Passion of the Vampire King (Blood Fire Saga Book 5) by Bella Klaus (best motivational books txt) 📗

He leaned toward me, and scooped me onto his lap. The muscles beneath me were tense. Taut. Trembling with what I could only guess was a mix of frustration and terror.

“Start at the beginning,” he said.

Resting my head on the crook of his neck, I placed a hand on his chest and rubbed circles over his heart. The organ pulsed a rapid beat beneath my palm, making my insides beat in sympathy. Parasites, Demon Kings, Kresnik, and rogue preternaturals… And there wasn’t a thing Valentine could do to protect me from this dangerous new world. Was it any wonder that Valentine was so unsettled?

I pressed a kiss on his jaw. “How about I start at the end, so you know that everything’s alright?”

He exhaled a sharp breath. “You’ve got to start telling me what’s happening,” he said, his voice tight. “If there’s anything I can do or say to help you, I need to know everything.”

My insides twisted into knots. Right now, I felt like I was keeping him in suspense, but I had to tell him this way. The beginning of the story was terrifying as preternatural Valentine had been ravenous, under the control of Kresnik, and hungry for my blood.

“So, I worked out a way to stop Hades from hurting me.”

“How?”

“I put my blood in his ashes to force his resurrection.”

“Wouldn’t that make you his master and the object of his desire?”

I shook my head, not wanting to utter a lie. The Demon King seemed the type of womanizer who lived for the conquest. I doubted that he could fixate on anyone long enough to become obsessed. “He’s too strong willed to listen to anything I say, but anything he tries to do to me backfires on him.”

Valentine stilled. “What did the Demon King try to—”

“It backfired.” I wrapped my arms around his neck. “More importantly, Hades and the rest of the Supernatural Council pardoned me for your murder and they’re no longer executing fire users.”

“The Council agreed because?” His voice trailed off. I guess he knew enough about the group of monarchs to suspect that they wouldn’t ever overturn their murderous policies.

“They know the truth,” I said. “All this time they’ve been sending fire users to Hell, they’ve been supplying Kresnik with powerful souls to turn into offspring whose power is compatible with his. The Council knows that now, and they’re going to stop the death sentences.”

Valentine fell silent for a few heartbeats, taking in the new information. He ran a hand down my bare thigh and pressed a kiss on my temple. “I’m glad you’re safe, but is my preternatural body protecting you from Hades’ advances?”

I told him about Kresnik’s scheme to create a preternatural army of zombies from inmates taken from nearby prisons and about Kresnik’s constant theft of power from all the Flame’s young people. Throughout my story, Valentine’s ragged breaths rasped against my eardrums, but he didn’t speak. I didn’t dare to raise my head and see his reaction in case my words floundered.

“In the end, Hades showed me how to disable the wards, and I broke the temporal magic protecting the Flame,” I said. “That’s when an army of enforcers detected the magical surge and turned up in Hampstead Heath.”

“What else?” Valentine snarled.

My head snapped up, and I finally met his gaze. “What?”

Valentine’s lips flattened and his chest heaved with rapid breaths. “One person is missing from this tale of conspiracy and betrayal, and I want to know why.”

My insides shriveled into a little ball, and I wanted to do the same. To curl up like an armadillo to withstand the inevitable storm. Valentine would be horrified with all those things I did with his preternatural self—the blowjob under a glass table, riding him in a restaurant, the rough sex. Not only because his body had made me endure them, but because I had enjoyed his darker side.

His gaze intensified, making me squeeze my eyes shut and turn to the side.

“Mera.” His words were choked. “If he hurt you—”

“He didn’t,” I murmured. “Not really.”

“What does that mean?” Valentine’s voice shook with the effort to stay calm.

My throat thickened. Even though Valentine was a perfect gentleman with me, I wasn’t naive enough to think he hadn’t done those kinds of things with other women.

He was handsome, rich and a Vampire King. Up until he and I started courting, he had been a bachelor with over a thousand years of experience with supernatural women. His preternatural self didn’t get those ideas from thin air or even from Kresnik.

“Mera.” His hard voice knocked me out of my contemplation.

I leaned back in the cradle of his arms and peered up at him through my lashes. Valentine’s eyes were no longer amethysts. Red streaks appeared beneath their violet surface, combining with tiny striations of white that reminded me of lightning. The rings around his irises darkened to a hue bordering on black.

My breath quickened. I had to say something right now to ease his pain.

“When Kresnik first took control of your body, he handed me over as a gift.” I gulped over and over, pulling my gaze away from Valentine’s so as not to see his reaction. “Kresnik probably wanted me to get drained and discarded, but your body had other plans.”

“He broke free of the control?” he rasped.

“After drinking enough of my blood,” I murmured. “At some point, he noticed that I still had my magic. Maybe he knew it was impossible to transfer a shifter’s ability completely and it would return. Maybe he knew that Kresnik would eventually notice this and try to hurt me.”

Valentine’s arms tightened around my waist. “What are you saying?”

“You…” I gulped. “He had to maintain a pretense that I was both powerless and under his control, so Kresnik wouldn’t see me as a threat.”

His breath caught. “He hurt you.”

“Not really.”

“Mera, please,” he said. “If there’s any long-lasting damage—”

“He kept me powerless with thrall,” I said.

“And Quell,” he growled. “Do you know