Page 8 of It's in His Bite
I rolled my eyes with a huff. “Dad doesn’t need to know what I choose to do with my own body. I’m an adult. I’m able to consent.”
I twisted my wrist in renewed offer.
He edged around the island, his movements the barely leashed power I’d seen the night before. They were a more polished version of the vampire at the cafe. His body was a wall of heat, only a foot away from me now. My core pulsed with a renewed, aching interest. Somehow, I managed to keep my hand from trembling.
His hands were gentle as he cradled my wrist and lowered his head over the delicate skin just under my palm. He paused, his lips hovering a bare inch above my skin, for a suspended, infinite moment of time. And then he struck, the same lethal speed I’d felt Tessa use when we were in high school and I had confessed to her I wanted to know what it felt like to be a blood host.
I gasped, the pain cutting through the heat drumming inside my body.
Chapter Six
Landon
Strawberries.
The taste hit me before I could even remove my fangs from the delicate skin of her offered wrist. Her blood tasted like fuckingstrawberries. Ah hell, that was why the kitchen had smelled like a damn strawberry shortcake yesterday. How could I have forgotten that it wouldn’t taste like a typical human? She was a dhampir, a half vampire. Her blood would have a unique smell and taste, just like any other vampire.
Even if I had remembered, of all the possibilities, I never would have predicted strawberries. Not when everything about her was so damn fierce, so determined and capable. Not when she was the forbidden fruit, the apple dangled in front of me until I broke.
And, God, did I break.
A mournful groan fell from my lips as I took a step closer and adjusted my hold on her wrist, bringing it more fully against my mouth. The second swallow was even more decadent than the first, and it silenced that voice shrieking in the back of my mind warning that all of this would end poorly. That swallow onlyfueled a desire to drink again, and so I did, taking steady, greedy gulps as I crowded those last few inches between us. My knee wedged between hers, and she sucked in a breath.
And then she whimpered.
Horror seized me, freezing my tongue and my throat.
Bloody hell, my fangs were still in her wrist. When was the last time I’d been so enamored with the taste of someone’s blood I’d forgotten to pull my fangs away from the punctures? Not since I was a young boy still feeding at my mother’s wrist.
I pulled away at once, ready to admit this was the exact poor decision I knew it would be. The blizzard wouldn’t last forever. I could hold out. Even as I thought the words, my fangs elongated and a deeper hunger ripped through my body. I couldn’t bring myself to move more than a few inches away from the vein I’d opened in her arm.
Harlowe’s cheeks were flushed a deep crimson, the same color that spread across her neck and collarbones. Her eyebrows lowered as she bit her lip.
“Is…” Her throat rippled with a swallow. “That can’t have been enough. It’s never been that fast before.”
Jealousy ripped through me, so intense it was a miracle my skin didn’t flay right open. How often had she offered her vein that she would know what most vampires needed from a host? Fromher? Between one heartbeat and the next, the need to find that nameless prick and drive a stake through his still-beating heart overwhelmed me. Every muscle tensed in readiness.
Good God above, this was madness.
“Landon?”
Shit, she needed to stop saying my name. I couldn’t fucking think straight with the way her lips wrapped around the syllables pinging around in my mind. Uncertainty flashed in her eyes and pinched the corners of her mouth before she reached out to me with her free hand. I didn’t trust myself to move, to do anythingbut hover above her bleeding wrist. She carefully palmed the nape of my neck, her touch light as a feather.
Her chest shuddered with another heavy breath. Thirst and need ripped through me all over again, stronger and deeper than even a moment before.
“It wasn’t enough,” she whispered.
Her voice had gone low and sultry, her body already reacting to the pleasure my bite always induced. It sent a thrill straight to my cock.
This was such dangerous territory. Another minute, another taste, and I knew I wouldn’t trust myself to make the proper choice: leave her untouched in every way that Joshua would use to justify putting a stake through my chest.
That one taste would have to be enough to get me through the next twenty-four hours until the snow slowed enough that the mountain town reopened. I would need those swift, greedy tastes to last long enough to find a human who wouldn’t remember me the moment my fangs left their vein, just like the man last night.
As if she could read my thoughts, Harlowe’s nails pricked my skin. Her body straightened, as if she had decided something in the stretch of silence. I readied to drop her wrist, to allow her to back off. Instead, she pressed the bleeding punctures to my mouth. The wounds were still bleeding freely, dual beads slowly dripping toward her elbow. I cautiously licked one trail, cleaning the bright red from her skin.
Her breath caught, and both of her hands fisted, the one on my neck twisting into my hair, holding me immobile. Her command wrapped around me, the single word reaching into the depths of me and ripping out the very last bit of common sense by the roots.
“Feed.”