Page 46 of A Memory Not Mine (Sanguis Amantium #1)

Chapter forty-four

Mira

A fter my bath, I pulled on one of Baird’s T-shirts—why his, I didn’t know.

Lately, it felt like every decision I made was guided by something just beyond me, like my will was no longer entirely my own.

I walked downstairs to an empty kitchen and heard a strange, rhythmic sound—metal scraping against something hard—coming from another room.

Curious, I padded barefoot through the front hall toward the dining room.

Baird was sitting in a chair, legs planted wide, a low table in front of him.

Bunny lay curled at his feet, sound asleep.

On the table rested a wide, flat sharpening stone, and in Baird’s hands was a sword—long, ancient-looking.

He drew the blade toward himself in slow, precise arcing movements, the scraping noise almost meditative.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

He looked up for only a second, then returned to the blade. His jaw was tight, his body tense, eyes narrowed and unreadable. “Trying to take my mind off something.”

I stepped closer. “What, Baird? Tell me. ”

He stopped, setting the sword down roughly on the table. Then he stood, the chair creaking under the shift of his weight. His stance was solid, grounded—coiled.

“Why did ye do that, Mira?” he asked, voice low but sharp. There was anger in it—real, unfamiliar anger—and the worst part was that it was directed at me .

“Offer you my blood?” I asked, knowing the bath I’d taken hadn’t provided any answers that I hadn’t already suspected.

“You didn’t just want me to heal your wound—you provoked me. You knew what it would do. And ye did it anyway.” His words were sharp, caustic.

“I—” I started, but he cut me off.

“Are ye happy now?”

I didn’t even know how to answer. What I’d done had satisfied a truth I needed to confront for myself—but in doing so, I’d turned Baird against me. The cost of knowing had been his trust.

“Do ye know how disgusted I am with myself?” he growled, stepping closer. “Do ye know how good ye taste? I’ve never tasted anything like it. Yer blood is…it’s like a siren’s song. A drug. I knew I wanted it—but tasting it unhinged me.”

His breath was ragged now, fury and desire entwined.

“All I can think about now is fucking ye,” he said, each word landing like a blow.

“Coming inside ye, with yer blood on my lips. Feeding from a human has always been arousing—but I’ve never fed during sex.

Two hundred and forty years. It was a line I refused to cross.

Because if I did…I knew I’d lose another piece of what little humanity I had left. ”

His voice broke just slightly. “Being with ye makes me feel human again. But in that moment, I wanted to forget it all. To surrender. To possess ye and turn myself over to the monster that I am. ”

“How could I know?” I asked, not cowering. Holding my ground. I wasn’t going down without a fight.

Baird froze, the muscles in his jaw flexing as he looked at me—really looked. His breathing was still heavy, but something shifted in his eyes.

“I’m not a vampire, Baird,” I said, voice steady despite the tremor in my chest. “I didn’t know .

I couldn’t have. You said your saliva could heal, and I—God, I don’t even know why I did it.

Maybe I was testing you. Maybe I wanted to understand what I’m dealing with. But I know you would never hurt me.”

I took a step forward, slowly, refusing to shrink beneath the heat of his anger. “But don’t you dare throw this all on me like I was trying to manipulate you. You’re the one who’s lived for centuries. I’ve had two days to process this. You knew what that would do to you. I didn’t. ”

He stared at me, the tension still rippling through his body, but now his expression softened—not weak, just exposed .

“I’m not your enemy,” I added, quieter now. “And you don’t get to lash out at me because you’re terrified of this part of yourself, the part you hate.”

His posture faltered, just slightly. He looked away first.

My heart was racing—not from fear, but from something far more dangerous. Hearing Baird describe the bloodlust he felt for me should have horrified me. But it didn’t.

It aroused me. God—what had I become?

Heat bloomed low in my belly, flooding through me, telltale wetness between my legs. My breath hitched, shame and desire twisting in equal measure.

Baird’s nostrils flared. He caught the scent. I saw it the moment he did—his gaze sharpened, his body going utterly still. Like a predator registering prey .

I was powerless to control how my body responded to him—and he knew . God, he knew .

My legs felt like water beneath me. I didn’t trust myself to move, to speak, to do anything that might tip the balance one way or the other. The air between us thrummed, heavy with all the things we weren’t saying.

And then, softly, like a vow, he spoke. “I feel everything you do, Mira. Your desire…your need. It sings to me.”

Lust gripped me, fierce and undeniable. I wasn’t just reacting to him. My body was calling to him.

My legs were unsteady. I didn’t trust myself to move.

