Lost Paradise (6 page)

I struggled, frantic.

“Devlin may have forgiven you, but we
haven’t. I’d rather snap your neck here and now, but raping you is
the only payback I’m going to be allowed to have. Get ready for a
wild ride, Sar.”

Vince gave up trying to shove down my pants,
and instead turned them inside out, peeling them off me like a
skin, even as I thrashed.

“Everyone knows you get horny,” Kev
continued, his hate palpable. “We’ve all been briefed. If you
asked, we were supposed do whatever you asked, so long as it didn’t
threaten your life or the fetus.” Kev leaned in closer. “That gives
us all kinds of leeway. Dalcon’s a big believer in rough trade
anyway—”

I bit Kev’s right hand hard. He jerked back
from me, gritting his teeth, blood oozing from his hand.

“Stop it! Don’t do this!” I got out.

He slapped his hand over my mouth again.
“Shut up! No one will believe you didn’t ask for it! You’ve fucked
Lash! If you’d let that snake have you, you’d let anyone have
you!”

I closed my teeth on his hand again, biting
deep. But this time he didn’t let go.

Kev hissed, “You bite me again, and we’ll
fuck you until we can’t get it up anymore. You bed a were
regularly. You know how long we can make this last. Now hold
still.”

I stopped trying to bite him as tears slid
down my face. Kev eased down on the stairs with me, so I was lying
on his legs and his body. I struggled harder, trying to get up.

“The best part of this won’t be doing you,”
Kev hissed in my ear. “It will be seeing you for months afterward,
years, us both knowing what really happened and that no one
believed you didn’t want it. I’ll cherish your screams, Sar. They
won’t bring my best friend back, but it’s something.”

I flailed hysterically, frantically, moving
desperately, trying to get free of him as Vince unzipped his fly,
and dropped his pants.

“Hurry up,” Kev said, his breath hot on my
neck. “After you have her the first time, she’ll settle down. Then
you can hold her for me. We’ll trade off after that.”

Vince stepped out of his pants, his penis
already erect, a drop of semen glistening on the tip. I began to
whimper with fear.
What Devlin had done to me hadn’t been this.
Dev had been gentle, even considerate. These men just wanted to
hurt me.
I kicked harder at Vince, thrashing.

“Hold her still,” Vince said roughly, as he
began to ease his body down on mine.

There was a hiss of air. Vince fell forward
onto me, shrieking in pain, a huge hole in his right shoulder, the
edges bloody hamburger.

Kev sprang to his feet, and pulled out a
knife, holding it against my throat. “Stay back!”

Lash stood there near the ballroom door, his
eyes flat and cold, a silenced gun smoking in his hand. “Kevin,” he
hissed. “You know better than this, to think you can fight me. Drop
her.”

“Stay back!” Kev said, digging the knife into
my neck. I let out a cry. “I can knife her before you can shoot
me.”

Lash stopped and holstered his gun. Then he
uncoiled his whip, pulled his knife in the other hand, and began
advancing.

“Want to share her, Lash?” Kevin called
out.

Lash moved closer. With the speed of a
striking snake, he curled the end of the whip around Vince’s right
arm, and jerked him off of me. With a flick of his wrist, he
loosened the whip from him, and began closing the twenty-five feet
that separated us.

Kevin began to back up the stairs, still
holding me. “Stop!”

I felt the point of a knife again against my
throat. Lash stopped where he was, but didn’t put down his whip or
his knife.

“I know how good you are!” Kevin called. “But
you can’t get this out of my hand before I cut her artery. Titus is
off with Leri. She’ll bleed to death in moments. Now be
reasonable.”

Lash didn’t reply.

“We’ll share her with you, Lash. I know you
haven’t been with anyone since her. That was months ago! I just had
some last night, and I’m already horny just from feeling Sar
struggling against me. You must be in agony, going that long
without any—”

Was that true? Shit, I hoped not
.

Lash was motionless as a statue.

“Come on,” Kevin growled. “I can smell how
much you want her. You can even have her first, if you agree to
hold her for us after.”

Lash resheathed his knife, and coiled his
whip up, snapping it back on his belt. “Hold her for me,” he hissed
lustily.

“Yes!” Kevin shouted with relief.

