Page 23 of Vampire Kings Box Set

Her radio crackled. “Candy,” she answered, snapping it from her shoulder. Maddox pretended to not be able to hear what was going on though he could hear the ear piece as well as she could.

“No longer a rumor, sir. It sounds like a grisly scene.”

“Let’s go,” Maddox said. “Lorien, watch Will.”

“C’mere.” Lorien grabbed Will by the back of the collar and hauled him backward off the couch where he had been sitting watching TV.

Will cursed and reached back, trying to grab hold of Lorien, but his fucked leg and the awkward position, not to mention having lost the element of surprise, made it almost impossible. Lorien dragged him over to the kitchen island and tossed him up on it.

“Don’t. Move.”

Green eyes pierced Will’s skull and made it impossible for him to resist. It felt like his brain slowed down to a point where he couldn’t actually think anymore. Instead, he just sort of floated around mindlessly in his skull, barely inhabiting it.

“Did you ever notice the shackle points on this island before? Bet you didn’t,” Lorien said, reaching under the kitchen sink to pull out several lengths of chain, which he then used to secure Will to the island, the jangling of the links almost threatening to break through the vampire’s influence, but not quite.

It didn’t drop until the last link had been secured. Will’s mind cleared and he found himself completely chained on the kitchen countertop.

“What are you fucking doing?”

“Maddox told me to watch you.”

“He didn’t tell you to chain me up!”

Prison had given him both a fear of chains and an acceptance of them. He hated the way they felt wrapped around his waist and his ankles, his wrists and his neck. It was so unnecessary.

“You’re a flight risk, baby bird. And you can’t fly.”

Will knew Lorien couldn’t hurt him. Maddox would murder him. But there was a lot Lorien could do that didn’t rise to the charge of serious damage, and Lorien seemed to be very aware of that.

“I don’t like being chained.”

“Poor baby bird,” Lorien tutted, hefting himself up onto the counter to sit next to Will’s restrained form. “What are you going to do about it?”

“I’ll get out of them eventually.”

Lorien smiled, flashing very white teeth with just a hint of fang. “So Mad thinks you’re special. Has he made you feel special? He likes to fuck things like you.”

Will gritted his teeth and said nothing.

Lorien smiled brighter than ever and snapped into a new position, moving so quickly he seemed to be teleporting. Suddenly, he had vampire weight across his torso, and Lorien’s handsome, cold face sneering down at him. Lorien extended a finger and tapped Will on the nose.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” he sighed. “He’ll use you up, baby bird. He’ll drain you dry in more ways than one. You're not the first, and you won’t be the last.”

“I’d be more likely to listen to you if you weren’t a bitchy little psycho who chained me up.”

Lorien sighed softly. “You were never going to listen anyway. They never do. They fall in love. They start to believe that they’re special. That they matter. Listen to me now. Nobody and nothing matters to Maddox.”

“Now you just sound jealous. What’s the matter? Daddy won’t give you the d?”

Lorien sat up, his ass pressed against Will’s crotch, his elegant pale hands spread one on Will’s chest, the other on his neck. The gesture was intimate and threatening, and the weight over Will’s cock… well… it risked being stimulating.

“He fucks you because you’re disposable,” Lorien said.

“Yeah? Take these chains off me and I’ll dispose of you.”

“No. I take these chains off, you attack me, I have to break your other leg, Maddox gets angry at me when I hurt the human. I think it's better you stay right there.”

8 CRIME AND PUNISHMENT