Page 5 of The Vampire Kingpin

I licked my lips, excruciatingly aware of both his knife against my inner thigh and the switchblade concealed in the pocket of the pleated skirt bunched up around my hips.

His gaze went to my mouth, and my mind just…blanked. I’d never seen Spider up close before.

All vampires are gorgeous with an innate magnetism that can scramble your brains. But I was a dhampir, dammit, with some of that beauty and magnetism myself. I should’ve been immune.

Spoiler alert: I wasn’t.

In my defense, the dude was hot, with this whole alpha-vampire, I’ll-give-you-the-best-fuck-of-your-life thing going on. Liquid brown eyes, shoulder-length hair styled in long twists, a dark scruff covering his chiseled jawline.

But it was more than that. Tall and broad-shouldered, he oozed charisma like a rockstar on stage, commanding attention like it was his right.

He even smelled good. Coconut oil, and something rich and very male. I drew a breath, pulling his scent into my lungs, and his gaze dropped to my flared nostrils.

His sculpted lips tugged up like he was fighting not to laugh.

My cheeks heated. I was amusing him.

Working my hands between us, I shoved at his rock-hard abs. “Get off me!”

His eyes tracked from my flushed cheeks to my throat and back to my face again. “Say please.”

Something tightened in my core. The way he’d said that…

I was instantly wet. Clearly, it had been too long since I’d had sex.

“What?” I repeated in a too-husky voice.

“You heard me. Beg me, and maybe I’ll get off you.”

I met his eyes. “Fuck. You.”

His face hardened, and he leaned closer, his ropes of hair falling forward to brush my neck and face. The diamond studs in his earlobes glittered like stars against his moon-touched skin.

“D’you know who I am?”

“Um, yeah.”

“Then if I were you, I’d start begging.”

Alright, now he was pissing me off. Plus, he’d underestimated me because he’d left my hands free. I brought them back to my sides, casually resting my right hand on my rucked-up skirt.

“Make me,” I told him, soft and seductive.

His pupils darkened. “Make you?”

Huh. This was almost too easy.

“Mm-hm.” I slipped a hand into the pocket and closed my fingers around my switchblade.

His eyes narrowed. “What’re you up to?”

“Me?” I released the catch and pulled it out of my pocket, slashing at his face.

His hand shot out, cobra-fast, and plucked the knife from my fingers. He tossed it to the asphalt and slammed back onto me, locking his arm over my throat like an iron bar. “That was a mistake, Lark Nightstar.”

When I stiffened at my full name—which no one in the Underworld knew except Grimclaw—a feral smile curved his lips. “Yeah, I know who you are. You think you can live down here for six months without me knowing anything about you? And since you wanna play games, I’m Spider. The man who owns you now.”

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