom.”

“That’s not—I didn’t mean—” I swallow as he grins, tipping my chin back as he looks down at my bare body with his penetrating red eyes.

Asher is more muscular than the others and covered in tattoos, more so than they are too, but his eyes are also more damning. It’s like he’s hiding something within them he’s barely got a handle on—something that would damn him and those surrounding him if it got loose.

“I know what you meant, Silver. I was only joking. Hurry and wash, Jasper’s making you dinner.”

I hand him the empty water bottle and turn around to shower, trying to avoid focusing on the fully erect portion of him, where I saw a flash of jewelry trying to lure my eyes to sneak a peek.

“Maybe if you’re a good girl, I’ll let you get a closer look.”

“What? I didn’t…”

He pinches my cheek from behind before slapping my ass and getting out of the shower. “I can feel you blushing from here,” he calls as he towels off.

Shaking my head with a smirk playing on my lips, I quickly wash.

When I get out, he’s gone, giving the illusion he was never there to begin with.

That’s half the battle in my chest since I stepped into this world: is it even real?