Page 2 of A Steeping of Blood (Blood and Tea #2)
The waves of her short hair were as delicate as the wheeze escaping her mouth, strands feathering the black silk pillow beneath her.
He adjusted the cushions, rearranging the drape of her sari, tucking the coverlet under her side, knowing full well that each second that passed was another of excruciating pain for her. He couldn’t keep stalling.
“If I do this, there’s no going back,” he said, needing her to understand the weight of what she was asking him to do.
“Do you think I’m unaware?” Arthie asked, the bite he so adored back in her words. “I didn’t come so far to simply end up in a grave.”
He couldn’t stifle his surprise. “Nor does much of humanity. Is that not the ordinary progression of life?”
“Am I ordinary to you, Matteo?”
No, Arthie was about as ordinary as any other phenomenon.
Matteo rounded to the other side of the bed and climbed up beside her.
He was in bed with Arthie Casimir. She must have seen the teasing on his face, for she lifted her eyebrows at him before the expression turned into a wince of pain.
He knelt on the blood-soaked covers, beside the delicate length of her arm.
She looked smaller without the many layers beneath her typical tailored suit, without the baker boy cap holding down her hair.
“Do it,” she rasped, sensing his hesitance. “The Ram mustn’t win.”
Only Arthie could look at the head of an empire and say the Ram hadn’t already won. Only Arthie could challenge someone like that, could think herself capable of taking down someone as distant and powerful as the masked monarch of Ettenia.
He breathed a laugh, brushing away the hair that clung to her damp skin. “My praecantrix.”
She turned her head to the side, the pillow shaping to the curve of her cheek, pain momentarily out of mind. Her scorn was sharp in that dark amber gaze, for in the short time he’d been acquainted with her, he’d learned she was not fond of not knowing something.
And as much as he adored the nearly forgotten tongue and disliked disrespecting it into Ettenian, the last thing he wanted was to irk her.
“Enchantress,” he translated, and with care, he reached to her other side, bracing himself over her. His hair tumbled across his shoulder, brushing her bare skin.
Her breath caught. She immediately winced and pressed a hand against her side, tilting her chin up to meet his eyes.
There was anguish in hers, a bashfulness that he could tell she found irritating, but blanketing it all was her need.
It had been a long time since Matteo had been needed. Wanted? Always. Needed? Rarely.
He had no right to be selfish, but oh, how he wished to be. He leaned into her, catching her scent: tea and moonlight. Blood. Like a switch being flipped, like a brush bleeding out on canvas, his zealous fangs slipped from their sheaths.
He held back a wave of sorrow.
It should be a cause for celebration: Arthie Casimir was going to live forever.
It was not as if vampires could not be killed—Penn lay prone as proof—Matteo knew.
But it was one thing to live expecting old age to lay eventual claim to a soul, and another entirely to exist with the knowledge that only an act of extreme violence could cause one’s end.
Dark hair, brown skin, red blood. Matteo forced himself to stay present, to focus on the matter at hand. Her. He did this often: recited the colors around him, reminding himself that the world was not black-and-white, noting the angles and the shadows and the way the light was taken for granted.
It kept him from spiraling.
He checked her wound, her pulse. She was losing blood, but she would have to suffer longer before she could be turned. Which meant he would have to drain her himself.
“Matteo,” Arthie whispered.
“Shh,” he murmured, and with his nose, he brushed the hair from the side of her neck. Her pulse leaped to attention; her breath hitched. His own locked in his throat, and he wanted to savor this moment, to relish the knowledge that he had made Arthie Casimir breathless.
Gently, he ran his tongue over the skin on the side of her neck, priming it for his fangs. Vampire saliva was a strange thing. Almost numbing, almost intoxicating. Very wholly dangerous.
Matteo licked her again. Arthie gasped, grabbing his arm with both hands. He pulled back, looking for one last confirmation, and tried for a smile, hoping to convey You’ll be just fine. He was certain it came out as a grimace.
But she smiled back, almost shyly, reaching a trembling finger to trace the curve of his dimple.
“I owe you my life,” Arthie said, with so much emotion threaded into each word that it nearly made him weep.
That wasn’t really her speaking. Other than mayhem to her enemies, Arthie owed no one anything.
“Hush,” Matteo said, clearing his throat. “Don’t say anything you don’t mean and won’t remember.”
It was simply how the act of turning worked: Newly turned vampires remembered very little of their turning, very little of the process. Perhaps it was a curse; perhaps the body underwent so much change at once that it shredded its own memory of it.
“Oh, I always say what I mean and I never forget,” she said with utter certainty, and then she threaded her fingers through his hair and pulled him to her throat.
Matteo couldn’t stop himself—it was her boldness, the scent of her blood, the way he was drawn to her—his fangs went straight for her skin, piercing through her flesh. Arthie gasped, her hand slipping to the nape of his neck, nails digging into his skin.
He forced himself to ignore the way her touch made him feel, the way the low moan that escaped her lips made him want to press his eyes closed and give in to the burning desire inside of him.
He drew her blood into his mouth, and it tasted like she smelled: like earthy tea and smoky nights and the enigma that was purely her.
He sucked more, goaded by her moans, by her nails digging into his neck, holding him down. He slipped his fingers through her hair and tilted her head, admiring the shadows pooling into the strain of her throat.
Sweet stars, she was divinely delicious.
He retracted his fangs, smoothing his tongue over the twin punctures before lapping even more, knowing any moment now that it would be too much for her.
As if on cue, she bucked beneath him with a soundless sigh, writhing, thrashing, and when her eyes flared even wider, he clamped a hand over her mouth to stop her from screaming.
He’d already listened to one Casimir scream as they were turned today.
Her teeth scraped the skin of his palm, and he tucked his leg between hers, trapping her beneath him.
This was what every vampire desired, wasn’t it? An enamored thrall. An endless supply of blood. This heady, breathless, intoxicating air.
He wanted it to stop.
He kept drinking.
And then, at last, at last it was done.
Matteo peeled his hand from her mouth, pulled away as if not to disturb someone who was fast asleep. Arthie made no sound, no movement. Her eyes were closed, lashes damp. Her neck was jeweled in a pair of rubies that matched her sari.
Even in death she was a glory to behold.
And there, in the grim, still silence of the room, he heard her pulse.
Soft, fading, a question in each faint pump.
He would answer it a thousand times. He lifted his wrist to his mouth and bit down, drawing blood before pressing it against Arthie’s lips.
Then he pinched her nose, forcing her to draw a shallow breath through her mouth.
Matteo knew the moment she tasted it: a sick and twisted second chance at life. He felt the blood siphon out of him as she sucked in more, and more, until she stopped.
Her eyes flew open with a breathless gasp. She blinked down at his wrist, at the blood covering his clothes and hers, drenching the bed. She touched the punctures at her neck that were already knitting themselves closed and settled her gaze on his as if she’d never looked away.
There was a hesitance there, an uncertainty. At the same time, she looked as though she made good on her promise and remembered every moment since he’d brought her into this room.
Matteo didn’t know what to say or ask, so he did what he did best: He deflected.
“Welcome back, Enchantress,” he said with a wink, and Arthie passed out.