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“No?” He keeps his hand right where it is, squeezing lightly before sliding off one shoe, then reaching for the other. “Maybe it’s better if I don’t. I can’t imagine ice-cold fingers on your feet would feel very nice.”

As if to prove it, he strokes one of those fingers along the bare patch of skin just above the top of my sock. I shiver for reasons that have very little to do with the temperature of his skin.

“If you bite me first, it might feel better.”

Cas goes utterly still.

The words—completely impulsive, reckless, more than a little bit idiotic—settle into the silence between us. I want to reach out and claw them back to me. I want to snatch them away, laugh them off, crack a joke to cut the unbearable tension growing with each passing moment.

Instead of that, though, I do the unthinkable.

I dig my shovel in again, lifting another hunk of dirt out of the mortifying grave I’m making for myself.

“And then you could warm me up, too.”

Stupid. Such a stupid thing to say.

I’m a little chilly, not hypothermic, and with the house’s heat kicking on and the fire catching in the hearth, I’m already feeling better.

I don’t know what I’m saying, what I’m doing, what insanity has come over me, tugging at the truth lingering in the back of my mind.

I’ve been aching for it for days.

Cas’s bite.

The unbearable pleasure of what it does to me. The alchemy of blood and magick, he called it. I’ve tried to ignore it, to put the memory of what happened between us in the alley out of my mind, but it keeps finding ways to creep back in.

Every time I catch sight of two vivid fang marks on my neck when I look in the mirror. Every time he’s near and I catch a hint of cologne and fresh linen and the mouth-watering hint of his natural scent beneath—sharp and warm and irresistible.

Every time he looks at me like he’s looking now. Crimson eyes devouring me.

“Ophelia,” he says, so low and serious. “What are you asking me?”

He’s going to make me say it, isn’t he?

“I want…” The words stick in my throat, caught in a seven-year tangle of desire and fear, shame and need.

Cas moves slowly, carefully, giving me enough time that I could stop him if I wanted to. He stands and offers me his hand. When I take it, he draws me out of the chair before taking my place in it. He rests both his hands on my hips, and with focused, unerring intent, draws me down into his lap.

My body moves woodenly at first, like my limbs can’t quite decide if I want this or not. But when his fingers tighten in gentle encouragement, they go loose, trusting, melting into him as I drape myself across his thighs and settle into all the hard contours of his body.

“Tell me what you want, sweet Ophelia.”

“Your bite.”

He hums, low and approving, in the back of his throat as he pushes my hair over one shoulder to expose the mark he made.

“Here?” he asks softly, fingertips ghosting over raised pink skin.

The noise I make isn’t an answer, but the way I arch into the caress and the bolt of pleasure that races through me seem to tell him everything he needs to know.

Apparently, though, Cas isn’t done playing.

“Or here,” he murmurs, lifting one of my wrists to his lips.

He presses a kiss there, letting me feel a feather-light drag of his fangs before he pulls back.

“So delicate. You’d open so easily for me here.” His lips travel from my wrist, up the tender skin of my inner arm to my shoulder, my collarbone, my neck. “There are other places I could mark you. Places that would be our secret.”