Shadow Kin by M.J. Scott Read Free Book Online Page A

jacket and the linen below it upward, exposing his wrist.
    I didn’t let myself move. I wanted to look down, look away, deny. But I knew he could read the need in me anyway, hear the hastened heartbeat, see the tremors that quickened my skin now that he was so close.
    “I am well.” I kept watching. He’d never made me do this in public. Let me keep my sordid little secret—and the knowledge of the chain he used to bind me—to myself. Let others think he controlled me through fear and strength and will. It added to his power. But I knew the truth.
    The pulse in his wrist drew my eye. The tiny shivers of skin vibrating a little with every slow heartbeat. Vampire hearts do beat. Not with the same rhythm of the human life they have left behind. But blood still pumps through their veins, and the muscles beat to drive it so.
    Don’t think about the blood . I swallowed softly. “Did you have need of me, my Lord?”
    One side of his mouth curled slowly. My stomach clenched, willing him not to do what I thought he was about to. To punish me in such a way that only I would know it was a punishment, a sharp yank of the leash he held around my neck to remind me of where I was, who I was, and that my master was displeased.
    Given that he had not tasked me with the sunmage’s—Simon’s, I couldn’t help adding silently—death in public, then he was not going to reprimand me for failure in public. Doing so might risk lessening the fear with which the Blood regarded him, and to some extent, as the weapon he wielded, me. And that would never do.
    So tonight it was not going to be the easy way—a beating from which I could take a few days to recover and lick my wounds in private before he dispatched me to perform the next act of revenge or intimidation or simple malice.
    Tonight he would do something much worse and disguise it as a reward.
    “Oh no, my shadow,” he said, beckoning me closer with one long finger. “Tonight I think you have need of me.”
    Someone behind me sucked in a breath, a shocked sound that rang like a siren in the closely held silence. Maybe my secret wasn’t so open after all.
    “Isn’t that so?” Lucius continued, pinning me with his gaze.
    I squared my shoulders, knowing that begging would do no good. He knew me too well. Knew that the sensation of anticipated humiliation now crawled under my skin like bugs with razored feet. Knew that I would hate what he was about to do.
    It wouldn’t be enjoyable for him if I didn’t.
    It would be even more enjoyable for him if I fought him.
    Providing Lucius with an opportunity for enjoyment was something to be avoided.
    So I didn’t fight. “Yes, my Lord.” The words were shards of glass shredding my throat, but even through my revulsion, the need blazed into life, too long denied, too fierce to bank. If I refused now, I would pay with steadily worsening agony until I begged him for relief. As much as I wanted to be stoic, my body betrayed me. It wanted what he offered.
    “Kneel.”
    I knelt, fixing my gaze on his face as he leaned closer. If I watched his face, rather than the pulse in his wrist, I could control myself a little longer.
    “Good girl.” He slipped his dagger—so similar to the one I’d lost—from its sheath. The lamplight flickered along the blade in shades of orange and scarlet and there was an answering flash of red in his eyes. Anger. Fury. Fear caught me again, clearing the need a little.
    Danger still hung over me. He could still plunge that dagger into my heart. He was old. Old enough to be fast enough to strike before I could shadow. Old enough for it to be foolish for me to try anything. I stayed still, frozen like a bird confronted by a snake, hoping his anger would not overrule logic, that he would still think I was more valuable to him alive.
    After all, it wouldn’t be easy to find another wraith. The Veiled World guarded its females fiercely since my mother had slipped. The Fae did not appreciate the strength Lucius