Chapter 29
Tiptoeing slightly, Bo gently placed her hands on both sides of Hale's face and pushed just enough succubus electricity through her finger-tips to make him lean down to her with an eagerness of a teenager out for his first kiss.
"I am sorry," the woman whispered, sparkling blue lighting up her teary eyes as she started to draw the steady stream of chi out of the siren and a blissful, mildly goofy smile began to spread over his handsome face.
"It's not gonna hurt him," Lauren commented, watching them with a tainted approval as Bo was frantically gulping down the chi she had been deprived of for far too long and Hale was visibly weakening under her attack, "Not until the very end. It's amazing, actually, witnessing a succubus kill from the front row, the life force – this elusive, medically undetermined substance – being forcefully removed from a living being, this reversal of a healing process."
Hale's knees gave way and the fae went down making Bo kneel next to him not to break the contact. She tugged deeper, making him gasp, while her hands were running the length of his body trying to caress him into oblivion.
"Feel free to proceed with the full feeding process," the doctor kept instructing, "Not like I am not jealous, but for the sake of the experiment I'll have to suppress the feeling unworthy of a scientist."
The smugness in her voice, the unhinged glittering in her enormous eyes that Bo still remembered to have been kind and gentle once snapped the succubus out of her starvation-induced feeding frenzy and drove her to spring up to her full height.
"You have been unworthy of being called a scientist for quite a while, darling," she snarled, sated and riding the high of her chi-fix, as the hunger receded supplanted by indignation, "You are an insane, delusional, paranoid creature driven to the edge by the pain and the inability to cope with it. You've suffered but who hasn't, Lauren? Let's face it, fae are predators but you've turned into a vindictive monster."
Lauren's jaw dropped a little as she contemplated the enraged succubus in front of her but all of a sudden a giggle burst out of her, a nervous giggle, then another, delighted giggle, until she broke into a full-on fit of mirth.
"That's it, that's all I wanted to know, thank you very much, Bo," the doctor's laughter subsided enough for her to speak, 'You think you've told me what I am? No, you've just told me all I needed to know about what you are – a traitor, an enemy, an un-enthralled fae."
Her long fingers caressed the call button on the high-tech desk phone, seconds away from calling in reinforcement.
"And you are off your trolley," Bo muttered with a small pout as she gave a sharp sudden pull on the doctor's chi from across the room and sucked in a small wisp that trickled out of the blonde's lips. Lauren's eyes flew wide open as she felt something tug at her very core and she gasped in pain, her shaking hand instinctively went to her throat as if to stop the energy flow but there was no resisting the pull. Bo drew in another taste of her lover – big enough to weaken the human's body and blur her mind, not big enough to do any lasting damage to her – and saw Lauren's eyes fill with confusion that quickly turned to longing.
Curtailing the feeding, Bo streaked across the room to the doctor, restraining her physically, pinning her arms to her sides and locking gazes with her now flabbergasted lover.
"You are accusing me of disloyalty and treachery and yet you can't even entertain a possibility that I can actually attack you," the succubus smiled a sad loving smile, "I couldn't either until my bubble burst. I deluded myself into thinking you could be saved, we could be saved. I let you become dangerous to the others, I was ready to give us another chance even after you became dangerous to me, but now you are dangerous to yourself, Lauren, you are destroying yourself. I have to stop this."
"Will you kill me?" the blonde wheezed, the haze of succubus-induced lust clearing and fear quickly ousting the impotent fury.
"I killed by misadventure, I killed to protect, I killed out of hatred, but I could never bring myself to kill an innocent like Hale," Bo scowled but her expression immediately softened, "and I could never bring myself to hate you enough to kill. There will always be a part of me that believes that you'll get better, that one day I'll get you back."
"You should've told me about your immunity," the blonde's face was now streaked with slow tears, "We could've reined together, Bo."
"That's what I never wanted – to rein," the succubus sighed ruefully, "I wanted to be accepted and loved, I wanted you, Lauren. But now I'll have to, I'll have to rein, to sort out the unholy mess you've created and I've condoned."
Bo's arm went around the slim neck, squeezing and pushing, cutting the oxygen, the chocolate eyes never leaving the terrified woman in her arms, not until the unconscious body went slack and then Bo lowered her lover gently onto the thick carpet.
