Jameela experienced a moment of intense jealousy and stiffened.
“She will take his blood.”
“He is still my husband,” Jameela said with clenched teeth.
Dagan blinked. “You would rather have him?”
“No!” Jameela was quick to say, arching her neck so she could look at him. “But I don’t like it that she will have had the both of you.”
“As the both of us have had you,” he said quietly.
Jameela’s anger evaporated as quickly as it had surfaced. Her eyes softened. “Women are ever jealous of one another, milord. Forget I mentioned it.” She lay down, cuddling closer to him but as realization set in, she sat bolt upright in the bed.
“What?” he asked, his brows clashing.
“She will heal him!”
Dagan smiled. “Aye, she will.”
“He will walk again?” At her lover’s slow nod, Jameela began to cry again.
“Now what ails you, wench?” Dagan demanded. “Are you sorry my brother will no longer be a cripple?”
She shook her head. “I cry because I am happy for him, you fool!” she snapped. “He was good to me and he deserves happiness of his own.” She covered her face with her hands and sobbed.
At a loss as to what to do, Dagan patted her clumsily, unnerved and unmanned by her weeping. Upset with himself for not knowing how to handle her tears, he simply pulled her down beside him and held her, crooning words she had no way of understanding but feeling better for doing it.
Jameela’s ear was pressed closely to her lover’s chest and she could hear the steady, comforting beat of his stalwart heart. This man was hers and would be hers for as long as she lived. That knowledge brought a peace she had never hoped to feel.
“There will be times when I will need to go to that special place that is to be built,” he reminded her.
“And I will go there with you.”
Dagan shook his head. “Nay, you will not!” he said firmly.
She considered his answer for a moment then relaxed against him. “Then I will be waiting outside the door when you come out again.”
“For that,” he said, loosening his hold, “I will be thankful, wench.”
A long silence passed between them then Jameela asked if he thought she should make the acquaintance of the woman who had brought the three of them to a better life.
“Stay clear of her, ‘Meela,” he said, using a nickname he had often wanted to call her. “She is what she is and I have no more trust of her than I do any other Ordonese.”
“And you stay clear of her, as well,” Jameela ordered.
“With the greatest pleasure,” Dagan swore.
“Then seal the bargain, warrior,” she demanded and reached down for the shaft that had given her such extreme delight. Discovering it thickening in her grip, she used her free hand to rip open his shirt. She lowered her head and kissed his chest then ran her tongue down to one exposed pap. The instant her tongue touched that pebble of flesh, it hardened. Gripping it with her teeth, she lightly worried that manly nugget, grinning to herself, as the rod in her hand became heated iron.
As his lover’s mouth moved to his side and the cock she had pulled from his breeches began to throb, he flung his hands out to his sides and let her have her way with him. As her sweet, velvety soft lips closed around the head of his cock, he sighed with anticipation.
“
Give me what I desire as I have given you what you desired
,” the beastess within him whispered.
Along with the craving for the body of the woman he loved came a great thirst for rich, red blood.
“
Not this lady’s!
”
Dagan sent.
“
You will live a hundred years,
”
the beastess proclaimed
.
“
Longer still if you stay out of the clutches of your enemies.
”
Understanding shot through Dagan in an instant. Even as his manhood oozed life-juices into the suckling mouth of his lady, his blood began to turn cold.
“
Make her one of us and you will be together for as long as you both wish to live,
” the parasite cooed.
As though she had heard the evil thing speaking, Jameela released his shaft and looked up at him. Their eyes met and held. In hers was a silent question. In his, terror combined with despair.
“Dagan?” she finally questioned.
“I change, Jameela,” he said, flinching at the thought. “To something so vile, so…”
“If I were to change, as well,” she said. “Could we then be together in that special place being built?”
He thought a moment then nodded slowly.
Sliding her body up his, she pulled her hair to one side and offered him her neck. “Then do it,” she said.
Every instinct within him screamed denial. He could see the lightly pulsing vein in the slender column of her neck; actually hear the rush and flow of her blood running. His mouth watered and he licked his lips, the craving to taste her a physical pain that grew with every beat of her heart.
“Jameela,” he whimpered.
“Do it,” she repeated. “I would be one with you, my beloved.”
The addiction was too strong. The need was too great. The proposition of the beastess inside him was too demanding. He knew himself to be weak where this woman was concerned and the thought of her lying lifeless, death corrupting her lovely flesh was more painful than he could bear.
“Do it,” Jameela whispered.
He pushed himself up, moved over her and lowered his mouth to the pulse at the side of her throat. Spurred on as much as his great love for his lady as with the hunger invading his soul, he could feel his fangs extending.
Jameela winced as the sharpness entered her flesh. She drew in a deep breath and held it as numbness spread over the punctures. He was drawing on her flesh but she felt no pain. His tongue was lathing the wound and she was sinking into a gentle lassitude that made her eyelids flutter before she closed them.
“
Do not take too much
,”
the creature warned
.
“
There is venom in your bite but it will prepare the way for the Transference when it is time.
”
Inside his body there were fledglings growing to maturity. One would be drawn out of his flesh and placed inside Jameela’s. She would, then, be like him and there would be no returning to the way either of them were.
Gently, he eased his fangs from her throat, licked away the tiny beads of blood that remained, and then folded her in his arms once more. For the moment, the craving inside him had been satiated. As he laid there with her, his cock still throbbing, he willed the rock-hard erection to go away.
“Oh, no,” Jameela murmured and her hand slid down his chest and to the jutting column of his cock. “I want it harder, milord, not limp.”
