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She should have slit her own throat rather than kneel on all fours, back arched as she displayed her dripping cunt to the vampire.

This is still part of the game, she told herself.

Wrenching her arms up, a tendril of shadows looped themself around Elarian’s outstretched limbs until they pointed straight above her head, thickly bound in black. Twisting to look back proved useless; she could only see a sliver of amber light against the dark silks. In the encroaching void, it became harder and harder to harbor hatred when she only felt pleasure.

“I-I’m, I’m not…” she rasped before collapsing into the darkness.

The world stopped around her; only Lucan’s cold grip remained at her waist.

Blackness enveloped Elarian, muffling all sound. Slowly, her breathing faded until she wasn’t sure anything of her remained.

Someone wrenched her head back, her neck popping like a burst air bubble.

“Wake up, darling.”

A pause.

Then, Lucan’s cock thrust into Elarian with such force that her whimpers echoed through his chambers. The metal ball on the end of one piercing caught against the side of her entrance as he sank into her. Through her black delirium, she felt only numbing bliss. Blood slowly mixed with her wetness, body eager to take Lucan as if he were not something to despise. Each punishing thrust pulled a deep moan from her until her voice felt raw.

Something pressed against her other hole, slowly circling, teasing.

“That’s right,” Lucan whispered against the shell of her ear. “Be my fucking whore.”

As she slipped back into the darkness—Lucan’s cock buried in her cunt, shadows teasing her ass—a faraway part of Elarian idly wondered, Was this my trap or his?

twenty-two

Collars & Chains

The moon-pale elf writhed on the black silks, eyes fluttering open, unfocused on the world around her. She was a helpless thing now, every fine edge of her ruthlessness being dulled with pleasure.

If this were any other assassin, they would be dead by now.

But beneath that mask…

Gairan help him, beneath that mask, Lucan knew he would find not the face of a simpering courtesan, but the one that haunted his sleepless eternity. For a moment in that ballroom, she had looked at him, and he saw the girl in the Evermist again. He let himself believe she would return to him.

But even if she didn’t, he would not kill her now.

Not when the walls of her cunt gripped him with such strength, he felt his heart sluggishly beat again. Not when she took every inch of him and begged for more. And certainly not when he had nearly a century of hatred to carve into her lithe body, mutilating her until her only worth remained in her eager holes that betrayed her even as she cried for mercy.

Leaning forward on the bed, he tore the gilded mask away from the elf’s face.

Elarian’s face.

Lucan’s stomach churned. She looked so fucking beautiful there on his bed, eyes rolling into the back of her head as shadows penetrated her wet holes. Back arching dangerously high, she yelped when the thick tendril in her ass ripped itself out. The sight of pink blossoming around her quivering hole made Lucan’s cock throb until his sight blurred.

Vanquishing the shadows crawling over the elf’s quaking thighs, Lucan knotted his fingers in her silvery hair and wrenched her head up. Something in her neck shifted with a loud pop.

“Wake up, darling,” Lucan purred against her ear.

He lined his cock up with her cunt, juices dripping down her thighs, then buried his entire length with one punishing thrust. Shudders threatened to collapse the elf sideways. The ball of the piercing nearest the base of his shaft caught on her entrance; a breath later, the heavy aroma of iron filled his lungs.

Fuck, she was so perfect—so willing to accept him even as her flesh bled.

Each thrust brought his climax closer, the warmth that always flooded him arriving with such ferocity he had never felt before. He set a grueling pace, the elf’s hips bucking against him each time his weight slammed her into the mattress. Breaths came to her in ragged gasps, mouth stretched open as moans filled his chambers.

Another deep stroke, her walls fluttering around his entire length buried in her.