Page 38 of The Midnight Order (The Thorngray Vampires Duet #1)

Lowell

What I’ve walked in on proves my theory that no one listens to me. Corvin is at Silver’s vein, suckling like a newborn vampire, lost to the blood song, who can’t stop. Even though I know Corvin is the most controlled of us.

Sinking my hands into his hair, I tug his mouth off of her vein. A hiss leaves his mouth, and a very dazed Silver finds me with her blown pupils.

Her blood leaks from the open wound at her vein, and I lick my lips. For a moment, I forget what blood does to me. I forget my entire past, as I wonder what she tastes like.

“You’re breaking a covenant of the order, my child,” I tell Corvin.

“It was worth it,” he growls. Blood-lust is in complete control of him, and there’ll be no reasoning.

“Asher, take your counterpart somewhere to allow him to come down safely,” I command, tossing him toward the male who lurks behind me.

“Yes, sire.” Asher captures Corvin, and I hear the two make off into the manor.

The way he drank from her tells me two things: she tastes even more divine than she smells and is his Predestinat .

It’s good and bad.

She’s the thing that could take this infernal mask off my face. But she’s also the one who could rip this coven to bits.

She’s too gone to speak to me coherently, and I could kill Corvin for how much venom I can smell leaking from her throat.

Shit.

In my haste, I didn’t have him close her wound.

The same venom racing through her right now is the only thing that’ll close her leaking wounds, and she can’t stand to keep losing blood at the rate that she is, and I can’t stand another second of smelling her blood.

Lifting her over my shoulder, I run through the house with her bobbing in tow.

“Jasper!” I scream.

He appears from his study, stepping into the hall like a saving grace.

“Help me!” I plead, and his shock is evident in his eyes as he smells her blood.

“What have you done?” he asks as I lay her back on the chaise longue nearest the window.

“I did nothing. Corvin was at her vein when I found them. I could hear her moans.”

He doesn’t question why I was so tuned into her in the first place; he only opens his mouth as his fangs elongate, dripping venom, a scent that’s currently making me mad.

It’s on my shirt.

I rip my shirt off with a growl, tossing it across the room as my scars bare.

Jasper leans forward and licks over her wound, filling it with venom to seal it shut.

He hisses at her flavor, his hands gripping the lounger hard enough to rip through its fabric.

“Fuck!” he groans, standing and shoving out of the French doors leading out onto a small balcony outside of his study.

Silver whimpers, and my eyes tug back to her. “It’s alright, little lamb. I’m here.”

“Lowell.”

The way she’s said my name is like a prayer. It’s like a confession. I bite my fist and look her over for more signs of distress.

“Maybe I should…” Jasper starts, but I heft Silver into my arms and carry her to my room, slamming the door behind me as I lay her softly on my bed.

Before I can fathom what I’m doing, I have her naked. Her bloody clothes are discarded on the floor, and I rub my cheek over her hard nipple, causing her to moan.

She’s too keyed up, per usual.

These fools need to stop dosing her with venom so I can stop cleaning up their messes.

Then again, as Silver arches her body off the bed, pressing her breast into my tongue as I swirl it around her perky nipple, I find I might like the state they leave her in for me.

She whimpers, and I turn her face toward me, willing her to find me in the haze of her arousal. “I’m here, little lamb.”

“I need you,” she says through her chattering teeth.

Crawling between her nude thighs was a grave mistake. It’s not until she wraps around me like a serpent from hell that I realize that.

Her hands slide between us, working my jeans open as her feet worm beneath the back of them to tug them down.

“Hey, let me make you feel better. Don’t…” I hiss as her hand wraps around my length, warm and soft.

She strokes up and down a few times, teasing and testing.

“Silver, love… let’s… take it easy. Just let me go, and I’ll…”

Her hand angles me in such a way that the sensitive head of my cock slides through her wet sex, and I see stars.

I’m a centuries-old vampire; I could break her neck like a twig.

But right now, I’m under her control. I can do nothing except look between us where she holds me in her hand and wait for what she’ll do next.

While I’m transfixed, her feet work my jeans down further, and then I’m sliding out of them and crawling right back over her, where she takes me in hand again, and I’m back under her spell.

I haven’t been touched in so very long.

It feels so good.

Her hand still strokes up and down as she teases herself with the head of me. Back and forth.

A couple of times, she tugs me forward as if meaning to slide me into her body, testing what I’ll do.

I jerk back, realizing her tight grip on me grows tighter. “Shit.”

My eyes cross as she teases me into a frenzied state.

It’s no longer blood I crave. It’s her.

Only her.

All of her !

When she takes her hand away, I look up at her in bewilderment, not knowing what she means to do next, until she tugs me down closer and connects our lips.