Dagan sucked in his breath as she bent over him and drew his shaft into her mouth. As she milked him of his life juices he tried not to think of Hagan.
“
She tells me I will walk again when that evil thing is put in me
,” his twin’s voice slithered through his head. “
She says the sex will be better than ever!
”
“She’s taken his blood,” Dagan muttered.
Jameela lifted her head. “Shut up, warrior. Concentrate on what I’m doing, not what your brother is up to.”
“I was only…” Dagan began but she slid her hand around his shaft and twisted lightly but firmly from side to side, moving her fingers up and down, dragging him deeper into her mouth—just as he had taught her to do.
Giving himself up to her soft ministrations, Dagan Kiel closed his eyes and forced all thoughts from his mind.
Save the erotic one that made his blood boil and his cock as rigid as stone.
* * * * *
Hagan tucked his bottom lip between his teeth. His hands were on the arms of his rolling chair, clutching the wood as though the two projections were a lifeline. “Will it hurt?” he asked. He stared up at Neith. “I have feeling in my back and hips if not these useless legs.”
Neith hunkered down in front of him and placed her hands on his thighs. “They will not be useless once the Transference takes place, Beloved One.”
“But will it hurt?” the Grand Master repeated, worry clouding his amber eyes.
“Aye,” she replied honestly. “It will but isn’t that a small price to pay to walk again? To ride?”
A dreamy look crossed over Hagan’s handsome face. “To swim again,” he sighed, then opened his eyes wide. “That I won’t be able to do, will I?”
She shook her head. “No, but you can fuck me until your cock falls off. Won’t that be better than swimming?”
“Swimming in your cunt honey?” he retorted, his lips twitching.
Neith lifted her head. “I’ve had more than my share of lovers, warrior, but my cunt is as tight as a virgin’s! The parasite makes it so!”
Hagan looked at his twin who was standing nearby, his arms crossed over his chest. “How bad was the pain?” he asked.
“Bad enough,” Dagan replied without expression.
“Will I…” Hagan swallowed. “Will I scream with that pain, Dagan?”
“Like a steer at pulling time.”
Flinching, the Grand Master squeezed his eyes shut.
“It is too late for second thoughts, Beloved,” Neith said with a touch of anger. “The venom is in you and the thirst will grow. When it becomes a hunger, you will wish yourself capable of slacking it.”
Hagan did not open his eyes and his words were directed at his brother. “Can’t I just have a gob…a goblet of the stuff?” he asked, swallowing at the nausea that leapt up his throat at the thought.
Neith rolled her eyes. Dagan snorted. “You haven’t given him a taste yet?” he asked.
“Not of Sustenance, I haven’t,” she said with a wink.
Dagan unfolded his arms and came to stand beside his brother. “You don’t have a choice, Hagan,” he said, hands on hips. “You want to walk, to run, to dance with this woman?”
“To fuck her standing up,” Neith murmured.
Hagan opened one eye. “I’ve never done that.”
“She’s giving you back your legs, brother,” Dagan said with a grunt. “Be a man!”
Hagan turned his head and looked at the beaker where a fledgling squirmed, its forked tongue tasting the glass. He cringed.
“Do you want to remain a cripple begging for blood to satisfy yourself?” Neith snapped.
Tearing his stare from the hideous beastlet glaring back at him, the Grand Master shook his head.
“Put him on the table Manu,” Dagan ordered. As much as he loved his brother and wanted to see him whole once more, he could not force himself to be the one to put Hagan through the hell he knew was about to commence.
Neith looked around at her lover’s twin. “Will you be as spineless when it is time for your woman to be made one with us, warrior?”
Manu was standing behind his master’s rolling chair, trembling from head to toe. His face was as white as parchment and he kept swallowing as though something were stuck in his throat. His pleading eyes met Dagan’s angry ones.
“Leave us,” Dagan ordered and was nearly bowled over as the servant fled the chamber.
Jameela jerked as the door to the chamber was flung open and her husband’s servant ran down the corridor. She had been sitting outside the room, nervously waiting her own turn. Her palms were sweating and she ran them over her skirt as she got slowly to her feet. The door was open wide enough for her to see inside the room as she watched Dagan lift his brother from the rolling chair and carry him to a long table out of sight of the door opening. As she craned her neck to see around the door, she was brought up short by sight of the bitch that had made Dagan a man.
“You might as well come inside,” the evil woman called out.
“No!” Dagan denied and rushed to the door. He looked at Jameela for a moment then shut the door in her face.
The portal was made of wood a foot thick sheathed over with solid iron. It had taken four men to lift the sturdy thing onto its hinges. All sound within the room was cut off when it was closed. Though she tried the handle, Jameela found it locked and barred against her entry.
But it was not so soundproof that it blocked the hellish scream that came unbidden to her newfound sixth sense. Covering her ears with her hands did not block out that reverberating shriek of agony. Dropping to her knees, she knew her time was near. She began to pray she could endure the torment her lover and husband had undergone before her.
Chapter Sixteen
Dagan’s heart was breaking as he opened the door and beckoned his lady to join them. She was pale—paler than his taking of her blood should have made her—and he berated himself for being the cause of her distress.
“You heard?”
Jameela nodded. Taking small steps, she went to her lover and took the hand he held out to her. She was trembling and as Dagan folded her into his arms, she felt tears gathering in her eyes. “I am a coward, milord,” she whispered.
The Grand Master glanced at the woman who would soon become his new wife. Like his twin before him, he was beginning to feel the Transition coming on much too quickly after the Transference. The unease in his bones and muscles was rapidly growing.