Switchblade Goddess by Lucy A. Snyder Read Free Book Online Page B

from behind, stretching my flesh in ways I’d never been stretched, my arms and legs wrapped by his strong limbs, and Cooper was kneeling on the mattress between my legs, sucking my clit, bringing me to the brink again—
    —and I was standing, pressed between their straining bodies, both men filling me, thrusting into me, their hands and lips and tongues and teeth all over me—
    —a sudden dizziness took me, and we were on the bed again, my nerves at their mercy as another orgasm rocked me, they weren’t giving me a chance to take a breath, weren’t giving me a chance to even think, the doppelganger I’d made before had been a passive thing who didn’t even speak, but these creatures had turned aggressive and relentless—
    “No, wait,” I gasped, trying to get up.
    “You’re safe here,” Cooper soothed, hard at workabove me. “We have so much more for you; you just have to tell us what you want.”
    “Tell us what you want,” the Warlock crooned behind me.
    A chill washed through me as his words echoed in my memory. Miko’s mutinous lieutenant always said that to the people it parasitized:
tell me what you want
. And I’d dragged that shadow devil in here to kill it.
    I remembered the sight of the disgusting jellylike creature melting into the floor as it perished … had some of the devil survived? Could it exist as a spirit fragment, a shade of the shadow?
    Or had the nasty little thing gotten its hooks inside my head, planted seeds in my subconscious, and left me to reap them?
    “I want to get out of here!”
    But they weren’t letting me go. I looked to the dresser, seeking my enchanted sword and shield … and to my horror I realized they weren’t where I’d left them. They weren’t anywhere in sight. I felt my panic rise even as I came again under the doppelgangers’ sweaty pressure.
    “Stay with us.…” Cooper whispered.
    “Just stay with us.…” the Warlock echoed.
    Cursing, I surged up beneath them, throwing off their grasping hands, and lurched toward the red portal door. My fingers touched the brushed steel handle just as I felt claws closing on my ankles—

chapter
six
Retribution
    I came back to the living world, thrashing in the tepid water, fighting for breath. Jesus Christ. I lay back in the tub, shivering with fear and fever, trying to get my bearings. Jesus Jesus Jesus …
    I stared up at a crack in the beige ceiling. The shadow of my own pulse darkened my vision with every beat. My stomach churned, and I felt hot tears begin to spill down my cheeks.
    Trembling, I crawled out of the tub and stumbled wet and naked and weeping into the bedroom. I felt poisoned, violated, debased, and I wanted to be near someone who could make me feel safe.
    “Pal, help.” My voice was a weak croak, too faint to hear.
    He was curled up sound asleep on the pulled-out sofa-bed mattress. In his exhausted slumber, he looked both terrifying and fragile. My clean clothes were in a neat pile at the foot of the queen-size bed. Pal yawned and shifted, a stray ray of light from the gap in the blackout curtains shining on his gleaming, curved canine fang the size of a fighting knife. My loyal monster.
    My opera glove was slipping down, and I could see my purple flames flickering above the cuff. Flamesthat were inextricably linked to my hellement … and the nasty little devil that was apparently trying to use it against me.
    I felt anger begin to surface in the churn of my emotions. The cold, hard rage dried my tears like a wind from Valhalla. How dare the shadow try to trick me in my own domain? How dare it invade my most private thoughts? How fucking
dare
it?
    “You’re going to wish you’d never been spawned,” I whispered to the flames, then reached down to jerk my glove back into place.
    Pal needed his sleep, and I needed to cowgirl up. I didn’t need a hug, I didn’t need a shoulder to cry on; I needed to take my goddamned hell back and kill the little slime before it got any