The sucking. . . fuck him, the sucking. . .
When he finally lifted his head, he was drunk on her, his mind spinning for different reasons than from blood hunger. Next would be the sex, and he actually looked around for a bed.
Except. . . they were in the butler's pantry? What the hell?
Christ, he couldn't even remember how all this had happened.
He was sure, however, that he didn't want her bleeding out, so he dropped his head to her throat. Elongating his tongue, he stroked up the column he had nailed twice, feeling velvet and tasting her and smelling her -
The scent that entered his nostrils was not a commercial perfume.
And it was not a female's lush arousal, as he had sensed in the beginning.
She was terrified.
"No'One?" he said, as he felt her trembling for the first time.
With a hoarse cry, she began to sob, and in his shock, he went momentarily numb. Then, as sensation returned, he felt all too clearly her nails clawing into the backs of his upper arms, her delicate body trying to get free.
He let her go immediately -
No'One slammed into the corner cupboard and then went for the door, jerking at the knob, rattling it so forcibly the opaque glass was liable to break.
"Hold on, I'll let you - "
The instant he sprang the lock she took off, flying through the kitchen and out the other side as if she were running for her dear life.
"Shit!" He tore after her. "No'One!"
He didn't care who heard him as he called her name again, his voice echoing up through the dining room's high ceiling as he blew past the long table and then shot into the foyer.
As she ripped across the depiction of the apple tree in the floor, he recalled the memory of her that night they had tried to bring her home to her father's, her nightgown streaming behind her, turning her into a ghost as she ran across the moonlit meadow.
Now her robe streamed behind as she headed for the stairs.
Tohr's panic was running so high he dematerialized in pursuit, reassuming form halfway up and yet still not in front of her. Continuing to chase her on foot, he followed her past Wrath's study, and down the hall to the right.
The second she got to the bedroom she stayed in, she threw herself inside and slammed the door.
He got to the wooden panels just in time to hear the lock turn.
As her blood raced through his system, giving him the power he had been missing, and the appetite for food he hadn't had, and the clearest head that had plugged into his spine for ages, he remembered everything he hadn't during the time he'd been at her throat.
She had given herself willingly, generously, and he had taken too much, too fast, in a dark room where he could have been anyone but the one she had agreed to feed.
He'd scared her. Or worse.
Pivoting, he put his back to her door and let his knees loosen until his ass caught the floor. "Fuck me. . . fucking hell. . . "
Goddamn him.
Oh, wait, that had already happened.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Just before closing time at the Iron Mask, Xhex was in her office and shaking her head at Big Rob. On her desk between them were three more packets of that cocaine with the death symbol on it. "Are you kidding me with this shit?"
"Pulled it off a guy ten minutes ago. "