Page 41 of The Midnight Order (The Thorngray Vampires Duet #1)

Silver

Trudging past the fountain with the bottle of blood in my hand, I don’t know if what I’m headed to do is the wisest decision I’ve ever made, but my feet still move one in front of the other, carrying me toward my aunt’s desolate house. I know I can find him lurking there.

He’s always there.

Whenever Lowell’s distressed, I can’t just leave well enough alone. I don’t know why. There’s this urge in my stomach telling me to make it better, telling me to fix it.

The bottle of synthetic blood in my hand symbolizes the change in my world I never knew was coming. Only a few months ago, I was just a city girl living the New York City dream. Now, I live in a world of blood, confusion, and vampires.

I find Lowell hidden amongst the fir trees, where they blend into the red maples, shifting back and forth on his feet. His stare is directly connected to my house, even though I’m not there.

“Lowell.”

He doesn’t turn, only hangs his head. A sigh of disbelief and frustration bleeds out of him. “How stupid can you be?”

My mouth hangs open, partly in annoyance, the other part in anger, as he turns and rushes me in the blink of an eye. Blood sloshes out of the bottle, coating my hand.

However, I don’t have time to think about how it’s seeping into my skin. Lowell’s red, deranged eyes are peering into my soul, and a shiver sets in my spine.

“You can’t leave well enough alone, can you? That’s what’s wrong with you!”

I swallow.

His hand sinks into my hair, and ignorantly, my stomach flips as he tightens his grip. It’s the way Lowell loves: rough.

“What is that ungodly smell?” His upper lip lifts as he looks over my body.

“I—”

“What are you doing with that?” Snatching the bottle from me, he looks like he’s going to throw it through the woods.

“Jasper said you’re not feeding. He’s worried.”

“Jasper needs to learn his place. Seems I’ve let his power as might right-hand go to his head. Maybe he needs to be taught a lesson.”

My heart races as I contemplate the possibility of a fight between them because of me.

Lowell turns back toward the house, his hand still gripping the blood.

He knows he needs to feed, then.

“No! He didn’t send me here. I came to see if you’d drink it for me and if you’d tell me about…” I swallow, trailing off.

His eyes narrow as he tosses me a look over his shoulder.

He looks devastatingly handsome today.

He’s in dark jeans. Always in dark colors. His button-up shirt is rolled up at the sleeves, and the top two buttons are open. His thin, trimmed chest hair is peeking out at me. His thick neck has a tattoo in some ancient language scrawled on it, and I suddenly want to know how to read it.

“Tell you about what?”

I steady my nerves as I round back in front of him, trying to take his attention away from that damn house.

I swear it feels like the house is watching my back, watching me square off with a vampire like an ignorant little girl who doesn’t know any better.

Or is that Soliel?

Is her ghost looming in the halls, staring out the front window right back at Lowell.

“Is Osanna the witch you know that could help me?”

He hisses, baring his fangs. “Don’t get into my business, Silver.”

This pisses me off. “Why? I’m only allowed to fuck you, free you of your curse, and follow you around like a lost puppy? Fuck that! That’s not me. I need to know these things if?—”

“If what?” He steps into me, nearly knocking me breathless with his proximity.

I can’t back down, and I can’t let him know how much he affects me. I step back into him, squaring off with the leader of the Midnight Order, a centuries-old vampire.

It’s not the brightest thing I’ve ever done.

“If I’m going to fall in love with you, I need to know you! All the dark parts. Every sticky bit of you that you seek to hide. All of it.”

“The dark parts? What good will my showing you those do me?”

I shrug. “Maybe I’ll plant flowers there. Make them lighter.”

His laugh is snide, and it echoes through the woods.

“It’s a sweet sentiment, little lamb. But anything you try to plant in me will only darken and die. The soil of my soul is tainted.”

That hits me dead center, causing a pang to ripple through my chest. “That’s not true.”

“No. It is. You’re just choosing to see what you want to see because of every part of me that draws you in. But that’s only a ruse; that’s the charm vampirism gifts me to lure unsuspecting little lambs in to feed upon.”

Even though anger is welling in me, about to boil over, my breathing has hitched as his hand lifted to my face, brushing against my skin and causing an ache in my center.

“Will you at least try to feed?”

He revolts in disgust. “I can’t drink that shit anymore. Not with your scent lingering around every godforsaken corner.”

I swallow, ignorantly feeling guilt swarm over me. “What if you drank it while smelling me?”

It’s not a half-bad idea. Though it could go badly… for me.

His eyes flick down to the blood in his hand, his intricate muscles flexing as he contemplates the idea.

The thick cords of his neck vibrate with his next swallow, like his mouth’s full of glass instead of venom. “I could hurt you, Silver. I don’t trust myself. I shouldn’t be trusted.”

“You can’t go hungry, Lowell.”

