“Yes,” I reply, breathlessly.
“Yes…?” the insistence in her voice wraps around me like a vise.
Heat radiates from my core. “Yes,sir.”
“That’s better,” she replies curtly, bending down closer. “Tonight, would you prefer a stronger spell? I have many more abilities in my arsenal.”
I bite my lip, fearful. “Is…is it going to make me…” I’m not sure how to phrase it, but the idea of being wholly at her command is terrifying.
She laughs, a mirthless, evil sound. “Sweet one, if I was going to drain you completely, I wouldn’t need to glamour you first.”
Cold, hard fear grips me, and I start trembling even more than before. She notices, and her fangs elongate further down her chin, cresting in a powerful arc.
But something else shifts, an unexpected softness behind her eyes. Her voice lowers. “I won’t hurt you. Not unless you ask me to, of course.”
The breath catches in my throat, and I melt into her gaze. But she’s not enchanting me, not yet. The only power between us is the intensity of our attraction, the pull between her raw hunger and my desperate longing.
“If you want to leave,” she says, her voice thick against her sharp fangs. “You need only say the word, sweet one.”
My answer is immediate. I reply in a whispered breath. “I don’t want to leave. I want you…to drink from me.”
“And if you want me to stop, what will you say?”
I realize what she’s asking, and I take a moment to consider it. My eyes wander to the rose-etched columns around us. “I’ll say, ‘thorn.’”
“Good.”
Now that the agreement is made, she crouches lower over me, so that her face is only inches from mine. She takes her thumb and gently presses it to my bottom lip. The tender gesture melts any remaining resolve I might have had, mingling up the fear in something undeniable…
Desire.
And then she pulls me in with her stare, drawing me smoothly into her spell. But she’s already captured me. As I feel the tingle of the magic working, I know there’s an even stronger quiver much lower.
I recline onto the soft, silk pillow behind me, pushing my hair back from my neck.
“How sweetly you offer yourself up to me,” she says with a devilish smirk. “I’m going to enjoytastingyou, sweet one.”
And before I can say anything, before I can ready myself, she sinks her bared fangs into my throat.
Iscream…not a moan this time, but a proper, ear-splitting, glass-shattering scream. It’s so much more intense than when she bit my wrist. There’s something intimate, something vulnerable and electrifying, about her drinking from my neck. I’m caught between agony and transcendent pleasure as she feasts upon me. She’s never looked more inhuman than she does in this moment, her body tensed and hard, pining me to the bed. Her thigh finds a place between my legs, pressed up tightly against me. My body responds before I can stop it, straddling her.
Warmth and wetness pools inside of me as she drinks, as though my overwhelming desire is spilling out, uncontrolled and wild. I fist the thick blankets, unable to contain myself.
She takes a heavy pull of my blood and my head spins. Everything else disappears. Every thought, every anxiety, everything else in the world except for the two of us and our complementary, carnal desires.
The more she drinks, the more I feel that second urge…that pounding, painful throb in my core.
Blake had said it didn’t matter to him, right? That he didn’t mind. Even though a little guilty part of me knows he’s wrong, knows what this means…I can’t stop myself.
More consciously this time, I move against her thigh, feeling that wonderful hardness against my softest spot.
She pulls her fangs out of my neck and raises her head. Thick, red blood drips from her fangs. Her eyes are crimson, right down to the irises.
“Tell me what you want,” she says, raising a sly eyebrow.
“I…I wantmore,” I whisper, not completely sure what I can ask of her.
“Howmuchmore?”
