Page 1

Chapter

One

Bloom

The Stranger’s Touch

H e buried his face between my thighs, his dark hair falling across my belly.

I blinked hard.

Wait. What the…fuck?

When and how had this even happened?

Yet I spread my legs wider, a moan slipping from my throat, raw and shameless.

Shit. This felt good.

Too good .

Liquid heat coiled under my skin as his tongue worked me, demanding and dominant.

But who the fuck washe?

I raised my torso to find out, only to fall back as a hard wave of bliss shot through my nerve endings. I gasped in euphoria and disbelief, especially when the dark-haired stranger lapped roughly at my plump lips, drawing wicked clockwise circles, as if he knew my virgin body better than me.

Was I still a virgin?

I didn’t remember how we got here, but I was certain I hadn’t gotten drunk in town—I never drank—and brought that beautiful man home.

I opened my mouth, ready to question the man, but ecstasy shook my body hard as he grazed the peak of my clit with his teeth.

No. Not teeth. Fangs?

I needed to be sure.

I had no intention of mistakenly inviting a creature of the night to feast on my flesh just because I was aching.

Wading through waves of pleasure, I pushed up onto my elbows and spotted fangs.

Shit! Actual fangs.

My shoulders shook, an alarm ringing in my lust-addled mind.

“No,” I gasped, the protest weak even to my own ears.

My eyes fluttered shut, lips parting in shock, pulse hammering, not just from fear.

Even seeing those dangerous fangs, I couldn’t stop feeling fantastic.

Was I really this perverted? Mom had spent a lifetime drilling virtue into me. Now all her strict lessons were wasted. No,insulted .

Something was wrong with me.

Maybe I shouldn’t have devoured all those dark romance novels from the town library. But then again, no book could twist me like this if the seed hadn’t already been there.

“Hey,” I demanded, voice ragged, “how did this happen? Who let you in? Because itwasn’t me.”

I should have kicked him, or shoved him away with the heel of my palm before this had gotten so far. I could still grab his silky, thick hair and pull him away from my moist sex.

But I didn’t.

I wasn’t aggressive by nature.

Maybe the ecstasy weakened my will. I cleared my throat, intending to snap, “Stop,” but what escaped was a breathless,“More. Please, more.”

Fine.One more minute. Then I’d put a stop to this and make him explain himself.

The stranger lifted his head. His eyes, somewhere between emerald and winter frost, burned with hunger.

He felt oddly familiar, like a lover from a past life. Absurd. This was my first.

I’d never even dated. Once a month, I traded herbs and potions in town, lingering by the library window to watch the crowded streets. Never had I seen a man like him. No mortal could look like this. If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought him a god forged in shadow.

His grin sharpened, and my blood ignited like a struck match. Lust scorched through me, but worse was the reverence in his eyes, as if he’d worshipped me this way a thousand times and still hungered.

My heart stuttered at his sheer beauty, the cruel curve of his smirk, the way his heated gaze devoured me.

Another moan departed my lips, sounding like I was in heat, while the stranger’s sinful tongue lapped at my sensitive bud, turning my bundle of nerves into a throbbing pebble and reducing me to a shuddering mess.

Pleasure crested, and I arched against him with a cry.

Hunger roared up from my depths, primal and insatiable. My core burned, every nerve alight. If he didn’t stop, if this pleasure didn’t end, it would destroy me.

“Who are you?” I asked and let out another moan.

“Remember, baby. Remember us.” His voice was dark silk, raw with longing and pain.

I blinked. Remember what? Remember how he’d wrecked me like this? Gods, yes—any woman would. I’d carve this into my bones if it meant he’d return.

“Remember, or all will be lost.”

Pain flared through me, so hot that I screamed.

Fuck , he bit me!

I’d thought he was a gentleman, but he was a barbarian!

Before I could kick him (seriously, who bites a woman's clit?), immense pleasure exploded through me, twisting with the pain until I couldn’t tell them apart. My screams turned ragged, desperate, as fire surged through every dormant nerve.

A jet of heat simmered, searing my tender flesh and bursting from my molten core. Before I knew it, my first orgasm arrived in a tsunami—unstoppable, mind-shattering, and shocking the hell out of me.

My roars turned to hiccups as the orgasm overwhelmed my fragile body.

