Immortals After Dark 01 - The Warlord Wants Forever

arrow with supernatural speed and let it sing without hesitation. He lunged to dodge it, but she’d anticipated his move and the arrow pinned him to the wall. A second took his other shoulder, drilling its tip half a foot into the stone. He cast her a killing look, then lurched forward to simply let the arrows tear through him, but the shafts were ringed like shank nails.

    When he realized he wouldn’t be moving, he bellowed with rage.

    He saw Myst pulling her clothing together, turning for the door. “Don’t you walk away from me.”

    “So sorry to interrupt your plans for tonight.” She cast him that hurt look. “You almost made me forget that you’d come down here to torture me. You want to learn? Know that we hate torture. It starts to add up over the years—”

    “That was before I knew you were my Bride.”

    Her face went cold in an instant. “Before you knew you could finally screw me? Now that your body’s in working order, I don’t feel the skin flayed from mine?”

    “You’re my Bride. Mine. You belong to me.”

    She flew back at him, enraged. The bright one tossed her a dagger and Myst caught it behind her without looking. Again his mind demanded to know what she was.

    She pressed the blade to his jugular. Her pupils were silver and lightning bombarded the castle. “If I belonged to every man who wanted it so or to every vampire I’ve blooded there’d be nothing left of me. But no one cares about that.”

    “You’ve not blooded others. They would be here protecting you, fighting for you.”

    “Not”—she leaned in closer, tilting her head like an animal—“if I killed them all.”

    Then she grabbed the back of his head and pulled him to her, pressing her lips against his. She kissed him hard. Yet he soon tasted…her blood? Just as he groaned, she drew back with an inscrutable expression on her face.

    Unimaginably warm and rich, her blood was as exquisite as everything else about her, and he shuddered in ecstasy at the luscious taste. “You know I’ll want nothing else now,” he rasped.

    In response, she snapped her teeth at him. To the others she commanded, “Leave him,” then exited the cell.

    The archer and the bright one exchanged a confused glance. “And by ‘leave him’ you clearly mean leave him beheaded, disemboweled, and chock full of quills like a pincushion.”

    “You heard him—I’m his Bride.”

    “Ohhh,” the bright one said, blowing a bubble. “You mean he hasn’t, uh, you know, released, the first time since his blooding?” Then with a quick glance at his crotch, she said, “And he stays like that without you, right?” She chuckled. “I’m cool with the plan.”

    The archer wasn’t convinced. “Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy condemning vampires to unending sexual torture as much as the next fabulously talented huntress…” When Wroth heard a guard charging in, she leisurely shot an arrow in that direction, tilted her head at the result, then sighed to Myst, “But Vampire Bride just sounds so B-movie. He just dragged you down to B-moviedom.”

    The bright one made her voice overly dramatic, saying, “For that alone…he must die. Seriously, Myst. Your ‘husband’ has irrevocably damaged your street cred unless you kill him like the others.”

    They were all mad.

    And still he was hard, aching for her body, for the blood she’d given him just to torture him. “You evil, teasing bitch. Kill me then.”

    For just the merest second he imagined he saw compassion in her eyes, but when she shrugged, his hazy mind finally grasped that she was going to leave him here with nothing but a body knotted with lust for her and a taste of blood that he would go to his knees for. “You’re the most malicious bitch I’ve ever known.”

    “Flatterer,” she chirped.

    Across the corridor, she easily leapt to the window forty feet above, opening the shutters to draw the unfortified bars from the space as though she might pluck back a curtain. She held a hand down for the others.

    “I will find you,” he bit out. “I will find you and make you pay for this a thousand times.”

    The bright one leapt up and caught Myst’s forefinger with her own. “Sounds like he’s setting up a date,” she said as she dangled.

    “Oooom,” Myst purred, her gaze flickering over him. “Dress casual.”

Chapter Four
    Present Day

    N ever-ending sexual desire that could never be slaked.

    She’d knowingly—delightedly—surrendered him to