The Snowmaiden, A Bride for Krampus - Jeanette Lynn Page 0,23
he chuffed. One deep breath, then a sudden stilling to deeply inhale, and I knew he’d realized he had company.
Dark eyes blinked, glanced up at me. He froze at the sight of me. Oh god, oh god. Was he smelling my blood? Was his feral Krampus side going to just tear into me?
Bel’s bite, that icky venom, was wearing off. If all Elves were like him, they were damned assholes and all deserved to be boiled alive in a vat of piping hot cocoa.
The low warning growl that issued from my cell mate had me tensing up. I nearly jumped out of my skin as the frosted bars at my back bit into my bare flesh so hard it burned. I was surprised I had any feeling left in any part of my body at all.
Crouching, his nose lifted and he sucked in huge gulps of air. Was he… testing it? Tasting it?
As if he’d smelled something he found interesting, he jerked to his feet. His eyes still had a bit of a glazed look, his steps unsteady as he stumbled his way over to me.
Adrenaline pumped through me. Of all the times for my Elf bitten ass to become functional, it was with the big bad nightmare before me that could probably smell the fear coursing through me. Horror filled me as he licked his lips, the longest tongue I’d ever seen slipping out between those thin lips flicking the air. His tongue was black and forked, fat and thick, competing with the long tail sprouting up from the top of his hollowed out melons for butt cheeks. Even out of it, he moved with a predatory grace that had my hackles up. Wide hip bones jutting out on such a thinned out frame, that flat stomach of his was looking even more inverted than before he’d passed out. The male looked like he was withering away right before my very eyes.
If he croaked on me from crazy Krampus metabolism defect and I froze to death, we’d both be golden.
I had zero faith my chances were anything less than slim. I was going to die.
It’s terrifying, the thoughts that race through one’s mind as their imminent death looms.
My imminent death was right before me now, breathing down my face. Hot breath that smelled strangely of cider, that heavy sweetness from freshly pressed apples tickling my nose, coasted over my bloody arm. His loud snuffling went from deep sniffs, to quick, short inhales, and then I felt a hot, wet tongue rasp up the length of my ravaged arm.
I held so perfectly still I’d forgotten how to breathe. My skin itched to twitch but I didn’t dare. His tongue was hot, to the point my frozen over flesh felt like pins and needles were stabbing at it. He was beyond hot, giving off heat this close I felt my quivering frame slowly beginning to thaw.
Bels’ words of warning kept rattling around in my brain. No sudden movements or outbursts.
Thin lips closed around the flat of my forearm, right over the Elf bite and deepest of the gouges. What looked like a secondary layer of lips closed over his teeth as he began to suckle at my arm, as if to milk the treat he’d found for himself. He liked the taste of blood. I could only sit here in terror and contemplate what else of me he might like to get a taste of.
The sucking on my arm grew harder and harder, until it hurt and I knew I’d have an enormous spot where the blood had come to the surface. His tongue lashed the spot as he worked. Once it seemed he’d gotten all he could from it, he began to growl. I knew then, as that low sound started up and grew, rising in his chest until it rattled him, and my arm as he kept his mouth closed around it, my time was up.
Waiting for it, that striking bite, a small modicum of relief filled me as his ravenous suckling slowed, the laps of his tongue lashing my damaged flesh easing up. It was stupid of me to think it would offer some reprieve when he let my flesh go with a wet pop and pulled back to study it. Leaning in, he gave my forearm a sniff and then snarled at it, as if it’d done something to grievously injure him and he was giving it to the count of ten to apologize and then cooperate