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He watches me, eyes smouldering in the dim kitchens.

The light from the hearth’s tender flames gleam over the lashing tattoos that climb up the side of his neck.

I slip off the edge of the table, never breaking our locked gazes. My boots smack down on the stone floor.

“And you kiss like a male in love,” I snarl at him, my upper lip curling back enough to reveal my sharper teeth.

Daxeel moves for me in a breath, his chest expanding with my scent. The advance backs me into the edge of the table.

I crane my neck to keep my snarl aimed at him.

He towers over me, his mouth hot on mine.

But he doesn’t kiss me.

“I am wholly in love with you—” against my lips, he seethes the words with venom. “—and it is what I hate most about you.”

I bite, hard.

The sharpness of my teeth sinks into the meat of his lips. I taste the inkiness of his black blood on my tongue.

A rumble hums in his chest, vibrates against me, and shove into him. he falls back some steps and looks at me.

The fine wool of his sweater is crumpled at his front. Fresh tears tug on the collar. It slinks with the rise and fall of his chest, and I think his insides are surging with need—pure, primal need.

Slowly, his tongue drags over the fresh cuts on his lips, tiny, freckled teeth marks.

He licks away his own tarry blood.

Then he’s after me. He chases my lips.

Each step I stagger back, he strides to meet.

My spine hits the edge of the table, stops my retreat dead in its tracks.

His hands are fast on the meat of my hips—then the floor is swiped out from under me. He shoves me onto the table’s edge.

“I want nothing more than to only hate you,” he bites the words out, hands pushing up the skirt of my dress, “You don’t know how deeply I regret courting you, vicious one.” My undergarment is shredded with a rushed, firm yank. “I let you in when I should have cut you down.”

His fingers cut into my thigh, and I wince into his mouth. The faint warmth of freshly drawn blood tickles down to the curve of my bottom.

“I fear that if my love for you is nothing short of eternal—” Desperation cracks his voice. “—it will destroy me.”

The sound of it breaks something in me, snaps it in two, and it might be my heart.

My hiss turns into a whimper and, in a heartbeat, I’m grabbing out for him, snatching onto fistfuls of his sweater, as though if I can touch him, I can heal him.

And maybe myself.

His warning comes in a gravelled grunt, and he smacks my hands away from his sweater. In a swift blur of darkness, he’s torn off his sweater and thrown it aside.

In that same rushed moment, I’ve reached down for the waistbutton of his trousers and fumbled it undone.

Shadows peel away from his flesh like tattoos come to life—and small tendrils spear off for me.

Urgency steals him.

Mouth hot on mine, his hand is quick to fist around the base of his cock—and it pushes against my slick folds in a hurry.