“Do it then,” I said, my voice low and trembling—part challenge, part plea. I was pushing him, testing him, daring him. Asking him to stop holding back. To lean in to what he was now, not just the man he’d once been. “Take me.”

His eyes locked onto mine, wide with something between shock and hunger.

“You know I want it,” I went on. “I can’t hide it from you. I want to deny you my body, but I can’t . And that makes me angry— furious, even —that I have no control over how I respond to you.”

I stepped closer, or maybe he did—I wasn’t sure anymore where he stopped and I started.

“But more than anything…I want to feel what you feel for me.” I was drunk on it—on his desire, on the way he craved me, the way he tasted my blood like it was sacred.

“You want me to feed from you.” Baird growled, deep and low, a statement of fact rather than a question.

“Yes,” I whispered, breathless. “Do it. Do it now.”

He closed the space between us in a blur—so fast it stole the breath from my lungs. One moment he was across the room, the next he was right in front of me, body radiating hunger, restraint held together by threads.

His hands gripped my hips, his touch possessive, claiming. I could feel the strain in him, his last grasp on control slipping away.

My body answered him without hesitation—softening, opening, wanting .

I wore nothing beneath his T-shirt, and his hand slid along the bare skin of my thigh as he lifted me effortlessly.

I wrapped my legs around his waist, instinct taking over thought.

He popped the button on his jeans and pulled down the zipper with one hand, freeing his cock.

My slick pussy was a homing beacon for him, and he rammed it home with a single thrust. He gave me no time to acclimate to his girth; it felt like he was tearing me in two.

But the pain was ecstasy, and with each deep thrust, all I could think of was opening myself more fully, wanting him buried as deep inside me as he could get. It was so deep, so fast—creating the most intense mix of pain and pleasure I’d ever felt.

He pressed me savagely against the wall, the force of it stealing my breath. I could feel every tremor running through him—his control fraying, unraveling as the inevitable grew closer.

His mouth hovered at my throat, breath ragged, and his hand came up to the base of my neck, not choking, but pinning me—holding me still.

“I can’t take just a taste,” he said, voice hoarse, almost broken. “Not with you.”

“Then don’t,” I said, tilting my neck. “Take what you need.”

His groan deepened into something vicious—a growl torn from somewhere primal. And then I saw it .

Fangs, lengthening where moments ago there had been only teeth. He hadn’t wanted me to see this part of him—not truly. The part that was still Baird Campbell had recoiled from it, ashamed of what he was.

But that part wasn’t in control anymore.

The creature had risen to the surface, and it was the creature who wanted me to see. All of him. Every dark, inhuman edge.

He bent his head to my neck, and I felt the sharp sting—then quickly something far more overwhelming.

Pleasure surged through me, hot and electric, curling through my spine and bursting behind my eyes.

My body convulsed in response, not from pain, but from the exquisite rightness of it, as if every nerve had been waiting for this exact moment to come alive.

Each time Baird’s lips had touched that spot on my neck, it had woken, sparked, heated.

Now, at last, I understood what it had been waiting for.

With each pull of blood from my neck to his lips, I felt more undone—more lost and found, all at once.

Baird was grunting with each thrust, trying to merge our two bodies, like a demon trying to possess me.

He was relentless, claiming my body and every breathless response.

The rhythm of our bodies—carnal, pounding—echoed like an animalistic bassline beneath it all, until the hardest, most brutal climax tore through me and I screamed his name, my pussy spasming around his still thrusting cock, the sound of it raw, erotic, resounding with each stroke.

At the moment of his release, he tore his mouth from my neck as if something unseen had yanked him back. His cry—a raw, strangled sound—spilled into the room as he came inside me, his body shuddering with the force of it.

His hands still gripped me, crushing my flesh. He didn’t let go. Couldn’t.

And in that instant, we both knew—there was no going back. Not to who we were, not to what we’d been before this. He panted against me for several minutes as he struggled to regain control.

When he finally bent again to my neck to close the wounds there—I saw it. The shame on his face was unmistakable.

Baird Campbell, the man, had returned.

His body softened against mine, the white-knuckle grip he had on me loosened, and he slipped from within me, the connection between us suddenly tender, exposed. One arm still cradled my back, holding me up. I wasn’t sure I could stand.

Not from blood loss—but from the sheer force of him. From the way his body had battered mine, from the blinding orgasm that had left me trembling, adrift, every muscle still quaking in the aftermath.

I didn’t fully understand what had just happened between us, only that something had shifted—something vital. The divide between us hadn’t closed, as I’d hoped. It had widened.

What had I done?