Page 2 of Velvet Folds (Velvet)

Chapter 2

In which our hero offers his favor

It has been more than a decade since a true sacrifice lay upon this stone.

Some have wanted to be in the position for reasons beyond my understanding. Others have reluctantly accepted my teeth as a penance. Others still have come with a blade secreted away and the desire to take my blood before I can take theirs.

I’ve been met with apathy, anger, curiosity and fear… but this human sacrifice…

She looks up at me with clear, pale eyes, waiting expectantly, and my teeth ache with the need to feed.

Her tongue peeks out to lick her full lips. The motion draws my gaze back to her sun kissed skin and the scar on her left cheek.

The wind flutters her hair around her face, uncovering a thick streak of shocking white beneath the black where it should not be.

“How old are you?”

I do not drink from children, which she certainly is not. And I will not risk the aged, which she does not seem to be.

But that streak…

“Thirty-six… or thereabout.” She shakes her head, flicking her hair back into place. “Don’t tell me you believe in the superstitions of uneducated men.”

Humans would likely think she was cursed.

The challenge in those words… I would not have expected her to question my intelligence as she waits for my teeth to pierce her skin.

She is braver than I thought upon first explanation. But bravery does not change what she will have to endure.

Dipping my head close, I tell her, “I will do what I can to make this quick and as painless as possible.”

She swallows and her heartbeat quickens as she licks her lips one more time. “I can stand a little pain.”

My hands tighten around her at those words. And my tongue trails over the pulse that flutters in her throat.

I don’t offer to let her go.

The warmth beneath her skin pulls at me as strongly as the moon overhead.

Teeth pressed against her vein, I sink into her and…

My eyes widen as I drink her in, savoring the nectar of her blood.

She is who I’ve been quietly hoping for. My mate… My queen.

Her flavor fills my mouth and desire coils through me, winding tight.

I draw away from her before I’m finished to ask, “Who do you belong to, sweet sacrifice?”

Her chest heaves and her eyes flutter as she looks up at me, blood trailing down to soak into the pale fabric that clings to her breasts. “I belong to myself.”

That isn’t what I want to hear.

I want her to smile up at me and tell me she’s mine. I want her to know what fate has already shown me. But how could she know?

“Tonight, you’re mine, sweet sacrifice.”

“Yes.” The word is a whisper.

“Let me help ease that pain.” I drag my claws along the stones, blunting them so I won’t harm her.

I trail my hand up the inside of her thigh and she eases her legs apart for me.

Such a sweet and warm sacrifice. I shudder as a tremor of sharp need flutters through me, wings trembling when my fingers reach the apex of her thighs, and I trail along the soft mound of her sex.

My fingers delve between her legs, caressing her perfect velvet folds.

I should ask again, but tonight she is mine. I need her to crave being mine tomorrow and every night thereafter.

I bite her again to keep from speaking words she doesn’t need to hear—yet—and making promises she won’t accept.

Yet .

My tongue aches to replace my claws and explore her velvet folds.

With my teeth sunk deep into her throat, I want nothing more than to capture her up, to steal her away to the castle and slake my lust and need in her.

But she has not agreed to that.

Not yet .

Her velvet folds should be mine. They will be mine.

That possessive desire ripples through me with the certainty of fate.

She came to me. She gave herself to me, not just willingly, but greedily.

Her legs spread wide, she rocks against my fingers and her blood sings against my tongue. We are, in the moonlight, two creatures of need.

Her sweet velvet folds encase my finger as her body rocks on me, squeezes me the way I want her to squeeze my cock.

My cock is heavy within its pocket. Hot and needy, it presses against me, demanding to be released… demanding release.

I can only drink so deeply of her and even still I edge too close to the limit before I draw back, licking her wounds clean.

Free of my fangs, her head tips back, her throat pale in the moonlight, her spine arched as she writhes on my delving fingers.

The muscles hidden behind those velvet folds squeeze tight and her hand goes to her breast, squeezing through the soft fabric of her nightdress.

“Please,” she begs in a whisper. “I need—”

She doesn’t finish her sentence. She doesn’t have to.

“I know, sweet sacrifice. I will give you anything and everything you need.

Thumb working over the tight bundle of nerves at the top of those velvet folds, I keep my other claw from scratching at her skin, and it only takes a moment’s work before her cries echo out over the forest.

She needed this release as much as my body demands it does, as well.

Her body racks with pleasure and I go to my knees as my cock finally bursts free, my cum paints the side of the slab and I grit my teeth, wishing I was sunk deep inside her.

Each inhale makes me dizzy with want for her. The desire to lift her away from this slab, to take her to my lair is so strong, I take a step back instead of taking her up into my arms.

I settle for licking the taste of her from my claws.

Laid out on the sacrificial slab, she looks soft and sweet and demure. But I know the truth of what lies beneath that virginal white. I know who she could be if she wanted to. Perhaps who she already is.

I want to know who this woman is and how to love her.

The word catches in my mind.

That is what I have been looking for… The person fate would deliver to me to love.

“Ask a favor of me and I will make it so,” I tell her, lifting her palm to my lips and sucking an ugly splinter free.

Silence hangs in the air between us and the selfish creature inside of me coils tight. I want her to ask for anything that might keep her close to me.

“The girl,” she says, her breath catching. “The girl who ran away. Her father sent her here against her will. He chained her to a post and threatened her to stay silent.”

Raising her gaze to meet my eyes, she says, “He tried to break your rules. I would like to see him punished.”

It is not the favor I expect.

On the rare occasion I have offered them, those requests are usually for jewels or gold… things to ease their lives, things to help them escape this place.

My sweet sacrifice wants to give her favor to another, even though that is not how she asked for it.

“How should he be punished?”

“The old way,” she says. “He broke the old laws. The old punishments should be meted out. After all… if one father breaks your rules, others will think they may break them, too.”

Her gaze doesn’t waver from mine as she makes her request.

Perhaps she is not what I thought she was after all. “I am not the only bloodthirsty creature out tonight, am I?”

“No. You are not.” Her gaze drops to my lips and she turns her head, offering her throat to me once more.