Blood-Bonded by Force (41 page)

A large breath escaped her as a flush of ecstasy coursed through her body. Thomal pressed his tongue against that button and held it there for several long seconds, the soft, focused pressure chasing away any lingering tension. Her thighs fell wide and the clench melted from her toes. Her mouth slacked open around erratic pants as he made small, sliding movements against her, all energy, feeling, friction concentrated on this most sensitive part of her. Frissons of electricity plunged down her legs.

He added a finger to her torment, tucking it inside her, easily sliding on her wetness. He moved it in and out, all the while his tongue softly rubbing. A sound of pleasure slipped out of her, raspy and awestruck. Her hips surged to meet his strokes. Tension returned, but in a good way, a bound-up, anticipatory pull in her womb. Her inner muscles tightened as her husband’s tongue and finger worked in concert, and between one second and the next, she was coming, her spine lifting, her sheath squeezing and throbbing. She hissed, gasped, moaned.

As the shocks left her body, Thomal sat back on his heels, his eyes black with lust, his dobber standing erect as a Beefeater guard from the middle of his crotch.

Was it even bigger now?

“Want more of that,” he growled. Taking his dobber in his fist, he moved between her thighs, positioned himself at her entrance, and pushed inside her.

A groan rolled up from the pit of her chest as she felt her flesh close around him.

Thomal let out some kind of animalistic snarl. No more niceties now. He pummeled her with his thrusts, deep, hard, fast, nothing eloquent or expert, but with a passion so raw and real that inside her she felt places open that had been closed her whole life. She’d expected comforting familiarity to come with his aggressive passion, but instead her breathing took on a frantic tenor. What if he was lulling her into a false sense of security?
That’s what you do best, isn’t it? Leave
? She couldn’t lose this…

A guttural rasp broke past Thomal’s lips, the noise sounding like it’d been wrenched from deep within his soul. “Jesus, yeah,” he ground out. “Yeah.” Rising above her, he entwined his fingers with hers and pressed her hands to either side of her head, locking eyes with her in an intimate hold. His velvet shaft was an unrelenting force inside her. His gaze never wavered.
This isn’t me rejecting you, Pändra
.
The total opposite
.

Her vision fuzzed as another orgasm slammed through her, these shockwaves stronger than the last. “Thomal,” she whispered.

His muscle-ridged chest and taut belly crushed her into the mattress as he came down on top of her for his final strokes. “So fucking good,” he panted softly into her ear, then sank his fingers into her hair, grabbing up fistfuls of it as he captured her lips in a rough, devouring kiss. He rooted himself firmly against her, his butt muscles clenching tight, his length pulsing rhythmically as he filled her with his seed…filled up all her empty, lonely places. His ragged moan of completion poured into her mouth, then he collapsed on top of her, her name tumbling from his lips.

Panting, she hugged him close, all hot, steamy skin.

He sprawled boneless on top of her, gasping and sweating, his heart hammering as if it meant to scarper off from the cage of his ribs.

She caressed her hands down the cool scales of Thomal’s dragon tattoo, petting his creature as she waited for him to regain himself.

Thomal muffled a chuckle against her sweat-dampened throat, then, “Wow.” He straight-armed himself above her, a strange smile spreading across his face as he singsonged, “Little Jack Horner sat in a corner, fucking this cutie pie. Stuck in his thumb, made the bitch cum, and said, ‘Hell of a lad am I!’”

She laughed, openmouthed and with a full lung of air. “What the
devil
?”

A larger smile bloomed in his eyes. “I told you I’d combat your need to kick my ass with dorky jokes.”

“That was a limerick, you gonk.”

“How about this, then?” He settled down on his elbows, his chest caressing her breasts. “Tomorrow morning we head into Ţărână’s family neighborhood and pick out our house. Oh, and those kids you want to have. I’m totally on board with making it happen. Whenever you want. Soon.”

She opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again. “For crying out loud, stop. I’m not feeling the need to lace into you. Truth is…” She made a show of snuggling beneath him. “I’m feeling rather contented and satiated.”

“Hmm.” He pulled out of her, then rolled to her side, propping his head on his hand. “It was my sexual prowess, wasn’t it?”

