Chapter 9: Blood Feud
The morning sun cut razor-sharp lines through the east lounge, catching motes of dust that danced like atoms in a reactor. I was wobbly, my thighs trembling with a deep, humming ache. I’d lost count of how many times Pace had made me come. The memory was a bruised, visceral echo in my muscles, a phantom fullness between my legs. The borrowed charcoal shirt—his shirt—swam on me, the cuffs rolled, the collar carrying his scent like a second skin.
Pace moved ahead, a silhouette of controlled power against the gilded light. Vito hovered near a sideboard, pouring three glasses of water, his gaze carefully averted.
My foot caught on the edge of a priceless Kirman rug. I stumbled, a soft gasp leaving my lips as my knees buckled.
He was there. A hand, hard as iron, clamped around my bicep, yanking me upright before I could hit the floor. His grip was punishing, fingers digging into the tender flesh. No tenderness, only possession.
“Steady, Doctor,” he murmured, his voice for my ears alone. His dark eyes scanned my face, checking for weakness, perhaps cataloging it.
Vito cleared his throat, a low, gravelly sound. “He’s awake. Lucid. The medics have stepped out.”
Pace didn’t release me. He used his hold to steer me across the room, toward a recessed alcove where a hospital bed had been installed, incongruous amid the rubies and frescoes. Monitors beeped a steady, lazy rhythm.
Jace Augustus lay propped against white pillows. The resemblance to Pace was there—in the strong jaw, the dark hair—but where Pace was all volcanic intensity, Jace was a still, deep lake. Pale, with shadows like bruises under his eyes, he nonetheless exuded a magnetic calm. His gaze, a cooler, sharper grey than Pace’s, found me first. It didn’t travel over my body in a claim. It assessed, with the curiosity of a scientist studying a novel specimen.
“Brother,” Pace said, his voice devoid of warmth. He finally let go of my arm, but moved to stand slightly in front of me, a human wall.
“Pace.” Jace’s voice was weaker than I expected, raspy from intubation, but the intelligence in it was needle-sharp. His eyes slid back to me. “And you must be the brilliant Lina Vesperine.” A faint, genuine smile touched his lips. “I owe you my rather functional nervous system. Thank you.”
This was not the rabid, ambition-crazed rival Pace had described. This was calculation wrapped in courtesy. It was more dangerous.
“It was the protocol,” I said, my own voice surprisingly steady. “Your cellular regeneration rate is… notable.”
“A family trait,” Jace said, his eyes flicking to Pace, a ghost of challenge in them. “Though it seems mine needed a little external kickstart.”
The air tightened. Pace’s posture didn’t change, but I felt the aggression radiating from him, a heat on my skin.
“We’ll discuss your… recreational choices later,” Pace said, the words clipped. “The men you were with are dead. The product is gone. Another mess I’ve had to contain.”
Jace’s smile didn’t falter. “Always cleaning up. It must be exhausting, playing patriarch.” He shifted slightly, a wince of pain breaking through his composure. “I heard you negotiated for my release personally. With unprecedented… collateral.” His gaze landed on me again, lingering on Pace’s shirt I wore. “I hope the terms were to your satisfaction, Lina.”
“Her satisfaction is not your concern,” Pace said, a low warning rumble beginning in his chest.
“Isn’t it?” Jace asked softly. “She’s clearly a valuable asset. One you’ve brought into the heart of the house. I’m just expressing… familial interest.”
The blatant appraisal, the subtle challenge to Pace’s ownership, was a spark in dry tinder. I saw Pace’s knuckles whiten.
“Get some rest, Jace,” Pace commanded, turning away, dismissing him. He caught my wrist. “We’re leaving.”
“A pleasure, Lina,” Jace called after us, his voice following us out of the lounge. “I look forward to… further discussions about your work.”
Back in the cavern of his bedroom, Pace slammed the door. The sound was final, a gunshot in the quiet. He stalked to the sideboard, poured two fingers of bourbon, and threw it back.
“He’s different,” I said, leaning against the bedpost for support.
Pace turned. The calm facade was gone, stripped away by pure, banked fury. “He’s a chameleon. He shows you what he thinks you want to see. Right now, he sees you as a lever. A way to unbalance me.”
“He thanked me.”
“He’s marking you,” Pace corrected, setting the glass down with a sharp crack. “Making you a player in his head. In our game.” He crossed the room in three strides, caging me against the carved post. The anger on his face was mixed with something hotter, more primal. “You smell like me, you walk like I fucked you senseless, and still he looks at you like you’re a puzzle to solve. My puzzle.”
