Richard: Blood Brotherhood – Erotic Paranormal Dark Fantasy Romance (5 page)

“I need you to kiss me.” He leaned down, and instead of taking her mouth, he suckled at the tip of her breast, nibbling none too gently on her nipple before biting hard enough to draw blood. He knew that she was aware that he was feeding from her. She held him to her even as her body lifted to each of his strokes into her pussy. And when he moved to the other breast to sample it, she cupped them both for him, and he fed from them back and forth as his cock felt ready to explode. Then, moving to her mouth, he kissed her.

She tasted of the way honey and flowers smelled in the spring. Her body felt like paradise and hell all at once. Paradise because of his need to keep her with him, and hell, because he knew that she’d leave him.

Rick fucked her harder now, feeling her body accepting his even as he lifted her ass up to pound her harder. When she tilted her head for him, he didn’t ask her for permission, but licked the pounding pulse there and sank his fangs into her throat.

Her scream echoed in his head. She came three times as he drank from her, fucked her like a man possessed. And when his own climax raced over him, making his balls hurt just before they released, Rick felt her pull his wrist to her mouth, and she bit down just as he came the second time.

Darkness surrounded him in that moment, and he only just managed to hang onto consciousness. Nothing could have prepared him for the bond that held them as one. When he sealed the wound at her throat and took her again, marking her body with just a brush of his hand, Rick knew that she was his and would be for as long as she’d have him. Forever if she’d let him.

Everywhere he touched her, he could see his mark. She was his, his mind and body told him. This woman was his. And when she came again, this time wrapped around him like a glove, both her body and pussy, he came as well, filling her for the final time as he felt himself falling over the edge of darkness.

When he woke he was in his room on his bed, and not in the clinic where they had started out. Sitting up, he could see her at the window, one that had not been there before, with a sheet wrapped around her. When he said her name, she turned to him and he could see that she’d been crying.

“What is it? What’s happened that has you upset like this?” Rick got up and went to her. Lifting her up and setting her on his lap, he held her as she sobbed against his chest, and tried to think how badly he’d hurt her when he’d taken her virginity. “I’m so very sorry, love. I should have been easier on you this first time. I promise you that a warm bath will help, and if you want, I can see about getting you some cream. I don’t know if they make it, but I can find out.”

She looked up at him. “You have not hurt me.” He nodded and wiped at the tears on her cheek. “That was the most beautiful thing that has ever happened to me. And now you’re going to think about what I am and who my sister is, and it will be gone. I don’t have any desire to go back to her, so if you could find me a place to live here, I won’t bother you again.”

“No, the only place that you’re going to live is here, with me.” He held her and thought about her sister. He had no doubt that Lucia had sent her here to get him. For what, he could only guess, but Ryiah, as he’d been told, had only been the messenger, not the one that had hurt him. “You cannot leave me. And, to be honest, while I’m not sure how your sister came to hate me so much, I can tell you that you’re not going to go back to her.”

“Hunter told me that she was going to keep me from men my whole life. I know not why she’d do that to me. But she hates me more than you.” He thought about what Nate had told him. “I shouldn’t like to go to her again either.”

“I’m going to tell you something that I only just found out. You’re older than your sister.” She looked up at him, and he could see the confusion on her face. “An hour older. I think that’s the reason that she keeps you so close, so that no one will tell you. And the fact that without you finding your mate, she’d be able to rule you because your magic would never be fully realized.”

“No, I’m the younger of us. It’s why she’s so powerful.” He wasn’t sure about that now but said nothing. When she sat up, he wanted to tell her he’d been joking and hold her again. The look on her face was full of hurt. “She said that I was hers to rule. That because I was younger that I would do as she said, and when she got the chance she would have someone murder me to take me out from under her care. I never understood her thinking on this, other than I must have done something to her long before I had any memories of it.”

“I don’t think that’s right. I mean, her hatred of you, yes, but not that she was stronger than you. She lied to you your whole life.” He watched her face. When her eyes widened, he started to ask her what it was when he felt pain like he’d not felt in centuries. They were being marked.

Her body bowed from his and fell to the floor. As much as he wanted to go to her, he couldn’t move over the pain in his own body. His back and legs felt like hot stakes were being burned against his flesh. His mouth shifted. His fangs felt like they were being pulled from his mouth. When he spit out the blood filling his mouth, his fangs were there as well, and he could feel new ones taking their place. Stronger and longer ones, he had no doubt. As he tried to hang onto consciousness, he reached for Ryiah.

Her screams hurt his head and his heart. Every time he touched her, just to brush his fingers over her skin, he knew that he was hurting her. But the need to hold her, bring her body to his, made him try and try again. When she curled into him, her body spooned to his, he knew a new kind of hell when he felt his back making room for what he could only assume were wings. It was too much. Rick just simply let the pain take him under.

