Page 69 of Will It Hurt?

Jinn

I was being tested.

Now that one need was sated, another reared its ugly head. The base instinct flooded my brain with the urge to bite, to take, to consume.

I could hear it, the steady thrum of her pulse beneath the surface, so close, so tempting . Even now, tangled in the multi-colored quilt with the scent of sweat and sex thick in the air, it was her blood that consumed me.

It wasn’t fair.

I’d just had her—her body, her sighs, the soft gasp of my name on her lips—and yet it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough. Because the thing inside me, the thing I had spent centuries caging, didn’t crave her touch.

It craved the magick of her blood.

She shifted, pressing against me in that lazy, post-bliss way humans did, her arm draping over my chest.

“When were you born?” the little wytch asked, her fingers tracing the platinum cross I wore at my neck. She was warm and soft and perfectly dimpled as she lay in the nook between my arms, her head tucked comfortably under my chin.

I wondered if she was willfully trying to distract me from the wayward circles of my looping thoughts—away from the saliva that filled my mouth at the memory of how her blood tasted.

“1851. ”

“And what was it like in 1851?”

I placed a finger in her curls and was touched when a lock twined around it.

“Noxious,” I admitted, wondering why I felt a residual tug at my heart when her curl wouldn’t release my finger.

“I suppose indoor plumbing wasn’t a thing until much later…” Aisla wrinkled her nose.

“No,” I said, forcing myself to focus on her words and the way her lips moved around them.

“Although plumbing was a large part of the problem. No, the real issue was the pollution that made living in London unbearable. Often, I’d wake up to what I’d call stinkers .

The thin glass panes our landlord called a window would be covered in soot, thick as mud.

You couldn’t see the sky if you tried. The air outside would be several shades of scary—grey, if you were lucky, or black as sin.

And all of it was bound to enter your lungs. ”

Aisla paused her exploration of my chest and stared up at me.

“And here I was expecting some romantic recollection of the Victorian era.”

“There wasn’t much romantic about it. Unless you consider pollution, sickness and suffering romantic.”

“And what would you do when these stinkers happened?” she asked, slinging a thigh over my hip.

“Most would stay home, I suppose, but we didn’t have much of a choice if we wanted to earn our daily wage.”

“We?” Aisla asked.

“The working class.” I pulled her thigh more firmly into the dip of my waist. “We didn’t have the option to wait out the greasy fog. We just walked into the shroud with a scarf tied around our nose and mouths.”

“Surely that’s not healthy. ”

“Health and safety is a fairly recent thing,” I said, unable to keep the sarcasm out of my voice.

She tutted. “That’s not what I mean. I was thinking more along the lines of your physical health. If you fall ill and can’t work, that would affect your employer, right?”

“Wrong.” She seemed taken aback when I contradicted her.

“Workers were easily replaceable back then. I worked at a factory and my job didn’t require any special skills.

I had nimble hands and a good pair of eyes and that was pretty much all they needed.

If I was ill or died, there was a line of people waiting outside the factory doors for casual work.

My chair would’ve been taken in a heartbeat. ”

“Oh.”

There was an odd note in her voice.

“Why, little wytch, are you sad for me?”

“No,” she said quickly, then relented with a sigh that landed warmly on my chest. “Okay, maybe. It just seems like such a bleak life.”

I shrugged. “It was… but it also had its moments.”

She raised her face to me. “Tell me one of these moments.”

She was full of commands this evening.

I pulled her closer, craving her warmth.

“The factory was closed on Sundays, and so I would help Mrs. Peats at her bakery. We’d get up at three in the morning to bake bread and sweet treats for the after-church crowds.

” If I closed my eyes, I could almost smell the inside of the bakery—cinnamon and vanilla, yeast and flour.

“The feel of dough in my hands brought great comfort. I’ve always been a tactile person, much better at working with my hands than any other tool.

And the feeling of dough between my fingers—the soft resistance, the yielding, the way it pushed back as I kneaded, warm and alive in my hands, it was incomparable. ”

I chuckled at a distant memory. “The smell of yeast always made me sneeze.”