I struggled in his arms, but he held me
easily, the knife still at my throat.

“I want to go first,” Vince growled from the
floor. “I’m hurt—”

Lash looked down at him. Vince shut right up,
and didn’t move, staring up at Lash with fear.

Lash strode over and stood before me, his
flat eyes staring into mine. “Put her hair in front of her body, so
I can see it,” he hissed. “And take the knife away from her
throat.”

“You said to hold her,” Kev said
suspiciously.

“Hold her arms. She’s afraid enough that she
won’t move. I don’t want to feel anything but her body against
mine, Jerk.”

Kev put away his knife. Shoving my hair to
fall over my chest, he took firm hold of both of my arms. “You
should have known better than to put your faith in a celibate
were,” he murmured in my ear. “There’s no vampire here to save you
this time, Sar.”

“Be quiet already,” Lash hissed at Kev, as he
grabbed hold of my shoulders and bent his head to my neck.

I held still, praying the man I’d come to
know wouldn’t betray Devlin, even if he still hated me. His fangs
pierced me, and he began to drink. The moment he did, The Lust
washed over me again.

Yes, God, Kev could hold me, anything to
feel this again, to feel Lash drinking me down like water…

“Yes,” I murmured, letting my head fall back
as I clasped Lash closer. “Please—”

Kev’s grip abruptly loosened. Lash groaned
and pulled me against him hard, his arms going around me, grinding
his hips into me. I let out a moan, then reached down for his
zipper.

Lash exploded into action. Without warning,
he yanked his fangs out of me, shoved me aside, and sank them into
Kevin’s neck. Kevin shrieked, trying to push him away. I was
painfully wrenched back towards them, my hair caught in Kev’s belt.
Lash gave me another push, tearing me free. Kev shrieked loudly
over and over in absolute terror as I rolled to lay on the ballroom
floor, dazed.

Pushing myself up with my arms, I saw Lash
let go of Kevin. The werebear slumped to the floor, his eyes
rolling up as he convulsed. His mouth was agape, drooling as he
jerked spastically. Vince was screaming over and over, his eyes
wide with fear, as he tried to crawl away from Kev and Lash. Lash
went for him next. With a hard snap, he broke his neck and Vince’s
scream cut off. He fell to the floor to lie in a pile of bloody
arms and legs.

“He healed,” I murmured. “There’s new skin
showing through the hole in his shirt.”

Lash left them where they lay and walked
over. He put his hand gently on my shoulder. “Are you all right?”
he hissed softly.

“Yes,” I said brokenly, and began to cry.

Lash took my hand, and pulled me to my feet.
“Come.” He took me into the nearest bedroom down the hall and shut
the door.

I looked about me at the red walls, dazed.
“This is the flame room.”

“Sit for a moment.”

I sat.
It was good to sit.

Lash went to the bathroom sink and washed out
his mouth, taking something from his pocket, and mixing it with
water. He did this several times, spitting whatever it was into the
sink. After, he came back over to me. “Do you want me to call Dev
or not? He can come here—”

It seemed hard to think. Why couldn’t I
understand his words
? “What were you doing?”

“The poison I shot Kev up with won’t kill
him, but he won’t be able to move for the better part of a day. It
would have killed a human.” He looked at me intently. “I needed to
get any traces of poison that were left out of my mouth, just in
case you were still in the mood.”

My terror eclipsed my outrage. “You said that
your bite was only poisonous in snake form!” I said shrilly. “You
lied to me!”

“My fangs don’t change,” Lash said blatantly.
“If they went back to human teeth, that would be true.”

I shrank back from him. “So any time you
drank from me, you could have killed me—”

Lash’s hand shot out to grip my face hard. “I
won’t hurt you,” he hissed, his flat eyes staring into mine. “I
promised Dev I’d keep you safe. I can bite without injecting
poison, as you well know.”

I curled up into a ball, making myself small.
“Why’d you lie to me?”

“That night I said that I wanted your blood.
You wouldn’t have let me

if—”

“You scared me.”

“I had to,” Lash hissed. “I had to make Kev
believe that I was going along with their plan to get close to him.
He was right, he could have cut your throat before I could stop
him. Titus is too far away to save you. You would have bled to
death.”

