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  The cold wind tugged at my skirt, sending it billowing out to one side. I rubbed at my bare arms. “To keep the peace amongst the Vampyr families, or to keep the peace between Vampyrs and humans?” I asked.

  Victor’s thumb grazed my cheekbone. “Both.”

  “So I’m here to help you seize the throne of the Republic.” I let my arms hang limp at my sides and shoved off the balcony, making for the door back inside. “Well, then. You really know how to charm a girl.”

  “No, Raven. Please—listen.” He caught me by the wrist. “I need you. I need to draw that power into both of us. You want it too, don’t you? A girl like you—you can’t be happy with your people’s plight under the current rule.”

  “A rule your family instituted after the Onyx Queen’s death,” I retorted. “Lucio Bressov headed the Coven of Families when all the rules about Donations got reinstituted, when they laid the new set of strict measures governing our forced migration to Undertown.”

  “But that wasn’t his doing. It’s a Coven for a reason, and believe me, if you knew what he’s told me about the other families and what they want to do with humans—”

  My veins turned to ice. The cold, calculating resistance fighter in me guided me now, turning my face back toward Victor’s; that ice hardened my heart against his pleading look. He could pour sugary words into my ear and he could turn me on like a wall panel, but whether I wanted to feel for him or not, the real truth was that I needed him. I needed to use him—just like he needed to use me.

  “And what is it that the other families want to do with us humans?” I asked coolly.

  Victor’s jaw tightened, muscle working under the surface. “You’ve heard of what it was like when the Vampyrs first emerged. Before the Onyx Queen came to power.”

  “A bloodbath,” I whispered. Humans hunted into near-extinction while the Vampyr families, all vying for control of the world, were turning humans into Vampyrs at a prodigious rate in order to build their own private armies. It was only under the Onyx Queen’s work to unite the Families, establish the Donation system, protect the remaining humans, and regulate all turnings that humans were able to survive at all, second-rate citizens though we were.

  Victor nodded. “And I’m sure you can guess which families would love for us to return to those days.”

  I shook my head and made my way back inside, Victor still following my closely. “Why do you go along with Violetta, then, if you don’t agree that that’s the way the world should work?” And why would he share my agonie powers with her, I thought silently, if he didn’t want her to gain that upper hand?

  “It’s . . . complicated.” Victor drew a deep breath. “You see, as rare as agonies are, Violetta’s done a remarkable job of collecting them all for herself. She’s terrifyingly powerful, and sometimes, it’s too much even for a Vampyr to fight off.” His cheeks turned red as he drew the balcony doors shut behind him. “I may be immortal, but I am still a man, and . . .”

  “Sure. I get where you’re going with that.” I stared into the wobbling flame of a wrought-iron candelabra. There was something more he wasn’t telling me; he’d said it was about more than just my powers as an agonie. But he kept bringing it back to that.

  Victor dropped to one knee in front of me. “Raven. Please, listen to me. Even if you care nothing for our political troubles, and all our scheming, I know you care for your own race. We can empower each other. With your agonie power, I can steer the Coven away from returning to those darker days. And you can protect your humans. If nothing else, I can promise you that.”

  Finch’s voice echoed in my mind, urging me to do whatever it took to learn these Vampyrs’ secrets. As much as my body begged me to yield to Victor Bressov’s cruel touch, my mind rebelled against it; I didn’t want to be just a vessel to him, a means of gaining more power. And I certainly didn’t want to be a pawn in his struggle with Violetta Stregazzi.

  But the power to help the Resistance, while, at the same time, I was gathering priceless intelligence on the inner turmoil within the Coven of Families?

  “I have two conditions,” I said.

  Victor nuzzled his hand against my palm, eyes slitting contentedly. “Anything.” His tongue darted around one fingertip, sending a tremor racing up my arm.

  “The first is that you allow me to use whatever alleged ‘power’ I get from my work as an agonie to better the plight of my fellow humans. I want your ear on all Vampyr-human issues. Are we understood?”

