Page 78 of The Vampire Curse
He reaches out and pushes the hair from my shoulder, exposing the mark. “I see you didn’t make it far.”
“Oliver—”
“Oli,” he says. I let out a soft gasp as he takes hold of my head in his hands and brings our foreheads together. “My offer still stands, Lady Clara, to take you from this,” he adds softly.
“Thank you,” I say, matching his tone. “But no.”
Oliver drops his hands and leans back, lips pressed into a tight line. “For someone who had wanted to escape from the vampire who claimed her, you seem to like him.”
“I don’t,” I snap without thinking. “We have a truce. Nothing more.”
Oliver sniffs the air. “His scent is on you. He has fed on you, if not marked you,” he says matter-of-factly.
I can’t deny it, especially when I still want to run to Alaric, thanks to this demon cursed mark. I avert my eyes, unable to match the power in Oliver’s gaze.
“It isn’t so terrible to like your vampire. As far as their kind go, Alaric is not a bad man.”
I swallow. His words echo thoughts I’ve had for a while now.
“I did leave. I was gone for a month. I went home to see my sister get married. But my life there is gone.” I shake my head, trying to hold back the surge of emotions that well up and make my throat thick. I ramble on, unable to stop talking. “I never had anything to begin with. It was all a naive girl’s dreams of something better. And I came back… so perhaps I’m the horrible one, using him—”
“Do not be so hard on yourself. If he didn’t want you here, then you would be gone or dead.” He squeezes my shoulder. “Sometimes, we must lose ourselves before we can discover who we truly are. Alaric knows this.”
The door swings open and Mrs. Westfield levels us with a glare, her hands on her hips. I side-step Oliver, breaking our contact, and reach for a tray, then hurry past her.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Alaric
Cherno drops down outof the air and lands on the desk. The demon crawls until they sit atop the unopened letter to my left that arrived this morning.
Since the claiming, Elizabeth’s messages have grown more and more frequent—even with the four vampires she sent to make sure I attended this year’s masquerade. Most end up in the fire, unread. They are all the same—pleas to give in to her desires at long last, and thinly veiled threats.
“I would think you would be happy,” Cherno says. “But instead you’re brooding. Why?”
I lean back in my chair and run my hands over my face, letting out a growl of frustration.
“I gave her the first mark last night,” I say begrudgingly.
I have wanted to touch her, to see and feel her come undone under my hands, for so long, that I nearly gave in to the pull of the mark. And then I sent her away, knowing how my actions would make her feel.
But with the pull of the mark dimmed—who she is, who she has always been—comes back to me. I let myself forget.
When she is around, that is all too easy to do. Avoiding her seemed best, but she sought me out again and again until I couldn’t send her away anymore. Having her stand next to me during the meeting was like drawing breath for the first time… though she made it hard to concentrate on the issue at hand. I hadn’t expected the first mark to affect me at all.
“If you despise her baring your mark, then you should kill her as she sleeps in your bed. Drain the rest of her blood and be done with it,” Cherno says coolly.
“It isn’t that,” I say. “It’sbecauseI want her—I want her to have my mark... but if I mark her again, I won’t be able to resist.”
I want her.
Cherno shrugs, an odd gesture for a bat. “Sex is sex. It only means more when there is something between the two parties to give it meaning.”
Fuck her, Cherno means,treat her as if she is nothing.
Guilt stabs at my chest with each word they say. It was neverjustgiving into the power of the mark.
“And that is the problem—I believe there is more between us than just attraction.” I lean forward and rest my arms on the desk, lowering my face to Cherno’s level. “I don’t understand how I can want her, how can I stand her touch, how can I want anything more than her slow, painful death… knowing that she killed Rosalie.”