Total pages in book: 53
Estimated words: 50512 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 253(@200wpm)___ 202(@250wpm)___ 168(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 50512 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 253(@200wpm)___ 202(@250wpm)___ 168(@300wpm)
“First off,” she says, shutting her book. “I didn’t ask Dagon. Annika offered him as a volunteer after we talked about how much healthier I felt after drinking from you. How much better I could access and control my power. How much clearer my mind felt.” She gives me a little shrug. “We were theorizing if those effects had to do with drinking powerful hunter blood.”
“And if he said yes? You would’ve fed from him?” The question snaps out of me in a way I can’t control. Fuck, I need to get a grip, but it’s impossible. There’s a territorial, primal creature scratching its way out of my chest and I can’t stop it no matter how hard I try.
“I don’t know!” she fires back. “You said I couldn’t feed from you again. And you’re also the one who told me feeding isn’t always…” She motions toward me. “Intimate. Annika certainly had no issues with the idea, and she’s his mate.”
The idea of her fangs in Dagon’s flesh has my own fangs punching out. If anyone is going to take care of her, it’s me.
She arches an eyebrow at me. “I don’t know why you think you have the right to be angry at me for entertaining the idea when you’re the one refusing me, Saint.” She sighs, getting off the bed and heading to the bookshelf across the room. “It’s your right to say no to me. It’s always your choice. But you have no right to kick in my door and start lecturing me for a choice you made.” She shakes her head. “I have to do something to stay alive.”
“You do have to do something. Feed from a human. A willing, volunteer human. I can smell you across the palace, Aurora. You’re toeing the line of starvation again.”
“I told you I won’t feed from a human.” She reaches to put the book back on the shelf and stumbles, her legs buckling.
I’m there in an instant, catching her against me before she touches the ground. She looks up at me, concern fluttering in her eyes.
Shit. She’s so damn weak.
And it’s my fault because I’m too afraid of losing control with her. I’ve damned her progress before she’s even truly begun. A low growl rumbles from me as I sweep her into my arms and take her back to the bed. I sit her on my lap, holding her head against my neck.
“I’ll feed you,” I say, doing my best to hold on to some semblance of control. It’s fucking hard to do, especially when she feels so pliant against me, the soft cotton of her pajama bottoms doing nothing to hide the delicate skin of her thighs.
“Saint,” she argues. “I don’t want you to be guilted into this. I’m not your responsibility. You have to be okay with me trying with other vampires—”
“No,” I cut her off. “Just…no. This isn’t about responsibility or guilt. This isn’t about me not wanting to feed you, Aurora. It’s about what you deserve, and if I lose control with you…”
“You won’t.”
I look down at her, at the way she has such unflinching trust in me. “I won’t pretend the trust we’ve built is unbreakable,” I admit. “You know me better than some of my own brothers, but that doesn’t mean you know every part of me. There are pieces of me that are chaotic. Sometimes those pieces take over.” I cringe. “I don’t want my chaos to bleed all over you.”
Aurora smiles up at me. “My chaos and your chaos are the same.”
Something inside me stretches awake, a longing I can’t describe or begin to understand. It has nothing to do with the desire coursing through me, begging me to set my mouth on Aurora’s body and make her moan. It’s something deeper, something endless.
I shift her against me, repositioning her at my neck.
“Not from the wrist?” she asks.
“Take it or leave it,” I offer.
I don’t have to help her get her fangs out this time. All she has to do is take a deep breath, and out they punch. Fuck, she’s so damn beautiful. She drags her lips over the skin of my neck first, a slow exploration that has every muscle in my body tensing with need.
Claim. Bite. Fuck.
No. No. No.
I shove the thoughts away even as I lean into her touch. Her lips feel so damn soft against my skin, their warmth a teasing caress that has me drunk.
A hot burst of pain melts into pure, undiluted pleasure, her bite the most sensual thing I’ve ever experienced. My blood spills into her mouth, and she moans as she swallows. She shifts over me, caging my hips with her thighs without breaking her bite. She’s drinking me down like I’m her last hope, and fuck me, I love it.
I slide my arms around her, allowing myself this small freedom to hold her while she drinks. She smells like a dream, feels warm and soft atop me, and those needy little whimpers are giving me life.