  “Completely,” he murmured, then drew my fingertip into his mouth, sucking at it. I squeezed my eyes shut as a barb of pleasure pierced me. I imagined how that mouth would feel against other parts of me.

  “ . . . The second,” I said, voice wavering as his sucking intensified. “You will not share me with Violetta Stregazzi. I never want to be her agonie. Anything that passes between us is strictly between the two of us. No questions asked.”

  He pulled his mouth from my hand. “It will be difficult to keep her from you, but I promise you, she’ll never lay a hand on you, or even eyes, when you and I are . . . otherwise engaged.”

  My legs were trembling like pudding as I looked back down into those dark, hungry eyes. “Then I will be your agonie.”

  Victor laughed darkly. “I was hoping you would say that.”

  In a blur, he was on his feet and clutching me by the throat with one hand while the other snared both of my wrists. I bit my lower lip, simultaneously wanting to fight against his control and surrender to it. He smelled like dark, rich chocolate, with none of the metallic scent of blood I’d smelled on the other Vampyrs that night. It filled my nostrils, intoxicating as the vodka still pulsing through my veins.

  “You have no idea how long I’ve waited for this,” he purred, nose nuzzling against my throat before he took a playful nip at the soft hollow at the base of my neck.

  “Four years?” I said. “You really remember me from that pathetic day at the end of my Secondary?”

  In response, he crushed his mouth to mine. His flavor burst against me like an overripe berry, his tongue teasing mine as our mouths pulled together with desperate fervor. He still held my wrists together, pressed between us. I traced my fingers against the outline of his swelling erection. He shuddered at the touch, and sank his teeth into my lower lip as pleasure coursed through him.

  “Careful, now,” he murmured. “We’ve a long way to go before that.”

  I pressed my thighs together, savoring the growing heat between them. “But I want you inside me now.” It was no act—as much as I feared him, his touch was so overwhelming, and my body responded to it seemingly heedless of whatever my brain wanted.

  “And that,” Victor said, “is why you must learn patience. Discipline.”

  He yanked me forward by my wrists, parading me through the darkened colonnade. In the distance, I heard the steady trickle of water, drawing closer as we approached the far end of the room. Victor threw me to the ground. I landed hard on the stone, and slid, skidding against a raised stone dais.

  And my heart nearly leapt into my throat.

  On the raised dais, all too familiar with the candles and nearby reflecting pool, stood the iron cross, exactly as I’d seen it in my hallucination.

  Chapter Six

  “Is something the matter?” Victor asked, glowering down at me from above. I could scarcely trace the hard lines of his nose and jaw in the near-darkness, but his skin nearly glowed with the dull candlelight.

  I shook my head, trying to clear the haunting sense of familiarity I had with the scene before me. All that was missing from the hallucination were the hooded figures, the eerie chants.

  “Then stand up. Get those disgusting rags off of you.” His voice rasped against my skin. “Quickly. Quickly.”

  He began swatting at me as I tried to struggle to my feet, but I was trembling, fraught with too many fears and too much delight. As little as I wanted to know what the eerie scene had to do with me and how I’d seen it, I was dying to feel
that cold metal against my bare skin, and explore whatever further pleasures Victor had in mind.

  I unfastened the metal bustier; Victor reached forward and ripped it from me, throwing it to the stone with a horrendous clank. “Faster,” he snapped. He reached for the gauzy strap of the gown and tore it down my shoulder, exposing one breast.

  “I’m—I’m trying.” I shook free of the gown, down to my lacy bra and stockings—ludicrous, impractical things I’d have never chosen for myself, had they not come in the box with the gown. The cool, dank air bit into my bared flesh as I took one tentative, shaky step up the dais, still in my heels.

  The sharp crack of a whip split the air, sending a chill down my back as heat rose to my face. I’d always known Victor Bressov was not a man to be trifled with. But this side of him was . . . something else entirely. That knowledge gave me confidence, somehow, as I took another step up the dais and stood before the iron cross.

