I listened to Marina’s heart—ba-ba-bum, ba-ba-bum, ba-ba-bum—the goblin triple beat different from every other fae’s.
I’d never tasted goblin blood. A deep, rich, forest green, it probably tasted like trees and dirt, just how Marina smelled.
“I can get away from you before you hurt me. I’ll hide until you’re sated and the bloodlust passes.”
The monster would never be sated.
“Sora, please. This is my chance to break you out. I don’t know if I’ll get another. Alobaz is too astute.”
“Alobaz is mine.” My voice was barely my own.
I sensed him close. The monster wrested back what little control I’d taken.
My body tensed, anticipating the arrival of what was mine. Baz dropped through the darkened ceiling and landed in a crouch at my feet, hands up and ready for anything.
He still wasn’t ready for me…
Chapter 5
Monsters Thrive in Darkness, Predators Kill Fawns, and Rubors Kill D’Arcos
When Baz jumped through the trapdoor in the floor, he hadn’t had the wherewithal to guess where he might end up. Mauldrene was plainly trying to kill him, or at least to maim him. He was only wearing a vest, and thanks to Mauldrene’s biting, lashing shadows, his arms and shoulders were crisscrossed with crimson, and his forehead, cheeks, and chin stung with lacerations.
Mauldrene surely hadn’t carved out a trapdoor for him so suddenly without sinister purpose. His thoughts had been singularly on his immediate survival. The trapdoor might have led to a frigid pit that would freeze him in an instant; perhaps to the gullet of some monstrous beast Mauldrene kept as her man-eating pet; or, simply, to the abyss, that endless chasm from which no one had ever returned. Mauldrene had been trying to do away with him practically since the moment he stepped across her darkened threshold.
Mauldrene had never deigned to provide a direct path from his quarters to the dungeon. The castle played keep-away with Soravelle and was far better at it than he was, able to rearrange her rooms and passageways at will. So when Baz landed so abruptly in Velle’s dungeon cell, shock assailed him.
Along with her scent: intoxicating.
As always, his gaze swept across her body. He’d landed in a fighting crouch. By instinct, he leaned in her direction—toward danger—even before he took stock of the entirety of his circumstances.
He knew the goblin Marina was there, illuminating the cell with lumoonlight. For the moment, he ignored her, his attention jumping to Velle’s face. Her eyes were mostly black pupils, her lips parted in what would have resembled passion if not for her fangs, long, menacing, and sharp, peeking out from beneath her plush upper lip.
This was why Mauldrene had finally, for fucking once, brought him directly here.
In all the vast castle, with her unexpected dangers at every turn, there was currently no greater threat to Baz than his prisoner. More beast than woman, she panted and snarled with her fingers curled into claws. What had he thought would happen when he demanded she feed only from him when she staunchly refused? This, precisely this. Deep down somewhere, he had to have known. And yet he wouldn’t—couldn’t—allow anyone else to touch her. She had to feed off him and no one else.
She tipped her head back and smelled the air with a flare of delicate nostrils. Moaning, she sniffed again, her black eyes tracking the slashes of blood that had dried on his skin. All but the deepest cuts had healed closed.
In a slow, languorous swipe, she licked her lips, flicking her tongue against first one fang and then the other. His cock stirred and hardened, and the monster inside him shoved the man out of the way, needing to join with hers.
He batted back his monster’s advances. It fought him, but retreated—for now.
“Sora,” the goblin said. She stood between his prisoner and the door, which stood ajar. Not even a goblin’s faithum should have been able to breach the spell that kept it locked.
“Sora,” Marina said again. “Feed from me.”
Sora didn’t so much as twitch in the goblin’s direction, full focus trained on Baz.
“You’ll hate yourself later if you were to feel anything for him. You can’t feed from him. You can’t share that with him.”
Black eyes glittering, his prisoner muttered, “Hate.”
“That’s right,” Marina said. “You hate him. You can’t drink from him.”
Did the goblin not scent Baz on her? Or did she not want to acknowledge that Soravelle was already his?
Soravelle groaned, long and salacious, as if picturing herself already drinking from him.