It sent her eyes drifting shut as he stroked his palms over her, cupping her breasts and gently caressing them. She couldn’t help but let out a small moan.
Following her own desires and instincts for once, she pushed his shoulders, sending him falling onto his back. He let out a startled noise but watched her, wide-eyed and awed, as she shifted to straddle his thighs.
I don’t have to deny myself this.
He was squirming at her ministrations as if he had never known the touch of a woman before. He rolled his head back, his mouth open, revealing that his top and bottom canine teeth were a little too sharp. Also revealing that he had another piece of metal in the form of a bar through his tongue. Now she was imagining what he used it for. Oh. She pointed down at him as if lecturing him. “No illusions. No control.”
“None, sweetheart,” he said through a heady, blissful moan at her touch. He was writhing beneath her, clearly overcome by her touch. “This is real.”
Real.
So much of her life had never been that. The people who took her in from the orphanage, her childhood, all of it—it all seemed to fall away so easily as the façade that it truly was. Society’s expectations. Death and horror paid to her by a monster, only for her to turn around and pay their kind more in return.
All of it was a lie.
This was real.
“Oh, Bella…” he said through a breathless sound. “I love you.”
As she pressed her body down onto his, as he delved inside her in all his demonic glory, she tilted back her head and cried out his name.
11
Walter was pacing. He did not pace frequently. Only when it was called for. And in this moment, it was required. He had too many problems to solve all at once. The American army had already rallied and was on its way. Humans needed to be corralled and monitored, fed and cared for enough that they could be sustained.
And there were three—correction, two—hunters on the loose in the city, dragging his Master’s new prize behind them on a damnable chain. The Captain of the demons had not come up for air since taking the female huntresses as his spoil of war. Zadok was indisposed dealing with the remaining two. And Vlad was often nowhere to be found.
Walter was once more on his own to strategize and defend the newly taken city.
Mostly on his own.
Honestly, he wished he were on his own.
It was not that Elizabeth was not helpful—she was a malicious, cruel, and calculating creature. She was as intelligent as she was dangerous, and she did not serve in Dracula’s higher ranks because she was weak.
She was a distraction.
And he needed to think.
“Gather Mordecai’s forces to the western border. The Americans are unlikely to request help from the Canadians unless we expand. We should take the scouts that come to garner information on the city. The less information they have on us, the better.” Elizabeth tapped her finger on the map. “Here is the major route I think they will take.”
“You’re likely correct. I doubt they will approach from the water until they get desperate.”
She sighed. “This is not a great city to survive a siege.”
Walter nodded. “I hope we do not have to withstand one for long. I do not think we will.”
“Do you think Uncle means to move us?” Elizabeth blinked at him.
Walter stilled his pacing briefly to face her. He debated how much information to give the woman but saw no harm in it. She was the only one who had expressed interest ensuring that they did not all die from cannon fire, after all. “I think we will stay here until the business with Miss Parker is concluded, and we will move on with whatever prey we have managed to garner before then.”
“Huh.” Elizabeth looked down at the map then back to him. “Well. Then all these plans are rather much for naught, aren’t they?”
“It is not a certainty. He may destroy her, and then we are back to our original goal.”
“Which do you prefer?” Elizabeth swung around to face him, her legs draping off the edge of the table. Her chestnut waves were loose around her face, curling along features that were carefully made to be perfect and beautiful.
But it was not uncommon for vampires to look as such. Their survival was based on their effectiveness to hunt, and if their prey came to them willingly, drawn in