  “That’s a good girl. Do as you’re told, and your punishment will be minimal.” His voice dropped low, caressing over me. “But there will be some price to be paid.”

  He spun me around to face him, then dropped down into a crouch. I spread my legs wide, at his urging, so he could fasten my ankles to the legs of the X. The wide leather straps of the restraints tugged at my stockings; the cool air tickled the exposed soft flesh of my inner thighs.

  “This is a good look for you,” Victor said. He yanked one wrist above my head and out, to attach it to the top arms of the X. “Helpless. Vulnerable.”

  “I wouldn’t say I’m helpless.” I leaned forward and caught his lips with mine. My teeth pulled at his lower lip, sucking at it until I felt it swell in my mouth.

  Victor laughed to himself as he kissed me back. “That’s the spirit. But I think you’ll find it takes more than that to defy to me.”

  With that, he tugged the last restraint into the place. I was splayed before him—nearly naked, exposed in a way I’ve never felt before. I’ve been with men, I admit, though not many; I’d been far more naked than this before them. But even in restraints, I felt something pulsing through me that I’d never felt before with Finch and the others.

  I felt powerful.

  It was the way Victor’s eyes sparked as they roved over me. That lust that rippled through his sinews as he shed his suit coat and as his fingers slowly, achingly unfastened the buttons of his dress shirt. The lean curve of his muscles as he stripped before me, like barely contained fury. I did this to him. I drove him to this.

  I think I was finally starting to understand the power of being an agonie.

  He strode to the far wall and flicked open a dark wooden box set into an alcove. Something metal glinted in the candlelight. He dipped his hand into the box, and when he pulled it back out, sharp metal tips glinted on the ends of his fingers, like claws. Fear and anticipation fluttered through me. Whatever plans Victor had in store for me, I knew I was bound to feel the prick of those claws against my bare skin.

  “You’re remarkably well kept for someone who’s suffered in Undertown her whole life,” Victor said, striding toward me with a panther’s grace. “Barely a nick or a scratch on you. How do you keep the monsters away?”

  “Which monsters? The human ones, or the ones like you?”

  He struck me across the cheek with a wet slap that ricocheted through my jaw. As delicious as its lingering heat felt, I found myself wishing it had been more like the first time we’d met—his ring tearing at my lip. But I was sure there was plenty more pain to come.

  “You don’t know what a true monster I can be.” He seized me by the chin, forcing me to meet his gaze. None of the playfulness remained in his face, and panic welled up in me, even as it heightened my arousal. Was this part of his game, or was he truly furious? Either way, I felt my joints tightening, aching for more of him, more of whatever attention he gave me, whether it was passion or rage.

  “Petty, pampered little Vampyr princelings who steal into the Undertown and think no one will notice if they drain some nameless Laborer dry?” I tried to sound indignant, even though I was terrified. “Those are monsters.”

  The steel-tipped claws pricked into my jaw. I yelped, a pleasurable pulse worming through me as I felt blood draw to the surface of my skin. “Petty,” Victor echoed. “Yes. Inconsequential. I’m the real thing you should fear.”

  “And why should I fear you?” I asked.

  “Because you are nothing without me. I control you. Your delight and your pain. Your death and your life. And I can turn it off and on at a whim.” He grinned. “And you are helpless to stop me.”

  He sank down to his knees before me; one clawed hand trailed down my chest and groped, rough and painful, at my bare breast. The steel nails only pricked at it infrequently, but each time, that sharp edge mingled with the rough, delicious feel of his skin against my sensitive, piqued flesh. He ran his thumb over my nipple, drawing it out, until it was so hard it ached.

  Then he pressed his tongue against my thigh.

  “Oh, god,” I cried, squirming against the restraints. With my thighs forced wide apart, I couldn’t even move them against one another to release the sudden craving I felt between them, a desperation to have my folds touched, tingled, teased, fucked. “Please. Please, just fuck me.”