She’s much calmer, more level-headed than before. It seems toying with me worked some of Corvin’s venom out of her system, which is good. That means we can stop this madness before it gets out of hand.

However, I’ve wanted nothing more in my life than to press my pelvis just a few more inches forward…

Her legs tighten around me, and she grinds up and down my length. Our moans have us lazily resting our lips together, not kissing, just trying to survive what’s between us.

When one of her movements nearly tips me inside, my breathing stutters. “Silver,” I warn.

She realizes how close she is and tries again.

This time, I’m a goner.

I want to know what she feels like around my cock more than I want anything else in the world.

The head of me finds her entrance, and she pauses, pulling back to look at me for permission.

We spend a moment panting, staring at one another in stilted silence before I inch inside her, stretching her.

She cries out, her head falling back to the pillow as I lose myself and bury inside her entirely.

“Holy fucking shit,” I breathe, the importance of being inside her, not lost on me, as I feel her fluttering around me.

“Lowell,” she pleads, begging me with little wiggles of her hips and kicks of her feet on my ass to move.

But I need to savor this moment.

This new beginning.

Pulling out, I give her one testing thrust.

It only takes another thrust to fall into a quick, mind-numbing rhythm together, our moans carrying through the manor.

“Little lamb, you feel so fucking good,” I tell her, nipping her bottom lip between my teeth.

She kisses me deep, her tongue becoming the only thing I can focus on besides the tugging of her on my length as I writhe with her, moving in tandem to the eventual eruption.

When she cries out, I continue to fall away from everything I’ve long since believed. All my reservations are forgotten as the bed dances against the wall.

I have to remember she’s human.

The final thought resonates in my head, slamming around like a foreboding.

“You’re the reason every member of this order can’t think straight.”

“I’m… sorry,” she sputters, barely able to form words.

I drive into her, not missing a stroke. Every blissful face she makes spurs me further. It spurs me to thrust harder.

“Are you?” I hover over her lips right as her walls convulse around me.

“No!” she screams as she orgasms around me, causing me to forget what I’d even said to spur her answer.

I grit my teeth as a few more thrusts have me shuddering, my orgasm spilling inside her.

When I push up on my hands to look down at her, a satisfied smile spreads across her lips.

I pull out of her, flip her over, and grab her hips to heft her onto her knees. Sinking inside her, I curve over her back. “I’m not done with you, little lamb.”

Hours later, Silver’s lying on my chest, and I’m staring at the ceiling.

“That was better than anything I imagined.”

I smile, keeping my gaze on the ceiling. “Imagined me fucking you often?”

“I mean…” she trails off, pushing up on an elbow to look at me. There’s a hazy look on her face that I like to think I put there. “You look so proud of yourself.” She shakes her head as she smirks.

“I’m not. I was weak with you. It was dangerous doing what we just did. I could’ve lost control.”

She leans over, kissing my cheek. “I knew you wouldn’t.”

“You have more faith in me than I have in myself.”

“Do you think that…”—she bites her lip—“you’ll ever be able to taste me?”

I take a deep breath. I can still scent her blood in my nose like she’s still bleeding.

“I don’t think so. Too much has happened to me. Too much is connected to blood-sharing.” I shake my head as memories flood through me.

She nods as her eyes fill with some unspoken questions. “Can I ask you something?”

“You can. I don’t know that I’ll answer, however.”

She locks eyes with me, and my body grows rigid all over again, remembering how she felt as she came for me…

“Who is Ossana?”

My breathing hitches as I sit up, throwing my legs over the bed to flee.

Silver captures me from behind before I can make it out of the bed, and her damning touch holds me hostage. Her hand runs the length of some of the scars on my back, and I flinch as she touches each one.

It’s like being marked all over again.

“Did she do this to you?”

“Yes.” I’ve never admitted that to anyone other than Jasper before.

“You loved her?”

I hang my head. “Yes.”

Why am I telling her this? Because of what we just did?

Is it because I can’t see her judgment where she is behind me?

She slinks over my lap, straddling me, cupping my hands in hers as she lifts my gaze back to her beautiful face. “I would do nothing to hurt you intentionally, Lowell.”

“But you might hurt me unintentionally.”

“You might hurt me the same way.”

Her words settle as she holds my face and peers through my soul, peeling layers back as she gets to the center of me where I’ve spent centuries hiding behind an impregnable wall.

“I want to see you.” Her hands travel to the top of the mask, which magically adheres to my face. Her eyes grow sad when it doesn’t give even a little.

“You might never get that luxury, little lamb. I can only give you so much.”

She leans her forehead against mine, and I only feel the slightest area of mine touch hers above the fucking mask. “I’ll take what I can get.”

It’s the kindest thing anyone’s ever said to me, and I feel one brick tumble down from the finely constructed wall around my heart.