Don’t black out. Breathe, damn it. I begged some unseen force. Not the inhaler, not now. Not in front of him.

I arched my back, my legs kicking involuntarily, as wave after wave of pleasure still rippled through me, gripping me.

Then I plunged.

Not through air—but into icy, suffocating blackness. Saltwater crushed my ribs, flooding my nose and throat. His hand, which had been curled possessively around my neck, now tangled in my hair as the current tore me away.

My cry of pleasure turned into a scream, then silence as the ocean forced itself down into my lungs.

Something heavy wrenched at my ankle, dragging me deeper. Pressure mounted, throbbing against my skull. My limbs went slack, strength bleeding away. My crimson hair fanned out around my face, swirling like red smoke in the water.

His fingers stretched toward me. Reaching? Pushing? I couldn’t tell. My chest was fire, my vision fracturing. Instinct betrayed me: I gasped. Water, thick and bitter, filled me.

The last thing I saw was his face—beautiful, grotesque—warping through the waves above as the abyss swallowed me whole and stole my life.

My eyes flew open. I jerked upright, legs spasming as if still kicking against the phantom tide.

My hand, shaking violently, clutched at the pillow until my fingers closed around the inhaler.

I exhaled hard, though my lungs still burned with seawater that wasn’t there.

A ragged wheeze escaped me. The mouthpiece pressed between my lips, and I inhaled sharply.

Cool relief flooded my airways. My grip on the sheets loosened. Just a dream. Just a dream.But it hadn’t felt like one—it had felt like a memory, like I’d been trapped in another woman’s skin.

I slumped against the headboard, catching my reflection in the mirror across the room. My face was moon-pale, my hair a riot of flaming red against the dark wood.

My frantic pulse finally slowed. I was safe. Home. In the cabin Mom and I had shared before the cancer took her two weeks ago.

The pain of losing her was still raw and sharp, a wound as fresh as yesterday. Nineteen years of love, and now only this hollowed-out ache remained. I clung to it. If I let the pain fade, I’d lose her all over again.

I scanned my room: a table, a chair, a chest, and an open closet, all painted spring lemon. Not my favorite color, but it had been Mom’s. Bleak loneliness swept over me as I looked down at the cotton sheets tangled around my body, damp with sweat.

The dream flooded back. One second, I was having my best and first orgasm, then I was drowning. It had felt so real, and I could still catch his scent in the air: sandalwood and brimstone, and burnt parchment. I could still feel the remnant of pleasure throbbing between my thighs.

I tossed the sheets from my legs and lifted my nightgown. I wasn’t wearing anything underneath. My flesh wasn’t bleeding, but it was reddened. A pinch of pain and pleasure still pulsed from the nerve endings there.

Sudden rage rose alongside the lingering arousal. He’d bitten my nerve bundle, my most sensitive flesh. How dare he?

I shook my head. He wasn’t even real. How could I argue with a godlike male in a dream? Despite the horror of drowning that followed, I wished the sex had been real and the dark stranger wasn’t just a figment of my imagination.

Strong sunlight filtered through the thin curtain. I’d overslept. But who wouldn’t after that kind of erotic dream? If only it hadn’t turned into drowning.

Shaking off thoughts of the stranger, I slipped the inhaler into my nightgown pocket and climbed out of bed. I pulled on the old robe draped over the chair and padded across the room, the worn wooden floor creaking under my bare feet.

A raven flapped its wings, cawing, as it flew between the trees. My gaze landed on the single grave at the back of the garden, protected by circles of stones. An epitaph etched on the tombstone:

Sara Aurelius

Walks Among Forgotten Gods

And Never Forgotten Here

Only forgotten when I was gone as well.

I’d laid Mom to rest here so she could still look at the garden in the afterlife, if there was one, so she wouldn’t be alone. All these years, it had been just Mom and me.

We could’ve lived in civilization, but Mom had chosen this isolated life at the forest’s edge, miles from the nearest French town, to protect me.

She wouldn’t explain why she’d insisted on this reclusive lifestyle, only saying that a goddess had shown her visions of my terrible death if I were found.

“Found by whom?” I’d asked.

She’d shaken her head. “It doesn’t matter, Bloom. You just need to avoid crowds until you reach middle age.”

I shuddered at the prospect of living alone here until middle age.