His mouth crashed down on mine. It wasn’t a kiss of passion, but of reclamation. A brutal, silencing act. I tasted bourbon and his unique fury. He bit my lower lip, hard enough to draw a metallic tang.
“He wants to see what I see,” he growled against my mouth, his hands fumbling with the button of his trousers. “He wants to know what it is about you that made me break protocol. Let’s give him a fucking show, then.”
He spun me around, bending me over the foot of the massive bed. The embroidered gold duvet was rough against my cheek. He shoved the tail of his shirt up my back, baring me. His hands were not gentle, spreading me open.
“Pace—” My protest was muffled.
“No,” he snarled. “No more doctor, no more strategist. Just this.”
He pushed into me from behind in one savage, deep thrust. I was still tender, slick from earlier, but the suddenness, the lack of preparation, forced a raw, shocked cry from my throat. He was enormous, a burning, stretching invasion.
“This is what you are now,” he grunted, his hips already pistoning, setting a relentless, punishing rhythm. Each drive buried him to the hilt, the slap of skin on skin violently loud in the room. “Mine. Fucked. Owned.”
He wrapped a hand in my silver-blonde hair, yanking my head back, arching my spine painfully. The pleasure was inextricably twisted with the burn of overuse, the humiliation of the position, the psychological warfare he was waging on us both. It was degrading. It was electrifying.
“You feel that?” he hissed, his breath hot on my neck. “That’s my cock in my cunt. That’s the only deal that matters now. The only contract.”
His free hand groped between my legs, his fingers finding my clit, rubbing rough, urgent circles. The dual assault was too much. A twisted, shameful heat coiled in my gut, building despite the pain, because of the pain, because of the sheer animal dominance of him.
“Come on,” he urged, his voice ragged. “Come on his behalf. Let it be for him, if you want. But you’ll come on my cock.”
The orgasm ripped through me, brutal and unwelcome, a seizure of pleasure that made my knees buckle. I screamed into the duvet, my body clamping around him in vicious pulses.
He swore, a filthy, guttural string of obscenities as my contraction pulled his own release from him. He slammed into me one last time, grinding deep as he came, his roar muffled against my shoulder. The hot flood inside me felt like a brand.
We stayed there, locked together, breathing in shattered tandem. The fury seemed to seep out of him, leaving a heavy, complex silence.
He pulled out slowly. I flinched at the sensitivity, the sudden, aching emptiness. He turned me around. His eyes were dark, unreadable pools. He looked at my swollen lips, the tears I hadn’t realized had spilled from the shock of sensation.
With a tenderness that was more devastating than his violence, he brushed a thumb under my eye, smearing the wetness.
“He’s wrong, you know,” Pace said, his voice hoarse. “You’re not a lever.” He leaned his forehead against mine, a gesture of exhaustion, of something perilously close to vulnerability. “You’re the fault line. And now he knows it, too.”
He scooped me up, carried me to the bed, and pulled the covers over us both. In the dark, his arm heavy across my ribs, I stared at the canopy.
The game had new rules. I was no longer just a player or a pawn.
I was the territory.
I was the territory. The silence in Pace’s bedroom was a thick, listening thing. His breathing evened into sleep behind me, his arm a lead weight. My mind, however, raced across a map of new vulnerabilities. Genetic modifications. A rival who saw too much. An inhibitor now swimming uselessly in my bloodstream while Pace’s seed likely took root. The variables were mutating faster than I could calculate.
Sleep was impossible. I carefully extracted myself from his hold, the cool air hitting my sweat-dried skin. His shirt was tangled around my thighs. I pulled it off, found my own crumpled dress from the floor, and slipped out into the hallway.
The estate at night was a different organism, all whispering pipes and hollow echoes. I needed air that didn’t smell of sex and amber. I moved on silent feet, drawn not toward an exit, but toward the faint murmur of voices from a service corridor near the east wing.
It was Vito’s low grumble. And another, weaker but clearer—Jace.
I froze in a shadowed alcove, my back against cool marble.
Inside a small sitting room repurposed as a medical anteroom, Vito was pouring a glass of water. Jace, paler under the fluorescent lights, watched him.
“So that’s Pace’s burning flame,” Jace said, his voice carrying a strange mix of admiration and pity. “I feel bad for her.”
Vito’s hand paused. “Wait, how did you—”
“He’s just like me,” Jace interrupted, his gaze distant, focused on some internal point. “I know one when it’s there. She’s literally something. Too bad Pace’s marked her.” He took the glass, sipped slowly. “And I could sense the otherwise… that she would die for him.”