The next time he woke he was in his bed again, but this time Ryiah was with him and curled around him. Holding her, he took an inventory of his body and knew that his legs were marked, as well as more of his back and chest. He could not imagine what was there, but knew that it would be part of the magic that came with being one of the warriors for Remy. A blood brother, as they’d been calling themselves.

When Ryiah lifted her head and looked at him, he told her he was sorry.

“I think we have been branded.” He told her that was right, that it was from the magic here. He could see some smears on her face, but wasn’t sure if it was just blood or actual tats. “Some. But there is also magic from you, as well as my own. I am…I was going to say that I am stronger, but I think that is a weak word for how I feel. I could easily take on someone much larger than me.”

“You might have to.” She said nothing, but laid her head back down while he explained about Benton and the malefactors, as well as the other things that had been going on since they started out. “As we gain our mates, we get stronger. So do our mates if they’re not already fully charged up. But we haven’t any idea what we are, where we’re going from here, and how much magic we have. We sort of fumble into it as it happens.”

“You can fly. I could before, but I think my wings are stronger for it. You have markings on you that are as ancient as I am, given to you by the queen of faeries, but also from magic that has been around for longer than even me.” He asked her how she knew that. “I can read them. All of them. They’re from my kind.”

His body was hard with ideas. Not just that she could read the markings on him, but perhaps Remy and the others as well. When she looked down at him he could see that her throat was marked, and he was sure if he looked, her back and legs would be as well.

“When you say ‘your kind,’ what do you mean? Vicki, one of the other mates here, she’s a faerie as well. But an earth faerie.” She nodded and told him she could feel her. “And my tats, you can read them all? Not just the ones on my neck?”

When she touched her finger to the one that he’d had for a long time, he watched her face as she read what was there. “This man, Richard James, belongs to the queen of all faeries. To harm him is to harm me. When he is injured, all who have caused him pain will die. Those that help him will be rewarded. Richard James belongs to me.” She looked at him then. “Would you like to know what the rest of them say? They are spells mostly, but they list what you are and can do.”

He nearly left the room, dragging her with him naked. Going back into their bedroom, he noticed in a vague sort of way that his bed was larger, his room as well. Where there was only the one window when he’d woken, he now had a wall of them. Even the ceiling was a large clear window. Rick thought that there was still a room about him—several, as a matter of fact—but as she needed light, the room had given it to her.

Once they were dressed, he kissed her again and grabbed her hand. It was time to talk to Remy and Skylar. They had to see if Ryiah could read them as well.

Chapter 4

Lucia was just leaving her chamber when pain took her to the floor. It wasn’t until she tried to stand up that it literally took her breath away and had her curling into a ball to try to stem the hurt of it. She looked around for the source of it—someone was going to die for doing this to her—but she found herself alone. Not even a guard nearby to blame it on.

Her mind wasn’t working well enough for her to think what had brought her to her knees, but she knew that whatever it had been, there would be hell to pay for it. And the fact that no one had come to see to her really pissed her off. When she could sit up she called for a guard, and when he was there, she killed him with her magic.

When the next one came in, she just stared at him from across the room. He was looking not at her but at the body of one of his cohorts, or whatever they called one another when they were alone. When she screamed, he looked up at her like he had no idea what he was doing there.

“If you don’t get your ass over here and help me up, so help me I will hunt down every member of your family and kill them all slowly.” That got him moving, but he didn’t hold her so much as caused her more pain. But she was afraid to kill him just yet. If she did, he would surely drop her and she’d hurt more.

When she was in her bed, he asked her if she needed juice. A standard question, she supposed, but it still pissed her off. As she lifted her hands up to end him, he spoke quickly.

“Ryiah has made contact with the one you seek.” She asked how he knew this. “I was with her when she encountered them. You sent me to make sure that she did her job. She has. I have no idea where she might be now. One of the women there picked her up from the arms of a man and flew away with her.”

“What do you mean, flew away with her? Was she a faerie?” He said he did not think so. “Then how is it that she was able to fly? Only faeries can fly, and I did not allow any of them to be with her.”

“But Hunter.” She asked him what a hunter had to do with this. “The faerie that was with her. She is forever with her. I think you know her, my lady.”

She did. That fucking little bitch that dared to turn her down when she told her she would come and be with her forever. Or until she tired of her, whichever came first. But to this man she was going to pretend that she meant little to her, and that she didn’t know her.

