The Keep

Part 1 of Wheel and Deal - The first in the Forgotten Thrones Series - An epic fantasy with explicit erotic/adult contents. Available for purchase through Amazon and Smashwords. Available for free here. Add it on Goodreads. Ch. 1 | Ch. 2 | Ch. 3 | Ch. 4 | Ch. 5 | Ch. 6 | Ch. 7 | Ch. 8 On a planet rife with strife, class warfare is brewing to new heights. You’ll be swept into an exotic land of crime and passion, betrayal and lust. In a new setting, with exciting races, sexy plots, and plenty of struggle and pain, you’re invited to indulge your darker side.

It was an hour or two after day break. The light outside was bright, the time of day that even sheltered vampires found themselves weakened. She finally heard the faint sounds of his return, the hatch opening cautiously and revealing him to be standing back a safe distance.

Her eyes rose to him expectantly, bounds broken, her body curled up near the stone. Her posture and expression was lilted and lazy, her eyes a bit blurred with lack of sleep, but there were nicks and scrapes on her hands. She had struggled to find a way out, but feeling the bite of hunger and the vengefulness of the sun, she’d relented.

Hand hidden beneath his robes, spell readied in his palm, he stepped down into the dimly lit room. A lantern was clutched in his exposed hand as he quietly shut the hatch above. His footsteps were cautious as he stared at her sullen form, studying her. “I lied about the food. I’m not willing to sacrifice one of my guests for your pleasure. They’re good people, young and hopeful.”

“Not starving isn’t exactly the same as pleasure,” she contested, holding her ruby eyes on his, “And it needn’t be a sacrifice. Hell, more zan a few times zey’ve been far more pleasured than I,” she smirked, slumping back against the wall. “Just a few minutes with one of zem and zey’ll be feeling fine. Better zhan fine,” she licked over her lips, before tracing her eyes over his body and posture. Hau’glin simply shook his head.

“Vat do you think I’m going to do, ah? Break your neck and make a dash into the beautiful sunlight?”

Hau’glin gave a wry, almost sullen, smile to her. “Finish your job, perhaps? Or have you forgotten why you are here?”

She grinned in response, her expression almost cheerily, “Ah, I’d hoped you’d forgotten that,” she bit her lips, her eyes widening in a flirtatious manner that contrasted with her words.

He placed the lantern down on the table, near the heat-stone before stepping in nearer to her. “It’s been ages since I’ve seen one of your kind. Long since one of you has dared show your face in front of me without an army of slaves between us.” Anger roiled beneath his composed visage, his dislike for her people breathing fire into the words.

“Vat can I say. It’s zo hard to find good help now a day. And armies are zo expensive,” her words had their own edge, mixing with that wry little grin. He noted her confidence, her flirtatious behaviour. He wasn’t unaffected by her charms, but that well of anger kept him from acknowledging such things.

As quickly as she blinked, he’d shot out his free hand, her neck grasped directly beneath her jaw in that powerful grip, her eyes bulging in surprise as he tightened his fingers around that slender stalk of a throat.

Her back arched and her body shifted so that her neck was not totally choked off, her eyes turning hard, “No need,” she said, her voice hard. Vampires didn’t have a real need to breath, but it was a difficult habit to break, even after all these years.

Some long suppressed rage smouldered beneath his dark eyes as they narrowed at her. “I stopped my crusade against your lot long before I had my fair share of vengeance,” he muttered to her darkly, looming over her form, long dagger-like claws pinching out against her neck as they grew from his hands just slightly, “everyone I ever knew dead. And still you haunt me. As if you wish me to go back to slaughtering you until none are left.”

She winced a little at the claws, but there was no empathy in her gaze. Her tongue poked out and touching to her top lip, “Zey von’t stop. Vhy should you?” she choked out.

His rage was halted for a fleeting second; it was his turn to be surprised. Barely a heartbeat had passed before his grip on her neck tightened.

“You may have seen me with my guests,” he hissed through his own fangs with anger, “but I don’t reserve those kinds of soft feelings for murderers of the innocent.” He snatched out his other hand, grabbing for her black top, tearing it open with one sharp yank to reveal a tight bra clinging to her bust just as black as the silken cloth. It held a practical purpose, rather than seduction, harnessing her breasts to her chest, as if they were bandaged down.

Her laugh was garbled by the tightness of his hand around her throat, but even as her body jerked from his force, her eyes sparkled at him. She had misread him so much, the warnings her boss had given her having fallen on disinterested ears. When stalking him, he had seemed so passive and well adjusted. It had been a vital error on her part to assume that he’d been helpless as well.