When I glanced down, Aisla was staring at me strangely, as though the sight of my smile was something foreign, something she wasn’t sure how to process.

Her eyes lingered too long, searching my face like she was trying to decipher a puzzle. Her brow creased ever so slightly with quiet kind of confusion—like she was watching something she wasn’t meant to see.

“You’re different when you smile,” she mouthed softly, her knuckles brushing my cheeks. “I can almost forget you’re the same person who tried to murder me.”

“Yes, well—”

I faltered, the words vanishing under my breath as Aisla’s heartbeat quickened its tempo. It was a subtle shift, easily overlooked. But I’d become so attuned to the beat of her heart that the slight quickening was as clear as a whispered confession.

The steady rhythm stuttered for a fraction of a second, then pulsed just a little faster beneath her skin. I could hear it, feel it in the air between us. The scent of it grew richer, tinged with something warm and electric, like a spark catching dry kindling.

“What are you thinking about right now?” I asked, studying her features.

“I wonder what it would have been like if we’d met under different circumstances.”

“Like a vampyre-wytch networking event?”

She rolled her eyes. “No, but maybe at a pub or a café or somewhere more normal.”

“We did meet at a café.”

“Where I’d been assigned to end your life.”

“You mean to tell me that it’s not the fun little meet-cute you wanted?” I teased .

Her fist landed on my shoulder in a gentle punch.

“ The Daily Grind just reminds me of death and grief,” she said. “It’s not something you want in your life every single day until the moment you’re allowed to retire.”

“It must be hard.” I surprised myself as I spoke. Even though everything inside me rebelled at the lack of morality in her role, I could see how such a job could take its toll.

“Very hard,” she agreed, leaning back against the headboard. Her neck and collarbones were bare save for the little soulglass that was filled with her ward. “Sometimes I feel like I’m the recipient of all their grief. That when they die, it slips into me and becomes my burden to carry.”

She touched the soulglass absently.

“My mother always said never to humanize any assignments. She was painstakingly particular about this rule.”

“And?” I prodded.

“Maybe I forgot her warning sometime over the last ten years. Or maybe it’s impossible to be human and not care.”

“Maybe it’s the latter,” I said. Brought alive by the pain in Aisla’s voice, the shadows rose from my skin, moving slowly like waves caught in a low tide. Gently, almost wistfully, they found her shoulders and wrapped around them, brushing her skin back and forth.

“Oh.” Surprised, she ran her fingers over them like someone stroking an affectionate animal. “They feel like… a downy throw. Very different from before.”

“They take on different textures depending on the occasion, but right now, it looks like they want to comfort you.”

“Don’t you mean you do?” she asked shrewdly. “They’re a part of you, aren’t they?”

“They’re an extension of me, yes. They feel my anger, my pain, my joy… ”

“And your need to comfort wytches who whine about their jobs.” Her laughter held no mirth. “I should be happy I still have a job in this economy.”

“That is a rather pessimistic way of looking at things.”

“Says the vamp with unlimited funds.”

She had a point.

In recompense, I urged the shadows into a gentle knead. A soft gasp parted her lips and she let her head fall back.

“What would you do?” I asked, watching her hum in satisfaction as the shadows mimicked a massage. “If you didn’t have to neutralize my kind for a living?”

I thought she might take a moment to consider response, but the words were cued on the tip of her tongue.

“This may sound vapid and brainless to you, but when I was younger, I really wanted to start a YouTube channel dedicated to teas.” She smiled a little sheepishly.

“I had this image in my head of setting up my phone in front of the hearth downstairs and making content like I was welcoming someone into my tea shop with the little bell ringing as they walked in and the kettle whistling away…”

She glanced away, avoiding my eyes. “It probably sounds silly to you.”

“Not if it brings you joy,” I said. “Not if it makes you smile when you get out of bed in the morning.”

The idea of social media was still strange to me. Nat was constantly scrolling on his phone when he should be working, and I could tell that the kid was addicted to something he saw on the screen.

