This Side of the Grave (#5 Night Huntress)

holding cell in West Virginia. He chartered a plane to Louisiana and helped contain you while we traveled here.”
His voice changed ever so slightly when he said “contain,” making me almost screech as I demanded, “What exactly did Mencheres do?”
“Held you immobile with his power while I shagged you in the back of the plane,” he replied bluntly, a half shrug seeming to say, You wanted to
know. “Couldn’t risk you breaking free and crashing the aircraft, and attempting to drive to West Virginia with you in that condition wouldn’t have
been wise.”
Mencheres. Bones’s co-ruler, grandsire, Master vampire of incredible power, and the ally who unnerved me the most, had telekinetically held me
down so Bones could boink me into submission en route to a vampire holding cell? Sweet holy Jesus, let me have hallucinated hearing that!
“Get me some silver,” I managed to croak. “I’m going to kill myself.”
“Don’t fret, he faced the other way the whole time,” Bones said unperturbedly. “Aside from knowing it would’ve bothered you to have him watch,
Kira also wouldn’t have fancied that.”
“Kira was there, too?” Good God, I barely knew her! And she’d been just a row or two away while all this was going on? If I still had the ability, I
would’ve passed out from humiliation.
“Told you you’d feel better if you didn’t know the details,” Bones replied with a pointed look.
“I’ll never doubt your word again.” Or set foot out of this room, if Mencheres and Kira were still here.
He dragged me into his arms even though I was stiff from mortification.
“You needn’t be so ashamed. All you did was shag your husband; who’s to be shocked by that? Can’t say it’s an experience I’d care to repeat,
but that’s only because you weren’t really yourself.” His lips brushed my ear. “Otherwise, chaining you up for over a day and a half of uninhibited
rogering sounds terribly appealing.”
I knew he was trying to cheer me up, but I was still staggered over hearing I’d assaulted a tourist, gotten crazy every time Bones wasn’t plowing
away at me, and as the coup de grвce, Mencheres had—in a manner of speaking—participated in Bones and me having sex. And here I swore I’d
never have a threesome, the thought occurred to me amidst my lingering incredulity.
“Thought you said it was two days,” I muttered, finally registering the last part of what he’d said.
“You’ve been asleep for round nine hours now. Wasn’t sure if you’d still be caught up in the same hunger when you woke, so I didn’t take your
restraints off.”
I didn’t blame him. God, I wouldn’t have blamed Bones if he’d duct-taped a vibrator to me and just took care of the whole sordid nightmare that
way.
“You know what they say about being careful what you wish for? I used to wish there was something we could do, you know, intimately together
that you hadn’t already done before, but I didn’t think it would ever happen.” I gave him a limp smile. “Though I doubt you’ve ever been forced to
nonstop bang a woman hyped up on the undead voodoo version of Spanish fly, have you?”
His chuckle was soft. “Can’t say that I have, Kitten.”
“Yeah, well, consider me an original.”
This time, when his lips brushed across my skin, it lasted more than a moment.
“I always have.”
How he could be affectionate with me right after this latest cluster fuck—literally!—was beyond my comprehension. I should thank my lucky stars
that while this scenario was an eleven out of ten on my perversity scale, Bones’s former human life as a gigolo combined with his promiscuous past
as a vampire meant this probably only rated a three for him. Thank God he’d been there, too. I would have been horrified to cheat on Bones if I’d
been hit with Marie’s blood-induced slut whammy when he wasn’t around.
The idea made me shudder. I was already fuming at Marie over letting those Remnants loose on Bones; if she’d have damaged our marriage as
well—and though Bones would understand given the circumstances, it wouldn’t be something he’d ever forget—then I’d truly despise her.
The question that overshadowed even my searing embarrassment over my actions the past two days was why Marie had forced me to drink her
blood. If not to use it as fuel for Apollyon’s warmongering, why would she want to see if I could absorb her powers? Marie was too calculating to
have forced me into doing that just to satisfy her curiosity over whether ghoul blood would affect me the same way vampire blood did. She could
have made me drink from another ghoul aside from herself to get the same proof.
What was she up to? And should that be of greater concern than what Apollyon was doing?
“If you’ve, ah, been occupied dealing with me for most of the past two days, there might have been some developments,” I said, swinging my legs
off the bed. “Let’s hope there has been, and that it’s good news.”
Chapter Eighteen