“And why does she have a hunter with her?” He asked her what hunter. Lucia was beginning to think she was in a play, where everyone knew their lines but her. “Never mind. Find Ryiah and have her brought here. With the man she was to bring back to me. And while you’re at it, find this Hunter. I want her to tell me why she thinks to leave this house without my permission. Does she not know that she belongs to me?”

“I know not what is in her mind, my lady.” She wanted to snap his neck. When he started for the door, he paused and looked back at her. “My lady, you should be aware that there has been a great disturbance in the magic around this house. That was what caused my delay in coming to see you. The house is no longer protected by magic. And the people here, they are no longer yours to rule.”

Long after he was gone, Lucia lay on the bed. Her mind was working on why the magic was no longer around the house and who she might have to kill to make sure that they left her magic alone. But in the back of her mind something kept tugging at her so that her sister was forefront several times in her thoughts. Lucia started to rise to check the books when she saw a faerie sitting at the foot of her bed.

“You wished to see me?” Lucia didn’t care for her tone and snapped her fingers. Usually that would have them running, but this one just sat there. “My name is Hunter, in the event you’d ever bothered to know it. But we both know that you are aware of who I am, and also who I belong to.”

“How dare you speak to me this way.” She stood up and the faerie moved as well. She was just far enough away from her that Lucia couldn’t grab her. “Where is she?”

“Who might you be talking about? There are a great many
shes
in this house. Or I should say, there
were
a great many in this house. There are only a few now. Male or female, as a matter of fact.” Lucia asked her what she was talking about. “Shes. You asked me where she was. I’m telling you that I don’t know which she you are talking about. There is you, of course, and me, but I don’t think you would have said it that way if you meant me. Nor would you begin to ask me where you were. When you should...well, you might not know, but you might too. There is still Blue, but I think she was on her way out. And—”

“Shut up.” Hunter only smiled at her. “Where is Ryiah? I’ve been told that you have been with her a great deal. I want you to tell me when to expect her back with my mate.”

“Never.” Lucia waited for more of an answer. When none seemed to be coming, she asked her again when she was returning. “When she has her powers sorted out, I would guess. And then there is the added magic that comes to her as well now. That’s a lot of sorting out, don’t you think?”

“She has no powers. And if you think to answer me in riddles again, I will have you killed.” Hunter said nothing, but did smile bigger at her. “I hate you, Hunter. And would gladly kill you for this. What is it you think you know?”

“I know a great deal. Much more than you would wish the world to know about, I’m sure. Like that Ryiah is not just your sister, but older than you by fifty-nine and a half minutes. I know that you have lied to her all her life, keeping her under your thumb so that you could have her murdered.” Lucia looked around for anyone that might have heard the little fucker. “And so you know, Richard wasn’t your mate. He never was. We knew this, but let you believe it so you’d send her to the compound.”

“Why would it be important for Ryiah to go to the compound?” She didn’t think about the things Hunter had said to her. Didn’t even want to know how she’d found out that Ryiah was her older sister, or how she’d been lying to her about their order of birth. But she really needed to know why it was important that Ryiah go there now. She was pretty sure she already knew that answer too.

“See? You do know it.” When Hunter flew to the window and sat there, Lucia felt her knees weaken and slid to the floor rather than fall. “Does it bother you, Lucia, that your sister has finally found some happiness after living with you and being terrorized all her life? You’re not nearly as stupid as we all think. Almost, but not nearly so. And yes, she’s found her mate…the one we let you think was yours. We’ve been…all of us have been keeping him safe for her. Not you.”

“She belongs to me. And so does he until I say differently. I shall say if she can have a mate or not.” Hunter laughed, making the hair on the back of Lucia’s neck dance with it. “Tell her to come here now. I wish to speak to her.”

“No.” Lucia looked at Hunter when she spoke. “I no longer serve you. None of us do, as a matter of fact. The only reason I’m here now is to distract you and to have a little fun while the rest of the inhabitants of your prison have time to gather what they can and leave.”

“I won’t allow that.” Not that she could do much about it right now, but she was starting to see that things were going to go badly for her if she didn’t regain some control over this. “You will not disobey me, Hunter. Go and find Ryiah and bring her to me this minute. I don’t know where you heard those lies from, but they’re not true. I am the eldest and I rule here.”

“You only wish that you did. And as I have told you before, we know you not to be the oldest. Ryiah is. Whatever plans you had for her? They are now gone. She has come into her own.” Hunter moved around the room again. This time when she landed, it was close enough for her to touch her should she want. Instead, she leaned back against the wall behind her and tried to think. Hunter continued as if she’d not just given her an order. “Her mate is a very powerful man. He has been touched by the queen. She had picked him for Ryiah long before you killed his family.”

