Succubus Unchained - Heather Long Page 0,45

you defend Rogue from me now?”

“Sure, why not. He at least didn’t want to hold me hostage.” Well. He had, but he got over it. I wasn’t going to split hairs on it now.

If I did, deal with it. Like I’d said before, I was complicated.

Asshole hummed. “We can debate that in the future.” He swung his head to pin me with his gaze again. “Tell me what I have done that has so earned your ire.”

“Let’s see—you bit my neck over and over without so much as a by your leave. You woke up like some creeper from a horror movie and attacked me.”

The memory alone sent a shudder through my system. Not even an altogether unpleasant one. Something inside of me had to have been cracked while I was in that prison. Or maybe it had been Dimitri’s attack and the shit storm that led to me ending up in that cell. Asshole’s possessiveness had been a heady, overwhelming experience.

Didn’t change the fact that he’d bitten me there.

“I had to change the bite that made you,” he told me patiently, as if that explained everything.

“Is there a Complete Idiot’s Guide to understanding what the hell you’re talking about?” Aggravation struck sparks in me again. “You know what, don’t answer that. I don’t want to know. You asked me what you’d done to offend me? Let’s start with you bit me, then you drained me, then you fed me your blood, and you did it over and over and over again.”

The memories he’d conjured in me, the emotions he’d threaded through my system, had tangled with my own complicated feelings where my dragon—fuck me, he wasn’t my dragon. Yet he was. But where he was concerned. Where Fin fit in. And Rogue.

As if drawn by the thought of him, I flicked my gaze to where Rogue stood. He no longer glared at Asshole, but studied me with a far gentler expression. The hint of affection in his icy blue eyes sent another shiver rippling over the surface of my skin, and I licked my lips.

He’d been every bit as dominant and possessive with me from the beginning, but he’d avoided my throat after I’d made it clear I didn’t want to be bitten there. He’d also at least tried to explain things. But it wasn’t just that… The agony in his eyes when I didn’t listen to him and turned him—no, not me. Alfred.

Asshole, Fiona, I snarled internally. He doesn’t get to be a name. Not here and not right now.

I needed the distance.

That was the confusing part. The anger and the self-loathing gleaming in his eyes in my memories superimposed over him now. None of those emotions were directed at me, however, and it just made it more difficult to reconcile.

Fuck, I did not sign up for this drama. I added it to the long list of reasons why I wanted to skin Dimitri alive.

“When a vampire makes another, the mark they leave from that kill is permanently etched into the flesh of the child.” Asshole snared my attention again.

Gross.

“Some believe it is both a physical and psychic link between sire and offspring.”

Yeah, yeah. “Whatever, he couldn’t control me. That was what they were all worried about. Isaac tried.” I bared my teeth in more of a snarl than a grin. “That didn’t work out so well for him.”

The barest of smiles softened the edges of Asshole’s mouth. “You are far too strong-willed to succumb to just anyone.”

“Thanks for the tip.” The Sahara had nothing on the dryness of my tone.

“However, you are ours. Mine.” The possessiveness in that last word locked me in place as surely as if he’d snapped a chain on. “You will not wear the mark of another. Few can change that of a sire.”

“But you’re special.” It came out more snark than sarcasm.

He shrugged. “I am me.” Closing the distance between us, he curved his finger under my chin and lifted my face so I would meet his gaze. Fuck me, the reaction skating over my skin left my nipples peaked and my body slick and soft. I did not want to want him. Somewhere, my body failed to get the memo. “You will wear our marks. You are ours. Erasing him from your flesh did not erase him from life. I will give you that as well.”

I jerked my chin away, grateful for the autocratic haughtiness in his demeanor. It reminded me why he was an asshole. “I’ll deal with him myself.