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Ravaged: A Dark Vampire Reverse Harem Romance (Dark Vampires Book 2) Page 2
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Page 2
Reality snapped back all at once, my perception zooming backwards as though travelling through a long tunnel. I was back on the forest floor, frozen as a statue as I looked up at the dark stranger. That wicked smile was still burning on his face.
It was then that I realized the reality of my peril. This vampire hadn’t hunted me just to kill me. He’d hunted me for his other thirst, the one that beat through them almost as strong as their blood hunger. He wanted my body. He wanted to take me.
As the thought occurred to me, he nodded slowly, our eyes connecting as we finally understood one another. I was only a young woman of twenty years, and though I lived in this wicked wasteland where girls like myself were often defiled, my virginity was the one thing I had managed to keep intact amid this madness.
“Up,” he said, the word breaking through the silence like an ancient spell. My body answered before my mind could contemplate any other option. Hands pressed into the dirt, legs straightened, and I was standing before him. Then he motioned with his hands, his eyes glancing down at my torso. He pointed at my dress and then at the ground. If he thought for one second that I was going to undress my—
“Hey!” I shouted, staring down in disbelief as I started freeing myself of my clothes. My hands moved of their own accord, unfastening my cape and letting it fall to the floor. Then my tunic and red dress joined it, cascading to the floor in slow motion like a waterfall made of velvet.
I stood shaking before him in my white tights, which finished halfway up my thigh, and my underwear. As an outlander I didn’t have much in the way of nice things, we lived on the fringes of society, settling in small nomadic villages with little in the way of luxury. The few meager things I did own were worn, clothes were threadbare, bedding was thin, and shoes were worn with holes. It just happened that I owned one nice set of underwear, a matching set of white floral garments that had been gifted to me by a hunter in our village.
His intention had been obvious. He wasn’t a handsome man, but he was a gifted huntsman and respected amongst our people. I may have even married him if he hadn’t been torn apart by vampires.
The vampire’s black eyes glistened with madness as he took in my almost-naked form. I wanted to scream, run, do anything in the wake of his vampiric control but I was a helpless statue before him.
“Navalas?” he said, the word a slicing whisper in my ears. It was vampire tongue again, spoken in a way that I could tell it was a question. The word didn’t mean anything to me, but in my mind, I heard another voice. It said, ‘Name?’
My lips moved, betraying my intended silence. “Lily,” they said.
“Heir bringer,” he whispered. I turned my head as much as I could. What did he just say?
He breathed in the air, obviously inhaling my scent, and let out a long deep breath. As his eyes closed, I felt an iota of his control slip away. It was as though one of the hot bands wrapped around me snapped. My right arm flew forward as I went for his face, before the blow could land his other hand had intercepted my strike. Darkness simmered in those black eyes, welcoming my attempt at defiance.
“No, no,” he growled. “Obey.”
Before I could process it, he spun me around and dropped his weight down onto one knee. He bent me over it, ripped my underwear down my milk white thighs and then he—
He spanked me.
His hand cut through the air and cracked against the skin, the sound echoing through the dark forest like a broken branch. A sharp cry leapt from my mouth as fire flourished across my soft flesh and prickled over my behind.
“Fuck!” I yelled, pain escaping from my lips.
He didn’t offer any explanation or break. I heard his hand slice through the air again and felt his broad palm crack against my skin. The vampire wasn’t holding back with the strikes, each hit seared my skin with burning pain that quickly turned to—
A pleasant warmth?
I struggled in his grasp, kicking and screaming as he brought his hand down against my rear over and over again. With each spank my whole body tensed tight, breath shaking from my throat as his fire burned through me. I didn’t want the bastard to hear me cry, but I couldn’t help myself.
“Fuck!” Spank. “Stop!” Spank. “Oh god!”
I’d already lost count, but on what felt like the dozenth strike he paused, his giant hand resting over my bottom. He very delicately rubbed small circles over the red flesh and ran his finger up the inside of my thigh. His finger pushed against my folds and slid upwards.
I was soaked through.
My eyes widened as the realization came over me. I felt myself clench against his touch, and then I felt my juices trickling down my thighs. Was I actually fucking wet from this? Had those been cries of pain or cries of… pleasure?
Our game apparently over, he snapped his fingers and my body danced to his rhythm again, shifting up until I was on my knees before him. His chest was rising and falling underneath his black riding leathers. That deep darkness in his eyes was devouring me.
Then he moved forward, his lips crushing against mine. A strong hand wrapped around the back of my head and held me close, as his tongue thrust into my mouth and danced against my own. For a second I fought it, but then my body eased into his almost immediately. This time it didn’t feel like I was moving to his control. This time it felt… voluntary.
His other hand came forward and squeezed my breast, caressing it gently through my bra. A moan broke on my lips and my body flinched against him. A man had never touched me there like that before. Each squeeze left me wanting more. My nipples pebbled against the soft brassiere.
Fangs pressed ever so gently against my bottom lip, and his lips grazed delicately down to the slope of my neck, where they sucked at the surface of the skin. Pleasure moaned from my lips and I threw my head back, my body falling into him as my hands wrapped around his neck and body.