“No, I wasn’t scared then,” I whispered. “I
was scared of you before, but not now. I trusted you to save
me.”

He let go of my face. “I saw that you did in
your eyes, before The Lust came.”

I wanted to tell him that it meant something
that he had had me there in his power and he hadn’t taken
advantage.
Right now he was probably regretting he
hadn’t…
Embarrassed at my unkind thought, my face flushed.

“Why were you in there anyway?” Lash hissed.
“You said you were coming to meet me for lunch. How am I supposed
to keep you safe if you don’t do what you say you will?”

“I went looking for you,” I replied, coloring
further. “Kev lied to me, told me you were there.” I sank down to
the floor, sitting cross-legged.

Lash eased himself down beside me. “But you
don’t want me now, right?”

While Lash had made sexual remarks before,
they’d been teasing or hostile. His words now were polite, laced
with an undercurrent of passionate need. What Kev had said about
his celibacy had most likely been true.

Disgust rose in me at the thought of Kev, at
what he’d tried. But more disgust was for me, that in the midst of
attempted rape I’d still managed to get off on the idea of fucking
Lash.
What the hell was wrong with me?

“I’m going crazy,” I said brokenly.

“Maybe,” Lash offered, after a moment. “But
it’s not like you got there by yourself. For a human, I think
you’re handling things really well.”

I wiped at my tears. “I hit Vince with a
hammer. I enjoyed it. I was hoping to hit others—”

“If I were you, I’d have hit him, too,” Lash
said drolly.

I looked over at him. “I’d have hit you if I
found you, if you hadn’t done what I wanted.”

“No hitting me,” Lash said, giving me baleful
eyes. “Not that you’d have needed to. I’d have done what you asked,
whatever it was.”

I looked back at him, biting my lip. He
stared back at me, unmoving.

I looked away.
What was it about him that
called to The Lust?
It had always wanted violence, back from
the first. But Lash had never hurt me. I’d witnessed him hurt Theo,
but that was it. None of this made any sense…

What did I know for a fact? Only that The
Lust had risen today when Lash had drunk my blood. But The Lust
rose and was sated with Devlin without Devlin doing any blood
drinking. Maybe it was Lash’s fangs entering me that had incited
The Lust to rise?

I cast another quick glance over at him. Lash
looked back, clearly still hoping.

If he kissed me, would The Lust rise?
There was only one way to find out. But did I really want to go
there again on purpose?
Sure I’d fucked up his life, driven his
girlfriend to another state, and he’d been celibate now for months.
But that didn’t make sex with Lash a good idea.

On the other hand, what if he didn’t need
to touch me for The Lust to rise?
The first time I’d just
looked at him. I’d been minding my own business this very afternoon
when I’d been driven to seek him out.
What if we left here, and
The Lust came back in the kitchen during lunch, or worse, a couple
days from now when I was home with Theo
? For whatever reason,
it clearly wanted Lash this time. If I denied it again, I might be
even more violent the next time it overtook me.
What if I picked
up a gun then instead of a hammer?

I had to control this. It was better to get
it over with now where we had a little privacy.

I reached for him, my eyes a little scared.
“Come to me.”

Lash looked at me in surprise, and then moved
closer, coming into my arms. He pulled me tight against him,
molding his body to mine, the press of his erection straining to be
free against my groin. I reached down between us then, hesitantly,
and very slowly ran my hand across the hardness. He let out a loud
hiss, his pelvis contracting against me.

The Lust rolled over me like a steamroller,
squashing my resistance flat, making me feel like I had not been
with anyone in years. Without a word, I unzipped his jeans and
reached inside. He was hot and swollen, already a little slippery
in his readiness. I curled my hand around his shaft, and he thrust
into it, hissing with eagerness. I brought his penis out of his
jeans, stroking him quickly. Lash hurriedly unbuckled his belt and
unbuttoned his jeans, baring himself fully to me.

I looked at him with hot eyes, savoring the
sight of his engorged flesh. I hadn’t been wrong about his width,
and his length was good, too, though nowhere near Devlin’s. I
stroked his hard shaft gently, rubbing the tip. He responded
immediately, moving frantically in my hand, letting out groans with
each thrust.