She chuckled. “Dare I shovel more fodder onto your ego?” She dashed a hand over his soft hair. “But, aye, I never knew sex could be so smashing.”

His expression was one of pure pleasure. “Me either.” He traced a finger along the flesh of her arm.

She smiled. “What you just said, about the house and the nippers? Let’s do that.”

Making a sound in his chest, Thomal rolled back on top of her.

“What’s this? Ready to go again?”

“Just need a tiny bite,” he said, lowering his face to her throat. The pointed tip of a fang traced the path of her carotid artery.

They made love and slept, made love and slept, all through the night. The early hours of stupid o’clock had just arrived by the time they were finishing with their fifth go-’round…and were interrupted by a fist pounding at the bedroom door.

Panting on top of her, Thomal’s head bolted up from her neck, his fangs still elongated. “Somebody’s about to get killed. Go away!” he shouted at the door.

“Thomal.” It was Breen. “This is important, man. I wouldn’t be here disturbing you if it wasn’t.”

He grumbled. “All right. One second.” He kissed Pändra on the nose as he slid out of her. “Sorry, baby.” He hopped out of bed and grabbed his blue jeans, tugging them on.

Wrapping herself in the bed sheet, she climbed off the mattress, too. “It’s okay, love. My vadge could use the rest, anyway.”

He glanced askance at her as he pulled on his T-shirt. “Nuh, uh.” He crossed the room, and she followed. “What’s going on?” he asked as he opened the door.

Breen, who already leaned right heavily toward Pure-bred pale, was white as a corpse. “It’s Tonĩ.”

At the mention of her sister’s name in that dire tone, Pändra lost all feeling in her limbs. She must’ve made some kind of horrified sound, too, because Thomal’s arm instantly came around her shoulders.

Breen looked at the two of them through the long sweep of his black bangs. “She went into labor soon after Pändra got out of surgery. We didn’t want to bother you with the news, because Luvera said you guys were, um… But there were complications with the delivery, so now you need to know.” Breen’s throat appeared to be struggling with a swallow. “Tonĩ almost died and she’s in critical condition.”

Chapter Forty-four

Nỵko set the glass pitcher in the Bruns’ kitchen sink and poured iced tea into it, sloshing most of the liquid over the high rim.
Darn it
. His hand was shaking as badly as if he was a one-hundred-thirty-year-old, palsied man whose main claim to fame was not messing his Depends after his morning pureed prunes. Him in the kitchen was proving to be the proverbial bull in a china shop—the very reason he was using the sink for this iced tea chore, instead of the counter. It was also why he’d left brewing hot coffee to Beth Costache, who’d gone home to her kids a while back.

He’d broken two glasses early in the morning when they’d all first holed up here: one, two, right in a row—
crrrr-ash
.

The startling noise hadn’t earned much more than a dull stare from the two other men, Dev and Shọn, who were here with Nỵko to sit vigil with Jaċken. Everyone was too shell-shocked and grief-stricken to do anything but act spacey. Dev still had blood on his jeans: Tonĩ’s or the baby’s? Who could tell, so much had just…come out of her.

Nỵko pinched his eyes closed, his stomach lurching sickeningly. Bracing his palms on the edge of the sink, he leaned heavily on his hands as memories of the scene in Ţărână’s hospital dropped on top of him like jagged rocks: Jaċken, wild with panic, rushing into the waiting room for help; Dr. Jess, frantic over Jaċken’s stillborn baby; the sight of Tonĩ on the delivery table, white as paste and nearly unconscious, looking like she’d been through the wringer. Which she had.

No woman brought a child into this world easily, but giving birth to a Vârcolac baby was a unique chore. Instead of contractions, the laboring woman went through what could only be described as sonic blasts. These were earthquake-like, the pulsations rolling off the womb strong enough to break windows, knock nearby people off their feet, and topple bookshelves. So as soon as a momma-to-be went into labor, she was locked into a belly container on the delivery table to protect the surroundings and the doctor. The container restricted movement, so the uncomfortable momma was made even more uncomfortable, and worse, no pain meds could be given for such a thing as sonic blasts. She had to suffer through it. The single upside was that delivery time for Vârcolac babies clocked in at much less than what it would be for a regular human kid. Vârcolac were birthed in anywhere from four to six hours. The rare woman went eight.