Vito set the pitcher down hard. “Wait a damn minute, what’s so special about Doctor Vesperine here? And now you two got hooked?!”
A soft, exhausted laugh escaped Jace. It turned into a wet cough that made him wince. He recovered, his expression smoothing into something resigned and ancient. “Vito, you know I’ve already had a flame. And no one could replace her.” He looked directly at his brother’s lieutenant, the truth stark in his grey eyes. “The worst thing? She’s Pace’s best friend. And we’re just not for each other.”
The confession hung in the sterile air. It was a key, sliding into a lock I hadn't known existed. Pace’s best friend. A woman Jace had loved. It reframed everything—the rivalry wasn’t just about power or blood. It was carved from a deeper, more personal scar.
A floorboard creaked behind me. I spun, my heart hammering against my ribs.
Pace stood there, barefoot and shirtless, his trousers slung low. He’d heard. His face was a mask, but his eyes were volcanic. He’d heard Jace’s words. He’d seen me listening.
Without a word, he closed the distance. His hand clamped over my mouth, stifling any sound, and he hauled me backward, away from the light, away from the revealing voices.
He didn’t take me to the bedroom. He pushed me through the first door we passed—a linen closet, deep and dark, smelling of starch and lavender. He kicked the door shut, plunging us into absolute blackness.
“Eavesdropping, Lina?” His whisper was a blade in the dark. His hand left my mouth, traveled down my body in the confined space.
“I—”
His fingers hooked into the neckline of my dress and ripped. The sound was violently loud, fabric tearing clean to my waist. “You want to know about my best friend? About his flame?” He backed me into a shelf, towels tumbling around us.
His mouth was hot and punishing on my neck, his teeth scraping my collarbone. His hands were everywhere, rough, claiming, as if he could overwrite Jace’s words on my skin. He shoved the torn dress and my underwear down my hips. They pooled at my feet.
“You’re not her,” he growled, his breath coming in ragged bursts. His palms scraped over my nipples, pinched them hard. “You will never be her. You’re mine.”
I was naked and shivering in the closet dark, surrounded by the clean, mundane scent of laundry. He fumbled with his fly, the sound of his zipper vicious in the silence.
He lifted me, my back scraping against the wooden shelf, and slammed me down onto his waiting cock. I cried out, the stretch brutal and immediate. He stuffed his hand back over my mouth, muffling me.
“Quiet,” he ordered, his hips beginning a ruthless, short-stroked rhythm in the cramped space. Every thrust jarred my spine against the shelf. There was no room for grace, only for this raw, frantic joining. The base of his cock ground against my clit with each punishing drive.
“This… is what you are,” he panted against my ear, his voice trembling with a fury that felt like grief. “This cunt. My cunt. Not a story. Not a ghost.”
I was split open on him, anchored only by his grip on my hips and the shelf digging into my back. The pleasure was a sharp, rising wire, threaded with pain and a devastating empathy. He was fucking the confusion out of himself, fucking the past away, branding me with the present.
His hand slid from my mouth to my throat, not squeezing, just holding, feeling my swallows, my gasps. “Come,” he demanded, his thrusts becoming erratic, desperate. “Come for me. Now.”
The orgasm was a seizure, a silent, screaming ripple that locked my muscles and drew a guttural groan from him. He followed, pulsing deep inside me, his forehead dropping to my shoulder with a shudder that felt like collapse.
We stayed like that in the dark, joined, breathing in the smell of lavender and sex. His grip on my throat softened, became a caress.
When he finally lifted me off him and set me on wobbly legs, he didn’t speak. He found my hand in the blackness, his fingers lacing through mine with a startling tenderness.
He led me, naked and torn, back through the sleeping house. Not to the bedroom, but to a large, modern bathroom he switched on. Light flooded the marble and chrome. He turned on the shower, steam beginning to fog the glass.
He looked at me then, really looked, at the dress hanging in rags, at the new marks on my skin, at my face. His own fierce mask was gone. In its place was a naked exhaustion, and something like shame.
“Her name was Elara,” he said, his voice hollow. The water drummed behind him. “She chose him. And then she chose to leave this world. That’s the story.” He reached out, touching a bruise on my shoulder his fingers had made. “You are not the territory, Lina.”
He stepped into the shower, steam billowing around him, and held the door open, waiting.
He stepped into the shower, steam billowing around him, and held the door open, waiting.
