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Her breath catches again, but she doesn’t say or do anything to stop me as I draw on venom from my fangs that’s meant to help stop the bleeding, and lean in to run my tongue over the wounds I’ve made.

Gods, it’s another mistake.

They’re clean marks, only leaking a trickle of blood as I tend to them, but it’s enough to bring a haze back over me. A haze commandingmore. To consume, to savor, to devour.

With the very last scraps of sanity I possess, I pull back. I tip her chin up and, finding her healed to my satisfaction, collect enough of myself to step away.

Ophelia’s hand flies to her throat, and she blinks rapidly, eyes darting over me.

“Again,” she rasps. “What the fuck was that?”

I shrug, acting for all the world like what just happened was of no great consequence. Like it was to beexpected. Her reaction, my reaction, how very close to some unimaginable edge we both were.

I doubt the truth would be very helpful in this situation. If she knew what just passed between us surpasses anything I’ve felt in my centuries of this existence, I can’t imagine it would calm her in the slightest.

“Like I said, each bite is different. What did it feel like to you?”

Her eyes widen, a hundred silent thoughts flickering through them before she closes down again. Arms crossed over her chest, chin tucked like she’d shield the evidence of my bite from me, she shakes her head.

“It was… fine. Not as bad as I expected.”

A pulse of sharp dissatisfaction settles itself into my gut, and I frown at her. “You were expecting it to be unpleasant? Then why did you agree?”

It’s her turn to shrug, feigning a nonchalance she can’t quite pull off—not when her cheeks are still flushed and her pulse is still racing and her hair is mussed from the grasp I had on her.

“I didn’t expect anything. And now that we’ve got that out of the way, we should probably head into the—”

“Ophelia,” I interrupt gently.

Cupping a hand around her jaw and tilting her head back, I study my mark one more time.

Just to be sure it’s fully healed over.

Certainly not because I want to admire it, to reassure myself it’s still there.

“Are you alright?” I ask.

“I’m fine.”

We pause in our silent standoff for a few tense moments. Ophelia, chin set high in defiance, some of her earlier bravado returning. And me, drawing my hand regretfully away, straightening my jacket where it still sits askew from Ophelia’s desperate, grasping hands, clearing my throat and nodding toward the end of the alley.

“Good. And yes, we should head inside.”

It’s for the best, ignoring the truth of what just happened. And if Ophelia wants to do so as well, all the better.

Giving her shoulders a little shake, she brushes her long curls back and I catch sight of my mark again.

What was I just thinking about?

Letting it go? Leaving it be? Ignoring it?

If I had any semblance of sanity left in me, I might scoff at my own pathetic reaction to something as simple as a bite mark.

But the sight of it there, so shockingly crimson against her skin, is just one more spark of insanity to join the low burning embers of all the rest.

Hold your head high and let them see, I want to tell her.Wear it proudly, sweet Ophelia, because I’ve never seen anything so wickedly beautiful as my mark on you.

“Come on,” she huffs, already stalking away from me. “We’re going to be late.”