Free Possession-Blood Ties 2 by Jennifer Armintrout Page B

wouldn’t say anything more. I sighed and walked in to our meeting with General Breton. 5
    Resistance
    “W hat were you like before you died?”
    The question startled Cyrus. He’d thought the Mouse asleep. If anyone could sleep through the noise the Fangs made upstairs. It seemed almost as soon as the sun went down, the music started and the engines roared to life, and then there was the inevitable screaming. Usually, the Mouse endeavored to be asleep before then. Having days of experience with them, she knew the Fangs’ feeding schedule. Cyrus would have been asleep himself, if he’d had the testicular fortitude to take the bed from her. He comforted himself by reasoning he liked the sounds of the screaming upstairs. He tugged his thin blanket in a futile attempt to cover his entire body. The hideous, polyester preacher clothes bunched with every movement, but he shuddered to imagine the rough upholstery against his naked skin, so he kept them on.
    “What do you mean?” he asked now.
    She rolled to face him. She’d stopped cringing from him, at least. Maybe the dark helped.
    “They brought you back from the dead. What were you like before you died? Were you…the way you are now?”
    “Human?” Cyrus sniffed derisively. “No, I wasn’t human.”
    “No.” Wrinkles of frustration creased her brow as she sighed. “Did you…hurt people?”
    He flinched when her hand strayed to her bandaged throat. He hated himself for regretting he’d hurt her. It was growing tiresome, this feeling of shame at doing something he would

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    have found perfectly natural in the past.
    “Of course I did. And far worse than you got.” When she didn’t respond, a wicked impulse overtook him. The first time he’d killed, he’d been put off by it. But he’d turned it into a game then, to make it engaging. What he’d done to her before had been mindless. How foolish of him. It had always been the chase that satisfied him. “I used to love girls like you.”
    She leaned up on her elbows, a hint of fear in her eyes. “What do you mean, like me?”
    Shrugging, he folded the chair’s footrest and sat up. “I’m sure you know your type. Starving for affection the way a dog starves for table scraps. Just plain enough that they never get the attention they want, but pretty enough to get noticed by men who are truly desperate. I’ll bet you hiked that sundress up for your fair share of please-love-me fucks.”
    She sat up, hugged her knees. “You’re wrong.”
    “Of course I am.” He stood with his hands in his pockets, looking down at her. “You were one of the good girls.”
    Uncertainty quivered in her watery eyes as she nodded.
    “Good girls don’t exist.” He sat beside her on the bed and placed his hand on her blanketcovered knee. “No matter how they tease, no matter how they insist they want to stay pure, they’re burning to know what it’s like.”
    “What…” She closed her eyes, shook her head as if to clear her thoughts. “What what’s like?”
    Cyrus peeled back the blanket slowly, and she hurried to arrange her skirt over her knees. He reached beneath her legs and cupped the warm, rounded muscle of her calf. “The feeling of completely surrendering yourself to another person.”
    “I’ve never—” Her breath hitched, cutting her denial short.
    “You have.” He moved his hand up, skimming the bend of her knee. She shivered, but didn’t draw away.
    He stilled his hand. “You don’t have to deny it. I’ve had enough girls like you to know what’s happening in your head. You’re wondering what I did to them to make them give in. What pleasure I gave them to wear them down so they would surrender to me without hesitation. And you’re wondering if I’ll do the same to you.”
    He slid over her in one smooth motion. She gave no resistance, parting her thighs so he could lie between them. It was fear