Page 38

After he had disappeared through the study door, I put my shoulder back to the proverbial grindstone. The numbers, red and green and blue, all soon became meaningless and fuzzy. This company’s stock was going through the ceiling, that one was about to drop through the floor, that one hadn’t budged in a week… It all started feeling useless. I laid my head on my arms and dozed heavily. Just for a moment, enough to rest my eyes.

“Fressia.”
His voice sounded cool… cautious. 
I rose with difficulty, swiveling in my chair to regard him. 
“What is it, Baze?”
He looked very grim, very serious. His lip was set in a stony line; his chin looked slightly dimpled in this countenance. 
“Baze, what is it??”
“There are bodies. In your freezer.”
I blinked at him, not registering the reason for his distress. 
“Yes… and did you find the bacon?”
He exhaled sharply, jaw dropping in incredulity. 
“Fressia, there are fucking HUMAN BODIES in your fucking FREEZER.”
I sighed, flopping back in my chair. Honestly? Did he think I let all my prey live?
“Basil, calm down. I told you what I am; I told you what I do to survive…”
“Did you feed me people?”
I leaned forward, letting my head drop into my hands. 
“Basil…”
“You answer me, woman. Did you feed me someone? Did I eat a person?”
I had had enough. He was becoming hysterical. For no really good reason. He needed to be controlled.
I looked him deeply in the eyes, turning on that special ability all Children possess. His eyes remained stonily hard. 
“Basil, you will calm yourself. There is no reason to be upset.”
He opened his mouth, raising a hand as if about to object. He was stopped. His face loosened for a moment. He hesitated. 
“That’s not true.”
“Yes it is. You will calm yourself. Now.”
He frowned again, fists clenching. “Stop it. Don’t you do that, I
know what you’re doing. I won’t ca-”
I pounced. I shoved aside the left shoulder of his robe. Sunk my teeth into the side of his neck opposite the side I had bitten already

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Page 39

I drank deep, growling low in my throat as I did. I gurgled his sweet, savory sustenance with impatient greed.
If simple hypnosis didn’t work, a bite surely would. In my exhausted state, it seemed like the best course of action.

It was not.

His hands seized my biceps. He gasped. I felt his legs buckle, let him sink to the floor and sank with him. I felt his rage and indignation, his feeling of being wronged. At this, I actually felt a pang of guilt. 
My mind wanted to welcome that familiar euphoria into which his sanguine drug always threw me… but it could not. There was too much anger in it. Too much steadfast intransigence. It was therefore tainted with a bitter aftertaste.
I tried again to force my will upon him. I tried to convince him he was never one of the mice. That the only contents of that meat locker were meat. I felt him caving under my onslaught bit by bit… then I felt it fall through. I almost lost my balance, almost fell back from surprise. He held me fast.
He pressed back. He that was once birthed from the womb of the Celestial Cat. No longer he that was the cat born of mice.
He pressed back, not in stubborn injustice at being forced to eat human flesh. He pressed back in outrage that I had dared to force my will upon him.
My hair was seized; I was yanked roughly from his neck. My neck, instead, was pierced by long, thick fangs. 
I had never felt so vulnerable. So… weak. This could not be… I was the mistress, and he the pet.
I was thrown to the floor. I grasped my neck, feeling hot tears spill down my hot cheeks. I felt my capris being yanked from my legs. I felt him tear my silken panties from my body.
And I felt his teeth take the back of my neck. I could no longer even attempt to struggle.

He put me in my place with no compassion. He punished me for my tenacity. He showed me how foolish I had been to try to control him… And he made me his mate. His pet. His.

This pain… this pain was unbearable.
And I loved it, in shame.
His will drove deeply into my psyche as his barbed weapon drove deeply into the shuttered entrance of my womb. His mind clamped down on mine, drew forth my moaned apologies.
He left me there, on the floor… writhing in a thin puddle of my own blood and our mingled fluids. I cannot describe quite how that