In its place, liquid fire gushed through her veins.
Gasping, she looked and found the wound. A gaping, inky hole leaking sluggish blood tainted black. Big enough to fit three fingers inside—with dark, ominous veins spidering out.
Venom.
Horrified, she watched the toxin move. Spreading with each frantic, terrified beat of her heart, it pulsed as it surged through her veins and made her skin bulge.
Sobbing now, Kore turned to flee. To retreat into the dank, dark little cave and its harmless puddles of misery.
And in so doing…
… exposed her back to a predator…
CHAPTER 7
Molten heat surged through Kore’s veins. Alien arousal that spread as her heart flailed and thrashed, each fluttering lurch a treachery that pumped the venom deeper. Faster. Swamping her with the sort of liquid inferno that drew a choked gasp from her lips. Forced her fingers to curl into hooked claws as she tried to drag herself away. To claim some fragile, doomed whisper of safety.
But her body betrayed her.
Limbs that had been broken and miraculously healed no longer obeyed her whims. Knees that had been bent in supplication to a sun god were now scraped and stained with algae, damp with the lingering breath of the ocean—stained by the shifting, treacherous shadows lurking beneath the waves.
Quaking, her muscles heavy with feverish heat, Kore tried to fight the slick stone. Tried to scramble and scrape as she fled the beast who was inside her, now.
In her blood.
Throttled by a gasp, she choked on a sob as her muscles quaked. Heavy and languid, she grew clumsy as the toxin spread. Her movements sloppy even as her fingertips tore against the rocks. Skin rubbed ragged and raw went unnoticed.
But her thigh?
It throbbed.
Tugging at her sanity.
Leaking thick, sluggish blood, dark veins spidered out from the tear in her flesh. Drawing every spare ounce of her attention as the wound flushed hot and ominous.
A sound crackled through her lips. Thin with terror, it was a fragile thing. Pathetic. Flailing, her heart lurched in her chest, crashing against her ribs as Kore clawed for distance. Trying to claim the foolish hope that she might escape this fate. This horrible prison with its impossible, mythic guard.
It wasn’t the pain.
It wasn’t the fear of what might become of her—she was far too traumatized for all that.
No, it was the inferno unfurling within her.
Dark.
Vile.
Insidious. It was the sort of heat that pooled low in her belly. Drawing a gush of slick moisture from deep inside, her breath hitched when she felt her heartbeat drop low. Pulsing in a place that only her Lord Apollo and his consecrated priests were meant to know.
Arousal flushed in her cheeks. An alien glow that grew more visceral with every passing moment. Cresting toward something heinous with each panting, shallow breath that splattered past her lips.
“Nooo,” she moaned and squeezed her eyes shut. Teeth sinking into the inside of her cheek. Hard enough to taste the coppery tang of her own blood.
Such was her futile attempt to resist.
It did nothing to banish the fever—if anything, her refusal only drove the obscene sensitivity humming in her skin higher.
Nipples peaked beneath the tattered remnants of her robe, Kore’s breath grew haggard as the rough-spun fabric tormented those delicate peaks. Chafing with each tiny movement, a bolt rippled through her sinew and landed in the hollow between her legs.
