Grizz
“FATES,” I mutter and stride to her so quickly, her eyes widen. I scoop her up in my arms and toss her on the bed so fast she gasps.
I draw back. “Did I hurt you?”
“No.” She’s laughing. “This is what I wanted.” Her hands roam over me and when I find her mouth and claim it, she arches into the kiss.
Then she wriggles down my body.
“Kit-?” I go to grab her, haul her back up, but her hands are busy on my jeans and I freeze.
“Shh,” she says. “Just relax and enjoy it.”
I huff. “That’s my line.”
“You don’t have to-”
“I know. I want to.” She unbuttons and unzips and opens my jeans like unwrapping a present. It’s dark, but I feel the reverence in her touch. Hot breath hits my skin.
“Hang on.” I can’t believe I’m stalling her, but the chance to watch her is too perfect to pass up. “I want to see you.”
I reach over, flick on the light.
She blinks up at me. I lie back and let her settle over me, reaching to stroke her face.
“Don’t let me stop you.”
“Mmm,” she purrs, and nuzzles my cock. She starts kissing it, her eyes closed as if she’s reached nirvana. Fates, she’s not gonna suck my cock, she’s gonna worship it.
Her head drops and I groan as she licks my balls, swirling her tongue like she’s licking an ice cream cone. Dizzy with pleasure, I let her take her sweet time. How did I get this lucky?
“Jordy…baby…you gotta stop.”
She jerks her head up. “You don’t like it?”
“You know I love it. But I’m gonna explode.”
She smiles, and I see the vixen in her.
“Naughty,” I growl. “Suck my cock.”
“Yes, sir.”
Fates, I’m gonna blow. “Now,” I order and she sits up, dipping her head down immediately.
That’s when I see it, a white mass of scars over her left breast.
“What the fuck?”
Her head snaps up, worry creasing her brow.
I touch the raised flesh, white weals where the skin was marred and healed. How have I not noticed this before?
“It’s nothing,” she says, her expression dulling. A huge change from her usual sunny self. Like light shutting off.
“He fucking mauled you.” I splay my hand over the raised flesh, so angry I can’t see straight.
Jordy bows her head. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Who did this to you? Was it Augustine?” I can barely growl out his name.
Her eyes closed, she shakes her head. I catch her hair, holding her still. “Who?”
“I don’t know. He was another vampire. I don’t know who he was. Augustine gave me to him…as a reward. You know my relationship with him. I did as I was told.”
“And he hurt you.” It’s not a question. Fangs tearing into her like that, it had to hurt.
She jerks away and sits on the edge of the bed, folding into herself. I get a lungful of her scent. Not fear, not anger.
Shame.
My anger washes away.
“Shh, it’s okay. I know he marked you. It’s okay.”
“It’s not,” she says in a small voice that kills me.
I scoot to her, and when she shrinks away, I straddle her small body between my heavy thighs, enclosing her. My arm goes around her middle just in time for me to feel her give a dry sob.
Oh fuck.
“Hey,” I say, desperate. “Hey, it’s okay. I didn’t mean to react like that. It’s just…” I search for words to describe the rage brewing in my chest. “The thought of you getting hurt like that…makes me want to destroy worlds.”
“It’s my fault,” she says.
“Jordy, no. No way it’s your fault.”
She keeps her head bowed.
“What happened? You want to talk about it?”
She shakes her head.
“Okay, you don’t have to talk about it.” Fates, what do I say? I thrust my forearm in front of her. “See this?”
She nods.
“What do you see?”
“Tattoos. Lots of them.”
“A whole sleeve.”
“Yes.”
“Feel it, Jordy. Touch it.”
She does and I grit my teeth. Her touch still has me hard. I wait until she reaches my favorite part of the tattoo, a giant redwood. She runs her finger up the trunk and pauses. There.
“You feel that?” I ask, burrowing my face into her hair. Even her scent is perfect. “You know what that is?”
“A scar.”
“Yep. Big one. Got caught with a knife.”
“But how-” she stops. She knows what scars a shifter.
“Vampire blood. I tried to stake the fucker. Got hit with blood, and it made the knife wound scar.”
She turns in my lap, eyes wide at my declaration. “You fought a vampire.”
More than one, but she doesn’t need to know that. She looks absolutely shocked and I get it. Because I fought a vampire, and I’m still breathing.
“It’s not possible,” she whispers.
“Feel my arm.”
She does, more hesitantly. The weal runs through the heart of the redwood tattoo and becomes a wave on an ocean, the Great Wave by Hokusai. Further around my arm, on more placid water, a ship sails into the horizon. “How did you get away?
“Luck.” It’s a partial truth. “I can’t tell you much.”
“You don’t remember?”
I shrug. Something in her eyes makes me ask, “Do you remember?” I touch her scar again, gently, but she flinches.
“No.” Her face shutters again. “Not completely.”
“He’d have to spill vampire blood on you to make it scar. Lots of it.”
“I know,” she says softly.
I don’t want to ask. What sick fuck vampire tears into his victim, and soaks her in his own blood just so she’ll scar?
No wonder Jordy has nightmares.
“So how’d you scar, then?” she asks.
I don’t want to go down this road, but if it draws her away from her dark path, I will. “Same way you did. Vampire blood. Lots of it.”
“He bled on you?’
“Not by choice. It burned like a mother, but I got him, in the end.”