Page 23 of Eternal Ruin

He could not let her touch him as a human. He was not worthy of it.

But he could touch her now. He could do anything now.

Reading his intention, she swallowed thickly.

Her eyes tracked him, speaking to him in a private language. There was the piercing intensity of her hatred and the thick water of her grief. Her delicious rage. But this… the way she was looking at him now—open and cresting with need—made him forget she carried more treachery in her little finger than his greatest foe’s drawn weapon.

“What are you doing?” she breathed.

What was he doing?

He had planned to not touch her at all—inside or outside the house. But how quickly he bent his rules when it came to her.

She’s dangerous.

Susenyos tried to focus on his words and not her stilted breath playing at the base of his thumb.

“You wounded me before the council. What am I supposed to do with you?”

His canines widened in his gums until he had no choice but to part his mouth. Often, it was a fresh wound that woke his fangs. But there was no cut here, nothingto explain why he was quickly losing control, mouth hovering dangerously close to her neck.

Enough. He tried to still himself.

But his fangs only drew closer, thumb still toying with her bottom lip. All he could think about was hot, gushing blood. He pulled at her tie, a red-and-black Uxlay design with the twin golden lions emblazoned, slid it free, and tucked it into his back pocket, smiling. Such a thin piece of clothing guarding her lovely throat. He pushed her thick braids over her shoulders, opening her collar.

A furrow grew between her brows, the swirl of desire snuffed out by confusion.

She studied his fangs, her tone distant. “You want my blood.”

Even his voice was parched. “Always.”

All of this had to be bloodlust.

“Then drink.”

He could read something wrong in her tone but that damn word always stripped him of any coherent thought. And right now, his fangs were thinking for him. He tipped his head down, her soft skin heaven against the hard ridge of his nose.

He could feel her veins, all three of them, two branching into one, and the longer he held himself still, the more blood gushed through the vein. Sensations danced on his lips as he traveled up and down the column of her throat. Not a bite, but a near-kiss. Breathing her in.

Her fingers bunched on his arms, hard enough to pinch his skin.

“Just do it.”

How quickly she sounded like him—equally starved.

He smiled. “You’re not enjoying this, are you, little bird?”

Susenyos continued to press his mouth to her vein. She might have won the game of the house, but he wouldn’t let her command every part of him.

He returned to the feel of her long braids wrapped in his hand. Like the vines of Farah’s trees, shimmering with pieces of the sun. The leaves surrounding them swayed with the wind, a circle of tattered curtains cutting them off from the world.

“What is it, exactly, you want me to do?” he whispered against her ear. “Kiss you?”

He was thrust back to the memory of her angling his head down to her shoulder, gentle and eager during Cossia Day. He’d been powerless, completely at themercy of the scene before him, her body worthy of worship. Then she’d uttered those damning words. Asking him to drink with such sweet innocence.

He tried to distract the craving in his fangs by trailing lazy kisses along her neck, teeth scraping gently on the lobe of her ear.

He wouldn’t drink… not untilsheneeded him to.