The Devil Next Door

81

Maddie tasted the blood in her mouth and savored the pain.

She had marked this man as her own. She would mate with him and perhaps produce offspring… but he was defiant, he was willful and arrogant. She would not have that. If she brought him in for a breeder and spared him the knife, then there were things expected. She would not be rejected.

Not here in her own lair.

Not by this pig who spurned her offered meat.

In the hazy corridors of her mind she could remember other men, shadowy figures without faces, and never had they rejected her like this. She always had her fill when the season was upon her.

Grinding her teeth, she watched the man by the fire. He was well-muscled, firm, he would have made a very good breeder. Too wiry for the eating, but that did not mean he wouldn’t know the knife. As she sharpened a carving blade against a dull stone she knew there were ways to break pigs like him.

The heat inside her was almost unbearable… pulsing, wet, hungry. It would need to be fed and if he would not feed her then another would be found. But maybe this one. Maybe if she punished him, cut a few things off, let her daughters toy with him a bit.

Then he would beg for what she offered.

Because it was his and she had already selected. He would fill her needs or she would flay him alive…