Page 16 of Fangs

I snap my eyes back to them, heart slamming.

He fucks her mouth harder, hips snapping forward in brutal rhythm. “Almost there. You’re going to take every drop, Mag. All of it. But you will not swallow. Do you understand? Your blood stays pure for the auction. No swallowing. Hold it.”

Mag makes a desperate, muffled sound of agreement.

Thomas’s body tenses. He drives in deep one last time and comes with a low, savage groan, pulsing thick ropes of spend into her mouth.

“Hold it,” he commands, still buried in her throat. “Every last drop. Don’t you dare lose a single one.”

He pulls out slowly. Mag’s lips are stretched and glistening, cheeks hollowed as she keeps everything inside.

“Now spit it out,” he orders. “All over yourself. Make a mess for me.”

She obeys at once, opening her mouth and letting the thick, white spend spill out over her chin, down her neck, across the torn fabric of her dress. It coats her skin in glossy streaks.

“Good pet,” Thomas praises, voice dark with satisfaction. He reaches down and rubs his hand over her face, smearing his spent across her cheeks, her lips, marking her thoroughly. “Look at you. Covered in me. Perfectly tamed.”

He cups her jaw, tilts her head up, and commands, “Open. Empty.”

She parts her lips, showing him her clean tongue and empty mouth.

Thomas leans in and spits directly into it.

Mag swallows nothing. She simply holds still, obedient, waiting for the next order.

He turns his head and fixes me with that same sadistic smile.

“I’m taking Mag to her room where it’s safe,” Thomas announces, voice slicing through the air. He points a long pale finger directly at my chest. “And you will stay exactly where you are. Do not move an inch. You are serving a punishment here until I find Cain, who was the one supposed to be taking care of you tonight. He will come here to escort you to your chambers. Girls are forbidden to walk this manor during the night. Disobey me again, and there will be permanent consequences.”

As he turns to the doorway with Mag trailing behind him like a broken doll, he pauses, casting one last cruel smile over his shoulder.

“Since you kept staring at him while I was fucking Mag’s throat, now you can keep the man in the portrait company.” A short laugh. “He’s the dangerous monster who used to own this place. The one from the stories. Enjoy your evening with him, little pet.”

The heavy oak door slams shut. The deadbolt slides home with a final, echoing thud.

Monster

The shadows in the corners seem to draw breath, expanding and contracting with a slow, organic rhythm.

And the man in the painting watches me.

I should have stared blindly at the floorboards, counted the excruciating minutes, and obeyed the brutal rules. That would have been safe.

Instead, his piercing eyes hold me fast, looping an invisible cord around my chest and reeling me in.

I rise from the chair, my bare feet carrying me forward across the freezing floor, drawn by a magnetic current I don’t understand, primal, desperate, and entirely reckless.

I stop right before the portrait. Up close, his sheer scale is staggering. He is even more magnificent than he appeared from afar, every heavy brushstroke shimmering with an uncanny, restless vitality, as if the artist captured not just his physical form, but the raw, beating pulse of his soul. The painted shadows behind his massive shoulders shift just a fraction, mimicking the rise and fall of a hidden chest.

You are losing your mind. It is just oil and canvas. A vicious monster. Two hundred years in the grave.

My fingers reach out, trembling violently as they brush the carved edge of the gilded frame. His gaze tracks the movement of my hand. I could have sworn I felt a phantom vibration ripple through the wood.

I think about a man like him, who could destroy all my captors, revenge me. Serve the four Masters head on a silver tray for me. Send them to hell. And I would be free.

This man is a butcher. A legend of pure terror. And yet…

My hand drifts lower, leaving the frame. My breath hitches, tumbling out of my lungs in a shallow rush. The heat in my chest liquefies, spilling downward and pooling into an aching throb low in my belly.