What the fuck was I doing?
“Mine,” he growled, the word sending tingles through my body and into my clit. My bra dropped to the floor, freeing my breasts to the cold air. His thumb grazed over my nipple, drawing small circles that left me clenching.
Then his hand brushed down my body, traveling down the flat of my stomach and down between my legs. His fingers curled against my wet folds and he pushed inside. My eyes bulged and I crowed pleasure up into the trees.
“Fuck!” I said, gasping as his finger broke me. The thick pad moved up against my tight walls and found a spot inside me that made every muscle contract at the same time. His other hand came down my back, squeezed my ass and slid between my cheeks until his finger found my other hole. Lips kissed my throat, his thumb circled my clit as his finger stroked my walls, his other hand gently probed my other tightness.
I’d orgasmed before. I had orgasms before. I’d indulged in the act of masturbation in the little private moments I had, when I was alone in my tent or at the hot pools. Some saw the act as religious treachery, but I didn’t really care for such things. I wasn’t a sinner, I didn’t think of myself as a bad person, I was just a girl trying to survive, indulging physical needs from time to time as the urge took hold of her.
But the little experience I had of my body was nothing compared to this feeling. The vampire had complete and utter control of me, somehow stirring points across my body until I felt something inside me, an intense and great pressure, growing at the pit of my stomach and building until it had to break.
“I’m going to, I’m going to—!”
The sentence kept breaking as I tried to say it out loud. As the great waves of fire shattered inside of me, I finally got the last word out, my entire body shaking and trembling as pleasure erupted through me.
“Come!”
My pussy dripped with slickness, clenching tightly around him as my hips thrust forward to find their own friction. I dug forward to force him deeper, I pushed back to feel his finger against my bottom. I pushed my fingers through his black shaggy hair and clamped him against my throat as his lips danced
over my throat and collarbone.
In that moment I was so horny for him I wanted everything. I wanted to feel that bite. I wanted him to take me. His hands tightened around me, squeezing into the flesh as he held me close to him.
For a few moments all I could do was hold onto his body as I struggled to find breath again. Holding him close I found the scent of earth and pine. It was a comforting scent, one that made me think of warm fires and soft blankets.
My mind was slowly coming back to me, slowly contemplating the reality of what was happening here. A vampire had me on my knees in the forest, crying into the night as he did the most terrible things to my body.
What else did he have planned?
Then I saw something moving in the darkness. Figures in the trees. My human eyes could barely dissect the shadow, but as the figures moved closer through the edge of the glade, I saw their hoods silhouetted against the black. The other riders.
There were three, the other three from before that had been hunting me with this vampire. Each was about twenty feet away, but as they approached the vampire holding me pulled his lips away from my neck and looked up, not staring at his accomplices, but clearly acknowledging their presence.
“What?” he said, his voice a low and threatening rumble.
“Helios,” one said from the shadows, its voice slicing in broken vampire tongue. This was another word I understood vaguely, but I wasn’t sure how accurate the translation was. Humans.
The vampire holding me gave a simple nod and then the other hooded figures disappeared back into the trees. My mind began to race as I dissected the scant information. Humans? Did that mean my tribe was here? Had they sent a party looking for me?
Would I be rescued?
As I looked back at the vampire, I noticed something different about him. The shining black in his eyes had now been replaced with a brilliant crystalline red. His eyes glimmered through the silver moonlight like brilliant rubies.
“Your eyes…” I gasped.
None of it made any sense. Vampires had red eyes, that much was true, but once they lost control and went feral, like most vampires out here in the outlands, their eyes became a deep and shining black, glistening pearls of madness that held hollow fury. Lifeless beads that hungered only for blood and rape, a dark blackness like in the eyes of a shark.
But now they were red, the color of a vampire with a semblance of control, a semblance of humanity. Once a vampire went feral though there was now going back. How was this possible?
“Your tribe,” he said, struggling with the words. I got the impression he was battling with the feral ferocity raging within him, trying his hardest to talk in my tongue. “They know how important you are.”
“What?” I stammered. I had never heard a vampire say this much before. Especially a feral.
“Heir bringer.” The words he had said before. “Fertile. Ripe. They want to take it. They want to sell it. They won’t take what is ours.”
I pulled back slightly. What the fuck was this guy talking about?
“Listen pal, I don’t know who you think you—”
With a snap of his fingers my mouth clamped shut. The invisible threads of his vampire control were around me again and my body was moving of its own accord. I stood, redressed myself and then he scooped me up into my arms.
“Let me… show you.” With a powerful jump the vampire vaulted up into the trees, easily taking us thirty feet up before we landed on a high up branch. I was about to ask what the fuck was going on when he covered my mouth with his hand and pointed down at the clearing.
Footsteps came through the trees, and then I saw them, the small search party of human men that had obviously been sent from my village. There were three of them in total, men that all I knew well. Lucius, Solomon and Peter. They were three of the most senior men within our small tribe.
“I can’t believe we had one amongst us all this time,” Lucius spat. “Who’d have thought it, Lily Waters, a breeder?”
