Page 16 of The Reveal (Bloodlore #1)

The vampire king lifts a hand in a manner that should appear languid but ... doesn’t. He waves it, just slightly, but I stand straighter at the sight of it. Like it’s a command wired straight through me.

It must be, because all the other vampires disappear.

I look around for puffs of smoke, or hints that they simply moved really fast, the way Ty did last night, but there’s nothing to see. They’re just gone.

“Vampire tricks,” says the king.

I find myself thinking about his name. Ariel. Like an angel.

But paired with Skinner . Which I suppose is self-explanatory, really.

My own skin prickles with warning. Then blares with alarm as it really settles in on me that I am standing all alone in this huge room, all mirrors and high white ceilings above polished wood floors, with this valley’s apex predator.

He doesn’t move, but that almost makes it worse.

My body knows exactly what he is, and I wait a strangled breath or two for it to decide if flight or freeze is the better option here— fight being laughably out of the question—but something else happens.

At first, I think it’s catastrophic, a disastrous explosion of heat from the very depths of me, but it doesn’t make me keel over.

It just makes me too hot and too uncomfortably aware of that heat in all the worst places.

All the most humiliating places.

He stays where he is, across that polished floor, with nothing of him in the glass at his back. I’ve never laid eyes on him before, I wish I never had, and yet I know two things immediately.

One, if he crooked one of those fingers at me, I would go to him.

Without question. I can feel a hard pulse of soft heat between my legs at the very idea, and it shocks me.

I’m not the sensitive twin. I’m not sensitive .

I don’t feel things, and even if I do every now and again, it’s not like this .

Even that night with Samuel wasn’t this . It was a rush. It was exciting.

What it was not was this ... catastrophic longing that I can feel pulse in my fingertips and the tops of my ears.

Two—and worse—he knows.

Ariel Skinner, king of all the vampires, knows exactly what effect he’s having on me.

I can see it in the way his eyes gleam.

I can feel the way that reverberates inside of me.

“You are not what I expected,” he says.

His voice washes over me, and it feels like singing. As if the sound of it is inside me, a chorus of the most beautiful sounds—

I frown at him. “Are you doing that? Stop doing that.”

Ariel’s head tilts slightly to one side. “What do you mean?”

I wave my hand near my head. “The voice thing. It’s annoying.”

“My apologies,” he murmurs, sardonically enough that it, too, feels like an unnecessary caress. “I would hate to be annoying .”

If that’s his normal voice, it’s not really better. It licks all around me like fire this time.

And by the time I manage to process that, or at least survive it, he’s right here in front of my face.

I didn’t see him move, either.

“Is that tiring?” I ask. “Popping around like that. Does it take extra energy? It looks like it would be exhausting.”

I’m babbling. Something I’m not sure I’ve done in years. In fact, the last time I can remember the urge was that night Samuel walked me home.

This is significantly more overwhelming.

Because he is something close to unfathomable.

Up close, I notice other things about the vampire king. Maybe I’m grasping for a handhold in the middle of the cyclone happening inside me. Maybe I’m desperate to humanize him when it’s clear that nothing about him is the least bit human.

I have no idea how he passed as one before.

There’s all of that astonishing male beauty, an immediate shock to the system. He’s perfect. Even the scars that I can see etched into his chest seem to gleam as golden as the rest of him, and if that’s not enough, he smells good.

I can see sweat on his body, but he doesn’t smell like a gross, sweaty man.

There’s a hint of something like the sea.

I don’t know how I know that’s what it is, having never been to the sea myself.

When have I ever had the time to drive six hours round trip just to say I went to the coast?

But I know it all the same. Mixed in with that is something that reminds me of rosemary.

Maybe the slightest hint of eucalyptus, and beneath that, something warmer I can’t identify.

In my whole life, I have never had the slightest urge to move toward a sweating man and press my face into his armpit . Yet I realize with a shock that, right now, that’s exactly what I want to do.

I want more than just to smell him, though. I want to nuzzle my face into him, and maybe lick him, too, so that I can—

What the fuck.

I frown at him. “You sent me a message. A handwritten message, delivered—not at all ominously—to my front door.”

Ariel is standing a little too close to me. Not in a threatening way. Or, anyway, it’s not immediately life threatening. Still, he shifts back a bit, and I can’t decide if I feel relieved or ... something perilously close to regretful .