He clawed at her flesh as he bared her to him. Jamming her head back to the table, he jabbed a finger into her naked skin, just above her heart as his upper lip curled just so, his lips pulling back in the beginning of a snarl that didn’t fully form. He pricked her with the sharp tip, “I could carve out your heart and feed it to the poor innocents upstairs, leech.” His breathing was hot and heavy against her skin, lunged up against her so closely as he was.

“Assuming ve have hearts,” she sneered.

Narrowing his eyes at her stubborn defiance, he twisted his finger into her, enough to draw dark blood from her onyx skin before he drew the elongated claw down the center of her chest. The sharp edge sawed through her bra with a brief pause before moving across her stomach.

She snarled as the tightness of her bra was cut away, her full upper form revealed to be much more impressive than it had looked in her full assassin’s gear. Her torso twisted under her assault, her fully rounded bust jiggling on top of her small ribs as she gave the first sign of a struggle.

The delightful present she held pressed beneath her clothing managed to steal his focus for another surprised moment. Even in his rage he couldn’t help but find himself transfixed upon her breasts. Perhaps it was the long seclusion at work. She squirmed beneath him, bringing him back to reality and his dark eyes shot back to hers. His hair and face shimmered almost silver in the pale light of the lantern, leaving him looking almost lupine before her as he snarled.

“Why do you taunt me? Do you yearn for death, parasite? Is that it? Do your memories haunt you that much?”

She tried to shift away from his anger. From her body it was easy to guess she wasn’t more than her late teens when she was turned, though it was notoriously difficult to tell with the dark elves. “Taunt you?” she let out a coarse bark, “You’ve obviously not been taunted by the overlords in a long time if you think zis is how zey’d do things!”

His hand at her neck, he pushed her back up over the table, “You know all about that, I suppose,” he nearly hissed, “how they taunt and take their sick pleasures upon victims and their families.”

“You can’t blame me for doing my job,” she crooned softly, trying to seduce him with her charms once more as her dark brown hair slowly fell out of her ponytail, her bangs pushed to the side above her ruby eyes. Her eyebrows pinched at the middle and her throat was quickly becoming raw with his force, words barely making it past the obstruction.

His eyes shot to hers, hardening, “When it’s being a murderer, I most definitely can,” he said, his words coming out on the brink of a snarl. “When I killed your kind it was in retaliation. Protection,” he sucked his front teeth, giving the impression that he was about to bite into and devour her flesh. “A job?” he sneered, “Really?”

There was no desire for pity or forgiveness in her hard, red eyes, “I wasn’t born,” she struggled out, moving to make room to talk, “zis way.”

Seemingly startled by her choking, he lightened up his grasp upon her, blinking as if surprised by his actions. Furrowing his brow he stared down at her, “Were you made by them, into this, just to be their assassin?”

She stared at him, that same, even stare, “Not ‘just’ to be zhere assassin. But vould you ask many questions,” she paused, shifting a bit, “if you vere me?” Her smirk returned. It was a small, almost shy action.

Pausing to consider her words, he finally loosened his grasp upon her throat, releasing her entirely and pulling back, no longer lunged over top of her, but looming at a more comfortable distance. Gesturing to her top he said, “I’m sorry I–” then caught himself, shaking his head a little, “I didn’t mean to get so carried away. Your kind just…” he faded off there, the effect ‘her kind’ had on him quite apparent.

She leaned back again, relaxing once more, her hand going to her throat and petting it, not seeming bothered by the blood dribbling at her chest. She let out a slow exhalation of dead air, “Yea, vell,” she swallowed, clearing her throat, “If I caught an assassin, I’d do vorse. So don’t beat yourself up.”

Though it hadn’t bothered him last night, with her true nature unhinging him somewhat, her cocksure behaviour did trouble him some. He narrowed his eyes at her, studying her half naked form with an intense curiosity. “Knowing your kind, I have no doubt of that,” he stated bluntly.

He pulled his hands back inside his old grey cloak, “I’ll leave you here a bit longer. I said I’d give you time before I left, and I mean it.” Licking along his lips, and over his own fangs, he added, “Perhaps it might please you to know I’m contemplating letting your compatriots come for me so that I can finish them off before I leave.”

She shrugged after a long pause, her ruby eyes moving back towards the black heated stone, “If they vere watching me, they’d likely be planning on killing me soon anyways,” she said with no hint of angst. She was still confident that she’d get out of this mess.

Studying her stoically for a moment before backing away, he climbed back up the steps, “Then you’re safest here,” he stated, leaving the lantern with her before disappearing out of the hatch once more.

To purchase the entire Part 1 of Wheel and Deal, it’s available through Amazon, Smashwords, and Goodreads for $2.99.

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