Blood Ties Bundle: Blood Ties Book One: The Turning / Blood Ties Book Two: Possession / Blood Ties Book Three: Ashes to Ashes / Blood Ties Book Four: All Souls' Night. Jennifer Armintrout
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make things happen.
Making things happen proved to be more difficult than I expected. Cyrus was increasingly moody, constantly fretting over the impending fete and his seemingly permanent houseguests. A huge part of my plan to help Ziggy hinged on my ability to manipulate Cyrus, but it was hard to manipulate someone when they wouldn’t talk to you. Saturday loomed like impending death. I grew desperate, and not just because my plan might fall through.
As sick and dishonest as it seemed, I wanted to spend one last day with him. It was a death wish, considering how adept he was at reading my mind, but he either had been too busy to uncover my deception yet, or he had figured it out and was waiting to punish me for it at a more convenient time. For reasons I wasn’t willing to explore, I would risk being found out for just a few more hours with him, even after he’d made me feel so…used.
Eventually I decided that if I were to get myself back into Cyrus’s good graces, I’d have to take the first step. Friday morning, I went to his bed without an invitation. Dressed in a white silk nightgown I’d found in my wardrobe, my heart pounding so loudly I thought it would burst from my chest, I stared down the guards at his door.
When I entered his bedroom, I’d expected to find him with Dahlia or Ziggy, but he lounged on the bed beside a slender girl with blond hair. Her back was turned to me as they lay sideways across the bed, and one of her arms draped across Cyrus’s waist. He looked up with eyes of mismatched blue and the smile of a man who’d just learned he’d be having his favorite meal for dinner.
“I hope I’m not interrupting,” I said, surprised at the smoky sound of my voice. It must have been the sexy lingerie, or the perfume, or the makeup, because I was really getting into character.
Cyrus gave the girl a kick. Instead of scrambling to her feet and rushing from the room, she fell limply to the floor at the foot of the bed. Her head lolled to the side on her broken neck, and I saw her missing eye.
I almost turned back. No. Do what you came here to do.
I called over my shoulder for the guards and they stepped through the open door. I gestured to the dead girl, trying not to look too revolted as they carried her away. “I didn’t want an audience.”
“She was boring, anyway. Kept crying about wanting to go home.” He leaned up on one arm. “To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?”
I approached him slowly, trailing my hands across the silk that covered my stomach, my breasts, then the bare skin over my collarbones. “I’ve missed you.”
Suspicion clouded his eyes. “I thought you didn’t like me very much. Those were your words, were they not?”
“Maybe I don’t like you. I might just be here for sex.” My body throbbed at the thought.
I looked down the length of his body and saw he was just as hungry for me, despite his previous encounter. “You want something more, I can tell.”
I stepped to the edge of the bed, ignoring the blood on the carpet at my feet. “Maybe I do.”
He smiled, flashing the tips of his fangs, which had not yet retracted since his feeding. The vampiric feature in his otherwise normal face made him seem more dangerous than usual. “Is this something I can give you?”
I feigned helplessness. “I don’t know. It could be.”
“Everything comes at a price, Carrie.” He sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed.
Taking a deep breath, I hiked my nightgown above my knees with one hand and gently pushed him to the bed with the other. I straddled him, lifting the silk to my waist, and guided his erection into my body.
He moaned and I gasped as I sank down his cold length. I lifted my hips, letting him slip almost completely out, and pressed my throat to his mouth.
The change came over him almost immediately as he pierced my neck. I forced myself to concentrate on the feeling of him inside me, the sensations that made my head swim, so he wouldn’t see the true reason for the favor I would ask.
Or the pain that suddenly knifed through my heart.
This would be the last time we’d be together. I don’t know why it bothered me so much. I blamed all the feelings I had for him on the blood tie. But maybe that blame had been misplaced. Maybe I really did care for him. But the decision had already been made. I’d promised Nathan, and I had a duty to protect Ziggy. There was no changing my mind now. If I grieved for Cyrus in the end, it would be my burden to bear.
I rose on my knees, letting just the tip of him rest against me. He strained up from the bed, trying to reenter me. I made a move to get off him completely, and he stopped fighting.
“You’re trying to hide from me,” he whispered, leaning up to run his tongue over the scar he’d created on my neck. “But you aren’t strong enough. I can see what you want. Say it.”
My hands shook as I stroked his hair back from his forehead. Was this a trick? How much did he really see? “I want to choose who the Soul Eater gets.”
His body went still at the words, and for a moment, I thought he would turn me down. Or worse, reveal that he’d seen through my ruse and kill me on the spot.
Wrapping his powerful arms around me, he flipped me onto my back and filled me in one, brutal thrust. “Whatever my princess wants.”
I suppose I should have felt like a total whore at this moment, but my relief was so overwhelming I almost laughed. I threw my head back and surrendered to the feeling of my sire’s hands on me, his cock filling me. When I came, I shouted so loud I was sure I’d woken the entire household.
Cyrus finished soon after, collapsing on top of me with a smile.
“Saturday will be a night to remember,” he rasped against my cheek.
A tear fell from my eye.
You have no idea.
Seventeen
Happy New Year
When I woke the next night, Cyrus was gone. I curled into the space he’d vacated, expecting warmth but finding none. Of course. Vampire. No body heat. I sat up, chuckling at my stupidity, but my good mood vanished at the sight of Dahlia leaning against the closed door.
“What are you doing?” I pulled the sheets up to my chest and groped through the bedclothes for my nightgown.
Dahlia’s face was emotionless, and she didn’t make eye contact with me. “Do you love him?”
I had no idea what to say that wouldn’t set her into a flying rage. I hoped the truth was good enough. “No.”
“Then why are you still here?” She kicked the door with a slow, deliberate rhythm.
“I can’t leave.”
“I wish you could.” She laughed, not in the crazy way I’d heard before, but in a dry, bitter laugh of weariness. “I wish I could.”
“You can.” I felt a little guilty for lying to her. In less than twenty-four hours, I planned to have her fed to the Soul Eater. I bolstered my resolve by remembering the time she’d stabbed me in the gut, burned down my apartment, attacked Nathan, and the fact she was pretty much the reason I was stuck here.
She looked me straight in the eye. “Are you familiar with the Stockholm Syndrome?”
Am I ever. I nodded. “It’s when the victim of a hostage situation forms an attachment to her captor.”
“You probably think that’s what’s going on here, right?” She ran a hand over her mussed curls.
“Maybe,” I said quietly, reaching for Cyrus’s robe at the end of the bed.
Her eyes dropped to the black silk in my hands, and narrowed when I pulled the robe over my shoulders. But she didn’t move from