Page 73 of Inked & Bloodbound

She sits up, pulling her knees to her chest, like she’s just noticed her nakedness. Her tone is strong and defiant. “I’m coming with you.”

“No, you are not. It’s out of the question.”

“I am coming with you,” she repeats. Louder and slower this time. “I promised I would do this, and I’m going to see it through. Besides, you said it’s going to be dangerous. You think I’m going to let you walk into that alone?”

She slides her wet hair away from her tender neck and grimaces as she presents her bruised throat to me. “I’m not taking no for an answer. I’m coming with you, and you’re going to drink from me. We need every advantage we can get. So hurry up and drink.”

She’s offering herself up like a sacrifice, trusting me with her life when she has every reason not to. I’m a piece of shit, but my predator instinct takes over and taints every part of me that’s still human.

The air stills, my vision narrows, and all I can see is the pulse fluttering beneath her skin. All I can hear is the sound of her blood rushing through the channels of her broken body.

A jolt of shameful desire rips through me, and I can’t stop myself. I lean down and press my lips to her throat, feeling her essence thrum beneath my mouth. When my fangs pierce her tender tissue, she gasps and grips my shoulders but doesn’t pull away. Her blood flows onto my tongue, and the world explodes into sensation.

“Just try not to nearly kill me this time,” she mutters with gritted teeth.

But all I can do is drink.

24

LILY

“Let me heal you,” Cassini says, his fingertips ghosting over the tender bruises blooming across my throat.

After he drank from me in the bathroom, he wrapped me in the softest towel he could find and carried me to the bedroom, laying me down with the consideration of someone handling a precious artifact. Now he’s curled around me protectively, still fully clothed while I’m bare except for the terry cloth, his lips pressing tiny, apologetic kisses along my shoulder and collarbone.

His hand moves with ghostly tenderness along my skin, cataloging each mark—the vampire’s brutal claw marks, the puncture wounds from his own fangs, the tender bruising and scuffs from being slammed against brick walls. Each touch is so feather-light, it’s as if he’s afraid I might shatter.

“How will you heal me?” I whisper, shifting so I’m pressed even closer to the solid slab of his chest. Despite everything that’s happened tonight, I’ve never felt safer.

“My venom has magical properties, my love,” he murmurs against my skin, his breath cool and soothing. “I can lick your wounds, and you’ll feel no pain. Your body will put itself back together almost instantly.”

“Will it hurt?”

“The opposite.” His thumb traces the edge of a particularly dark bruise, and I suppress a wince. “It will feel…good. Maybe a little euphoric. My saliva contains natural endorphins.”

I turn to study his face in the soft moonlight filtering through my bedroom curtains. There’s guilt written in every line of his face, self-recrimination in the set of his jaw. He’s been apologizing with his hands for the last ten minutes, mapping my injuries like he’s memorizing them.

“You don’t have to,” he continues softly. “I know I’ve already taken so much from you tonight. I ask for too much. I know that. I just want to do this for you.”

But I’m already tilting my head back, exposing the column of my throat to him. “I want you to.”

He kisses my temple and trails his lips down to the first mark. When his tongue makes contact with my skin, a shock of warmth spreads through me, followed immediately by a floating, weightless sensation.

He’s right—it doesn’t hurt. Instead, there’s a tingling that borders on pleasure, like tiny champagne bubbles fizzing through my bloodstream. Each gentle stroke of his tongue sends ripples of contentment through my nervous system.

“Better?” he asks, pulling back to examine his work. The worst of the bruising has already faded, and the dull ache dissipates with it.

“Much.” My voice comes out dreamy, slightly slurred from whatever supernatural cocktail is now coursing through me. “I feel kinda high and tingly. Whatever it is…it’s good shit.”

A soft chuckle rumbles through his chest. “That good?” He moves to the next mark, taking his time, savoring the taste of my skin and running his flat tongue along the curves of my body. “You need rest. Go to sleep and let me take care of you.”

But I can’t rest. There are two things I can’t stop thinking about.

The first is the fear of what I’ve committed to do tomorrow night and the reality of it. I’m taking a huge risk by even being there amongst creatures that would drink me dry given half a chance. Notonly will I be in enemy territory, but I’ll be spying on them, and I run the risk that they would either kill me on the spot or kidnap me and use me like some kind of human polygraph if they discover what I truly am. All because I’ve committed to a suicide mission to rescue a girl I don’t even know, to help a man I can’t fully trust, so I can hunt for breadcrumbs of insight about a woman who abandoned me.

Then there’s the other thing. The growing heat between my legs. The feel of Cassini’s tongue on my skin and the memory of it elsewhere. The venom that lives in his mouth, the same one that he used to heal me, he once used in a far more intimate place, and my body remembers it all too well.

And it wants more.