Page 219 of Blood Day

Trustwas a funny word. I couldn’t say if I trusted him or not right now. I didn’t trust anything, including my own mind. For all I knew, I was deep-diving into a well of nothing and making up Cedric’s thoughts. Making up his historical feelings. Making up his existence above me.

But his blood…

His blood certainly tasted real, spiraling me back into a dangerous sea of hope. I clawed for the surface, refusing to believe it, my mind too desperate for an escape to be reliable.

Cedric sighed my name, his tongue dancing with mine.We don’t have time for this, little flower,he whispered.But I don’t know what else to do. You need to know I’m here.

I couldn’t reply because I didn’t know what to say. His presence revitalized me, made my soul soar and my heart pound.

Yet a part of my psyche remained anchored in the horrors of my life, the memories of the last few days stampeding across my thoughts.

Willow…I pictured her crumpled form, then the dangerous touch of the lycan who had led me to that room.Did I really escape? Or did I imagine it?

You’re here,Cedric promised.Listen to my mind, Lily.

I tried, but it contained all the answers I desired… which had me further pushing him away. I didn’t want to be here. I didn’t want to believe in him or in us or to think that there might be an escape—a future.

It was… it was too much.

I-I can’t,I whispered to myself.I… I can’t do this.

Goose bumps pebbled down my arms as I tried to pull my mouth away from Cedric’s, to breathe in the air around me, to ground myself in my reality, towake up.

But he kissed me harder, his tongue demanding my attention as his palms grazed my sides.

You’re mine, little flower, he told me.My Lily. MyErosita. My mate. I came for you.

You left me.

I had no choice, but I’m here now.

You cut me off,I continued.You’re not real.

I’m real,he vowed, his fangs skimming my lip.Very fucking real.He pressed his lower body into mine, the thin dress covering my form doing nothing to shield me from his heat and size.

I arched into him without really thinking it through, my body seeming to react to his call, desiring the sensation of my mate. He growled into my mind, his analytical senses firing as he calculated time and location, the strategy unfolding so quickly that I barely followed his train of thought.

And then he was kissing me again with so much passion that I forgot my name. I forgot my purpose. I forgot my very existence.

All that mattered was this dream weaving through my being.

If I’m going to die, I might as well die like this,I thought. Or maybe that was Cedric’s thought. I couldn’t discern reality from fiction, his touch short-circuiting my brainand forcing me to be his. To breathe him in. To revel in his existence. To only feel his hands on me, his lips, histeeth.

I trembled as his fangs found the sensitive pulse of my neck, his bite so potent that I lost my senses entirely to his vampiric kiss.

My dress whispered across my skin, the fabric falling away as Cedric’s palms continued to roam every inch of me.Definitely a dream,I decided, bowing up into him as he pressed me back into the floor.Or maybe a nightmare.

Because we were in a room shrouded in death, hidden in a part of the compound meant to hold all the dead bodies until cremation day arrived.

I only knew that because of Cedric’s dark thoughts.

What a morbid dance, I marveled as I felt his hips pressing into mine again.A dark and twisted fate.

Dizziness overwhelmed me as he pulled deeply from my vein, grounding me beneath him, forcing me to feel his dangerous touch and the claim lying in wait between my legs.

At some point, he’d unfastened his pants.

And now…