Vindicta (The Liquidator Wars Book 1) Read online

  “I knew you were big,” she said smugly, this beautiful Daughter of the Electi that hadn’t managed to give him more than the time of day for weeks at a time.

  Bayn found himself completely entranced, aroused beyond comprehension.

  He bent his head trailing his tongue down from between her breasts, circling her navel and down lower to the apex of her thighs. Brynn shivered in anticipation as he hovered above her in between her legs and, as he looked up at her, her gaze never wavered. Those beautiful crimson eyes never once looked away from him. This only heightened his arousal and his awareness of what was happening between the two of them. Something that he had wanted for long along. Something his own twin brother wanted for himself, but now he had his chance and, if they followed through and he took her purity, she would be bound to him forever. As long as they lived.

  Excitement at the prospect roared through him as his desire to take her grew exponentially. Just the thought of it caused his body to shake as he hovered there, just above one portion of her perfection. He was beyond ready to have a taste, and he was willing to bet with anyone that she tasted as beautiful as she smelled. He could no longer take the anticipation and placed the very tip of his tongue where he knew she wanted it to go, swirling gently around her arousal. An animal growl escaped him, and he closed his eyes as the taste of her spread from that point and into his mouth and coated his tongue.

  He felt her hands comb through his hair and then tangle in it in her ecstasy, her breathing coming quick and short as he heard her heartbeat in his own ears. It was fast and beating erratically, matching his own that he could feel within his ribcage. He opened his eyes and gazed up at her and what he saw had him in awe. Brynn’s head was thrown back, her back was arched elegantly, her breasts pushed out, and her hips writhed beneath his mouth.

  One word rang out in his mind as he looked up at her. Mine.

  Bayn removed himself from his position before her and covered her body with his own, causing her to arch her back against him. He shuddered and covered her mouth with his, his appendage throbbing with the need to accept the gift she was offering him. All thoughts of the battle happening below them had left him as soon as he felt that flash of heat move through his body, the need to make her his mind, body, and soul taking over any other impulse he may have had. Now, at that moment, all he wanted to do was mate her and take her as his own and the thought never once wavered.

  He pulled away and looked down at her and into her eyes, her crimson orbs pulling at him and taking him under the wave of her spell never to surface again. And he was perfectly content with that. The smell of her soaked into his flesh, musk and lilies blanketing him. Claiming him. All of him.

  Her hand came up to push a few loose strands of his dark hair from his face, nothing but love in her eyes.

  “Bayn?”

  The sound of his name on her full lips drove him wild, and he nearly came right then but reeled himself in. There was only one true way to claim your mate and, if that happened, he wouldn’t be able to make certain other males knew she belonged to him. That he belonged to her completely.

  “Yes, Daughter of Electi?” he asked, a wicked grin spreading over his lips.

  Without warning, she hooked her leg behind his and rolled him over onto his back as if she had done it a million times, but he knew different. Instinct drove her actions, not experience. She sat up and straddled his hips, his erection pressing against her slick flesh just between her legs. She moved against him and sweet, electric pleasure ran rampant through his body, spreading from where their bodies touched. They moaned together.

  Brynn removed herself from him, and he reached out for her but, once her feet touched the floor, she leaned over his waist and ran her slick, pink tongue up his shaft. Without a second’s hesitation, she took him, all of him, into her mouth and he couldn’t hear his eyes away as heat licked at every inch of his body and sweat broke out over his flesh. She moved up and down on him, sucking and teasing with her tongue at the just the right intervals, causing him to get so close to the edge and fall back down as she retreated. As he watched her, she was a vision of sexuality, her pink nipples erect and a blush of pink across her chest from her arousal.

  He couldn’t take any more torture, and he had to claim her, and he had to now. He sat up, and she pulled away as if knowing what he was doing. His large hands grabbed her hips, and he lifted her from the floor, rolling as he tossed her back onto the bed amongst the luxurious sheets and he was on top of her within seconds. Brynn’s cheeks were flushed, and she glittered with perspiration, her breaths coming ragged and deep as she stared up at him in wonder.

