Chapter 13: His Bite, Her Fire

Beyond my window, the moon was white, a ghostly witness to my suffering.

I did not sleep.

I could feel the pressure of the gold collar against my neck, the heat of Kael's gaze on my skin, and the ghostly touch of his tongue where he had kissed wine from my lips.

Horror on that--

I could feel him.

A strand of awareness binding us, tugging at the edges of my mind.

I walked back and forth across the room like a caged animal, the quiet of my dress whispering against my skin.

It was too hot, too cumbersome.

My blood had been racing with a hurt I'd never experienced.

I recoiled from where I'd stood when I heard a knock on the door.

I hadn't even had a moment to open my lips before Kael pushed it open.

Tonight, he hadn't worn armor. He did less and less of that anymore.

Black linen pants, and an open shirt, his pale chest glowing in candlelight.

Nigh on human.

Nigh.

His eyes burned with some unrelenting and merciless thing.

"What are you doing here?" I growled, too quick, too restless.

He did not answer for an instant.

Simply shut the door behind him softly with a soft click, trapping us inside together.

"I sensed your pain,"

I swallowed hard. "You did?"

His mouth was curled into a line. "A bond formed. Breakable, but. Unstoppable devouring."

A bond.

Due to the blood.

Due to the bites.

Due to the evening at the banquet when he branded me publicly before all eyes.

I ought to have been outraged.

I ought to have been questioning him things.

But all I could do was the course of his body hurled over the air between us to the other side of the room, power, and predator.

"You have to feed," he growled, and the inflection of his voice was mean.

I nodded. "I don't want anything."

He grinned, level and low, and sounded amused rather than thrilled. "Not you, little rose. Me."

I was a human popsicle.

"Oh."

He inched closer.

So close I could read the lines of fatigue creased into his face, the hard muscle of his jaw.

He was struggling with himself.

I should have screamed.

I should have run.

Instead, I tilted my chin.

"Then feed," I gasped.

His jaw muscle trembled.

"You don't know what you're offering," he growled.

"Perhaps I don't," I gasped, my chest struggling. "But you do. And. so do I."

I had no idea what I was saying.

And only that the pain inside me, the hunger, the burning hunger—it was all for him.

With this.

Kael's low rumble shook his chest.

And before I could even attempt to make sense of what was occurring, he claimed me.

It wasn't sweet.

It wasn't sweet.

His arms clamped around me, holding me against his chest. His teeth against my throat, glinting tips of his fangs sinking into the skin but not breaking.

Not yet.

"Last chance," he growled against the pound of my pulse.

"Make me stop."

I should have.

I didn't.

I arched back on my head, baring my throat.

A sacrifice.

A submission.

A challenge.

Kael's grip broke.

His teeth bit into my skin with a burning, sweet pain that stole my breath.

I breathed hard, fists on his shoulders.

The first kiss of his lips was shattering.

Hot.

Hungry.

Wild.

Blinding pleasure washed over me, white-hot and unbelievable.

I moaned, helplessly, my knees folding.

Kael wrapped me, one arm across the arc of my back, the other across the crescent of my nape as he fed.

The world went round.

Everything dissolved to the fire in his mouth, the burning black clasp of him inside me.

My blood.

My soul.

My flame.

Something inside me ripped wide asunder.

Power—blind and brutal and terrible—throbs through my veins, satisfying his hunger for something just as wild.

Kael curled back with a snarl, eyes open and blinding.

The scarlet flame flared between us, searing down my flesh.

"What did you do?" he growled, his voice raspy and coarse.

"I don't—I don't know," I stuttered, falling.

His fists clutched me.

Set me upright.

Held me close.

"Your blood," he growled, his voice hardly anything.

"It's not human. It's—something else."

I gazed at him dully.

"You bit me," I bellowed like a fool.

"And you bit," he snarled.

The tie between us was no longer a vibration.

It was a growl.

I could feel him inside me—his hunger, his anger, his confusion.

And underneath it all—

A raw, racking hunger.

His thumb traced the line of my neck, over the twin bruises.

"You burn," he breathed. "You burn like fire."

I trembled, twirling in his fingers before I could steady myself.

"No," I struggled, futilely attempting to repel him. "You—you said that this meant nothing. That I meant nothing."

His face contorted, a spasm of something that resembled regret.

"I lied."

There was space between us.

Heavy.

Choked on a lethal current.

"I won't be yours," I cried, my voice shaking.

"You already are," he gasped for air. "As much as I loathe it. As much as I resist."

He stepped back, releasing me with a wrenching spurt of cold.

"This makes no difference," he growled, trying to make it so. "You're still my blood slave."

"And you," I flung back at him, "are still my keeper."

His lips curled up in a cold grin.

"For now."

And then he left me.

Leaving me shaken, seething, and bound to him more tightly than ever.

Long after

He left, and I leaned against the window, gazing out into the moonlit garden below.

Our connection hummed like a live wire spark across my skin.

I ran my fingers over the place on my throat where he'd bitten me, following the red, healing skin.

His bite.

My fire.

Whatever was between us—it was something that both of us could no longer deny to see.

Or stop.

And at the bottom of my heart where the fear was struggling with something worse and better—

I didn't know if I didn't care.

To be continued....