Page 18 of Fangs

A violent sound shatters the silence.

I shoot upright, heart hammering, scanning the gloom. The balcony doors swinging on their hinges, wide open, as if a gale has torn through the room. But there is no wind, only the cold invasive press of moonlight.

A bird, I tell myself, pulse racing. Just a bird.

Then I see it.

A shape clings to the railing. Large, dark wings wrapped tightly around a small body.

A bat.

I press back against the headboard, breath catching. The creature unfurls its wings. Against the white glow of the moon they stretch impossibly wide. Shadows drip from the edges like liquid smoke.

Then it is gone. Not flying… vanishing! Dissolving into the night like mist.

I lie back down, and I could swear—just for a heartbeat—that I see two luminous purple-blue eyes watching me from the curtains as they sway in the phantom breeze.

“Lucille,” a demonic lethal voice whispers from the dark.

Shadow Play

The temperature plummets. My breath comes out in clouds of white, and I sit up again, scanning the room.

Darkness pours through the wide gap of the balcony door, pooling across the floor before rising in twisting coils. Tendrils unfurl, reaching into the room like searching fingers.

A nightmare. This is a nightmare. Or a trick.

I press back against the headboard, my pulse a wild drum in my ears. The shadows climb the bedposts, coil around the frame.

I force a scream but my throat closes around the sound. I’m frozen.

The first tendril wraps around my wrist. So impossibly cold, like winter wind given form. It tightens, and I gasp from the shock of it. The reality of it. This is no dream.

The shadows are touching me.

Another coils around my other wrist. I struggle, but my arms are yanked upward, stretched above my head. The shadows lift me from the bed, suspending me in midair like a puppet on strings.

My nightgown falls loose around my thighs. My hair spills down my back. I’m exposed, vulnerable, and the shadows hold me fast.

More tendrils rise. They slither up my legs, my thighs, my hips. I shudder—from cold, from fear, from something else I refuse to name.

One thick tendril traces the line of my throat, then the ridge of my collarbone, the outer curve of my breast. It circles the peaked nipple without ever touching it. Teasing, denying, forcing my breath into short, helpless pants. Another glides up the sensitive skin of my inner thigh and stops a single inch short of where I’m already slick and aching. Their heat keeps rising, denser with every pass, pulsing against me like living veins.

A broken sound escapes my throat.

This is wrong. This is so wrong. Why are my hips lifting to meet them?

The tendril at my breast finally closes over the nipple and rolls it with exquisite, controlled pressure. At the same moment the one between my thighs presses against my clit and begins a slow, maddening circle. Pleasure sparks white-hot through my belly. My body jerks in the restraints.

One thick coil pushes inside my wet pussy in a single glide—stretching, claiming, seating itself deep while the external tendril continues its ruthless attention to my clit. Another rises and brushes my parted lips. When I gasp it slides into my mouth, thick and warm, fucking my throat in the same deep, measured rhythm.

I choke. Tears spring to my eyes. The dual invasion turns every nerve into raw, singing wire.

But the shadow is not blocking my air. It is coaxing, sliding deeper, teaching my throat to accept it.

My mind splinters. This is what I saw. What Thomas did to Mag. The way her throat worked around him, the sounds she made, the tears streaming down her cheeks. I thought it was brutality. I thought it was degradation. Now I understand…

The shadow moves inside me, and pleasure sparks behind my eyes. My body arches against the restraints, my hips rolling of their own accord. The shadows inside my pussy finds the perfect rhythm, and I cry out around the intrusion in my mouth.