  “I love you, Brynn,” he admitted to her, the three words never once had left his lips before the moment. “Always have and you are mine.”

  She smiled up at him warmly, her nails raking his back lightly.

  “Then take me, Bayn. Claim me,” she whispered.

  His body hovered over hers and the tip of his erection pressed against her entrance. He leaned down and kissed her again, pushing into her just barely. He felt her unbroken hymen just inside.

  A loud and electric cracking sound penetrated the air, and then a red light flashed between them, sending Bayn backward and into the wall opposite the bed. A magical connection had broken like the break of a snapped rubber band. He fell to his knees and blacked out just as Brynn rose from the bed, covering herself as she moved toward him, terror plain on her face. He brought himself to a sitting position, shaking the confusion away as the urge to claim Brynn left him just as suddenly as it came. From the look on Brynn’s own face, as she wrapped a sheet hurriedly around herself, she was just as confused as he was.

  Images flashed through his mind and at first, he couldn’t make them out, but then he recognized the blonde head of Gwenyth. Then the unmistakable scent of iron as blood poured across pale flesh. A feminine cry was the last thing he heard before Brynn’s excited shouts brought him back to focus.

  “Bayn, are you okay?” she asked as their eyes met. Bayn couldn’t help but think that Brynn was beautiful even when she was afraid, the fear turning it into a tragic beauty. “What the Hell was that?”

  Bayn shook his head and did not have an answer for her.

  He took a profound, and steadying breath as the pain from the impact began to leak away.

  “I have no clue, but your sister is in trouble. And so are the Quaji.”

  Brynn moved away from him quickly and shoved her body into the clothes she had shamelessly thrown to the floor in a trance that she still did not understand. Sprinting to her dresser, she grabbed any and all glass vials she could, looking to Bayn with a beseeching look in her eyes. He jumped from the floor and followed in her footsteps. They exploded from the room running as quickly as they could out of the large double doors of the mansion, their feet meeting the grass of the front lawn.

  She nearly fell as her feet met the grass slick with Liquidator and vampire blood, but what she saw around her was the most debilitating sight she would ever see in her long life. Bayn watched with confusion as her crimson stare flashed Sapphire blue, activating her gift as she looked on at what he couldn’t see.

  “Bayn, I have failed us,” she breathed, barely audible.

  Each soul spark from every body littering the lawn of the Electi manse, floated into the air, fading one at a time as they moved into the afterlife, taking the vampire’s chances at replenishment with them. There would always be more, but each was a precious gift given by the Creator, and she had left them to fade without fulfilling their purpose.

  Something had caused this, and she had to find out what.

  ***

  Ryder was wounded but not badly enough to require medical attention. He had removed the arrow from one of his well-developed pectorals himself, and one glance at it told him all he needed to know.

  Brynn was on to him, and he was a marked man.

  The arrow he had removed from his immortal body was topped at the non-business end with red and s
ilver feathers: it had been friendly fire that had nearly taken him out. If it had been embedded a little more deeply, it would have pierced his heart. He was almost sure that Calyx fired it off, at Brynn’s order.

  Well then. That meant that he had limited time to implement the rest of his plan before he left, and he might as well do it now while the distraction of the battle was still ongoing

  He looked around to see if any of the other guard or notables were observing him. He didn’t see Calyx and her arrows, but he did see Tarren off in the distance, the huge hulk of a warrior vanquishing Liquidators three at a time with ease.

  He half ran back to the manse, and as he approached was delighted to see Gwenyth outside her guarded room on her terrace, staring moodily down from her balcony, still dressed in the same virginal white gown as she had been wearing earlier.

  He could have flown, but he knew his boots might make a noise when he landed, so using his massive strength he climbed the rugged walls up to her balcony, throwing one leg over the railing, then the other, and easing himself soundlessly onto the terrace.