“Richard James.” Hunter smiled. “No. He is my mate. I will not have it. This was not in my plans, and I won’t have you messing with them. Not to mention, had the queen picked him for my sister, I would have been informed of it. Someone would have told me.”

“No, we would not have. It was fun having you believe that you were unable to kill him. You could not, but it was entertaining watching you think it was because he belonged to you. When all the time, your entire career of trying to end the James family for a thing that you did to yourself.... Well, it’s given all of us a great laugh over the years.” Lucia stood up, but the faerie did not move. “You can try to kill me, Lucia, but it won’t work. I am no longer yours but belong to the true leader of our kind. Ryiah should have been the war queen long ago.”

“We’ll see about this.” She went to the doorway and called to her guard. When no one came, not even her servants when she called for them, she turned back to Hunter. “They’re out of the castle, I suppose. Trying to figure out why there is no magic around us to protect all that I own.”

“You go on thinking that. But if I were you, I’d be trying to think of how to beg for mercy from Ryiah. She is not going to be happy to find out that you have lied to her over her lifetime, or to think of all the suffering she had to endure at your hand. Just to name a few, you put her in a dungeon for over two decades. Then you forced her hand when it came to protecting you from the Gathering. Not once, but several times. And know this…when they find out what you did to her, they won’t be angry at her, but you. You did this all to yourself, and now you have to pay the price for it.” Lucia did remember that. And a great deal more things she’d done and said to her sister. In that moment, she was suddenly afraid of Ryiah. “I would be as well should I have the list of things against me that you have.”

“She’s my sister. She cannot harm me.” Hunter said nothing. “You know this as well as I. She cannot harm me any more than I could have her. And I did try.”

“So you did. But you are forgetting that you harmed her by lies and deceit. You gained by harming her. You profited off her blood. And you did this with the full knowledge that she was greater than you.” Hunter flew off the bed and moved out her chamber door. “I only came by to tell you that she shall not be returning. None of us will, as a matter of fact. Ryiah won’t, at least not in the capacity that she had been before. All that you own is hers now, and rightfully so. So with that being said, I will take my leave of you. Goodbye, Lucia. I would like to say it has been a pleasure, but it hasn’t. You’re a mean, spiteful faerie that is going to get all you deserve.”

After she was gone, Lucia tried to think. If Ryiah had her power, of which there was no doubt of that now, then she could easily destroy her. Not just kill—that would be too easy—but to literally destroy her, make her suffer in ways that would last lifetimes. She would also command the faeries. Lucia had figured out over the years that not only were they small, but they were vicious as well when they felt they’d been slighted in some way. And the pain they would inflict would be more than anyone had ever felt before. She knew as surely as she was standing there that they’d be particularly horrible to her. All because she told Ryiah a few lies and seen that a few of the faeries were killed.

As she moved through the house to find someone to help her, she noticed the changes. Gone was the chair that she’d spent so much time in. Now it was only the plastic one that she’d formed it from. The walls that had looked like they had been papered in cloth, their print so fresh all the time that it looked like art rather than just a simple covering, were gone as well. In their place were dried dirty walls that sagged badly. There were also piles of trash, more than likely the same ones that had been in this house when she came to it. Instead of cleaning it as she should have, she’d covered everything in magic. And why not? She’d had an abundance of it.

The drapes that she had agonized over for days were now just rags hanging over the filthy windows. Again, just like they had been when she’d entered this house all those years ago. The floors, for all the beautiful tile, was now dirt and stone. Lucia had to step carefully so as not to fall to the sublevels below, it was so bad. Furniture was gone, with not even a faded place in the dirt to show that anything had been there. The windows that had not been covered were broken, their beauty now lost because the magic was leaving her. Stepping into her office, a place that she’d spent countless hours going over each plan and every coin that she’d been able to gather, she saw that it was in ruin as well. The fireplace grate was broken, with large pieces of the stone inside of it. It had never occurred to her that the house would continue to decay around her magic. Not that she would have given it any thought at the time, but now it was terribly sad. The room also had a chill. Lucia was sure the reason for that was that she’d spent so much time in here making her sister heel to her.

Lucia was going to have to do something, and soon. Ryiah could not treat her this way. She would have to give her back all her things, all the magic that had been hers. When someone laughed in the room, Lucia looked around twice before she realized she was alone. When they laughed again, she crawled under the table and hid. There was no magic anymore to keep the monsters at bay.

~~~

Master moved along the streets. There were no humans around that he could bring to his work area to help him with his cause. He was going to need them, and he had a feeling that Rembrandt was keeping them away from him. Twice he’d thought he’d seen someone, but they were gone before he could make his big body go in that direction. Things were falling off him daily now. He’d lost one of his fingers just this morning.