Page 43 of The Blood we Crave

I roll my tongue against my front teeth, shaking my head in mock understanding. “So you’re here strictly for Silas?”

She nods quickly, not even letting me finish the question.

“Yes, we play chess on Thursdays. That’s the only reason, I swear.”

I glance down at my hand, opening it to find blood smeared against me, the cuts from my nails still flowing.

“You’re letting him teach you, huh?” I ask, feeling my jaw twitch as I rub my bloody forefinger and thumb together. “Are you learning things from Rook and Alistair as well?”

Looking up at her is a mistake because her eyes are looking at my hand, drawn to the cherry color in my palm, unable to look away and desperate to reach for it.

Blood hungry.

“I asked you a question.” I snarl. “Do you creep on them? Follow them around like some boy-obsessed little girl?”

“Wh-what?” she stutters, shaking her head, making all those wet curls bounce.

I’m ashamed of how easy it is for me to reach forward and snatch her throat between my fingers, jerking her close to me so that she can’t run from me. She can’t see anyone else huddled close to my chest. Can’t breathe in anyone else. No one else but me.

My thumb dips into the sides of her neck, feeling her pulse flutter in my hold. The slippery liquid in my palm coats her pasty skin, streaks of red tinting a winter bed of snow.

My mouth waters at the sight of her wearing my blood like a ruby necklace.

“Do you watch them?” I ask again.

Her little breaths brush against my face as I decline my head, tucking my chin so that she has to elevate her neck into my grip in order to look me in the eye.

“No, Thatcher.” She chokes on her words, my fingers forbidding her breath to come out of her own accord. “It’s just you. I’m your ghost. Only yours.”

Her words were supposed to be ice over my burning skin. But they aren’t. They’re an accelerant.

Watching her struggle in my hands, with my blood smeared along the fragile column of her throat and her telling me just how obsessed with me she is, only sends white-hot heat into my body.

In the past few months, she has done nothing but provoke and grate my nerves, clawed at the walls of my self-control with nails I didn’t even know she had. I have no desire to be around her any more than was required.

When I look at her, I see my first and only mistake.

But right now, she looks like death’s most desirable lover. The grim reaper himself would’ve crossed lands and oceans to touch her like this, to slather every single inch of her body in his blood so he could lick it clean.

A zap of shock flies down my spine.

“I don’t want you to be anything to me,” I say, wanting to retreat from her immediately.

I want a shower. I want clean of her. Right now.

This is the reason I stay away. Why I ignore the burn of her eyes on my skin and her presence in a room. Because for one split second, one single grain of hourglass sand, I’d been weak for this girl.

As an inept boy, I’d been weak for her, and I never want to experience that again. I had let her survive, forced her out of the way of my father instead of doing what I was tasked with.

She will not do this to me again.

I release her throat, allowing her to inhale deeply without restriction, and try to keep my eyes from the crimson handprint marked on her neck.

“But sadly, a deal is a deal.” I take a step back from her body, watching as her body sags visibly without my touch holding her up. “So I have no choice but to be your teacher.”

I will make it clear what this is and the boundaries I require for this to work.

“When do we start?” she whispers, looking like she wants to say more but is holding back in fear of me retracting my agreeance.