  Gwenyth’s back was to him. He crept up soundlessly behind her, first glancing to make sure the guards were outside her chambers and not in it.

  “Love,” he murmured as she first started, then sank back with relief into his arms, “I have returned to you!”

  Gwenyth spun around and then held him tightly.

  “Thank the Gods!” she muttered, a lone tear trailing down her cheek in relief, “I thought they might have killed you! I know my sister suspects us now. I am afraid of what she might do to keep us apart, Ryder!”

  “I believe she tried to kill me Gwenyth,” he told her, pulling his tunic aside to show her his wound, “Look! And the arrow I pulled out was this!”

  Gwenyth’s expression became shocked as he pulled the offending arrow out of his scabbard. It was still streaked with his blood on the end, though his wound had long since healed.

  “How could she?” Gwenyth hissed her voice trembling in anger, “How dare she? She acts so prim and proper and cold, but I see how she tortures Tarren and Bayn with her body, always making sure they catch a glimpse of her thigh or her breasts--she know it drives them mad, but she gets off on it! --And now I fall in love, I who have never been with a man, and the birch trees tries to murder you on just the suspicion that we are having an affair? It is intolerable!”

  “Shhhhhhh now my beauty,” Ryder said, looking around. He could see the dregs of the ongoing battle, with the last lightning net arcing gracefully through the traffic on a corner of a city street and frying Liquidators. He knew the Guard was stationed outside Brynn’s chambers. But he had a plan.

  “Up you go!” he said to her smiling and swinging her around so that she was on his back with her legs around his waist. “I am taking you down the wall. Do not be afraid I am a strong climber and I have done it wearing backpacks that weigh more than you do. Where can we go to be alone, Gwenyth? We need to think, and I need your warmth, my love.”

  “The stables,” Gwenyth said, her sweet breath on his neck giving him a pleasant tingle. “No one is there at this hour and all the hands were recruited to the battle today. We can be alone there Ryder my Love!’

  Slowly and carefully Ryder made his way down the wall. He didn’t want to attract the attention of the Guard stationed on the roof by flying, but clambering down the stone studded wall of the manse and staying in the shadows he knew he wouldn’t be seen. His heart was racing. At last, he would be alone with Gwenyth, Daughter of the Electi.

  When he reached the ground he put his hand to his lip so that she wouldn’t speak, and slowly, still keeping to the shadows on the blindingly sunny day, he managed to secret them until they ran the last few feet to the entrance to the stables.

  Inside it was cool and smelled of new mown hay and eucalyptus, which the stable hands used when they mucked the stalls to rid the place of the odor of horse dung. It was pleasant, and soon Gwenyth, who knew the design of the tables from her riding lessons, took Ryder’s hand and led him to the very back stall which hadn’t been used in months.

  In one corner were half opened bales of hay, much of it spread on the grayed and weathered boards of the flooring. A shaft of light poured down from a casement window, and they turned to each other eagerly.

  Ryder broke apart from kissing her to make a request.

  “Gwenyth, my bride to be, I want to see you naked.”

  Partly out of spite for what her sister Brynn had done, and partly out of her own desire to be as close to the man she loved as possible, Gwenyth quickly removed both her gown and her underskirt, her pert young breasts with their large rose colored nipples bobbing as she did so.

  When she was completely nude, she turned slowly in a circle enjoying the feeling of his eyes visually drinking in every inch of her.

  He sat down on the piles of hay, pulling her across his lap, nuzzling her neck and then exchanging deep kisses with her.

  His hand that was not holding her against him teased her breasts and then drifted down between her thighs. As soon as it did, Gwenyth gave a deep sigh, opening her thighs so that he might explore her nether regions with his hands.

  She was wet, drenched in perspiration of receiving him inside of her, and for a moment he was tempted nearly past his capacity to resist fucking her lush little body.

  But then he remembered that his future depended on what he did next, and he whispered to her.

  “Gwenyth,” he began, his fingers still making lazy circles around her labia that became increasing swollen and protruded in preparation of coitus.

