Page 7 of A Love So Deadly (Kissed by Darkness #1)

Chapter

Six

Lucian

I want to kiss her. And it shocks me enough, that want, that I don’t.

I’m close, so close I can taste her in my mouth. Sweet with sunshine. But I veer away at the last minute.

Her eyes snap open, and she stumbles back, but I still have her wrist so I stop her fall. I shouldn’t be touching her.

I want to. I want to have her on her knees. I want her to crawl across the room and offer me everything she is. Her ass, her cunt, her lifeblood.

I want to cast ropes.

I want to make her sing with longing, draw out the frustrations and the edge of her orgasm until she’s broken and mine to bend to my will. I need her to submit in the purest form.

Without glamor. Without mesmerizing. Just because she wants to be my perfect slave.

She’s fascinating. She intrigues me. So maybe that’s why I want to kiss her. Just to see what might happen. Elliot’s able to fight my glamor and mesmerizing voice somehow.

Admittedly, I didn’t use them at full power. I don’t want to with her. Not unless I have to. But still, it’s been a long time since someone’s been able to resist. Even the slightest. In fact, I can’t remember anyone specifically.

I touch her finger, and the cut is almost healed. By tomorrow it’ll be gone, so I resist sucking on it once more.

She’s human. I’m done with humans. But having an assistant is something I need.

And usually I’ll hire someone to accompany me to events, someone stunning who draws eyes, someone I can make forget ever meeting me.

Someone I can, if I wish, feed on after, just to really solidify the wiping of their memory.

I want to find out what makes Elliot tick, why she applied for the job.

Why she lied about who died.

Someone did, but it wasn’t a friend from school or a friend in an accident. I think I’ll research her.

The lying should worry me, but it thrills me instead.

“You’ll be coming to the cocktail hour with me,” I say. “I’ll send you a dress.”

“It’d be easier to leave from here. My part of Tenebris isn’t exactly something where high society goes,” she says, her wrist still in my grasp, her finger still pointed out.

I should let her go.

I don’t.

This is a test of my own limits.

“Really?” I ask.

“Yes.”

I rub my thumb against her leaping pulse, the blood flowing is rushing from its journey around her body, feeding her organs and cells oxygen, nutrients. It’s rushing to be replenished in her heart.

That blood’s going to be dark and flavorsome, like the finest of whiskeys. The fresh blood’s more like wine. I fucking love how complex a human can be on so many different levels.

And I can, if I choose, feed on either, just by listening.

With Elliot, I want both.

“I’ll have it delivered.”

“What kind of event?” Her gaze is on my mouth.

I’ve had plenty of women look at me with lust. Plenty look at me with hate or fear.

She’s the first I’ve had that looks at me with a mixture of lust and distrust.

It’s pure catnip.

Maybe Vittoria’s right and I shouldn’t have hired her. But if she’s right, she’s also wrong. Not many pick up on my numbered ads.

It means she went looking, it means she wanted this, which is why I was interested in her in the first place and I still am.

Enemies, if she is one, should always be kept close.

This time, as I rub my thumb light over that leaping, racing pulse, I wonder what, exactly, kind of enemy she is.

“I need…I need some water.”

She has that drugged-out look a sub gets when she goes into subspace, that natural version of a mesmerized human.

Intoxicating doesn’t even begin to describe the look she’s wearing.

And I think I might be teetering. My fangs want to drop.

Sink deep into her flesh and rip open her veins so I can swallow down that hot, divine blood.

Let the sweetness of her flow through me.

My cock hardens at the thought.

I release her and get a bottle, cracking the lid and handing it to her. She takes it, fingers brushing mine, and that vital heat of her shoots through me all over again.

Her delicate throat works as she swallows down the water, but when she stops, I notice that she’s still in my aura, still close. Like she’s unconsciously tethered herself.

It’s the effect of me being an old vampire. I’m strong, so her ability to throw off the mesmerization intrigues me all over again.

She looks around my office.

I don’t have appointments today, and I know Emily left everything in order. Organizing my so-called life and appointments, answering mail and emails are busy work. Mainly because my real interests and business shit are taken care of by me and Vittoria.

Each of the vampires and humans have their jobs in VMR, but the humans are the breathing face of it all.

That’s all Elliot is, a breathing face, someone who outsiders see. Someone who deflects all but the invited.

She’s a front.

So apart from light reorganizing, she doesn’t have much to do.

Not today. But I think I need to make work for her.

She has an air of curiosity about her that could lead to trouble.

And there are always things to do. VMR is in the real world and we get hit by real world things. I’ll keep her busy. I’ll?—

“What’s in here?”

She’s touching the crystal bottle of blood. The blood isn’t freshly decanted but it satisfies in the way a drink does.

“Nothing for you to drink,” I say. Her gaze lights up and lingers a moment.

I let her go because I need to, not because I should, and she goes to the hand mirror, my new treasure. She touches it’s gilded, tarnished edge carefully. “This is beautiful.”

“I’m going to restore it.”

That makes her turn, and she half frowns. “You do that?”

“I don’t exist in a vacuum.” Every piece of furniture in here is mine, the pieces I’ve kept through the years.

They hold memories, and then there are ones like the mirror which are filled with someone else’s memories, but to me it’s fresh and clean.

I like to work on them, keep them in order, bring out glory in things like the mirror. “I have hobbies.”

“Like painting civil war figures?”

“Something like that.” I don’t do anything of the kind. “And you?”

“Star Wars figures.”

My face must be blank.

“Luke? Darth Vader? Padme? Leia? Han?”

I approach her again and ease the bottle away, setting it down, but I don’t touch her again. Yet. “I haven’t had the privilege.”

“It’s a famous movie franchise.” She lets out a shaky breath. “I don’t really collect them. I did as a kid.” Her gaze shifts back to the mirror. “I think I like the mirror how it is.”

“It’s been uncared for. It’s lost its original luster.”

“Maybe, but it’s got a story like this, and the decay and wear are beautiful. I think it’s okay to fix things to make them shine again, but not like they’re brand new. You have to know when to stop, when to find the beauty in something that isn’t perfect.”

Her words swirl through me, and I can see a deeper meaning that what she perhaps means. But I’m living proof of something that isn’t perfect, something that is as far from new and pristine as anything can be. Except my exterior looks.

“I’ll take it under advisement.”

Then I take her hand again, gently this time, and lift that finger to my mouth.

I’m losing control, I know it, but her pupil’s grow big, a bloom of night, and I can’t help myself.

I give into temptation; I lick her finger.

The moment I touch her flesh with my tongue everything stops except the throbbing beat of her heart that seems to fill the room.

I lower my fangs as I suck her finger into my mouth and run the edge of one over her flesh, cutting her, and that sweetness bursts and fills my mouth. I swallow her blood down and she quivers.

An orgasm rushes up in her. With her blood flowing I can feel it, the pressure, the intensity the urge in her to reach that peak and fly over it.

So I give it to her. I suck hard, and she shudders, almost collapsing against me. It’s like I’ve got my hand in her pants, under her panties, with my fingers buried in her cunt. Those contractions wrap around me, and her glorious orgasm makes her blood headier.

It takes everything I have not to drink deeply from her. I force my fangs to retract and lick over the spot so that the wound can begins to heal.

Then I step back.

Her hand hangs in the air a moment before falling to her side.

“We have work to do. Send the RSVP, and I’ll leave the other mail to answer on your desk.

And with that, I open my door and usher her out, closing it behind her.

What the fuck am I doing?