Page 55 of Inked & Bloodbound
“I don’t think you should be going anywhere,” he says, and the bass of his voice reverberates against my neck, grounding me back to the present.
I press myself into him harder, so my voice is muffled by his body. “You can’t go out there if the sun’s still up or we’ll end up in this mess all over again.” I attempt a laugh, but he doesn’t return it.
“We have about an hour until sundown. I could try and cover my skin, maybe? I could be fast. Just tell me where to find it.”
I pull back and look up at him, his beautiful face marked withsoot from his burns, and clean, tear-stained lines cutting a path through his cheeks. I reach up to touch them, and he catches my hand. He brings my palm up to his mouth and delivers a tender kiss in the center.
I smile. “No, I’m fine, please. You stay down here. Besides I need to change, there’s blood on my dress. I’ll get something to eat and start getting my stuff together for nightfall so we can go.”
His eyebrows rise. “You’re not staying here?”
“No, I want you to take me home, and I want you to sleep over…except I don’t want us to sleep.”
“I think you need rest and don’t need a long car journey right now,” he says, missing the point completely.
I wet my lips and give my best attempt at bedroom eyes, tracing my finger down the center of his chest. His breathing gets shallower, and he flinches when I reach his waistband. “I don’t want to rest. I want you to worship me the way you prayed over me.”
His eyes narrow in confusion, and I let out an exasperated sigh.
“Alright, how do I say this nicely? I want you to fuck me, and I’m not doing it in my stepdad’s basement like some teenager. I want to be in my own damn bed.”
His eyes widen.
I think he’s got the message.
If I gloss over the part where I nearly died, the feeding was the most intensely fucking erotic thing I’ve ever experienced. Every sip he took, every draw of blood from my veins, sent lightning bolts of bliss straight through me. Like every nerve ending in my body was connected directly to his mouth. The weakness, the dizziness—that was real. But so was the desire that had pooled low in my belly, the need that’s still thrumming through me even now.
“Lily,” he says, stepping back. “I know you feel like you want to do this…with me right now, and trust me, I’d love nothing more.” He bites his lip and takes a deep breath as his eyes rake over me, but then he shakes his head. “I’m sorry, but you only want to because of my venom. It’s engineered to make you feel like this. It’s sick, but once we’ve fed, or kissed, it’s easier for us to feed on a human again and again. The venom makes it so you don’t just let us—you crave it.”
Is that true? Is what I’m feeling some kind of supernatural aphrodisiac?
“This is bullshit.” I mutter, pushing past him, the shame of the rejection spreading under my skin like wildfire. “I’m a big girl. I know what I’m feeling, and it’s not some kind of vampire roofie. It’s real.”
He tries to grab my arm, but I shake it off and saunter to the basement stairs on rubber legs, careful for him not to see me struggle.
“Lily, come on. I am only trying to protect you.”
“Ha. That’s pretty big talk for a guy who just did what you just did.”
I open the door, letting in just enough light to see the devastation on his face. My words hit him like a slap, and his whole body deflates. Then I slam the door behind me.
We haven’t spokenin twenty-three minutes. Not since he asked me if the air was okay, or if I’d prefer another radio station. I mumbled something with my arms crossed and have been staring out the window, listening to mariachi music ever since.
It’s weird to be in the passenger seat of your own car, but he insisted he drive, and even though it felt a little too macho for my tastes, I decided to let him. I know he’d prefer driving his own, but his early dawn joyride at ninety miles per hour must have pushed the old thing to the limit, and he couldn’t get it started.
Earlier, Cass had called up some mechanics to come get his car, promising them a cash bounty if they could deliver it to him in Austin within twenty-four hours. Two middle-aged Latinas with gray-streaked hair and oil-stained overalls arrived impossibly fast. They never took their eyes off me as he spoke to them in Spanish and paid them handsomely from a huge roll of dollars in the glovebox.
He shifts uncomfortably in the seat and throws me a sideways glance as he adjusts the seatbelt, which is straining across his broad chest. “I don’t know how you drive this thing,” he says, punctuatingthe trumpet solo of the jovial music. “It’s like driving a tin can. It doesn’t feel safe at all.”
“What?” I splutter. I’d been planning on staying silent the whole ride home, but he’s clearly trying to bait me. “And your car is, I suppose? Oh yeah, it’s the picture of reliability. It’s got to be, what? Fifty years old?”
He flashes me a smile. “Sixty-eight, actually, but who’s counting.”
“It’s probably not even worth repairing it, you know. It’ll end up being stripped for parts in some junkyard. Or donated to a museum like all the other relics.”
“Well, if they do that, I just hope they get the scratch out of the bumper.”
Fuck. So he saw the damage I did.