“And you can’t feed me,” he whispers, shoving some of my hair away from my neck and watching where my pulse ticks beneath my skin.

I can no more control how fast my heart is beating than I can control the weather.

“I could…”

He snaps his teeth so close to my cheek that I jump, my hands finding purchase on a tree behind me, nails gripping the bark. “Don’t offer a wolf your throat, little lamb. He won’t know when to stop.”

His words whisper over the column of my neck, and I ignorantly elongate it, giving him just that.

“Use my scent as you drink… from the bottle,” I offer, stammering as his nose skims my flesh.

One of his hands cups the right side of my neck, while the other grips my left hip, each feeling like they’re scorching my skin. He’s barely hanging onto his control, and something about it makes me feel so fucking hot.

A blush pricks every inch of my body, traveling lower and lower, culminating in the space between my thighs where every bit of yearning is gathering.

“Lowell…” My voice sputters out, but he doesn’t seem to hear me.

He’s fighting between what he wants and what he knows is right.

While I’m willing to bleed myself dry to quench his thirst, which makes no sense.

“Your willingness is intoxicating, Silver.”

His saying my name sends a shiver through my body, the likes of which get trapped at the base of my spine, only adding to the way I’m shaking.

His lips press to my pulse point, steady and looming. It should feel threatening. He’s a killer. It doesn’t.

God help me, it doesn’t.

It feels like I’m on the precipice of life, effervescent and dazzling.

My hand grips the neck of the bottle, reminding myself its contents are what he needs, not my blood.

“You’re intoxicating,” he whispers against my ear. “You could be the one to take the pain away. Is that what you want to be, little lamb?”

“Yes.” Turning my face into his, I brush my nose over his cheek until my lips float over his.

He closes the distance, consuming my moan. My tongue seeks entrance, begs for it.

My head is spinning, my heart racing. The more my blood races, the higher my delirium soars. Until I’m ready to lie down on the altar in sacrifice for this man.

With a hiss, he pulls back. “Give me the bottle.”

Even as I hand it to him, his lip is pulled back in disgust.

He pulls a mouthful from it, his cheeks bulging. Burying his nose in my neck, he breathes me in.

I hear the moment he swallows, following my throbbing vein from my collarbone up to my ear with an animalistic growl that bleeds into my skin like osmosis.

I’m shaking, using his shoulders for stability as the heat at my apex only deepens.

My scent enlivens him, and the idea of his need for me alone makes my mind so loud and needy.

Sometimes, I feel like there’s no going back to who I was before this manor, before these men. Not because they’re vampires, but because they’ve changed me so incrementally. There’s no way back to that girl.

One more mouthful, and he’s back at my throat, using my scent as his own personal chaser to choke down the blood he doesn’t want while smelling the blood he longs to taste so badly that he doesn’t trust himself.

“Fuck,” I whimper, my panties soaking.

His hand on my hip squeezes, his nails digging into my skin. “I can smell how bad you want me.”

A slight noise comes from me, and I’d be embarrassed if I weren’t so delirious right now.

“Finish it,” I plead.

He chugs the rest of the bottle with a dark chuckle, throwing it through the woods. I don’t register a crash of glass because Lowell wraps around me, lifting me against the tree as our mouths crash together.

Both his hands grab either side of the tree behind me while his hardness presses right where I need him, grinding me into the sharp bark.

The digging of my shoulder blades through my shirt only makes me cry out louder.

I’m about to beg him to touch me when one of his hands leaves the tree, making quick work of ruining my pants in the middle. If I were sane, the strength it took would startle me. In his arms, however, I’m not.

He slides my panties to the side before freeing himself and pressing inside me in one fluid thrust.

We both emerge together, moaning together, moving together, greedy for one another as he angles to fuck me fast and deep.

Each push and pull of his body inside mine drives me higher, a buzzing inside me becoming the only thing I can focus on.

Please, please, please…

One of Lowell’s hands finds my clit, adding friction, and my head falls back, colliding with the tree.

The world around me feels like a kaleidoscope of color, where I’m only another speck on its canvas, sinking deeper as the perspective shifts, ever-changing.

“God, you make me feel so fucking alive,” Lowell snarls, thrusting harder, so hard I think he might break me in half.

I open my mouth to beg him not to stop when my orgasm crests, tugging me beneath it like an undertow I got too close to.

My lungs burn for air that I can’t give them.

I can’t focus on anything bodily other than riding the wave of us to the very end.

Lowell quickens his pace, his eyes locking onto mine as his mouth drops open and a gut-wrenching moan rips out of his throat.

It’s so raw.

So perfect.

“Silver,” he manages as he comes apart, sputtering with his following broken thrusts inside me.

I sink my hands into his dark hair, pulling his mouth to mine in a bruising kiss that says everything that I can’t find words for as he stills inside me.

The kiss is an understanding between us, one I don’t know I fully comprehend at the moment, but I will.

Soon.