  “Yes?” she answered in a breathy voice, “Ryder, take off your clothes my love,” she added, almost petulantly. At that point, she wanted nothing more than a grudge fuck against her conniving and cruel sister Brynn.

  “Gwenyth,” he said again, looking down into her guiltless eyes, “I cannot take you as a man takes a woman now--you know to the Electi this is a marriage vow, and I will not take you to wife in a stable, my Princess…

  “But I do ask for your maidenhead for my own. I will take it in such a way that you are still mine forever, though we have not lain as husband and wife…

  “Will you allow me to do this? I promise I will be gentle. And I will keep it with me always, wrapped in my clean kerchief, next to my heart. We belong to each other, Gwenyth. I need this permanent token of our love for each other. May I?”

  Gwenyth looked back into his eyes, and he could see that hers were misting over.

  “Yes, Ryder Perkins, my lover, you may have my virginity in any fashion you care to take it. My heart, my soul, and especially my body are yours. I shall desire no other until the day I die!”

  Ryder felt himself relax then. From every standpoint, morally, spiritually, and most importantly by the rules of the Electi, Gwenyth, Daughter of the Electi was giving him permission to pop her cherry.

  It was a prize more valuable than diamonds to what would be his new masters, and the little lovesick fool was throwing it away with both hands.

  Ah well, he mused--that was youth for you.

  He bent his head again, covering her mouth, his tongue dancing furiously as he slowly worked on opening, for the first time, the virginal being stretched across his lap shoving her breasts up at him to suck.

  As most of the Daughters of the Electi, her hymen was intact and tough. He worked his fingers so that he might break it while keeping most of it intact.

  It was tougher than even he thought to finally get a finger inside her, and he remembered belatedly the legends that Daughters of the Electi were Hell to break for the first time, but were insanely fertile

  Ryder kept up a steady stream of whispers, telling her what a gift she was giving him, and how brave she was being, telling her he didn’t want to hurt her and assuring her that it would be okay.

  In the end, he just got tired and plunged into her with two fingers, making her cry out.

  Immediately, he captured the crescent shaped viscous pri
ze in his handkerchief, putting it away carefully as Gwenyth moaned and tears leaked from the sides of her beautiful eyes.

  He looked down and saw that she was bleeding copiously, her virginal blood warming his knee and turning the golden straw beneath both of them crimson.

  “There there,” he told her holding her against his chest, “That’s my brave darling! And now you are mine, Gwenyth! We belong to each other forever!”

  “I love you,” Gwenyth told him, kissing him, “I am glad...but it hurt more than I thought it would!”

  Just then they heard soldiers returning. They were still at a distance but coming closer.

  “Up you go,” he crooned. She seemed a little unsteady on her feet, so he hurriedly helped dress her, replacing the few items of clothing she had been wearing, glad that they were few.

  Ryder realized that he had a dilemma. He couldn’t fly her back to her room because the returning troops would see him. He couldn’t climb again for the same reason, and she was bleeding enough so that she would bleed over his shirt and breeches if he put her on his back again.

  Gwenyth sat on a bench, studying his face. When his eyes found hers, she gave him a wan smile. With her hair tousled and her face flushed, she suddenly looked like the very young, impetuous girl she was.

  She had no idea what she had just given up, and how dearly it would cost her

  He fell to his knees.

  “Gwenyth the soldiers and returning and if they find me here, they will kill me. Can you figure out some way to get back into the manse? I’m sorry, but I cannot return you!”

  She reached forward to stroke his hair.

  “Of course, I can. I shan’t have you killed trying to help me get back to my room. I might be able to go through the kitchen.

  “But you must leave now my love! Just promise me you will return for me. You must promise!”

  “Of course,” he told her, feeling inexplicably sad. In spite of the fact that he loathed the Electi in general, he was not entirely proud at having duped one so young and inexperienced.

  “I promise,” he said soberly, “And you must promise me that you will wait for me Gwenyth. We belong to each other now.”