Page 99 of Blood Day

“Or are you talking about your blood?” I continued. “Blood you used to heal me so you could break me again, right?”

His fingers fisted my hair, his grip bruising my hip. “Do you know where sexually skilled humans with fighting spirits go after Blood Day?”

“Moon chase,” I hissed, aware of that knowledge because he’d blatantly spelled it out for me.

“So why do you think I failed you in both of those areas, Lily?” His gaze darkened. “To deter you from heading down that path. Yet you ran headfirst for it the moment I left. And why? To prove me wrong?”

“To see you again,” I bit back. “I wanted a chance to show you that you were wrong about me. But you weren’t there. So I took the next class and the next, hoping for the opportunity to demonstrate my improvements.” Because I was a sad, pathetic human with an idiotic infatuation with a Master.

He glowered. “You want to demonstrate yourimprovements now? Let me fuck you in the ass against that shower wall, just to see if you can take a vampire cock the same way you could a human one?”

“If that’s what it takes, then yes,” I snapped, entirely lost and confused as to how the conversation had come to this point. I couldn’t even remember what he’d said to make me start talking. But I was so angry at him for failing me. For driving me to such extremes just to prove him wrong.

“You’re a stubborn little brat,” he muttered, shaking his head. “I failed you because I wanted to make your inevitable death as peaceful as possible. You don’t meet the physical requirements for a Vigil. You’re not marked as eligible for the Immortal Cup. And you were on the fast track for going to a harem. So I tried to push you down a different path toward servitude instead, hoping you would end up somewhere less violent. But now you’re a prime moon chase candidate.”

He released me so suddenly that I almost fell.

“I didn’t check your records while I was gone because there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to help you.” He faced the wall and slammed his palms against the tiles so hard that I jumped. “And now there’s little I can do to fix this.”

I gaped at his back, all of his statements slamming into me with the ferocity of a stun gun.

“I could kill you,” he continued, his fingers curling against the marble wall. “Ishouldkill you. That would be the kind solution.”

He faced me once more, his expression sending a chill down my spine as he reached for me again. I took a step backward on instinct, but his palm curled around my nape and pulled me forward.

“But I can’t,” he whispered, his gaze falling to mymouth. “I can’t kill you, Lily. The very notion of it sends me into a blind rage. You’ve become my obsession. Everything I’ve done these last few months has been in an effort to return to you before Blood Day. To see you one last time. To touch you.” He shook his head. “I don’t want to hurt you, Lily. I want to give you life. To make you bloom. Provide you with enough memories to last an eternity.”

I stopped breathing, the intensity in his words and expression rendering me speechless.

This was all likely another manipulation, a way to break me irrevocably.

But it felt so incredibly real.

“I’m too selfish to kill you, Lily.” He walked me backward until my shoulder blades hit the wall. Then he pinned me there with his hips as his hands cupped my cheeks. “Ask me for anything else, and it’s yours. But please don’t ask me for death.”

Chapter 22

Cedric

A dark laughechoed through my thoughts as I repeated my confession in my mind.

Death had been my purpose for millennia.

Yet it was the one thing I couldn’t give to Lily.

A better man would put her out of her misery. But I wasn’t a good man. I wanted Lily, even if just for a month.

She’d die.

I’d live.

And the memories of our time together would follow me for eternity, or until I found a new flower.

Hmm. I ran my thumbs along the hollows beneath her pretty eyes.No. There will never be another Lily.

I’d lived several thousands of years and had never found a female like her. She captivated me in a bewitching way, making me wonder if some higher being had sent her here just to torture me.

She’d accused me of tormenting her.