Page 99 of Blood Day: Part Two

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 brain and 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…

Now he was pressing into me, making me feel whole, making me feel like I was his.

All the while, I felt his awareness spreading out around us, searching for signs of intrusion, and reveling in this sense of forbidden lust.

We were taking a risk.

And that risk seemed to fuel him onward, demanding that he move. Because it was the only way for us to feel alive, to prove to me that this was real.