The words sent a chill down my spine. Breeders were rare humans that could reproduce with vampires. They were highly sought after, made up a fraction of the population and were very powerful bargaining tools in this broken world. I wasn’t a breeder though; I was just a regular girl.
Wasn’t I?
“I always thought that pretty little bitch would have a nice cunt,” Solomon said. “Should have fucked her years ago.” I felt sick to my stomach. Solomon’s wife, Agnes, was one of my closer friends in the village. How could he talk about me like that?
“Well she’s out here somewhere,” Peter said, “we know that much. Once we find her, we can all have our fill with her, and then we can sell her to some big coven in the vampire cities. We’ll get enough money from selling her to feed the tribe for years. We’ll all be very rich men.”
“And we’re absolutely sure she’s…” Lucius began.
“You saw the way that pack of ferals destroyed her tent,” Peter cut in. “They ripped through her things, driven insane by lust. Her mating scent must have begun, which means every vampire in fifteen miles of here will be coming for her body.”
“What if they already have her?” Solomon hissed. “The ferals. They could have her right now.”
“I doubt it,” Peter said. “If a feral pack had caught her, we would hear their barking from here. They act very strangely when they find a breeder. You’d expect them to tear her to pieces, but no, they group around the breeder and scream until sunrise. Then the whole damn group, breeder included, usually goes up in flame. No one knows why.”
“She’s running then,” Lucius said. “Like a scared little mouse.”
“Yes, and we’re going to find her. Lily!” he called, his voice taking on a gentler tone. “Lily! We’re here to help! It’s Peter!”
The three men carried on through the clearing, their barbaric conversation drifting slowly out of earshot as they left. Once they were gone, I looked back to see the vampire staring at me. I noticed a deep black swirl forming in his reds.
“You’re losing control again,” I said, mostly whispering to myself.
His chest was heaving. He looked like an animal on the edge.
“Mine,” he growled. “Not theirs.”
“I am no one’s. Is that clear? No one’s!”
“I need. We need. We take. You come. You queen.”
I stilled at the words. Queen? What on earth did he mean?
Whatever it meant it was clear I didn’t have many options. If I somehow escaped the clutches of my vampire captor, it didn’t appear I was any safer going back to camp. The men I knew there, men I had thought were friends, had basically said they would rape me and sell me to a vampire coven in the big cities.
“Scent strong,” the vampire growled, his grip crunching around the branch we were sitting on as he tried to control himself. His language seemed to be slipping again. “Have to mask. Have to claim.”
In my head the best option was to get away from the vampire and the men from my village. I would head into the wilderness, find a new tribe, find a new village. But how did I escape the clutches of this maniac in the first place, how did I—
Thoughts still rampant in my mind, a shriek escaped my lips as the vampire grabbed me and took off again. His hand quickly covered my mouth to stifle the scream, and I shut my eyes to stop myself from being sick. He was impossibly fast, so quick that I couldn’t process where we were going. All I could feel was the sharp pull and push of momentum as we raced through the forest.
Inside of a minute we stopped, the vampire setting me down on the broken porch of an old wooden cabin. I knew this place, it was a couple miles south of our village camp, I had come across it while scavenging several months ago. There was nothing else around here but woods for miles.
Was this his home?
“No,” he growled, shaking his head as he pushed me inside. He looked back over his shoulder before shutting the door. He’d read my thoughts. I hadn’t voiced the question out loud, but he’d
answered me somehow. That was another flag, another sign that told me there was something different about this vampire. He could talk, somewhat, he could use vampiric influence and he could mind read.
This was no run of the mill vampire. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he wasn’t feral… but he shared so much savagery with the beasts.
I stepped into the cabin, which looked much the same as when I’d last seen it. There was little left in the way of furniture, save for a broken couch in the main room downstairs and an old bed upstairs. I did notice piles of furs on the floor though, laid out in front of the hearth which had been boarded up last time. Had the vampire and his friends done this?
“Strip,” he ordered, his eyes looking me up and down. “Strip. Ronan take. Ronan fuck. Ronan take mate.”
I’d had enough of being told what to do. With one sharp motion I swung my arm through the air and raked my hand across his face. It connected with a sharp ‘Crack!’, which was satisfyingly crisp, but the vampire didn’t flinch at all. He simply stared at me, his red eyes quickly turning black again as his chest moved slowly.
“Obey.”
“Or what?” I said, crossing my arms.
“Ravas.”
“Ravas? Speak common you savage I don’t understand your vampire language.”
A dark grin came over him, and he took a step forward, forcing me to swallow as he closed the distance between us. I was starting to hate the way his gaze intimidated me.
“Ravas,” he repeated, and this time as he did, I heard a voice in my mind again. “Punish.”
I clenched my jaw and cocked my head to the side. “Fuck you. I’ll stake you in your slee—agh!”
We blurred across the cabin and hit the wall on the far side of the small room. The force was enough to scare the absolute shit out of me, but not enough to actually hurt me. He pressed me up against the old wood, one hand gripped around my throat. The slightest squeeze came from his fingers, choking me ever so slightly of air.
It terrified me.
It made me want to run.