whether it was with pain or amping up her own natural lusts.
She wanted rage?
She wanted blood?
I had it all in spades.
The blackness of her eyes seemed to expand until it swallowed all hint of color. The feed had left her near staggering drunk, but the more pain I inflicted—I punched her in the boob for a second time, and if those babies weren’t natural, they would have popped like water balloons—the more her focus locked on to me.
Daeva, like succubi, fed off the emotions. Hers were just a lot more specific than mine. The rake of her need scoured against my skin as she fought for purchase.
“Oh honey,” I murmured as I dragged her away from the bar and fended off the hooked claws of her fingers as she tried to grab my hair in retaliation. “I’m not playing.”
Gaze fixed on her, I smirked. The fact that she fought to latch onto me to feed left her wide open, and I found the lust, the hunger driving her so desperately and fanned it as I locked my arms around her neck. Wild need like that could cloud the mind, and it also threatened the control.
I’d been starving once. Desperate. It hadn’t been pretty.
A lot of bodies had fallen that night, and I’d sworn to never let myself tumble down that rabbit hole again. The daeva writhed back against me as I locked my arms tighter. Now my gaze was on the room. The bloody and the injured filled my vision. Somewhere in that mess was Elias. There were innocents caught up in this, too, but Elias was my friend.
That she’d involved him was bad enough.
When she dragged Fin into it, though, it tipped me over the edge.
I needed her tentacles out of all of them before I killed her. Otherwise, the whiplash might very well overwhelm them and make a bloody mess even worse.
A flash of movement, and my dark angel ripped another vampire in half who charged at us. Like puppets on a string, the daeva’s power lashed at them to reel them in to protect her, but I’d cut off her oxygen. She was fighting for every single breath. I wasn’t worried about assault from any other direction, not with Fin prowling around the edges of my own fight.
The fact that he didn’t interfere scored him some major points with me. Not that I needed to focus on that at the moment. The sudden snap, like a board being broken, warned me a split-second before the daeva’s violent need focused one hundred percent on me.
I inhaled the headiness of the near desperate wantonness. It did nothing for my own hunger. I survived by feasting on the lusts of others, so hers was merely an appetizer. But I focused on drawing it into me, even as she tried to magnify my lust. It didn’t work.
Laughter bubbled up in little bursts of glee as she scrabbled at me, clawing at my arms and trying to throw her head back to hit me, but I avoided it and ignored the blood slicking my skin as she dug her nails in deeper. Now I could cut off her oxygen entirely.
Gradually, the struggle went out of her, and then she flopped, a doll on the end of a cut string, and I released her to fall the rest of the way to the ground. Straightening, I met Fin’s gaze. My own breaths came in short, sharp little gasps.
Why the fuck did I need to breathe again?
I really didn’t get it.
The fighting had diminished, but it wasn’t totally done. The ferocity had dimmed. Fin raked his gaze over me, his teeth flash as he grinned. “Enjoy that, did you?”
I shrugged. “I told you, she didn’t get to have you. I hate little bitches who feed on drama.” It was an oversimplification, but it was also as much about territory as anything else. I couldn’t let someone else wander in and start feeding on what belonged to me. That was like inviting them in to try on your shoes, and you just know those bitches were going to ask to borrow them.
The corners of his mouth curled upward as he glanced down at the daeva. “She’s still breathing.”
I shrugged. “I didn’t need to—”
He snapped her neck, then wrenched her head right off. The spray of blood left me a little nauseated. Not because it was gross—okay, it was totally gross—but the smell of her blood was repugnant. Kind of like the way I reacted to