I don’t like either one.

His arms are folded, emphasizing all the muscles in those arms, his wide chest, and below.

I can see the place where those indentations over his hips dip below the flowing pants he’s wearing.

I think they have a name. The pants, not the indentations.

What is it that martial artists wear? Gi pants, I think.

I’m not sure why it seems critical that I remember.

His feet are bare. I tell myself that a barefoot, half-naked man wandering around in a place of business should not be getting to me like this. I should find it all a bit strange and sad, and what I should not do is keep taking in too-deep breaths of that scent of his.

But every time I do, I can feel it everywhere inside of me, like a violent, seductive tide.

As if, at the slightest provocation or maybe no provocation at all, I’m going to fling myself at this man and do whatever I need to do if only he’ll—

I blink again.

“Are you doing that too?”

He allows a small, disastrous curve of that deliciously cruel mouth. “I think that you simply find me attractive.”

“So you are doing it.”

“My great curse is that mine is a mesmerizing beauty,” he tells me in that same sardonic tone. He lifts a sculpted shoulder. “It is a burden.”

“That’s going to have to be a no, thank you from me,” I say, and cross my own arms. Defiantly. I remember myself a moment later and swallow, though that’s tough when my throat is so dry. “Your Majesty.”

He really smiles at that, completely transforming that hard mouth of his into something so sensual that it seems to pour all over me, molten and gold.

I feel an ache inside of me yawn open, so wide and so fast it almost feels like an illness, but I know it’s not. I only wish it was.

More than that, I know that he’s not doing it.

This time, it’s all me. It’s a roar . It’s ruinous .

It’s all heat and longing, need and wonder, and a new sort of terror takes me over.

Because it’s one thing for a vampire to play games with me. That’s what vampires do. It’s something else entirely for me to actually find this ...

But the word I want to use to describe this is too scary. Too revealing.

I shove it back down, deep inside, and do my best to bury it with all the other things I refuse to feel.

“I’m surprised you came down to the school tonight,” Ariel says, still wearing a hint of that smile on his face. “It’s very dangerous for humans at night.”

“I was given to understand that an invitation from a vampire king is actually a direct summons.” I have to clear my throat and am certain that makes me look weak—then I remember that no matter what I do, I am weak. “And that it would be foolish to ignore it.”

“Excellent advice.” He moves away then, and I feel it. As if this whole time I’ve been clenched in a fist—his fist—and he’s finally opened his palm.

I can feel a low, wild sort of throb deep between my legs. I can feel it in different parts of my body, too. My breasts feel heavy. My nipples hurt.

I’m sweating again, but I’m not afraid. Or not afraid of dying. More afraid that I might die before I get to taste—

I frown at his back as he walks across the floor, but now I can’t tell. Did he do that? Or did I?

How is it possible to hunger for another being like this? So quickly and so overwhelmingly, with parts of my body I didn’t know could feel this way?

Even when I know he’s evil.

I blink a few times, then focus on that tattoo that winds its way over the perfect surface of his back. But it’s not the dragon I’m expecting.

It’s a phoenix.

There’s an unpleasant sort of jarring sensation deep inside of me, and for a moment I truly believe I’m about to throw up. There’s a ringing in my ears and a sharp, sickening horror in my gut.

Because it looks a lot like another tattoo I know. Two tattoos, in fact.

The ones that Augie and I got on our eighteenth birthday. Matching phoenixes that look a lot like this vampire’s boldly drawn, sweeping rendition, dark feathers and all. Mine is more delicate, a splash of bold lines on the right side of my abdomen. Augie’s is on the left side of his.

Two firebirds in a pod, he said back then.

His medallion is around my neck, and it feels like it’s burning my skin. The fact that we have basically the same tattoo as this vampire king makes my head hurt. I feel hungover and drunk at the same time.

I watch as he walks to a desk I didn’t even notice over in one corner, surrounded by a high counter.

Behind it are the sort of prosaic things you might expect in any martial arts studio.

Even knowing nothing about martial arts myself, I can see that there are pants like the ones Ariel is wearing hanging on the wall.

What looks like duffel bags, marked with the gym’s branding.

Various fighting things like gloves and helmets, though I’m not sure what immortal killers want training equipment for.