Page 150 of Plug and Drain

Susie didn’t dare respond. They’d been caught in a lie.

Lying to the King was treason.

Henrikk prowled, exploring her room, his bony fingers trailing along the top of a row of neatly stacked books that reached his hip. “So, I began to wonder. Has Arken, my faithful servant, somehow…fallen in love?” He laughed sharply, as if the notion was absurd.

Susie threw Arken a desperate look. He needed to speak up—to deny it. For both their sakes

His hold around Susie tightened, but he was silent as he glared coolly at Henrikk.

The King cackled.

Susie summoned the meekest voice she could summon. “What’s so funny?”

“I did not think Arken would ever make the mistake of loving another. He has long been wonderfully sequestered. But he was not always like that.” Henrikk paused at the end of the row of books. “It took considerable energy on my part to bring the best out in him.” He moved to observe the spiralling tower of colour-coded books, tilting his head and sucking his bottom lip consideringly.

“Time…effort…incentives…and, upon occasion, application of the appropriate amount of force. Isn’t that right, Arken?”

Henrikk’s arm abruptly shot out and knocked the tower of books over.

Susie flinched as the books she’d spent weeks stacking carefully in an interlocking pattern tumbled to the ground.

No one moved.

“You are awfully quiet, Arken,” Henrikk noted, drifting back towards them, his words slithering up her spine like cold fingers. “I wonder why that could be?”

The vampires exchanged a long, cryptic stare that Susie could not make sense of. All she knew was that Arken was in trouble. He was paralysed, at least verbally. She really wished he would snap out of it. She’d known Henrikk affected him, but she hadn’t expected him to be speechless.

The air simmered with tension as the vampires stared off, and Susie’s insides were screaming danger. She had to do something.

“It’s just sex,” she said quickly, squeezing Arken’s hand before slipping out of his grasp. She rose, forcing herself to stand straight-backed before Henrikk. Her hands trembled so she hid them behind her back.

She swallowed. “We…This doesn’t mean anything. Really. Professor Zott was just using me as an example of good pet behaviour when Headmaster Arken visited. And…”

“Is that so?” Henrikk looked between them, his pale eyes calculating as they settled on Arken. “You and this female wolf are simply partaking in a ‘casual’ tryst?”

To Susie’s relief, Arken gave a stiff nod.

“In that case,” Henrikk said, “I am somewhat reassured.”

A tiny fraction of the tension left the room. Susie earnestly hoped that Henrikk would simply back out of the room and leave them alone.

Any relief vanished when Henrikk took a step closer into her space. Her dread mounted. He smelled like old blood and draughty stale attics.

She knew that look he was giving her. The same hungry gaze males often stared at her with. Like they wanted to be above her, groaning, and grunting as they took and took.

Susie panicked. She had to change the topic, distract him—or offer him something else to placate him. She had to try.

My blood.

Without looking at Arken, she pulled her hair aside and indicated the bite marks on her neck. “Arken has been feeding on me.”

Here. Look. My neck. Feed on me.

Feed on me and leave.

Drink, and then never come back.

She had never prayed before, but she prayed now that Henrikk wouldn’t touch her.