  “No,” he snarled. He sank all five claws into my breast. I bucked back against the cross, no longer even sensing the division between pleasure and pain. It was all one sensation—agony. Bittersweet, wonderful, awful agony. It was richer and more vital than a breath of fresh air.

  “Now you’re starting to understand.” Victor cricked his neck from side to side, then slowly, carefully plucked the claws free from my flesh. “Be a good little slut. Show me how you can scream.”

  He wedged himself between my spread legs and traced his tongue in a wide circle on the inside of my thigh. “Fuck,” I gasped, unaware of what I was even doing. I was letting words and emotions pour out of me without thought and it was so incredible, so freeing . . . The slow circles rose up my leg, until he found the first tendril of nectar running down my thigh, and he bit into the skin there, sucking fiercely until I was sure he would leave a welt.

  “Do you prefer it when I’m sweet?” he asked, peering up at me from between my legs. “Do you want me to taste you, really savor you?”

  “Yes,” I whispered, not trusting myself to say more. I’d never felt more aroused in my life. My clit was throbbing; I tightened my walls with ravenous hunger.

  He parted my outer lips with his unclawed hand and ran the tip of his tongue slowly, so slowly along their edge. My back arched instinctively. I clenched my hands into fists, nails digging into my palms, as a sharp, piercing delight went through me. “Do you want me to suck that sweet pussy, fuck you with my tongue?”

  I tilted my hips toward him, frantic to feel his tongue on me again. “Yes!” I cried.

  “Yes, what?” His voice was gravelly.

  “Yes, please,” I begged. “Please suck me.”

  He took a sharp bite into my thigh. “Your body and soul are mine now.” He licked the raw skin where he’d bit it, and trailed his tongue up to my folds. “If I want to bite you or suck you, I’ll do it.” His tongue rubbed hard between my lips, scraping at my clit, the very tip pressing into me. “If I want to drink you, spank you, turn you, kill you, then I will.” He darted his tongue again inside me, writhing, pressing, making me clench around it like a fist. “Do you understand me?”

  Turn me? Kill me? My heart was hammering within my chest, but the terror in his words made me slicker than ever. That tongue, and his hot breath against my skin, and now—oh, god, his mouth surrounding my clit, sucking it into him—

  “I understand—please, please, you’re going to make me cum—”

  Abruptly he pulled away from me, leaving me throbbing, standing on the edge, ready to jump. Cold air danced across my engorged flesh. Every change in the breeze and every crackle of a candle’s flame felt like a dagger to my spine, prodding m
e closer over the cliff. I needed it. I needed it fiercely.

  “No,” he said forcefully, his voice like the crack of a whip. “You come when I command it. Only when I command it, and always when I command it.” He smirked. “One day, you’ll be on a crowded mag-lev train, and I’ll comm you with the order to come for me, and you’ll be helpless but to scream as a mind-shattering orgasm tears through you, everyone staring at you in fear.”

  I nodded, shaking against the bars of the X. I felt like a balloon with its skin stretched too tight. If he didn’t push me over the edge soon, I was sure I would burst.

  “But I think I’ve served you quite enough today already, wouldn’t you agree? It’s your master’s turn.”

  “Anything,” I said, my throat raw. “Whatever you want. Just please, let me—”

  He slapped me again. It tasted like the sweetest wine inside my cheek. “If and when I’m satisfied with you.”

  At that, he grabbed the top arms of the X and, bared arm muscles glistening, heaved it to one side. I spun through the air until he settled the cross upside down. I slipped down, blood rushing to my head, restraints digging into my ankles to support me.

  “Now that’s much better.” Victor gave a lewd slap to my exposed bits. “Maybe the disorientation will tame your brazenness a bit.”

  He reached for the slender buckle on his belt. From upside down, I watched him unearth his erection from the fine suit pants—thick, reddened, and as long as I’d imagined it, from tracing it with my hands that morning. He gave himself a savory tug and stepped toward me.