"I'm sorry, my love," the succubus whispered wistfully.
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"I was afraid doctor Lewis could be listening and watching us through her many ears and cameras," Dyson's tone was as near apologetic as it ever got, "Even a conspiratorial wink could damn us."
"You might have guessed my room was safe as soon as I told you I had planned on shooting Lauren," Kenzi managed to pull a reprimanding expression, shaking the blissful look.
"Well, I might've," the wolf easily conceded, hiding a smirk in his beard, "But who's to blame me for not wanting to break the moment? That kind of moment?"
Kenzi propped her hand on his bare chest and straightened, looking down at him through the tangle of her long dark hair hanging loose and disorderly.
"Certainly not me," she whispered, her upper lips catching her lower lip and that rekindled the fire that had just been doused. In a flash the shifter grabbed her forearms and flipped her on her back, positioning himself on top of the naked girl.
"Looks like I am already pardoned but can I work on an advance pardon, just in case I blunder again and get you mad?" he purred as his knee inserted itself between Kenzi's legs turning the question into a statement of intent.
"Do you think we can afford the time?" the girl asked with uncharacteristic bashfulness, relishing the rare feeling of surrendering control to a man.
"Is there anything else you'd rather do?" the wolf quirked an eye-brow.
"Not really, just a nagging thought that it'd wise to start planning our course of action," she couldn't pitch her voice above whisper as she felt the wolf starting on his own course of action.
"We wasted so much time, risked so much and so often, there's no way I'm engaging in a life-threatening activity again before I give you something to remember me by," he only half-joked as he bent to kiss the last of the conscious doubts away.
Another half an hour later Kenzi came to a conclusion that for the moment she certainly had enough to remember the shifter by and dragged herself out of bed to slip on her kimono, thus dampening, if not removing completely, the further temptation.
"OK, now that I can at least breathe evenly, we need to get our minds out of each other's pants," she started sternly but was interrupted by Dyson making a show of peering underneath the covers.
"I am pretty sure I am not wearing any and neither are you," he commented, the smirk back in place and growing in smugness.
"Down, boy!" Kenzi had to hide a smile of her own, "We have to do something about my sister and about Tamsin."
"Tamsin?" he repeated, surprised out of his endorphin-fuelled goofiness, "I told you, baby, she's not in the picture, there's only you…"
"I know that," the girl waved a hand dismissively, "You've proved your dedication and focus today. Twice. But it was her who made you sick – I saw the trace of an injection on your arm when you were feverish. And then she sold you to Vex, I saw her at the gym."
Dyson frowned as the events preceding his capture were brought into sharp relief in his mind.
"The Valkyrie has been playing a convoluted game," he slowly nodded, "Using a smell-erasing spell, jabbing me with something, which, I have a suspicion, made me immune to the doctor's thrall."
"That's not the only possible explanation," Kenzi remarked, "Lauren failed to enthrall me too. I'm sticking to the version Tamsin tried to poison you and when it failed, turned you in to your mortal enemy."
"All over a couple of misfucks and petty jealousy?" the wolf sounded doubtful, "Much as the idea of a lady going on a homicidal rampage over me tickles my vanity, spells and potions are not her areas of expertise – if she wanted me dead, she would've run me through with a silver dagger. There should be something more to it, someone else involved with more widely ranging knowledge and further going designs. An antidote to Lauren's enthrallment to be tested in real life conditions, a spy in the enemy's camp in case of success. No offense to Tammy's brain capacity, but there's no way she could've concocted that scheme on her own. That has Trick the Blood King written all over it."
"But if the antidote didn't work," the girl came to sit back on the bed by the wolf's still lying form, "Your ruler was ready to sacrifice you?"
"The old royal bastard is inherently incapable of taking a direct route when he can take a tortuous one, even with people close to him, that's in his nature," Dyson sighed with a hefty dose of true sadness, "Ok, once I screwed around with his favorite parlor maid but otherwise I've served him for centuries and I am still a pawn in his games."
"The same as I've always been a pawn for my sister," Kenzi lithely leaned over to rest her chin against his shoulder, "The petite moi thinks we're better off without them, wolfie."
"We are, we will be," Dyson planted a tender kiss on her forehead, "As soon as we finish this mess. That's the only way we can be done with them."