Tonĩ had gone
ten
hours
by the time Jaċken came rushing into the waiting room.

For some unknown reason, Tonĩ never switched from the sonic phase into pushing mode. Her womb just kept blasting away, propelling Tonĩ toward a state of exhausted death. Dr. Jess finally decided to break protocol and have Tonĩ push even while she was blasting.

That’s when Nỵko, Dev, and Shọn had been called in from the waiting room and tasked with holding mattresses around Tonĩ in order to protect the hospital machinery and Dr. Jess. Nỵko had been the one to brace the mattress behind the doctor, stumbling and grunting as Jess got slammed back into the mattress again and again… Until finally, Jess had managed to extract the baby, limp, blue, and silent. Following that was more bad. Tonĩ’s final sonic blast catapulted the afterbirth out of her body along with a bucket’s worth of blood, which hit the floor and splatted all over Dev. Then she coded.

Paddles
! Doc Jess had yelled, then sharply commanded the rest of them to
Go!
the last thing any of them hearing was
Clear
!

Jaċken lost it.

Stumbling out to the waiting room, a long, moaning growl rumbled out of him as he started to make the ugly shift into Rău.

Goosebumps raised along Nỵko’s flesh. If Jaċken changed to his beast side, with such stark emotions ruling him, there was no telling if he’d ever make it back out. “Jaċken!” Nỵko leapt forward and grabbed his brother. “Stop! I need you to stay focused—for Tonĩ!”

Expelling another gravelly animal sound, Jaċken sagged forward at the waist.

Nỵko quickly hooked his arms under his brother’s armpits, his forearms wrapping over Jaċken’s shoulders, to keep his brother from nose-drilling into the floor. “I need you to stay in touch with your radar,” Nỵko said.

The two of them scuffled around the waiting room, head to head, like two Sumo wrestlers going at it. A chair got booted across the floor.

The occupants of the waiting room pressed back, the males body-shielding the women. Some of the wives were weeping, loudly, while others were stone-cold silent. Difficult to tell which was worse.

“Feel your radar and tell me if Tonĩ’s all right,” Nỵko told his brother. “
Is
she?!”

An eternal pause, then, “I don’t know,” Jaċken moaned out.

Nỵko squeezed his brother harder, motivation for Jaċken, a hug of relief for himself. That had been a relatively normal-sounding response. “You do know.”

Jaċken breathed audibly for several seconds. “Yes…she’s not…she’s not dead.”

The surrounding women muffled relieved cries against their men.

“She’s bad, though. Christ, Nỵko, she’s really bad off.”

Which turned out to be very true.

A few minutes later, a harried Dr. Jess had rushed out to give them an update. Tonĩ’s blood pressure was dangerously low, making the next twenty-four hours crucial for her survival. The baby, who’d been resuscitated, was doing only marginally better than Tonĩ, and so was also facing an uphill climb to remain alive. After that, Dr. Jess had shooed them all off, not wanting anyone under foot for the stressful work ahead of him, but he’d promised to keep them informed of any changes, good or bad.

So now here they all were, huddled in the Brun household, one heckuva sorry group.

Dev, who had a pregnant wife due in two weeks, looked to be permanently choking on a handful of red hot chili peppers. When Marissa had come by a few hours ago to drop off an egg and cheese breakfast casserole, Dev had ordered her to “Go home and lie down!”

Shọn looked way out of his element for what to do in the situation, since he’d never been particularly close to either Jaċken or Nỵko, but it said a lot that he was here and trying.

Jaċken’s state of messed-up-ness went without saying.

Nỵko himself was trying to manage all of these grim happenings while stuck in an excruciating half-bond. No.
Excruciating
couldn’t even begin to describe this extra-special form of torture and insanity. Maybe this: it felt like every inch of his skin had been ripped off his body, dunked in boiling oil, then reapplied with serrated needles. And whoever had tacked his flesh back into place had done a slipshod job. His skin kept coming off his muscles, scraping, chafing, abrading. There wasn’t any part of him that didn’t feel completely wrong. He would’ve been willing to hack off his knife-throwing hand to be done with it.