It was strange that people wished to air their grievances for an audience of millions to judge. They called it building an audience , making a brand , creating a presence , but to me, it looked like shouting into the void and hoping the void whispered back .

What was it they truly wanted? Recognition? Relevance? Or was it the simple fear of being forgotten?

Aisla shrugged.

“We’ll see,” she said. “I might try and get the idea off the ground. Or I might move to a different country. Thanks to you, I now have some options.”

I watched as my shadows slithered along her neck, touching the sweet spot beneath her ear. She shivered, uttering: “Oh, that feels good.”

In a moment of utter foolishness, jealousy struck.

The shadows were mine—extensions of me, threads of darkness woven from my will. They moved where I commanded, obeyed with only the slightest resistance. And yet, as they coiled around her neck and brushed against her pulse point with gentleness, something inside me twisted.

I clenched my fists, willing them back, but they hesitated, lingering against her as if reluctant to let go. My own creations, betraying me.

But under it all simmered envy —envy that my shadows were so close to the source of maddening, magickal blood.

I could hear it—rushing, pulsing. An ache began in my belly. God, how fragile that barrier was, how thin the veil between life and hunger. A breath, a bite, and it would spill onto my tongue, warm and rich, painting the world in shades of firecracker gold.

But Aisla let loose another appreciative moan, not realizing how close I was to being undone.

Space. I needed space.

I placed some distance between us, trying to ease my parched throat. Perhaps it was time to seek sustenance at the nest, no matter how unappealing it sounded.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, her fingers warm on my shoulder.

“Trust me, little wytch, you don’t want to know. ”

She moved with surprising speed for a mortal, straddling my waist so that I was trapped beneath her.

Her fingers clasped my chin, raising my gaze to meet hers.

“But what if I do?”

I clasped her wrist. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“You want a drink,” she said, staring at me. “You need a drink.”

Had I been so transparent? So obvious in my need?

I had spent a century and a half perfecting the art of control.

I prided myself on keeping my hunger buried beneath willpower and restraint.

But as she watched me now, head tilted slightly, lips pressed together, I wondered if my gaze had lingered on her neck too long or if there was a hint of drool along the corners of my lips.

“I’m fine,” I insisted, ignoring the rasp in my throat. “It’s manageable.”

It had been over a week since I fed from a willing donor. A week wasn’t long at all—barely any time in the grand scheme of things. But the lingering dregs of an orgasm still ran through my veins, tugging different needs to the surface.

“Why would you want to manage it?” Aisla asked, amusement in her voice. “When I’m offering you something most vamps can only dream of?”

If my heart hadn’t sputtered to death a long time ago, it would have stopped beating at that very moment.

She tilted her head, exposing more of her throat, and my stomach twisted.

She didn’t know what she was doing to me.

Or maybe she did.

Maybe she wanted it.

“Now,” she said, releasing my wrist and sitting back on her haunches. “I have some rules. ”

I nodded, not trusting my voice.

“This temporary bond will not become permanent,” she said. “You will take what I give you without complaint.”

Complaint?

The sentiment was furthest from my mind.

Instead, I wondered if looked like an eager dog waiting for its owner to snap their fingers for dinner.

“You can’t drink directly from me,” she said. “That’s a hard boundary. At no point will your fangs pierce my flesh.”

Could she hear the greedy gulp in my throat? The way my mind raced with every other way I could drink from her body? The way I was turning over every way I could make the experience more than a little pleasurable for her?

She leaned closer, her pulse loud, tempting, impossibly close .

A single finger rose to the base of her neck.

“An incision right here should do the trick,” she whispered, her breath hot against my cheek. “A small one, enough to make blood trickle down my chest.”

I tried to swallow the tangle of barbed wire in my throat, steeling myself against the aching void that clawed at my insides. Hunger burned through me, curling around my ribs like a living thing, demanding I take what was so easily within reach.

She twisted her neck even further, saying:

“Do the honors, Jinn.”

But it wasn’t meant to be.

A flurry of knocks on the bedroom door brought the tension to a sputtering halt.