The hot water was a shock, a scalding baptism that turned my skin pink. It cascaded over my head, sluicing away the sweat, the dried evidence of his possession, the scent of linen closet dust. He didn’t speak. His hands, so brutal minutes ago, moved over my skin with a clinical thoroughness, working soap into a lather, washing every inch of me. His touch was devoid of desire, a practical, almost penitent ritual. He rinsed my hair, his fingers massaging my scalp, and for a bizarre moment, I felt like a prized animal being cleaned after a difficult race.
He turned me gently to face the tile wall, his hands on my shoulders. “Don’t move,” he murmured, and I heard him washing himself, the quick, efficient sounds of a soldier in a field rinse. The steam curled around us, a private fog.
He shut off the water. The sudden silence was loud, broken only by the drip from the showerhead and our breathing. He wrapped a large, warm towel around me, tucking it securely, before roughly drying himself. He led me, wordless again, back to the bedroom.
The disheveled bed from our earlier frenzy still held the shape of our bodies. He pulled back the covers on the far side, a fresh, cool expanse. He guided me down, then went to a cabinet, returning with a tube of ointment. He sat on the edge of the bed, his weight dipping the mattress.
His expression was unreadable as he untucked the towel. The cool air raised goosebumps on my thighs. He squeezed a dollop of salve onto his fingers, his movements deliberate. He began to apply it with a shocking gentleness to the places his passion had bruised: the inside of my thighs, the red marks on my hips, the faint bite on my shoulder. The ointment smelled of aloe and chamomile, a stark contrast to the amber and gunpowder.
His touch was so careful it made my throat tight. This care was more disorienting than his violence.
“Pace,” I whispered, my voice raw. “Give me a break, please… I’m already weak…”
He didn’t look up from his task, his fingers still circling gently on a tender spot. “Don’t play dumb with me,” he said, but his tone was flat, exhausted. “Use that smart brain, Doctor of yours.” His eyes finally lifted, traveling over the topography of my body he’d just anointed. The dark intensity returned, but it was layered with a weary hunger. “God, when I look at you naked and full of my love bites around your chest and stomach like this…” He leaned in close, his voice dropping to a hoarse whisper against my skin. “Makes me want to fuck you ten times again.”
A shudder of pure, exhausted refusal ran through me. “Pace, fuck no.”
He hovered there for a beat, his breath hot on a bruise. Then he pulled back. A faint, strained smile touched his lips. “Relax,” he sighed, the tension bleeding out of his shoulders. “I was just kidding.” He bent and kissed the hollow of my throat, not with hunger, but with a soft, devastating finality. He pulled the covers over me, tucked me in as if I were a child, and stood.
He dressed in silence—fresh trousers, a simple black t-shirt. He didn’t look at me again before he left, closing the door with a quiet, definitive click. The lock didn’t turn. The permission, the fragile trust in that omission, vibrated in the silent room.
In the antiseptic glow of the medical anteroom, Jace watched Vito pace a tight, frustrated circuit. The water glass sat, half-empty, on the bedside table.
“You’re not telling me something,” Vito grumbled, running a hand over his bald head. “About the doctor. Pace is… different. And you looked at her like you’d seen a ghost with a blueprint.”
Jace adjusted the nasal cannula, his movements still slow with residual weakness. “What did the background check say? The one you ran the minute Pace dragged her through the front gates.”
Vito stopped pacing. “Clean. Eerily clean. Orphan. Top of her class at every institute that would take her. Published. Private. A ghost in the academic machine. No family, no friends, no hobbies. Just work.”
“A ghost,” Jace repeated, his grey eyes sharpening. “You’re right. But you didn’t dig under the ghost story, Vito. You just read the epitaph.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Vesperine.” Jace said the name slowly, tasting it. “It’s an affectation. A pretty name she chose for her publications, for her new life. Her real name is buried under a mountain of legal guardianship papers and sealed juvenile records. Lina Theron.”
Vito went very still. The name clearly meant something. “Theron. As in…?”
“As in Aris Theron,” Jace finished, his voice low. “The biochemist. The one who pioneered the early gene-splicing research our family’s… modifications… were originally based on. The one who disappeared twenty years ago after his lab was firebombed. A lab his seven-year-old daughter was rumored to have been in that night.”
The air left the room. Vito’s face paled. “Christ. You’re saying she’s…”“I’m saying she’s not just a brilliant doctor Pace got hard for,” Jace said, his gaze fixed on the door, as if he could see through walls to where she slept. “She’s the living legacy of the man who helped design us. She didn’t just walk into the lion’s den, Vito.” He finally looked at the stunned lieutenant, a chilling clarity in his expression. “She was born in it